A Place in the Sun (1951) **1/2

A Chinese Ghost Story (Sinnui Yauman) 1987 **1/2

The Bigamist (1953) **1/2

There is an interesting backstory about director Ida Lupino’s The Bigamist (1953).  She and her then husband, the writer, Collier Young, formed Emerald Productions (later called The Filmmakers) in 1947, so that she could make high-quality films that usually centered around provocative subjects.  To her exasperation, she had been relegated to being typecast in B-pictures at Warner Brothers. Her production company gave her the opportunity not only to act in, but also to direct and write a number of unique films. Although Lupino and Collier divorced in 1951, they continued to work together. When production began on The Bigamist, Young and the film’s other female lead, Joan Fontaine, were married. In an ironic twist, a film about a man married to two women ended up being written by a man who was producing it with his ex-wife (who was also the director), and co-starring his current wife.  Only in Hollywood!

The story, written by Young, Larry Marcus, and Lou Schor, is about a traveling freezer salesman who finds himself married to two women at the same time because he’s pretty much an honorable man.  Now, that statement reads and sounds strange, I’m sure, and I’m not condoning bigamy as a practice (personally I believe that any type of marriage should be against the law), but Harry Graham’s (Edmond O’Brien) case is rather unusual.  He loves his first wife, Eve (Fontaine), but they have a complicated relationship.  After learning that she couldn’t have a child of her own, Eve started helping Harry run his business, and it, not Harry, became her main focus. Harry, who spends more time on the road than at home, is a lonely man who longs for companionship.  He gets it with Phyllis (Lupino), but not the kind of companionship you might think. They become genuine friends first and then later, one fateful night, things turn into something more.  Besieged by guilt, Harry returns home and vows never to see Phyllis again, but after months of not seeing her he decides he owes her an explanation.  This is when he learns that Phyllis is pregnant, and being a stand-up guy (don’t laugh) he offers to marry her.  Harry probably could have gotten away with it for years but for one small detail—Eve decides she wants to adopt a child, and that means an investigation by a very nosy adoption agent named Mr. Jordan (Edmund Gwenn).  I won’t spoil the ending because it’s so good (and ambiguous anyway) that you have to see for yourself how the dominos fall for Harry.

So, Lupino wanted to make movies about provocative subjects—I suppose pre-martial sex, out of wedlock pregnancy, hints at abortion, and bigamy were provocative enough for 1953.  There are a lot of layers to the overall plot of The Bigamist that might irk some feminist film critics, but there are a few things they might like to ponder over for a bit first.  Let’s start with Eve as a woman consumed with growing her business. Is her devotion to the company a surrogate for the child she will never have? Had she been able to have a child, would she have even started working? Is her career blinding her to the fact that her husband is emotionally absent?  Is this why she decides she wants to adopt?  Does Harry seek companionship with Phyllis, a waitress, because he feels emasculated by Eve’s business acumen? And, what about Phyllis—is she a modern woman who doesn’t need the confines of marriage to have sex or is she being punished with a pregnancy because she crossed a societal line? Moreover, does she give into societal norms by marrying Harry? What’s most compelling about The Bigamist is that there is not just one answer to any of those questions.

While I wouldn’t say that the performances were Oscar-worthy (or even Golden Globes worthy), they are passable.  O’Brien, for his part, does a nice job of making Harry a sympathetic character—a tall order, seeing as he was playing a bigamist.  Of course, Lupino wrote the Warner Bros. acting manual on how to portray cynical women who after being stung by love once avoided it like the plague. I can never understand how directors direct themselves—you’d think there would be an objectivity issue somewhere (see Woody Allen)—but Lupino was the first female director to do so.  Her performance is much stronger in the first half of the film than in the second half.  Once Phyllis becomes pregnant, and bedridden, gone is all of her spunk and Lupino seems perturbed by the character she is playing, which is insane because she’s both the director and producer of the movie.  There’s not much to say about Fontaine’s turn as Eve.  This isn’t to say that she does a bad job, but her character is pretty one dimensional, which, of course, hinders her ability to elicit sympathy for her character.

Overall, the best thing about The Bigamist is the rather provocative storyline, which merits an after-viewing discussion. The acting, if not sensational, is passable and does the job of conveying an emotional center to the film, which is played out well in the ambiguous ending.

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) **1/2

Contrary to published reports, and the Oscar committee of 1952, director Vincent Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) proved that Lana Turner could really act. Playing a character amalgamation of a little bit of Judy Garland, Dianna Barrymore, and probably Jennifer Jones, too, Turner gives the performance of her career—how she was snubbed by the Academy for this and rewarded with a nod for her campy turn in Peyton Place (1957) is beyond comprehension.  A further annoyance is that Gloria Grahame won Best Supporting Actress for her very limited turn in this film and beat out both Thelma Ritter (With a Song in My Heart) and Jean Hagen (Singin’ in the Rain) for the award.  However, the one person who did rightfully earn a nomination was Kirk Douglas, who plays a Hollywood megalomaniac who darkens the glitter of Tinseltown for everyone he meets.  I suspect Douglas’ spot-on performance of the bastard son of Orson Welles, Val Lewton, and David O. Selznick is one of the reasons that The Bad and the Beautiful is still considered one of the best done movies about the film industry.  Mind you, that doesn’t mean that it’s not soapy (hell, a soap opera is named after it, just insert Bold for Bad)—because it is—but wasn’t (and isn’t) Hollywood its own soap opera?

