Hitchcock: The Birds

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds, which concluded a remarkable four-picture run for Hitch: North By Northwest, Vertigo, and Psycho coming before. Talk amongst yourselves: has there been a better streak? One possibility is Francis Coppola’s Godfather-The Conversation-The Godfather, Part II-Apocalypse Now. Other suggestions welcome.

Anyway, The Birds, loosely based on a story by Daphne DuMaurier, is a change of pace for Hitchcock in a few ways, though it still rests on the suspense he was best known for. In a way, this is a horror story, as people aren’t the problem, it’s nature run amok, as the small coastal town of Bodega Bay is attacked by all species of birds. No particular reason is given (in the real-life inspiration to the story, pesticide was to blame) and the ending is ambiguous. Many people refer to this film as a poem, in that there isn’t the typical structure of a narrative.

The film begins with a lawyer, Rod Taylor, meeting a socialite (Tippi Hedren) in the bird department of a pet store. They’re on opposite sides of a lawsuit, but despite the initial hostility are attracted to each other. So much so that Hedren, a prankster, drives all the way from San Francisco to Bodega Bay to deliver a pair of lovebirds. But there there are ominous signs, such as when a gull hits her on the head, and then sparrows flood into Taylor’s house through the chimney.

The film is a slow-boiler. We go through some typical Hitchcock stuff, such as the monstrous mother (this time played by Jessica Tandy, though she is allowed to soften toward the end) and the icy blonde. Hitchcock wanted Grace Kelly, who was by now a princess, and ended up discovering Hedren, who was not a very good actress and who has pretty bad things to say about him now.

But Hedren’s limited range doesn’t interfere with Hitchcock’s suspense. There are two notable uses to camera–one is the schoolhouse attack, as Hedren sits on a bench and behind her crows slowly gather on monkeybars. The resulting attack on running schoolchildren has some ludicrously bad special effects, compared with today, but the way Hitchcock sets it up has us ignore the effects and realize the terror.

The second is when birds attack Hedren while she’s in a phone booth. In some ways the cutting is like the shower murder in Psycho–the cuts are so fast and precise that the scene comes across as a blur, but again, the terror is intact. I also love the edit as Hedren watches, horrified, as a flaming stream of gasoline travels toward the gas pumps, igniting a fireball.

The final act of the film, when Taylor, Hedren and family batten the hatches as the birds assault their house, is also bravura filmmaking. It just goes to show how the banal, when presented as a threat, can be just as scary as monsters from space.

The ending has no defeat of the birds–how would one conquer the world of birds. There’s a great sequence when an old lady ornithologist (Ethel Griffies) tells everyone how many birds there are. She also says that they don’t attack humans. When she’s proven wrong, all she can do is sit quietly, breathing heavily. Instead the ending is completely up in the air, a stalemate. In some old B-films, there would be a title card that would say The End? This is one of those films. It is one of Hitchcock’s finest; his last really great film.

King Kong

It was 80 years today that King Kong premiered at Radio City Music Hall. The film is proof that special effects, which advance almost year, need not be state of the art to make a film work. By today’s standards, the effects in King Kong are laughable (though, in some ways it was the Avatar of its day). Technology may advance the ways of telling a story, but the story itself is paramount.

The film has been remade twice, and neither film trumps the original, which tells the story of a filmmaker (very much like the co-director and conceiver of the project, Merian C. Cooper) who hires a tramp steamer to take him to an uncharted island in the Pacific Ocean. He has heard tales of some kind of powerful being, known only as “Kong,” that keeps the islanders in fear, so much so that an ancient wall separates them from the domain of Kong.

Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) needs an actress for his film, but no agent will send one on such a mysterious trip. So he finds a woman fainting from hunger, Anne Darrow (Fay Wray) who jumps at the chance (after Armstrong, in a carefully worded scene, assures it will be “strictly business”–this was a pre-Code film, after all). After being seen as bad luck by the crew, she eventually becomes beloved, especially by Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot), the first mate.

The boat arrives at Skull Island through a thick fog, the sound of drums in the distance. Everything that Denham says was true, but an encounter with the natives goes badly when they want to buy Wray, offering six of their own women. It’s commented that the natives don’t see many blondes. After refusing, the crew slip back to their ship, but Wray is kidnapped, and offered to Kong as a “bride.” That’s when the big guy makes his debut–a giant gorilla.

In the second act of the picture, which I think is the best, the crew try to rescue her, while Kong carries her around like a Barbie doll. We find out that many previously extinct creatures live on the island, and often Kong has to kill them to keep Wray safe, most notably a Tyrannosaurus Rex. There is a visceral thrill to this section, as the sailors run for their lives from a Brontosaurus (a biological error–they were herbivorous) and when they are shaken off a log by an angry Kong. They fall to their deaths, and though it is obviously dolls falling and landing on the ravine floor, a sense of brutality still exists.

After Kong is captured, because he will not do without Wray, comes the memorable New York sequence, which is also heart-pounding. I especially think a scene in which the escaped Kong, looking for Wray, pulls an unknowing woman out of her bed, and, realizing she is not Wray, drops her to her doom, has real punch to it. The famous end on the Empire State Building, when Kong is shot by airplanes (in one of them Cooper and co-director Ernest Schoedseck play the pilot and gunner) still has tremendous emotional impact. As Armstrong says in the last in, “It was beauty killed the beast.”

The film has been immensely popular since it was released. For years in was a Thanksgiving Day staple on WOR in New York, and it’s surely one of the most viewed films of all time. The stop motion work by Willis O’Brien, which of course looks pretty silly today, was far ahead of its time, and wowed crowds in the ’30s, and small children would still be pretty thrilled by it. But, there are some troubling aspects to the film.

As Quentin Tarantino pointed out in Inglourious Basterds (and he wasn’t the first) there is a strong racial component to King Kong. Kong’s journey mirrors in many ways the black American experience–taken back to America in chains, and then vilified for liking a white woman. I don’t know what Cooper’s thoughts were on the subject, but it’s hard not to think that the fear of miscegenation lurks not so far beneath the surface of the film. The closeup of Kong when he first sees Wray reveals almost a lustful leer and he looks a lot like some of the depictions of blacks from the time, such as Uncle Ben and Little Black Sambo. The scene (which was cut out of the film after the Hays Code came in effect) of him undressing her and then sniffing his fingers seems to be of the same lustful provenance.

The depiction of the islanders, though pretty tasteful for the period, also carries some racial stigma. That they would offer six of their own women for Wray may be because she’s unusual to them, but audiences of the time I’m sure couldn’t help but think “that’s about right.”

Wray would also be remembered for her role in this picture (a person would be hard pressed to name another, though she was in Cooper’s The Most Dangerous Game). Kong would go on to be a household name, not only appearing in remakes but in knockoffs like King Kong vs. Godzilla, which I remember seeing as a very small child in my local library. As with all great monsters, he is terrifying but sympathetic, and watching him fall from the top of the building leaves us with a profound sadness. When Denham pushes his way through the crowd to view the ape’s corpse, it’s kind of interesting, because one, I hope that the city is going to slap him with a huge fine and possible jail time for being the cause of this mayhem, and two, I wonder if has any remorse? Does he realize that he could have left Kong on the island, the balance between man and nature still intact?

A Clockwork Orange

Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange is one of my top ten favorite films of all time. After reading the book I gave it another view last night, the fourth or fifth I’ve seen it. It still enthralls.

I must have seen it for the first time on HBO. When it was released in 1971 it was rated X (a rating that has since been usurped by the adult film industry), and I only knew it from the MAD Magazine parody, “A Crockwork Lemon.” I remember seeing it again, I think for the only time in a theater, my first week of college. I think I was buzzed.

