Armored Car Robbery

/ Colin McGuigan / 9 Comments

Sometimes a title will intrigue, sometimes it will beguile, and sometimes it’s just self-explanatory. Armored Car Robbery (1950) by Richard Fleischer lets us know exactly what the subject  matter will be right off the bat. I guess if one wanted to be pedantic, the real focus of the movie is on the aftermath of that robbery in the title. Even so, there’s not much doubt about what you’re going to get and the film itself is a model of the same kind of pared back economy. It is most refreshing to spend time with a movie that can tell an absorbing story in a little over an hour without the narrative feeling rushed or unduly compressed.

We are thrown straight into the tale from the off, witnessing the finishing touches to a plan being applied by its mastermind Dave Purvis (William Talman). Nevertheless, even as we  watch him recording the response time of the LAPD to a reported incident at Wrigley Field ballpark, there’s that sense that all will not go off exactly the way he’s reckoned. It’s the way of things in crime movies, and maybe more tellingly the way of things in relation to human interaction. No matter how meticulous the planning, there’s no getting away from the foibles and vagaries of that most incalculable of all elements, the human heart. The illogicality, and in this case perhaps the emotional dysfunction, of humanity is neatly illustrated when the attention shifts to Purvis’ associate Benny McBride (Douglas Fowley). He is first glimpsed in a box seat in a burlesque theater with a big grin all over his face. Why? Because he’s getting a massive kick out of watching his estranged wife Yvonne (Adele Jergens) stripping on stage. It’s apparent too that he’s maybe deriving even more enjoyment from the fact he’s looking at an auditorium full of baying strangers lapping up the view. When we learn that that she wants no more to do with him, the spectacle of a man reveling in the pleasure of strangers watching the woman he can no longer have undressing in public is quite sobering. You just know this cannot end well, and it’s hammered home with greater force when yet another wrinkle is added – Purvis is romancing Yvonne behind McBride’s back. As such, when the heist alluded to in the title hits the inevitable snag, there’s no real surprise to be had. Somewhat perversely, given the tangle of personal affairs, the glitch comes from the outside, the combination of an unexpected error in the timing as well as a couple of stray shots. The result is a dead detective, a mortally wounded McBride and a panicked getaway. The rest of the movie follows on from that, with the tough and rasping Lieutenant Cordell (Charles McGraw) hell bent on running in the hoods who have left his friend dead on the sidewalk. It devolves into what we would now term a police procedural, as clues are painstakingly collated and woven into a net that will be drawn inexorably tighter.

Richard Fleischer’s early films noir are all enjoyably pacy movies, all coming home at around an hour with only Trapped stretching as far as 80 minutes or thereabouts. There’s a directness to them, a kind of relentlessness that drives them on toward a no nonsense resolution. That’s obviously a product of their B status, but Fleischer brought a style to his presentations that wasn’t always apparent in other budget features. His close-up shots are particularly effective, that focus on Fowley’s reaction to his wife’s performance has a certain shock value once it’s known what their relationship is. And the director gets mileage too from having Talman, Steve Brodie and Gene Evans scuttling round piles of lumber and freight on a shadow drenched dockside while McGraw’s squad tries to ferret them out. The later interrogation of Steve Brodie after he’s been picked up is tightly framed, emphasising how little wriggle room he has, and when McGraw thrusts himself aggressively into the shot there’s no doubt whatsoever how neatly he has been snared. None of this requires expensive or complex setups, just a good eye for composition and lighting and the awareness of how to catch a mood and portray it on the screen.

The best of the early Fleischer noirs are the two starring Charles McGraw – Armored Car Robbery and The Narrow Margin – both of which cast the hard-edged actor in what appear to be uncharacteristically heroic roles. So successful had he been as tough enforcer types for Anthony Mann and Robert Siodmak that he seems to have been born to inhabit such parts. Yet these two Fleischer movies use the man’s natural abrasiveness to excellent effect while still placing him on the side of the angels. The gruff, bulldog demeanor is fitting for a man in charge of a dangerous assignment, and one with a strong element of personal interest too owing to the death of his long-serving partner. He never comes across as unnecessarily belligerent, rather he is as forceful as any particular situation demands. William Talman was another of those supporting players who could shade his work according to the requirements of the script. He could be terrifyingly dangerous as in The Hitch-Hiker, combative and adversarial as Hamilton Burger in TV’s Perry Mason, or even selflessly heroic in The Racket. Adele Jergens had the right brassy quality as the femme fatale of the piece; maybe more could have been done with the triangle between herself, Talman and Fowley, but there’s enough on screen as it is and too wide a detour in that direction might well have slowed some of the story’s momentum. In support, one can’t ask for much better than people of the caliber of Douglas Fowley, Steve Brodie and Gene Evans.

Armored Car Robbery is what might be termed a textbook RKO film noir, tough and tight as a drum, and immensely satisfying to watch. I think that studio’s B movies were in a class of their own with high levels of craftsmanship on show on many occasions, and no little artistry to found in some of them too. Armored Car Robbery may be a small movie and a modest one at that, but it’s also straight out of the top drawer.

Mirage

/ Colin McGuigan / 17 Comments

A journey from darkness into light. That is as succinct a description of Mirage (1965) as any I can imagine. It is a slickly told tale of confusion, loss of identity and amnesia all wrapped in an almost dizzying aura of disorientation, which is perhaps only reasonable given the fact the movie was made right in the middle of the socially, artistically and politically tumultuous 1960s.

The titles appear over a nighttime tableau of a brightly lit New York skyline. And then, just as the film proper begins, one high rise building is abruptly plunged into darkness and so too is the world of our protagonist. In the gloom and flickering shadows cast by hastily struck matches and cigarette lighters David Stillwell (Gregory Peck) emerges into a corridor of bustling and chattering silhouettes, phantom forms looming out of and retreating back into the darkness, men and women wrenched suddenly from their corporate conviviality and left to flounder in an environment which has been rendered simultaneously bewildering and alluring by the simple expedient of a random power cut. Stillwell exchanges some banter with strangers and colleagues alike before heading for the stairs. There he runs into a young woman, Shela (Diane Baker), who appears to know him yet also talks in apparent riddles. Descending from the 27th floor, their conversation veers from dime store philosophy to coy flirtation, and in among it all is an intriguing reference to a mysterious Major. By the time the they reach the street level, suspicion and obfuscation has overtaken them. The girl has become inexplicably indignant and Stillwell is about to come face to face with the fact he is something of a cipher, not least in his own eyes.

When practically everything one thinks one knows is thrown into question, when sudden death and the ever present threat of further violence start to become commonplace, when one’s normally assured awareness of self is challenged at every turn, then doubts about sanity and reality start to creep in. There is the dreadful realization on the part of Stillwell that, quite improbably, he has no memory of the last two years of his life. He knows his name, and where he’s supposed to live, but that’s about it. The job he’s supposed to do feels unfamiliar, he has no friends he can recall and odd images pop up in his mind: a conversation beneath the boughs of a tree in a place far from the city, the shocked face of a man plummeting from a window high above the unforgiving sidewalk. With complexities and confusion piling on top of each other, with the girl drifting in and out of the picture, he consults first a rude and bellicose psychiatrist (Robert H Harris) and then a novice private eye (Walter Matthau) in his quest to discover who he actually is.

