Monday, November 21, 2011
It's Still Alive
By Damian Arlyn
When the 18-year-old Mary Shelley decided to participate in a competition involving her husband and two other colleagues (including the famous British poet Lord Byron) centered on who could write the best horror story, she probably had very little notion that her story, which was reportedly based on a dream she had experienced, would be not only the obvious winner of the competition but go on to become one of the most celebrated and oft-imitated horror stories in Western Civilization. First published in 1818, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus told the terrible tale of a scientist who created a monster and then suffered the disastrous consequences of such an action. Though it has been adapted for stage, screen and radio numerous times (including the campy but highly enjoyable Kenneth Branagh version made in 1994), there is one incarnation that stands above the rest: James Whale's 1931 masterpiece, which celebrates its 80th anniversary today. Released by the same studio as Tod Browning's Dracula and in the same year (a seminal one for monster movies it would seem), Universal's Frankenstein became a Hollywood classic for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was turning the unknown actor playing the large, mostly mute creature (an actor so obscure they didn't even include his name in the film's opening credits) into a major motion picture star. That actor's name was Boris Karloff.
Initially, Bela Lugosi was cast as the monster but he turned out to dislike the part so much that he soon quit the picture and Karloff stepped in. Karloff's performance is the heart of Frankenstein. His stiff, lumbering movements and vast emotional mood swings (from innocent curiosity to angry, maniacal rages) perfectly captures the early development of a newborn infant. One of the most heartbreaking
sequences of the film also is one of the most memorable: his tragic encounter with a young girl. Though despised by everyone he comes into contact with, the child is the first and only person not to respond with fear or antagonism to his frightening appearance. She invites him to sit and play with her, tossing flowers into a nearby lake and watching them float. The giddy expression on the monster's face betrays the first real feelings of joy he's experienced since his creation, but it is short-lived. Once the flowers are all gone he stupidly picks up the girl and tosses her in the lake, drowning her in the process (a scene whose second half actually was censored upon original release). He quickly realizes he's done wrong and runs off with a look of fear, panic and confusion on his face, like a toddler who's just broken his mother's favorite vase and knows he's in trouble. It's a tremendously sad moment and not just because of the death of the child but because of the pathetic nature of the monster. Through his ignorance and foolishness, he destroyed the one thing in his life that offered him genuine unconditional love. Karloff's creature is one of the saddest and most sympathetic monsters ever put on screen. Some have speculated in recent years that the monster's lonely and persecuted existence served as a metaphor for director James Whale's own feelings of isolation as a homosexual.The cast surrounding Karloff also is quite good. Colin Clive's portrayal of the obsessed scientist is as equally memorable as Karloff's performance (his declaration of "It's alive!" is forever etched in cinematic history). Dwight Frye plays Frankenstein's hunchbacked assistant Fritz with the same gleeful malevolence with which he played Renfield in Browning's film (it's almost as common to mistake Fritz's name for Igor as it is to assume Frankenstein is the name of the monster rather than the doctor). Another Dracula alumnus is Edward Van Sloan (Van Helsing) who once again plays a scientist in Whale's film, though one who meets a far more inauspicious end. Van Sloan also appears in a prologue warning more sensitive audience members of what they're about to see. Interestingly, Van Sloan performed a similar act at the conclusion of Dracula in its initial run.
Like the prior Dracula film, Frankenstein was based not primarily on the author's original novel but on a theatrical adaptation by John L. Balderston. Unlike Browning's film, however, it bore very little resemblance to its source material. Beside the essential premise and the names of a few of the characters, this Frankenstein was a work of total imagination. For example, details about how the creature is brought to life in the book are exceptionally few. This makes the legendary birthing sequence (brilliantly parodied in Mel Brooks' affectionate 1974 spoof Young Frankenstein), wherein Dr. Frankenstein uses the natural elements such as thunder and lightning to animate the lifeless corpse lying flat on the platform being lifted up high into the air while sparks of electricity fly noisily from various mechanical apparatuses all the more impressive. Likewise, the creature's appearance is radically different from that described in the book but no less creative and memorable. The now instantly recognizable look of the monster (the bolts on the neck, the flat head, the green skin, etc) was designed by make-up artist Jack Pierce, the man also responsible for yet another Universal monster a decade later — Lon Chaney Jr.'s Wolf Man. Needless to say, Frankenstein was a huge hit upon its release, but unlike a number of other Hollywood classics which now are dated terribly, Whale's film still holds up incredibly well.
One of the qualities that makes it so watchable are the amazing visuals. Clearly inspired by German expressionism, the stark and at times surreal look of the film contributes to the dark Caligari-like atmosphere. Whale was a theater director before he did cinema and he brings a theatricality to the film that helps make it more chilling and captivating. Whale would go on to direct the sequel Bride of Frankenstein (considered by many to be ever better than its predecessor but still unseen by me) and Universal's The Invisible Man. Whale tried to distance himself from his horror films later in his life but his career faltered and he eventually committed suicide in 1957. He even got his own film in 1998 in the form of Gods and Monsters where he was was played by openly gay actor Ian McKellen, who has admitted that he identifies very strongly with the struggles of the talented filmmaker. Regardless, however, of the obscurity or notoriety of Whale's more "serious" output, his horror work is among the best of the genre and Frankenstein wouldn't be the celebrated classic it is today without him. It also makes sense that the story of Frankenstein itself (as originally conceived by Shelley) wouldn't be as remembered today as it is without Whale's film. It's ironic that a story which warns against the dangers of man trying to achieve immortality shows no signs of "dying" anytime soon.
