Tag: Raymond Massey

A Matter of Life and Death (1945, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)

A Matter of Life and Death suffers the unusual condition of being too good for its own good. Writing, directing, and producing team Powell and Pressburger (The Archers), along with their crew and much of their cast, do singular work on Matter. Jack Cardiff’s Technicolor is so breathtaking a character can get away with commenting on it. Marius Goring plays that character, a pleasant French aristocrat who’s gone on to work as a grim reaper. Goring’s one of the phenom performances. The others are Roger Livesey, Robert Coote, and Raymond Massey. None of the performances slack, of course, they just aren’t exceptional creations.

Unfortunately, leads David Niven and Kim Hunter aren’t on that list. Matter is ostensibly the story of Niven and Hunter’s great love overcoming death (hence the title). The film opens with a rending sequence where British bomber captain Niven calls in and gives his final report to American Hunter; they have an awkward, deep flirtation—see, Niven’s about to jump without a parachute because it beats burning alive in his doomed plane. He and Hunter have a quick get-to-know-you talk, then forecast an impossible future before Niven’s got to go.

This entire sequence is peerless. Cardiff’s photography, Reginald Mills’s cutting, Niven, Hunter. It’s movie magic.

It’s also Hunter and Niven’s biggest scene together. Alone, anyway. Matter’s not very long, given the eventual scale, just 104 minutes. And it makes that time by not spending much of it on Hunter and Niven’s romance. Instead, the movie races to bring in Livesey, which is great because Livesey’s great, and he gives one of the all-time heroic everyman lead performances.

Except, Niven’s the lead. He’s just nowhere near as fun to watch. Especially not once he starts napping most of the time. While Niven’s convinced he’s got to defend his right to stay alive to Goring and an otherworldly tribunal of some sort, doctor Livesey’s sure he’s got a very specific kind of brain tumor. Hunter then spends most of her time with Livesey until the third act because they’re caring for Niven. Livesey’s also a badass Brit biker, so there are a few motorcycle sequences ranging from harrowing to charming. Despite the wartime context, the Archers find the little joys in the characters’ lives.

Which makes it all the stranger when Massey—the prosecuting attorney, a Revolutionary War veteran who still hates the colonizing British—brings up how wartime romances are just a little bump and grind, and they don’t lead to anyone putting a ring on it. The most dramatic rising action is all about this big trial, and then it’s just a couple talking heads. Niven’s not even in the scene because the Archers know he’d only distract from Massey, who’s… well, divine.

But the movie still rests it all on Hunter and Niven’s romance being deeper. Sure, Hunter dotes on him, but Niven’s basically in a medical crisis through their entire courtship–and we don’t even get to see the most relevant parts of it because it’d have delayed Livesey showing up. Matter’s fine with holding its reveals once Livesey’s arrived, but until then, it’s racing to get to him. Hunter and Niven’s romance plot gets an incomplete, even though Matter acts like dropping literally every other character and subplot can make the movie about the couple.

Unfortunately, not.

A Matter of Life and Death is a masterful, technical, creative marvel. It’s got rich, thoughtful performances in insightfully written roles. It’s also just a little bit too thin once it gets to the finish. But, damn, is it beautiful. The afterlife is black and white, and 1945 Earth is color. Glorious Technicolor. There are these transition shots between the two, where there’s a move from color and not, and they’re always exquisite. So a mixed bag, but wondrously so.

This post is part of the 10th Annual Rule, Britannia Blogathon hosted by Terence Towles Canote of A Shroud of Thoughts.

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.

The Old Dark House (1932, James Whale)

The Old Dark House is a strange film about strange people doing strange things. Director Whale and screenwriter Benn W. Levy rarely let the film get a set tone–unless one counts the consistent mix of comedy and horror. It’s not straight comedy; the comic elements tend to be either absurdly strange or pedestrian. Husband and wife Raymond Massey and Gloria Stuart bickering over his driving until the storm becomes too dangerous for an argument, for example.

Whale goes for peculiar horror elements–relying on his cast to be creepy enough in their performances sometimes, but other times utilizing for practical effects in scenes without a cast member having to do much. The editing, from Clarence Kolster, is spectacular. Whale often goes for a visceral reaction, like when Boris Karloff’s vicious manservant preys on Stuart.

But just like the mix of light comedy and horror, Whale and Levy take the time to deepen even Karloff’s character. All of the characters end up getting some depth, both the “regular” people and then the crazy family living in the titular house. The film’s both cynical and hopeful, with Lilian Bond’s chorus girl having an arrangement with industrialist Charles Laughton, but not one with expectations.