Based on George Bradshaw’s “Tribute to a Badman”, the Oscar-nominated screenplay cuts the picture into three periods, told in flashback, of the life of movie producer Jonathan Shields (Douglas).  The first section is dedicated to the Poverty Row years of the young producer and his friend and aspiring director Fred (Barry Sullivan).  Working for a penny-pinching film executive (played by Walter Pidgeon), the duo hit B-picture gold when they make Doom of the Cat Men (no doubt, a direct reference to Lewton’s Cat People).  Unfortunately for Fred, when the opportunity to make a $1 million picture comes their way he gets burned by the rising star that is Jonathan. 

The second act of the rise and fall of Jonathan Shields is the main reason to watch The Bad and the Beautiful, because this is when Turner’s Georgia Lorrison has her dealings with him.  The daughter of a Hollywood legend and drunk (probably a reference to John Barrymore), Georgia is a Hollywood extra—as well as a drunk and tramp (all things that at one time or another Turner herself was) who Jonathan deems has star power—even though she can’t really act.  Knowing that Georgia has daddy issues, Jonathan becomes a father figure to her and coaches her on the finer points of acting while casting her in the lead of his next big picture.  Insecure and fragile, Georgia falls desperately in love with Jonathan only to realize what a detestable human being he actually is.  To say that Turner is on fire in every one of her scenes would be an understatement. She owns every second she is on screen—she even overshadows Douglas.  I would have been completely happy if the other two sections of the film had been completely thrown out and Minnelli just focused on this maniacally toxic relationship.

The final part of the film focuses on Jonathan’s dealings with author and screenwriter James Lee (Dick Powell).  A southern academic married to a distracting, idiotic wife (Grahame), James Lee finds himself entrenched in Hollywood after his wife convinces him to hear Jonathan out about writing the screenplay for his novel, which Jonathan has bought the rights to.  When Jonathan realizes his would-be writer can’t get anything done because of his wife, he asks a known Hollywood Casanova (Gilbert Roland) to provide her with her own distraction.  Things don’t end well…all around. The film’s director (modeled, I believe, on Alfred Hitchcock) walks off the set and Jonathan takes over the helm and proceeds to produce the film that bankrupts his own studio.

My biggest complaint with The Bad and the Beautiful is it ends with the weakest part of the movie—maybe of no fault of it’s own.  Whoever thought it was a good idea to have anything or anyone follow Turner’s section of the film was obviously an idiot. The headliner is the headliner, and things don’t usually go well when anyone follows the main attraction. Yes, I know that when Jonathan was with Georgia he was on top and the downfall still needed to be told, but that fact alone does not negate how much the story sags once Georgia is out of the picture (although she does make a brief appearance in this section). 

Overall, The Bad and the Beautiful is the beneficiary of great performances by Turner and Douglas.  While I don’t agree with the overall organizational structure of the film, it is still well told and highly entertaining. 

White Heat (1949) **1/2

Before Al Pacino and Robert De Niro made playing gangsters their main source of income, James Cagney owned that particular character type.  In films like The Public Enemy (1931),  Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), The Roaring Twenties (1939), White Heat (1951), and Love Me or Leave Me (1955), Cagney wrote the book on playing tough-talking, psychotic hoods.  Of all of these performances, his turn as Cody Jarrett in director Raoul Walsh’s White Heat is probably his most riveting.  Perhaps after being typecast as the quintessential gangster so many times Cagney had perfected the role.  Everything that is good about White Heat is due to his performance, as well as Walsh’s focused storytelling style.

Cody is the leader of a California-based crew who hold up a U.S. mail train carrying over $350,000.  This act sets U.S. Treasury investigators on his tail and eventually leads to him confessing to a lesser crime that lands him in the clink for 1 to 3 years.  It is here that he meets an undercover cop named Pardo/Fallon (Edmond O"’Brien) who ingratiates himself to Cody after saving him from an assassination attempt organized by his second in command, Big Ed (Steve Cochran), and his two-timing wife, Verna (Virginia Mayo).  After escaping from prison with a new crew, Cody sets out to even the score with Big Ed and plans a payroll heist at a chemical plant.  All the while, the man who Cody thinks is his new partner, Pardo/Fallon, is setting a trap for him.

