Friday, August 03, 2012
Edward Copeland's Top 100 of 2012 (40-21)
Fritz Lang made a lot of good movies, but nothing equaled this tale told in his native language. Peter Lorre made his mark as the hunted child killer in a film filled with atmosphere, suspense and thought.
Kept from the public for years after its initial release, the one plus to its exile was that I experienced this masterpiece of a political thriller — 50 years old this year — for the first time on the big screen in a crisp, black-and-white print. I hope that Jonathan Demme’s misguided idea of trying to remake this classic didn’t sour the original or scare younger viewers away from seeking out Frankenheimer’s version. The 1962 Manchurian Candidate contains many attributes that make it worth recommending, but every film lover must witness Angela Lansbury’s portrayal of Mrs. Iselin, a contender for the top 10 screen villains of all time.
My much-missed dog Leland Palmer Copeland didn’t usually watch TV, but whenever this classic came on, she was drawn to it. One time, Leland even seemed to sit on the couch and watch it from beginning to end. Maybe it was the music, maybe it was the colors. The sad side effect of Leland’s affection for this film that no one truly ever outgrows is that now that she isn’t here to watch it Dorothy and her friends with me any longer, Oz sometimes proves too painful for me to revisit.
No one gives this film the credit for its darkness that it really deserves. This isn't sappy sentimental drivel; this is about a man who feels as if he's been pissed on all his life and finally reaches the end of his rope. James Stewart's talent, Capra's gifts and the script by Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett make George Bailey's journey plausible and touching. Only a Mr. Potter could hate this film.
Howard Hawks directed John Wayne to his second-greatest performance in this thrilling tale of a cattle drive and bitter rivalries. It also contains the perfect example of a Hawksian woman as Joanne Dru keeps talking, even with an arrow protruding from her body. I feel as if Hawks has slipped some in esteem among the old masters as far as the younger critics out there go. This master of nearly all genres seems long overdue for resurgence.
I wrote in my 2007 list that The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde constantly swap slots for my choice as the best film of 1967 and damn if they haven’t done it again five years later. One of the many great lines in 2009’s (500) Days of Summer comes when the narrator, in describing Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character, says that an early exposure to sad British pop music and a misreading of The Graduate led him to believe that the search for love always leads to The One. (If I’m still around to make another top 100 in 2019, I suspect you’ll find (500) Days of Summer there — after multiple viewings I believe it’s the 21st century Annie Hall.) Back to The Graduate itself, Nichols’ direction looks better with each viewing and the cast remains remarkable. It’s just that my reaction to the story itself that waxes and wanes. It’s never bad – it’s just that sometimes I find myself loving it a bit less than the last time.
The history of movies doesn’t lack for great teamings of directors and actors and the man who more or less made John Wayne an icon with the way he introduced him as The Ringo Kid in Stagecoach also directed the Duke to his best acting performance here. Wayne always worked as a good guy, but he proved his acting chops when someone inserted an element of darkness into his characters. The Searchers also has proved to be a useful template for many other films, most notably Taxi Driver and Paul Schrader’s Hardcore. Ford brought a lot of great imagery to this story and it arguably contains the greatest closing shot of his long career.
As I foretold a couple notches back when writing about The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde holds the higher esteem in my heart in this snapshot in time. Perhaps it’s a side effect of the journey I took through Penn’s entire filmography following his death, but it’s a great film regardless. Each time I watch it again I become more convinced — harrowing moments of violence aside — this truly plays as much as a comedy as The Graduate. At the time I re-visited it, watching how the Depression-era bank robbers became folk heroes to the masses, the resonance with the destruction 21st century Wall Street bankers wreaked on our nation’s economy was easier to identify with than ever before.
In the 1927-28 contest for "Artistic Quality of Production" at the Oscars, this film faced off against Sunrise and Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness. While Sunrise won and I wouldn’t argue against its status as a superb film (It’s not that far back on this list after all), I admit to preferring Vidor's film and its tale of striving to succeed as everything in the world appears to conspire to keep you down.
There's a good reason that so many cite Robert Towne's screenplay as one of the great examples of writing for film. If only all scripts (including some of Towne’s) were this superb. It remains one of the best examples of a modern noir, filmed in color, as well as Polanski’s best work. Jack Nicholson’s Jake Gittes came in his unbelievable and unforgettable run of great 1970s performances that began with 1969’s Easy Rider. It also gives us one of the sickest screen villains in Noah Cross, played so well by John Huston. Chinatown always will live on in the pantheon of film’s with last lines so memorable even people who’ve never seen it know the words.
You know 1950 was a great year for movies released in the United States when a picture as great as All About Eve only finishes third on my list for that year (behind The Third Man and Sunset Blvd.). That takes nothing away from All About Eve though with its brittle and brilliant dialogue and multiple great performances, including Bette Davis’ best, Celeste Holm, Thelma Ritter and, most especially, George Sanders as Addison DeWitt.
Death comes in large doses in The Wild Bunch, but its violence, despite Peckinpah turning the carnage into quasi-ballet-like imagery, isn’t what makes the film so remarkable. The film delivers its true eulogy not for its human characters but for the death of an era and a way of life. As with so many of Peckinpah’s great films, too many misunderstood the film’s intent but The Wild Bunch only grows more evocative and timeless with age, thanks in large part to its ensemble of acting veterans who display the film’s themes through every crease and line on their faces. With the recent death of Ernest Borgnine, Jaime Sanchez (Angel) remains the last living actor who belonged to the bunch.
Billy Wilder (like Howard Hawks) had the talent to soar in almost any genre and this quintessential film noir is a supreme example. How it lost the Oscar to Going My Way and Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson failed to get nominations still puzzles me. Wait — no it doesn't. The Academy picks wrong much more often than they pick right. Barbara Stanwyck gave a lot of great performances, but Phyllis Dietrichson may have topped them all — and if she didn’t, the others better look out.
Kurosawa gets routinely mentioned by many as a master (and deservedly so), thanks mainly to his great sword-laden epics, but for me this "modern" film stands high as one of his strongest, telling the sad story of a long suffering bureaucrat who seeks meaning in life when he's diagnosed with terminal cancer. A truly touching, remarkable film.
Has there ever been a more touching image placed on film that the ending of this silent film, made well after silent films were dead, when the newly sighted blind girl realizes her benefactor was a little tramp? I don't think so either.
The film that marked Woody’s leap from pure comedy to something more still stands as one of his very best 35 years later. With a structure that deserves comparisons to Citizen Kane in that you’re never quite sure what comes next that guarantees a perpetual freshness no matter how many times you’ve seen it. Allen threw almost every trick he could think of into Annie Hall — animated sequences, subtitles to translate what characters really thought, split screens (even if they actually filmed scenes in a room with a divider — and produced an instant classic. Diane Keaton delights as the title character, the film overflows with priceless lines and timeless sequences and the first great Christopher Walken monologue.
It's almost become shorthand to argue that Part II bests Part I in The Godfather trilogy, but I disagree. The original still takes the top spot in my book. I don't think the crosscutting of Michael and young Vito ever quite meshes and instead interrupts the rhythm of Part II. No such problem in the original, an example of making a movie masterpiece out of a pulpy novel. Examining the film more closely again earlier this year for its 40th anniversary while I enjoyed and admired it as much as ever, for the first time I had to acknowledge that unlike later mob classics such as Goodfellas or TV’s Sopranos, The Godfather does romanticize the Corleones. You never see innocents suffer from their line of work — Vito even denies they’re killers. It doesn’t change the film’s status as a fine piece of cinematic art, but it did make me think harder about it than I had before.
