Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 1949, knock on any door, nicholas ray
Director: Nicholas Ray
Before his debut feature, They Live by Night, had been released in theaters, Nicholas Ray was enlisted by Humphrey Bogart to direct a social problem picture for his newly-founded Santana Production company. Bogart himself was cast as a lawyer who must defend a delinquent, played by John Derek, in a murder trial. The film, Knock on Any Door, was based on a novel by Willard Motley, which argued that the slums of America are producing criminals, and that society at large should take responsibility for these cyclical patterns of the impoverished class. While the premise leads to a moving, humanist speech by Bogart in the third act, it is slightly mishandled given that Derek had many opportunities to succeed in his youth – Bogart’s fatherly companionship, his relationship with a social worker, a loving, supporting girlfriend - and he blew each one. While the picture calls for social reform, it conversely suggests that, at a certain point, the damage has been done and that criminals are simply a lost cause. Despite the critical flaw, the picture is handsomely made – in the flashback sequences of Derek’s childhood, characters wear striped shirts that resemble prison garb, and there’s a number of vertical lines both within the set and constructed through shadows that suggest that Derek, like the rest of his friends and family, is literally trapped within his socioeconomic boundaries. Derek wasn’t much of an actor and, indeed, his “pretty boy” monicker in the film reveals just about all that he has going for him, however his scenes are often salvaged by the talented character players around him (a terribly-scarred George Macready as the district attorney is particularly memorable).
Director: Max Ophüls
Adapted from Elisabeth Sanxay Holding’s novel The Blank Wall, which would also serve as the source material for a 2001 film entitled The Deep End with Tilda Swinton in the leading role, The Reckless Moment is the last picture that Max Ophüls made in Hollywood, and it is among the biggest deviations that he made from the romantic films that he built his reputation on. Joan Bennett plays a woman who attempts to cover up her daughter’s accidental murder of a callous, much older lover. After disposing of the body, James Mason shows up at her doorstep and blackmails Bennett, having found the love letters that the daughter had sent to the boyfriend prior to his death. In the way that Ophüls plays with morality and the shifting relationships between criminals and victims, the picture is familiar of Hitchcock. The scene in which Bennett is covering up the murder is shot with a number of long tracking shots, cutting intermittently to examine the eerily desolate landscape. Just as Hitchcock was fascinated by silence, Ophüls refrains from using any score in this sequence – all that is on the soundtrack is the sound of the boat’s motor as Bennett rides out into the sea. Besides the formal achievements, the picture is memorable due to Mason’s blackmailer, a predator who is nonetheless kind-hearted and wrecked with his own guilt. Watch how he defensively reiterates to Bennett that Nagle, the partner that he speaks of, is real. In the way that Mason delivers the line, the audience can come to any number of conclusions about the relationship between the two blackmailers, and how Mason himself is a victim of his accomplice.
Director: Max Ophüls
The first of the two noirs that Max Ophüls directed in Hollywood, Caught is a scathing cultural critique sometimes undone by its tendency to overstate. Barbara Bel Geddes plays a young woman whose sole ambition is to marry rich. She succeeds in gaining the hand of the ultra-possessive Robert Ryan, who considers her as his wife to be an employee. Ophüls was always a feminist director, and in this picture he sympathizes with the expectations placed upon women by the media. It is significant that Bel Geddes is not solely criticized for her warped world view – the way that her arc plays out suggests that her attraction to the rich lifestyle is a sickness in the vein of alcoholism or drug addiction. The first images of the film are stills from fashion and modeling magazines, suggesting the dangerous allurement of celebrity and the way that women, in particular, are targeted by the fashion editors. The picture is well-acted and has moments of genuine suspense, however it begins to spin its wheels in the final act as the script bombards the audience with a multitude of speeches about how unimportant it is to be rich, a point that had been made clear an hour previous.
Director: Edward Buzzell
An insufferable Esther Williams vehicle only notable for Frank Loesser’s “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”, Neptune’s Daughter is a poorly-aged debacle lazily directed by Edward Buzzell. Though I’ve only scratched the surface of her body of work, Williams appears to have little comic talent on screen – while she is formidable in dramatic roles such as Million Dollar Mermaid, here she is absolutely humorless in what is otherwise a live-action cartoon. The picture displays the studio system at it’s lousiest – it is hardly coherent, with a polo scene late in the film rife with stylistically unmotivated jump cuts. “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” is so helplessly out of context that the scene becomes funny for all of the wrong reasons (in the same scene, Montalban refers to the warmth of the room, not to mention the fact that swimming suits are the attire of choice throughout the bulk of the picture). Even with a lousy Williams vehicle you might expect a redeeming spectacle or two, however the lengthiest of which is entirely missable and occurs just before the end credits roll.
Director: Raoul Walsh
Students of screenwriting should be encouraged to see White Heat. It’s a film that aggressively forces it’s way through a convoluted narrative without wasting a line. James Cagney’s Cody Jarrett is one of his finest creations – a psychopath captained by a controlling mother, tormented by a paralyzing emotional neurosis. What makes this particular performance so memorable is that it recalls much of what he’d done up until that point in his career. Take, for instance, a scene early on where he kicks a chair out from underneath Virginia Mayo – a brutish act not far removed from Tom Powers of The Public Enemy smashing a grapefruit into his girlfriend’s face. Mayo is also memorable as the despicable, ill-mannered moll, as is Margaret Wycherly as the controlling mother to end all mothers. In the end of the film, silhouetted by flames, Jarrett shouts “Made it, ma, top of the world!” in one of the most lasting images and line deliveries of the gangster genre.