Adapted by Peter Stone (Charade) from a novel by Howard Fast, which I haven’t read and thus can’t comment on the script’s fidelity or otherwise to the source, Mirage is probably the last good movie made by Edward Dmytryk. It is what we have come to refer to as “Hitchcockian”, a twisty thriller with an everyman lead adrift amid a baffling set of circumstances, replete with a MacGuffin about chemical formulae and profiteering. Stories built around episodes of amnesia tend to grab the attention and there is a natural curiosity about what is really going on. The movie captures the perplexity of a man who cannot be sure of who or what he is, although the fear that should accompany it isn’t as well developed. The old noir staple of the flashback sequence is in evidence, or maybe it would be more accurate to speak of flashback moments. Isolated instances of the past regularly intrude on the present – a snatch of conversation, a word here and there, a man moments away from death. All of this evokes the feeling of knowledge swirling around the periphery of the mind, of memories darting glances at consciousness before retreating again to the security of oblivion. It works in that it keeps the viewer off balance and provides a kind of connection to the character on screen groping his way toward the truth.

The role of Stillwell wouldn’t have been a great stretch for Gregory Peck, a star who audiences generally trusted from the get-go. He had the air of a man you want to believe in yet he could also project internal conflict and pressures quite convincingly. In short, he came across as a guy it was possible to imagine getting himself tangled up in a mess such as this. Diane Baker is fine, but perhaps the role as written could have provided her with a bit more mystery, another layer of uncertainty for the hero to contend with. Walter Matthau again charms and amuses as the detective who blunders around nearly as blindly as Peck, using his hangdog weariness to excellent effect. On the other hand, Kevin McCarthy is wasted as Peck’s colleague, which is not to say he plays his part poorly. His screen time is limited and the role is underdeveloped – he does the slippery smarm well but flits in and out of the narrative too much to make any impression. Jack Weston and George Kennedy are enjoyably odd as enforcers, the former all craven obsequiousness while the latter is as belligerent and boorish as usual. Solid backup is provided by Robert H Harris, Walter Abel and Leif Erickson.

All told, Mirage is an admirable attempt at channeling the process of memory recovery, depicting a psychological struggle using the visual language of the cinema. That’s on a  purely technical level, but the movie works quite successfully as an entertaining thriller too. The film has long been available on a well authored DVD in the US and it has also been subsequently released on Blu-ray. I have this German BD, which I can heartily recommend.

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Lonely Are the Brave

/ Colin McGuigan / 25 Comments

My previous post was a brief perusal of two westerns from just before what can be seen as the cut off point for the classic western era. As with most if not all the genre efforts from around that time, there’s that sense of trying to look in two directions at once. If we do take 1962 as marking the last year for the truly classical western, it’s also interesting to look at a movie from that year which not only retains a strong feeling for the legacy of the genre but is also one which cast ahead in a way I increasingly feel was the path that ought to have been followed rather than the self-defeating one that grew out of the Spaghetti and revisionist versions. The film in question? Lonely Are the Brave.

The opening scene perfectly encapsulates the paradoxical situation at the heart of the story. Is there anything more evocative of classical western imagery than that of a weary rider stretched out on the open plains, resting up after a hard ride and a long day, gently warmed by the glow of the camp fire he’s built next to him – a man at peace and to all intents and purposes practically a part of the landscape he inhabits and works? And then the jarring intrusion of the modern world, the boom and roar overhead, drawing our eyes and his upward to focus on vapor trails carved across the sky by a passing jet aircraft. The message is simple: the world has changed, inevitably so, morphing into one of noise and urgency, where the travails and pleasures of an earlier time have been supplanted by an updated variety, and the only frontiers still unconquered are those the marvels of technology haven’t quite reached yet. All of that raises a question too, namely whether these two perceptions of the world can co-exist, or whether one must naturally wipe away the other. By the end, the latter is very strongly indicated, but I’m not sure if Dalton Trumbo’s script has entirely closed the door on the former. Even in the ultimate tragedy lies a grain of hope, and perhaps no more than half a grain at that, reflected in the bittersweet admiration of a lawman who sees the futility and waste in the contemporary world’s need to impose itself on a free spirit. One could argue that the last shot heard in the movie represents the one which killed the western, a coup de grâce for a genre which was about to slip into sharp decline. I do think that is mainly what Trumbo was expressing, although I also reckon he left the door not quite ajar but still open just a crack.

“A westerner likes open country. That means he’s got to hate fences. And the more fences there are, the more he hates them…Have you ever noticed how many fences there are getting to be? And the signs they got on them: no hunting, no hiking, no admission, no trespassing, private property, closed area, start moving, go away, get lost, drop dead!”

Whatever one’s opinion of the destination, the journey that gets us that point is a fascinating elegy to a myth. If the myth of the Old West had any meaning, it was as a celebration of freedom. Like all myths, however, this cannot be entirely true. Unfettered freedom is neither practicable nor possible once populations grow beyond a given point and societies, even on a rudimentary level, take hold. In the final analysis, there’s no getting away from the truism that one’s freedom extends only to the point where someone else’s begins. All of this is part of what makes the western such a compelling narrative vehicle. The entire concept has conflict built in, and conflict is the essential ingredient of drama after all. So many westerns have had as their foundation the idea of fences, be they physical or mental.

Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas) is one of the last holdouts against the relentless encroachment of contemporary life and the fences it brings with it. The first glimpse of the man confirms the impression of someone who is a walking anachronism. The attitude, appearance and lifestyle hark back to a time long gone, and his bemusement at the clamor and restrictions of the world around him makes the viewer wonder whether it’s one he has been dropped into rather than grown up with. His almost comical effort to navigate an insanely busy highway foreshadows the deeply unsettling conclusion of the picture, but it also serves to underline just how out of his depth this man is in the latter half of the 20th century. The film throws out these contrasts all the time – the way Burns is befuddled, abused and finally struck down by the brute force of modernity, juxtaposed with those scenes showing him in his element, resourceful and formidable in circumstances that favor his talents. Sure he sets himself up for difficulties in his efforts to make contact with his imprisoned friend (Michael Kane) but the way he falls foul of a bitterly aggressive one-armed man (Bill Raisch of The Fugitive) and then George Kennedy’s sour and sadistic jailer are more the result of his unfamiliarity with a world he shuns.

That world is one made up of prisons of various kinds. There is the literal one where his friend has wound up serving a two year sentence for trying to do the decent thing by some illegal immigrants, plus ça change indeed. Even Walter Matthau’s sheriff seems to spend a lot of time early on framed behind bars, albeit those set protectively into the walls of his own office. Always an immensely crafty performer, Matthau revels in the absurdity of life around him, musing on the enslavement of routine and regulation which even appears to extend to the neighborhood stray who marks his territory with near military precision on a daily basis. It’s a lovely character sketch, by turns dyspeptic and droll, and satisfyingly empathetic by the end.

