Fans of Sam Fuller should be very pleased to see that Forty Guns, his 1957 western starring Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan and Dean Jagger, is coming in a dual format (Blu-ray/DVD) edition from Eureka in June as part of their Masters of Cinema line. More details on their website here. I’m looking forward to this.
Recently, I wrote about Brainstorm, commenting on its connections to classic film noir. Another movie from the same decade, albeit a few years earlier, with an arguably stronger affiliation to the world of noir is Cape Fear (1962). Sourced from the hard-boiled, pulpy writing of John D MacDonald, the film is a merciless examination of some of the darkest areas of human nature. While almost all the varied aspects of the filmmaking process, and the artists and craftsmen involved, blend together to produce the finished product, much of its power derives from the central performance of Robert Mitchum. For a man who initially didn’t want to do the picture, Mitchum fully inhabits his part and brings a level of feral brutality to the character that makes Max Cady one of the most memorable and formidable villains the screen has known.
The story is a relatively simple tale of revenge and retribution, a face-off not only between the principal characters but between the law and justice too. Sam Bowden (Gregory Peck) is a successful lawyer, married with a teenage daughter and living in some comfort. A typical noir scenario frequently sees the protagonist cornered by circumstance, and what better way to achieve that than to have the past come crashing violently into the present. In Sam Bowden’s case the unwelcome past is represented by the swaggering, cigar-chomping figure of Max Cady (Robert Mitchum), a man who’s spent eight years in prison on the basis of Bowden’s testimony against him. The question of his own guilt doesn’t occur to Cady, he simply regards himself as a victim of Bowden’s meddling and is thus intent on exacting vengeance for what he considers a life denied him. From his first encounter with Bowden outside the courthouse, a mock affability barely concealing his threats, Cady becomes omnipresent in the attorney’s life. Everywhere he goes, his arrogant nemesis seems to follow, and the veiled intimidation is gradually cranked up with each successive meeting. With the danger to his family becoming ever more apparent, Bowden turns to his friends in the police department in the hopes of using his establishment connections to rid himself of Cady. However, if he thinks he can bend the law to his benefit, he soon finds out how mistaken that assumption is – Cady is clever, cunning and more than capable of turning the tools of Bowden’s trade back on him. Bit by bit, the lawyer is drawn, through mounting desperation, towards that fine line between legality and criminality. Ultimately, Cady’s goading will lead him right up to the rim of the moral abyss and dare him to take that final fateful step.
J Lee Thompson had begun his directing career in British cinema a decade earlier and had made a number of films which showed he had a talent for both action and suspense. While working on The Guns of Navarone, he so impressed star Gregory Peck that he was promptly asked to take charge of this film. There are action sequences in Cape Fear, particularly during the harrowing climax, but it’s primarily a suspense picture, a dread infused journey of terror and moral compromise. As Bernard Herrmann’s ominous score pounds away, Thompson smoothly dials up the tension in tantalizing increments – clever cutting and camera setups lending an air of danger to such mundane and traditionally secure settings as the family home and the daughter’s school. And cameraman Sam Leavitt plays his part too, alternating between the sun drenched Savannah locations where Sam Bowden walks tall and proud as a leading citizen, and the inky shadows of his home and later the river as his thoughts turn to subverting the law which he serves in order to protect his family.
I said at the start that Cape Fear is a film which benefits from fine work all round. Peck was always good at portraying upright, heroic types. The role of Sam Bowden was a comfortable fit for him, and he catches the slight stiffness that makes the character ever so vaguely unlikable very well; Peck had the ability to convey a kind of prim smugness at times, a quality which fits in nicely in the early stages when he’s calling in favors from Martin Balsam’s accommodating police chief in an effort to run Cady out of town. I found it interesting that Lee Server’s biography claims Mitchum regarded the Peck character as the bad guy until the brutality of the second half of the film clarifies matters. Actually, it not so hard to see where he was coming from with that theory as the story has the establishment figures closing ranks against the outsider in the early stages. Of course the full extent of Cady’s depravity and ruthlessness is starkly revealed as the story unfolds, but that faint touch of ambiguity at the beginning adds further interest to my mind.