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Labels: 30s, Books, Branagh, Browning, Fiction, Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr., Lugosi, McKellen, Mel Brooks, Movie Tributes, Remakes, Sequels, Theater, Whale
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Wednesday, October 19, 2011
The first time was not the charm
By Edward Copeland
Though one shouldn't assume, I'm guessing the third time did indeed prove to be the charm as far as screen adaptations of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon go, even though time prevented me from sampling 1936's Satan Met a Lady starring Bette Davis. Reports on that incarnation of Hammett's story claim it turned the tale into farce, changed all names to protect the fictional and rechristened the much-sought-after Maltese Falcon as the fabled Horn of Roland. Unfortunately, I did have time to see the first crack movies took at Hammett's detective classic, director Roy Del Ruth's 1931 film The Maltese Falcon. I can see now — with Warner Bros., screwing up the story credited with creating the hard-boiled detective genre twice within seven years of its publication — how it became a matter of pride and urgency to try again as soon as 1941 to right the cinematic wrongs. This time, the studio hired a talented writer (John Huston) and gave him his first shot at directing in the hopes he'd make the definitive film version of The Maltese Falcon, which he did, even though his casting of Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade looked unorthodox at the time. However, Bogart's Spade ended up being as definitive a take on the private eye as the film itself became on the work of fiction. Now, I realize people exist who enjoy slowing down to gaze upon traffic accidents and part of these misguided souls wants to see how bad the 1931 version really could be. Trying to spare these folks an hour and 20 minutes of their lives prompts me to write about that 1931 Maltese Falcon today.
More than merely a decade separates the two films titled The Maltese Falcon and — with the exception of more sexual innuendo because the camera rolled on the 1931 version in pre-Code era Hollywood — little of what's different plays in the first film's favor. In fact, Huston's Maltese Falcon proved so beloved that when televisions began to spring up in U.S. households and old movies were rerun, the first Maltese Falcon got a new title: Dangerous Female. It's somewhat ironic that the 1931 movie would end up traveling under an alias
because one of the most mystifying changes the 1931 film made from Hammett's story was making that "dangerous female" be named Ruth Wonderly from beginning to end. She still lies and kills, but she doesn't use any fake names at all. Brigid O'Shaughnessy doesn't exist here. In Hammett's version, she also used other aliases but even Huston edited it down to two. Bebe Daniels plays Miss Wonderly in the 1931 version and she's representative of that film's biggest problem. Even some of the cast who were good in other roles in other films, weren't here. Perhaps it's just seeing them in contrast to the brilliant 1941 ensemble, but with the exception of Una Merkel, who plays Sam Spade's secretary Effie in 1931, nearly the entire cast stinks. Granted, part of the problem stemmed from the time period and the cast was populated with many performers who made their names in silents and didn't make the transition well. The only truly decent sound role that Daniels ever got was as the fading star Dorothy Brock in the 1933 musical 42nd Street. However, when I mentioned it as a pre-Code picture, that was not an exaggeration. The opening scene shows a pair of female legs adjusting her dress and walking out of Sam Spade's office followed by Spade (Ricardo Cortez) adjusting the pillows on the couch with the definite implication that hanky panky had been taking place. His relationship with Miss Wonderly seems to be sexual for sure and there's no question about his affair with partner Miles Archer's wife Iva. As Wonderly, hiding from Iva and trying to make her jealous at the same time, Bebe Daniels takes a bath in a scene that nearly shows her nude.
What ultimately ruins this version of The Maltese Falcon and, I suspect, would be the key to any attempt to tell this story belongs to whoever gets cast to play Sam Spade. In the 1931 case, Ricardo Cortez simply sinks the character and takes the movie down with him. Cortez, like Daniels, came from silents. Looking at his resume, he later did appear in one good film, his final film actually — John Ford's The Last Hurrah in 1958 — not that I recall him in it. Cortez portrays Spade as a grinning ghoul. He never stops smiling, laughing or giggling. Because he only seems to have one emotional note, every piece of dialogue gets the same spin, ruining some great lines.
When he's meeting with Caspar Gutman (Dudley Digges) — for some reason Gutman's first name starts with a C here but a K in 1941 — and Gutman explains the falcon's origin dating back to the Crusades, Sam says, "Holy wars? I'll bet that was a great racket!" In a talented actor's hands, that could get a laugh. Coming out of Cortez's mouth, it drops like a lead balloon, but it's how he delivers every line whether he's making a threat, toying with cops or trying to seduce a woman. I don't think it's director Roy Del Ruth who is to blame, not that he ever made an exceptional piece of work, but Cortez in the 1931 Maltese Falcon gives us another example of how a bad lead can ruin an entire film. For a modern example, think Danny Huston in John Sayles' Silver City. Other things that make this film's Sam Spade ridiculous don't have anything to do with Cortez. When he gets the call about Miles' murder, his bedroom looks suitably seedy just as Sam's apartment does in 1941. However, when you see his plush living room, egad. The first thing it reminded me of was those ridiculously large Manhattan apartments the characters in the sitcom Friends somehow afforded. How does Sam Spade afford this nice a place in San Francisco even that long ago when Miss Wonderly's $200 payment was way more than they expected?
One thing I searched in vain to find on the Web was how old Miles Archer is supposed to be in Hammett's original story. In the 1941 version, there doesn't seem to be that much of an age discrepancy between Jerome Cowan and Bogart (In real life, Cowan was born in 1897, Bogart in 1899). However, Roy Del Ruth's version shows Miles (Walter Long) looking as if he has quite a few years on Sam (Long was born in 1879, Cortez in 1900). I was curious how Hammett wrote them, but could never find an answer. The closest I found was a character description on something that claimed to be the final version of John Huston's screenplay for the 1941 film where he writes that Miles is "about as many years past 40 as Spade is past 30." Iva's role increases in the 1931 version and in it, Miles knows that she and Sam had an affair, He returns early from a trip while Iva has called to whisper sweet nothings to Sam on the phone. When Effie steps away from her desk, Miles picks up her extension and overhears his wife and Sam's conversation. He never really gets a chance to confront them about it because when he goes into Sam's office, that's when Miss Wonderly has begun telling her story and she'll kill Miles soon enough. One thing doesn't change — both Sam Spades anxiously want the affair with Iva to be over. An interesting note about how Spade and Archer work in 1931: They shared an office in 1941 and were called private investigators. In 1931, each man has his own office and the sign on the outer office door refers to them as "Samuel Spade & Miles Archer: Private Operatives."
