jonp72 wrote:For zedz's sake, I have also added some Len Lye clips, including a double bill that includes Free Radicals paired with Colour Box. Len Lye, Colour Box in a double bill with Free Radicals
Len Lye, Colour Cry
Len Lye, Tal Farlow
Thanks jon. I was going to correct you re. Tal Farlow, which is not a 50s film (but is a minimalist wonder), but imdb has, for some reason, classed it as 1958 instead of 1980, so it's eligible.
It's great to see Free Radicals again, even in this impoverished form. In a good print, in a pitch-dark theatre, this is surely the greatest 3D movie ever made.
zedz wrote:Thanks jon. I was going to correct you re. Tal Farlow, which is not a 50s film (but is a minimalist wonder), but imdb has, for some reason, classed it as 1958 instead of 1980, so it's eligible.
Now this I don't understand. Giving IMDB the call when they move a film from 1949 to 1950 is one thing. But if they've really miscredited the film's year by 20+ years, shouldn't common sense prevail here?
To stay with experimental/short films for a moment, I saw Alain Resnais' early short film "Guernica" a couple of days ago. It is an intense meditation, not only on Picasso's painting of the title, but actually on the development of the artist's aesthetic over the course of his life. Simultaneously, it manages to tell the story of Guernica and its people, and the attrocities that were visited upon the city, which served as the inspiration for Picasso's painting. The film is offered as an extra on Milestone's release of Clouzot's The Mystery of Picasso, and it is highly recommended.
Aside from that, I managed to see quite a few films from 1950 in the past week. Here is a brief run-down:
To begin at the low end, Hitchcock's Stage Fright and Stuart Heisler's Dallas did not really impress me. Both films seemed a little uninspired, although in Hitchcock's case, at least he attempted to come up with an original twist.
Elia Kazan's Panic In the Streets -- like Boomerang -- did not seem to me to be amongst the director's most personal or original films. With the emphasis on investigative procedures, this reminded me a lot of Hathaway's "docu"-crime pictures of the forties, and Dassin's Naked City. However, it is a tight little film noir that serves up the pleasures of the genre well enough. Preminger's Where the Sidewalk Ends likewise oozes atmosphere, but after having viewed dozens of forties films noirs, this just came across as slightly less edgy. It is still a film that I would recommend any time, and it is of course a pleasure to see Preminger work with Tierney and Andrews again. Starring Joan Crawford, The Damned Don't Cry feels like it was built around its star (and probably were). To some extent, it plays off the Mildred Pierce formula, but the story is different enough that it does not work against the film.
Lewis Milestone made several really good war films during his career, however, I am not sure that Halls of Montezuma is one of them. It carries over some of the ideas of A Walk In the Sun, but it does not stay the course like the earlier film did. There was in Walk a very authentic feeling of the inner lives of the soldiers, and who they were in their civilian lives, all achieved without any flashbacks. Also, the inevitable human tragedies in Walk were more powerful for not being dwelt on. In Montezuma, Milestone occasionally moves into the minds of the soldiers, but because the convention is not consistent, it jars the flow of the film, as does the brief flashbacks to civilian life. The film also is more overtly bitter, and dwells on the injustices and tragedies of war, and (to me) it detracts from the power of the film. Montezuma is in color and looks good throughout on the Fox disc -- there are even moments when it looks great.
I am not very familiar with Jean Negulesco, but my memories of reading about him are not that positive. However, I viewed Johnny Belinda a couple of months ago, and was actually very positively surprised. Not only did it travel to Nova Scotia (filmed on location, I think), it also told a really warm and human story about a deaf and dumb country girl, who lives through some exceedingly grim experiences, the treatment of which in a Hollywood movie must have been quite shocking in the forties. Based on Belinda, I picked up Negulesco's Three Came Home, which is another grim woman's story. This time it is set (on location) in Borneo, and concerns the true life story of an American woman, who was interned in a POW camp by the Japanese shortly after the outbreak of the war in the Pacific. The thing that I liked about this film was again the sense of authenticity. The Japanese are the villains, but they are not altogether inhuman beasts -- in fact, one of the most outstanding moments in the film belongs to the Japanese Colonel of the womens' prison camp.