Then there are the virtual prisons, those of their own making, which both Gena Rowlands and Kirk Douglas inhabit. She has locked herself into a marriage with a man who, by her own admission, she probably only half understands and from whom she is now unwillingly estranged due to his incarceration. Her affection, and maybe more, for Douglas is always apparent though in the little looks and gestures. The same applies to Douglas himself, the untamed loner who, like it or not, knows he’s beyond the point where he can change. In a movie ripe with poignancy, the touching little scene played out on the porch of Rowlands’ house before Douglas departs for the last time is superb – regret, longing and a love acknowledged and treasured yet still resisted all combine beautifully.

“Jack I’m gonna tell you something. The world that you and Paul live in doesn’t exist, maybe it never did. Out there is a real world and it’s got real borders and real fences, real laws and real trouble. And either you go by the rules or you lose. You lose everything.”

There is a great deal of loss in the film. At various points, dignity, freedom, and eventually even that tenuous hold we try to maintain on the past all are wrested from the grasp of the characters. This should mean it’s all relentlessly downbeat, but there are genuinely uplifting episodes sprinkled in among the grimmer ones. Douglas’ struggle up the rocky mountainside is an epic affair where his grit and cunning is put on trial repeatedly. It carries some of that Anthony Mann symbolism in the upward thrust, and the moment when he finally crests the peak and spurs “Whiskey”, his stubborn and recalcitrant mount, towards the treeline on the other side and the promise of salvation is truly joyous. What follows shortly afterwards is heartbreaking of course, but that neither negates nor dilutes the emotion captured in that instant.

So where does all this leave the movie within the genre’s evolution? As with the other great westerns of 1962 – here I’m thinking specifically of Ride the High Country and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance – a line is drawn beneath the genre, a sense of closure achieved. It makes its point about the doomed romanticism inherent in looking back, and if it doesn’t look ahead with positivity, it does underline the fact that progress cannot be halted. I found it interesting too to note that although the director of the movie David Miller was not someone associated with westerns – the only other he made was Billy the Kid decades earlier – it stands out as his best piece of work. I have wondered before now whether the western wouldn’t have been better served exploring its core themes in a contemporary setting once the classical era had passed, and it’s an idea I continue to find intriguing. Maybe the fact that recent years have seen the contemporary western enjoy considerable success via television, ironically the medium that once contributed to its slow demise, provides proof of that?

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A Last Hurrah?

/ Colin McGuigan / 108 Comments

No, not The Last Hurrah, Ford’s peek behind the scenes at local politics, and not necessarily the last word from myself either. What I’m talking about here is the western and in particular that brief period of time when it was still recognizably classical in form and feel, and not long before the changes which saw it rapidly evolve away from its roots towards something quite different would begin to become more apparent. So, the beginning of the end, or the end of the beginning? The answer to that will of depend on how one regards the direction and impact of those changes.

I have settled on taking a look at two movies from the same year, the date carries some significance in itself, which have at least one element in common. They also happen to be movies that I found myself watching as a result of recent revisits to a couple of others. The year in question is 1961, right on the cusp of the transition to the next stage of western filmmaking. That is not to say these films represent the end of the classical era of the western; that tends to be broadly accepted as coming about a year or so later, but they are poised (or teetering, if one feels less charitable about the subsequent years) on the edge of a major shift. The titles are Posse from Hell and The Comancheros and the most obvious link between the movies can be found in the writing: Clair Huffaker wrote both the original novel and then the screenplay for the former and produced the initial screenplay for the latter, before James Edward Grant finished it off. These films have something of the Janus aspect to them, casting wistful glances at the glories of the preceding years and simultaneously squinting ahead into the glare of a less certain future, even the characters within seem unsure in which direction they ought to be gazing.

Posse from Hell is one of Audie Murphy’s better westerns from the 1960s, none of which are actually poor, and taps into the implacability that formed the core of the man. His reluctant deputy has a steely independence about him, a coldness he was able to slip into when required and which is always credible. His dogged pursuit of Vic Morrow’s gang of four fugitive killers reminded me of the similarly relentless way Gregory Peck went about tracking down four men (incidentally, one of whom was played Lee Van Cleef in both cases) in Henry King’s magisterial The Bravados. Perhaps the fact I’d seen that movie again not long before had planted the seed in my mind, but the driven determination they both feature struck me. And yet the contrast was apparent too; King’s film had a more personal vibe, and the solid moral point it successfully hammers home is more powerful. In Posse from Hell even the motives of Morrow and his companions is abstruse, they seem to do bad things simply because they can and with no particular goal in sight. That is not to say the script has no ethical aim, Murphy’s rejection of the puritanical judgements of others and the final realization by him and Zohra Lampert that intolerance isn’t necessarily universal refute that charge. Nevertheless, it all plays out like a less anchored and more sensationalized version of tales told before.

The Comancheros, quite literally the last hurrah for Michael Curtiz to the extent he was so ill that some of the director’s duties fell to John Wayne, while enjoyable enough was already starting to feel slightly dated. There’s an unevenness to its tone that jars occasionally and dilutes what is at heart a harsh story. The whole concept of arming people to allow them to carry out atrocities has a certain unpleasantness about it, and the process of hunting down those who indulge in this sits uneasily next to some of the knockabout comedy on show. Even having Wayne’s undercover Texas Ranger take part in one of those cartoonish brawls with Lee Marvin feels odd given the nature of the latter’s half-scalped renegade character. There are also scenes of the aftermath of a Comanche raid, replete with corpses strung up and these are juxtaposed with more semi-comedic actions by Stuart Whitman wielding a shovel. Similar criticisms can be leveled during the climax at the Comanchero hideout, with hideous punishments sitting side by side with scenes of comically drunken Indians. As such, the script feels indecisive, unable to make up its mind as to what kind of movie it wants to be. This is very likely down to the way it was started by Huffaker and then rewritten by Grant.

Another viewing of Rio Conchos, which adapts a Huffaker novel and tells a somewhat similar story, served to highlight these inconsistencies. That film of just a few years later maintains a much tougher and harder-hitting focus. Of course, by that stage, the redemptive nature of westerns was being increasingly challenged – not entirely wiped out but certainly infected with a strong dash of cynicism and hints of the full-blown nihilism that the influence of the Spaghetti western would allow to drift in. Looking at these films and the involvement of Huffaker in their production has me wondering whether, if one is prepared to accept them as part of the transitional process, the author himself here should be thought of as part of the transition that was underway in the the genre. Answers on a postcard…

So there you have it, two quite different movies in theme and style yet both produced in the same year and from the same pen. That in itself makes them interesting to me, and then when you factor in how reflections of the past can be discerned alongside harbingers of the future it adds some further food for thought. The process of change is a fascinating one, it is after all the connecting fabric of life, and while the way it can be traced in westerns may not always be satisfying it is something which draws me back time and again.