Many directors deliver great one-two punches in terms of brilliant consecutive films and Lumet pulled off one of the best of them in 1975 and 1976, beginning with this masterpiece based on a true bank robbery. Al Pacino delivers what may be one of his top two or three performances. It also contains the best work of the sadly too brief career of John Cazale and a peerless ensemble. Lumet’s direction aided by the editing of Dede Allen produced one of the most re-watchable films of all time. If I run across it on TV, even cut up, I stay glued to the end.
After more than 70 years, John Huston’s directing debut still sizzles. Watching Bogart embrace his first real role as a good guy exhilarates the viewer as he thrusts and parries with the delightful supporting cast of Mary Astor, Ward Bond, Elisha Cook Jr., Gladys George, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Barton McClane and Lee Patrick. What many forget about the film comes in that unforgettable climax that basically consists of five characters talking to each other for nearly 30 minutes — and it’s riveting.
The film that really put Spielberg on the pop culture map remains to me his greatest accomplishment. Two distinct and perfect halves: Terror on the beach followed by the brilliance of three men on a boat. It's also an example of how sometimes trashy novels can be turned into true works of film art in a way great novels usually miss the mark in translation (though Peter Benchley's novel at least killed Hooper off as well leaving nonexpert waterphobe Brody as the victor and sole survivor, which would have made for a slightly better ending but I'm nitpicking).
Tweet
Labels: Arthur Penn, Capra, Chaplin, Coppola, Hawks, John Ford, kinpah, Kurosawa, Lang, Lists, Lumet, Mankiewicz, Nichols, Polanski, Schrader, Spielberg, Towne, Wilder, Woody
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Thursday, March 22, 2012
"What do they want from me? After all, I’m only an actor."
By Roscoe
Hendrik Höfgen sets a new standard for protesting too much with the above line from István Szabó's film Mephisto, which celebrates the 30th anniversary of its U.S. release today. Höfgen, unforgettably embodied by Klaus Maria Brandauer, is an actor who finds himself living in, to put it politely, interesting times — 1930s Germany. Szabó's film, based on the novel by Klaus Mann, details Höfgen's career trajectory from provincial Hamburg star and Communist Party member to his final status as the most prominent actor in Nazi Germany, the darling of the Fascist elite. To do this, he, not surprisingly, has to do a lot of skillful maneuvering and charming and flattering, to say nothing of soul-selling.
Höfgen is first seen in his dressing room, screaming with rage and frustration at the wild ovation a visiting star performer is getting from her audience. In what turns out to be the first of many scenes involving Höfgen gazing into a mirror, he manages to pull himself together, going from abject misery to a teeth-baring defiance. He soon is complimenting the star on her performance (which he didn't see) and fishes for compliments from her, asking her to speak a little louder so that everyone can hear her high estimation of his talent.
Soon, the political climate of the era is laid out for us, with Höfgen's communist leanings and involvement in a Revolutionary Theater getting particular attention. The Nazis get some mention, but aren't taken particularly seriously until the terrible day when Hitler is elected chancellor, and everything is turned upside down. Höfgen's communist past suddenly is a liability as he finds some old enemies in high places. He makes the most of an even more highly placed acquaintance, who is the mistress of the Nazi Field Marshal (played by Rolf Hoppe, the character clearly based on Hermann Goering), and is able to get himself cast as Mephisto in a revival of Goethe's Faust. The Field Marshal is very taken
with Höfgen's performance, and Höfgen's career is saved. He's soon the Nazis' go-to spokesman on cultural matters, spouting their platforms on German art with an actorly polish that is supposed to make the ideology more palatable. It isn't all roses, though, as Höfgen soon finds that there's more to pleasing Nazis than repeating their platitudes on High Culture. He eventually is the manager and star of the German National Theater, and has to deal with Nazi interference on personnel and cultural issues. Certain Jewish staff has to be dispensed with, and most serious works are not acceptable to the regime on political grounds. Höfgen’s production of Hamlet, based on the uncomfortable lecture he delivers, looks to be Shakespeare re-imagined in the Nazi mold, with Hamlet as a bold and resolute hero, a prince of the North. And, based on the final moment of the film, the Nazis seem to have bigger plans for Hendrik.
It should be mentioned that Mann's novel Mephisto was based on the career of the German actor Gustav Gründgens, best known today as the derby-hatted master criminal Schranker in Fritz Lang's M. Gründgens was Mann's brother-in-law, and had a career trajectory similar to Höfgen’s, running the German National Theater in Berlin during the war, with Goering's backing.
So how does Mephisto the film hold up, 30 years on? Remarkably well, I'd say. Szabó brings the film to life with a good deal of energy and style, favoring tight close-ups of his excellent cast. I’m very taken with the film’s multiple Mephistos — ranging from Höfgen’s own two performances of the role (one before and one after the Nazi takeover) to the group of costumed Mephistos who appear at Höfgen’s wedding late in the film, leading the entire party in a celebratory dance. To be fair, the film's 144
minute length can feel a bit prolonged in places, but for a viewer willing to hang in and do the work, there are real rewards. The success of the film must depend largely on casting Höfgen properly, and there's no denying that Szabó hit a bull’s-eye with Klaus Maria Brandauer. Brandauer’s performance is a marvel, a real tour de force, a blowout display of overacting, underacting, and everything in between. He’s able to negotiate the character’s shifting allegiances and sell-outs large and small with what looks like ease. Not the least of the Mephistophelean bargains in the film is the one Brandauer makes with the audience — as bad as he gets, he’s always fascinating to watch as he veers from extreme egotism to extreme self-loathing. He's as electrifying now as he was in 1982. He gets excellent support from the rest of the cast, with special notice going to Karin Boyd as Juliette, Höfgen's Afro-German mistress and dance instructor, probably the only character in the film who really knows and loves him for what he really is. Their scenes together really crackle.The film, alas, seems to have dropped off the map, strangely so since it picked up a best screenplay prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the Oscar for best foreign language film, the only film from Hungary to do so. The DVD is out of print, and no longer available via Netflix. A real shame. This film deserves a lot better.
Roscoe blogs at Roscoe Writes. He graduated from the film program at CUNY’s Brooklyn College, and lives in NYC with his husband.
Tweet
Labels: 80s, Books, Fiction, Foreign, Lang, Movie Tributes, Netflix, Oscars, Shakespeare
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Thursday, March 15, 2012
"I'm just one of the Master's robes. He can put me on or he can take me off."
By Edward Copeland
That face. That gorgeous image of Gong Li not only exposed to me to her for the first time but to my first viewing of a Zhang Yimou film as well. Wait! I confess — factually speaking, clips of Raise the Red Lantern and its star crossed my eyesight before I saw the movie, but I prefer to remember it the other way and I hadn't seen Red Sorghum or Ju Dou yet. Besides, the scenes shown on Siskel & Ebert couldn't really do justice to that remarkable face or film, particularly that opening scene that consisted only of a young Chinese girl named Songlian (Gong) speaking to her offscreen mother (voice of Ding Weimin).
SONGLIAN: Mother, stop. You’ve been talking for three days. I’ve thought it over. Alright, I’ll get married
MOTHER'S VOICE: Good. What sort of man is he?
SONGLIAN: What sort of man? Is it up to me? You always speak of money. Why not marry a rich man?
MOTHER'S VOICE: Rich man? If you marry a rich man, you will only be his concubine.
SONGLIAN: Let me be a concubine. Isn't that the fate of a woman?
Songlian talks to her mother in a voice that's strong and defiant and that makes the silent streams of tears that fall down her cheeks even more powerful, just as the film that follows that scene will be.
