Category: 1955

House of Bamboo (1955, Samuel Fuller)

I had a variety of ways I was going to open this post. I was going to make a Robert Palmer reference for my apparent target demographic (it would have read: Director Fuller has cranes and knows how to use them). Except it turns out… Fuller didn’t have a dozen cranes roaming the Tokyo streets. He shot it on a minimal budget for locations, and the city shots were done guerilla without permits. It’s okay, though, I think. The thank you to the Tokyo cops might’ve been bribes.

But I also thought about talking about the film as a relic from the past. It’s a crime saga set in post-war Japan, filmed on location. Also, on some very elaborate sets on sound stages, where Fuller presumably does get to use his flock of cranes (to excellent effect; he directs the hell out of Bamboo). It opens with Jack Webb-lite narration describing how military policing works in Japan, initially following American army captain Brad Dexter and Japanese official Sessue Hayakawa. They’re investigating a train robbery at first, and then the story jumps a few months, so there can be more narration when stickup artist Biff Elliot’s shot with the same gun used in the opening robbery.

Oh, yeah, there’s a big train robbery opening, with Fuller and cinematographer Joseph MacDonald taking full advantage of the wide, glorious CinemaScope frame.

Then the action cuts ahead a few more weeks with Robert Stack arriving. He’s Elliot’s pal from the service and just out of jail. He thinks Elliot’s got a gig for him, except Elliot’s dead, and his widow (Shirley Yamaguchi) didn’t know he was a crook until she read it in the paper.

Now, Stack thinks white guy Elliot is ashamed of Japanese wife Yamaguchi because he kept her a secret from everyone. Except it’s actually because the other Japanese women are shitty to Yamaguchi for marrying a white guy. The way it’s presented, with Yamaguchi the victim of bigotry on her man’s account, seems to be telling American women if they’re racist to their husband’s buddy’s war bride, they’re being as bad as a Japanese woman.

Also, Yamaguchi talks about how Americans could have no idea how the social pressure works… even though interracial marriages were still illegal. It’s peculiar. Bamboo’s very pro-Japan (well, pro-American colonization project Japan), but Fuller’s also sympathetic to particular plights (who wouldn’t want a wife “taught since childhood” to dote on her husband) and seemingly oblivious to others.

His obliviousness is a blessing at times, however. He made it through making the movie with Stack in the lead. The only thing worse than Stack playing tough guy is Stack playing sensitive romantic. See, he’s going to fall in love with widow Yamaguchi… at the same time, he’s asking her to pose as his squeeze to help him infiltrate Elliot’s gang.

Robert Ryan leads the gang. Ryan is mic-drop fantastic. No notes. Even when he seems to jump the shark, it’s to build up to something else later. Rising action is unfortunately rare in Bamboo too; only Ryan gins up enough momentum.

The supporting cast runs hot and cold. Yamaguchi’s okay in an endlessly problematic part and not bad opposite Stack, which is an achievement. She’s barely in the third act, though, because the movie has to acknowledge she and Stack aren’t ever going to kiss, so what’s the point?

Cameron Mitchell plays the second-in-command, who Stack inadvertently starts to replace, further engaging Mitchell. Mitchell’s great. Bamboo somewhat compensates for Stack’s wooden performance, with the other actors bringing the heat. Except Mitchell can easily do it, whereas Yamaguchi’s already got a lot on her plate. And Ryan’s supposedly enamored with Stack, but there’s no reason for him to be.

Ryan fills the gang with ex-military officers drummed out of the service for being violent criminals. Besides his lack of affect, the only significant thing about Stack is his ostensibly impressive criminal record. Only Ryan’s not using him for any of that stuff. Ryan’s just another goon. Plus, Ryan spends their scenes waiting for Stack to start acting, which everyone else has figured out isn’t happening.

But Ryan and Fuller seem sure Stack’s got to have something at some point.

Nope.

An uncredited DeForest Kelley also gets to upstage Stack as Ryan’s other named goon.

Bamboo’s a great-looking film. Fuller loves the wide frame, and he loves doing the Tokyo travelogue—including a finale set at a rooftop amusement park—but he’s got no sense for the script. Or at least how to make it with Stack playing it. Bamboo is an eighty-four-minute movie running almost twenty minutes too long. Stack’s a terrible lead in the first act. Eventually, he gets sympathetic because of the plot, but he’s an American bully, shoving his way around Tokyo and trying to intimidate everyone. However, he’s nice to kids, which is a tell.

Oh, and bad music. Bad in it’s from 1955, so, of course, it’s going to be “ethnic” themed. Except composer Leigh Harline one-ups it by going Hollywood Chinese music. When it’s just thriller music, it’s usually fine.

House of Bamboo isn’t a success, but it’s a superbly made film. Fuller does masterful work. And Ryan’s so good.

The Night of the Hunter (1955, Charles Laughton)

Night of the Hunter is a singular experience. Definitionally. It’s the only film Laughton ever directed, which makes sense. The film’s visuals are decades too early for the composites they can do; Laughton did direct plays, which also makes sense. Hunter feels “stagy,” but not. Laughton directs his actors for close-up without ever losing track of their place on stage. Plus, there are some fantastic big sets of the Ohio river shore. They’re during the children’s fairy tale adventure, which makes them more successful.

Hunter doesn’t start as a children’s film, not exactly, but it will be one for the majority of its runtime. The last third or so is Lillian Gish’s movie. It’s a strange misogynistic patriarchal boot-straps reinforcement arc, but she’s also phenomenal, and Laughton directs it like a Disney cartoon, so it’s troubled but outstanding. Actually, Gish starts the movie. She appears over a star field with some relevant Bible quotes because Hunter is ostensibly about top-billed Robert Mitchum.

He’s a charming, serial killer preacher, traveling from rich widow to rich widow during the Great Depression. The film opens with a helicopter shot of some boys playing, then zooming in to them finding a murdered widow. Cut to Mitchum talking to God while driving away. It’s a bunch of quick character setup because we’ll never see him justify himself again. He becomes a… well, he becomes a Hunter, but also just a function of the kids’ story.