Initially, I had intended to take a look at three movies here, including one more from the following year with the aim of examining the development underway and, hopefully, making some point about where things were heading in the genre. However, I found it was all growing far too long and the risk of boring readers led me to break it up into two separate posts. The other movie therefore gets its own entry, perhaps deservedly so, and will be posted in due course. As such, while this post can be read as a stand alone it can also be taken as the first of a two part look at a pivotal moment in the western genre.

The Sellout

/ Colin McGuigan / 40 Comments

Initially, I had planned to post something different today, but that can wait. Sometimes circumstances just produce odd little coincidences, we end up viewing a movie or reading a book or story that quite by chance seems to hold a mirror up to events unfolding before us. The very fact this occurs without our actively having sought out some visual corollary makes the effect all the more striking. It is sobering to remember too that 76 years ago people were warning of the dangers of complacency, ringing alarms over the way corruption and graft can creep surreptitiously into the fabric of life, how bullies and self-serving chiselers can threaten and intimidate while hiding behind the cloak of laws they manipulate and soil rather than respect. Even more unsettling is the fact The Sellout (1952) painted its picture of contemptuous authoritarianism as a localized, contained phenomenon. It should give us all pause when we realize that virtually the same unsavory themes are now being played out in real life both nationally and internationally.

Structurally, The Sellout feels like a film of two distinct halves for the simple reason that the action plays out through the eyes of two quite different protagonists – newspaper editor Haven Allridge (Walter Pidgeon) and ambitious state attorney Chick Johnson (John Hodiak). It opens with Allridge, with the stoicism, stability and straight-down-the-line respectability an actor like Pidgeon effortlessly projects. That a man such as this – successful, comfortable and with a solid family life – should end up being rolled by a sly grifter (Thomas Gomez), tossed behind bars in a cell full of lowlifes and humiliated is supposed to shock, and it does so. That he is forced (in a scene that is as suggestively unpleasant as the production code of the time would allow) to witness the degradation of his companion, a man he generously offered a ride home, hammers this point home even more resoundingly. His sense of outrage is palpable and, using the tools available to him through his profession, he embarks on a campaign to expose the rottenness which has been growing steadily in his state. And then, just as he appears poised to land the killer blow, he stops, dropping out of sight for a time before inexplicably deciding to relocate and take up a new job in Detroit. The reason for this sudden reversal is eventually revealed through the diligent and relentless investigative work of Johnson, resolutely assisted by local cop Maxwell (Karl Malden).

Gerald Mayer had made the tense and tightly confined Dial 1119 a few years earlier and he does sound work here, certainly good enough to leave me wishing he had racked up a few more titles in his relatively modest feature filmography before moving into his long and prolific career directing for television. Exposé movies can become dull affairs at times, sometimes due to the limited nature of whatever issue it is that’s being highlighted, or maybe the one-dimensional characters that can populate them. The Sellout avoids those pitfalls due to both the quality of the acting and the (probably unexpected) timelessness of the script. Both Pidgeon and Hodiak bring subtle shading to their characters, the former especially, and aren’t just the impossibly noble figures that one sometimes sees.

A strong supporting lineup is always a boon, adding weight and interest to those scenes where the main players are absent or otherwise sidelined. The Sellout has genuine depth in support with Karl Malden, Audrey Totter, Everett Sloane, Cameron Mitchell, Thomas Gomez and Paula Raymond all making significant contributions at various vital points in the narrative.

However, even a stellar cast working well can struggle to make an impression if the material they are handed is subpar. There is forever a risk of any issue driven picture dating badly, in the sense that the themes explored may be tied inextricably to situations which have since lost relevance. Normally, I would say it’s fortunate that concerns depicted still resonate and clamor for attention today. In the case of The Sellout, I can’t help feeling that any comment acknowledging that fact really ought to be preceded by the word ‘unfortunately’. That said,  this is a fine film, one that is in the unusual position of being an even more worthwhile viewing experience today than would have been so when it was made. With that, I shall leave you, without further comment, with a transcription of the speech John Hodiak makes during the climactic courtroom scenes:

“In the mute parade of these frightened citizens. Weak men and strong men who have become weak and big men who have become little. All frightened. Their very silence testifies to that more strongly than shouted words… Their first protection was the law. Out of the domination of brutal and ruthless men, the law was turned against them. There is another protection: public opinion. Public Opinion finds its voice in the press, the free press. Here, a courageous editor brought his newspaper to the battle: he fought. His blows began to hurt. And little men who’d been fooled or frightened began to stir… to fall in behind his waving banner. But then something happened. Exactly what happened we don’t know. We may never know. But we do know that the voice of the public was stilled. The press had been enslaved… and when the press lost its freedom, these people lost their freedom. And Freedom is no idle phrase, it’s close and personal. It’s the right of Wilford Jackson, Walter Higby, Bennie Amboy. These people… of you and me… weak and strong… big and little to follow our normal pursuits in peace and without fear. Your Honor, the situation I’m covering here today is a symptom of civic cancer. We smell its malignancy not only in the terror-stricken avoidance of civic duty by this parade of bribed and intimidated witnesses, not only in the treasonable misconduct of public officials, not only in the violence, abuse, and even death we’ve observed… but in the growing helplessness of all decent people and their apparent apathy to the tightening grip of these ruthless men. This cancer must be traced down to its roots. It must be cut out or it will spread. And when it spreads far enough… the community will die. I therefore plead that this court free the people of Bridgewood County from the dictatorship of fear by finding cause to bind these defendants over for trial. The state rests.”

7 Women

/ Colin McGuigan / 52 Comments

The final films of the great filmmakers can be a mixed bag with truly memorable works being very much the exception. Not unnaturally, a certain tiredness can creep in, the quest for originality may bring about misfires or confusion. This is all to be expected when careers are long and that very longevity has had to confront changing trends and shrinking budgets. Those last two factors are hard to avoid but the real artists are forever chasing truth in their art and sometimes they can touch upon it in spite of the constraints imposed by the passage of time. Of course the great artists will already have found their truth and if we (or they) are fortunate, then that truth may find expression as a distillation of the themes explored in their peak years. John Ford was without doubt one of the greats and maybe even the greatest. His final movie 7 Women (1965) has not always enjoyed a strong reputation yet I believe it deserves better, and I also see it as providing a fine coda to a remarkable career.

A lot of the critical dissatisfaction with 7 Women stems from the fact that it appears to be something of an atypical Ford film. It is not set in the American West nor is it focused particularly on what might be termed the American experience – it is not easy to frame as one of his examples of myth building. It does not allow for the inclusion of any of his Irishness, not even in its minor characters, and there is little if any examination of masculinity. Still, to criticize it on those terms is  to succumb to no more than a superficial reading of Ford. Sure he blended the aforementioned elements into so many of his films, almost all of his best works contained one or more of them – How Green Was My Valley is one the major titles which stands out as not doing so. To focus on that would be to buy too completely into Ford’s own blarney and “I make westerns” shtick. The fact is he was most interested in the cohesiveness of communities, questions of faith and duty, and the truth lurking behind facades. 7 Women keeps the spotlight firmly trained on all of these.

