Your weekly fix of great movies made before you were born that you should check out before you die.

An aging actress of another era wastes away in her mansion on Sunset Blvd. It’s by chance alone that a young writer stumbles upon her dreary existence and is pulled deep down into her madness alongside her. That young writer is now floating face down in a beautiful pool.

A classic, a must-see, a brilliant film, Sunset Blvd. succeeds on every level no matter how desensitized by the past 60 years of filmmaking we’ve been.

Sunset Blvd. (1950)

Directed By: Billy Wilder

Written By: Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, and D.M. Marshman, Jr

Starring: Gloria Swanson, William Holden, Erich von Stroheim, Nancy Olson, and Jack Webb

There are thousands of angles to take on this movie, but there are three that are particularly fascinating in the modern context – its status as a horror film, its theme of shifting stories, and what most consider a new invention, the meta angle.

Sunset Blvd. begins with a very convincing body trying its damnedest to breath pool water (a shot achieved using a mirror on the bottom concrete) while simultaneously narrating our tale. It’s clear that violence is more than a possibility, and the former living man makes it clear that we need to hear the real story before it gets distorted. Fortunately, that man is Joe Gillis (William Holden), and Joe Gillis is a writer.

The flick plays with more than a few genre tropes, but it’s genuinely frightening when it wants to be. Regardless of the drama, the noir, or the tragedy, the movie that it most resembles is Misery – the story of a writer who is stranded in the house of a crazed fan. Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) is incapable of being a fan of anyone but herself, but she could beat Annie Wilkes in a fistfight or a staring contest. She’s insane from the moment we meet her (trying to bury her sweet pet chimpanzee), but Wilder isn’t content to make her a flat boogeyman. There are few slasher icons as scary as Norma Desmond, but she’s ultimately sympathetic (until she swings right back to being murderous and pants wettingly-horrifying. Still, if you don’t believe this movie is a horror flick, take a look into Desmond’s face and try and deny it.

The most prevalent theme is one of shifting stories, and there are more than a few elements that Wilder and company play with:

1. The opening narration is given by a dead man and continues throughout the film as he plays out his fate. He places an emphasis on getting the right version of the story out there for the audience, but he’s both omniscient (as a man from beyond the grave) and faulty (because he’s a man who doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him).
2. Gillis pitches a concept called “Bases Loaded” that sees a troubled ball player in debt to some gamblers. The studio executive wants to change it to a female character and give it comedic musical numbers.
3. The movie itself reshapes Hollywood history by name-dropping and by featuring filmmakers as themselves. It’s unclear what year the story takes place, but if we consider it being 1950, it changes a lot. Cecil B. DeMille (playing himself) is shooting a historical epic, because that’s what he was known for, but in real history, he would have been shooting When Worlds Collide. There’s a random note about Norma Desmond’s car (a beast of an Isotta-Fraschini) is perfect for a new Bing Crosby picture (one of the actors Wilder had a feud with), but it’s unclear what movie it would be for. These figures and dropped names exist as themselves, but in an alternate universe where a silent star named Norma Desmond exists as well. It’s Cecil B. DeMille playing a character named Cecil B. DeMille that’s remarkably similar to him.
4. It also shifts stories by toying with genres. Early on, there’s a noir-esque car chase, but it isn’t gangsters or spies or hardboiled detectives. It’s a failing screenwriter and two repo men. The tension is there, but the reason for it isn’t. Wilder is a master of manipulation that way and loved making all kinds of movies. Here, he gets to make several kinds in one.
5. Gillis also mentions a previously made movie of his as a story about Okies in the dustbowl that ended up being filmed on a torpedo boat.
6. The centerpiece of the movie is a script called Salome that Desmond has written. It’s her story, but it becomes reshaped by Gillis as he rewrites it completely.
7. Gillis, an established liar, also changes his own personal story depending on who he needs to sell. Ultimately, it’s this story that matters most because Norma Desmond ends up changing him (in one specific way, permanently).

Alongside the stories, the concept of playing parts and roles is explored heavily too. It’s through this, and through simple roles like “mother,” “husband,” “servant,” and “master” that it transcends the bonds of being another simple Hollywood movie about Hollywood. It becomes something we call relate to (even if we’ve never been held as a de facto prisoner in a wealthy old loner’s house).

Since it’s a story about stories, it has no choice but to be meta, but Wilder plays around with that concept as well. For one, it’s a movie starring a silent film star/aging actress about a silent film star/aging actress trying to be in a movie. For two, Gillis and Betty (Nancy Olson) are working on an “Untitled Love Story” script together while falling in love. Plus, Gillis is a writer who had a few hits but has sunken into joblessness – a situation that mirrors William Holden at the time. He’s essentially playing the writer version of himself, just as Swanson is playing the insane version of herself. There’s also the real-life filmmakers to take into consideration here as well.