The kids are Billy Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce. Their first scene is dad Peter Graves getting home after a bank robbery, with the cops in hot pursuit. He hides the cash, telling Chapin not to tell mom Shelley Winters about it because she’s flighty. Graves soon gets hanged, but not before his cellmate–Mitchum, of course—hears about the stolen money (thanks to Graves talking in his sleep).

Pretty soon, Mitchum’s sniffing around widow Winters and her kids. Chapin’s suspicious, but Winters’s gossipy church lady best friend and boss Evelyn Varden likes the idea of her settling down with a man of God. And Mitchum seems all too happy to oblige. Plus, Bruce thinks Mitchum’s just great, even if Chapin’s old enough to know something’s not kosher.

Unfortunately, Chapin’s only confidant is his drunken uncle James Gleason.

The first half of the movie is Mitchum worming his way into Winters’s life and affections—and setting up his ministry, something the film rushes through because Gish isn’t back to establish Mitchum’s not a true Christian because he’s not her kind of Christian—then there’s the children’s dreamy adventure, then foster mom Gish’s juxtaposition with Mitchum.

The setting plays a big part in the first half. It’s a small, suffering Depression-era town. Chapin and Bruce’s dad killed two people and then got hanged; they’re infamous. Mom Winters is infamous. Varden’s a good friend to her. The character relationships are delicate and complicated, something Laughton understands and directs for. Both the actors’ performances and how he frames those performances. The film’s screenplay—based on a Davis Grubb novel (better name than anything in the movie) with James Agee adapting—has a particular ear to the dialogue. It’s smooth but stagy; only, since Laughton never lets the film be stagy, it’s something else. It does make sense later with Gish and the Christian patriarchal reinforcement thing; the acting and filmmaking are so good, it never really matters until then.

Mitchum’s the runaway great performance. He starts scary and just gets worse. He goes from killer stepfather to nightmarish demon. Especially once he and Gish start squaring off. The film sets it up as real versus fake Christian, but… it’s not even different sides of the coin. The reveal of Mitchum’s actual brand of Christianity informs a whole bunch about the character (intentionally). The similar reveal on Gish—even with all its (qualified) humanity—informs a bunch about the filmmakers.

Anyway.

Gish is great too. Winters is real good but doesn’t get a full arc because the kids’ adventure takes over. Though, actually, neither does Mitchum.

The kids are okay. Low okay. Chapin’s better with Bruce or the other kids than with the adults, which isn’t great. He and Bruce fade out in the third act, with Mitchum preying on Gish’s teenage ward, Gloria Castillo. Or at least Castillo wishing he would. Hunter can get away with it because of the fairy tale structure.

Bruce is often adorable but not particularly good. Gleason’s fun but the part’s poorly written. It’s a caricature with too many details. Varden’s a little much but likable enough.

Even with their big performances, Mitchum and Gish aren’t ever the whole show. Laughton ensures it’s always Night of the Hunter, a heart-warming, audiovisual spectacle of starvation, robbery, murder, and ice cream.

The technicals are all phenomenal. Stanley Cortez’s photography, Robert Golden’s cutting, and Walter Schumann’s music. Laughton loves using sound, whether the score, diegetic sound, or diegetic signing. Mitchum’s smooth-talking preacher knows he’s got a good singing voice, which pays off in one of the third act’s most incredible sequences.

Night of the Hunter’s a beautifully made, often beautifully acted, achievement of a motion picture. Just a tad too reductive of its female characters. Even if you give it the terrible parenting advice because 1955… the patriarchal messaging is a bridge too far.

A Life at Stake (1955, Paul Guilfoyle)

A Life at Stake is a peculiar noir. It’s low budget, it’s got an actor-turned-director in Guilfoyle, it’s got Angela Lansbury as the femme fatale, it’s got a great, lushly romantic score from Les Baxter, and it’s got a jam-packed script from Russ Bender. The film only runs eighty minutes, and there are a couple longer suspense sequences, but Stake is usually full of distinct dialogue. Bender’s always giving someone something weird to say, and then it curiously derails the scene as the film tries to resolve the newly introduced tangent. It’s got a lot of personality.

The script, anyway. The film itself does not. Leading man Keith Andes apparently got the job for his impressive chest—which gets a showcase in the first scene—rather than his acting prowess. Lansbury’s okay as the femme fatale, but once her viciously cruel and rather icky husband Douglass Dumbrille gets into the action, she’s barely around anymore. See, Lansbury’s a wealthy lady who wants to go into business with down-on-his-luck builder Andes. She’s bored and wants to go back to real estate, with Andes building the houses for her to sell. Or is it all a scheme to take out a life insurance policy on Andes then kill him to collect?

The life insurance policy melodrama takes over from the illicit behavior stuff, though it never gets particularly illicit; while Andes is determined not to take no for an answer, Lansbury’s able to keep him under control because he wants her for her money too.

Meanwhile, Lansbury’s earnest kid sister, Claudia Barrett, becomes fascinated with Andes, and he’s not going to cast her attentions aside just because she’s a naive twenty-one. The naivety makes her just great for exposition dumps it turns out, but with a bunch of added dialogue because Bender’s an enthusiast writer. Lansbury probably gives Stake’s best performance—there’s not much competition—but Barrett certainly provides the most likable one. Well, except Kathleen Mulqueen as Andes’s assistant, who has to put up with her boss not just being a post-war builder bro, but an obsessive one. He’s worried he’s too worried about Lansbury and Dumbrille plotting to kill him… because he’s got too much evidence they’re trying to kill him not to be concerned. Mulqueen’s got to weather his ranting. It’d probably be great ranting if it weren’t for Andes’s performance and Guilfoyle’s direction.

Plus, Barrett’s performance falls apart in the third act when she gets downgraded from love interest to sidekick. It’s not her fault as Bender’s writing doesn’t really keep together for the finale either.