What’s interesting about Cody Jarrett, and Cagney’s performance, is that Cody is a complete psychopath, albeit a charming one.  Insanity runs in his family, as both his father and brother totally cracked up and died in asylums, and Cody is no exception.  He has absolutely no problem killing witnesses, strangers, and even members of his gang when they get in his way.  The only person he would think twice about killing is his mother (Margaret Wycherly).  Ma Jarrett and her son have some sort of strange symbiotic relationship that had it existed in the real world (though the movie may have been inspired by the Barkers) would have given psychiatrists loads to ponder.  It also sets up one of the best scenes in the film, when Cody learns that Ma has been killed.  The sounds that come out of Cagney after learning of her death echo what one would hear when an animal is being slaughtered. Cody goes totally berserk. The raw, ferocious intensity that Cagney displays in this scene looks and sounds completely real. 

Virginia Kellogg’s Oscar-nominated motion picture story, which was turned into a screenplay by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, is tightly-wound together by Walsh’s straight-forward directing style.  Known for his ability to trim the fat off of movies, Walsh uses every scene to keep the plot moving forward to its explosive (literally) ending.  This, of course, is what White Heat is most famous for: its ending. From the famous lines Cody says to Pardo/Fallon after he realizes he’s been duped:

A copper, a copper, how do you like that boys? A copper and his name is Fallon. And we went for it, I went for it. Treated him like a kid brother. And I was gonna split fifty-fifty with a copper!

to Cody’s maniacal laughter after being shot by the police atop a gas storage tank, oodles and oodles of gold nuggets escaped to be used as future popular culture references.  And, what better way to go out than with a bang—literally—and in the words of Cody himself, “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”

 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Virginia Mayo’s performance as the sultry, manipulative Mrs. Cody Jarrett.  Certainly anyone who’d marry Cody in the first place must have had a screw loose, but Verna is a strange concoction of amusing crazy.  Her back-talk to Cody is both smart and child-like, but it emerges from the body of a woman who has no problem using her looks to get from Point A to Point B.  Mayo plays well against Cagney.  While her best scenes with him are the ones where she gives as good as she gets, she also has the ability to play a woman truly afraid of her menacing husband.  This, of course, was due to the fact that Mayo was completely frightened by Cagney because she found his performance so realistic.

Overall, White Heat is a tightly constructed crime drama that benefits from the good acting of Cagney and Mayo, as well as from a focused, linear plot.

 

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) **1/2

Director Michael Curtiz’s biopic of legendary Broadway producer, writer, and star, George M. Cohan, is mildly entertaining.  James Cagney deservedly won his only Academy Award for his portrayal of Cohan, but once you get past his singing and dancing there isn’t much more to the movie. 

For one, Robert Bucker and Edmund Joseph’s script was a sanitized retelling of how Cohan worked his way up the Great White Way and became “The man who owned Broadway”.  Cohan, although in poor health at the time of production, was a consultant on Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), and, as such, wanted certain elements of his personal life either glossed over or completely omitted altogether.  Knowing this unpleasant fact takes a lot of the shine off the movie for me.  I am of the opinion that if you’re going to make a biopic it should at least be relatively accurate, since unfortunately so many people learn their “history” from films and television shows. 

While I don’t have a problem with the fact that Cagney won the Best Actor Oscar for Yankee Doodle Dandy, I can’t help but wonder if he didn’t benefit from the United States having recently entered World War II. What I mean by this, for those of you who haven’t seen this, is that while the film is obviously a musical and a biography, it is also a propaganda piece as well.  When you start your movie off with a visit to FDR’s office to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor, primarily for writing such  patriotic songs as “Over There” and “A Grand Old Flag”, it’s obvious that some flag waving is being done.

The musical numbers themselves are rather impressive, but unfortunately blackface does rear its ugly head ever so briefly.  Still, the staging and performance of the likes of Yankee Doodle Dandy (Boy) and Harrigan are so well done that I can almost overlook that Cagney wears blackface for a few minutes.  What I can’t overlook, though, is that once the singing and dancing stop the film seems to stagnate. A good musical, in my opinion, should seamlessly flow from the overall story into the musical numbers.  Unfortunately, for me, at least, Yankee Doodle Dandy doesn’t do this and seems clunky whenever the music stops.

Overall, Yankee Doodle Dandy is strong on songs and soft on storytelling. 

Guys and Dolls (1955) **1/2

 

When I think of Gene Kelly or Frank Sinatra I envision them in musicals—they belong in this genre.  But Marlon Brando in a musical?  WTF!  The first time I sat down to watch Brando’s starring turn in director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Guys and Dolls (1955) I thought to myself: This isn’t going to end well, is it?  But, what a surprise, as the movie is actually rather entertaining and Brando does a relatively good job (thanks to a lot of sound engineering). Still, Brando’s not the best thing about Guys and Dolls. What makes the film really tick are the musical numbers performed by Frank Sinatra and Vivian Blaine. 