Buzzed or not, the film is an artistic masterpiece. Opening with a screen of nothing but red, with Walter Carlos’ mesmerizing electronic music, it then focuses on the face of Malcolm McDowell as Alex, wearing the iconic costume of bowler, white shirt, pants and suspenders, black combat boots, and a bloodied eyeball cuff link. He is also wearing one false eyelash. (All of this is thanks to costume designer Mila Canonero–this was not his costume in Burgess’ novel). The camera pulls back to reveal there are three other similarly dressed young men, slouched and drinking glasses of milk. They are in the Korova Milk Bar, and as the camera continues to pull back we see that the tables are plastic sculptures of naked women. The milk is, of course, full of drugs.

Burgess’ book was a satire on the psychology of good and evil, and the eternal struggle of whether criminals should be punished or rehabilitated. Kubrick’s film is even more of a comedy, even though it is brutally violent, so violent that it earned that X rating. Today the violence is fairly tame given what we normally see, but it is still shocking because it so sexual. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the home invasion scene, where a man is brutally beaten and his wife raped, while Alex sings “Singin’ in the Rain.” Or when another woman is bludgeoned to death with a large statue of a penis.

The film is pretty faithful to the book. Alex and his “droogs” roam the city, eager to commit “ultra-violence” and the “old in-out, in-out.” The night after the home invasion, his other droogs try to seize power from him, but he puts them straight–with violence. They want to commit higher-earning crimes, so he agrees to burglarize the home of a posh woman, the one who gets bonked with a plaster cock. But his fellows set him up, and Alex is arrested and imprisoned for murder.

While in prison he becomes assistant to the chaplain, and reads the Bible, but fantasizes about being one of the Romans who whips Christ. Eventually he undergoes an experimental treatment to rid himself of violent impulses. The government is keen on this, since it is hoped it will reduce crime and free up the prison space. The chaplain is aghast, because he thinks goodness has to come from with in, and this way offers Alex no choice of being good. “When a man loses his choice,” the chaplain says, “he ceases to be a man.”

Alex undergoes the treatment, which involves nausea-inducing drugs while watching films of violence. One of the most iconic scenes of the film is when Alex is bound in a straitjacket, a gizmo holding his eyes open, an aide dropping water into his eyes to keep them moist. The treatment works, too well, for Alex can not function in society (his room at home has been rented out), and his love of Beethoven has been ruined forever because it was on the score of the films.

He then becomes a political football, taken in by the very man he had beaten, who sees him as a chance to defeat the government in the next election. This man, played humorously over the top by Patrick Magee, doesn’t realize who Alex is until he overhears him singing “Singin’ in the Rain.”

As I said, though violent, and too disturbing for some, this is a comedy of rich layers. For one thing, McDowell gives a great performance, kind of like a vicious Eddie Haskell–completely polite on one hand, but also thoroughly reprehensible. The film has made him older (he started at 15 in the book), and something of a bon vivant. The scene that has him wandering through the record store, wearing an Edwardian coat, and then picking up two teenage girls for sex (sped up, and set to the William Tell Overture) is pure comedy (in the book the girls were ten and they were drugged and raped).

Also, the performance by Michael Bates as an extremely officious jailer is hysterical, particularly the facial expressions he shows when a cured Alex is tempted by a naked woman. Or the scene in which Magee, now aware of Alex’s identity, serves him a meal while staring at him with undisguised contempt.

Kubrick, a filmmaker who appeals to the intellect rather than the emotions, doesn’t really take a stand in this film. Alex survives, triumphant, reverted back to his violent past, a poster boy for the cynical governmental official. The issues are glided over and not really addressed fully, instead Kubrick approaches the themes stylistically. For instance, there is a great deal of time in this film spent to filling out paperwork. I hadn’t noticed this before, but a good five minutes is spent with this, and it’s completely unnecessary to the story. I can only imagine that this is Kubrick’s commentary on bureaucracy. There’s a long scene when Alex is interred into the prison, including an inventory of his pockets and Bates shining a penlight into his rectum looking for contraband.

The film was nominated for four Academy Awards (it didn’t win any), and I think is Kubrick’s strongest work, along with Dr. Strangelove. It appeals to my sense of humor, in that the comedy is black as pitch. This, even though the film, as with the book, paints a depressing view of the near future. The architecture chosen for the film, outside of the Korova Milk Bar, that is, is bleak and ugly. Alex lives in a flat in a section of the city named by number, with trash in the hallways. His former droogs become policemen (who almost kill him) giving life to the old saw that the line between a criminal and a cop is a very thin one.

One other note–playing a small part of a bodyguard is David Prowse, who six years later would put on the flowing back robes and helmet of a certain Darth Vader.

Film Noir: Gun Crazy

While watching Haywire a few days ago, I noted that Steven Soderbergh favored, during moving car scenes, to photograph from the back seat. That is certainly a nod to Gun Crazy, a 1950 noir from Joseph A. Lewis. Though a B-picture, it has come to be known as an influential film and one of the best examples of “femme fatale” noir in the genre.

Shot on the cheap, Gun Crazy tells the story of Bart Tare, a young man obsessed with guns, but not killing. A flashback shows him shooting a chick as small boy, which turns him off of killing, but not of shooting, as when he is a teenager (and played by Russ Tamblyn), he gets sent to reform school for stealing a gun. After serving four years in the army as a shooting instructor, he is on the hunt for a job.

Now played by John Dall, he is instantly captivated after a trip to a carnival, where he sees Peggy Cummins, who appears to him with six shooters in both hands. She is a trick-shot artist, and the two find instant rapport. She throws over the sleazy carnival manager (Berry Kroeger, in a fine performance) and she and Dall impulsively marry. But she wants the good life, and for her that means becoming stick-up artists.

Of course, this leads nowhere fast, as the two end up on the run. Dall can’t leave her–it’s clear that they have a great sex life–and they end up surrounded in a swamp in the California mountains. It’s a cautionary tale–those women-with-guns calendars are for exhibition only.

What’s so important about the film is its use of the camera, specifically a several minute single take in which Cummins drives toward a bank, and then Dall gets out, goes into the bank, comes back out, and they make their getaway, all shot from the back seat, and in real traffic, without rear projection. Only the actors and those in the bank knew what was going on–passersby did not. The verisimilitude of the scene is enthralling, and the technique is repeated several times. It’s thus a lack of money that makes for a more exciting film.

Cummins is an attractive woman, but there’s something sinister about her appearance–maybe it’s her doll-like eyes, while Dall is a complete dupe, clearly thinking with a different part of his body. These types of films are legion in noir history (an alternative title for this film was Deadly Is the Female). Above all, the film is a good thriller, with genuine excitement and characters that are written with some depth.

1962: The Trick Is Not Minding

It’s time for my annual look back 50 years at the films nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. For the year 1962, I noted something interesting: All five films nominated were also among the top ten earners in box office. I haven’t checked, but I doubt that happens often; it would be unthinkable today, as there is a clear delineation between art and commerce, with the two rarely coinciding. Of course, this doesn’t mean that audiences were much more sophisticated in those days. Films that did good box office were often nominated for Best Picture, even if no one liked them, as there was great studio loyalty.

Also, the films nominated were very long–all over two hours, four of them over two and a half, and one over four. Two of them had intermissions and overtures, a rarity today. The last film I saw in a theater that had an intermission was Gettysburg, and I can’t remember the last one with an overture.