Regardless of the solid work from Peck, Polly Bergen, Telly Savalas, Lori Martin, Barrie Chase et al, it’s really Mitchum’s show all the way. He’d proved how well he could take on villainous roles in Charles Laughton’s dreamy and magical The Night of the Hunter but I feel playing Max Cady saw him step up to another level altogether. He’s genuinely electrifying every time he appears on screen, strutting and swaggering and dominating every frame with his sheer physicality. To refer again to the Server biography, it’s said that he invested himself in the role so deeply that he terrified Barrie Chase – something that’s clearly visible in the movie itself – and almost had to be restrained during the climactic assaults on both Bergen and Peck. The film was remade 30 years later by Martin Scorsese, with Robert De Niro as Cady, and featuring cameos by both Mitchum and Peck, but it didn’t work anywhere near as well for me. That remake, despite attempts to add some intriguing new aspects to the characters’ relationships, suffers badly from a cartoonish performance by De Niro that pales before the raw dynamism of Mitchum’s work – the sheer primal power of the man burns itself into your memory.
I just recently watched the film again on Blu-ray, which I picked up bundled with the remake for a very good price, and it benefits from the increased resolution but not in any startling way. If Cape Fear isn’t generally referred to as film noir, then it comes awfully close as far as I’m concerned. It’s dark, brooding and tough – the ending does see justice prevail, just, but it comes at a heavy price and nobody really walks away unscathed. For anyone laboring under the illusion that Mitchum tended to phone in his performances, or that J Lee Thompson was simply Cannon fodder, Cape Fear ought to put those myths permanently to rest.
Remakes have popped up here from time to time in the past and they often divide opinion among movie fans, not only based on their relative merits but also on whether there’s any point in producing them at all. For me, the best remakes, or at least the more interesting ones, try to do something different with the material. For example, the casting may radically alter perspective, or the source material (say, a novel which has been adapted) might be adhered to more faithfully. Shifting from one genre to another – which I feel was successfully achieved with High Sierra and Colorado Territory – is another potentially fruitful option. And this leads me to Broken Lance (1954), which essentially recycles Philip Yordan’s screenplay for House of Strangers and transposes the action from New York to the old west.
Newly released from prison, Joe Devereaux (Robert Wagner) is “invited” to the governor’s office in town to be presented with a proposition. His three brothers – Ben, Mike and Denny (Richard Widmark, Hugh O’Brian and Earl Holliman) – aren’t exactly thrilled to meet him and instead offer a ranch in Oregon and $10,000 in cash, on condition he catches the next train out of town. At this stage it’s unclear to the viewer why Joe’s siblings are so keen to see the back of him, or why he so contemptuously deposits the proffered money in a spittoon. It’s only after a ride across the vast, open country to the now abandoned family home that the pieces begin to fall into place. As Joe stands amid the dust-choked remnants of his old life, staring at the huge portrait of his now deceased father, his thoughts drift back to earlier days. We see Matt Devereaux (Spencer Tracy), the gruff Irish patriarch who has tamed a land and is now doing his level best to tame his four sons. Joe is the youngest and his favorite, born of his Indian wife (Katy Jurado), while the others are the product of an earlier marriage. That Mike and Denny are bad apples is immediately apparent when they’re caught attempting to rustle cattle from their own ranch, and Ben’s resentment is seen to be simmering close to the surface as well. The main theme – although it’s by no means the only one – is that of fractured family relations. As the boys have grown into men and the frontier is similarly maturing, the cracks within the Devereaux clan are starting to show. The old man, while not without charm, is of that hard, pioneering breed accustomed to enforcing their will with a six-gun, a whip or a rope. However, times move on and priorities alter along with them. Ben feels that progress requires a change in the way the family business is run, yet he lacks the courage to face down his father directly to effect that change. So there’s tension in the air, but it really only comes to a head when pollution leaking from the local copper workings leads Matt into violent confrontation with the miners. Sadly, from the aging rancher’s perspective, frontier justice has no place in this new world where corporate interests are beginning to assert themselves. With the prospect of a lengthy prison term for his father looming, Joe offers to shoulder the blame as his brothers shirk the responsibility one by one. What ought to have been a nominal sentence turns into a long stretch though as Ben flat refuses to pay the hefty compensation demanded. The result is the exposure of all the old wounds and ultimately the disintegration of a family.