In most respects, the broad outlines of the story follows the tale most people know through the 1941 film. Many of the same lines are used, so they probably originated with Hammett, but they just don't get the same spin or aren't rewritten the way Huston did. Mostly, things get left out to make things go more quickly. We don't see Archer shot and killed and he doesn't tumble the way he does in 1941. Spade still receives the news in the dark of his bedroom, though it isn't filmed nearly as well as it was by Huston, and we don't see him call and
ask Effie to inform Iva. We only learn that she did that deed from the cops who confront Sam with that tidbit. Effie gets to score with some information of her own as well, telling Sam that Iva wasn't there when she got there, even if that is a red herring. For instance, the character of Wilmer doesn't appear until very late in the movie and doesn't get but a handful of lines, though he does kill Gutman offscreen as he does in the story which doesn't happen in the 1941 film. What's shocking about that is what a waste it is of the actor who plays Wilmer here — Dwight Frye, who in 1931 proves so memorable as Fritz in James Whale's Frankenstein and Renfield in Tod Browning's Dracula. Iva's increased role as a troublemaking sexpot went to an actress whose own life ended up as a bigger mystery than the one in The Maltese Falcon — Thelma Todd. In just 10 years, she appeared in an astounding 119 features and shorts, probably best known for her work with the Marx Brothers in Monkey Business and Horse Feathers. In 1935, she was found dead in her car, a victim of carbon monoxide poisoning but it was long rumored that she'd been murdered, especially by gangsters eager to force her and her boyfriend, director Roland West, out of ownership of their club.
As if most of the movie hadn't played as if it were the work of amateurs already, despite the changes here and there, it had mostly followed Hammett's story — until the ending drops it down another level of awfulness. Early in the film, when Spade visits the scene of Miles' murder, they toss in a scene where Spade stops briefly and speaks with a Chinese man and the conversation isn't mentioned again until the end when Sam reveals that the Chinese man witnessed Miles' murder and ID'd Miss Wonderly as the killer. First, it's downright remarkable to believe that Sam knows how to speak Chinese. Second, that means that almost from the beginning he knows that she killed his partner, yet he still plays along with her the whole time and, as he tells her, falls for her, though he does turn her in to the police. Then, as a final epilogue, Sam visits Ruth in prison and brings her a pack of cigarettes and tells her that thanks to breaking the case, he's been named the chief investigator for the District Attorney's office. As he leaves, he tells a prison matron, "I want you to be very nice to that girl in No. 10. Give her anything she wants. Good food, cigarettes and candy. You know what I mean. Send the bill to the District Attorney's office. I'll OK it." Thank goodness they let John Huston and Humphrey Bogart do Hammett's story right.
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Labels: 30s, B. Affleck, Bette, Bogart, Books, Browning, Fiction, Huston, John Ford, Marx Brothers, Musicals, Remakes, Silents, Whale
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Friday, September 02, 2011
What you've seen on the big screen (but not in its original release)
By Edward Copeland
As my readers can no doubt tell, my contributors and myself don't have much in the way of original copy to offer this week (that's why you've seen three days in a row of From the Vault posts of old reviews written when the films in question originally came out prior to this blog's existence). I'm taking this "week off" because I have several projects coming up that require lots of watching and writing so I can more or less place ECOF on autopilot. It then occurred to me that this would be a great opportunity to me to run something I've always wanted to and that really isn't labor intensive.
Since seeing movies in a theater, for the most part, is a logistical impossibility for me now, I've always wanted to list the films that I was fortunate enough to see in a theater through re-releases that I either wasn't born when they originally came out, I was too young to see in their original release or somehow I missed the first time and they happened to come back. I figured that would be a great comment starter. I've only linked to reviews I wrote based on being able to see the films in a theater the way God intended. Of course, I didn't count The Rocky Horror Picture Show since it never stopped playing. I just went with alphabetical order. I hope I've recalled them all.
Hamilton Luske & Wolfgang Reitherman
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Labels: Altman, Browning, Buñuel, Coppola, Curtiz, Fellini, G. Stevens, Godard, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Landis, Lean, Peckinpah, R. Scott, Renoir, Scorsese, Welles, Whale, Wilder, Wise
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Sunday, May 29, 2011
You can't hurt a dead man
By Edward Copeland
Fritz Lang already was known as one of the world's greatest directors before he came to Hollywood. In fact, when Hitchcock was starting out, Lang's reputation for making masterful suspense films in Germany such as M, Spies and the Mabuse series earned Hitchcock the early label of "the English Fritz Lang." Hitler's rise to power led his propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels to offer Lang the job as head of the Third Reich's film industry. Instead, Lang fled Germany (losing his wife, who divorced him, in the process), first going to France, where he made one film, and then to America where his first effort produced the classic Fury, which premiered 75 years ago today. For his first time working in Hollywood, Fritz Lang made one helluva film.
Though critically well received upon its release, Fury didn't make a big splash or earn the revered status it holds today. Its release in 1936 also coincided with the year its male lead, Spencer Tracy, finally came into his own. Tracy had been kicking around Hollywood for several years, but hadn't achieved star status yet. In Fury, he was second-billed behind Sylvia Sidney, who was a bigger draw at the time. With 1936, not only
did Tracy get his great role here (though he hated Lang and refused to ever work with him again), it followed Tracy's second-billed role to another bigger female star, Jean Harlow, in Riffraff, but his status climbed with his next two films that year. Almost exactly a month later, he was third-billed behind Clark Gable and Jeanette MacDonald, but Tracy's turn as a priest trying to reform a childhood friend turned gambler in San Francisco, the year's top-grossing film, really raised his profile. The part would earn Tracy his first Oscar nomination as best actor. He wrapped up 1936 as the fourth in the quartet of Harlow, William Powell and Myrna Loy in the comedy Libeled Lady. By year's end, Tracy truly had become a well-known quantity on his own, something set in cement when he went on to win the next two best actor Oscars in a row for Boys Town and Captains Courageous. While Tracy delivers fine work in San Francisco, his performance in Fury was the one that deserved that nomination.Fury, even today, remains a powerful film and, as Peter Bogdanovich points out in the DVD commentary, seems quite unusual coming from MGM, a studio not known for making this sort of hard-boiled movie. Fury had elements of noir, but more accurately belongs in the school of tough social commentary with a lot of the expressionistic touches that Lang brought with him from his German filmmaking days, shots and styles that you wouldn't see in a film by an American director at that time, let alone an MGM release. Fury plays closer to something that might have come from Warner Bros., but truly, though the studio and even Tracy viewed it as nothing more than a "B" picture, Fury would have been unique for that time no matter who released it. On the commentary, Bogdanovich says he thinks it's the least likely film MGM ever made, but I have to differ with him on that point — I still think Tod Browning's Freaks holds that distinction.