Most of the film is wanting interiors, but there are a couple nice exterior street scenes shot on location. The first is just a shot, finally opening the film up—almost the entire first act takes place at Andes’s boarding house (run by Jane Darwell in an extended but not unwelcome cameo)—and the second is a suspense sequence. Guilfoyle’s no better at directing off a soundstage than on, but Ted Allan’s photography is a lot more interesting out of doors.

Frank Sullivan’s editing is bad, but it usually seems to be a lack of coverage from Guilfoyle.

Stake’s engaging throughout thanks to the script’s strangeness—and Baxter’s music leads to some good sequences—with the wanting finale short enough not to matter much.

East of Eden (1955, Elia Kazan)

As intentional as Kazan gets with his direction of James Dean, he’s orders of magnitude more intentional on Julie Harris. Harris is top-billed and the natural protagonist, but Dean’s a supernova. He’s the lead, he’s the star, he’s dynamite, a press agent’s dream. Only he’s got a really quiet part for most of the movie; he’s an extrovert we only ever get to see as an introvert because the movie’s from 1955 (and about 1917) and when he’s not being a top-notch farmhand, he’s bedding every Hispanic girl in town. The film manages to find some honesty in how racism is playing a factor, but it can’t exactly address it.

It’s not just it’s 1955… men are men, after all. And East of Eden is a gloriously turgid mix of toxic masculinity, chauvinism (in both senses), and some kind of religiosity. The religiosity is mostly in the ground situation and revealed backstory; it’s important and it informs everything, but more in how it protects Dean’s twin brother, Richard Davalos, and their father, Raymond Massey, from ever having to take personal responsibility. Massey’s been a single dad since they were born—their mother died in childbirth, he told them—and he’s parented with the Bible. Except Massey’s a very kind, empathetic, curious person—Massey’s performance is startling in its earnestness and warmth, even when he’s being a complete jackass to Dean—so he’s had to arrange his life a certain way. It works with Davalos, who models the piety of his widower father as a way to navigate through as well—masking his core-deep insecurities and jealousies—but not with Dean. Because Dean’s the same as Massey, only Massey wants Dean to be like dear departed mother, Jo Van Fleet.

Who, it turns out, lives just a train ride away.

Van Fleet is a successful madam in the shitty coastal town, while Massey and sons live in the more Christian in-land farming community, where you can meet a nice girl like Harris.

The film opens with Dean following Van Fleet home, where she sends out Timothy Carey to deal with the lurking teen. Carey might be looped; he’s uncredited and Eden’s full of looped audio (quite obviously because Kazan wanted something just right; the film’s exquisite in its precision); either way he’s awesome. He runs Dean off, with some exposition to at least foreshadow and establish this plot line with Dean and Van Fleet. It’s a great sequence.

Once Dean’s back on the right side of the mountains, the film introduces Davalos and Harris. They’re a morally upstanding teenage couple, very chaste, very appropriate; Harris finds Dean concerning—so peculiar he’s scary—while Davalos just thinks his twin is a hilarious goof, at most a prankster.

Davalos and Dean is Eden’s most complicated relationship and the one the film gives the least amount of time. The film’s about Dean getting up the courage to confront Van Fleet, but more about how the many-layered revelation of Van Fleet affects Dean’s relationship with Massey. And, unintentionally, Davalos and Harris. They become collateral damage in this brewing family drama no one realized was brewing. Van Fleet’s the catalyst for the explosion, which is appropriate as she’s the one who got it brewing in the first place.

At least, the way the men see it.

Once Dean has a heart-to-heart about his parents with sheriff Burl Ives (who’s phenomenal in this picture), he starts trying to play the good son. And those attempts—the successes of those attempts—are going to bring ruin to everyone. Some more ruined than others. And there’s enough ruination going around it’s not all Dean’s fault. He is, after all, a sixteen or seventeen year-old kid who has a lot going on in his life and the easy access to alcohol. Massey’s good and evil dichotomy runs Dean and Davalos’s lives, with Harris’s outsider perspective and questioning starting to make Dean ask some questions. In conjunction with the rest of the world making Dean ask some questions too.

War’s almost on and Dean has a profiteers take on it. Davalos and Massey are devout pacifists, but Dean’s a mercenary. Only he’s not because he doesn’t understand what’s going on because he’s a kid. He’s a drinker and a fighter and a lover, but he’s still a kid, something Van Fleet sees in him and is willing to help him too. The relationship with Dean and Van Fleet, Dean and businessman Albert Dekker, with sheriff Ives, they’re all helping push his character development. Right up until we remember Adam had two sons (literally, of course, Adam is Massey’s character’s name) and then everything explodes. Even though we’ve only ever seen Davalos from Dean’s perspective and in Dean’s scenes… he’s had his own subplots brewing and boom.

The third act is then this tightly constrained melodrama where Kazan does everything he can to max out the intensity without getting too loud. And it’s where that direction of Harris gets so important.

Harris has figured out what’s going on with this family and she knows how to fix it but she has to get Dean, Davalos, and Massey to do that work. So it’s not just Dean’s going to be a golden god and get all the camera’s attention, it’s also the story doing it too. It’s treating Harris as a function.

Kazan doesn’t let it.

He, cinematographer Ted D. McCord, and editor Owen Marks figure out this way to showcase Harris, especially in the second half, when it becomes obvious she ought to be the protagonist of this story. Except men.

Harris is great. Dean is singular. No one’s made the adjective. Massey’s great. Ives, Van Fleet, Dekker. Davalos is fine. He functions. Lot of help from Kazan. With everyone else, it’s Kazan figuring out how to best convey his actors’ performances; with Davalos… he’s making it work.

Lois Smith is excellent in a small part.

Technically, it’s almost perfect. There’s a repeated shot of Dean riding the train back to the bad town two scenes and a few hours after we saw it used for him coming home to the good town; it’s now night, the shot’s day. It’s bewildering. Kazan and crew make up for it. He and McCord do a lot with camera angles, including some really awesome showy stuff; the repeat footage gets a pass.