Edward Dmytryk couldn’t be said to be a western specialist yet he made a couple of very strong entries with this one and Warlock. One thing that’s apparent right from the opening credits is the director’s comfort with the wide CinemaScope ratio. Dmytryk’s use of the wide lens (though cameraman Joe MacDonald deserves credit here too) to capture the sense of enormous, uncluttered spaces is quite awe-inspiring at times; it contrasts nicely with the packed interior scenes in town, and neatly highlights the restrictive nature of the advance of progress. This aspect is further highlighted during the trial sequence, where Matt Devereaux, formerly at ease and supremely confident out on the range, alternately squirms and blusters on the stand. Of course it’s also a tribute to Tracy’s acting skills that this works so well. He was arguably the greatest of all naturalistic performers, reacting as opposed to acting. His irascible bravado has an undercurrent of twitchy nervousness, he moves uncomfortably in his chair under the disapproving glare of prosecutor and judge, and is in sharp relief to his earlier scenes where he’s “holding court” in his own home. What we have is a man out of time, or almost, becoming increasingly limited by both the law and his own physical frailty, just as the frontier itself is slowly withering in the face of encroaching civilization.
In a sense, westerns represent an opportunity to dip into the past, to catch a glimpse of an era now gone and existing as no more than a memory. Broken Lance actually mirrors this within its narrative structure, by means of the long central flashback. As viewers we’re invited to take a trip to yesteryear via images on a screen, and Joe Devereaux does something very similar before our eyes; as he gazes upon the imposing portrait of his late father he finds himself transported back to the days and weeks leading up to his imprisonment. Characters pass comment on how much Joe has changed after his incarceration, and I feel Wagner did highly creditable work in the movie. There is a noticeable difference in both his bearing and attitude in the contemporary bookend sequences and the flashback. Wagner isn’t often praised for his acting but I reckon he quite successfully makes the transition from fresh-faced enthusiasm to bitter maturity over the course of the film’s 90 minutes. No doubt the fact he was up against such heavyweights as Tracy and Widmark helped him up his game. Widmark though seems to have little to do for long stretches, really only coming into his own in the final third. His discontented elder sibling is always there as a brooding sideline presence, but the full effects of the denial of parental trust and affection only break through gradually. When the explosion finally comes we’re treated to vintage Widmark – all snarling hatred and half-repressed racism.
The racial matter is never entirely to the fore in the film, although it is of significance and always lurks just below the surface. The difficult legal position in which Matt Devereaux finds himself is at least partly exacerbated by his marriage to an Indian, and then there’s the prejudice the Governor (E G Marshall) cannot overcome at the thought of his daughter’s (Jean Peters)Â involvement with a half-breed. The casting of Katy Jurado, the cinematic epitome of soulful dignity, really hammers home the anti-racist message for me. As her family first squabbles and then tears itself apart in an orgy of greed and ambition, she remains the one calm, loving and forgiving constant, surrounded by a sea of pettiness and jealousy. It’s interesting too that following her husband’s death, she moves back to her own people while the three sons of the first marriage relocate to the town and luxury – the ranch lying abandoned, the most positive figure reverting to traditional ways and the negative ones embracing the brave new world of progress. As such, I think this film earns a slot in what we sometimes refer to as the pro-Indian cycle of westerns. Aside from Jean Peters as the spirited love interest for Wagner, most of the others in the fairly big cast are subsidiary characters. E G Marshall gets to indulge in a bit of stiff self-reproach, but Hugh O’Brian and Earl Holliman have little else to do other than skulk around in Widmark’s sneering wake.
Broken Lance is widely available on DVD nowadays – it’s out on Blu-ray in France although I suspect that edition will have forced subtitles, and the Spanish version is reportedly a BD-R. I have the old UK release from about 10 years ago, which is still a very strong disc. The image is very sharp and clean and does a fine job of showing off the widescreen cinematography. Unfortunately, for such a rich movie, there are no extra features whatsoever offered. As remakes go, Broken Lance is one of the very best in my opinion. House of Strangers (which can itself be taken as a spin on King Lear) is a fine film in its own right but I feel the story is actually improved upon in this instance. By moving the location and turning it into a western, a number of other themes are more productively (or maybe more interestingly) explored – anyway, it’s sufficiently different and worthwhile to be judged on its own terms rather than comparatively. The characterization is complex, the writing smart, and the direction and cinematography are first class, with what looks a lot like a nod to Anthony Mann in the climactic scene high among the rocks – a highly recommended western that stands out even in the crowded field of 50s classics.