Frank Loesser’s hugely successful original 1950 Broadway musical, Guys and Dolls, won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical.  Loesser based his musical on two short stories by Damon Runyon, “The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown” and “Blood Pressure”. While screenwriters Mankiewicz and Ben Hecht made a few changes from Loesser’s musical, the film is essentially about a $1,000 bet between two professional gamblers, Sky Masterson (Brando) and Nathan Detroit (Sinatra), that Sky can’t take repressed Salvation Army Sergeant Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons) on a date.  Nathan desperately needs the money to secure a location for a floating crap game that he runs, and knowing that Sky will bet on just about anything and that Sister Sarah is a no-nonsense woman, especially when it comes to sin, i.e. gambling and drinking, Nathan believes he has a sure bet.  However, Sister Sarah’s mission is failing and General Cartwright (Kathryn Givney) is threatening to shut it down. Seeing an opportunity to win his bet and also take a rather attractive, if not uptight, woman to dinner in Havana, Sky guarantees that he can fill the mission with at least 12 bona fide sinners for the mission’s next meeting if she agrees to go with him.  When Sister Sarah agrees and Nathan loses the bet he must find another place to hold his crap game. Fortunately for him with Sister Sarah away in Havana, the mission is the perfect place to hold the game—Lieutenant Brannigan (Robert Keith) and the cops would never suspect such a venue. 

While Sky and Sister Sarah make an interesting pairing, it is Nathan’s relationship with his nightclub singing fiancee, Adelaide (Vivian Blaine), that makes the film entertaining to watch.  Blaine, one of the four original Broadway cast members, is flawless as a woman with a 14-year old cold to match her 14-year old engagement to Nathan.  Yes, her baby-doll voice is a little annoying at first, but it grows on you as the picture progresses, and eventually you’ll accept it as a necessary character trait (or flaw).  She and her Hot Box chorus girls get to perform two outrageous numbers, “Pet Me Poppa” and “Take Back Your Mink”, that you can’t help but be amused by.  Her one solo number, “Adelaide’s Lament”, is about the psychology behind her cold and delivers the laughs.  Additionally, she sings “Sue Me” with Frank Sinatra near the end of the film, which spotlights that they were by far the two most talented singers in the movie. 

Sinatra, for his part, plays a member of the gambling underworld well—of course, he had the background for this role.  Perhaps he was miffed that Sam Goldwyn and Mankiewicz decided to cast a less than stellar singer who had never been in a musical before as the lead, but Sinatra really amped up his game for Guys and Dolls.  From his rousing rendition of “The Oldest Established (Permanent Floating Crap Game)” to his delivery of the best musical number of the movie, “Adelaide”, Sinatra showcases why people would eventually pay so much to watch his live shows—he has the chutzpah to deliver the goods. 

Surprisingly, the most well-known song from Guys and Dolls, “Luck Be a Lady Tonight”, was not sung by Sinatra but by Brando.  Of course, Sinatra went on to later record his own version and it became one of his signature songs.  Brando may have had an inflated sense of self regarding his abilities as an actor, but he was the first to admit that he had a terrible singing voice.  In an interview ten years after his performance in Guys and Dolls he revealed that all of the songs we hear him sing in the film were the result of countless takes being cut into one version of a song.  This probably explains why Brando never did another musical, even with Guys and Dolls making an estimated $14.5 million profit.  Of course, he had company when it came to less than stellar voices, as Jean Simmons was known for her dramatic abilities and not her singing.  Still, they muddle along well together in the film and do admirable jobs on “I’ll Know” and “A Woman in Love”.  But, truthfully, their best interactions are when they are just acting. 

One musical number that is often overlooked in Guys and Dolls is “Fugue for Tinhorns”, which is sung by Stubby Kaye, Johnny Silver, and Danny Dayton.  This is a shame because it’s probably the most difficult to sing and best arranged song in the entire film.  Stubby Kaye was a fabulous singer, who was relegated to ancillary roles because of his weight, so it’s nice to see him shine in “Fugue for Tinhorns” as well as “Sit Down You’re Rockin’ the Boat”. 

Overall, Guys and Dolls is an entertaining, not-all-together ridiculous 1950s Hollywood musical. It’s light and fun, and filled with catchy, memorable songs.  Most importantly, no one wanders off to dance a 10 to 15 minute ballet solo for the sake of art which makes absolutely no sense to the film’s overall narrative.  On the down side, it is a tad too long and would have benefitted from some editing.

Seconds (1966) **1/2

Based on David Ely’s 1963 novel of the same name, Seconds (1966) is a disturbing science fiction—and, I would go as far as to say horror—film about a man who completely takes on a new identity to escape his meaningless suburban lifestyle.  Director John Frankenheimer, along with cinematographer James Wong Howe, depicts a stark vision of a world where lives can be created or taken by an underground company headed by a man who looks and sounds a lot like Harry S. Truman (Will Geer).  The story itself is so bizarre that it is frightening, and Howe’s voyeuristic cinematography and Jerry Goldsmith’s eerily haunting score only heighten the troubling plot. 