When Gong Li and Zhang Yimou collaborated (onscreen and off), it turned out to be one of the most fruitful actress/director relationships in cinema history, even though it lasted a mere six features, the last of which, 1995's Shanghai Triad, ended the teaming on a mixed note (Gong and Zhang reunited for 2006's Curse of the Golden Flower, but it didn't come close to matching their work in the '90s). Raise the Red Lantern marks my second favorite of the Gong/Zhang films (topped only by 1994's To Live). Lantern immediately followed Ju Dou and, like that film, received an Oscar nomination for best foreign language film. However, one major difference separated the two films in terms of Oscar submission. China submitted Ju Duo as its official entry when it received its nomination in 1990, the first Chinese film ever nominated. Ju Dou did face some controversy and the communist government banned it for a few years, though eventually they lifted the ban. Lantern proved even more provocative to the Chinese officials, who viewed the film as a veiled allegory for the contemporary Chinese government and similarly banned it (and later lifted it) so it was submitted to the Academy Awards by Hong Kong, which hadn't been handed over to the China yet.
Like Ju Dou, Raise the Red Lantern takes place in 1920s China during what was known as the country's warlord era, not that anything on the screen specifically tells you the date of the film, aside for a phonograph player that narrows the time period down. Songlian does marry a rich man as she told her mother she would. Soon after she arrives at the ancient fortress that the Chen family has held for generations, she'll learn how right her mother was when telling her that she'd be a concubine since she would become the fourth wife (or Fourth Mistress, as she's formally referred) to Master Chen (Ma Jingwu). Screenwriter Zhen Ni adapted Lantern from the 1990 novel Wives and Concubines by Tong Su. After the brief prologue where Songlian speaks directly to the camera, Zhang divides the film by seasons, beginning with SUMMER when Songlian shows up at the massive, Chen castle grounds dressed like a schoolgirl, wearing long pigtails and carrying a single suitcase. Her unexpected appearance panics the old, longtime servant Chen Baishun (Zhou Qi) who asks her why she didn't take the bridal sedan they sent for her. Songlian tells him that she insisted on walking and when he reaches to take her
suitcase, she refuses. She's determined to be self-sufficient. Baishun doesn't argue and begins to lead Songlian toward her new residence. After her long walk, Songlian feels slightly grimy so before she enters the interior of her home, she spots a servant woman (Lin Kong), who must be around her age, sitting on the ground of the stone courtyard, washing clothes by hand. Songlian asks if she might borrow a bit of the clean water from her basin to rinse her arms and hands and the servant, whose name is Yan'er, reluctantly acquiesces but doesn't hide her bitterness toward this new arrival — through glares, tone and words. Realizing quickly what the pecking order in the Chen household will be, Songlian drops any pretense of politeness and orders Yan'er to bring her suitcase into the house. When I rewatched Raise the Red Lantern, for the first time in several years, while many of its most potent and devastating details had remained seared in my memory, I'd forgotten how many surprises the film springs on you via its talented cast, Zhang's directing choices and Zhen's script. I don't mean twists in the conventional sense that we think of when it comes to movies such as Angel Heart, which I discussed just last week, or Fight Club but in characters and situations where things don't turn out to be quite the way they appear at first glance.
Songlian entered this multiple marriage with a decidedly cynical attitude, but the attention a new wife gets shown on her first day overwhelms the 19-year-old. Baishun shows her into her home, which isn't particularly spacious but comes adorned with nice looking furnishings. What takes Songlian's breath away is when the battalion of servants begins appearing to equip residence, both inside and outside. Men hurry into place pushing rolling racks of bulbous red lanterns that they light and hang on hooks leading to her door. One man comes into the house, lowers a ring holding several of the lanterns above her bed, methodically lights each one and then raises them back toward the ceiling again. This section of the film brings the moment, as in Ju Dou when those dye machines began working overtime, that absolutely gorgeous cinematography consumes the screen. Unlike Ju Dou, which splashed wide array of vivid color across its canvas using the long abandoned Technicolor process, Red Lantern's cinematographer Zhao Fei utilizes the color in the film's title as his hue of choice (and won awards from both the Los Angeles and National Society of Film Critics groups for his work. The Inaccurate Movie Database credits Zhao correctly on the movie's awards page, but claims he and Yang Lun, one of the two d.p.'s on Ju Dou, teamed up on Lantern's cinematography on the film's main page. Zhao removes other virtual crayons besides red from his box to create vibrant and striking images for such as a startling icy blue shade at one point. He even manages to make winter's grays and whites sparkle somehow amidst the dullness of the grayer ancient surroundings. While the pampering flatters Songlian, who likes to consider herself smarter and worldlier than many around her, the audience shouldn't forget her age either.
We eventually learn that Songlian attended a university but her father's death forced her to drop out since her family no longer could afford the tuition. That's what led her mother to pressure her into marriage but it's also why she warned her daughter against the type of marriage she enters. That first day though seems pretty good to Songlian — the new wife gets to decide the dinner menu and receives a foot massage, which brings another group of servants (all female) to her residence to prepare her for that ritual. What Songlian doesn't realize is that every day isn't like this and the Master picks which of his wives receives the "honor" of having
him sleep with her that night along with the other perks (foot massage, dinner menu, etc.) This pits the wives against one another on a daily basis, competing and scheming daily to be the chosen one. If this were played for laughs, they'd call it "Desperate Concubines." Raise the Red Lantern tells its story on so many levels simultaneously (if one happens to be veiled criticism of the Chinese government, so be it; the movie did come out just a little more than
two years after Tiananmen Square), but at its core, the lanterns being lit shine upon the tragic history not only of women in China, but women everywhere — a battle being waged frighteningly on state and national levels in the U.S. today over issues thought settled long ago. (And Songlian tried to pursue a higher education — what a snob!) The wives learn to covet the foot massages that, while not as awful as the practice of foot binding, don't look particularly relaxing. One of the oldest servants, Aunt Cao (Cao Zhengyin), explains to Songlian that "a woman's feet are very important" so she can serve her master well. That's why the wives get the "privilege" of this ritual where servants as the servants stretch out the wife's legs, resting the feet on a stool and wrapping a piece of linen around them. Then Aunt Cao takes two hard looking implements that make sounds like rattles and beat them repeatedly against the souls of the wife's feet. In an issue of Senses of Cinema by David Neo on the film called "The 'Confusion Ethics' of Raise the Red Lantern," Neo writes extensively about the history of fetishism of women's feet by men in China, saying, "It was a Chinese myth that the smaller a woman’s feet, the smaller her vagina — therefore, the better for the man."Songlian gets an idea of the games wives play that first night, what should be her "honeymoon." The young woman expresses nerves as it is, hiding her nakedness beneath the covers and asking her husband if they can turn out the lights, but he likes the
lanterns lit, so he can see her. It doesn't matter much because before they can consummate their union, a servant knocks on the door to interrupt. He apologizes but tells the Master the Third Mistress (He Caifei) has fallen ill and is asking for him. At first, the Master orders him to call for a doctor and to tell her he'll see her in the morning, but the servant says she's insistent. The annoyed Master says he's sorry to Songlian, but if he doesn't go, she'll keep this up all night. so he leaves Songlian alone. (This isn't fun for the servants either who have to extinguish the lanterns and Songlian's home and light them at the home of Meishan, the Third Mistress. Someone, presumably Zhang, made a very interesting decision concerning Master Chen in the film: The moviegoer never gets a clear view of his face. The first time I saw Raise the Red Lantern, I thought perhaps Zhang was withholding the moment the audience sees what he looks like for a dramatic purpose much as Spielberg didn't let you see the shark right away in Jaws. That doesn't turn out to be the case though. While Master Chen certainly can be viewed as a villain, it's more like evil spreads out from him and his family's "rules" while in most cases you don't see him committing the acts himself. The Master really serves as a pawn in this game where the women are the victims as well as the villains. Then as the saying goes, you can’t judge a book by its cover.