There were lots of changes taking place in filmmaking in the mid-50s. Actors were trying heir hand at directing and/or producing, location shooting was growing ever more popular and Europe, with the tax breaks offered, drew many, and then there were all the widescreen processes coming to the fore as the studios struggled to compete with the challenge posed by television. Lisbon (1956) is one movie which offers an illustration of all these factors at work. It’s a handsome-looking Cold War thriller made by Republic Pictures in the period when the studio was sliding into terminal decline and only a few years away from ending feature production altogether.
It’s early morning in a luxurious villa on the outskirts of Lisbon, and Aristides Mavros (Claude Rains) has just been awakened by his manservant. While sitting on the side of his bed, shaking the sleep out of his head, his attention is drawn by the gentle chirping of songbirds on the windowsill. Smiling indulgently, he sprinkles some seed for the birds to feed on and withdraws to the side. As the tiny creatures gather for the unexpected treat, Mavros brings a tennis racquet crashing down on them before offering the mangled bodies to his cat for breakfast. The wrong-footing of the audience, by turning a potentially sweet pastoral scene into something more macabre, is attempted a few more times throughout the movie, but never quite as successfully or shockingly. It is thus established that Mavros is a villain, although viewers will have to make up their own minds by the end if his brand of ruthlessness is any worse than that of other characters. The central plot is relatively straightforward as Cold War films go: Sylvia Merrill (Maureen O’Hara) is a rich American, whose elderly husband has been abducted and is being held somewhere behind the Iron Curtain. Mrs Merrill wants her husband back and is prepared to pay Mavros a substantial sum of money to arrange it all. For his part, Mavros engages the services of the one man in Lisbon with a boat fast enough to guarantee pick-up and delivery of the frail tycoon. Robert Evans (Ray Milland) is a smuggler using a converted torpedo boat to run whatever is profitable into Lisbon beneath the suspicious but powerless eyes of the Portuguese authorities. Evans’ usual cargo is the likes of perfume and tobacco, but he’s not above widening his interests to encompass people, as long as the price is right. As the complex business of negotiating and arranging the handover gets underway, trust and betrayal, those perennial bedfellows, come into the equation. Is Evans the kind of man to be relied on with so much money floating around? If Mavros is a crook, is he at least a dependable one? And what are Mrs Merrill’s real motives?
Lisbon was Ray Milland’s second feature as a director, following on from his impressive debut in A Man Alone, and it’s a reasonable effort, although it lacks the tightness of the earlier movie. Of Milland’s five feature films, I’ve now seen three (Hostile Witness is unwatched on my shelf and The Safecracker has eluded me so far) and I feel he was pretty good behind the camera. However, in my opinion, there’s a bit too much stodge in the middle here as the nature of the various relationships is explored and defined. While all this is necessary for the plot to make sense, the execution lacks a bit of snap but is just about rescued from descending into tedium by the very attractive location photography. As widescreen filmmaking became the norm, various studios were developing their own versions of the process. Republic Pictures came up with what they called Naturama, an anamorphic scope form, although the screencaps here show that the copy of the film I watched, sadly, didn’t provide the chance to see the full effect.
In all five of his directorial features, Milland also took top billing, a smart move for an actor nearing the end of his time as a leading man. His advancing years actually work out well enough here as he’s playing a slightly shopworn and tarnished hero. Overall, I wouldn’t call it a demanding role; there’s a smidgen of ambiguity, by dint of his character’s profession, but it’s standard action/romantic stuff for the most part. Claude Rains has the choice role – although my feeling is that even if it weren’t so written, he would still have managed to make himself the most interesting figure on view – and dominates every scene he’s in from first to last. Ever suave and urbane, Rains was also capable of adding a calculating, reptilian quality when the occasion demanded. His Mavros is a terrific piece of perverse sophistication, utterly unscrupulous and delighted by his own sadism; there’s a lovely moment when he orders the burning of two of his “secretary’s” favorite dresses because she had committed an indiscretion, and then changes his mind and makes it just one on learning that she also kicked the pompous manservant. I was less satisfied by Maureen O’Hara – not because of her acting, but due to the script having her character complete the kind of volte-face that seems far too abrupt to be credible. There’s a nice turn though from Yvonne Furneaux (The Mummy, Repulsion) as Mavros’ companion, who finds herself falling for Milland. In support we get Edward Chapman, Francis Lederer, Jay Novello and Percy Marmont.