On his nightly commute from his New York banking job to his suburban home in Scarsdale, Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) is given a scrap of paper with an address written on it. Later that evening he receives a phone call from a man claiming to be his dead best friend, Charlie (Murray Hamilton), who attempts to convince him to change his life.  What happens next is a series of shockingly matter-of-fact conversations between Arthur and the “Company”.  It seems that they can help him extricate himself from his empty existence, in which he no longer shares intimacy with his wife (Frances Reid), sees his married daughter, or enjoys his job.  All he has to do is set up a trust worth $30,000 to handle his transition—a cadaver must be procured for his “death”; extensive plastic surgery must be performed; and, his new identity must be established. Trust signed, Arthur goes under the knife and several weeks later Tony Wilson (Rock Hudson) emerges.  He chooses artist as his new career, and the company sets him up in a beach house in Malibu and assigns John (Wesley Addy) as his adjustment advisor (and servant).  When it appears that Tony isn’t transitioning as they would like, they send in a woman (Salome Jens) to help the process along, as well as some other “reborns” to monitor his behavior. Unfortunately, Wilson doesn’t adapt to his new life and returns to New York to see where he went wrong with his wife and to ask the Company for a redo, so to speak.  Without giving the ending of the movie away, I will say that the last five minutes of the story are startling and uneasy to watch.

There’s something about black and white film that makes psychologically disturbing movies even more frightening.  Howe’s cinematography creates a cold, austere atmosphere for Seconds, which expertly matches the disturbingly detached narrative.  Cinematically, the most important theme created by Howe and Frankenheimer is the distortion of reality. Their use of a fisheye lens to capture Arthur/Wilson’s distorted sense of being creates a mode of expression that a standard lens could not achieve. Additionally, the use of extreme close ups (so close you can see the character’s pores) elevate the tension/anxiety level and are almost jarringly uncomfortable to look at.  In one particular scene, after Arthur has spoken on the telephone to Charlie, Arthur is framed in a tight close up shot which depicts his unease and unhappiness. This shot is then followed, in rapid succession, by a medium and then a long shot, which emphasize Arthur’s isolation. Another scene that I especially enjoyed was when Wilson returns home and picks up a picture of Arthur, while standing in front of a mirror, and his face is reflected across the glass of the picture frame and the two faces of the same man are captured. 

Of course, such disturbing images deserved to be set to an equally disturbing soundtrack. While it has a sound all its own, Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack seems to pay homage to Bach’s Baroque style. Filled with imposing organs, melodic strings, and eerie 60s electronic music, the soundtrack is just as disquieting as the film’s subject matter.

Seconds did not do well at the box office or with critics.  Some found the idea ridiculous that John Randolph’s Arthur could be transformed into Rock Hudson’s Wilson. This is a valid complaint, as Hudson was nearly a half foot taller than Randolph and ten years younger, too.  Moreover, audiences weren’t quite prepared to watch Hudson in such a dark film—especially not after seeing him in a string of light romantic comedies.  Personally, I was equally impressed by Hudson and Randolph’s performances. Randolph expresses his character’s disillusionment and resignation quite effectively—so much so that you actually do feel sorry for him.  And, Hudson, for his part, is quite memorable in the last few scenes of the film, where he displays a gamut of emotions: regret, hostility, and horror.  

Overall, while I must admit that the story is a bit far-fetched, it is also so disturbing that I couldn’t help but be drawn into it.  It also helps that it was expertly filmed and that the soundtrack only enhanced the terror of the narrative. 

All That Heaven Allows (1955) **1/2

No one in classic Hollywood did melodrama better than director Douglas Sirk.  With films like All I Desire (1953), Magnificent Obsession (1954), There’s Always Tomorrow (1956), Written on the Wind (1956), Imitation of Life (1959), and today’s entry, All That Heaven Allows (1955), Sirk made movies that focused on domestic concerns, almost always centered around the emotional needs and desires of women. Over and over again certain themes would appear in his pictures: female alienation from social norms; motherly love tested by the selfishness of their children; and, criticism of conformity—although this particular theme was not always recognized by critics, at least not until the veil was lifted about how un-ideal the 1950s actually were for many American women.  Yes, the plots of many of his films played like a soap opera, but no soap opera was ever so well acted or sumptuously lensed. 

Such is the case with All That Heaven Allows, a melodrama which reteamed Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson following their hugely successful pairing in Magnificent Obsession. While Wyman was a star and an acclaimed actress (she had three Best Actress nominations and one Oscar statute) when she first worked with Sirk on Magnificent Obsession (for which she earned her fourth Best Actress nomination), Hudson was pretty much a second, third, or fourth banana in Hollywood and was regarded more for his looks than for his acting abilities.  Sirk must have seen something in Hudson that others did not, because between 1952-1958 he and Hudson made nine films together at Universal.  All That Heaven Allows was their fifth collaboration, and their second pairing with Wyman.  Clearly, Wyman was the star of the show, but by this point Sirk new how to get the most out of Hudson that he could.