I start with with The Longest Day, an almost-three hour film about D-Day. Produced by Darryl F. Zanuck, it was too much for one director–it had three, not including an uncredited Zanuck. Starring a cast of thousands, with cameos by some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, London, and Berlin, including John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Henry Fonda, and Richard Burton, the film is a clear-eyed, unsentimental chronicle of one of the most pivotal days in world history. It starts the night before the invasion, when bad weather almost cancelled it, and then proceeds throughout the pre-dawn paratrooper jump, then the landing, and the fighting for every inch of the beach. There is a lot of time devoted to the arrogance and stupidity of the Germans, who refused to believe what was going on. As many history buffs know, Hitler was not awakened because he took a sleeping pill. “We will lose the war because the Fuehrer took a sedative,” one German officer moans.

What’s very impressive is the scale of the production. There are no CGI soldiers on the beach–167 actors were hired, and over 450 military extras were used. The actual fighting isn’t as bloody as Saving Private Ryan, this was 1962 after all, but it’s still intense.

Not so intense is The Music Man, a bloated adaptation of the Broadway hit. Directed by Martin Dacosta, the film starts Robert Preston as a con man in Iowa in 1912. His scam is to sell musical instruments for a band to gullible parents, but since the instruments are actually delivered I’m not sure what the profit margin is. Of course he falls in love with town librarian Shirley Jones. There are several familiar songs like “76 Trombones,” “Till There Was You,” and “(Ya Got) Trouble,” and the film uses candy colors that it is almost surreal. But I was bored out of my skull. This is a movie for grandmas. Notable in the cast is young Ronny Howard, who plays a kid with a lisp who sings the song “Gary, Indiana.” The Simpson’s episode, “Marge vs. the Monorail,” is a better spin on the same idea.

Mutiny on the Bounty, one of the few remakes to be nominated for Best Picture (The Departed is the only one that has won) is also bloated, and has a performance by Marlon Brando that has to be seen to be believed. It was a critical failure, but did crack the top ten for the year in tickets sold. The film emphasizes the mutineers love of Tahiti, which is where much of it was filmed, and where Brando met his third wife, Tanita, who is his love interest in the film. The film also emphasizes Bligh’s cruelty as stemming from his interest in getting the shipment of breadfruit to Jamaica, but historical accuracy ends with Brando’s death scene–Fletcher Christian didn’t actually die until four years after the mutineers settled on Pitcairn Island. Directed by Lewis Milestone (after Brando forced Carol Reed to quit), there are some well-done scenes on the high seas, but mostly this is a dud.

Though it didn’t win, I think To Kill a Mockingbird is the most beloved film to come out of 1962. One of the best movies ever made from a good book, the film managed to capture what has made the novel the book that is second only to The Bible as the one that has inspired more people (based on a poll). Gregory Peck stars as Atticus Finch, a lawyer in a sleepy Alabama town in the 1930s. His daughter Scout narrates as an older daughter, remembering the period where her father defended a black man falsely charged with rape.

The film works on several levels. It is an idyllic look at the innocence of childhood, soiled by the evils of racism, but it is also a celebration of humanity, with the use of the character Boo Radley (played silently by Robert Duvall, in one of his first roles). When Scout says “Hey, Boo,” at the end of the picture, it would take a hard-hearted person not to feel a rush of emotion.

Gregory Peck won the Oscar, and deservedly so, but in doing so he beat out newcomer Peter O’Toole, who was brilliant in the Oscar winner, Lawrence of Arabia. I’m sure voters figured they’d have plenty of time to honor him, and fifty years later he has been nominated seven times with no wins. At least he won an honorary Oscar.

Directed by David Lean, Lawrence of Arabia was an easy choice for Best Picture, as it is a masterpiece and won of the great achievements in cinema history. It couldn’t be made the same way today–it would have to be done with CGI, as it would be too expensive (water had to be trucked at $3 a gallon, and think of all the sand that had to be smoothed out after each take). The story of British officer T.E. Lawrence and his command of Arabs against the Turks during World War I, the movie is four hours long but goes by in a flash. It’s desert vistas are breathtaking, but it also works on a small scale–the character of Lawrence, as he goes from an eccentric to a self-appointed prophet.

The film also has one of the great edits of all time: when Lawrence blows out a match, and we cut instantly to the burning desert. Speaking of matches, one of the greatest lines from the film is when, after Lawrence puts out a match with his fingers, a colleague tries it and burns himself. “That hurts!” the man exclaims. “Of course it does,” Lawrence tells him. “The trick…is not minding that it hurts.” Of course, that and several other scenes in the film have us wondering whether Lawrence is as sadomasochist.

Review: Family Plot (1976)

Released in 1976, ‘Family Plot’ was the final film in Alfred Hitchcock’s outstanding directorial career. While never regarded as amongst his best films, it has reputation as a good film and when I’d seen it previously had enjoyed it. Having not seen it for many years I was interested to see how it held up.

The plot centres on two couples who initially have no connection with each other. The first couple is fake psychic Blanche (Barbara Harris) and her boyfriend George (Bruce Dern), with the second couple being jeweller Arthur (William Devane) and his girlfriend Fran (Karen Black) who are also ruthless kidnappers. When Blanche and George go searching for a lost heir (with the prospect of $10000 for themselves) their paths cross with Arthur and Fran… which could cost them their lives.

‘Family Plot’ has the elements to be a top-class entertainment – a good cast, an interesting and fairly unusual plot and one of the most acclaimed directors ever. But despite its good qualities the film never really catches fire. The elements are there for a thrilling and tense ride but the film is never more than mildly diverting.

Considering he was so often the biggest asset of films he was associated with during his epic career, ironically probably the main reason for the failure of Family Plot is Hitchcock’s direction. For a film and a plot that needs a snappy and brisk feel, Hitchcock’s direction is rather flabby and laboured. Apart from a tense car chase that Blanche and George experience, there are precious few of the famed Hitchcock touches on display.

Also Hitchcock’s style – so innovative and captivating for most of his career – feels rather ‘old-hat’ here. The film is visually uninteresting and it has jarringly obvious back projection that’s used not only for scenes set in cars, but even in Arthur’s jewellery store. Such back projection was not really an issue in the 1940s & 1950s but by 1976 it gives the film a rather cheap look..

Despite Hitchcock’s direction the film is still solid entertainment. The main credit for this can go to Ernest Lehmann’s script. While it makes the plot a tad too convoluted, it’s full of good characterisation and witty lines. Crucially, it creates an interesting dynamic between not only the two central couples but even between Arthur and his sidekick Maloney (well played by Ed Lauter); indeed because of the deft writing the Arthur/Maloney scene is probably the most enjoyable in the film.

Lehmann’s script also makes an interesting contrast between the two couples. Arthur and Fran are portrayed as wealthy, composed, slick and charismatic while Blanche and George are messy, coarse and chaotic. Indeed by traditional Hollywood standards you would almost expect Arthur and Fran t be the charismatic heroes of the film,  with Blanche/George with the rather buffoonish enemy. And yet the script turns things on its head in the latter stages as we see the intelligence and ingenuity of Blanche and George come to the fore while the truly nasty side of Arthur is exposed.

Due to the talky, non-flashy style of the film, it’s to the film’s benefit that the main characters in the film are portrayed by character actors, not the stars that so often fronted Hitchcock films. Particularly good is Bruce Dern as George. It’s a good example of the benefits of having a character actor in such a role as he adds lots of interesting details to his character’s persona; even before watching this again after many years, the way he tapped a gravestone with his pipe always stayed in my mind. He’s great fun to follow in his investigating as he slowly uncovers the conspiracy. Also William Devane (sounding a lot like Jack Nicholson) is entertainingly smooth and smarmy as Adamson. The only weakness on the acting front is the seance scenes where Barbara Harris (who’s otherwise good in this film) indulges in tedious and incomprehensible mugging.