Lisbon isn’t the most widely available title – I have this Spanish DVD, and I don’t think it’s been released anywhere else to date. However, as I mentioned above, the aspect ratio is compromised – the titles play in proper scope but switch to 16:9 as soon as the actual feature kicks in. The lack of headroom suggests cropping mainly at the sides of the image, although there may well be some zooming taking place too. I once caught a TV broadcast of the film, similarly cropped to fit a 16:9 screen, so I think it’s reasonable to suppose the DVD is derived from a master prepared for television. Under the circumstances, I can’t honestly recommend this as a purchase. The film is a reasonably entertaining thriller with a good opening and finish, but the mid-section is a bit slack. Despite some weaknesses, the location work and Claude Rains add lots of value – it’s just a shame a better version isn’t available.
You’re smart… honest. I like smart women. They got cat in ’em.
Current trends in cinema indicate that audiences prefer ever-increasing running times, or at least the major studios seem to interpret it that way. In terms of minutes spent in front of the screen, you could definitely say you’re getting your money’s worth out of a movie these days. But is it really possible to reduce the worth of a movie, or any piece of art for that matter, to such crude terms? I’m fine with long films if the story or its telling merits the added time. The problem though is that this is rarely the case; simple stories are padded to the point they lose their edge, and true epics no longer as potent. It wasn’t always so. Once upon a time filmmakers knew that quality and quantity were not equal partners, that it was unnecessary to tie them together in a marriage of inconvenience. Today, let’s look at Jeopardy (1953), a movie that does all it needs to do in under seventy minutes.
There’s something wholesome and reassuring about family vacations, especially the hard-earned ones. Doug Stilwin (Barry Sullivan), along with his wife Helen (Barbara Stanwyck) and their young son Bobby (Lee Aaker), are driving south to get away from it all the stresses and strains of life. They’re heading to Mexico, to a deserted fishing cove Doug remembers visiting with an old army buddy, and everything seems right with the world. As they cross the border and move away from the big towns Helen’s narration catches some of the optimistic flavor of the early 50s – there’s an air of domestic contentment, but there’s an edge to her voice at times that warns of a tale which will take a twist before it runs its course. We get the odd hint of an undercurrent of tension – Doug doesn’t like being told what to do and Helen is obviously not a woman to be undervalued – but the first real sense of danger comes when the family encounters a police roadblock. The reason for the spot check becomes apparent later. For the time being, things couldn’t be better – Doug finds his secluded beach and the family settle down to relax in glorious solitude. However, to borrow from another noir narrator, fate has put its finger on this particular group of people. While exploring the old jetty, Bobby gets his foot stuck in the decaying timbers and his father has to go and free him. It’s at this point that everything, quite literally, falls apart. The upshot is that Doug finds himself trapped in the shallows by a fallen pile, and the tide is rising. With all attempts to extricate him coming to nothing, Doug convinces Helen to drive back to the last settlement they passed in search of help. Reluctantly, she does so, leaving Bobby behind to keep him company. What she encounters though is Lawson (Ralph Meeker), the object of the aforementioned police dragnet. As the water level rises, and Helen’s sense of desperation matches it, we learn exactly how far a woman is prepared to go to save the life of the man she loves.
I’ve commented before on how there’s something very attractive about John Sturges’ work in the 50s, which is not to say I dislike the bigger, and more ambitious films he made in the years to come. I feel he was at his best in the 50s though; there’s a tightness, a kind of taut economy, in his filmmaking during that period. Jeopardy is a straightforward and direct story – there’s no explanation of who Lawson is or what precisely he’s wanted for, but a handful of telling shots let the audience know all that’s necessary about his character and the things he’s capable of. Time is of the essence for the man trapped on the beach, and Sturges never once lets go of that sense of urgency. The almost constant use of motion – the crashing waves, Helen’s chaotic drive to the settlement, and Lawson’s similarly frantic journey back – offer no respite from the tension. Not a moment is wasted, nor a word uttered superfluously. In visual terms, Sturges was as fine an exponent of the wide screen process as it’s been my pleasure to see. While this film was framed for, or at least is presented in, Academy ratio, the director’s spatial awareness and composition is always in evidence. The high, objectifying angles increase the sense of isolation of the characters in a barren and hostile environment, and the close-ups catch every twitch of emotion on their faces.