Finally, I viewed three films that need very little comment except to say that they are excellent -- Rossellini's Francesco giularre di Dio, Antonioni's Story of a Love Affair and Melville's Les enfants terrible. Each of these films, in their very different ways, had me completely stunned as I was watching them, and in moments of repose during the week, I constantly found my mind wandering back over specific images and scenes -- I am sure that some of those moments will never leave me. All three of these films will almost certainly end up on my final top 50 list, and I do not think I could recommend either of them highly enough. I feel extremely fortunate to have been able to experience such three excellent films (for the first time) within the space of one week. As to the DVD editions, I honestly do not see any reason to hesitate with either of these three. I believe I have read negative comments about all of them, but to all intents and purposes, these are truly fine renditions of the films that MoC, NoShame and BFI have provided. Everything can be improved upon, but the source prints in these cases are almost spotless, and I was not for a minute distracted by anything to do with the transfers of these films (the only slight "but" for me would be the beginning of Love Affair, where the subtitles were a little difficult to read, and seemed to literally flash across the screen). Do not miss out on these films!
Wow, you really are dedicated! Are you going to continue working through the decade chronologically?
By a coincidence, I also watched Where the Sidewalk Ends on the weekend. A terrific film, but, as you say, there's lots of tough competition in that particular field.
By an even bigger coincidence, I watched Dallas as well, and shared your indifference. Considering I liked Sergeant York much less than I'd expected, that Cooper collection is starting to look surplus to requirements. Springfield Rifle is superior, but not stellar.
I have seen two utter 50s masterpieces in the past seven days, however.
The Night of the Hunter, which gets richer and stranger every time I lay eyes on it. Has any American film ever had such a mastery of shifting tone? Given the number of scenes built around characters singing (including the climactic Gish / Mitchum duet), can it be considered Hollywood's most eccentric musical? One thing that struck me this time is how much the film's peculiar, fairy-tale mood is cued within the narrative by character after character telling their own fairy tales - or, even more explicitly, relating their own personal stories as if they were fairy tales (Pearl to her doll; John recasting their father's story to Pearl; Rachel recasting John's story as Moses'; Harry Powell's threatening fire-and-brimstone recastings of his own experiences).
The other one is Naruse's Flowing, a breathtaking example of complex filmic narrative (related within a complex filmic space that Naruse negotiates seamlessly) and true ensemble acting. In this instance, it's futile trying to rank the greatness of the performances: nobody's grandstanding, nobody's stepping on one another's toes, every actress is completely embodying her three-dimensional character. An exhilarating masterpiece.
Re: Tal Farlow - imdb is an ass. Lye might have started the film in the late 1950s, but he didn't complete it until just before his death. In fact, he didn't complete it at all, leaving it up to his assistant to execute the final version.
Tal Farlow (1980)
1min 30sec, 16 mm, b&w, sound
In the 1950s Lye made geometrical scratch patterns to accompany the elegant jazz guitar playing of Tal Farlow. He returned to this project in 1980 but died before he could complete it. The editing was finished by his assistant, Steve Jones under the supervision of Ann Lye.
The original soundtrack music to "Night of the Hunter" was released on an RCA LP in 1956 (now very rare) and on an RCA-BMG compact disc in 1999. For better or worse, it is narrated throughout by Charles Laughton and the actual music sometimes gets a bit lost behind the narration. The score was done by Walter Schuman and the narration is credited to Davis Grubb, who wrote the novel. An interesting curiosity, but not the first choice for my portable player when I go jogging.
Thanks to the Second Sight's DVD releases of several of Max Ophüls' films I've finally been able to see more of his work beyond that lousy region 1 transfer of Lola Montès.