The story for Fury, originally titled Mob Rule, was written by Norman Krasna (who earned the film's only Oscar nomination in the category of best motion picture story) while the screenplay was written by Bartlett Cormack and Lang. Joseph L. Mankiewicz served as producer. One of the best parts of the DVD's commentary is that you don't just get Bogdanovich, but get Lang himself, taken from an undated interview he recorded about the film, excerpts of which also are included on the commentary track, though Lang died in 1976 long before anyone had even thought of such a thing as a commentary track (Hell, few had video tapes by then). Lang addresses the subject of how he could have co-written the script when at the time, he barely spoke English. According to the Austrian-born director, he'd spent a lot of time just hanging around with regular, non-show biz Americans, trying to get a feel for how their syntax and really contributed more in the way of scenes while the co-writer MGM gave him, Cormack, turned it into dialogue. One change MGM insisted on, which I think actually was a good one, was they changed the character Tracy plays, Joe Wilson, from being a lawyer as he was in Krasna's story to being a man just trying to make ends meet. MGM's argument was that audiences would relate to Joe more if he were a "man of the people" and I think they were correct.
Fury takes places in 1936, but even when Lang made period pieces he approached them with the same attitude. "Every movie should be sort of a documentary of its time. Only then do you get a sense of its truth," Lang said. Fury starts out as a romance of sorts, but by its end it will have traveled as far from romance as you can imagine
and Lang will have shown a lot of that sense of truth that he aimed for in his films. Joe loves Katherine Grant (Sidney) and wants to marry her, but he lacks the money for them to start a life together. As the film opens, Joe and Katherine are bidding each other farewell as Katherine is catching a bus back to her hometown. They stare longingly at a window display of wedding dresses that Joe wishes he could afford. While waiting at the bus station, Joe's coat gets caught, tearing the pocket. Katherine says they have enough time for her to sew it. As she opens her suitcase and retrieves her sewing kit, Joe even playfully fondles her delicates, slightly daring for the time. Joe also isn't as refined as Katherine, as she always has to correct him on words, such as when he gives her a "mementum." Katherine tells him she got him a memento as well and presents him with her mother's wedding ring which was inscribed Frank to Katherine (which also was her mom's name) and Katherine added "to Joe." Due to his large hands, Joe can only wear it on his pinky as they say goodbye.
Joe holds high principles and tries to pass them on to his two younger brothers, Charlie and Tom (Frank Albertson, George Walcott), that he rooms with in Chicago, which isn't easy since Charlie is involved with the rackets and a gangster named Donelli. That night after saying goodbye to Katherine, Joe gets particularly peeved and righteous when Charlie returns home with Tom as drunk as he is. Joe also has taken in a stray dog who followed him home, whom he names Rainbow (played by Terry). Joe and Katherine maintain a relationship via mail until Joe surprises her with the news that he and his the brothers saved enough money to open a garage/gas station. Charlie has given up his shady life and with the three in business together and it doing fairly well, Wilson's earning a steady income now. Joe is even able to purchase a car, which he plans to drive on a trip to see Katherine, now that that wedding day seems like a real possibility to him. That's when the story takes its dark turn and things go terribly wrong.
A cheery Joe hardly needs the car to get to Capitol City to see Katherine (with Rainbow at his side, who he's since learned was girl when she gave him of litter a puppies) — because Joe's practically floating on air and in anticipation of being reunited with his girl. Even though living is a bit easier for Joe now, he still sticks to his
frugality, choosing to camp out on the sides of the highway rather than finding a motel. When he's nearly completed his journey, trying to find shortcuts on back roads, a man (Walter Brennan) holds up a badge and stops his car with a shotgun trained on Joe. Wilson cooperates fully, but his answers still strike the deputy as suspicious so he takes Joe to the sheriff for further questioning, even though the confused Wilson still has no idea of what he's being accused. 1936 not only marked the year when Spencer Tracy really made his mark, it also moved Brennan to the front ranks of character actors. He'd been working since the 1920s, almost entirely in uncredited roles, but in addition to Fury, 1936 brought him notable parts in Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, the many times remade Three Godfathers and Howard Hawks' Come and Get It, which would win Brennan the Academy's very first supporting actor Oscar, a prize Brennan would win a total of three times between 1936 and 1940.Once Joe gets taken to the sheriff's office in Strand, he finally gets an idea of what's going on when Sheriff Hummell (Edward Ellis) asks him the seemingly innocent question of whether he'd like some peanuts. Joe graciously accepts, admitting he's had a weakness since he was a boy. That's when the sheriff shows him a newspaper headline about the ransom delivered to the kidnappers of a young girl from a family named Peabody and how peanut shells were discovered near the abduction scene. (As a former newspaperman, it's amazing to me just to see how wide broadsheets used to be.) Joe insists he's innocent and has people who can prove it. He wants to call Katherine, but when he notices the headline says the kidnappers were three men and a woman, he fears getting her involved and asks for his brothers instead. First, the sheriff wants him to empty his pockets, which he does, and they include peanuts and some cash which Deputy Bugs (Brennan) takes to check against the serial numbers of the money that was delivered to the kidnappers. Somehow, a five dollar bill with a matching serial number found itself in Joe's possession so the sheriff locks him up until the district attorney can question him further. Even poor Rainbow is stuck barking around the jailhouse.