Barbara Stanwyck was in her mid-40s when she made Jeopardy, and showing few signs of relinquishing her grip on leading roles. By this stage she’d had plenty of experience playing tough broads who knew their way round the world and were capable of giving as good as they got. Unlike similarly strong actresses like Bette Davis or, more especially, Joan Crawford, whom I often find off-putting, Stanwyck retained that toughness without descending into hardness. While she worked in a variety of genres, there was an edge and earthiness which made her a good fit for westerns and thrillers. Jeopardy gave her top billing and plenty to get her teeth into – the painful decisions circumstances have forced her into making are never shied away from and her reactions to them remain entirely credible. Barry Sullivan would go on to make another two movies with Stanwyck – most notably Sam Fuller’s Forty Guns – and he worked well with her on screen. The film has no shortage of high drama and thus needed a strong, stable presence to anchor it all. Sullivan is very good as the man used to taking charge and calling the shots, who’s reduced to helplessness. Even so he’s stoic throughout, and his interaction with Lee Aaker (who also appeared in Hondo the same year) is genuinely touching at times. Just the other day I saw Ralph Meeker described, not at all disparagingly, as “a poor man’s Brando”, and I can see how that could be the case. He had the kind of brutal machismo that made him a terrific and interesting Mike Hammer a few years later in Kiss me Deadly, and he has ample opportunity to show that off here. I think it’s also worth noting that even in a film as lean and pared down as Jeopardy, Meeker’s character still has the chance to earn redemption by the end.
Jeopardy was released on DVD in the US some years ago as part of a Stanwyck box set, and the disc was also available individually. It shares that disc space with To Please a Lady, and the transfer is quite good. The print is generally sharp, clean and without damage. The theatrical trailer is provided as an extra along with the radio adaptation of the story. I’m very partial to sparse, brisk storytelling, even more so nowadays as it seems to have become something of a lost art; men like John Sturges knew how to do it well, and Jeopardy is a solid example of that.
Since when is a young rattlesnake any less poisonous than an old one?
First and foremost, a good film needs to be entertaining. The more interesting ones ask questions and have a clear theme which dominates the plot. For this viewer, the theme is always important as it indicates the direction the picture is likely to take. As such, I’m always a little disappointed when the theme is underdeveloped or poorly developed. One is left wondering what point the filmmakers are trying to make, what their position really is. Good Day for a Hanging (1959) is an example of this, suggesting that it’s going to offer a critique of justice and the death penalty. However, it loses focus and ends up being neither fish nor fowl, dragging our sympathies in one direction before wrong-footing us and apparently contradicting the line it was initially following.
Ben Cutler (Fred MacMurray) is an ex-lawman living in an idyllic Nebraska town. He’s a widower with a grown-up daughter and only weeks away from marrying Ruth Granger (Maggie Hayes), another single parent. His plans for a peaceful domestic future are thrown into disarray though by the arrival of a five man gang intent on robbing the bank. The heist doesn’t go entirely smoothly, resulting in a shoot-out and pursuit with a hastily assembled posse. The upshot of all this is the aging marshal (Emile Meyer) ends up dead, and the man accused of killing him is a former resident of the town, Eddie Campbell (Robert Vaughn). Cutler manages to wound Campbell and bring him back to town for trial, although the situation is complicated by the fact his daughter (Joan Blackman) was the outlaw’s childhood sweetheart and still carries a torch for him. Well the trial comes to pass, and Campbell ends up convicted of murder and sentenced to hang, principally on the evidence of Cutler who has been drafted in as a replacement marshal due to his previous experience. Throughout it all Campbell maintains his innocence with the support of Cutler’s daughter, who refuses to believe her former love capable of murder. As Campbell’s date with the gallows approaches the discontent within the town grows – Cutler’s isolation also increases as first his daughter, then his betrothed, and finally the citizenry turn their back on him and question his judgment and motives.