The first film of his that I watched was Le Plaisir from 1952 featuring three adaptations of short stories by Guy de moupassant. All of the stories are interesting and run the gamut from shocking to humorous to tragic in the space of its short running time of just 93 minutes. It's a wonderfully lyrical film with amazing sets (the brothel in the second story is a marvel) and justly famous cinematography. I couldn't help but wonder if Stanely Kubrick was inspired by this film in A Clockwork Orange for Alex's POV attempted suicide shot, because a nearly identical (and far more impressive) shot is incorporated by Ophüls into one of the stories. Considering Kubrick's fondness for Ophüls it's very likely he was inspired not only to attempt that great shot in Clockwork but also perhaps his tendency for long, elaborate tracking shots.
I'm going to watch Madame de... tonight, I can't wait.
zedz wrote:Are you going to continue working through the decade chronologically?
I started with the decade of the forties, and I really enjoyed viewing the films this way, so it is my ambition to continue at least up until the end of the sixties. Mostly, it is just a way for me to put my viewing into a system, and to have more of a purpose to sit down and view all of these films. However, the thing is that the system is actually a good one. The films all have their merits in and of themselves, but viewing chronologically, you get the sense of the progress of the careers of all of these people (both directors, actors, producers, and the myriad other people involved in making the movies); you get a sense of genres and styles waxing and waning in popularity, and an idea of what is truly original; you also get the experience of seeing history unfolding, not only as it pertains to the movie industries of the various countries, but also in terms of national and international events.
zedz wrote:The Night of the Hunter, which gets richer and stranger every time I lay eyes on it.
This is also a huge favorite of mine, although I have not seen it for more than ten years. I have been holding off on a DVD purchase, because I remember reading somewhere that a much extended print had been shown some years ago. Since then, I have been anxiously waiting for a DVD release. On the other hand, the waiting is getting ridiculous... is there a specific edition of this you can recommend?
zedz wrote:The other one is Naruse's Flowing...
Flowing is still a few weeks down the road for me, but I will be seeing my first Naruse this week -- Repast -- and it is something I have looked forward to for I cannot tell you how long. (Reading your speculation at the head of this thread, I was thinking that I would not be surprised, if we would see one or more Naruse films in the Top 10 of the list -- the impact of DVD availability can only be underestimated).
There are 24 Naruse films from the 50s (of which I've seen 16) -- and, at present -- only three are available. Granted, these three are undoubtedly three of his best. But other films that are unavailable are equally important (and wonderful). The best of these "missing" films are probably "Floating Clouds" and "Lightning" -- but there are at least another half dozen true gems from this decade. Only one of those I've seen is "mediocre" -- Bara gassen (War of the Roses).
At one point I had a subbed video (from a TV broadcast) of "Floating Clouds" (but I don't think I ever digitized this). The only English subbed version of "Lightning" I've encountered (also from a broadcast) was basically unwatchable.
Mizoguchi has 12 films to consider -- and most won't be available in time for the list...
Ozu has a mere 9 50s films -- but 8 of them are excellent) or better). Only Munekata Sisters is comparatively minor. I think all the others are available with subs from somewhere or other.
Gosho made 16 films -- and none are available with subs so far as I know -- and only one is available on DVD at all. "Where Chimneys are Seen" and "Banka" are very worthy contenders (and I havce yet to see most of his 50s films).
For those who can read French, Uchida's "Bloody Spear at Mt. Fuji" is one of the best historical films of the 50s -- a bitterly anti-samurai samurai film.
Kon Ichikawa made over 30 films -- including some of his (reputedly) best satirical comedies -- almost all terra incognita, alas.
zedz wrote:The Night of the Hunter, which gets richer and stranger every time I lay eyes on it.
This is also a huge favorite of mine, although I have not seen it for more than ten years. I have been holding off on a DVD purchase, because I remember reading somewhere that a much extended print had been shown some years ago. Since then, I have been anxiously waiting for a DVD release. On the other hand, the waiting is getting ridiculous... is there a specific edition of this you can recommend?