Because Laughton’s messed up, just like almost everyone in the film. Melvyn Douglas’s drunken, mildly broken World War I veteran is ostensible lead–it’s between him and Stuart–and the film subtly implies his problems.

It’s a deliberately, beautifully made, beautifully acted (Ernest Thesiger mesmerizes) film. Truly fantastic.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Directed by James Whale; screenplay by Benn W. Levy and R.C. Sherriff, based on a novel by J.B. Priestley; director of photography, Arthur Edeson; edited by Clarence Kolster; produced by Carl Laemmle Jr.; released by Universal Pictures.

Starring Boris Karloff (Morgan), Melvyn Douglas (Penderel), Charles Laughton (Sir William Porterhouse), Lilian Bond (Gladys), Ernest Thesiger (Horace Femm), Eva Moore (Rebecca Femm), Raymond Massey (Philip Waverton), Gloria Stuart (Margaret Waverton), Elspeth Dudgeon (Sir Roderick Femm) and Brember Wills (Saul Femm).

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The Speckled Band (1931, Jack Raymond)

I think The Speckled Band is a period piece but maybe not. There aren’t any exterior establishing shots in London, so no automobiles. It’s a question because the Sherlock Holmes in this film isn’t some recluse… he’s got an office and three secretaries.

The film has a very episodic feel to it, but not in the traditional sense–it feels like an entry in a film series, but it’s Raymond Massey’s only Holmes appearance. Massey does a fantastic job, infusing the character with an affable, melancholy feel. His Holmes feels the outcast due to his intellect–not the traditional approach to the character.

But since the film concentrates on the mystery, top-billed Lyn Harding and Angela Baddeley have the most to do. Baddeley is the victim to be and Harding is her vile stepfather, who’s probably going to kill her. I’m not sure a more revolting villain than Harding in this film–he doesn’t have a single moment he’s not plotting something rather nasty.

Director Raymond has some nice compositions and he keeps a great tone to the film. I was never sure if Baddeley, high billing or not, was going to live through the film.

Freddie Young’s cinematography is nice, particularly the outdoor scenes. They made me wish the sequences were longer, as Raymond and Young knew how to make the countryside lush with foreboding.

Athole Stewart makes a good Watson (the film even introduces him before Massey).

Besides Baddeley’s tepid love interest (Ivan Brandt), it’s rather solid.

1.5/4★½

CREDITS

Directed by Jack Raymond; screenplay by W.P. Lipscomb, based on a story by Arthur Conan Doyle; director of photography, Freddie Young; edited by Maclean Rogers; produced by Herbert Wilcox; released by Woolf & Freedman Film Service.

Starring Lyn Harding (Dr. Grimesby Rylott), Raymond Massey (Sherlock Holmes), Angela Baddeley (Helen Stonor), Nancy Price (Mrs. Staunton), Athole Stewart (Dr. John Watson), Marie Ault (Mrs. Hudson), Franklyn Bellamy (Alaine), Ivan Brandt (Curtis) and Stanley Lathbury (Rodgers).

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Arsenic and Old Lace (1944, Frank Capra)

Arsenic and Old Lace has to be one of the finest–if not the finest–film adaptations of a stage production. Nothing about the film, save the knowledge it’s from a play, suggests its theatrical origins… not the one night present action, not the one set. It’s an ideal motion picture comedy, down to what has to be Frank Capra’s most inventive direction. Capra’s confined to that one set for the majority of the film and he keeps things very interesting. He reveals the house gradually, not even exploring the full size of the main room–where around seventy percent of the story takes place–until well into the third act of the film.

The film’s full of fantastic performances, but the story’s split between Cary Grant and Raymond Massey. Grant disappears for a while and Massey takes over, but filling a completely different role than Grant. The film sort of goes without a protagonist for a while in Grant’s absence (Massey isn’t really an antagonist at this point) and the story accelerates into a different area without him. When he returns, he doesn’t inhabit the film in the same way. For the first half, watching Arsenic and Old Lace is watching Grant. Sure, lots of good stuff is going on around him, but his performance is captivating. It’s unlike anything else (Grant hated the performance) and it’s wonderful. Maybe because it so perfectly matches the viewer’s expectation of a reasonable person’s response to the film’s fantastic situation. The romance between Grant and Priscilla Lane–which has a lot of texture independent of the main action’s two plots (the aunts and their gentlemen and Massey’s return)–is wonderful too. Lane and Grant play great off each other; it’s impossible to imagine anyone else in the roles.