Nathan Juran is best known now for his science fiction and fantasy movies but he directed a number of pretty good westerns, notably with Audie Murphy. Good Day for a Hanging was a low-budget affair (recycling the score from 3:10 to Yuma throughout), resembling a TV western in some respects but quite competently handled by Juran. The opening quarter-hour is pretty stylish and tense as the build up to and execution of the bank robbery take place, Juran alternating nicely between wide shots and telling close-ups. The truth is the direction remains smooth all the way and the climactic shoot-out is well done. The script, however, is less satisfactory. One is left with the impression that the writers were unsure or undecided what point they wanted to press home. On the one hand, the whole movie seems to be building towards a condemnation of the death penalty, but then changes tack for the climax. There also seems to be that typical 50s concern with disaffected youth, but again the payoff is at odds with the end result. And then there’s the character of Cutler – the inner conflict of a man of principle is certainly explored, but he’s portrayed as such an implacable and frankly unsympathetic figure that even that doesn’t really hit the mark. All of this amounts to a very average western, and you can’t help but feel let down when you think of the creative and thematic heights the genre had reached by the end of the 50s.
Generally, I like Fred MacMurray in westerns, although I understand he wasn’t all that enthusiastic about doing them. His best roles always had a touch of ambiguity about them, and those where he was downright unsympathetic were probably the strongest. As Cutler, he had the opportunity to play to his strengths, his unbending conviction on the outside causing plenty of internal turmoil. For long stretches it’s hard not to see him as the villain of sorts, apparently oblivious to the mounting pressure from family, friends and community. But I’m not totally convinced that’s how we’re supposed to view him. Once again, I feel the writing is fault here rather than MacMurray – we’re encouraged to see him as others do as opposed to how he sees himself. And then there’s an element of unreality to it all; would any man honestly jeopardize his relations with those closest to him, those he genuinely loves, for what is at best a highly debatable principle? Pitted against him was Robert Vaughn, a man whose place in western lore was just a year away from being cemented in John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven, but who would find his true niche in TV, particularly as The Man from U.N.C.L.E. He’s fine as the troubled youth as far as it goes, but I feel he suffers from the confused scripting too. The supporting cast features, Emile Meyer, Maggie Hayes, Joan Blackman, Denver Pyle and The Virginian, James Drury, all in perfectly acceptable if unremarkable roles.
Good Day for a Hanging was released some time ago in the US by Columbia – TriStar on DVD and should be easily available. The transfer to disc is OK, but nothing more. It’s in the correct widescreen ratio and doesn’t display any noticeable damage, but it’s a lackluster affair for all that. The image is a bit dull and faded, mediocre at best. Even so, this is the kind of film that’s unlikely to have a lot of care lavished on it so I’m happy enough to have it available in acceptable form. Have I been unduly harsh in my overall assessment? Perhaps, and others may disagree. For me, context is the key here; 1959 saw the release of some of the best films the western genre had to offer, and Good Day for a Hanging looks weak when set against them. I don’t think it’s a bad movie, MacMurray and Vaughn are very watchable and Juran does all that’s asked of him, but it promises a lot more than it ultimately delivers.
 This isn’t a family. It’s just a bunch of people living at the same address.Â
Trends in cinema are constantly changing with genres rising and falling in popularity all the time. Despite that, the detective story has never really gone out of fashion, in the same way that the literary version stretching back to its earliest appearance in the works of Poe and Dickens remains consistently popular. Sure the style has altered over time, the snappy sophistication of the Van Dine and Queen influenced movies of the 30s giving way to the tougher hard-boiled dialect of the Hammett and Chandler adaptations of the 40s and so on. While the trappings and presentation may shift according to the mood of the times, the central figure of the detective is always with us. Whether these characters happen to be public servants or private investigators they are seekers after truth, and occasionally justice gets a look in too. By the 60s the gumshoe or shamus had passed through the period of post-war cynicism and, though some vestige of that weary attitude was still to be found, taken on an air of cool detachment. Under the circumstances, it’s hard to think of a better choice than Frank Sinatra to play the title character in Tony Rome (1967), a private eye yarn retaining most of the familiar motifs of the sub-genre and blending them into the more permissive atmosphere of the late 60s.