When I knew at the end of last year that the anniversary of the U.S. release of Raise the Red Lantern occurred this year, the prospect of
writing about this great film excited me. I wanted to detail the surprises and turns the film takes and how what could have been a staid period tale of oppression turns into a moving, riveting and entertaining motion picture all at the same time, but when I watched it again, a protective feeling awoke in me. Sure, I could utilize the silly SPOILER ALERT, but it isn't that important to tell you in specifics who does what to whom. If you haven't seen the film, you must experience these events for yourself to truly appreciate Zhang's masterful direction, Zhen's great screenplay and, most especially, the wondrous ensemble of actresses. I love Gong but, unlike most of her films, she's not the only actress with chops. All the characters that matter are women and two of the other actresses give performances as downright superb as Gong's. He as Third Mistress Meishan and Cao Cuifen as Zhuoyun, the second mistress also do brilliant work. Giving a fine turn in a smaller role is Lin as Yan'er, the spiteful servant who becomes Songlian’s personal maid and spits in her laundry. We eventually learn her attitude comes from her feeling that she should have been the Fourth Mistress. Playing the First Wife, Yuru, is Jin Shuyuan, an older woman who keeps quiet most of the time since Master Chen shows little interest in her anymore. (Given her age, that's one reason I though they kept his face hidden — to shock us with how old he looks.)
He Caifei and Cao Cuifen stand out in what really end up being the film's most difficult roles since the movie places the audience in the same position as Songlian in that we don't know how to read them. He's Third Mistress Meishan definitely comes on the scene as the troublemaker, interrupting Songlian's first night and when the same tactic fails the second night, she
uses her skills as a former opera singer to sing all night on the roof of the castle and keep everyone awake. Cao's Second Mistress Zhuoyun
doesn't seem duplicitous at all at first, going out of her way to be friendly to Songlian and give her gifts. She even acts as if she's happy for her when she gets picked as the mistress for the night. It's only when Songlian uncovers secrets that Yan'er hides in her quarters that she realizes that the maid works as a spy for Zhuoyun. The situation that persists in the Chen household infects everyone in the end and soon Songlian plays the same sort of games and schemes in the same ways to try to monopolize the master's attention. Eventually this chain of events leads to horrifying results for most of the people who live there. After someone dies, Songlian actually says that she is lucky to be dead because that is a better fate than being alive in the Chen household. A lot of lines prove to be very telling, but I'm going to give them to you as blind quotes to preserve the film's surprises. During a dinner of the wives, one complains about another and vows how different things will be when she's in charge prompting another to say, "When you're in charge, the Chen household will perish." One mistress on another: "She has the face of Buddha and the heart of a scorpion. She's the truly wicked one. I'm no match for her." Even though Master Chen has a grown son Feipu (Xiao Chu) by his first wife and has another by Meishan, Zhuoyun regrets only giving him a daughter and Songlian gets warned, "If you don't give him a son, you're in for hard times." Both actresses give simply superb performances, but I haven't heard much of either since. Not that you can trust the Inaccurate Movie Database, but it lists very few titles for He Caifei (I'm going with the spelling of her name I find everywhere else, that's how little I trust IMDb these days) except for some Chinese TV series, though it says her last feature was Ang Lee's Lust, Caution. Cao Cuifen's IMDb filmography ends up even sparser, showing a single TV series and four feature films in her entire career. Then again, who know what can happen to artists in China?
As for Gong Li, Raise the Red Lantern might have been one of her earliest performances, but it showed what a gifted actress she was even then in her mid-20s. She has continued to work steadily in China as well as some American productions such as Memoirs of a Geisha and Michael Mann's film version of Miami Vice. In Red Lantern, what she has to accomplish and does truly amazes. Every emotion you can think of, Songlian expresses — and she gets a drunk scene and gets to go mad as well. It's too bad the performance wasn't eligible for an Oscar nomination. When you think of the Academy's tendency to bestow best actress on twentysomething actresses constantly, few of whom approach what Gong did.
Zhang Yimou provides a lot of great camera moves in the movie both in terms of composition and motion. He has one sequence that pulls back from a scene (I don't want to say of what) to give you the bigger picture that's quite remarkable. As I said earlier, the wondrous
cinematography combined with the production design just produces a stunningly beautiful film, even if it's a heartbreaking one in the end when you see a Fifth Mistress arrive who looks like the youngest yet. Zhang often ran into trouble in China, but he has stuck it out there. Part of me always has wished that he made the leap as other directors did when fleeing totalitarian states such as Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder. Then again, who's to say that Hollywood wouldn't have ruined him as they did Jean Renoir who had to return to Europe to make good films again? China has done their own damage. I miss the Zhang Yimou who made the personal, intriguing films before he got caught up in the Hero-House of Flying Daggers-Curse of the Golden Flower-type of filmmaking. Riding Alone for a Thousand Miles certainly went in the right direction and there are a frustrating number of his works that just never make it here at all. The Flowers of War makes me curious, but after the disaster of A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop, I don't know what to expect from him. Whatever he does, we'll always have that great period of work that lasted through about The Road Home in 2000. More importantly, we'll always have Raise the Red Lantern.
Tweet
Labels: 90s, Books, Ebert, Fiction, Foreign, Gong Li, Lang, Michael Mann, Movie Tributes, Oscars, Ray Top 100, Renoir, Spielberg, Wilder, Zhang Yimou
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Thursday, March 01, 2012
Hate, Murder and Revenge
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
Mention director Fritz Lang’s name to a movie fan and more likely than not they’ll conjure up visions of the style that eventually became identified as “film noir.” Lang was one of the godfathers of noir, with elements present in films from his German expressionist period (Der Müde Tod, M) to his later American works (The Woman in the Window, The Big Heat). Crime dramas were Lang’s forte, though he worked in any number of genres (one of his best-known vehicles, 1927’s Metropolis, is considered by many to a science-fiction masterpiece) but they all share a common thematic bond…one that was described succinctly by critic Andrew Sarris as “the same bleak view of the universe where man grapples with his personal destiny and invariably loses.”
Lang even directed Westerns, a genre that seems at first a bit alien to his cinematic M.O. The first two oaters he helmed, The Return of Frank James (1940; also his first color film) and Western Union (1941), were assignments during his stint at 20th Century Fox, but he nevertheless accepted both projects with enthusiasm, once comparing the history of the Old West to the European saga of the Nibelungen (a subject he brought to celluloid in back-to-back films released in 1924). His third and last Western — released to theaters 60 years ago on this date — was Rancho Notorious (1952), a film that succeeds despite so many things being against it and that today remains the most intriguing and “noir” of his brief flirtation with the genre.
Vern Haskell’s (Arthur Kennedy) dream of marrying fiancée Beth Forbes (Gloria Henry) vanishes in smoke when the assayer’s office in which she works is robbed by two desperadoes and she ends up dead after being shot by one of them, a man named Kinch (Lloyd Gough). Kinch and his partner Whitey (John Doucette) race out of town with a posse hot on their tails, but when the sheriff announces that they’ve ridden out of his jurisdiction and the remaining members refuse to ride any further; it’s up to the grieved Vern to continue the hunt. Vern finally catches up to Whitey, who’s been shot and left for dead by the treacherous Kinch after an argument. Whitey’s enigmatic dying words are “Chuck-a-luck,” and Vern persists in his pursuit despite not knowing its meaning.