To be sure ‘Family Plot’ is well down the list of Hitchcock’s best works and is probably one of the worst examples to use of his directorial skills. But overall it’s a decent, well-acted and intelligent film that provides solid entertainment throughout.

Rating: B-

Film Noir: D.O.A.

Directed by Rudolph Mate, D.O.A., from 1950, is one of the classics of the film genre, a film ahead of its time that put off some early reviewers. It begins with one the greatest hooks in film history:  a long tracking shot of a man, from behind, walking through police headquarters. He enters the door marked “Homicide Division,” asks to see the man in charge, and tells him he’s there to report a murder. “Whose murder?” he’s asked. “Mine,” he replies. The man isn’t thrown out of the office, instead they know who he is and proceed to listen to his story.

D.O.A., though not told in real time, is one of those films that has a deadline. Edmond O’Brien stars as the man trying to solve his own murder, and along the way he’s often rude, but only because he doesn’t have much time. In a way, it reminded me of that Simpsons episode where Homer only has 24 hours to live after eating incorrectly prepared blowfish, only in the film, O’Brien expresses no need to have sex.

O’Brien plays Frank Bigelow, an accountant in a small California town. He’s off to San Francisco for a vacation, ostensibly to get away from his secretary (Pamela Britton), who’s pushing to make their romance more permanent. When he gets to Frisco he’s instantly on the prowl, and we even hear a slide whistle playing a wolf whistle sound whenever he sizes up a pretty girl.

He meets some people and goes out to a jazz club (in one of the first representations of the beat culture in cinema). A mysterious man switches his drink. The next day, he feels a pain, and goes to a doctor. He’s told he’s ingested “luminous toxin” and has only a few days to live.

The rest of the film is O’Brien tracking down clues to find his killer. He starts with a man who was trying to get ahold of him, but later committed suicide. Britton finds the connection–O’Brien once notarized a bill of sale for the man. This leads to stolen iridium, and O’Brien chasing all over Los Angeles (if traffic were presented realistically, he would have run out of time). Some of the clues seem a little convenient, but Mate and O’Brien never let up the sense of time running out, which keeps the film taut. It’s only 83 minutes long, so there’s really never a dull moment once the diagnosis is made. There are some nice set pieces, such as a shootout in a drug store and a scene in a warehouse where O’Brien tries to avoid a sniper.

D.O.A. is a fine example of the genre and is easy to find–it’s in the public domain and there are more than 20 releases on home video/DVD.

Truffaut: The American Night

Throughout the ’70s, Francois Truffaut attained a revered not-so-elder statesman position in world cinema. He directed films that won an Oscar and several Cesars. He also permanently broke with his former colleague and friend Jean-Luc Godard. Truffaut was a lover of Hollywood films down to his bones, and chose to work in that style, while Godard went off into the avant-garde.

The film that broke them was Day for Night. Francois Truffaut won only one Oscar–it was for the 1973 Best Foreign Language film, and the winner was Day for Night. He was also nominated for Best Director and Writer for the film. Aside from The 400 Blows, it is Truffaut’s most acclaimed film.

By this time, it was clear that Truffaut was unabashedly a sentimentalist, and a lover of Hollywood cinema. The French title of the film is La Nuit Americaine, or The American Night, which is a term for shooting a night scene during the day (the American phrase for this is, natch, day for night). By using the word American in his title, Truffaut clearly, even at the height of his game, was still acknowledging the influence of American movies on his work. Consider a dream sequence where Truffaut, playing the director of the film-within-a-film, remembers as a child stealing the stills of Citizen Kane from a movie theater.

Day for Night is the story of a film being made, and it plays like an exciting adventure. Truffaut as the director is dogged but not mercurial–there’s a kind of business problem-solving aspect to him. He also, interestingly, is deaf, and wears a hearing aid on his sleeve. Unlike, say, the demonic figure Peter O’Toole plays in The Stunt Man, Truffaut’s Ferrand is an avuncular nice guy, who’s not above engaging in mischief like having his prop man steal a vase from the hotel they’re staying at.

The plot covers all the vicissitudes of making a movie, from insurance problems to temperamental stars to an actress who is pregnant to a cat not going for a saucer of milk to the death of an actor. Some of them are quite funny, especially embodied by Valentina Cortese as an aging star who hits the sauce a little too hard and can’t remember her lines (Cortese was nominated for an Oscar, and the winner, Ingrid Bergman, said that she should have won).

Several subplots run through the film. Jacqueline Bisset is the English superstar who has just come off a nervous breakdown. Jean-Pierre Leaud is a love-struck actor who gets dumped by a script girl, and then locks himself in his room. He comes out, wearing just a nightshirt, and asks for money for a whore.

But the overall theme of the film is the siren call of cinema to those involved. Nathalie Baye, who plays Truffaut’s assistant, can’t believe that a person would quit a movie for a man: “I would drop a guy for a film,” she says, “but never a film for a guy.”  Truffaut, luring Leaud back to work, tells him: “Go back to your room, re-read the script, learn your lines, then try to sleep. Tomorrow we work. That’s what matters. Don’t be a fool. You’re a very good actor. No one’s private life runs smoothly. That only happens in the movies. No traffic jams, no dead periods. Movies go along like trains in the night. And people like you and me are only happy in our work.”

Truffaut also seems to be interested in showing the sausage-making of film. We see how artificial snow is made, how a simple window dressing can stand in for an entire apartment, and how large crowd scenes are handled. Here, film is magic, but it’s also nuts and bolts and work.

The film is dedicated to Dorothy and Lillian Gish, and Truffaut pays homage to the silent era with his treatment of Bisset. She’s a perfectly capable actress, but Truffaut can’t stop glorying in her face. And it’s a great face.

There have been many films about the making of movies–screenwriters write about what they know, after all–and Day for Night may be the best one ever made.

Truffaut: The Adventures of Antoine Doinel

Francois Truffaut’s first film, The 400 Blows, featured a young actor named Jean-Pierre Leaud as Antoine Doinel, a 14-year-old boy who seeks to escape his horrible family life. The end of the movie is a freeze-frame of Antoine, as he reaches the sea, but faces uncertainty in his life ahead.

Despite that ending, Truffaut and Leaud would continue the story of Antoine, through one short film and three features, in all covering 20 years. It is the longest association of director, actor, and character in movie history.

Truffaut returned to Antoine in 1962 when he was asked to make part of an omnibus film. The result was Antoine and Collette (called Love at 20 in France), a look at Antoine living on his own and trying to romance a young woman (Marie-France Pisier), who kind of strings him along. It would mark a habit of Antoine’s–he would fall in love with a girl’s whole family, making up for the loveless home he grew up in.

The second feature was Stolen Kisses, released in 1968. Much more comic in tone than The 400 Blows, the film views Antoine after being kicked out of the army, struggling to find himself in a series of jobs.

This film is really a confection, not very substantial but with a lot of Gallic charm. This, even though it was filmed during the turmoil surrounding the dismissal of Henri Langlois from the Cinematheque Francais, which caused riots in Paris. The film is dedicated to Langlois, and during the opening credits we see the closed doors of the Cinematheque.

But Truffaut was not an overtly political filmmaker. 1968 was one of the most turbulent years in world history, especially in France, but there’s hardly a whiff of it here. The only direct mention is when Antoine’s girlfriend (Claude Jade) mentions she has been to a demonstration, and he reacts as if she said she went to the moon. Truffaut was a sentimentalist, and this is a delightful but insubstantial romantic comedy.