Based on Edna and Harry Lee’s 1952 story of the same name, All That Heaven Allows is billed as a May/December romance between a well-to-do widow and a working-class gardener/arborist.  Mrs. Cary Scott (Wyman) is a lonely widow who feels isolated by the world she and her deceased husband used to occupy. Her two grown children, Kay (Gloria Talbott) and Ned (William Reynolds), are preoccupied with their lives at their Ivy League schools and assume that their mother will eventually marry a mature, and very passionless, man from their social set—or purchase a television set to spend her evenings with.  However, she strikes up a friendship with Ron Kirby (Hudson), the man who prunes her trees, and against her better judgment begins an affair with the handsome man who is both younger than herself and who is also of lower social standing.  She is attracted to more than his good looks, though.  She admires his individuality and his simplicity, and through interactions with he and his friends Cary finds a world where people care about other people—not about how much money they have or their social standing.  Yet, when Ron asks her to marry him, at first she says that it will never work because of their differences. Ah, but love is strong and she decides to take a chance—and that’s when the nastiness begins.  Her snobby friends (sans poor Agnes Moorehead’s Sara) find the relationship scandalous and her children think it’s humiliating—mostly to them.  Unable to “thine own self be true”, Cary breaks off the engagement to appease her beyond-selfish children and finds herself alone and miserable.  Finding herself at a personal crossroads (in front of a television nonetheless), Cary has to make up her mind about whether she’s going to live her life for others or for herself.

Personally, I don’t think this is a film about a May/December romance. Wyman was 38 years old and Hudson was 30 when they made All That Heaven Allows. While I know Cary is supposed to be in her early to mid forties and have two college-age children, she doesn’t look all that much older than Ron.  Perhaps that was a focal point in the Lees’ story (I’m pretty sure she’s supposed to be fifteen years older than Ron), but it really isn’t in the movie. Yes, there are a few barbs from the town gossip (Jacqueline De Wit) and a not so kind muscle reference from her son that insinuates that there is an age difference, but that’s not really what All That Heaven Allows is about.  Instead, I view it as an critique on American consumerism and conformity (there’s a reason Cary reads from Thoreau’s Walden).  The thing that seems to rankle Cary’s friends and children the most about Ron is that he’s not one of them—driven by money and having fine, expensive things.  He doesn’t belong, nor does he want to, to their worldview.  And the fact that someone from their social/economic group would want to shed the life that they so value and esteem to live a simple existence is almost anathema to them.  Cary doesn’t want to conform and so she is ostracized by her friends and shamed by her own children.  As a result of doing what others expect of her, she finds herself locked inside a world that holds no meaning for her.  It is only when she realizes that she needs to do what makes her happy that she can truly be free.  In 1955, women, in general, did not do this and I expect the ending of this film was shocking to some—hopefully, it was also enlightening to others.

While she may not be as well remembered as Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, or Barbara Stanwyck, Jane Wyman was a very fine actress who could do comedy or drama, and was also a dancer and a singer.  Wyman, much like Stanwyck, had had a difficult childhood which she used to her advantage when playing characters who needed to draw upon their own internal fortitude to face difficult situations.  And although she was not what one would call a classic beauty, she had a certain personal grace and countenance that was admired by moviegoers.  These qualities, of course, allowed her to play Cary Scott as a gracefully polite woman stifled by the circumstances of her life.  It’s not easy to play a sacrificing woman and not be tinged by sanctimony, but Wyman does an excellent job of melding Cary’s two worlds and personalities into one overall character.  She must be refined, composed, and repressed at certain times, and at others she is free to display desire, unencumbered happiness, and hopefulness—but not too much, because there are voices of doubt that still rattle around in her mind that makes her happiness guarded and almost unrealistic. 

Other than Wyman’s performance, the thing that most stands out about All That Heaven Allows is its aesthetic appeal.  Sirk’s cinematographer of choice on this, and many of his most esteemed films, was Russell Metty.  Working in the wonderful, sumptuous world of Technicolor, they created a beautifully lensed picture.  Throughout the movie they use muted colors to heighten the personal alienation and torment of their characters.  Perhaps the most memorable scene in the film is when Cary goes to the mill to tell Ron that she’s breaking off their engagement. Set against a Monet-esque snowscape looming outside, Ron’s partly refurbished mill-home is conspicuously and overbearingly full of open space and made up of wood and stone.  Sirk and Metty will revisit this particular setting later in the film when they capture the most lasting image of the film: Cary standing in front of that same snowscape in a fully refurbished home staring at a stag standing right outside the massive window.

If I have one critique of All That Heaven Allows is its heavy-handed use of Franz Liszt’s Consolation No. 3.  Yes, we get it, it’s a melodrama, do we really need to have such overly dramatic music soaring in the background? 