As he rides from town to town in the search for answers, he manages to cross paths with a wanted outlaw (Fred Graham) in a barbershop who gives him another mysterious name: “Altar Keane.” The outlaw, Ace McGuire, draws on Vern when he realizes Vern is just seeking information and Haskell is forced to kill Ace in self defense. Taken into custody, Vern is cleared and offered a reward for McGuire’s killing but all Haskell is interested is information on “Altar Keane”; fortunately, a deputy (Dick Wessel) is able to identify her as a former saloon gal (Marlene Dietrich) he once knew but can’t give Vern any more than that.
Vern finally gets more background on Altar in another small town — she once worked for saloon owner Baldy Gunder (William Frawley), who after firing her helplessly watched her clean up at his chuck-a-luck game under the watchful eye of gunslinger Frenchy Fairmont (Mel Ferrer). Learning that Fairmont is cooling his heels in jail in the nearby hamlet of Gunsight, Vern manages to get himself arrested and thrown into the same jail cell as Frenchy, and the two men are able to execute a successful jailbreak. On the lam, Frenchy takes Vern to his hideout: a horse ranch near the Mexican border dubbed “Chuck-a-Luck” and run by Altar…who is now Frenchy’s girlfriend. Since Fairmont vouches for Vern, Altar agrees to allow Haskell to stay (the rules are that he is to ask no questions and do his fair share of work around the ranch) and introduces him to the rest of the men also hiding out at Chuck-a-Luck Ranch, who have gained admittance by tithing 10% of their stolen swag to their hostess. Vern’s assignment is to find out which of the guests is responsible for killing his fiancée, without tipping his hand that he’s just masquerading as an outlaw.
As Vern’s stay at Chuck-a-Luck stretches longer and longer, Altar begins to develop feelings for him and Vern reciprocates…but only to achieve his mission of locating the murderer, accelerated by the discovery of a brooch he gave to Beth as a gift that now adorns an evening dress worn by Altar. Vern is racing against the clock because the man responsible for Beth’s death, Kinch, is among the outlaw contingent and he recognizes Vern after seeing Haskell mount a horse one afternoon. When Vern must help the men rob a nearby bank to continue his outlaw charade, Kinch takes a shot at him and misses. Vern finally learns Kinch’s identity after presenting Altar with her share of the proceeds from the robbery, and confronting Kinch in a saloon, he manages to reign in his instincts to kill the outlaw, allowing the law to take over and mete out justice. Kinch is rescued by his pals before he is locked up, and the band of outlaws rides out to the ranch, convinced that Altar sold them out. Altar, in the meantime, has decided to abandon her life at Chuck-a-Luck and attempts to explain to a jealous Frenchy that she’s also given up on Vern, who had earlier could barely conceal his disgust with her lifestyle. Altar and Frenchy are then ambushed by the outlaws, and in the resulting shoot-out Kinch is killed (putting an end to Vern’s quest) and Altar dies from a bullet she took for her Frenchy.
Vern Haskell, the protagonist of Rancho Notorious, shares a similarity with those heroes played by James Stewart in the '50s Westerns directed by Anthony Mann (such as Winchester ’73 and Bend of the River): a man obsessively driven to right a past wrong who finds himself compromising his morality in his pursuit to do so. Haskell is basically a decent guy (we don’t learn much about Vern, other than he’s a lovestruck cowpuncher) who must play the part of a bad man in order to achieve his goal of vengeance, and often at his own peril since he’s in the company of other individuals he can’t trust. While Stewart’s heroes also were ready to be welcomed back into the societal fold after finishing what they set out to do; in Notorious, once Vern achieves his revenge, it’s apparent his life is over and done with — the final frames of the film find him and Frenchy riding off for points unknown, with the narrator singing the final stanzas of a ballad hinting of their eventual demise.
Rancho Notorious’ ballad, “The Legend of Chuck-a-Luck,” was written by Ken Darby (a member of the vocal group The King’s Men, who were regulars on radio’s Fibber McGee & Molly for a time) and sung by William Lee, and it adds a note of Greek tragedy to Lang’s remarkable Western. (The ballad idea was later appropriated for High Noon.) The title of Darby’s composition was originally going to be shared as the title of the film until director Fritz Lang learned from one of Howard Hughes’ lackeys at RKO that the movie would instead be known as Rancho Notorious because “Mr. Hughes doesn’t think they would know what Chuck-a-Luck was in Europe.”
“But they would know what Rancho Notorious is?” Lang fired back as he took his leave of the company man's idiocy.
The production history of Rancho Notorious was troubled from the get-go — Hughes was only a small part of it (the film’s limited budget forced Lang to shoot the Western in the studio, which resulted in some none-too-convincing exterior scenes that hamper the movie’s credibility a tad). Star Marlene Dietrich and director Lang did not get along well at all (despite the two enjoying a brief affair during the making of the film) Lang originally designed Notorious with Marlene in mind, with the original plot centering on an aging saloon girl and an equally up-there outlaw who couldn’t quite cut the mustard anymore. The notoriously (sorry about that) vain Dietrich pooh-poohed that idea, and also bickered with cinematographer Hal Mohr (with whom she had worked on Destry Rides Again) when he was unable to maintain her eternal youth before the camera to her satisfaction. Despite all that foofrah, it’s a great showcase for Marlene; there are many parallels between this role and her portrayal of Frenchy (is it coincidental that both movies feature characters with that name?) in Destry and she also gets to sing a song, “Get Away Young Man.”
Star Arthur Kennedy effortlessly shifts back-and-forth between hero and rotter, and never loses the audience’s sympathy from the start (granted, that would be difficult to do since his girl was raped and murdered by a remorseless dirtbag) despite his later descent into the dark side. He demonstrates a nice rapport with Dietrich’s Altar (so named because she’s worshipped?) even though it’s all show on his
part to eventually learn what he needs to know. Mel Ferrer, as the charismatic Frenchy, isn’t quite in the same thespic league as Kennedy but manages to deliver a solid performance…and again, there’s an adoption of an oft-used Anthony Mann theme in that Frenchy serves as Vern’s doppelganger — an example of what Haskell could become in a similar set of circumstances (the two of them riding off together at Notorious’ conclusion reinforces this). Lloyd Gough, the actor who plays the target of Vern Haskell’s obsession, sadly doesn’t even rate a mention in the movie’s opening credits due to his being on the Hollywood “blacklist” (more evidence of Hughes’ meddling). Rancho Notorious also spotlights a first-rate supporting cast of actors familiar (and in some cases, unfamiliar) to Westerns — it’s great to see B-Western and serial veterans such as Lane Chandler, I. Stanford Jolley, Fuzzy Knight (shout-out to a West Virginia homeboy), Pierce Lyden, Kermit Maynard and Francis McDonald on hand. Jack Elam is a treat as one of the bad guys as is reliable Frank Ferguson, who’s a defrocked preacher hiding out at Dietrich’s. The film also showcases one of the rare cinematic turns of George Reeves, whose movie roles would start to dissipate once he became too well-known as TV’s Superman. (If that guy working the chuck-a-luck wheel in Frawley’s saloon looks like a guy who spent three years on a deserted island with six other castaways, that’s because it’s Russell Johnson, in one of his early movie appearances.)Critics weren’t particularly kind to Rancho Notorious at the time of its release, but with the passage of time the movie has developed a cult following and a reputation as an offbeat but enjoyable Western; it’s an early example of what could be called a feminist Western (with its themes of violation and rape, not to mention the Dietrich character as a strong, fascinating character more than capable of holding her own in “a man’s world”) and much of its titillating sexual content was “liberated” by Nicholas Ray for his film Johnny Guitar, released two years afterward (equating stealing from a woman’s safe as rape, for starters). Scripted by Daniel Taradash (based on a story written by Lang associate Silvia Richards), Notorious manages to overcome its budget limitations and occasional seams-showing to become a film not too easily forgotten — as a critic for Time Out Film Guide once observed: “The fateful moral, the complete avoidance of naturalism, and the integration of an ongoing ballad into the plot, all make the movie quintessential Lang; add an overt political stance and it would be quintessentially Brechtian too.”