The opening scenes show Antoine being unceremoniously and dishonorably discharged from the army. He makes faces as his commanding officer dresses him down, reminding him he will be unable to get a civil service job, suggesting he may sell neckties on the street. Recalling Antoine’s urge to roam from The 400 Blows, we hear how often he went AWOL.

As with Antoine and Collette, Antoine’s only family is the parents of his girlfriend. This time she’s Christine, whom he wrote to in the army, but they seem to have settled into a friendship. Christine’s father gets him a job as a night clerk at a hotel, but he gets fired when a private detective tricks him into opening a door to reveal a woman in the midst of adultery. The detective (pointedly name Henri) feels bad for him and gets him a job at his detective agency, where Antoine becomes the most hapless detective outside of Inspector Clouseau.

One of his assignments is to go undercover at a shoe store, to find out why the owner (Michel Lonsdale) is so disliked. He ends up falling for the man’s wife, and, similarly to The Graduate, which came the year before, the two engage in an affair in which Antoine is bumblingly nervous, while the wife (Delphine Seyrig) is assured.

This film is like The Graduate in many ways, as it captures the uncertain time of a young man who doesn’t quite know where he fits in. As with The Graduate, politics are of no interest to the young man–he’s a misfit, not a revolutionary.

The third feature in the cycle was Bed and Board, from 1970. It is an absolutely delightful picture that made me laugh several times, and I always had a smile on my face. In some ways it is proto-Woody Allen romantic comedy.

Antoine is now married, to Christine. They live in a tight-knit apartment building, where a number of endearing oddballs live, such as the man who won’t leave his apartment until Marshall Petain dies.

Antoine and Christine are happy, though poor. She teaches violin lessons. He starts by working in a flower shop, trying to revolutionize a method of dying flowers. That doesn’t work, so he ends up at a hydraulics company, steering miniature boats in a small-scale harbor. They have a baby son, and there’s some comedy about what his name is. Christine wants Ghislain, but Antoine says that sounds like a baby who wears velvet knickers. He wants Alphonse, but Christine thinks that sounds like a peasant. Since Antoine fills out the paperwork, Alphonse it is.

It is at his new job that Antoine meets a Japanese woman, Kyoko (Hiroko Berghauer). The two enter an affair, though Antoine is quickly tired of it, as he has trouble sitting at those low Japanese tables and the two have nothing to talk about. Christine finds out about it (in a lovely scene involving opening flower petals) and kicks him out. Will true love conquer all?

Truffaut, as with Stolen Kisses, films this as a meringue, not getting heavy but just following his characters as they bounce through the pinball machine. There are a lot of little quirks and eddies, such as when an old policeman says of Christine, “I wouldn’t lay her well, but I would lay her often.” Jacques Tati makes a cameo, in full Monsieur Hulot costume. There’s a running gag involving a fellow who owes money to Antoine, but every time they run into each other, Antoine is owed even more money. And there’s a recurring appearance by a guy everyone calls “the Strangler” who turns out to be a TV comedian.

But the heart of the film is the buoyant and funny relationship between Antoine and Christine. If indeed Antoine is part Truffaut, there appears to be self-satirization, such as when Christine says of Antoine’s biographical novel, “I don’t like this business of writing about your childhood, dragging your parents through the mud. I don’t know much, but one thing I do know – if you use art to settle accounts, it’s no longer art.” Antoine, who again is friendly with Christine’s parents (he has a pleasant run-in with her father at a whorehouse) says, “I like all parents. Except my own.”

Though the film could be seen as Truffaut’s Scenes From a Marriage, it never gets very serious. Christine never really gets that mad at him, and there’s always a sense that they will get back together. The film was intended to be the last in series, but ten years later Truffaut and Leaud teamed up one more time.

That film was Love on the Run, from 1979. Truffaut said he was dissatisfied with the film, and though it has a certain charm, he was right. The film ends up being a summation of the films before, and doesn’t offer any new insights into the character. As Truffaut pointed out, Antoine never evolves.

The film starts on the day of Antoine’s divorce from Christine. They have amicably split, but Jade has had enough of his affairs and self-centeredness. Antoine is now living with a record-shop employee, Sabine (Dorothee). But when he runs into his old girlfriend, Colette (again Marie-France Pisier) he impulsively hops on a train with her. She has been reading his book, a barely fictional account of his life, which has been told in the four previous Doinel films.

The double-edged sword here is that Truffaut was able to use film clips from those films. When Antoine remembers something, we can see a film clip of it, as when he lies about his mother dying in The 400 Blows, or when he has an affair with the Japanese woman in Bed and Board. But having seen all those films in the last few days, it has the effect of being a highlight reel, not a real movie. Antoine is still self-centered–Pisier tells him so–and his relationship with Sabine is based on a serendipitous, albeit romantic, coincidence.

The one spark here is that Pisier, who co-wrote the script, gives herself a subplot involving her defending a child murderer. Though I appreciate the attempt to give one of Antoine’s woman a life beyond him, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

It’s a shame the series ended on such a flat note. There are some touching scenes, such as when Antoine visits his mother’s grave for the first time (she’s buried next to the woman who inspired Camille). The closing credits are intercut with scenes of young Antoine from The 400 Blows, laughing as he spins around in a carousel. That’s moving, but could have meant so much more with a stronger film.

Leaud, who also made many films with Jean-Luc Godard, was an interesting actor in these films. Of course he was mesmerizing in The 400 Blows, but in the other films he’s a loose-limbed, comic actor, gliding through each film as if he were on roller skates, trying his best to stay out of trouble but failing utterly.  He still makes films today, but nothing with the impact that his Doinel films did.

Truffaut definitively stated that Love on the Run was the last Doinel picture. Sadly, he died in 1984, so there was no chance to go back on that proclamation. As a package, they are an interesting portrait of an artist covering a character through history, which has been done often in literature (as John Updike did with Rabbit, or Richard Ford with Frank Bascombe), but usually a director doesn’t have the luxury of using the same actors. Truffaut did, and we are all the beneficiaries.

Truffaut: Mid-Career

This post will be concerned with Francois Truffaut’s career from 1965 to 1970, absent the Antoine Doinel pictures, which will be discussed in a future post. Based on DVD availability, that includes Fahrenheit 451, Mississippi Mermaid, and The Wild Child.

Fahrenheit 451 was Truffaut’s first film in color, and his only film in English (he was, for a while, attached to filming Bonnie and Clyde, which I would have loved to have seen). It is, of course, based on the famous dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury, in which firemen don’t put out fires, they start them. They burn books.

Book burning is a particularly odious image, mostly associated with Nazis, but pops up every once in a while even in our freedom-loving U.S.A. The opening scene shows a squad of firemen, wearing kind of odd, Victorian-style helmets, riding a vehicle that is both futuristic and antique, to a home where someone is hiding books. Montag (Oskar Werner) is an expert at finding hidden books–false TV sets are a typical place. The firemen then gather the offending material and burn it.

In this society of Bradbury’s creation, printed material is banned (the opening credits are spoken, not typed). Citizens are kept docile by drugs and TV, and told that books lead to unhappiness. Of course, what the government fears about books is that they have alternative ideas, but they have persuaded most that books are dangerous to their well-being.

Montag is in line for a promotion, but a few things start to happen. He meets a vivacious neighbor (Julie Christie, who also plays his vapid wife). Then he becomes intrigued by the books he burns. His captain, Cyril Cusack, says this happens to the best of firemen, but he insists that books are rubbish. But Montag starts to read David Copperfield, and then gets hooked. Soon his house is full of books.