A million more words could be written (and probably have) about this incredibly deserving film. It’s ultimately a story about people caught in the middle of a changing time and the various responses they have to it – which is why it’s fantastic that it’s so timeless. It’s a modern movie made before the modern era that hasn’t lost a step or gained a wrinkle since it first premiered. Fortunately, it’s nothing like its washed up main character because it’s her descent into madness (and down the stairs) that’s the most captivating element of all. It was a star-making turn for Gloria Swanson – just in time for her to retire. Life has a funny way of teasing art that way. That’s why it’s important to get the real story before it gets all distorted.

Next Thursday, we’ll welcome a vagrant into our homes with My Man Godfrey.

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Your weekly fix of great movies made before you were born that you should check out before you die.

The persistent question in To Be or Not To Be is this: what use is a clown during wartime?

There might not be a definitive answer, but Ernst Lubitsch‘s most dramatic work (by default) is a comedy that has to be taken seriously. It’s also startling proof that it’s harder to laugh when you’re standing too close to the fire. It’s only in stepping back that you can feel the warmth without getting hurt.

That was the case when this comedy about Hitler and Hamlet premiered right smack dab in the middle of Word War II.

To Be or Not To Be (1942)

Directed By: Ernst Lubitsch

Written By: Edwin Justus Mayer

Starring: Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Robert Stack, Stanley Ridges, Tom Dugan and Sig Ruman

Hitler walks calmly through a small street in Warsaw, Poland. The two countries aren’t yet at war, but the darkening cloud of it looms overhead. As the townspeople stop their shopping, stall their cars in the street, and begin to surround the man, a young boy asks for his autograph. He’s a huge theater fan.

Of course, Hitler isn’t actually Hitler. It’s the actor Bronski (Tom Dugan), who is made up to look like a funny little man with a mustache for a satirical play the Polish theater company will be staging after their run of “Hamlet” comes to a close.

To Be or Not To Be doesn’t waste time in making its comedic mark. The sight of Hitler casually strolling through Warsaw is a jarring enough one, but the entire next scene (a rehearsal of the play) is full of people yawning while saluting Der Fuhrer, and Adolf himself saying, “Heil myself.”

The writing here is non-stop humor, whether it’s one-liners, character based, slapstick or the natural result of misunderstandings and mistruths. It only lets up whenever something deeply traumatic happens (like, say, the invasion of Poland).

For the entire elongated first act, there’s no real story or stakes. It’s simply a matter of spending time with these wonderful people that seem to have a good time even while fighting. There’s Maria Tura (Carole Lombard), the lead actress of the company who foolishly opens the door to romance with a young admirer in the military named Sobinski (Robert Stack) despite her marriage to lead actor Joseph Tura (Jack Benny channeling the hubris of Orson Welles who had just premiered Citizen Kane a year before).

So, yes. It’s a Poland inhabited by American poster children. No one even attempts a Polish accent (which is probably for the best). This cultural remapping is a fascinating one which exists as a bit of historical fantasy fulfillment. The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor a year before this film’s release, and the sheer Americanism of “Poland” here plays out a bit like the Inglourious Bastereds pumping round after bloody round into Hitler until his face is no longer a face. The casting is, on the surface level a necessity (and Lombard was one of the biggest stars of the time), but on a deeper level, it’s a way of placing America there when it all started. Giving the cavalry a chance to save the day before things get too out of hand.

The first act crashes into the second when Nazi tanks cross over into Poland. Things aren’t funny anymore. This massive event grabs those able to make us laugh by the throat and threatens to silence them. However, with incredible deftness and guile, Lubitsch and company draw every ounce of humor that can be mined from the situation. It’s black humor to be sure, but it’s damned funny. The result is that high stakes have suddenly been brought into glaring focus. What began as a standard, madcap romp becomes a movie where people are fighting not only for their lives but for their way of life. The comedy contrast shows just how sacred something as simple as laughing can be when it’s taken away. Does an actor remain an actor in dark times? How do you make a Nazi cross? What good is a clown in wartime?

The most direct reference to this comes right after Sobinski and some other military pals sing a rousing beer hall chant. Professor Siletsky (Stanley Ridges) notes that he’s happy to see they all still have their humor. Sobinski replies, “We’re funnier over Berlin.”

That’s it right there. The entire tone of the film delivered in two lines. Hilarious but grave. Few directors and casts have been able to strike such a precarious balance so well, and To Be or Not To Be remains a study in how to stay serious while making everyone roll in the aisles.

Sadly, audiences of the time weren’t rolling. They were outraged. This comedy was released when people couldn’t fathom mocking something as dangerous as Naziism and Hitler’s threat to the world. The Great Dictator had done it two years earlier, but the US wasn’t in the war at that time. Hitler was a figure rife for parody, not the reason our sons and brothers weren’t going to come home ever again. Plus, Lombard had been killed in a plane crash (returning from a trip to sell war bonds) before the release.

For many reasons, no one really felt like laughing.

Fortunately, the skill of the flick lived beyond that environment and survives as a classic of the genre (whatever genre that might be). It shifts from raucous comedy to spy thriller effortlessly. It’s difficult to tell who is spying for whom, and the (now unimportant-seeming) problem of Maria romancing a young man behind her husband’s back complicates allegiances. Joseph has gone from star actor to member of the SS, but Maria remains true to the cause of Warsaw and her new romance.