How Green Was My Valley (1941) **1/2

Director John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley (1941) was nominated for ten Academy Awards—it won five (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Supporting Actor). By taking home the Oscar for Best Picture it beat out such films as Citizen Kane (1941), The Little Foxes (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Sergeant York (1941), and Suspicion (1941). While it definitely had one helluva cast and the massive Welsh mining town constructed at Fox Ranch in Malibu Canyon was impressive, I cannot agree that How Green Was My Valley was a better film than Citizen Kane, The Little Foxes, The Maltese Falcon, or Suspicion—though it was better than Sergeant York and the other four films that were nominated for Best Picture that year (Blossoms in the Dust, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Hold Back the Dawn, and One Foot in Heaven). You add this oversight to the fact that Gregg Toland’s cinematography in Citizen Kane lost to Arthur Miller for his camerawork in this, and you make one heck of a depressing film even more…disagreeable. 

Based on Richard Llewellyn’s 1939 novel of the same name, the film depicts the trials and tribulations of the Morgan family and their late 1800s Welsh coal-mining village.  Gwilym Sr. (Donald Crisp) and Beth (Sara Allgood) Morgan are the parents of six boys and one very pretty daughter, Angharad (Maureen O’Hara).  All of the Morgan men except the youngest son, Huw (Roddy McDowall), work in the coal mines, while the Morgan women tend to the house that they all live in.  At the start of the story they all seem content with their lives; though the work is hard, they have a nice home and plenty to eat. However, as the plot progresses and the mine starts to cut wages the family is divided over the possibility of a strike. This division not only drives three of the sons from the family home (the oldest son, Ivor [Patric Knowles], has married Bronwyn [Anna Lee] and lives next door), but also finds the village turning on Gwilym, a leading member of the community, because he is against the strike.  Tragedy abounds for the Morgans, as one son is killed in the mines and eventually the other three sons are discharged from the mine and must make a new start in America, and poor Huw also finds himself temporarily paralyzed for a time.  Oh, and I almost forgot Angharad’s sad fate—she is in love with the village preacher, Mr. Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon), but finds herself married off to the mine owner’s son (Marten Lamont).  There is nothing uplifting about How Green Was My Valley—a few parties, some singing and intermittent light moments cannot overcome what is a grim, unpleasant story.  And, even when there was one snippet of hope for one of the Morgans—Huw is a smart boy who could apprentice for a middle class job but decides he too should go down into the mines—that is even taken away. 

If it’s possible to ignore how completely depressing this movie is, I suppose you could marvel at the production design and appreciate the fine acting by most of the cast.  One of the strange things about How Green Was My Valley that not a lot of people know is that producer Darryl F. Zanuck planned on making it the next Gone with the Wind (1939), shot in Technicolor on location in Wales with a runtime of nearly four hours. He started pre-production with William Wyler as his director, but Zanuck’s ambition and Wyler’s notorious reputation for going over budget and taking forever to make a picture made Twentieth Century Fox place the film on hold. Eventually, Zanuck got the wheels of the production moving again by suggesting that John Ford was just the right director for the project.  While four of the most important parts had been cast by Zanuck and Wyler, Ma and Pa Morgan, Huw, and Mr. Gruffydd, it was Ford who cast Lee as Bronwyn and O’Hara as Angharad without screen tests. Lee invented an Irish grandfather and all O’Hara had to do was use her Irish accent and tell stories of her homeland—Ford was a sucker for anything and anyone from his beloved Ireland.

The expertly designed Welsh village is truly amazing. Zanuck had wanted to shoot on location in Wales, but World War II made that impossible and his budget had been drastically cut by Twentieth Century Fox anyway, and so he settled for Brent’s Crag in Malibu.  Zanuck’s Technicolor dream was also abandoned when he realized that Malibu would never match the green valleys of Wales.  The village cost approximately $110,000 to construct and tons upon tons of coal were brought in for the construction of the mines. Anyone who didn’t know better would really believe that How Green Was My Valley was actually filmed in a coal mining village in Wales. Even the coal slag looks real, although it was an illusion created by the hillsides being painted black.

While I hated the story, I loved the characters. Donald Crisp deservedly won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Gwilym Morgan.  He is the heart of the film and probably should have been nominated for Best Actor, because without him there would not have been a moral backbone to the story.  Sara Allgood, as his wife, earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for her spirited performance as one-tough matriarch.  The doomed romance between Mr. Gruffydd and Angharad was bittersweet to watch.  Probably my favorite scene in the film is Angharad’s brazen attempt to get the man she loves to step in and claim her before she is married off to a man she doesn’t love.  Of course, O’Hara was much too fiery an actress for the always reserved Walter Pidgeon, so she, of course, dominates whenever they are on screen together. 

Overall, How Green Was My Valley is a depressingly nostalgic look at an idyllic Welsh mining community destroyed by greed and pollution.  Occasionally happy things occur, but mostly it’s a hard, bitter depiction of the destruction of the pastoral existence.  Oh, John Ford, thankfully you will later redeem yourself with The Quiet Man (1952), and for that I can forgive you for just about anything…even two hours of constant depression.