Massey has the film’s most difficult role, since it’s so incredible. I wonder how much Arsenic and Old Lace did for Boris Karloff’s name recognition, as Massey has to personify the idea of Karloff (and the unmentioned Frankenstein) from his first moment on film. But Massey has to go further–he has to be both menacing, dangerous and silly. The viewer has to be scared of Massey and what he might do, but also has to be able to laugh at him. By the time he’s ready to go after Grant, the viewer’s already had a chance to laugh at him a little, but Massey brings it all around to present real danger.

Peter Lorre has a similar position. He has to be funny–Lorre’s performance is one of film’s great comedic performances–but also endearing and a little disturbing. He’s still Massey’s partner in crime, even if he’s incredibly likable. There isn’t a weak performance in the film or even one less than stellar, but Lorre still stands out.

The rest of the supporting cast–Josephine Hull and Jean Adair as the two aunts are great–is all exceptional. Arsenic and Old Lace is one of those flawlessly casted films.

My wife had never seen the film before, which made the viewing even more entertaining. It’s least like the rest of Capra’s films of the period, but that dissimilarity somehow makes it more exciting to see from him. It’s as close to experimental as Capra ever got with his style. It might even be his most impressive work as a director; he’s essential to the film, which has such a strong script, it’s easy to think he could have gotten lost somewhere.

I’m hard pressed to identify my favorite part of the film. I love the sequences with Lane and Grant in the graveyard, but Grant’s long stretch of discovering what’s going on–where he’s the whole show–is fantastic too. But then there’s Lorre….

There’s just too many great things about Arsenic and Old Lace to narrow it down.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Produced and directed by Frank Capra; screenplay by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein, based on the play by Joseph Kesselring; director of photography, Sol Polito; edited by Daniel Mandell; music by Max Steiner; released by Warner Bros.

Starring Cary Grant (Mortimer Brewster), Josephine Hull (Aunt Abby Brewster), Jean Adair (Aunt Martha Brewster), Raymond Massey (Jonathan Brewster), Peter Lorre (Dr. Herman Einstein), Priscilla Lane (Elaine Harper), John Alexander (Theodore Brewster), Jack Carson (Officer Patrick O’Hara), John Ridgely (Officer Saunders), Edward McNamara (Police Sgt. Brophy), James Gleason (Lt. Rooney), Grant Mitchell (Reverend Harper), Edward Everett Horton (Mr. Witherspoon), Vaughan Glaser (Judge Cullman), Chester Clute (Dr. Gilchrist), Edward McWade (Mr. Gibbs), Charles Lane (Reporter at Marriage License Office) and Garry Owen (Taxi Cab Driver).

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Chain Lightning (1950, Stuart Heisler)

Both critically and popularly, Chain Lightning gets classified as one of Bogart’s lesser, late 1940s films. While the film certainly is a star vehicle for Bogart, it’s only “lesser” if one compares it to Bogart’s stellar films (basically, the ones everyone remembers). On its own, Chain Lightning is far from perfect, but it’s a fine film. Director Stuart Heisler can direct some good scenes–since the film’s about a test pilot, there’s a lot of Bogart-only scenes, which Heisler handles (he has trouble when it’s a group scene). The special effects are quite good and they’re another thing Heisler incorporates well. I was about to say he didn’t do the romance scenes right, but there’s one scene between Bogart and Eleanor Parker where I can say I’ve never seen the shots before or since, so he does good on that aspect too.

The problems with Chain Lightning come from its lack of prestige. It’s about a test pilot, Bogart’s the only “star,” as Parker probably wouldn’t become a star for another year or two. (Apparently, Chain Lightning’s release was even held up for a year). The film’s got some really dynamic character relationships–between Bogart and Parker (he abandoned her in Europe during the war when he went home for no reason other than laziness), between Parker and Bogart’s rival Richard Whorf, and between Bogart and Whorf. Except none of the relationships are standard–Whorf, for instance, thinks the world of Bogart’s pilot, while never doubting Parker will choose him (even though, obviously, the audience knows different). Bogart gets to come across as petty and mercenary, to degrees I don’t think I’ve ever seen him go before (even in Casablanca, which is probably the best comparison). It’s just too short.

At ninety-five minutes, with multiple special effects sequences and a five or six year present action (some takes place during the war, then in 1950… sorry, 1949), it’s way too short. There’s not enough fat on the script to pad out the film, so it’s just the one straight gesture and the writers can’t quite make it work without hokey voiceovers and narration. For some of it, most of it in the middle, actually, I kept thinking it was so much better than I remembered it being (then the final act came around). Still, it’s certainly not a bad or even mediocre film. It has a lot going for it.