Tweet
Labels: 50s, Anthony Mann, blacklist, Howard Hughes, J. Stewart, Lang, Marlene, Movie Tributes, N. Ray
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Friday, December 09, 2011
Centennial Tributes: Broderick Crawford
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
In 1949, Columbia Pictures brought Robert Penn Warren’s classic novel All the King’s Men to the big screen in an adaptation that deviated a great deal from the source material (as most films are wont to do) but nevertheless made for a compelling movie about idealism and political corruption in telling the tragic story of the rise and fall of a populist demagogue named Willie Stark. In casting the film, director Robert Rossen first offered the role of Stark to John Wayne who — not surprisingly — turned down the part, thinking the script unpatriotic. Rossen then decided upon Broderick Crawford, a burly character actor whose prolific if undistinguished cinematic career was comprised of playing tough guys and Runyonesque hoods in vehicles such as Tight Shoes (1941) and Butch Minds the Baby (1942). The role of Willie Stark fit Crawford like a glove, however; he won an Oscar for his performance in King’s Men beating out the Duke, who also had been nominated that same year for his starring turn in Sands of Iwo Jima.
Crawford’s triumph for All the King’s Men has often acted as a litmus test where Academy Awards are concerned; many film historians and critics argue that the Best Actor Oscar should not have gone to someone whose movie career, with the exception of King’s Men and Born Yesterday (1950), was marked by admittedly one-note performances in B-pictures, alternately playing heroes and villains. Is the purpose of Academy Awards to single out meritorious individual performances, or are they largely recognition for an entire distinguished body of work? I suppose it matters very little in the final analysis, because there are no mulligans when it comes to Oscars: Crawford won his, and in all honesty I think it was most deserved. The actor, who would become one of Hollywood’s most cantankerous character thespians, was born 100 years ago today, and now is good as time as any to see if his stage, screen and television legacy holds up.
Broderick Crawford was born in Philadelphia in 1911 to a second generation of performers, vaudevillians Lester Crawford and Helen Broderick. The latter name is familiar to many classic film buffs that’ve seen the comedienne in such Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers vehicles as Top Hat (1935) and Swing Time (1936). Before her movie career, she and her husband were a successful comedy duo in vaudeville, with an act that occasionally featured their young son in small roles. Brod graduated from the Dean Academy in Franklin, Mass., (where he was a well-regarded athlete) and was accepted at Harvard but his further academic pursuits came to a halt when he dropped out after three months to find work in New York. He became a jack-of-all-trades (longshoreman, seaman, etc.) though eventually the show business bug consumed him and he landed a number of radio jobs in the 1930s; reportedly appearing from time to time on Flywheel, Shyster and Flywheel — the 1932-33 half-hour comedy series starring Groucho and Chico Marx.
With performing in his blood, Broderick made his Broadway debut in 1934 as a football player in She Loves Me Not (he had made his stage debut in the same production in 1932 in London, where his talents attracted the notice of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, who in turn introduced him to Noel Coward) and later appeared in such productions as Coward’s Point Verlaine, Sweet Mystery of Life and Of Mice and Men. It was for the latter play that Crawford earned exceptional critical acclaim, though when it came time for Hollywood to do its adaptation Brod was overlooked for the part in favor of Lon Chaney, Jr. By that point in his show business career, Crawford had set stage work aside in favor of the movies; his film debut was in the Samuel Goldwyn-produced Woman Chases Man (1937; with Miriam Hopkins and Joel McCrea) and he continued to appear in such B-flicks as Submarine D-1, Undercover Doctor and Eternally Yours. On occasion, Broderick would land roles in “A” productions such as Beau Geste, The Real Glory, Seven Sinners and Slightly Honorable but his rough-hewn manner and less-than-matinee-idol looks (in later years he remarked that his cinematic countenance resembled that of “a retired pugilist”) usually relegated him to character parts in scores of shoot-‘em-up Westerns like The Texas Rangers Ride Again and When the Daltons Rode. He did, however, prove versatile and adept at humorous turns in films like The Black Cat (Brod’s actually one of the “heroes” in this horror comedy, teamed with cinematic toothache Hugh Herbert) and Larceny, Inc.; he supported Edward G. Robinson in this last one as the lunkheaded Jug Martin, who assists Eddie and Ed Brophy in their attempts to rob a bank by purchasing and operating a luggage store next to it. (A decade later, Crawford paid homage to Robinson by re-creating a role that Eddie G. had played in the 1938 crime comedy A Slight Case of Murder but unfortunately, Stop, You’re Killing Me can’t quite measure up to the original.)
Crawford’s film career was interrupted briefly by World War II; he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps and while in Europe saw action in the Battle of the Bulge. He later was assigned to the Armed Forces Radio Network in 1944, where as Sergeant Crawford he fell back on his previous radio experience to serve as an announcer for Glenn Miller’s band. Back in Hollywood by 1946, Brod returned to the B-picture grind with occasional bright spots such as Black Angel, The Time of Your Life (as a melancholy policeman) and Night unto Night. His gig in All the King’s Men transformed him into a box-office draw and made him the most unlikely leading man since Wallace Beery; signing a contract with Columbia that same year, he also nabbed the plum role of tyrannical junk tycoon Harry Brock opposite Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday — a part that actor Paul Douglas had played to great acclaim on stage.
Crawford’s brilliant comic turn in Yesterday had an unfortunate side effect in that it earned him enmity from critics who have argued that, for the most part, he played variations of Harry Brock in practically every film in its wake. The success of both King’s Men and Yesterday nevertheless earned him considerable cache to appear in “A” productions such as Night People (1954) and Not as a Stranger (1955) —the latter film once described by one critic as “the worst film with the best cast.” His turn as Capt. “Waco” Grimes in Between Heaven and Hell (1956) features some of his best work, and his approach to the character may remind you of Col. Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. That same year, he surprised critics again by scoring as a petty thief seeking redemption in Federico Fellini’s Il Bidone.
Truth be told, Crawford worked his magic best as a screen heavy; he appeared as a formidable villain against Clark Gable in 1952’s Lone Star, and particularly shone in film noirs such as Big House, U.S.A. and New York Confidential (both 1955). One of his best showcases in that style was in 1952’s Scandal Sheet, a film directed by Phil Karlson (based on a novel by Sam Fuller) in which he plays a tyrannical tabloid editor who assigns his star reporter (John Derek, who had played son Tom Stark in King’s Men) to investigate a sensationalistic murder knowing full well that he is the guilty party. Scandal Sheet bears a strong resemblance to the earlier The Big Clock (1948) — in which powerful magazine magnate Charles Laughton tries to frame editor Ray Milland for a murder Charlie committed — but while Crawford was certainly not in Laughton’s league watching him sweat bullets as the noose tightens around his neck during Derek and girlfriend Donna Reed’s relentless investigation is certainly worth the price of admission.