Truffaut handles this high-concept material mostly straight, without filigree or tricks. There are a few inside jokes–in one bonfire, we see a copy of Cahiers du Cinema with Truffaut on the cover–but for the most part this is straight ahead science-fiction, and at times elegantly exciting. A taut sequence in which a woman is found with a hidden library, what Cusack calls the dream find of any firemen, is magnified by her insistence on being burned with the books, an image that Montag can not shake.

The science-fiction elements are handled somewhat strangely. As I said about the uniforms, though this is set in the future, we don’t know how far ahead. For all I know Bradbury may have been referencing the increasing cultural illiteracy of his own time. A few things, such as wall-sized televisions, have the aura of the new, but otherwise there are no “Jetsons”-style gadgets, except for some jetpacks, which are shown in cheesy rear projection.

But this film is not about technical wizardry. Especially noted is a scene in a school, where children are drilled not in their ABCs but in multiplication tables (the old woman recites them mockingly while going up in flames). Which brings me to a question–are people taught to read? Montag stumbles through David Copperfield, reading as a first-grader might. But clearly he knows how to read–how was he taught? Are there no instruction manuals? Apparently not. It’s a bit of a puzzle, but certainly nothing to impinge on the excellence of this film.

Mississippi Mermaid, from 1969, seemed to be an attempt by Truffaut to make an Alfred Hitchcock picture, and he did not succeed. It has many of the elements Hitchcock used, but without the tautness and balance of the master. Instead it’s kind of a mess.

The film also has noir elements, in that its protagonist is a man who acts stupidly over a woman. Jean-Paul Belmondo is a wealthy owner of a tobacco plantation and cigarette factory on the island of Reunion, which is located in the Indian Ocean. He has been corresponding with a woman he met through the classified ads, and they are to marry. When she arrives, she does not look like her picture–she’s Catherine Deneuve–who explains that she did not want their relationship to be about her beauty. Belmondo can’t complain–not only is she a knockout, but he lied about his monetary status, not wanting to attract gold-diggers.

The two marry, and I’m reluctant to go much further in the plot summary, because I didn’t know what was coming, and it was enjoying to ride along with the twists. Suffice it to say that Deneuve is not who she says she is, and when Belmondo gives her access to his bank accounts we can tell this is a bad idea.

While Truffaut idolized Hitchcock, he just doesn’t have a feel for this material. Belmondo, to use a more modern cinematic line, just can’t quit Deneuve, no matter what she did to him. She’s the equivalent of Hitchcock’s icy blonde–I can’t tell if Deneuve’s mostly blank performance was on purpose or not. In any case, it’s hard to sympathize with Belmondo’s character, who continuously does stupid things. There’s an incredible coincidence that occurs when Belmondo and Deneuve, without each other’s knowledge, end up in the same seaside French city. Also, Chekhov’s rule about a gun being introduced to the story is followed to the letter.

At a certain point in the story I stopped caring about these two, as he was so dumb and her motives were so ambiguous. I could swear, though, that the end of the film takes place in the same mountain cabin that Shoot the Piano Player did. Truffaut often put in little inside jokes–the novel that this film is based on, Waltz Into Darkness, by Cornell Woolrich, can be seen in Stolen Kisses being read by Antoine Doiniel. There are other isolated moments of whimsy, such as when Deneuve is changing her top while in a car, and another motorist gazes at her and drives off the road.

From 1970, The Wild Child is a very interesting and compelling film that examines a true story, an example of the “wild child,” a human being that has lived without connection to any other people.

Set in the turn of the 18th century France, the film is about the Wild Boy of Aveyron, a feral boy of about eleven or twelve who was found living on his own, naked, surviving on what ever food he could find. No one ever found out his past, but assumptions were he was abandoned. He is taken to the society for deaf and mute children, though it is discovered he can hear. He is to be turned over to the asylum for idiots when a doctor (Truffaut himself) takes personal charge of the boy and seeks to teach him to be civilized.

The film is presented almost in a documentary style, as the plot mostly concerns the journal of Truffaut, who struggles to teach the boy, as well as coming to grips with whether he is doing the right thing. Over the course of the film we the audience must decide just what “civilized” means. Do we really need to eat with a spoon? Or wear shoes? At times the doctor doubts what he is doing, and wonders if Victor, as he names the boy, would be better off back in the woods.

The Wild Child is also visually interesting. Photographed by Nestor Almendros, who would go on to have a long and fruitful association with Truffaut, the film has the look of a silent–black and white, and with frequent use of irising. The lead performance, by a child named Jean-Pierre Cargol, is quite astonishing, and Truffaut said that he played the part of the doctor not out of vanity, but because he believed it would be better if he worked with the child without an intermediary.

The film can lead to fascinating discussion, as it also ties in with the Enlightenment, and the writing of men such a Rousseau and Montesquieu, as well as the work of naturalists and transcendentalists. Truffaut was inspired to make the film after reading about such cases throughout history, but the case of Victor happened at an interesting time in history, on the cusp of breakthroughs in scientific thought.

Perhaps most interestingly, The Wild Child makes a viewer recall The 400 Blows, in that it is about a child who is an outsider. Some criticism of the film was that Truffaut seems to be taking the side of the oppressor in this film–that we are supposed to think that Victor’s civilizing is a good thing. But I think Truffaut, like the doctor, was ambivalent, especially considering the last shot of the boy’s face, which is not a happy one, but instead one of uncertainty and confusion, much like the last shot of Antoine Doiniel in The 400 Blows.

Truffaut: The Crest of the Wave

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be looking at the films of Francois Truffaut. I’ve already written about his debut film, The 400 Blows, I’ll cover all of his films that I can. A shocking number of his films, including The Soft Skin, The Bride Wore Black, Small Change, and his last two films, The Woman Next Door and Confidentially Yours, are not available on DVD. I’ve seen The Bride Wore Black and The Woman Next Door, but not for over twenty years, so they’re not exactly fresh in my mind.

Truffaut was first a critic, and wrote a controversial article in 1954 viciously criticizing the French film industry. He espoused the “auteur” theory–that a director of a film was equivalent to the author of a novel–that was later picked up by Andrew Sarris in the U.S. Truffaut wrote for Cahiers du Cinema, under the editorship of Andrew Bazin, and he and colleagues Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and Eric Rohmer turned to directing their own films, in a style that would become known as the French New Wave.

Ironically they were influenced by American films–their holy trinity was Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, and especially Alfred Hitchcock (Truffaut would conduct a book-length interview with him). Truffaut’s first film, the aforementioned The 400 Blows, was a sensation at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival. This was quite a coup, considering his criticism of the festival the year before got him kicked out.

Truffaut’s follow-up film in 1960 was Shoot the Piano Player, and it’s American origins are evident. It is based on an American pulp novel, and has noir elements. But this story of minor hoodlums and the pianist who gets caught up with them is secondary to the style. Charles Aznavour, who is known as the “French Frank Sinatra,” stars as a pianist in a saloon. His brothers have fleeced a couple of hapless hoodlums, and are now on the run. These two hoods, called Ernest and Momo, end up trying to use Aznavour to get to the brothers.

The film is less about gangsters than it is about being an artist and getting second chances. We find out that Aznavour was once a concert pianist who learns that his wife slept with an impresario to further his career. Tragedy ensues from this revelation, and he punishes himself by playing rinky-dink tunes in a dive run by a piggish man. But he meets a new woman (Marie Dubois), and is on the cusp of redemption when the hoods interfere.

Shoot the Piano Player, though it has tragic elements, is mostly comedic. Consider the opening scene, which has Aznavour’s brother (Albert Remy) fleeing Ernest and Momo. We settle in, thinking it will be tense and dramatic. But Remy runs into a lamppost, and is aided by a good Samaritan. They have a discussion about marriage–Remy says he would like to get married someday, and the Samaritan says, “You say that like you mean it.”