It's at this point when Fury really starts rising toward its greatness on multiple levels and Lang delivers sequence after sequence, shot after shot that would wow first-time viewers today. The town of Strand already had been up in arms over the girl's kidnapping, but the sheriff actually displays a degree of professionalism in keeping Joe under wraps. Granted, he doesn't allow him to call his brothers, but he doesn't let the news leak out either. Would that his deputy had such impulse control. While Bugs hangs out at the barber's shop, one of the customers complain that the sheriff's department isn't doing its job or they'd have caught the kidnappers by now. His pride wounded, Bugs asks the man what he would think if he told him that they have a man in custody right then that they suspect could be involved. It sets up the first of many brilliant sequences by Lang as he films a rumor-filled small-town variation of the telephone game. First, the barber calls his wife to let her know what
he just heard. She reaches across the way to knock on the window of a neighbor in the next building to tell her. As the news spreads far and wide, you even get women who will preface their comments with words such as "It was told to me in the strictest of confidence." As the story spreads, it gets embellished along the way. The man was caught with $5,000 — no $10,000 of the ransom money. There's a funny shot that Lang inserts during a run of gossiping women of a bunch of clucking chickens. You also get a sense of the small town's attitudes, foretelling how this could go bad and quickly. When one woman actually points out that the man in custody hasn't been convicted of anything yet, another woman responds with, "My dear young lady, in this country, people don't land in jail unless they are guilty." The gossiping men say that the first thing he asked for was a lawyer, so they can complain about those attorneys "that get these skunks off" and how if people had more guts, they'd settle matter themselves. Not everyone in town responds to the news with anger. The Chamber of Commerce anticipates the revenue and p.r. a trial like that could bring to Strand.For the most part. that entire sequence plays for comic effect. Within the words of some of the citizens of Strand lie an undercurrent of undemocratic ideas and support for vigilante justice, but for now it's just played for laughs. The audience still has reason to be concerned for Joe regardless of how the town feels — we know that he's an innocent man locked up in a jail and that no one knows he's there, but the case against him is
weak, even the sheriff has admitted that, so Lang hasn't tightened the screws on the tension yet, aside from Katherine, sitting alone at a diner where she expected to meet him by now. All it takes is a single ingredient to get the men of Strand riled up — a healthy supply of liquor. As many of the men in town get pie-eyed, including the town's well-known troublemaker Kirby Dawson (Bruce Cabot), they all agree that it's high time the sheriff start providing them answers about this man he's holding. Soon, they find the next best thing when Bugs wanders by and they pull him in and grill him to tell them what he knows. Unfortunately, Bugs tells them the truth: They searched Joe's car from top to bottom but all he had on him was a five dollar bill related to the ransom money. It doesn't make the men very happy because they, like all who have vested beliefs in a lie such as Birthers or Truthers, don't want to hear that their rumors aren't true. It's not that they can't handle the truth, it's that the truth doesn't interest them in the first place, not when compared to the lies they've come to love. Kirby and some of the town's businessmen decide they'll demand answers from the sheriff himself the next day.
When Kirby and the business leaders meet with Sheriff Hubbell the following day, he's honest with them: The case against Joe Wilson is at most weak and circumstantial and he's waiting to let the district attorney question him and sort it out, but for now there's nothing for them to worry about and they all should simmer down. The businessmen accept his word but Kirby won't go that easy, insisting that the sheriff let him see Wilson which Hubbell, of course, won't let him do. With the undertone of a threat in his voice, Kirby tells the sheriff that, "An attack on a girl hits ordinary people where we live and we're gonna see that politics" don't get in the way of justice. The sheriff shoots right back, "And I'm gonna see that a bunch of half-baked rumors don't either." Hubbell then orders Kirby to "hightail it" out of his office or he'll take his entire family off the dole. You can tell the incident does disturb the sheriff though as he tells one of his deputies that he's gonna make up a new list of names to deputize and get out guns and tear gas while he calls the governor to ask him to send the National Guard if he needs them. He talks to the governor (Howard Hickman) who promises the sheriff that the guard will be at the ready should things get out of hand.
It only takes another night at the bar for that to happen — and for the media and politics to get involved as well. As the drunks in the bar start rabble-rousing, creating new fictions such as the idea that maybe Joe gave the sheriff his ransom money in exchange for his freedom, the talk turns more into taking matters into their
own hands, something spurred on by an out-of-town visitor just passing through after working to break a union strike in a neighboring town. One Strand citizen actually dares to call for calm, but he's quickly pushed away as Lang, in one great long pan moves along the angry faces populating the bar. He follows that up with an even more interesting shot where the camera takes the point-of-view of the approaching mob as it moves in closer and closer to the sheriff's building where Hubbell and his men stand ready on the steps, armed and warning them not to start trouble. For awhile, it's just a loud, noisy standoff, but the news gets out and soon newsreel cameras arrive, eager to film any melees. The sheriff anxiously awaits for the backup of the National Guard, not realizing that a sleazy power broker of the governor's party called them back when he heard that the governor had authorized them, telling the governor that no town likes to see itself invaded by troops, especially in an election year.
Lang's closeups of the crowd out for blood truly are frightening, managing to be distinct and indistinct at the same time. The standoff gets tenser and tenser as Kirby and the other ringleaders hurl insults at the sheriff who shouts back while Joe moves the cot in his cell to beneath the barred window so he stand on it and look out and personally see the horror gathering, probably not the best idea since it gives the mob another target to focus their hate on, yelling and throwing things at him. Joe pleads to the jailer to give him the keys and let him out — he knows he's not safe. At the diner, Joe Wilson's name finally
has hit the airwaves. When Katherine realizes no more buses are leaving, she pleads with the owners to borrow a car so she can get to Joe. When they have none to spare, she literally runs to Strand on foot, arriving as the sheriff, having been struck with a tomato, has retreated inside with his men and barricaded the door. The scene of Katherine working her way through the crowd is quite telling. At the back, the people seem more shocked by what is happening, but as she moves forward, the mood changes. Around the middle she gets to the spectators there just to attend a good show, happily chomping on hot dogs as they watch. When Katherine finally reaches, the front, that's when she finds the ones truly gleeful with bloodlust and can see Joe through his bars. Inside, Joe still pleads for help, but no one's listening except Rainbow who comes and joins him in his cell.The natural instinct of Katherine, horrified by what she's witnessing, is to call to Joe and try to reach out to him somehow, but with the crowd's mood, that obviously isn't the safest position to take. Inside, Sheriff Hummell, trying to stand his ground with the few deputies who haven't abandoned him, notice that it seems to have become eerily quiet. Soon they realize why. Led by Kirby, a large group of the men have fashioned a makeshift battering ram to force their way inside, in another example of one of those Lang visual touches you wouldn't expect to find in an American film of that time. The door comes down and the sheriff's office and jail is breached. The mob immediately head to the jailer, demanding the keys to Joe's cell.
The jailer denies that the keys are in his possession and the angry hooligans start practically choking the poor man to death trying to get him to cough them up. Then, one of the vigilantes spots the keys past the bars, beyond their reach. They try to use a long piece of wood to reach it to no avail and then Kirby hits upon the idea: They'll smoke him out. The mob gathers all things that will burn that they can and place them near the entrance to the jail cells and set them ablaze. The mob then return outside to joyously
watch as Wilson waits to die. Kirby, no longer viewed as the town joke, beams with pride. Lang films the other faces in similar, eerie angles and lighting. Other films have depicted mob violence on film before (William Wellman's The Ox-Bow Incident, Arthur Penn's The Chase to name just two off the top of my head), but I don't know if anyone has combined great film artistry at the same time he's getting his point across about its madness as well as Lang, not only here but in what he told Bogdanovich he thought was the best film he ever made, M. A staunch opponent of capital punishment, Lang felt the case against capital punishment should always be made by using the example of someone who is guilty.