And Paul Osborn’s script. Like, East of Eden has got to be a pain to adapt, but Osborn finds a chunk of the story (presumably the end, I’ve never gotten through it) and writes this great family drama; when I said earlier Kazan had to defend Harris against the script, it’s not Osborn working against her even, it’s the plot. Osborn makes sure Harris has excellent material. It wouldn’t work otherwise.

It’s just not easy to contend with Dean and his presence in the film, visually onscreen and then in general with the plot. He’s so exceptionally good and the film’s able to do so much more because it can leverage him.

East of Eden’s exceptional. I think I’d forgotten just how exceptional.

It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955, Robert Gordon)

I finished watching It Came from Beneath the Sea, which I regret, particularly because the whole reason I didn’t shut it down was for the big special effects finale, when the giant radioactive octopus finally attacks a city. Incidentally, it’s San Francisco, which doesn’t turn out to be anywhere near as cool looking as I had hoped.

The film dashes hopes early on, so when you’re sitting through the second act slog, you know there’s no good reason to be doing it, just that expectation the grand finale is going to be worth it. Ray Harryhausen’s special effects work is, after all, objectively stellar.

Sadly, not much of that quality is on display in Beneath. When we finally get to the giant octopus making landfall and giant tentacling the city… the detail’s not good. Because Beneath is way too cheap. It’s been way too cheap and you can kind of get yourself enthused by convincing yourself the cheap for the human science thriller is so there’s enough money for the finish and then… turns out no. It’s just too cheap.

Too cheap, too poorly directed, too poorly written, too poorly acted. And whoever did the light matching on rear screen projection—photographer Henry Freulich, whoever—might be so bad they’re incompetent at it. There’s no reason it should always look so bad, especially when there’s so much of it. There’s a particularly bad scene with the heroes in a beachfront restaurant where you have to remind yourself to pretend the background is supposed to represent something real to the characters.

Of course… maybe if the acting weren’t terrible. So I guess let’s get into how the acting, directing, and writing all congeal into a toxic slop.

From the first scene—well, actually earlier because the opening text crawl is poorly written and then the narration is not a good choice—but from the first live action scene, it’s clear Beneath is going to have some major acting and directing issues. What isn’t clear, from that first scene, is how bad Kenneth Tobey is going to get; he plays a submarine commander who comes across the giant octopus but doesn’t know what it is. Chuck Griffiths is his XO. Griffiths gives such a terrible performance you can’t see anything else. Time stops for Griffiths’s awfulness. It’s incredible.

Somehow, even though it’s not obvious Tobey’s going to be bad, Gordon’s direction is clearly at fault for some of Griffiths. Because Gordon’s directs all the other actors on the submarine terribly as well. Lots of quite bad acting from a variety of actors, which is going to all change when Tobey gets back to the Nazy and off the ship.

Because then it’s going to be creepy sexual innuendo with Tobey and two scientists working on a lab to discover what he found out at sea. Presumably through tissue tests but the science is never explained because George Worthing Yates and Harold Jacob Smith’s script is dumb.

It’s also extraordinarily sexist. Like, unpacking everything up with Beneath and its single woman—marine biologist Faith Domergue (doing a dinner theatre Marilyn Monroe impression)—would deserve thorough scholarly research if the movie weren’t just a fifties monster movie.

So in the lab it’s Tobey, Domergue, and Donald Curtis. Curtis and Domergue are not hooking up but Tobey thinks they’re hooking up because if he were Curtis, he’d be hooking up with Domergue. Domergue doesn’t seem to have considered hooking up with Curtis, but then starts to make bedroom eyes at him… after having an extremely suggestive clutch with Tobey out of sight from Curtis.

During this scene, while Tobey explains he wants to hook up and fast, Domergue picks up graduated cylinder and strokes it with her hand the rest of the scene.

Later we find out Domergue’s from a “whole new breed of woman,” they think they’re just as smart and just as brave as the men, which is why Domergue doesn’t know consent is bad—Tobey tells her Navy men take, don’t ask—and if she enjoys a kiss, she has to marry that guy.

I can’t remember if that scene is before or after the Navy sends Domergue into debrief a sailor who has seen the giant octopus and she has to seduce him to do it.

I think after.

So, yeah, It Came from Beneath the Sea is a shit show of misogyny, sexism, and male gaze (Tobey and Domergue are also apparently into each other because they’re exhibitionists; while waiting for Curtis to show up later in the movie they’ve been From Here to Eternitying it on the beach with a local cop hanging around nearby). It’s also a bad movie, with bad direction, bad acting (Curtis is somehow worse than Domergue, who’s somehow worse than Tobey, even though she’s his victim), bad writing, and not worth the wait special effects.

There are like two good effects shots in the movie. But it seems like it’s because they didn’t have money to let Harryhausen do a grander finale. The eventual shots of the octopus on land, tentacles going through the streets, are the good ones. They’re just aren’t good enough to make up for the rest. It’d be impossible to make up for the rest. Because the rest isn’t just bad, it’s icky. And bad.

Icky bad.

I Died a Thousand Times (1955, Stuart Heisler)

Going into the third act of I Died a Thousand Times, the film is in great shape. It’s got a strange pace but it’s all working out, mostly thanks to lead Jack Palance’s peculiar and strong performance, and it doesn’t seem like it could do anything wrong enough to screw things up. Unfortunately, the resolution is one giant choke. One where Palance is basically a bit player (or less) and the script fully embraces the casual misogyny it’s been flirting with the entire time. It seemed like it had gotten over it–Thousand’s casual misogyny has highs and lows, what with slut-shaming female lead Shelley Winters and then damsel in distress Lori Nelson’s arc from sweet young girl to callous, shallow tease (the film’s also got issues with the young people and their fast music, eventually—and perfectly—personified in an uncredited Dennis Hopper, who Palance sadly doesn’t beat to a pulp). But for the finish, when the film’s drained everything positive like sap, it brings back that casual misogyny. It’s not just disappointing and beneath W.R. Burnett’s script, it’s also annoying.