Tony Rome (Frank Sinatra) is a Miami based investigator, just about getting by, making enough to eat and pay off the gambling debts he’s fond of running up. A phone call from his ex-partner, Turpin (Robert J Wilke), lands him a job he’s not especially keen on but it doesn’t look like it’s going to require any great effort on his part either. A young woman (Sue Lyon) checked herself into the flea-pit hotel where Turpin is working as the house dick and promptly passed out under the influence of copious amounts of alcohol. Well so what? The thing is the hotel doesn’t need any further hassle from the law and the young lady just happens to be the daughter of Rudy Kosterman (Simon Oakland), an influential construction magnate. Rome stands to earn some easy money by simply delivering the tycoon’s daughter back home and ensuring no awkward questions are asked. Kosterman’s naturally happy to have the girl back but he’s also worried about her recent behavior – she’s been spending prolifically and it’s increasingly difficult for either her father or her incompetent milquetoast husband to control her. Firstly, Kosterman hires Rome to look into his daughter’s activities, then before he gets out of the door the millionaire’s wife (Gena Rowlands) wants to retain his services for an investigation of her own. When the motor launch that doubles as his home is ransacked by a couple of toughs convinced he must know the whereabouts of a jeweled pin the last thing he needs is another client. And yet that’s exactly what he gets the following morning as the Kosterman girl turns up and wants him to locate the jeweled pin (yes, that one) she mislaid in the course of her date with the whiskey bottle. Aside from the potential conflict of interests involved, an apparently straightforward assignment is beginning to turn into fairly complex mess. And that’s only the beginning; after Turpin turns up dead in Rome’s office the bodies start piling up with almost depressing regularity, threatening to sour his long-standing relationship with the police in the shape of Lieutenant Santini (Richard Conte), not to mention a potential relationship of another kind with divorcee Ann Archer (Jill St John). By the time the case is concluded Rome will lay bare the secrets the Kosterman family would prefer to keep under wraps – to reach that point he’ll have to pick his way through a maze peopled by a lesbian stripper, an effete drug pusher, a crooked jeweler and blackmailers.
This was the first of three crime movies director Gordon Douglas would make with Sinatra, the others being Lady in Cement (reprising the Tony Rome character) and The Detective. The latter is clearly the best and most layered of the trio, but Tony Rome is probably the most entertaining. The story derives from a Marvin H Albert novel – a writer whose work I’ve never read despite the fact I’ve seen a few movies now based on his books – and treads a fine line between glamor and seediness, intrigue and humor. Douglas, along with cameraman Joseph Biroc, makes the most of the Florida locations and there are some nicely composed setups (see above) which evoke the look and mood of the classic private eye movie. The plot does become pretty complicated but Douglas keeps the pace even and there’s enough incident to ensure interest never drifts. A good deal of the humor comes via the by-play between Sinatra and Jill St John; although there’s also a glorious, innuendo-laden interlude in Rome’s office, when a frumpy middle-aged woman tries to get him to look into the matter of her depressed pussy and see if he can make it smile again.
Sinatra was well cast as Rome, boozing, smoking and wisecracking his way around Miami and the Keys, mingling effortlessly with both high society and a range of lowlife characters. As a singer he was always capable of going from a buoyant cockiness to almost painful self-awareness, and he brings the same quality to his performance here. The smart, assured dialogue rolls of his tongue as he trades threats and jibes with equal ease, and yet there’s also the honest acceptance of his own weaknesses and failings as a human being. Recently, I’ve been chatting elsewhere about the nature of the detective in crime fiction/filmmaking, and I think Sinatra does well conveying the image of an imperfect but essentially honorable man surrounded by violence and deceit. Jill St John is fine too as the woman looking for a few laughs and finding herself regularly fobbed off as Rome’s investigation takes another interesting turn at just the wrong moment for her. The supporting cast is packed with familiar faces – Simon Oakland, Gena Rowlands, Robert J Wilke, an increasingly exasperated Richard Conte, Jeffrey Lynn, Lloyd Bochner, and cameos for boxer Rocky Graziano and restaurateur Mike Romanoff.
Tony Rome is a 20th Century Fox production and the DVD form that studio is very good – I have the UK box set containing the three Sinatra/Douglas crime films. The movie is presented in anamorphic scope and comes from a nice clean print, the colors are natural looking and I can’t say I’m aware of any significant damage. The movie itself is a good, solid detective story with a well-judged central performance by Sinatra. In fairness, it’s not the star’s best movie, not even his best with Douglas, but it is a good one, entertaining and engaging from beginning to end. It ought to be more than satisfactory for anyone into mysteries, detective stories or Sinatra.
Riding the High Country 