I just have the standard, bare-bones current edition (MGM?). It's an early DVD, but it works fine as a reminder of the big-screen experience. I don't know that there's an 'extended' version out there (and what extension does it need?), but I think a lot of the rushes survive and the niggle with the existing edition is that there's a wealth of material available for a truly special edition of one the greatest American movies, but the studio doesn't seem to be interested in giving it the treatment it deserves.
Michael Kerpan wrote:Mizoguchi has 12 films to consider -- and most won't be available in time for the list...
Films Sans Frontieres has released some excellent DVD sets of Mizoguchi that come with English subs. You can get several 2-DVD sets of Mizoguchi films from cinemasie.com for 25 euros per set. The sets include:
L'Imperatrice Yang Kwei Fei/La Rue De la Honde (Empress Yang Kwei Fei/Street of Shame)
Le Heros Sacrilege (The Legend of the Taira Clan + documentary on Mizoguchi)
I already have the Sansho the Bailiff set, and Sansho currently ranks as #2 on my 1950s list. I have the rest of the French Mizoguchi DVDs on order. In addition to Criterion's Ugetsu DVD, there are also legit region 2 DVDs of Life of Oharu and Lady Musashino from Artificial Eye. If you're willing to go region-free, you have many Mizoguchi with English subs to choose from, although Lady Oyu and A Geisha (aka Gion Bayashi) are still unavailable with English subs as far as I can recall.
Besides obvious 1950s masterworks like the already mentioned "The Night of the Hunter" and Ford's "The Searchers", four particular favorites of mine are Bresson's "Un condamné Ã mort s'est échappé" and "Pickpocket" as well as Ophuls' "Madame de..." and "Lola Montès".
Scharphedin2 wrote:Preminger's Where the Sidewalk Ends likewise oozes atmosphere, but after having viewed dozens of forties films noirs, this just came across as slightly less edgy.
Although I still think Los Olvidados and Orphee are better films from 1950, I think I probably liked Where the Sidewalk Ends a little better. Aside from reuniting the Dana Andrews/Gene Tierney pairing from Laura, I thought the film had interesing similarities to Touch of Evil. Although Dana Andrews is obviously much more handsome than Orson Welles as Lt. Quinlan, both characters illustrate that the end does not justify the means, even if law enforcement captures the current guilty party in the end. In addition, I thought Preminger raised interesting questions about guilt as personal consciences vs. guilt as moral responsibility vs. guilt in the eyes of the law.
I've got a list of new 1950s shorts, mostly abstract animation. Most are streaming videos you can simply point and click, but some require downloading to disk and possibly downloading the relevant media player to play them if you don't have the proper plugin. By the way, zedz, one of the downloads is the Whitney Brothers' Yantra. Enjoy.
Hy Hirsh, Come Closer (no IMDB entry, but online sources give its date as 1952)
Robert Breer, Recreation
Shirley Clarke, Bullfight (no IMDB entry, but online sources give its date as 1955)
Peter Kubelka, Schwechater
Peter Kubelka, Adebar
James and John Whitney, Yantra (no streaming video, scroll down to download AVI file)
D.A. Pennebaker, Daybreak Express (scroll down to download MPG file)
Jean Painleve, Les Oursins (scroll down to download AVI file)
Norman McLaren, Neighbours
Norman McLaren, La Merle aka Blackbird
Norman McLaren, A Phantasy
Norman McLaren, Mail Early for Christmas
Norman McLaren, A Chairy Tale
Continuing through the early 1950s, I viewed the following films this week:
With a title like The Frogmen there was probably little cause to be disappointed, but this film did seem like a fairly tired affair to me. It was directed by Lloyd Bacon, and designed to give this elite unit (1000 men out of 3 million in the US armed forces in World War II, as we learn early on) their place in the sun. The most exciting thing about the film is Richard Widmark and Dana Andrews (to some people it may even be more exciting as they of course do parade around in swim trunks part of the time). Another war film: Decision Before Dawn, truly impressed me. A very young Oscar Werner gives a sensitive and believable performance as a German POW, who volunteers to undertake an intelligence mission into Germany for the Allied forces. The film takes place in 1944, and the excellence of the film lies in its depiction of the utterly war ravaged German landscape and people. The film was made on location by Anatole Litvak, another strange marginal director, who made a number of interesting and well-crafted films (in recent months, I have seen The Snake Pit; Sorry, Wrong Number and The Long Night, all of which were very good films) during his long career, but whose name is almost a complete blank in the history books. The Red Badge of Courage is of course a completely different type of war film, set as it is during the American Civil War, and based on Stephen Crane's classic novel. It was gorgeously shot in high contrast B&W by Harold Rosson. At a running time of just over an hour it is a very tight little film, and in my opinion one of John Huston's most powerful works.