Later, in a gag worthy of Mel Brooks, Ernest and Momo (who may have been modeled on Thomson and Thompson of the Tintin comics) have kidnapped Aznavour’s little brother. Ernest (or is it Momo?) is bragging about a scarf, and the boy doubts what he is saying. “If I’m lying, may my mother keel over right this instant,” he says, and Truffaut cuts to an iris shot of an old woman, keeling over.

Shoot the Piano Player is the most “new-waveish” of Truffaut’s films. It has jump cuts and a certain self-consciousness, particularly in a shootout at the end of the film. But though shot in a gritty black and white by Raoul Coutard, there is a striking scene of a character sliding down a snowy slope, dead of a gunshot wound.

Shoot the Piano Player did not do well at the box office, impressing only the cineastes. His next film, Jules and Jim, was more accessible, a romantic triangle set over twenty years, from 1912 to 1932. In a dizzying montage that opens the film, with extensive voiceover, Jules (Oskar Werner), an Austrian, and Jim (Henri Serre), a Parisian. Jim is a ladies’ man, while Jules is shy. The two meet a vivacious woman, Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), who strikingly resembles a statue from antiquity they’ve seen on a Greek island. Jules falls for her, and asks Jim to leave her alone.

Eventually Jules and Catherine will marry and have a child, and move to Austria. The Great War interrupts the Jules and Jim friendship,  but when they are all reunited Jim learns that the marriage is falling apart. He and Catherine begin an affair, with Jules’ full knowledge. In fact, the three all live together. Jim and Catherine can’t make it work though, and Catherine, unable to live with Jim or without him, makes a fateful decision.

I’d seen Jules and Jim twice before my most recent viewing, and I just didn’t get it. Maybe multiple viewings and life experience have helped, because on this third viewing, I found it gripping. There’s a lot going on here. It has gained a reputation as being the “menage a trois” film, though it is not, as Catherine, despite being fickle, never shares the men sexually. And though the friendship between the two men is the real love story of the film, it is not a homoerotic one. Truffaut does throw in some ambiguity with a scene in which Catherine dresses as a man (see photo).

Though this is a romantic film, it does have New Wave elements, especially with the extensive voiceover (Shoot the Piano Player does as well, as we often hear Aznavour’s thoughts). I wonder if Woody Allen, who also used a lot of narration in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, another multi-sided romance, was tipping his hat to this film. Truffaut also uses stock footage from silent film days that gives the film an authenticity, and the music, by Georges Delerue, is that of a farce, not a tragedy. Truffaut mentions in an interview that the source material, a novel by Henri Roche, was written many years after the fact, which lessens the melodrama, and Truffaut sought to replicate that in the film. There are many sad things that happen here, but are not milked for maximum effect.

The film’s most striking legacy is the performance of Moreau as Catherine, a woman ahead of her time. She refuses to play along with the double standard–when Jim goes back to Paris to “say goodbye” to old lovers, she does the same. And as unbalanced as she sometimes appears to be, Moreau makes Catherine the kind of woman who would be hard not to be obsessed with. At no time do we question Jules or Jim and what they do.

 

Film Noir: This Gun for Hire

This Gun for Hire, released in 1942, is not a typical example of film noir. For instance, it has two musical numbers. The script is weak, with some corny dialogue and a plot that relies on two incredible coincidences. But the film, directed by Frank Tuttle, remains notable for the indelible performance by Alan Ladd, then an unknown, as the cold-blooded killer who discovers the good inside himself.

Ladd, who was fourth billed, is really the star of the show. He plays Raven, who, at the start of the film, guns down a scientist who was blackmailing someone. The scientist was supposed to be alone, but his secretary was at the apartment, so Raven shoots her, too. Notably, though, he does not hurt a young crippled girl, even though she sees his face. Raven also has a soft spot for pussycats, and slaps around the hotel maid who chases a stray away. Later, he will expound on the reason he likes them–they don’t answer to anyone, and go their own way.

Raven then meets with his client, the fussy and fat Laird Cregar. Cregar is an executive with a chemical company who is selling secrets to the Japanese. He sets up Raven by giving him marked money from a phony robbery. Raven is pursued by the police, and vows revenge on Cregar and his boss, who is the John D. Rockefeller-like owner of the company, played by Tully Marshall.

Meanwhile, a singing magician, Veronica Lake, gets a job with Cregar, who moonlights as a nightclub owner. She is approached by a senator, who wants her to go undercover and gather information on Cregar. Why a complete amateur is chosen for such a dangerous job is unclear. Also, Lake’s boyfriend is police detective Robert Preston, who just happens to be investigating the robbery.

If that weren’t enough of a coincidence, Ladd and Lake end up sitting next to each other on the train from San Francisco to L.A. Cregar spots them, and thinks they’re in cahoots.

The plot may be creaky, but there’s nothing routine about Ladd’s performance. He would seem to be heartless, except for cats and small children, but a scene in which he is holding Lake hostage in abandoned building on a railroad lot kind of sums up the era’s attitudes about criminals–they are the results of their upbringing. Raven was beaten consistently throughout his life by a mean aunt (his father was hanged, he says), and when she hit him in the arm with a red-hot flatiron, he stabbed her in the throat, beginning his odyssey through juvenile homes, where he was beaten even more.

The relationship between Ladd and Lake, though a little unbelievable (it’s hard to see why she trusts him) is nonetheless effective, and the end of the film, when he has a chance to shoot Preston but doesn’t, knowing he’s Lake’s boyfriend, works well. The film was based on a novel by Graham Greene, which I haven’t read, but I have no doubt the script is far more toothless than the novel. Still, because of Ladd’s performance, it’s well worth seeing.

Hitchcock: Saboteur

Saboteur is one of Alfred Hitchcock’s second-tier films. It has some memorable sequences, including one of his most famous–a man falling to his death from the Statue of Liberty–but it also has a kind of B-movie quality, perhaps because it lacks any real star power (the lead is Bob Cummings, who would later be best known as a sit-com star) and it resembles many other, better Hitchcock films that feature the same theme–a wronged man on the run (such as The 39 Steps and North by Northwest).

Released 70 years ago in 1942, the attack at Pearl Harbor happened when the film was in pre-production. It concerns spies working against the U.S., but unlike Notorious, we’re not sure who they are working for. Part of the genius of the film is that Hitchcock used friendly, all-American types for his spies, although a few of them were a little creepy.

The film begins in a airplane factory in California. Cummings is just an average Joe, and he his buddy accidentally bump into another worker, Fry (Norman Lloyd), who drops some envelopes with his name and address on them and a hundred dollar bill. Later, when a fire breaks out, he will hand a fire extinguisher to Cummings, who then gives it to his buddy. The extinguisher turns out to be full of gasoline, and the buddy is engulfed by flame. Since there is no record of anyone named Fry at the plant, Cummings is suspected, and flees.

He tries to track down Fry and ends up at the home of a wealthy rancher (Otto Kruger), who seems like a kindly old grandpa, but is revealed to be a spy. He turns Cummings over to the police, but he manages to escape, and in a scene reminiscent of one in Frankenstein, he happens upon a kindly old blind man. This man believes in his innocence, and asks his niece (Priscilla Lane) to take him to get his handcuffs removed. Lane isn’t as forgiving as her uncle, and plans of turning Cummings back to the police, but she ends up trusting him and they go on an odyssey that includes hiding out on a circus train, stumbling upon a plot to blow up the Hoover Dam, and then ending up in New York City, trying to prevent the demolition of a newly-christened battleship.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this picture is that one of the co-screenwriters was Algonquin Roundtable wit Dorothy Parker. The film is full of funny lines, including a terrific monologue by a truck driver giving Cummings a lift, and when Lane and Cummings end up in a ghost town called Soda City, Cummings says, “It’s the heart of the bicarbonate belt.”