The on screen text informs the viewer that the story is taking place in the years before WWII, in 1935 to be exact, in a remote and far-flung region of China. In essence, it is the frontier, just not the frontier of the Old West that one so readily associates with Ford. Instead this is the Far East yet it is no less a frontier for being located there – it is still the edge of civilization, that untamed region where law is but a casual interloper at best. Officially, this should have been a time when the warlord era had come to  close in China, but that’s not the case here. The specter of Tunga Khan (Mike Mazurki) hangs like a threatening storm over everybody’s head. The fear of pillage and atrocity is never far from the thoughts of the occupants of the evangelical mission run with clear-eyed determination by Agatha Andrews (Margaret Leighton). Despite this messianic zeal, there are deep and powerful undercurrents raging within the mission and its members. The one married woman present (Betty Field) is pregnant while approaching menopause and her ineffectual husband (Eddie Albert) is a dithering dreamer, while Andrews is waging a private war with her own sexuality and struggling against the temptation represented by her young assistant Emma (Sue Lyon). Into this increasingly tense atmosphere arrives the new doctor, the brash and worldly Cartwright (Anne Bancroft). Her unorthodox – at least from Andrews’ perspective – approach to life helps to raise an already simmering emotional temperature while an outbreak of cholera sees the balance of power begin to slide. However, the ultimate challenge, not simply to Andrews but to all of the denizens of the mission, will come when Tunga Khan’s rampaging bandits crash through the gates and take control.

Ford’s films were always liberally sprinkled with grace notes, quiet and reflective sequences that served to bookend the more vigorous passages. In a movie which has been criticized for its visual modesty the violence and terror of the bandits’ assault is calmly foreshadowed by Bancroft and Albert gazing at an evening sky bathed in the boiling and throbbing flames cast by a neighboring settlement being put to the sword. Moments like that do not reach the levels of splendor which were attained in masterpieces such as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, for instance, and it would be foolish to try to draw any such comparison. Nevertheless, within the context and framework of the movie before us there is still the classic Fordian human bonding on display. The same can be said for the scene with Andrews and Cartwright sitting below the tree in the courtyard in the wake of the cholera episode, a small moment of shared compassion that rounds out the characters. Even simple shots such as that of Cartwright drawing on a cigarette behind the shade of a mosquito net, separate, self-contained and lonely, are effective due to their quiet simplicity. Color is used sparingly but intelligently as well. So much of the movie is shot in subdued tones – the cool and severe blues and greys favored by Andrews and her fellow missionaries, the earthy browns of Cartwright. And then the climactic appearance of Cartwright clad in shimmering yellow, with that slash of crimson, a burst of positivity and passion emerging from the darkness as she prepares to sacrifice herself.

I briefly mentioned faith above, and want to return to that for a moment. It’s been said before that religion played a big part in Ford’s work, an assertion I only partially agree with. Is it not more accurate to state that faith and perhaps a broader notion of spirituality were stronger drivers? Religion, and certainly religiosity and sanctimony were never really celebrated. Redemption and the need for renewal, on the other hand, are common features. All of the characters in 7 Women are spiritual searchers of one kind or another.  All have come to this spot on the periphery of the civilized world hoping to find that which was denied to them at home. Andrews is dangerously repressed and existing at the border of her own psychological frailty. She has sought alternative fulfillment in religion but has grown aware of the fact it was not and is not enough, and is thus driven out of her mind. Eddie Albert’s Pether has finally married late in life and is busy seeking a fugitive form of contentment in the ersatz ministry he’s building around himself. In the end he chances upon some dormant nobility in his own rediscovered courage. At the heart of it all is Cartwright, a woman who through sacrifice unearths meaning in a life formerly wasted and marked by both personal and professional failure. This cigarette smoking whiskey drinker, contemptuous of piety, hypocrisy and cant reveals herself as a humanitarian in the truest sense of the word.

Anne Bancroft wasn’t the first choice to play Cartwright. Patricia Neal had started work on the movie but suffered a stroke so a replacement had to be found. Ford is on record as not rating her work but he was wrong about that – she has grit and toughness with just enough of that hint of vulnerability to fuel the soulful regret that defines the character, a woman wryly reconciled to the impishness of fate. Much as I admire Neal as an actress, I doubt she could have done better in the part. Margaret Leighton also fully inhabited her role and touches on some of that inner fragility she used so expertly in Carrington V.C. and The Sound and the Fury. Among the other cast members Flora Robson brings out that well-bred restraint that was her trademark. And it’s a pleasure to watch Anne Lee in one final Ford movie – a woman I will forever think of as Bronwyn in How Green Was My Valley and Mrs Collingwood (“All I can see is the flags”) in Fort Apache.

7 Women has been one of John Ford’s most neglected films, languishing in the critical stakes and seemingly forgotten when it came to home video releases. The absence of an official release on any form of physical disc was nothing if not conspicuous. Recently though, the Warner Archive Collection has made it available on a beautiful looking Blu-ray. Having seen the film multiple times over the years in less than stellar presentations, I can say this new release is a revelation, one which effortlessly elevates the movie. I sincerely hope this fine version prompts a reassessment of what to me are the clear merits of Ford’s final movie.

As this will be my final posting for 2025 I want to take the opportunity to wish all the visitors and contributors to this site over the last 12 months a happy, peaceful and prosperous New Year. Thank you all.

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Deadline – U.S.A.

/ Colin McGuigan / 42 Comments

“…the right of the public to a marketplace of ideas, news and opinions. Not of one man’s, or one leader’s, or even one government’s.”

That eulogy to the Fourth Estate, not merely to its desirability but to its necessity as a vital pillar of a functioning democracy is delivered relatively late on in Deadline – U.S.A. (1952) by Humphrey Bogart’s committed and conscientious editor. It might come late in the movie yet everything has been building towards that and the narrative would already have led us to that conclusion even if the script had not spelled it out. If this point needed to be made back in 1952, it is arguably even more essential now where the current era of demagoguery sees the foundations of democracy chipped away at on a daily basis.

On various occasions throughout the film various characters refer to a murder, a wake and a funeral. It’s as though the shadow of death hangs heavily over the entire project. However, it’s not the death of person, even though there are a handful of those folded into the plot, but instead the demise of a newspaper which is alluded to. This sense of a paper as a living entity, with as much conscience and soul as a human being, pervades the movie. To be perfectly frank, the newspaper in question could be said to have more human characteristics than some of the individuals portrayed. Anyway, this anthropomorphism is key to understanding Deadline – U.S.A. and the points writer and director Richard Brooks seeks to hammer home. The paper in question is The Day, a publication which prides itself on its standards and its history. The editor Ed Hutcheson (Humphrey Bogart), as well as the staff, regards it as a newspaper as opposed to a purveyor of sensationalist yellow journalism. Despite that noble intent, or a cynic might posit because of it, The Day is on its way out. Life support is about to be unplugged and the owners, the detached and disinterested heirs of the founder, are in the process of selling off the carcass to a competitor whose primary interest is buying it in order to close it down and thus corner the market. The viewer is invited to follow the final days of this venerable institution where regardless of the sense of inevitability, there is also a resilience on show. Maybe it’s a losing battle but Hutcheson isn’t going down without a fight and the battlefield he’s chosen for the paper to stage its last stand is one reigned over by Tomas Rienzi (Martin Gabel).