The film opens with Palance driving through the desert, headed west. We get the ground situation in pieces. He’s an ex-con bank robber, paroled after eight years. He’s not hostile so much as guarded. But he lets his guard down right away with kindly old couple Ralph Moody and Olive Carey. And not only because of their fetching, though club-footed and shy granddaughter Lori Nelson. Palance and Moody have a good rapport, which may or may not get some context in the script later on. Writer Burnett’s got some really big first act dialogue problems—when Palance and Winters first meet and shoot really bad slang at each other–but the script’s got a really delicate arc for Palance. It makes some leaps and bounds, particularly with the relationship with Palance and Winters, but it doesn’t ever seem rushed, just truncated. Lots of the credit goes to Palance, whose performance is initially as much about presence as delivery.

We meet Winters after we get the setup—courtesy cop turned crook James Millican (it also doesn’t help the film’s take on law enforcement takes a 180 for the third act)—crime boss Lon Chaney Jr. (who’s delightful) pays to get Palance pardoned so Palance can knock-off the jewelry stored at a swanky mountain resort. Even in 1955 dollars, I imagine it must have cost Chaney a lot to get Palance pardoned—despite being in for life—from a federal penitentiary. Probably more than the heist is worth. And if it was so expensive, why not have good backup for Palance? Instead, Chaney’s hired young punks Earl Holliman and Lee Marvin. Not only do they like fast music, they also bring along a dame—Winters. Ostensibly she’s there with Marvin, but she’s also keeping Holliman on a low boil. It’s because she’s manipulating the young sociopaths Palance lets her stay. See, Palance is actually a big softy. We know it with Moody, then we really know it once he friends the puppy at the tourist cabins where they’re all staying. He never entertains Winters, but he doesn’t disrespect her. He trusts her to handle the boys. It’s a very interesting relationship between them, because every time Palance seems like he’s warming up, he pulls back immediately, no warning. It’s a really nice performance.

Winters has her hands full, in the first act, with Marvin and Holliman (despite not having many scenes with them). Died has that weird structure I mentioned earlier. The first and second acts almost overlap because two such distinct things are going on. There’s Marvin, Holliman, Winters, and inside man at the resort Perry Lopez goofing off at the cabins, then there’s Los Angeles with Chaney and Millican, but also kindly old folks Moody and Carey (not to mention Nelson). When they’re finally gearing up to pull the heist, there’s a shock because there’s been no expectation of seeing Holliman or Marvin actually having to participate. They seem way too passive, not just in their behavior, but also in how the film positions them.

Though, actually, they’re in the background of the heist, just like they’re in the background of Palance and Winters. So it seems Heisler and Burnett agree. Or just didn’t want them in the way during the heist, which is fine. Marvin and Holliman are fine, but they’re not interesting to watch. Palance, Winters, even someone with a lesser performance like Nelson or Millican… they’re interesting to watch. A lot of Died takes place outside, often on location, and the film just feels more natural outdoors—another irony given the ending. Heisler rarely has ambitious shots outside the location shooting, but he and cinematographer Ted D. McCord succeed with that location shooting so credit there—but he’s more interested in the cute puppy than the relationship between aging career criminal Palance and girl with a past Winters, though Heisler does perk up a little once they’re making face. Because Winters falls hard for Palance. He’s a big tough guy who occasionally poetically describes the human condition and likes puppies and is kind to old people.

Winters doesn’t get the best part. Like, her exposition feels like it’s been given a G rating when it needs to be an NC-17. Because 1955. But Winters gets it across. The strongest thing, which the film doesn’t pursue, is how Winters interacts with Palance after she’s realized he’s a sweetie. The end fails the hell out of her too. It’s a real bummer.

I Died a Thousand Times—which actually makes no sense as a title since Chaney at one point talks about how you can “only die once”—really needs a better third act. It’s not even as competent, technically speaking, as it ought to be. Because it’s foreshadowed from the first or second scene, only in a really obvious way where they shouldn’t have really gone for it. Especially not since there’s another bookending device sitting there available, apparently just a passive addition to serve the plot but with a lot more possibility than the actual ending.

Is it worth seeing? Yeah. If it had a solid ending, it would’ve given Palance an amazing lead performance and possibly a great supporting one for Winters. It’s just… a real bummer.

This post is part of the Shelley Winters Blogathon hosted by Gill Of Realweegiemidget Reviews and Erica of Poppity Talks Classic Film.

Picnic (1956, Joshua Logan)

Picnic is all about sex. It can never talk about being all about sex because it’s from 1956 and it’s set in small-town Kansas anyway and no one in small-town Kansas was going to be talking about sex. Not when schoolteachers like Rosalind Russell are trying to ban books for even hinting at sex.

But it’s all about sex.

Mostly it’s about women wanting to have sex with William Holden, who’s a drifter come to town looking to get a job as an executive from his old college buddy Cliff Robertson. Holden was thirty-seven in Picnic and, regardless of his beefcake factor, looks at least thirty-seven. Robertson was thirty-two. He looks about twenty-seven. It’s never clear how much time has passed since they were in college together though when Russell finally loses it and dresses Holden down for, basically, rejecting her drunken advances, she brings up the age thing. So are they supposed to be mid-thirties? They’re at least old enough Kim Novak ought to be rethinking her de facto engagement to Robertson.

Novak is nineteen. Her mom, Betty Field, wants her to marry Robertson before he gets tired of waiting for sex. Novak just wants men to stop objectifying her. Field says it’s all she’s got going for her so she better use it to get a ring on it ASAP. Couple years, she’ll be way too old to catch a good rich man. I guess the “good” thing about Field utterly devaluing her daughter’s worth is she’s not greedy about it? Field doesn’t want Robertson and Novak to take care of her, she just wants Novak taken care of. She’s selfless. Field doesn’t like Holden strutting around with his shirt off—her sexagenarian neighbor, kindly Verna Felton gets Holden out of his shirt as fast as she can—but Field doesn’t like it. Because it’s catching Novak’s eye and if Novak decides she might want to have sex with some guy instead of just doing it out of duty, well, she’s going down the wrong path.