 

 

The Asphalt Jungle (1950) **1/2

(This is my contribution to the CMBA's Fabulous Films of the 1950s Blogathon, which runs May 21-May 26. Check out all the great blog posts!)

Tight—that is the best word to describe director John Huston’s, The Asphalt Jungle (1950).  The plot, cinematography and the acting are all tightly wound together to create one of the most compelling film noir heist movies ever made.  Quite simply, it is the granddaddy of all heist movies, such classics as Rififi (1955) and The Killing (1956) and modern-day “classics” like Oceans Eleven (2001) and Inside Man (2006) all derive from The Asphalt Jungle. What is most compelling, however, about the movie is how it looks at the subterranean world of crime and how different from your typical noir it actually is. 

Adapted from W.R. Burnett’s novel of the same name, Ben Maddow and John Huston’s Oscar-nominated screenplay is tied together by a jewel heist.  The lives of several men are determined by the success or failure of stealing and fencing diamonds and gold worth more than a million dollars (which was a lot of money back in 1950).  The mastermind of the caper is Doc Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe, in an Oscar-nominated performance), a recently released big timer with a full-proof plan to rob a jewelry store.  He enlists a local bookie, Cobby (Marc Lawrence), to help him snag $50,000 to put a crew together.  This leads him to Emmerich (Louis Calhern), a respected local lawyer with supposedly big pockets, who is also probably the most corrupt man in town.  The audience is then educated as to what is necessary, other than money, to pull off a grand heist—a box man, the guy who breaks into the safe (Anthony Caruso), a driver (James Whitmore), and a hooligan who handles a gun and any security guards or cops (Sterling Hayden).  Once this part of the education is over, we are then treated to a painstakingly detailed view of the entire heist. Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned and a few people get shot and there is a major double-cross that throws a damper on an otherwise spectacularly planned and orchestrated crime.

The underbelly of crime always proves compelling, and in The Asphalt Jungle it is on full display. However, the seediness is not only comprised of only career criminals but also respected lawyers and police officers as well.  For example, Cobby runs a local book that is protected by Lieutenant Ditrich (Barry Kelley), who gets kickbacks for looking the other way.  And, then there’s Emmerich, a highly respected man who both finances and represents crooks, while living in a fine house and carrying on with a woman young enough to be his daughter, or niece (played by Marilyn Monroe), while his bedridden wife (Dorothy Tree) just wants to play cards.

The story does a smart job of planting small hints about the criminals’ weaknesses and also explaining what makes them commit the crimes they do.  Doc won’t touch alcohol and has a fondness for young girls (one of which will haunt him in the end).  Dix (Hayden) only wants to make enough money to buy back his family’s horse farm but can never save enough from his robberies because he bets on the horses.  And, Louie (Caruso) has a wife and child to support.  They all just want one big score so they can get out of the life. These sympathetic, human characters don’t fit the stereotypical noir criminal, who are often violent and unethical.  For the most part, all of the criminals seem to follow a code of ethics, which flies in the face of Noir 101.

And, completely opposite to other noirs, there are no femme fatales anywhere to be seen in The Asphalt Jungle, which might sound strange when one considers that the perfect femme fatale-esque actress was in the film, Marilyn Monroe.  None of the male characters are obsessed with any wicked women. In fact, all of the women in the picture are highly sympathetic—even Monroe, who comes across as the most innocent mistress ever known to cinema. 

However, like any noir, The Asphalt Jungle is a shadow-filled black and white picture full of dark, atmospheric shots. Still, Huston’s framing of the film is much more open and uncluttered compared to other noirs.  He and Oscar-nominated cinematographer Harold Rosson employed high contrast lighting from start to finish, with an extended opening scene that follows Dix walking through a deserted asphalt jungle after his most recent robbery.  Perhaps my favorite scene in the film, other than the 11-minute jewelry heist, is when Doc first paces up and down the tight hallway of Cobby’s book parlor waiting to be introduced. One blinding overhead light illuminates the otherwise dark, grimy hallway as Doc walks toward the static camera—almost walking straight into it—and then he turns his back toward the opening door and the emerging image of Cobby. It’s a small scene, but so full of brilliant lighting and lens work. 

While Hayden may have gotten top billing, Jaffe was clearly the star of the show.  Of course, it helps that Jaffe could act galaxies around Hayden, but his character was the most interesting of the lot.  It takes skill to portray a tightly-wound but always composed character. Additionally, Calhern’s turn as Emmerich is also engaging.  Yes, it’s difficult to feel sympathy for a double-crosser and a philanderer, but when he sits down to write a letter to his wife when he’s about to be arrested and then rips it up after writing it, you almost feel sorry for him. 

Overall, The Asphalt Jungle was an important development in cinema.  It pioneered the heist film and laid the foundation for generations of heist films to come.  Additionally, it broke the barriers of film noir, and ushered in characterization and a more open and uncluttered framing into the world of noir. 

For more great Fabulous Films of the 1950s blog posts click this link: http://clamba.blogspot.com/.