Rienzi is an old school hood, one of those guys where the patina of civilization is especially thin. He’s been investigated for corruption and graft but nothing seems to stick. This time may be different though – the body of a mink clad good-time girl has been fished out of the river and gradually a trail leading back to this Teflon don becomes apparent. In essence, a race takes place to see whether all the connections can be made before the courts put the seal on the sale of the paper, or before Rienzi’s enforcers can make enough witnesses and whistleblowers disappear. While there are other subplots touched on to varying degrees, it is here that the movie sets out its stall. Brooks wants to make the point that real journalism serves a vital civic purpose – “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” if you like. Personally, I think his argument is both valid and worthwhile, maybe even more pronounced now than it was all those decades ago. If the printed press has gone into near terminal decline, the voice, function and long established ethics of the legacy media remain essential, even as they come under attack from a range of chiselers and charlatans.

Movies about journalism, indeed the same could be said for that other subset movies about the movies themselves, seem to have their own  special energy. That such productions should exhibit a vitality ought not to be much a surprise when one stops to think how many writers and filmmakers had a background in journalism. The accepted wisdom is to write about what you know and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that this kind authenticity does lend an added touch of passion to proceedings. Richard Brooks was one of those writer/directors who started out working as a reporter and the latent respect for the trade colors what he puts up on the screen in Deadline – U.S.A.  – that said, I do seem to recall seeing an interview he gave many years later where he expressed dissatisfaction with the title, feeling that it was meaningless in itself. Well if the title is somewhat awkward, the arguments underpinning the plot are not. Brooks keeps it moving along, capturing the noise and urgency of both the newsroom and the press room. There are a couple of instances of less convincing back projection but Milton Krasner has it looking attractive for the most part. Outside of the newspaper building itself, the most effective scene is that inside Rienzi’s car, where he and Hutcheson spar and both Bogart and Gabel make the most of Brooks’ snappy dialogue.

By this stage Bogart was an old hand at either playing it tough and cynical or tough and noble. He goes down the latter path here and his conviction is never in doubt whether he’s trading threats with a mobster or arguing ethics in the boardroom. The only less convincing aspect is his attempt to rebuild his marriage with his ex-wife Kim Hunter. She was an accomplished actress with successful work in A Streetcar Named Desire and A Matter of Life and Death behind her yet there’s a certain listlessness to her performance in this film which weakens that plot strand. On the other hand, Martin Gabel is a fine adversary for Bogart, desperate to convey respectability – “I’m in the cement and contractin’ bu’iness” – while his rough edges keep poking through the facade. There’s plenty of menace on display from Gabel, a man I’ll always associate with the role of Strutt in Hitchcock’s Marnie, but who also directed the atmospheric The Lost Moment.

As is frequently the case with big studio productions of the era, there is strong support from a deep cast of familiar faces. Ethel Barrymore rolls out her wise old owl act once more, but she does it so well and so attractively that it’s a pleasure to watch. Ed Begley is comfortably solid, and Paul Stewart (someone else who could shift with ease between villainous and sympathetic parts) casts alternately weary and wary looks from beneath his ever expressive brows. Joseph De Santis has a ball as the scumbag brother of the murder victim, smirking and sweaty as he chisels his way to an undeserved payday before making a spectacular exit where he literally becomes front page news. Jim Backus, Tom Powers, Warren Stevens, Fay Baker, Joe Sawyer and Willis Bouchey among others drift in and out. Apparently, James Dean had a small uncredited part but I’ve never been able to spot him even after numerous viewings.

I’m not sure how well regarded Deadline – U.S.A. is or what kind of reputation it has. I do know I’ve always liked it, it has one of those roles which feel tailor-made for Bogart and the sentiments of the script appeal. I guess I’m something of a sucker for movies focused on newspapers and reporters. It should be easy enough to access in good quality these days; this was not always the case but there are high grade Blu-rays and DVDs of the movie available in most territories now – I have the German DVD myself. While the more venal sections of society endeavor to undermine public trust in the integrity of the mainstream media, it’s good to remind oneself of how important it was and is to all of us.

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Undertow

/ Colin McGuigan / 61 Comments

In an era where entertainment gives the impression of becoming ever more bloated and unwieldy, where books seem to be sold by the page count and thus by weight like some indigestible stodge, where even movies which tell essentially pulp stories have running times that defy both logic and the endurance of the human body, it is a true joy to watch a film which is tight and trim enough to take care of business in just an hour and ten minutes. That ought to be a recommendation in itself yet Undertow (1949) has the added bonus of being a remarkably entertaining film noir, William Castle’s best effort in the genre/style in fact.

The war as a watershed – how many times has one come across that particular bromide? Yet its essential truth is undeniable. The image of the returning veteran, those men who dreamed of better days amid the waking nightmare of their years of service, is one familiar to the noir audience. Such men immediately draw sympathy by virtue of the sacrifices they made and this adds an edge to the dangers and depravities they confront on their return home. By 1949 the war was already slipping back into the misty corners of the past, the world was rushing ahead and wasn’t necessarily in any mood to slow down and wait for men trying to catch up with events that had bounded four years and more ahead of them. Tony Reagan (Scott Brady) is introduced as a classic postwar character. He’s a veteran with a vaguely shady past who has grown as a result of his experiences and is now focused on cementing a future for himself and the woman he hopes to make his wife. He has just bought a share in the hunting lodge business of a fallen comrade in arms, and is on his way to Chicago to propose to his fiancée Sally (Dorothy Hart). His last evening in Reno sees him briefly hooking up with a pal from his gambling past Danny Morgan (John Russell), as well as making the brief acquaintance of vacationing schoolteacher Ann McKnight (Peggy Dow). All of these people will cross his path when he lands in Chicago and also lands in deep trouble.  The classic noir protagonist frequently finds himself skewered on the horns of a dilemma, trapped somewhere between the pull of his past and typically bad choices going forward. This certainly fits Tony Reagan, a man who was told by crime boss, and Sally’s uncle, Big Jim Lee to stay out of Chicago and away from his niece.

There’s to be no hero’s welcome for Reagan; on his arrival at the airport he’s met by cops who run him downtown for a bit of friendly advice from the precinct captain, namely that he shouldn’t waste any time unpacking. That he ignores this tip shouldn’t come as any surprise, nor should the fact that he is soon slugged, blindfolded and shot, all as a prelude to a frame that looks like fitting him very snugly. If the movie has a weakness it stems from the way it sets itself up as a kind of whodunit where there’s no great mystery with regard to the actual culprit. In this case certain character traits as well as the way a vital piece of information was only available to one person don’t so much point the finger at as turn the spotlight full force on one individual, and when you see who that is then the rest of it kind of falls into place. Still, none of that really matters as much of the pleasure derived from following Reagan on his nighttime odyssey through Chicago trying to keep a half a step ahead of the cops, calling in favors and only realizing the full extent of his peril at the last moment.

