Director: George Stevens
Nominated for seven Academy Awards in 1942, The Talk of the Town paired Cary Grant and Jean Arthur, the co-stars of Howard Hawks’ aviation actioner Only Angels Have Wings, with the delightful Ronald Colman, whose career this picture would revive. Director George Stevens, who had been directing relatively light comedic fare since the early 1930s, would transition in the 40s and especially the 50s into more serious narratives with overt social messages. This picture, then, might be seen as an interesting transition point in that it awkwardly juggles its comedic elements with heavy-handed preaching. The message submitted by Stevens and screenwriters Irwin Shaw and Sidney Buchman, however, is ill-fit for their narrative. Grant and Arthur chastise Colman for his emphasis on logical thinking, suggesting that one needs to be more sensitive and emotionally-driven in order to achieve true morality. To suggest that reason is a dehumanizing moral blight is wrong-headed in itself, but moreso it goes against much of the drama of the picture. Take the climax, for example, in which a blood-thirsty crowd protests outside of the courtroom hearing of the wrongly-convicted Grant. They, appealing fully to their emotions and not submitting to reason, are the most violent, ignorant characters in the movie. As flawed as the anti-intellectual, logically-unsound message is, however, the picture’s true interest can be associated with its overt homosexual undercurrents, not only between Grant and Colman, but especially between Colman and his loyal valet played by Rex Ingram. The most unusual and surprisingly poignant moment of the picture is when Colman shaves his beard – a beard which he had earlier mentioned was grown in order to make him appear more masculine. Stevens shoots Ingram in a close up – this being a movie with very few close-ups so pronounced – shedding a tear, which makes little narrative sense unless you presume that Colman and Ingram have been lovers, and Ingram feels slighted by Colman’s new direction.
Director: John Ford
Edward G. Robinson plays a dual role in one of his very best showcases, The Whole Town’s Talking. Today’s viewers might be surprised to see that John Ford is credited with directing the picture, however Ford did make a number of comedies in his career and, even in his serious outings, his boisterous Irish humor would often come through. An office clerk at an accounting firm is mistaken for a notorious bank robber on the day that he was to be fired. When the police give him an identity card so as not to lead to any future confusion, the bank robber catches word and shows up on the clerk’s doorstep with intentions of routinely borrowing it. As the comedic elements of Ford’s pictures, especially his westerns (The Searchers being the prime example), are often brash and off-putting, it is a surprise to see how delicately he handles the humor that comes at the expense of the meek, affable clerk. The screenplay is credited to Jo Swerling and Robert Riskin, frequent collaborators with Frank Capra, and in its warm sentiment it possesses more of the traits of a Capra vehicle than it does a Ford. Most touching of all is the relationship that develops between the clerk and Jean Arthur, who, like many of Capra’s heroines (Arthur chief among them), gives the hero the confidence and drive to succeed. Robinson was initially reluctant to work on another tough guy part, but the picture is wholly devoted to presenting his dynamism – he makes a convincing romantic lead, and is given the chance to both convey the sensitivity of Marinius of Our Vines Have Tender Grapes and the menace of “Little Caesar” Bandello.
Director: Cecil B. DeMille
Cecil B. DeMille’s flamboyance is on display in The Plainsman, a western that boasts of containing a highly-fictionalized account of the Old West, condensing timelines and bringing together an unusual array of frontier icons in an apparent war against historical accuracy. Ever the showman, DeMille’s centerpiece is a battle against the Cheyenne Indians, which incorporates a reported two thousand Native American extras and some surprisingly convincing rear projection work. If the scale of the warfare is satisfactory, however, the casting of Gary Cooper is a blight that is never overcome. In Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, which was released the same year (earning him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor), Cooper plays an intentionally dull, laconic leading man, however in comparison to his Wild Bill Hickok, Deeds is a rousing, animated presence. One would be hard-pressed to find a more apathetic western hero, with his wooden line readings carrying all of the authority of a goldfish. His co-star, Jean Arthur, does what she can in the thankless role of Calamity Jane, but even her vivacity can’t quite bring integrity to the worrisome blunderer – take a shot every time that she must whimper “Oh, Bill!” and your liver will never recover. Beyond the miscasting, DeMille is not at all suited to the genre. His busy frames are the antithesis of the brooding landscapes of Ford or Hawks, and as such he loses the sense of mythologizing that is present in the best of the genre, denigrating his heroes to an afterthought amidst the action setpieces.