Katherine can't believe her eyes as a terrified Joe screams against the bars of his cell's window while the flames and smoke grow. She finally faints. A voice in the crowd yells that the National Guard is coming and the mob scatters. Before they do, a pair of them have a special cherry to place on the vigilante sundae. They light two sticks of dynamite and toss them at the building. They also spot the unconscious Katherine and, as if they were humanitarians, help carry her out of the way. Lang only lets you hear the explosion, but the camera does look back to cast its gaze upon the flaming wreckage that once was the sheriff's department and the jailhouse before going to a fade out.
When an image returns, we're back in the governor's office, where he's beating himself up for letting the political hack talk him into calling off the Guard. We could have prevented all that, he tells the man. The adviser tries to defend his position, reading congratulatory telegrams. The governor asks what kind of
telegrams they will be getting now that the world knows Joe Wilson was innocent, showing him a newspaper headline touting the capture of the Peabody kidnappers. The adviser says that of course, he didn't know he was innocent at the time. "Now, this is on every wire," the governor tells him, showing another headline: INNOCENT MAN LYNCHED. In Chicago, Joe's brothers Charlie and Tom can't believe the gall as they read the headline. "Sure, now he's innocent," Charlie says. As they talk, one of Rainbow's pups peeks its head out from beneath a bed and Tom asks if they still have any milk and takes the dog to the other room to give it a sip as the brothers continue to talk about how they will get revenge on the people of Strand who killed their brother. A familiar voice suddenly speaks up behind them, "That's five-and-ten cent store talk." Tom and Charlie turn with a start to see Joe standing in the doorway, very much alive.Needless to say, the Wilson brothers are shocked to see their supposedly dead older brother standing before them, but this isn't the Joe Wilson of before. This Joe is dark, hurt and angry as he takes a seat to start telling his brothers what happened.
"Know where I've been all day? In a movie — watching a newsreel of myself getting burned alive. I watched it 10 times. Or 20 maybe. Over and over again — I don't know how many. The place was packed. They like it. They get a big kick out of seeing a man burned to death. A big kick!"
Tracy really makes Joe's transition believable, from the upstanding, self-righteous man we first met to the embittered person we see before us now. He explains that poor little Rainbow did perish in the blaze, but the only way that he made it out was by sliding down a drain pipe, burning his whole left side in the process. Tom asks if he got burned bad, and Joe's answer proves more complicated than a simple yes. "Yeah, but that don't hurt me. Because you can't hurt a dead man and I'm dead. Everybody knows that. The whole country knows it," Joe spits. He tells his brothers that his murderers will pay and shows them something he tore from a law book indicating that lynching equals first-degree murder. Of course, Joe needs Charlie and Tom to pursue this for him, because he wants his killers legally tried and be given a legal death penalty and he can't very well bring that about, being dead and all. He also gives his brother another lecture about what this experience has taught him.
"Remember me preaching to you to be decent and to live right? Live right, ha! I tried it. Tried to like it and people, but they won't let you. Charlie, you were right. Donelli was right. Everybody was right and I was wrong, but I know now."
In Strand, District Attorney Adams (Walter Abel) investigates the case, but finds himself getting nowhere because the entire town is stonewalling him and trying to forget the incident ever happened, only referring to it in whispers, especially since they have their own guilt once they learned of Wilson's innocence. For now
though, Adams can't find anyone who will even admit that they saw Wilson in the jail cell window. When Tom and Charlie hear that the D.A. needs an eyewitness, they go to visit Katherine, who basically has slipped into a catatonic state since the incident. When Charlie lights his cigarette, the flame of the match freaks her out and she has a flashback of Joe in the burning jail. It does bring her back enough that she recognizes Charlie and Tom and they explain to her what they need from her if they want to see the people who killed Joe face justice. When the Wilson brothers return to the room where they've been staying in Strand, they aren't very happy to find Joe there, telling their brother what risk he's taking by being there should anyone spot him. Joe doesn't care. He wants to be close if there's a trial. "I want to see them squirm like they made me squirm. I want to see their necks at the end of a rope," Joe tells them. Meanwhile, the same political idiot who talked the governor out of sending the
National Guard tries to stop D.A. Adams from pursuing the lynching case, again citing the effect on the party in an election year. Adams tells him he doesn't care about the election — he must follow the oath he took first and enforce the law. The party hack tries to sinisterly remind Adams that he doesn't want to risk taking food out of the mouths of his wife and kids to which Adams responds, "Sure Will, but some of the things people have to had eat lately haven't set well in their stomachs." The discussion of the case turns into another one of Lang's bravura sequences where what starts as what he's telling the hack turns into his opening statement in the courtroom of the trial where the camera pans past the 22 defendants until it sees the radio mic and we still hear the D.A.'s speech, first with people listening to it at a bar, then by businessmen, then by a women in a bathroom somewhere (where we can see a man tying his tie in a reflection and finally to Joe listening in the room where he's hiding before we return to the D.A. in the courtroom.I'm gonna assume that more people haven't seen Fury than have and therefore, I'm not going to tell you how the rest of the story turns out. You'll have to watch Fury and find out if the D.A. manages to break through Strand's wall of silence prove which citizens were guilty and, even if he does, if the fact that Joe's alive will be revealed making the case moot in the first place. You'll also have to see if Joe remains the bitter man he is and if Katherine ever learns that he never died. However, I do want to toss out a couple of moments that I always find particularly memorable.
First, a really odd one. During a brief break in the trial, the radio announcers remind their listeners that the broadcast is sponsored by "No-Make-a-Me-Fat, the magic dessert." It reminds me of the antacid commercial that Edward G. Robinson's character hears during Lang's The Woman in the Window years later.