William Castle, like all studio era directors, worked in just about every genre but the bulk of his work fell into three categories: horror, crime and westerns. The horror movies have traditionally gained more attention from critics and fans alike, which arguably says as much for the enduring popularity of that genre as it does for the movies themselves. If I’m being honest, I don’t believe the quality of Castle’s films overall is commensurate with the level of attention they have received down the years. That may come across as somewhat curmudgeonly yet it’s not my intention to do so – I like Castle’s films for the most part and find the majority of them entertaining, just not necessarily always that good. Still, his better work does stand out and I’d have no hesitation in placing Undertow among those better pictures. At this stage in his career there was none of the gimmickry and clowning that would come to be seen as characteristic of the man. Instead, what we get is a compact and atmospheric piece of budget filmmaking that punches well above its weight.

Shakespeare had Caesar remark that Cassius had a lean and hungry look and was therefore dangerous. Perhaps John Russell ought to have been cast as Cassius then at some point in his career for he surely fitted that description. Even though he had heroic leading roles on TV  in both Soldier of Fortune and then Lawman, his villainous parts on the big screen tend to be memorable and carry an edge of authenticity to them. He turned in a strong performance in De Toth’s Man in the Saddle and I watched him a while back in Hell Bound and was again impressed. The latter has that typical mean streak that can be found in Bel-Air movies and Russell managed to embody that successfully. Scott Brady was a suitable pick for the lead too, only a few years out of WWII service himself, he had the right combination of toughness and sympathy to be believable as someone with underworld connections but also with the nous to realize his future lay in a different direction. Bruce Bennett’s reassuring presence as the conflicted friend adds solidity to the supporting cast; his well played scenes with his boss and particularly the short interlude in the basement workroom of his home help to ground the story. The two female roles were filled by actresses who had very short screen careers. Peggy Dow appeared for a mere three years between 1949 and 1952 , while Dorothy Hart stretched it out a little longer, running from 1947 to 1952 in features and a couple more on TV. Both had a number of good movies to their credit with Dow possibly squeezing more memorable work in during her brief time as an actress.

Undertow acts as a noteworthy example of the kind of well crafted crime and noir movies Universal-International was capable of producing. It’s gratifying that so many of these are now accessible and can be viewed in good quality, something fans of the studio’s output could only dream of a few years ago. Already released in the US in one of Kino’s box sets, the movie is getting an individual release in the UK ( Amazon link – As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases) with plenty of supplementary features via Powerhouse/Indicator in January.

Gun Fury

/ Colin McGuigan / 91 Comments

Every time I view a Raoul Walsh movie I find I’m struck by one thought: why don’t I watch more of his movies more often? It says something for a director whose work is so diverse and spread over so many decades that this should occur to me so consistently – in short, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a Walsh movie that didn’t leave me thirsty for another. Gun Fury (1953) is a standard pursuit and revenge western, but it scrutinizes other themes such as pacifism, isolationism, the hold exerted by the past, and a flirtation with, as opposed to a full embrace of, the classic concept of redemption.

The setup is quite simple. A stagecoach headed west is carrying among its passengers one Jennifer Ballard (Donna Reed), a woman journeying to meet her fiance Ben Warren (Rock Hudson) in order to get married and then continue on their way to California and the prospect of a future ranching. They find themselves sharing space with several others, ostensibly traveling on business of one kind or another. Before long these supposed gentlemen are revealed to be Frank Slayton (Phil Carey) and Jess Burgess (Leo Gordon), a pair of outlaws making the journey simply to facilitate the robbery of the stagecoach by the rest of their gang. In the course of the holdup Warren is shot and while merely wounded he is mistakenly thought to be dead and so abandoned. Slayton has set his sights on Jennifer and brings her along as they set out on the run south to Mexico. The pursuit element is therefore set in motion as Warren goes off in search of his woman, while the revenge aspect is strengthened by the fact Slayton and Burgess quarrel over the decision to abduct the woman, resulting in the latter being bound and left to die in the shadow of circling vultures. His rescue by Warren leads to the formation of an initially uneasy alliance, one held together by the promise of taking Slayton as the prize. Support comes from an unlikely quarter, an Indian called Johash (Pat Hogan) who is also hungry for revenge on Slayton whom he blames for the death of his sister. And so the chase is on, with the outlaws unaware to begin that anyone is on their trail.

Gun Fury was written for the screen by Roy Huggins, the creator of Maverick, The Rockford Files and, more significantly, The Fugitive. The previous year Huggins had both written and directed the very fine Randolph Scott vehicle Hangman’s Knot, also starring Donna Reed as it happens. Gun Fury proves to be a pacy and surprisingly tough little western which utilizes the revenge motif well. All of the characters are essentially driven by a desire for revenge of one kind or another – Warren for the treatment of his woman, Burgess for his the grisly fate planned for him, Johash for his family honor, later a Mexican girl (Roberta Haynes) for her betrayal, and even Slayton himself seems bent on settling scores with life itself for the losses inflicted by the Civil War. As with the best written westerns, revenge for all of these characters is ultimately shown to be a hollow and unworthy goal. The redemption strand is mainly seen in the character played by Leo Gordon, although it has to be said this not as successfully executed as it might be. Personally, I feel this thread ends up being undermined by the developments that take place in the final act. Others may be less swayed by that though. While the script by Huggins offers much food for thought, the direction of Walsh powers it all along. There is never any sense of drift and, as ever, the director skillfully juggles the character development with regular bursts of action, and all shot against a primal Sedona backdrop.

Rock Hudson is credible in the lead, catching something of the driven quality that Anthony Mann would coax out of James Stewart in their western collaborations, even if it doesn’t quite attain those levels of intensity. Hudson holds onto that hopefulness that defines his character, a feature that one would expect to find in a young man on the cusp of a new life in California. It is through Hudson’s Ben Warren that the pacifist and isolationist elements are explored. He has been strongly influenced by the recent Civil War, sickened by the wholesale killing and no doubt that would have struck a chord with audiences less than a decade after WWII and right at the tail end of the Korean War. His isolationist stance – he refers early on to his ranch being bounded on the west by the ocean and on the east by the river, and he claims to have no interest in anything happening on the other side of that river – is tested and thrown back at him as he seeks out allies in his race to catch up with the outlaws. Rebuffed time and again by people too scared or just apathetic and self-absorbed, he is left with no option but to face up to his own former beliefs and reassess them. Finding a way to reconcile a desire for peaceful coexistence with the realization that a civilized man cannot simply retreat behind the barricades of personal interest is a complex theme to examine; it’s to the credit of all involved that it is articulated so smoothly within the framework of the movie.