Director: Frank Capra
Near the end of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, a Freudian psychologist suggests that the title character possesses the qualities associated with manic depression, demonstrating the considerable highs and lows in Deeds’ outlook over time through the use of a chart. The graph, of course, is eventually dismissed (psychiatrists were rarely heeded in Hollywood until after the war), however one might make the case that it accurately represents the tonal qualities of a Frank Capra picture. A cloying sentimentalist in the eyes of some, his pictures often dwelled in the murk of a corrupt civilization before a single hero comes and speaks on behalf of a common cause, thus achieving harmony in the community. One of the very best of these predictable endeavors is this 1936 romantic comedy about a humble small town man who inherits twenty million dollars from the uncle he never knew. Gary Cooper is Deeds, and at the time he was cast-against-type – in pictures like Design for Living, Cooper was a smoldering, sexual figure who would likely be associated with high society. At first, his Deeds is numbingly dull, but that is the intention. Through the eyes of a reporter played by Jean Arthur – who romantically pursues him for the benefit of her journalistic career – the audience gradually warms up to the “simple” man, whose childlike enthusiasm at seeing a fire engine is infectious in its warm-hearted naivety. While the film begins to feel overlong once the all-too-familiar court case is underway, Capra’s charitable message is appealing if not radical, and the relationship between Cooper and Arthur really sings thanks to their great on-screen chemistry. Arthur, who would finally find stardom after the success of the picture, is a joy, as the audience watches her false, opportunistic smile slowly transform into something more authentically affectionate as her relationship with Deeds progresses.
Director: Drew Goddard
The much discussed meta horror comedy The Cabin in the Woods comes, according to screenwriters Drew Goddard and Joss Whedon, as a direct response to the violent, cynical trends that have permeated contemporary horror cinema since the beginning of the century in money-making series’ like Final Destination, Saw, and Hostel. To attack these modern gore films, Goddard and Whedon have constructed a world in which a disposable group of teens are slaughtered by a set of circumstances that are contrived by higher-ups in an industrial complex. When the kids act too smart, for instance, their air becomes polluted with pheromones that will inevitably encourage them to have gratuitous sex. As a piece of genre criticism, the efforts of the filmmakers are astute and, if not necessarily revelatory in the post-Scream world, endearing. The necessity of the Richard Jenkins and Bradley Whitford characters – not unlike the game-makers of The Hunger Games franchise – is not merely to comment on the audience’s indifference to the violence that they witness on screen, but as self-reflexive substitutes of the writers, directors, and editors of a genre picture. Through them, the contrivances of the typical “cabin in the woods” narrative are directly addressed – the series of types (including the “virgin”, who will most certainly outlast her companions), the ominous gas station attendant who sets the horrific tone, and, ultimately, irrational survival behavior. Several post-modern genre pictures have made knowing quips about their own predictability, but The Cabin the Woods is quite different in that it is an attack on the filmmakers and studios that continue to produce such sadomasochistic monotony. Once Goddard and Whedon have exhausted this exploration, however, what follows in the latter half is an, if visually interesting, ultimately tedious exercise involving Gods, monsters, and the woman behind the curtain. Amidst all of the climactic carnage, it is easy to forget the initial intelligence that was present the writing.
Director: Luis Buñuel
In many ways the quintessential example of late-period Buñuel, Tristana is an ample showcase of a number of the director’s biggest interests: obsession, sadomasochism, religion, and so on. Set in Toledo, Spain and starring Catherine Deneuve (in her second collaboration with him following Belle de Jour), Tristana is based on a book by heralded Spanish novelist Benito Pérez Galdós. Fernando Rey is Don Lope, an atheist nobleman who falls in love with his adopted daughter (as played by Deneuve) when she reaches her late teens. Soon, she leaves him for a much younger man, only to return years later after she has fallen ill with a tumor that will leave her an amputee. Buñuel’s concern is power – Tristana, an object of Don Lope’s pleasure, eventually seeks vengeance on the man who took her virginity. It is the stuff of preposterous melodrama – and, frankly, it can sometimes be difficult to see it as anything more – but Buñuel is fully in control and, more significantly, entirely self aware. Early in the picture, for example, Don Lope quips that the only way to keep a woman honest is to break her leg so that she cannot leave home. With bitter, hilarious irony, it is the crippled Tristana that is the catalyst for Don Lope’s downfall. Just as the director’s final film, That Obscure Object of Desire, would be, Tristana‘s structure is almost entirely symmetrical – the shifting power dynamic happens roughly half-way into the picture, or at least it is then that Tristana’s youthful exuberance is shown to have been quelled and Don Lope’s demise begins. This sense of inevitability is echoed in the final frames of the film in which Buñuel, as if having pressed rewind, traces back glimpses of key moments in the relationship.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1954, luis buñuel, the adventures of robinson crusoe
Director: Luis Buñuel