I also liked how subtly the groundwork is laid for things early that will prove important later, but that's all I'll say. I don't know if this was factually correct in 1936, but the D.A. says that 6,010 lynchings had occurred in the past 49 years without punishment, though it did make me wonder how many actually were punished. There also are many great quotes, but they would give away things to come if I gave them away with the exception of one that Joe Wilson says at one point, that he really could have said at any point after his escape to anyone and it's so essential, I really must end on it.
"The law doesn't know about things that were very important to me, silly things maybe, like a belief in justice and an idea that men were civilized and a feeling of pride that my country was different from all others. The law doesn't know that those things were burned to death within me that night."
It's amazing how contemporary Fury feels 75 years after its release and how many angles it was able to cover concisely in a short, 90 minute running time. Fritz Lang maintains his reputation as one of the all-time great directors, but people don't mention Fury nearly enough when listing his best.
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Labels: 30s, Arthur Penn, Bogdanovich, Browning, Capra, Edward G., Gable, Harlow, Hawks, Hitchcock, Lang, Loy, Mankiewicz, Movie Tributes, Oscars, Sylvia Sidney, Tracy, W. Brennan, Wellman, William Powell
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Monday, February 14, 2011
The Blood Is Still the Life
By Damian Arlyn
They may be cold to the touch, but right now vampires are pretty hot. Shows such as Vampire Diaries and True Blood, movies such as Let the Right One In and its American remake Let Me In, books such as the Twilight series (and its accompanying movie adaptations) and even a whole subculture of teenage "vampire-wannabes" serve as constant reminders to us that vampires currently are a very popular cultural phenomenon. Yet, in their various literary, movie and TV incarnations, vampires mostly are portrayed as tortured, sensitive souls cursed to continue their earthly existence through the blood sacrifice of others. I'm not entirely sure when this shift toward conceiving of vampires as sympathetic took place but I think it owes a great deal to the novels Anne Rice wrote in the '70s and '80s. Before romantic, melancholy characters like Lestat and Louis came along, vampires were seen (like werewolves, mummies and Frankenstein) primarily as monsters. They were evil, bloodthirsty beings who actually enjoyed taking the lives of others in order to survive. Almost nowhere is this is more apparent than in Tod Browning's 1931 Dracula, which celebrates its 80th anniversary today. In looking back at this horror classic, one recognizes many of the very qualities that would come to be rejected by modern-day vampire enthusiasts while simultaneously seeing several of the very aspects that entrance them with that whole dark underworld in the first place.
Browning's was not the first cinematic treatment of Bram Stoker's novel. Despite being unable to secure the rights, the great F.W. Murnau adapted it into his 1922 silent Nosferatu and was subsequently sued by Stoker's widow. Murnau's Count Orlock (sinisterly played by German actor Max Schreck in a lot of make-up) was a repulsive creature whose evil was manifested in his hideous appearance which, incidentally, more closely resembles the character described in the original book. Browning's Dracula, on the other hand, is all too human. Played by the Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi (who originated the role in a successful Broadway play written by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston), he's handsome, charming, poised, well-dressed, well-groomed and rather sexy. It is this version of the character that most influenced the way the public perceived vampires and Lugosi's Central European elegance and flair played a big part in that.
Though it seems somewhat campy today, Lugosi's performance is iconic and captivated people's imagination at the time. He brought a theatricality to the role that helped to establish vampires as larger-than-life beings who walk, practically glide, untouched through the world of mortals. As Roger Ebert once wrote, "Vampires are always in pose mode... The buried message of many scenes is: Regard me well, for here I am, and I am thus." Speaking in a broken English accent (which, contrary to legend, did not indicate that Lugosi had to learn his lines phonetically; by the time the film was made he spoke English very well), Lugosi welcomes an unsuspecting Renfield — played with equal theatricality by Dwight Frye — into his castle like "a spider spinning his web for the unwary fly." His lines, mostly absent from the original book, are spoken in such a slow, deliberate manner that they have become just as famous for their delivery as for their words: "I never drink... wine," "Listen to them: children of the night. What music they make," and the simple yet hypnotic introduction, "I am... Dracula."
The Deane/Balderston play served as the basis both for the interpretation of the Dracula character and for the structure/aesthetic of the rest of the film. This is why, after a spectacular opening in Dracula's Transylvanian castle, the film takes place mostly in England and takes on the feel of a typical "drawing room" mystery. Browning's approach to the look of the film is appropriately dark and moody but not especially inspired. It has been speculated that the passing of Browning's original choice for the role of Dracula, his friend Lon Chaney, so upset him that he didn't invest as much effort and care into the production as he otherwise would have and in fact left it to cinematographer Karl Freund to do most of he shooting. Interestingly, the crew that filmed the Spanish-language version of Dracula (since it was common practice at that time for studios to make a completely different film utilizing the same sets and costumes rather than simply dub the existing film with foreign languages) created a far more visually interesting product with more camera movement, better staging of certain sequences and even some special effects that made the English version seem a little hokey. What it didn't have, however, was a Dracula with the charisma and screen presence of Bela Lugosi.
There is another element that to modern audiences is noticeably absent from the film. Outside of the opening titles (where Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" can be heard) and a scene in a concert hall, the film is completely devoid of any music. Dracula was one of Browning's first sound pictures and his discomfort with the new technology seems apparent in his use of sound. There are long stretches of silence in the which, though they invoke an atmosphere of suspense and dread, clearly reflect a filmmaker whose training stems from silent cinema. Esteemed minimalist composer Philip Glass attempted to rectify this in 1998 by writing a score for a string quartet that he intended to accompany the film and indeed most DVD versions now have the option of viewing it with a separate audio track that includes Glass' contribution. Although Glass is undeniably talented and the score is itself worth listening to, I personally find it too distracting and intrusive. It transforms Dracula from a piece with perhaps too many silent moments to a film with practically no silent moments. Thus, whenever I sit down to watch it (which usually is every Halloween) I have to do so without Glass' music to really enjoy the experience.