No Way Out is Joseph Mankiewicz's topical noir drama centered around an African-American doctor, who becomes the center of a race clash, when he loses the life of a white gangster on the operating table. Richard Widmark is the king of all racial bigots in the role as the dead gangster's brother, while Sidney Poitier stars as the young doctor, however, the most exciting ingredient in the casting is Linda Darnell, who, like Poitier, is caught in the middle of it all, as the ex-wife of the deceased criminal. There are a couple of memorable “noirishâ€
Last edited by Scharphedin2 on Sat Mar 17, 2007 11:44 am, edited 2 times in total.
Scharphedin2 wrote:And, finally, I viewed my first film by Mikio Naruse this week – the very minimal Repast. I think it helps to have seen the work of Japanese directors before approaching Naruse, and I look forward to seeing many more of his films. This film is surely one of the more melancholy films that I have seen recently – not so much in an overt way (although it is that too), but in all that is implied through the brief cycle it describes in the lives of its characters, and which I understand to be a miniature by Naruse of his general perception of these lives.
I don't consider this melancholy at all -- but rather as a rich and complex romantic comedy. Structurally speaking, this is definitely a comedy. Whether it is comic in mood depends, I guess, on the viewer. The male and female leads are both basically decent folks (who got married rather young -- and may have had unrealistic expectations) -- but after 5 years of marriage they have gotten into a rut. The visit of the niece only makes things worse. Naruse's heroine goes off to Tokyo, expecting to find that everything will be so much better back home (but finds out life is more complicated than she realized), while her husband does a bit of self-examination and maturing. When they finally meet in Tokyo, the husband manages to say precisely the right things. The ending is as as happy as any in "real life". Perhaps if Fumiko Hayashi had lived to finish her story, the end would have been bleaker and less positive -- but Naruse chose to end on a more positive note (temporarily upsetting one of his screenwriters).
Michael Kerpan wrote:I don't consider this melancholy at all -- but rather as a rich and complex romantic comedy. Structurally speaking, this is definitely a comedy. Whether it is comic in mood depends, I guess, on the viewer... When they finally meet in Tokyo, the husband manages to say precisely the right things. The ending is as as happy as any in "real life". Perhaps if Fumiko Hayashi had lived to finish her story, the end would have been bleaker and less positive -- but Naruse chose to end on a more positive note (temporarily upsetting one of his screenwriters).
Maybe I am just in a blue mood
I actually did appreciate the humor of the film (at least in the first half). I also felt that it was a happy ending after a fashion. However, my sense was that Hara surrendered to her fate at the end. My experience of Hara's scenes back home was that she realized that she was as much a burden on her family, as the niece had been during her visit. When she meets back up with her husband, I agree that there is humor in the scene, but my chuckle almost stuck in the throat at his line "I am hungry...," because, as I experienced it -- and I felt it was traceable in Hara's reaction as well -- the husband has not changed. Fundamentally nothing has changed. The couple will go back home, and their life will be a succession of five year cycles, like the end of the one we have just witnessed. Only, in the future, they will stick together, because they have both realized that it is not possible for them to really do anything else -- at least not that is acceptable within the social framework in which they exist. Hence, my melancholic experience of the film.