Field’s got another daughter, a younger one, Susan Strasberg. Strasberg is a bit of a tomboy, super-smart (there’s some throwaway line in the first act, which is full of throwaway lines, about Strasberg having a four year scholarship except then she goes back to high school), and she too takes notice of Holden. Not in an inappropriate way but in the same way Felton notices Holden; they understand he’s a foxy man and there ain’t no other foxy men in Kansas. But they don’t lust after him in the same way as… oh, Russell, who gets drunker and drunker as the day progresses and finally gets so touchy-feely with Holden she tears off half his shirt. Got to let the beefcake out!

Russell’s all about the sex; even as she describes herself as the “old maid schoolteacher” what she really means is she hooks up with hot younger dudes out of town then brags about it to her friends at work. In town she’s stuck with decidedly not sexy, not younger Arthur O’Connell. He’s a local shop-owner, a bachelor stuck in his ways. Who, sure, gets hammered and talks Russell into going off after the picnic to “drive” in his car. There’s a great line from Felton about how everyone disappears after a picnic—Field is wondering where everyone went because she’s forgotten what it’s like to want sex—but Felton remembers. And she’s like, “They’re all off having sex.” And you’d think Field would remember because she told Novak to go off with Robertson and give him some play so he stays interested.

Now, Novak’s a good girl, from a good family, she’s just not a rich girl. Or a smart girl. She’s quiet and a little sad. Being socialized to accept paper boy Nick Adams hitting on her every morning no doubt has something to do with that sadness.

She just wants someone to take her seriously. And not because of how she looks.

So when she and Holden have this super-charged sexy dance at the Picnic, which sets off Strasberg’s jealousy and resentment as well as Russell’s beefcake lust, well… is it different when Holden ogles her? Because it’s William Holden and not Nick Adams or Cliff Robertson.

Or, in the film’s grossest revelation, Arthur O’Connell. Who goes over to visit Russell (who lodges with Field and daughters) and ogles Novak.

O’Connell recovers from that moment, mostly because he’s got Russell holding up their scenes, but… yuck.

If Picnic could talk about sex, would it be better? Well, not if it still had such unbridled passion for patriarchal relationships. Novak and Holden have zero chemistry, which would be a bigger problem if the script ever needed them to have any. But Novak’s written so thin—she’s constantly asking people to define her character in the first act, which gets tedious fast because the character relationships ring hollow. Director Logan, who directed the original play on Broadway, has no patience or regard for his actors. He’s always in a hurry, always shooting in these boring long shots (though James Wong Howe’s photography is fantastic). Often there will be some terrible cut; editors William A. Lyon and Charles Nelson shockingly won an Oscar for the film, which is something since there’s not a single smooth transition between long shot and close-up in the entire film.

While I’m talking about the crew, might as well get George Duning’s score out of the way. It’s too loud, too bombastic, too obvious, too melodramatic. Jo Mielziner’s production design is excellent though. It’s a shame Logan doesn’t have better shots for it. He’s got some really awkwardly pedestrian shots, like he’s scared of cranes or something. The film’s wide Cinemascope aspect ratio is another problem. It opens the film up too much and Logan rarely can compose for it.

The big dance scene is about the only intentionally well-directed sequence in the film, though there are occasional unintentional good shots.

It’s never incompetent, it’s just never anything but competent.

The film peaks somewhere in the second act, during the picnic. Regardless of all the problems, Picnic has a great pace. At least until the third act, when it starts to drag on and on, introducing these juxtapositions between Novak and Russell, O’Connell and Holden. Only none of the characters do enough for the juxtapositions to make any narrative sense, much less drum up any dramatic effect.

Great performance from Russell, really good ones from O’Connell and Felton. Okay—all things considered—one from Holden. He’s pretty good in the first act. By the last act you wish he’d rethought agreeing to the film (given he was worried he was too old for the part he’s obviously too old to play). Novak’s… she could be worse. Same goes for Field, though she’s immediately grating. Strasberg’s great, but the part’s crap. Worse, it’s a big part. It’s just a big, crappy part. If the movie were actually about her and Novak, it’d be something. If the movie were about Novak, it’d be something. If it were about any of its characters, it’d be something. But the smorgasbord approach? Doesn’t work. No one gets enough time or space.

Though it probably wouldn’t matter because they still couldn’t talk about sex. Picnic is fixated on it. Even if all of its ideas about it are at least bad, sometimes icky, sometimes much, much worse.

This post is part of the Rosalind Russell Blogathon hosted by Crystal of In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood.

Moonfleet (1955, Fritz Lang)

Moonfleet is a very strange film. The protagonist is ten year-old Jon Whiteley; the film starts with him arriving in the coastal village, Moonfleet. It’s the mid-eighteenth century. Moonfleet is a dangerous, scary place. Sort of. Whiteley is in town on his own because his mother has died (Dad is a mystery, but nowhere near enough of one) and she’s sent him to look for an old friend. The old friend is Stewart Granger. He’s an old flame. Mom and Granger hooked up, then her rich family ran him out of town. The family fell on hard times, moving away from Moonfleet, so Granger moved back. Not because he’s nostalgic for Whiteley’s mom, but because it’s a good place to run a smuggling ring. He seems to have known the mom at least moved.