It might be hard now to imagine that anyone ever thought Dracula was scary, but the truth is that people were frightened by what they saw. Decades before newspapers would report that The Exorcist had patrons fainting in the theaters, Dracula had a similar effect on audiences and, to the delight of the studio, it was an enormous box office success. Looked at today a lot of it seems amusing at best and rather silly at worst, but several things save it from being simply a relic of a bygone era: Freund's striking cinematography, some magnificent sets, a few genuinely creepy moments and memorable performances by Dwight Frye, Edward Van Sloan (as Van Helsing) and, of course, Bela Lugosi (who would become so identified with the role that he would have a lifelong love/hate relationship with it). What also cannot be ignored is the role it played in initiating a whole pantheon of cinematic vampires that would later follow. Just as Bram Stoker's book coalesced and solidified much of the language and imagery that is now associated with the mythology of vampires, Tod Browning's Dracula would establish much of what makes vampires attractive to a moviegoing audience: their mystery, their immortality, their sex appeal. They may have started out as engaging villains and ended up as angst-ridden antiheroes, but regardless of how they got that way, without the work of Browning and Lugosi, we wouldn't have any of the vampire media that we do today...though we shouldn't blame it for that.
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Labels: 30s, Browning, Ebert, Fiction, Lugosi, Movie Tributes, Murnau, Silents, Television
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Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Herzog Week: Even Dwarfs Started Small
By Edward Copeland
Of all the Herzog films I watched in preparation for this week, Even Dwarfs Started Small is the only film I came close to not finishing because it's just that damn odd.
You know you're in for something way off the beaten path when the DVD commentary contains (as do most Herzog films) not only Herzog and Norman Hill but professional eccentric Crispin Glover, who was reportedly so influenced by this disturbing mess that he planned to film his own homage to it.
I don't know if Glover got around to it, but if he did, don't tell me about it. In some case, ignorance truly is bliss. While the film is unique for using a cast entirely of little people, it's nothing more than a collection of bizarre and disturbing images.
Though it's about 95 minutes long, it took me a long time to finish because it's weirdness eventually took on an element of mundaneness that would not hold my interest. There is no plot to speak of and even less in the way of character.
My best guess is that it's a story of what happens when the inmates run the asylum, but are they inmates? It's unclear whether the dwarfs are students, inmates or patients of an institution, but they clearly are leading a rebellion when one of their own seem to be arrested for wrongdoing.
As they trap the institution's supervisor inside, they go about mutilating animals, staging mock weddings, setting fires, hotwiring cars so they can run in endless circles and crucifying a monkey. They also giggle and cackle. Boy, do they giggle and cackle.
Herzog says on the commentary that following a prize he won for his first feature, the very good Signs of Life, he was plagued by nightmares and Even Dwarfs Started Small sprang from that. He also said the he was influenced by Tod Browning's classic 1932 film Freaks, but he missed the great lessons of that film. Freaks created real characters you cared about from its sideshow attractions as well as a story that carried the film from beginning to end.
Even Dwarfs Started Small has none of that and is by far the worst Werner Herzog film I've ever seen. Of course, because it was made by a major filmmaker such as Herzog and is ambiguous about what the hell it is about, it's one of those films that many will defend with the usual: "I don't get it. It must be genius" instead of accepting the simpler truth: it was Herzog's third feature and it was a mess made by a self-taught filmmaker in his 20s experimenting and failing in the process.
Just because he made a spectacularly strange dud doesn't distract from the great works he would go on to make. This is weirdness for the sake of weirdness.
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Labels: 70s, Browning, Foreign, Herzog
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Tuesday, February 20, 2007
"The most unusual MGM movie ever"
By Edward Copeland
That's how Robert Osborne introduced a recent airing of Tod Browning's 1932 film Freaks on Turner Classic Movies. The cult classic from the director of Bela Lugosi's 1931 Dracula was released 75 years ago today.
Even three-quarters of a century later, Freaks is a difficult film to describe and its appeal is even harder to sell to those who only hear the plot synopsis and might expect nothing more than a truly sick exploitation film better suited as gross-out attractions in state fairs of days past. That's OK, you're just not one of us, one of us, one of us. Simply put, the title just about says it all — emphasized when a hand violently rips through the movie's title card at the outset. Set in a circus sideshow, Freaks focuses on the lives of the "deformed" and "nature's oddities," though really the biggest freak in the movie is a "normal" human. Cleopatra (Olga Baclanova), an acrobat described as the "peacock of the air," who enjoys teasing the lovesick little person Hans (Harry Earles), especially once she learns he's an heir to a sizable estate. Cleo sets out to trick him into marriage in hopes of stealing his fortune.
Hans can't seen through her, but the little woman who loves him, Frieda (Daisy Earles), certainly can as do the other members of the sideshow attractions, who eventually set out to inflict a more sinister Revenge of the Nerds-style revenge on the acrobat. Frieda's motivation is love of Hans and the other freaks, while concerned about Hans, really want to teach Cleo a lesson, especially after watching how she mocks them all during a segment that even gets its own title card: The Wedding Feast. What's amazing about the film is that, even after 75 years, it retains a lot of power that goes beyond the morbid fascination one would expect. Sure, there are throwaway gags based on the people's conditions, such as an armless woman sipping wine with her foot. Then there are other touches such as when the real-life Siamese twins, the Hilton sisters, play off their ability to react to the other's senses. (Violet makes out and we see Daisy react).
For those unfamiliar with the Hilton sisters, they not only appeared in this cult classic but inspired a modern Broadway cult classic of their own with the 1997 musical Side Show with a strong score featuring music by Bill Russell and lyrics by Henry Krieger, who has three Oscar nominations for best song this year for his new contributions to the film version of Dreamgirls. Tod Browning even appears briefly as a character in the musical. Side Show earned four Tony nominations, including a rare dual nomination for Alice Ripley and Emily Skinner who played Violet and Daisy. Alas, Side Show went home empty-handed, losing book and score to the inferior Ragtime and musical to the empty spectacle of The Lion King, though it's hard to argue that Ripley and Skinner should have beaten the magnificent Natasha Richardson in the revival of Cabaret.
As for Freaks the movie, it seemed even more powerful upon rewatching it recently than it did when I first saw it years ago. Browning creates a truly unique atmosphere and builds genuine creepy suspense as the freaks chase Cleopatra, crawling slowly through the mud on whatever limbs remain. It's funny, as Osborne told it, to know that MGM was so ashamed of Freaks at the time, it let its rights to the film slip away and removed Leo the Lion but, once people rediscovered it years later and it was reassessed more thoughtfully, MGM jumped at the chance to reacquire the rights and put their logo back on the film where it began and belonged.
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Labels: 30s, Browning, Lugosi, Movie Tributes, Musicals, Theater
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