A fascinating departure in Luis Buñuel’s oeuvre, The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was the surrealist’s first American-funded film, his first film in color, and the only film that he completed entirely in English. Dan O’Herlihy, Oscar-nominated for the role (eventually losing out to Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront), stars as the titular Crusoe, who finds himself deserted on an island along with only a cat and a dog. Those anticipating the fanciful delusions familiar of Buñuel’s work might find themselves disappointed, however early on there is a remarkable hallucination sequence in which Crusoe glimpses his ever-disapproving father. The specter washes a pig while speaking to Crusoe in a sing-song cadence, and Buñuel’s editors, Carlos Savage and Alberto E. Valenzuela, cut to shots of the father drowning in the sea and a parched Crusoe on a beach in the midst of it. Buñuel’s pictures were not typified merely by their aesthetic values, however, and where it fits into his canon is in the film’s heavy Christian symbology and in the complex moral attitudes that it addresses through the use of a reformed cannibal that Crusoe takes into his custody. For Code-era Hollywood, there is a surprising scene in which Friday, the savage, poses Crusoe logical inquires about the nature of God to which he has no reply. Beyond these pleasures, it’s a well-paced and beautifully-filmed adaptation – filled with golden and green hues by cinematographer Alex Phillips – that successfully brings Daniel Defoe’s novel to the screen without compromising either the source material or Buñuel’s sensibilities as a storyteller.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1930, all quiet on the western front, lewis milestone
Director: Lewis Milestone
As poignant as any war film ever made, All Quiet on the Western Front is an unrelenting portrait of young German soldiers during World War I. Released in April of 1930, the picture arrived at a time in which Hollywood was at the very beginning of one of its most exciting periods, but nonetheless the logistics of talking pictures were still being perfected. Lewis Milestone’s achievement, then, is all the more spectacular considering its context – it was a picture with all of the spectacle of its greatest predecessor in the genre, The Big Parade, with a dynamic soundtrack, elaborate tracking shots, and an uncompromising, perhaps controversial, social message. While it is hardly subtle, one cannot degrade a picture with these intentions as being excessive – aside from suggesting the realism of war, it is as steadfast as any battle picture in its anti-war sentiment. The soldiers discuss the idiocy of fighting for one’s country, and in a key, heart-wrenching moment, a German soldier mourns his fallen enemy. In one of the earliest scenes, the camera pulls back from a military procession into a classroom, where young school boys are lectured about the glory of being a soldier. This is one of the many moments in which Milestone frames the soldiers in windows and doorways, as if echoing their trenches, or even their coffins. Furthermore, as much as directors like Rouben Mamoulian were experimenting with the limits of sound in their early talkies, very few soundtracks of this era were as full and vivid as the one found here. The never-ending blasts of explosions and gunfire persist throughout the picture, not only evoking a sense of place but quite literally taunting the suffering men on the battlefield.
Director: Jacques Tourneur
A quintessential film noir from the director and cinematographer of Cat People, Out of the Past carries a particular type of cynicism that had become especially prominent in American filmmaking during the post-war years. In the opening moments, an idyllic small town is introduced, and within minutes it becomes infiltrated by a crude man with a questionable agenda. The wholesome suburban life that was often reflected in the late 1940s and 1950s is up-rooted by the man’s presence, who has literally come to destroy the facade for our protagonist. He, Robert Mitchum, will most certainly not go down easy. Daniel Mainwaring’s script, adapted from his own novel Build My Gallows High, is packed with crackling dialogue, perfectly suited to Mitchum’s imposing yet alluring figure. Late in the picture, Mitchum tells the femme fatale, played by an unforgettable Jane Greer, that they’re both no good and that they deserve each other. In doing so, he is underselling himself and the relationship that he has developed with an agreeable local girl played by Virginia Huston. Haunted by his past, however, with a permanence that he has fully resigned himself to, he must give up respectable living for the reckless toil of a life of crime and double-crosses. It is fitting that a picture that so skewers domestic stability came just after the second World War. Much like Mitchum’s character, men who suffered trauma on the battlefield had a difficult time assimilating back into home living, and as such the hero with a troubled past reflects the inability of war veterans to simply “begin again” on the homefront.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1934, h. bruce humberstone, merry wives of reno
Director: H. Bruce Humberstone
The summer of 1934 saw the the birth of the Production Code Administration, which would impose its moral standards on Hollywood pictures for the next three decades. Merry Wives of Reno, released in May of that year, can then be considered one of the last of the pre-Code films, and what a high note it was to go out on. Joseph Breen must have been pulling his hair out within minutes – just after the credits, a young couple wakes together in bed, having clearly sexually celebrated their one year anniversary the night prior. The writer, Robert Lord, was no stranger to such controversy - Convention City, which he penned in 1933, was infamously banned and eventually destroyed, making it the last missing feature from Warner Brothers studios. Much of the cast of that picture returns, including Guy Kibbee, Ruth Donnelly, Hugh Herbert, and Frank McHugh, and, if it isn’t quite as blatant with its sexual promiscuity as Convention City was said to be, it nonetheless possesses a cynicism in dealing with marriage that was certainly not allowed in Hollywood in the coming years. The survival of three couples dangles on the precipice of divorce, as the women make their way to Reno to make their separations official. For the oldest of the couples – Kibbee and Donnelly – divorce has long been a wish of theirs, however they continue to bargain with one another over the potential alimony payments. Though the series of sentimental conclusions comes as little surprise, what is particularly effective about the final act is that the characters don’t ever come to reason with one another, but instead the husbands contrive a situation of infidelity for their wives in order to illustrate the misunderstanding that put them in the dog house. Their “revenge”, then, keeps things from becoming too sweet, as does a memorable bellhop played by McHugh who, in the end, walks off arm in arm with two happy divorcees.