Scharphedin2 wrote:I actually did appreciate the humor of the film (at least in the first half). I also felt that it was a happy ending after a fashion. However, my sense was that Hara surrendered to her fate at the end. My experience of Hara's scenes back home was that she realized that she was as much a burden on her family, as the niece had been during her visit. When she meets back up with her husband, I agree that there is humor in the scene, but my chuckle almost stuck in the throat at his line "I am hungry...," because, as I experienced it -- and I felt it was traceable in Hara's reaction as well -- the husband has not changed. Fundamentally nothing has changed. The couple will go back home, and their life will be a succession of five year cycles, like the end of the one we have just witnessed. Only, in the future, they will stick together, because they have both realized that it is not possible for them to really do anything else -- at least not that is acceptable within the social framework in which they exist. Hence, my melancholic experience of the film.
Well -- I approach the film as someone who has been married for over 30 years. so, it strikes me as one of the most true to life films I've ever encountered. ;~}
Things HAVE changed. Hara sees much more than the fact that she is a "burden" -- she also sees just how dictatorial her (honest and hard-working) brother-in-law is. Her easy-going husband -- who has the courtesy to solicit her opinion -- looks better in comparison. She has also seen how hard the world of work actually is -- and the miserable lot of previously-married women (who are not good re-marriage material).
Michael Kerpan wrote:Well -- I approach the film as someone who has been married for over 30 years. so, it strikes me as one of the most true to life films I've ever encountered. ;~}
It is very true to life -- I wrote "minimal," but "true to life" is much closer to what I meant. I have never been married, but from how I experience many married couples, their lives describe many of the same situations and rituals as that of the married couple in Repast.
Michael Kerpan wrote:Things HAVE changed. Hara sees much more than the fact that she is a "burden" -- she also sees just how dictatorial her (honest and hard-working) brother-in-law is. Her easy-going husband -- who has the courtesy to solicit her opinion -- looks better in comparison. She has also seen how hard the world of work actually is -- and the miserable lot of previously-married women (who are not good re-marriage material).
You are right in all of these points, of course. I will look forward to seeing the film again. I still feel the humor and happy ending has a barb or two in it. The sense of melancholy that I experience is probably best described as a sense of "...is that really all there is to a life;" a quiet resignation dressed up as reconciliation. I am sure the reading is based in my personal (lack of) experience, and therefore very likely not what Naruse intended. Future viewings will tell.
Not sure what Naruse "intended" -- and his own personal life offers no real clues.. He was married twice. First to vivacious and glamorous star actress, Sachiko Chiba. By all accounts, this marriage did not go well. She came from a very well-to-do family -- and her mother apparently strongly disapproved of her marriage to a "commoner". A number of years after this high-profile marriage fell apart, he re-married (quietly) and though he kept his private life exceptionally private, there is no hint that his second marriage was unhappy.
Sachiko Chiba, in recent years, has said that allowing her family to destroy her marriage to Naruse was the most foolish thing she ever did -- and that he was a wonderful man. In her post-acting, post-Naruse life, she became the proprietor of a very classy and prestigious restaurant. ;~}
Last edited by Michael Kerpan on Sun Feb 25, 2007 10:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
I loved Repast, but I also have some trouble viewing the ending as wholly a "happy ending." It's more like it's the *happiest* ending possible in the circumstances, but there is a definite sense of resignation and melancholy over the fact that there are no happier resolutions available to this woman. Things have changed at the end, but the woman's optimistic voiceover in the last sequence is definitely double-edged -- she seems to be trying to convince herself of her impending happiness with her husband, rather than simply feeling it. But in all likelihood, not much of substance is going to change. The couple may be slightly better off financially in the end, which should take some strain off, and they have both independently realized that their lot in life is in many ways better than that of those around them, but what is really going to happen when they get back home? The wife will be going back to her usual routine of daily boredom and servitude, and I can only guess that after an initial period of greater solicitude the husband will fall back into his old uncaring habits too -- his change at the end does not seem especially substantial or lasting. I don't think it's stretching too much to read the film as an implicit critique of the circumstances of Japanese society and its treatment of women, where the best possible ending for a woman in this situation is the unsatisfying resolution we see here.
sevenarts wrote:I loved Repast, but I also have some trouble viewing the ending as wholly a "happy ending." It's more like it's the *happiest* ending possible in the circumstances....