And Granger’s got zero interest in having a ward. He spends most of his time drinking and carousing. He lives in Whiteley’s family manor, but it’s closed down and janky. He has his friends over to get blasted and hook up with the various women who throw themselves at Granger. Granger does have a live-in girlfriend, Viveca Lindfors, whose credited role suggests he seduced her away from a husband but it’s not in the story proper. Granger’s introduction actually has him with a different woman, Liliane Montevecchi. She’s Romani. She’s not credited as Romani. Anywhere, she might not even have a line. She’s there to do a seductive dance with lots of leg and cleavage. Lindfors gets very jealous because she’s only showing cleavage and not leg.

Okay, remember when earlier I said the protagonist is a ten year-old? Yeah, the movie makes this quick shift for much of the first act to being ladies getting hot for Granger. It’s almost like it’s a kids’—well, boys’, there’s nothing for a ten year-old girl except learning hot dudes like Granger get to treat them terribly and they should go back begging for more—but it’s like Moonfleet is a kids’ movie with stud Granger in it for Mom and all his ladies for Dad. It’s weird. Especially since the sexual nature of Granger’s various relationships isn’t implied. It’s explicit. Granger’s best pal is George Sanders, a lord who slums it at Granger’s pad to get wasted, gamble, and hook up with loose poor women. It’s okay because his wife, Joan Greenwood, knows all about that behavior. She’s fine with it, because she and Granger are schtupping. Sanders suspects he’s being cuckolded but isn’t sure and isn’t really too worked out about it. Granger’s subplot—or the closest thing he gets to a subplot in the ninety minute picture—involves Greenwood wanting him to run off with her and Sanders. Sanders is keen to it because Granger is ostensibly a lower class scoundrel who climbed the social ladder. Greenwood just wants to keep schtupping Granger, just not in England.

Back to ten year-old Whiteley. Much of the first half of the film has Granger trying to get rid of him. Or Granger’s smuggler gang threatening to kill Whiteley. Granger’s got a tenuous hold on the leadership role. At least until he shows off his sword-fighting skills to convince to rabble to stay in line. So it’s one of those kids’ adventure movies where the kid is in constant threat of vicious murder and there’s wanton (1950s acceptable) sex. Moonfleet is weird.

Whiteley’s adventure has him trying to find his grandfather or great-grandfather’s hidden treasure. Everyone in the town has been trying to find it for years but they’re all really dumb because once Whiteley gets one clue, Granger is able to figure it out.

The other major reason Moonfleet is weird is it manages to work. Lang’s direction is never particularly good. He doesn’t do action well. Not just the sword-fighting, which has bad editing (from Albert Akst), but like stage direction. It’s sluggish, like Lang is making the actors move too slowly across the Cinemascope frame. Robert H. Planck’s photography is also… unimpressive. The day-for-night stuff is always wonky, but the various interiors are always a little off too. The film’s got some really nice sets. Planck just doesn’t seem to know how to light them effectively. It’s fine. Lang doesn’t know how to shoot them effectively either. Moonfleet would probably work a lot better, visually, in black and white and Academy Ratio. Lang and Planck utterly wasted the Cinemascope.

And the script is slight. Supporting characters aren’t memorably written or performed. None of the supporting performances are bad—though all the men’s makeup is bad and there’s a lot of it; it’s bad on all dudes but Granger—they just aren’t memorable. Even though the smuggler gang is a bunch of recognizable faces, none of them distinguish themselves.

But Granger and Whiteley are both really good. Whiteley gets through lots of bad dialogue and sells the earnestness right. He brings some depth to the part; like, we don’t know what this kid’s life has been like, even if he does sound like a proper little English boy. His accent is a little out of place occasionally, however. And then Granger sort of seems to know he ought to be in this kids’ adventure picture about maybe this scoundrel being the dad and maybe not being the dad but it doesn’t matter because deep down everyone knows he really wants to be the dad. Only Moonfleet isn’t that movie. But Granger pretends.

He’s never more comfortable in the film than with Whiteley and the smugglers and never less comfortable then when with Sanders and Greenwood.

Sanders is okay. It’s a small part with nothing to it and no reason for George Sanders. Other than putting him in a wig and making him as unrecognizable as George Sanders as possible.

Greenwood’s… better than Lindfors? Lindfors seems miserable being in the film. She and Granger have negative chemistry.

So… Moonfleet. It’s a weird fail. The worst part is the end, which—for most of the film—is all the picture’s got going for it, the possibility of a solid ending. And then there’s a misstep and then a stumble and then a face-plant.

Moonfleet doesn’t deserve Whiteley or Granger.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed by Fritz Lang; screenplay by Jan Lustig and Margaret Fitts, based on the novel by J. Meade Falkner; director of photography, Robert H. Planck; edited by Albert Akst; music by Miklós Rózsa; produced by John Houseman; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Starring Jon Whiteley (John Mohune), Stewart Granger (Jeremy Fox), Joan Greenwood (Lady Ashwood), Viveca Lindfors (Mrs. Minton), Melville Cooper (Felix Ratsey), Sean McClory (Elzevir Block), Alan Napier (Parson Glennie), John Hoyt (Magistrate Maskew), Donna Corcoran (Grace), and George Sanders (Lord Ashwood).

THIS POST IS PART OF THE STEWART GRANGER BLOGATHON HOSTED BY MADDY OF MADDY LOVES HER CLASSIC FILMS.

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Studio 57 (1954) s02e01 – Young Couples Only

Young Couples Only is really good. Especially when you consider how Bill Williams is so weak in the lead and how director Irving never does anything special. He never does anything bad, he just doesn’t do anything special. He certainly doesn’t keep Williams in line. It’s probably a very good thing Williams’s real-life wife Barbara Hale plays his TV wife here. She can carry the scenes for him. And the other scenes usually have Peter Lorre, who does a phenomenal job implying all sorts of depth to his quirky character.

Hale and Williams live in a very nice apartment building. Furnished for–adjusted for inflation–about $600 a month. The only rules are the residents have to be couples, they have to be young, they have to be fit. Williams is an illustrator who isn’t particularly insightful; there’s a brief subplot about Hale not getting his humor (but other men do) but since it turns out Hale is right about everything in the world, maybe Williams doesn’t know what he’s doing.