Crawford also headlined another underrated noir entitled The Mob (1951); as undercover cop Johnny Damico, Crawford sets out to find a hit man while exposing corruption in the waterfront rackets — Mob has some memorably snappy dialogue in addition to its first-rate supporting cast (Richard Kiley, Ernest Borgnine, Neville Brand) though I will admit Brod seems more like the guy who’d be running the waterfront in the first place. Other standout noirs with Crawford include Down Three Dark Streets (1954), in which he plays a stalwart FBI agent, and Human Desire (also 1954), a Fritz Lang-directed remake of Jean Renoir's La Bête Humaine that cast him as the cuckolded husband in a torrid love affair between wife Gloria Grahame and co-worker Glenn Ford. (Crawford’s husband in Desire is a truly pitiful soul who earns the audience’s sympathy because Gloria, not to put too fine a point on it, is a real bitch.)
Ford and Crawford squared off again two years later in an underrated Western that’s been a longtime favorite of mine, The Fastest Gun Alive. Brod is the loathsome Vinnie Harold, a gun-toting bully compelled to challenge any individual who’s acquired a reputation as a fast gun. When he arrives in a town where shopkeeper Ford’s prowess with a firearm is being kept under wraps by the populace (they’re afraid that Glenn’s rep will draw every gunslinger in for miles around…and they were pretty much right), he and his men (John Dehner, Noah Beery, Jr.) threaten to set the burg ablaze unless they identify Ford. A great psychological oater, Fastest Gun stands out among the many Westerns Crawford appeared in at that time, which included such films as Last of the Comanches and The Last Posse (both 1953).
Toward the latter part of the 1950s, Crawford’s film appearances became sporadic (The Decks Ran Red, Goliath and the Dragon) due to his conquering another medium: television. Syndicated TV king Frederic Ziv tabbed Brod to play the lead role in a half-hour crime drama series entitled Highway Patrol, in which the actor played Dan Matthews, head of a state police patrol (the state was never specified). Ziv, who was responsible for such boob tube hits as Sea Hunt and Bat Masterson, scored a bona fide success in Patrol, which ran for four seasons (a total of 156 episodes) and made Crawford a TV icon, brandishing a trademark fedora and barking mile-a-minute orders into a microphone (“10-4, 10-4”). Crawford by this point in his career had finely honed the belligerence (and drinking habits) that made many producers reluctant to work with the volatile star, but Ziv got along well with Brod, though he later admitted: “To be honest, Broderick could be a handful.” Ziv wanted Crawford to do a fifth season of Patrol but Broderick took a pass, later explaining “We ran out of crimes.” However, he did go to work again for the company in 1961, starring as insurance investigator (whose specialty was precious gems) John King in King of Diamonds. The series lasted but a single season, as did a later show entitled The Interns (1970-71).
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Crawford found himself in demand as a frequent guest star in most of the hit dramatic TV shows from that era: The Virginian, Rawhide, Burke’s Law, The Name of the Game, etc. His movie work largely was relegated to foreign films though he turned up in the likes of Convicts 4, A House is Not a Home, The Oscar and Terror in the Wax Museum. His last notable film role was the titular protagonist of Larry Cohen’s 1977 cult curiosity The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover — a part he also had played in a sketch hosting Saturday Night Live in 1977, in which he also appeared in a send-up of Highway Patrol. Crawford also landed a tongue-in-cheek cameo on the first season of the TV series CHiPs, a watered-down version of the show that made him a household name (and he said as much, remarking to star Larry Wilcox: “You know, I was making those Highway Patrol shows long before you guys were born”).
Broderick Crawford rarely had any pretensions about being a great actor (he was famous for remarking “Don’t applaud, just send me the check”) — he took what work he wanted, and wasn’t what one would consider a leading man type in the style of a Cary Grant or James Stewart. Aside from his starring turns in All the King’s Men and Born Yesterday, his greatest legacy in show business was an unassuming little half-hour television cop show that is still around for us to enjoy today (Highway Patrol is frequently rerun on affiliates that carry ThisTV programming, and the first season of the series has been released on manufactured-on-demand DVD). But his performances were never boring, and when given the right material (King’s Men, Yesterday, The Mob, Scandal Sheet), he could be a most mesmerizing presence…and if you don’t believe me, check out Turner Classic Movies for a three-film festival beginning at 8 p.m. EST this evening in honor of his 100th birthday.
I’m serious, you need to sit down and watch.
“Do what I’m tellin’ ya!!!”
Tweet
Labels: Astaire, B. Crawford, Borgnine, Cary, Edward G., Fellini, Fuller, Gable, Ginger Rogers, Glenn Ford, J. Stewart, Joel McCrea, Lang, Laughton, Lon Chaney Jr., Marx Brothers, Oscars, Renoir, Wayne
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
Monday, June 13, 2011
A nightingale sang in Berkeley Square
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
The film opens on British hunter Captain Alan Thorndike (Walter Pidgeon), as he finds himself in Germany — in an area presumed to be Berchtesgarten, the Bavarian retreat of Adolf Hitler — with an opportunity to rid the world of a monster and prevent the Second World War. Thorndike has the Fuehrer lined up in the sights of his precision rifle and, pulling the trigger, there is an audible click…no bullet in the chamber. Giving his would-be target a friendly wave, we’re left to ponder as to whether it was his intention to assassinate Hitler. He firmly believes it was a “sporting stalk,” but the audience notices that he’s had second thoughts when he takes a bullet from his jacket and loads the rifle for a second go. Of course, our friend does not succeed at this encore; he’s tackled by a German soldier and captured by the Gestapo.
In 1941, debate raged on in America as to whether or not the U.S. should get involved in World War II…but perhaps the most anti-interventionist faction was based in the country’s motion picture industry. Hollywood took special pains to sit on the fence because they were anxious to not jeopardize the lucrative take from the rentals generated from U.S. films worldwide. Occasionally there would be a picture released that dared to take an anti-isolationist stance — Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) is considered by many to have started the ball rolling, followed by such features as Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940), The Mortal Storm (1940) and Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940). Seventy years ago on this date, a film was released to theaters that was directed by a man who had a little first-hand knowledge about the politics of Germany (having fled the country in 1934) and who no doubt identified with the protagonist of a film based on Rogue Male, a novel written by author Geoffrey Household shortly before war broke out in 1939. The director to whom I’m coyly referring is Fritz Lang…and the movie is his classic 1941 suspense thriller Man Hunt.
Captured by the Gestapo, Captain Thorndike is questioned by Major Quive-Smith (George Sanders)…who finds Thorndike’s “sporting stalk” defense to be a pile of manure, and tries to convince his prisoner to sign a
confession that he attempted to assassinate the Fuehrer on behalf of the British government. Thorndike refuses and is worked over by goons in the Gestapo’s employ — but because the good captain is made of sterner stuff, Quive-Smith decides to silence him by arranging his death in a “hunting accident.” Thorndike escapes his captors and gradually makes his way aboard a British sailing vessel, where he is kept out of sight by a young cabin boy named Vaner (Roddy McDowall). Thorndike, you see, is not out of the jungle yet because also onboard is a sinister hired gun (John Carradine) who answers to “Mr. Jones” and is masquerading as Thorndike with the help of Thorndike’s passport.Arriving on his home turf of London, Thorndike is convinced he’s safe and sound but, like many a protagonist in Lang’s films, he’s in a nightmare from which he can’t awaken. He’s being stalked by Jones and several other Nazi swine, and his request to his brother, Lord Gerald Risborough (Frederick Worlock), for assistance goes unheeded because Risborough doesn’t want to risk an international incident that could plunge Britain into war with Germany. (The fact that Thorndike no longer has a valid passport on him certainly doesn’t help matters either.) Thorndike’s only salvation is a young Cockney girl named Jerry Stokes (Joan Bennett), who helps him get to his brother’s home the night he arrives in London and later hides him out in her flat when he’s hunted by the police — the gendarmes find the mangled body of Jones in the London Underground and, locating Thorndike’s credentials on the corpse, assume that it’s Thorndike who has been murdered.