Where the film bogs down is in its jingoism, which can’t really be faulted, since it was 1942. Hitchcock didn’t believe in making political pictures, so he must have inwardly cringed at some of the speeches about how American is great and the cause of the spies (though Germany or Nazis are never mentioned) is evil. Better are little touches like when the circus freaks, including a bearded lady, a fat lady, a midget and Siamese twins, vote whether to turn the fleeing pair over to the police. The leader of the ring, the “human skeleton,” exults that they are a democracy in miniature. When the midget wants to ignore the result of the vote, the skeleton snaps at him, “Fascist!”

Being Hitchcock, there are many masterful shots. The scene of the fire in the airplane plant is terrific. It’s a stationary shot of a wall, and the smoke slowly rolls in from the right. There’s a scene that is almost a parody of Hitchcock–Lloyd, on the loose but chased by police, heads into Radio City Music Hall (where the film actually premiered). On the screen is a movie that has gunplay, and it is intercut with the gunshots from Lloyd and his pursuers. And the climax on the Statue of Liberty is well known to many. It was interesting to learn in the extras from Lloyd himself (who is alive at 97, God bless him) how that was done in a time before CGI. Hitchcock, of course, loved having scenes on national monuments, as he would do fifteen years later on Mount Rushmore for North by Northwest.

While Saboteur is not one of Hitchcock’s greatest, it’s well worth a look.

Film Noir: Too Late for Tears

If there’s one thing film noir has taught us–if you end up with a mysterious bag of money that is not your own, you don’t have long to live. Just leave it where it lies. It was true in No Country for Old Men, and certainly true of Too Late for Tears, a 1949 noir by Byron Haskin, re-released in 1955 with the more sanguine title, Killer Bait. It also features one of the most avaricious femme fatales in noir history.

Arthur Kennedy and Lizabeth Scott are driving through the Hollywood Hills when a car speeds by from the other direction and drops a bag in the back seat of their convertible. They open it and find oodles of cash. Scott immediately wants to keep it, while the more reasonable Kennedy wants to turn it into the police. A car comes up behind them, clearly the car the money was intended for, and Scott gets behind the wheel and races away.

Kennedy agrees to keep the money for a week, and puts in the baggage claim at Union Station. Meanwhile, the intended recipient of the money, Dan Duryea, tracks down Scott and tries to muscle her out of the money. He soon realizes he’s in over his head. He’s only a blackmailer–she’s a barracuda.

Scott eventually kills Kennedy and schemes to get the money, not knowing where the claim ticket is. Kennedy’s sister, Kristine Miller, grows suspicious when Scott tells her that Kennedy has run away with another woman. A man claiming to be an old friend of Kennedy’s, Don DeFore, shows up, and he ends up helping Miller prove Scott killed Kennedy.

Scott, who was a frequent cast member in film noir, really cleans up in this movie, as once she sees that money she exhibits a pathological greed. Duryea, one of my favorite character actors from the ’40s, gives a very interesting and shaded performance. At first he’s the tough guy, but as the film goes on, he follows Scott’s lead, which is not good for this health. I liked DeFore’s performance, but he seemed kind of familiar in a sit-com sort of way, and sure enough, he was the next-door neighbor on the Ozzie and Harriet show, which kind of makes seeing him in a gritty film like this out of place.

The film has been in public domain for ages and is in terrible shape, but it’s still a clever and menacing little movie, mainly thanks to Scott’s ferocious performance. Remember, if you find a satchel full of cash, just walk on by.

Greed

One of the legendary silent film classics, Greed, by Erich von Stroheim, has a complicated history. Currently, it is not on DVD (it was released on VHS), so my friend Bob and I took advantage of its screening at Film Forum, part of a von Stroheim retrospective. The version was the truncated two-hour one, accompanied by a live pianist. It was a wonderful experience.

Greed, based on the American classic novel McTeague by Frank Norris, was originally close to nine hours long. This was von Stroheim’s rough cut, and it is lost to history. He intended a four-hour version, and there is a restoration, with stills filling in for missing scenes. But after seeing the short version, it’s hard to imagine how a longer film could be any better.

McTeague (Gibson Gowland) works in a gold mine. He is a bear of man, his head covered in a tangle of blond curls. We first see him rescuing a bird, and when a colleague tosses it aside, McTeague picks up the man and throws him into a ditch. “Such was McTeague,” reads the title card.

McTeague’s mother has higher aspirations for him, and apprentices him to a dentist. Without any sort of degree, he starts his own dental practice. One day his good friend Marcus (Jean Hersholt, he of the humanitarian award), brings by his girl for treatment. She is Trina (ZaSu Pitts), and McTeague is smitten. While she’s under anesthesia, he struggles with himself, finally giving in and kissing her. Later, he will admit his feelings for her to Marcus. His friend willingly gives her up, and McTeague courts her. Apparently Trina has no say in the matter.

Finally they marry. The wedding ceremony, held in McTeague’s office, has a bad omen when a funeral procession passes by on the street below. The wedding night is like something out of a horror movie. We definitely get a sense of beauty and the beast, as the rough-hewn, massive McTeague seems like he might break the delicate, pale girl in half.

The couple become happy, though, when Trina, after purchasing a lottery ticket, wins $5,000. As the title suggests, this will spell the couple’s doom. She becomes obsessive in her stinginess, not willing to touch the winnings. Marcus feels cheated, realizing if he had stuck with Trina, he’d be rich, not McTeague. Someone (probably Marcus) turns in McTeague for practicing dentistry without a license, and the couple struggle to make ends meet, but Trina will not spend the lottery winnings. Finally McTeague leaves her, and she ends up scrubbing floors in a kindergarten.

Eventually McTeague commits a murder and takes off across the desert with the money. Marcus tracks him down, and the two men are in the middle of Death Valley, without water. The gold, of course, is meaningless at this point, and the film ends with an image that must have inspired Rod Serling.

Though the film has some dated elements, particularly in the overacting typical of silent films, it is a powerful film. Von Stroheim uses the camera well, showing a fondness for irising and closeup, but also has some ahead-of-his time use of composition, such as one where McTeague heads down a staircase, Trina above him, out of her mind. He also makes a point of focusing in tight on hands. There’s a moment, right before the wedding, that McTeague’s gloved hands are shown in closeup, behind his back, nervously rubbing together. Later, Trina will put lotion on her hands, but look like Lady MacBeth trying to wash the blood off them. At a few other instances, von Stroheim uses expressionistic inserts of skeletal, grasping hands, rinsing themselves with gold coins.

Birds are also a metaphor. McTeague has a pair of songbirds he keeps in a cage, and they stand in for the couple. A cat, representing fate, eyes them hungrily. And, as at the beginning of the film, McTeague will gently hold a bird in his hand, and then let it free.

The film is also surprisingly funny, and intentionally so (there are a few unintentional laughs for modern audiences; the first comes in the credits, which read, “Personally directed by Erich von Stroheim.” The funeral procession during the wedding is a bit of macabre humor, as is Trina’s reaction when McTeague proposes to her–it’s as if he asked to her have a root canal with no anesthesia. The wedding feast is an orgy of gluttony, with characters munching on the skulls of animals and generally eating like barnyard animals. Funny, but also certainly a commentary on the over indulgences of American culture.

As a serious follower of cinema, I’m glad I got a chance to see this film in the manner that I did. I urge everyone else, should they have the opportunity, not to miss it.