See, Hale thinks there’s something funny about Lorre, who’s playing the janitor. He gives Hale and the other wives in the building the creeps, even though he’s never really done anything. Other than be Peter Lorre. Williams dismisses Hale–her exasperation at his inability to get past dismissing her because, well, she’s a woman is phenomenal–while she gets more and more suspicious. Especially after their dog disappears.

There are a series of reveals in the second half, each better than the last. Not sure if Lawrence Kimble’s teleplay had the plot twist smarts or Richard Matheson’s short story, but they come off beautifully. Once Williams is in crisis mode, he’s a lot better. Until then, he’s just either having Hale carry his proverbial water for him or Lorre carry it. Young Couples Only sort of plays like a sitcom, with broad, affable performances from Hale and then Williams, only it turns out the show’s just getting warmed up and Hale’s along with the changing tone…and Williams isn’t.

But it still works out beautifully. Thanks to Lorre, thanks to Hale, thanks to the perfectly competent, unambitious technical execution. Young Couples Only is good.

This post is part of the 5th Annual Favourite TV Show Episode Blogathon hosted by Terence Towles Canote of A Shroud of Thoughts.

The Trouble with Harry (1955, Alfred Hitchcock)

The Trouble with Harry is very cute. It’s fine, the film’s intentionally cute, but it’s also somewhat frustrating. With the exception of the glorious Technicolor exteriors of Vermont leaves, director Hitchcock and photographer Robert Burks don’t do anything particularly interesting. John Michael Hayes’s screenplay is so confined it often feels like Harry is a stage adaptation. It’s not; Hayes’s script is just stagy.

The film takes place over a particularly long day in a small New England town. Lovable old sea captain Edmund Gwenn is out rabbit hunting and finds a dead body. Thinking he’s killed the stranger, Gwenn goes to cover it up, eventually involving local painter and singing stud muffin John Forsythe (Forsythe’s voice sounds nothing like his singing voice). Forsythe happens upon Gwenn after going in to town to charm some groceries out of shopkeep Mildred Dunnock. He also meets local spinster Mildred Natwick, who we’ve already met because she caught Gwenn with the body. And made a date with him. Because New Englanders are naughty.

Gwenn and Natwick at the body is cute, Natwick in the shop is cute, Natwick and Gwenn are going to be cute throughout the movie. Meanwhile Forsythe has his eyes set on new-to-town local single mom Shirley MacLaine, even though Forsythe appears to be friends with MacLaine’s kid, Jerry Mathers. Mathers finds the body in the beginning, even before Gwenn. This jumbling instead of sequential plot recounting is intentional. See, Trouble with Harry is full of twists and reveals in the first half. The second half is all dead body comedy, but the first half is moving its four main cast members into situations together. Gwenn and Natwick, Forsythe and MacLaine. With Mathers popping in as needed. And it turns out he’s occasionally really needed because Hayes and Hitchcock run out of energy so it all hinges on Mathers having been cute enough early in the film.

It works, but it’s a lazy finish. Harry can get away with some lazy because part of the joke is how little people care about the dead body, whether Harry is a stranger or even an acquaintance. Hayes doesn’t have any difficult jokes in Harry. Even when he’s trying to shock, it’s never with a difficult joke. They’re always easy. And cute. Shockingly cute at times, so it helps MacLaine is so cute. And so on.

Hitchcock does really well with the cast, even when they’ve got way too much dialogue (or way too little). At the beginning, when Gwenn finds the body, it seems like he’s going to be Harry’s stage manager and narrate it. Though in talking to himself, not the audience. But then Forsythe shows up and Gwenn never gets to be the lead again. Forsythe’s too charming. And talented a artist. And swell guy.

Though he’s a dick to Natwick in their lengthy first scene together. Eventually the script reins in that character “feature” and Forsythe gets a lot more likable. Though he’s not like anyone else. He’s never cute. Even Royal Dano as dopey local sheriff’s deputy who the Scooby Gang has to hide from occasionally–and who they bully in a shocking display of classist privilege at one point–even Dano gets to be cute. And really sympathetic. Right before the troubled finish.

Though maybe the truncation of the ending saves the film from more derision of Dano, which becomes the focus for the final act. It’s really weird. Either Hayes or the source novel writer totally bungled the finish of the story or Hayes and Hitchcock screwed it up. It’s disappointing.

Gwenn is great. Natwick is great. And they’re adorable. MacLaine is good. And cute. Mathers is never around enough to get annoying.

Dunnock is good too. She seems like she’s going to have more to do than she gets.

Hitchcock’s direction is fine. It’s occasionally precious, which doesn’t clash with the humor but it also doesn’t generate any energy. Great photography from Burks. Awful editing from Alma Macrorie. Some of it is lack of coverage footage, but it’s still awful. There are also these fades to black at the end of jokes or when it’s time to jump ahead in time because Hayes’s plotting is so thin and they never bring anything to the film. Some are fine, but they’re never helpful.

Bernard Herrmann’s score is an unqualified, adjective-free perfect.

The Trouble with Harry is a diverting and often adorable 100 minutes. It’s a fine production. It’s also rather mundane.

2.5/4★★½

CREDITS

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock; screenplay by John Michael Hayes, based on the novel by Jack Trevor Story; director of photography, Robert Burks; edited by Alma Macrorie; music by Bernard Herrmann; released by Paramount Pictures.

Starring Edmund Gwenn (Capt. Albert Wiles), John Forsythe (Sam Marlowe), Mildred Natwick (Miss Ivy Gravely), Shirley MacLaine (Jennifer Rogers), Mildred Dunnock (Mrs. Wiggs), Royal Dano (Deputy Sheriff Calvin Wiggs), and Jerry Mathers (Arnie Rogers).

THIS POST IS PART OF THE THIRD ANNUAL ALFRED HITCHCOCK BLOGATHON HOSTED BY MADDY OF MADDY LOVES HER CLASSIC FILMS.

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