Thorndike contacts his solicitor (Holmes Herbert) and arranges to get enough money to enable him to hide out from his pursuers and to make certain that Jerry is repaid for her kindness and assistance as well. He provides Jerry with the address at a post office in Lyme Regis to allow her to get in touch with him and let him know when the heat has died down. Thorndike’s trip to the Lyme Regis post office, however, allows Quive-Smith to learn of his hiding place…and institutes a final showdown between the two men from which Thorndike emerges as the victor. There follows a passage of time and having enlisted in the RAF once World War II is underway, Thorndike bails out of a bomber over Germany with hunting rifle in his hand…the implication being that he’ll be damned if he misses his intended target (Hitler) this time.
Serialized in Atlantic Monthly before being published in novel form in 1939, Gregory Household’s Rogue Male would soon become a best seller and later one of the classic thriller novels of all time. The book, having been written before World War II, never specifically states that the unnamed European dictator was the man mockingly nicknamed “Schickelgruber,” but the book-buying public wasn’t fooled for a second. Rogue Male was a perfect candidate for a movie adaptation despite its controversial (for the U.S.) pro-intervention stance and screenwriter Dudley Nichols (a longtime collaborator of director John Ford — in fact, Ford was originally assigned to direct Man Hunt) was assigned the task. The movie also would find its perfect director to handle the subject material in German émigré Fritz Lang.
Because Lang approached Man Hunt with not entirely clean hands — namely, his fervent anti-Nazism — the movie attracted the attention of the Hays Office, and was one of the first war films to do so. Hays head Joseph Breen objected to the fact that the film depicted all Germans as evil, and was no doubt instrumental in making sure that there were enough “nice” Germans in the movie to counteract this (the character of the jeweler, for instance). The censors also insisted that the director soft-pedal the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by Sanders’ Gestapo to get Pidgeon’s hero to confess — which actually worked in the movie’s favor, since the sequences were more effective with the torture implied as opposed to visually spelled out. As if Lang didn’t have enough trouble, the head of the studio producing Man Hunt, Darryl F. Zanuck, also was not too crazy about Fritz’s anti-Nazi enthusiasm and forbid the director to go anywhere near the editing room during the movie’s final stages. (Lang and assistant Gene Fowler, Jr. did an end run around Zanuck, however, and worked on the movie in secret.)
What makes Man Hunt both a classic Hollywood thriller and one of Lang’s best works is its pitch-perfect casting. Walter Pidgeon would establish himself onscreen as the epitome of British stiff-upper-lipness (though Pidgeon himself was Canadian) in films such as Mrs. Miniver (1942) and The Miniver Story (1950), and the part of Captain Thorndike in this film is one of his best movie roles. He’s a very engaging hero and the audience is with him every step of the way — especially in the rousing final sequence where Thorndike parachutes out of the plane with rifle in hand and loaded for bear. Pidgeon is fine with the he-man heroics but what really makes this movie strong is the tender relationship his Thorndike enjoys with leading lady Joan Bennett, who plays the part of the plucky Jerry.
It’s not too hard for audiences to decipher that Jerry practices the world’s oldest profession (and I’m not referring to farming) despite the Hays Office’s insistence that a sewing machine take prominent space in her flat in an effort to convince moviegoers that she was doing freelance seamstress work. Jerry is more or less accosted by Thorndike when the two characters meet in the film (he puts his hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming and cluing the thugs on his trail as to his whereabouts) and though she’s frightened and intimidated by him at first, she gradually develops an affection that quickly blossoms into infatuation and then love. Thorndike is a right guy because he doesn’t judge Jerry on her social station or background (unlike his sister-in-law when the two try to get help in the House of Risborough); he treats her with an commendable degree of kindness and respect. There’s a wonderful and subtle sequence set inside Jerry’s apartment the morning after their visit to Thorndike’s relatives where Jerry has ventured out and secured breakfast (fish and chips!) and Thorndike pulls a chair up to the table, insisting that Jerry sit down. The expression on her face is that of an indescribable reverence at his thoughtfulness; she then tells him: “You act like a gent but you ain’t…I mean…you really acts like a gent.”
Bennett is so luminescent and lovely in the part of Jerry that I often marvel at how she is so much different from the femme fatales she plays in later Lang films such as The Woman in the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945). (Joan is so appealing in the part that I’m even willing to overlook the fact that she has one of the most unconvincing Cockney accents in the history of the cinema.) Her Jerry has become so taken with Thorndike that she’s prepared to travel to the four ends of the earth with him — something Thorndike vetoes only because he fears for her safety, and not due to any social stigma. In fact, when he tells her that he’ll arrange for her to be financially compensated by his solicitor for helping him in his hour of need she gets upset because she’s concerned that Thorndike is going to treat her in the same manner as her other “gentlemen.” Instead, all she wants from him is what he promised her earlier in the film — she’s lost a pin that adorned her hat and he’s agreed to furnish her with a new one. He’s as good as his word in doing so, because as he informs her: “Every good soldier needs a crest for his cap.”
The brooch that Thorndike purchases for Jerry is a little chromium arrow — a trinket that will take on significance later in the film because in the climactic mano-a-mano between Thorndike and Quive-Smith, the major presents Jerry’s hat with the arrow attached to make his adversary aware Jerry has been disposed of, but the quick-thinking Thorndike, just when it appears that he’s up against it and at the mercy of the contemptible Quive-Smith, is able to fashion his lady love’s souvenir into something that brings about the Nazi’s downfall. Sanders, an actor whose picture you would find in the dictionary if you searching for a definition of “cad,” gives a performance as one of the silver screen’s most delectably villainous rat bastards, deftly mixing his patented brand of suavity with appropriate sinister menace.
The supporting performances in Man Hunt are equally worthy of praise, including Carradine as a ruthless killer (whose demise in the London subway is particularly memorable) and McDowall (in his American film debut) as the resourceful cabin boy who’s got Pidgeon’s back. McDowall would also re-team that same year for Fox’s How Green Was My Valley, exhibiting a similar surrogate-father-and-son relationship. Other familiar faces in Man Hunt include Ludwig Stossel, Heather Thatcher (as Lady Risborough — her interactions with Bennett’s Cockney gal are priceless), Egon Brecher, Roger Imhof and Frederick Vogeding. The music score is one of my favorites from any film — composed by Lionel Newman, it’s an enchanting melody that uses “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” as a continuing motif.
Fritz Lang’s dedicated moviemaking mission against the Nazi menace would resurface in three additional films in the wake of Man Hunt: Hangmen Also Die! (1943), Ministry of Fear (1944) and Cloak and Dagger (1946) — the last released after the end of World War II, of course, but using the final days of the war as background for its subject matter. But Man Hunt was the first and best, thanks to first-rate casting, direction and scripting…and not to mention the source material; author Household’s Rogue Male would see additional adaptations (including a critically acclaimed TV movie in 1976 starring Peter O’Toole) and a sequel, Rogue Justice, that sadly has not been adapted for either film or television to my knowledge. When the U.S. entered World War II on Dec. 7, 1941, with the attack on Pearl Harbor, they were not only prepared to fight in the theater of war but the ones at audiences’ local movie houses as well…and 70 years later, Man Hunt remains a textbook example of how Hollywood was committed to the fight.
Tweet
Labels: 40s, Chaplin, D. Zanuck, Fiction, Hitchcock, J. Carradine, Joan Bennett, John Ford, Lang, Movie Tributes, O'Toole, Sanders
TO READ ON, CLICK HERE