Probably true. But (along with Naruse here), I would submit that -- in real life -- one is rarely (if ever) likely to encounter happier endings. The options of almost all women and almost all men, in Japan in the 50s -- and in all places and at all times -- are severely limited. The story here (as with Ozu) is both highly particularized -- and remarkably universal. But, obviously, my reading is just that -- and other readings are defensible. Naruse _never_ leads his audience about by the nose -- which is one reason I love his films so much.
sevenarts wrote:I loved Repast, but I also have some trouble viewing the ending as wholly a "happy ending." It's more like it's the *happiest* ending possible in the circumstances....
Probably true. But (along with Naruse here), I would submit that -- in real life -- one is rarely (if ever) likely to encounter happier endings. The options of almost all women and almost all men, in Japan in the 50s -- and in all places and at all times -- are severely limited. The story here (as with Ozu) is both highly particularized -- and remarkably universal. But, obviously, my reading is just that -- and other readings are defensible. Naruse _never_ leads his audience about by the nose -- which is one reason I love his films so much.
Actually, this does make complete sense to me.
As I was thinking more about this film and our discussion about it, I remembered something I read in a book by Ruth Benedict called The Sword and the Chrysanthemum (a work commissioned by the US government during the war in an attempt to understand Japanese culture and behavior): Benedict talked about how western people place much more emphasis on the individual, and the individual's search to find his/her station in life. Whereas, traditionally, Japanese people "take their station in life." So, reading your post above Michael, and thinking further about the film, I think my experience of melancholy in the film's ending may very well be a result of viewing the film through a western prism of values.
In the following, I have recorded some thoughts on films from 1951 that I saw over the past week. Discussion and comments, as usual, are quite welcome.
Without really thinking about it, I realize that I have seen no less than three Henry Hathaway pictures over the past week – 14 Hours, You're In the Navy Now and The Desert Fox. Hathaway is generally considered as one of the consummate professionals of the old Hollywood – a director, who could be trusted to work on schedule and budget, and the quality of whose films were in proportion to the material that he was given to work with. So, presented with a rather contrived situation as the one in 14 Hours, he managed to deliver a decent 90 minute entertainment that is really held afloat by the long list of excellent actors/actresses that are paraded before the camera. Richard Basehart appears ten years younger in this film than in anything (Black Book, He Walked By Night, Decision Before Dawn, or, House On Telegraph Hill, for that matter, which was also released in 1951) that I have seen him in recently, and comes across as very fragile and disturbed, as he is supposed to in the central role of a young man, who is threatening suicide by jumping off the 15th floor ledge of a New York hotel. Paul Douglas is the traffic cop, who over the course of 14 hours attempts to talk the kid down; as the mother, Agnes Moorehead is excellent in the kind of hysterical “old spinsterâ€
I decided to try a systematic approach, in isolation, this week, by watching three Mann / Stewart westerns in a row. I left out my favourite (The Man from Laramie) and my least favourite (Bend of the River) because I knew where I stood on them (and because three in a row was as much as I could stand). The remaining ones were all potential inclusions in my final 50s list, so the aim of the exercise was to sort out their relative merits (my principle for ranking being ruthless subjectivity).