Phil Carey never quite made it as a lead player. Columbia was casting him in some pretty good pictures around this time, but mainly as the second lead and sometimes in rather unsympathetic parts. The character of Frank Slayton was not what anyone could term attractive – he’s not only a killer but a sadistic one to boot, leaving one man to perish horribly in the wilderness and having another of his gang staked out on the ground and trampled to death for an act of betrayal, and that’s before we get to his frankly abusive treatment of both Donna Reed and Roberta Haynes. The paradox of course is that he regards himself in a wholly different light, as a dispossessed gentleman craving only a return to the gracious living he believes he was robbed of and which is his due. The following year Donna Reed would star alongside Carey again in Phil Karlson’s They Rode West.  Her role here is better than that unfocused effort and she would go on to do further good work in westerns over the next couple of years first in another Roy Huggins scripted movie Three Hours to Kill and also more impressively for John Sturges in Backlash.

Leo Gordon is such a welcome presence in just about anything. Frequently cast as the one-dimensional villain, it’s a pleasure to see him given a more nuanced role. I’m not convinced that the character we have followed on screen would have behaved in the way he does in the final act, but that’s not the fault of the actor. Lee Marvin typically did a great deal with minor characters in small parts in his early films. Some actors have what it takes to make their mark on screen, something largely indefinable but instantly recognizable too. Marvin had that something. The movie business is rife with “what if” scenarios and always has been. There’s some irony in the fact that  Roberta Haynes tested and apparently came close to being cast in From Here to Eternity, in the role which would ultimately go to Donna Reed and for which she would win an Oscar. That’s Hollywood for you! Also featured in a supporting role as one of the outlaw gang is perennial heavy Neville Brand.

Gun Fury is a mid range Raoul Walsh movie in my opinion, which means it’s a good film by any standard. Plots which are relatively straightforward yet carry within them an abundance of ideas that are put forward in an intelligent and adult way are very appealing. I have always liked this film and I reckon it is the kind that should go down well with most fans of the classic western.

Back from Eternity

/ Colin McGuigan / 31 Comments

If there are really only seven basic plots or stories then that probably explains why remakes, which are practically as old as cinema itself, are so common. From a business perspective, something that has proven to be successful once may well do so again so the temptation is always there to take another trip back to the creative well. In among the virtual ocean of remakes there is to be found a more exclusive subset, that of a director redoing his own earlier films. Filmmakers as diverse as Alfred Hitchcock, Raoul Walsh and George Marshall did this over the course of their careers. In two of those cases ,The Man Who Knew Too Much and Colorado Territory, I know I like the later films better and if I wouldn’t go quite so far with Marshall’s Destry, I still feel it’s a worthwhile movie. In 1956 John Farrow remade his own Five Came Back (1939) as Back to Eternity, but I can make no comment on how it stacks up against its first iteration for the simple reason that I’ve not seen the earlier version.

The “stranded in the wasteland” story is one which is ripe with possibilities. It promises danger, excitement and suspense, it allows for drama to grow out of shifting group dynamics, it acts as a platform for endurance and ingenuity, and it can also easily blend in themes of spirituality and even notions of redemption. Back from Eternity manages to combine all of those elements in its sub-100 minute running time. The first half hour or so is given over to the kind of character introductions that are necessary. Thus we see the eager new pilot (Keith Andes) and the older flyer (Robert Ryan) weighed down by the accumulation of a lifetime’s emotional baggage as well as a fondness for the whiskey bottle. There is a glamorous refugee (Anita Ekberg) now discarded by her shady lover and on her was to an even shadier future in what sounds like a South American bordello. Among the others there’s a brace of couples, one young and contemplating marriage (Gene Barry & Phyllis Kirk) and the other old and devoted (Beulah Bondi & Cameron Prud’homme), and a political assassin on his way to face execution (Rod Steiger). When a violent storm forces their plane down in the middle of an unexplored jungle in headhunter country, the real drama kicks in. They say that a crisis brings out the best and the worst in people and that is seen to be so here, selfishness and selflessness clashing like a couple of ethical knights in a jousting match of the conscience. Casting people back into a primal landscape and circumstances peels away their civilized veneer and reveals the true characters beneath. Everything comes to a head when the plane has been patched up but only to the point where it is capable of safely taking off and staying in the air with just five people on board. The question naturally arises as to who will go and who will stay, and all the while the unseen threat in the jungle inches ever closer.

Back from Eternity was scripted by Jonathan Latimer, a man who wrote a good many screenplays which John Farrow directed. He was a fine novelist too and his Bill Crane mysteries are a real delight and are highly recommended. As a novelist he was adept at weaving a rich thread of humor into his hard-boiled setups, however there is none of that on display here. Instead, there is a strong flavor of what I think of as Farrow’s influence. He was a director who frequently evinced a noticeably spiritual side to his work and it is clear to see in this movie. Aside from one overtly religious scene, there are the allied themes of sacrifice and redemption coursing through the fabric of the narrative. This is placed front and center in the decisions taken and the character arcs traced by the elderly Spangler couple and Rod Steiger’s Vasquel. It can be glimpsed too in the change of heart experienced by Jesse White’s former hood, in the renewed hope and motivation which stirs in Ryan’s disillusioned pilot, and also in the maternal protectiveness that a new found sense of responsibility draws forth in Ekberg.

All of this lends substance to the story, although it should be noted that it doesn’t arrive at the expense of the tension or danger that sustains the interest of the viewer. William C Mellor does some fine things with the lighting in the airplane and jungle scenes and I feel Farrow was wise to keep the headhunters off screen throughout. We only see the results of their handiwork on a couple of occasions and the rest of the time their oppressive presence is indicated only by the softly ominous beat of drums and a brief glimpse of a hand brushing aside some vegetation – out of sight yet very much on our minds.

What then of the acting? Rod Steiger is nothing if not interesting, a performer steeped in the Method and one who has garnered both fulsome praise and scathing criticism. Humphrey Bogart said his technique was of the “scratch your ass and mumble” variety, yet he was nominated for an Oscar in On the Waterfront, won one for In the Heat of the Night and did some remarkable things on screen in The Pawnbroker. Like him or loathe him, he was a talent, but he too often abandoned all restraint and seemed to tear movies apart with the sheer artificiality of his work. Fortunately, he holds himself in check in Back from Eternity, operating within his boundaries instead of trashing them. His one indulgence is his adoption of a frankly bizarre accent, a weird type of strangled German or middle European effort that calls unnecessary attention to itself. Robert Ryan is very subdued as the pilot, disenchanted and with a cool noirish cynicism, but never despondent. Anita Ekberg is largely decorative, a pleasingly pneumatic presence and Phyllis Kirk comes over rather starched and stuffy in comparison. Gene Barry is pretty good too as a slick type who quickly sees the polish wear off when he’s in jeopardy – it’s not at all a sympathetic role and I always admire actors who have the guts to take on that kind of part. Generally, the cast turn in professional work and all of them have their moments.

Back from Eternity was released by Warner Brothers on DVD as an Archive title. It looks solid throughout, presenting a crisp widescreen image which is in good shape overall. As I said at the top of this piece, I’m not in a position to draw comparisons with Farrow’s first go at telling this story, but I hope to get to that movie at some stage. Anyway, I’m a believer in taking films on their own terms and merits, and I can only say that I enjoyed this one.