Winchester '73
This, as ever, is a stunning film, and one which, historically, brought new depth to the western. My previous reservations about it were related to its schematic plot (the story-of-a-penny mechanics of its circulating rifle and the surrounding characters), but they're easily dissolved when you consider what that scheme achieves. This film is surely the gold standard for narrative compression. I can't think of any other film that crams so much into less than 90 minutes. More than a dozen characters, all with their own agendas and carefully crafted personalities, multiple plots, a series of clearly defined episodes in clearly defined locales, any one of which could be expanded to fill lesser features.
In contrast to something like Stagecoach, where ‘complexity' is denoted by a group of stock characters reacting in their own stock ways to the same stimulus (I like Stagecoach, but primarily as an action film, not a psychological drama), Winchester '73 is populated by more or less real characters who interact in more or less real (and thus unpredictable) ways. And for the most part it's an acting tour-de-force. Stewart is tough and relentless, but his relationship to his sidekick (Millard Mitchell) is sunny and nuanced (more so than in the other two films, with Mitchell and Brennan, in which the resident codger is somewhat infantilised).
My previous favouring of The Naked Spur and The Man from Laramie over this film had partly been to do with their superb villains: Robert Ryan is electrifying in the former and Arthur Kennedy is one of the most complex villains in any western (we can actually witness his fall in the course of the film). But Stephen McNally is just superb here, maybe giving the best performance in the film. Everyone else is up to snuff, with two glaring exceptions, and for me they really damage the film: Charles Drake is histrionic and unconvincing as weak Steve; Rock Hudson is an embarrassment in redface.
In fact, the Indian stuff is by far the worst part of the film. It would have been far better to have skipped the scene between John McIntire and Rock entirely: it's grotesquely clunky and even includes the film's clunkiest visual (Rock with cardboard-cut-out Indian on horseback against the “setting sunâ€
I've chosen a chronological approach to constructing my own canon of 1950s film, but the task can seem quite enormous even when you haven't moved past 1950. So far, my #1 film for 1950 is Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados. I loved it when I first saw it in college, and I still love it now that I've revisited it over ten years later. It is an almost seamless blend of neorealism, surrealism, and noir that depicts how extreme poverty creates a culture of casual cruelty that views each new generation as disposable. My #2 film for the year is currently Jean Cocteau's Orpheus, which proved that Cocteau could generate the same trancelike poetic beauty he achieved in Beauty and the Beast, even when his story required him to put himself in a more "grown-up" and "modern" setting. I'm going out on a limb for my #3 choice, but I have lately become so infatuated with Alberto Gout's Aventurera that I have an almost protective feeling toward it. Once voted the #4 in a poll on the best Mexican films of all time, it is an amazing blend of the "women's picture," the noir, and the musical that keeps ratcheting up the emotional stakes in such a finely calibrated melodramatic manner that even Douglas Sirk might feel a little envious. If you put Carmen Miranda, the Mexican cantina sequences from Touch of Evil, a Pedro Almodovar pastiche of Latin American melodramas, Rita Hayworth in Gilda, tabasco sauce, and some Mexican jumping beans into a blender set at high speed, Aventurera is what might pour out when you're done.
Unfortunately, my #4 choice for 1950, Cyril Enfield's noir Try and Get Me (a.k.a. The Sound of Fury), is not "officially" available on DVD, although cinemacom.com has a DVD-R of it available on their web site, and some VHS copies may still be available from Amazon.com or EBay. An out-of-work guy from the Midwest who just moved his family to California meets a guy who says he can get him a lucrative "job," but the job turns out to be driving the getaway car in a series of armed robberies. Eventually, the family man and his more violent "friend" graduate to kidnapping the son of a local tycoon, but the plan goes bust after the more violent guy kills their captive. While this crime is unraveling, the film weaves in a critique of how journalists not only sensationalize news about crime, but will even weave new details out of whole cloth if it will sell papers. The movie climaxes with a depiction of vigilante justice that I found even more bracing and compelling than the lynch mob in Fritz Lang's Fury. Like some of Samuel Fuller's work, Cyril Endfield had a talent for mixing B-movie directness with razor-sharp social commentary.