The question of what a clown can offer in wartime is a purely personal one (and one audiences at the time of release seemed to answer loudly with boos), but the title of the film itself and the consistent structural references to “Hamlet,” offer something else entirely. Will you let war change you? Violence? Hatred? Your enemies?

To that effect, there’s a strange scene in the middle of the film where Professor Siletsky (a dapper older man) tries to sell Maria on the benefits of Naziism. He asks if he looks like a monster. He tells her that they’re only trying to make a happy world. He calmly reassures her that Hitler is a benevolent leader who thinks only of his people’s welfare. On the one hand, it’s a true attempt at humanizing Hitler by allowing a character time to do so in dialogue. On the other, Ridges’s delivery is so subtly, perfectly evil that he satirically achieves vilifying the Nazi cause and coming of like the serpent swearing the apple won’t do any harm. It’s a masterful performance, but it’s also something deeper that speaks to what the rest of the movie so thoroughly accomplishes. Beneath the roar of laughter and behind the charming smiles, the true vilification of Nazis isn’t in their wanton warmongering or their unimaginable cruelty. Loss of life is damnable, but loss of humanity is a different brand in the warehouse of evil entirely.

Oscillating freely between sharp drama and carefree comedy, To Be or Not To Be points out this profound dichotomy, mourns the death of man and mankind alike, but challenges the audience not to give up their humor in the face of terror.

I can think of no better way to celebrate Memorial Day weekend.

Next Thursday, we’ll take a drive down the immortal Sunset Blvd.

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Your weekly fix of great movies made before you were born that you should check out before you die.

Every February, I use this column to explore some Best Picture nominees that didn’t win. In fact, it’s a rare thing that we look at Oscar winners (often times they take care of their own publicity), but few are as fascinating as The Best Years of Our Lives.

After a brief period of Hoorah American jingoism that shoved WWII through a processor with the violence turned down to something civilians could swallow in pill form (which either meant comedy or straight-ahead action), Best Years marked an attempt at telling the story of men returning from war to find that life had changed and so had they.

It’s an honest look at what shocking violence can do (that doesn’t need to shock with violence), and it brought heroes back to a home front that simply re-framed the type of war they were fighting.

The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

Directed By: William Wyler

Written By: Robert E. Sherwood

Starring: Myrna Loy, Frederic March, Dana Andrews, Virginia Mayo, Hoagy Carmichael, Teresa Wright, and Harold Russell

Like most Best Picture winners, it would be easy to pile on the standard reasons for why it succeeds. It deals with sensitive issues gracefully and forcefully, the acting is stellar, and the overall effect is one that resonates against your bones so hard that your blood gets sloshed around.

Great writing, great directing, great acting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It won an Oscar. You should see it, and if you haven’t, there’s a company that will deliver it right to your mail box. It’s a fantastic movie that should be on your to-watch list already. In fact, in a world where some think that Shawshank Redemption being #1 on IMDB’s Top 250 list proves a younger generation is picking the new favorites, this 65-year-old film still makes the IMDB cut, coming in at #172. It’s a classic, yes, there’s no doubt about that.

But what makes this flick so captivating is its success in the context of when it was made, what it had to say, and how it said it. A perfect counter example is The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek which was released only two years before (which happened to be during the war), and is filled with the sort of emotional slapstick and silliness that was meant to distract and keep smiles on faces that had a lot to stay sullen over outside the dark room with the flickering frames.

On the other hand, Best Years falls somewhere between Morgan Creek and The Hurt Locker. It’s not as flighty as the first, and not as bombastic as the second, but it portrays what must have been an all-too-recognizable life for many Americans in the post-WWII period. In fact, the idea for the film was born when director William Wyler read a “Time Magazine” article on the challenges facing military personnel as they returned home from fighting that was published in August 1944 (about a year and a month before the war ended, and two years and three months before the film debuted).

Wyler was the David Fincher of his time. His perfectionism was nearly psychotic, but, like Fincher today, he got results. He was a deliberate filmmaker who demanded a certain level of authenticity in his art, especially where the military was concerned. During WWII, Wyler served the US (he became a citizen in 1928, the year he directed his first non-Western) as a major in the Air Force, creating two documentaries that saw him flying with pilots on bombing missions. The danger wasn’t a manufactured one. His cinematographer Lt. Harold J. Tannenbaum died during filming after being shot down, and The Memphis Belle would remain the only film credit to his name.

It seems obvious that Wyler was uniquely qualified to create a movie like Best Years which sought to capture a delicate, complex national mood to both mourn and celebrate it. The war was over, we had defeated a massive set of enemies, but there was still much to lament.

On a structural level, Wyler made two decisions that set the film on a course to become one of the best war movies of all time. First, he cast several unknown or lesser known faces amidst a handful of stars. Frederic March was a star, Dana Andrews was on the rise, Myrna Loy was a legend even then, Virginia Mayo was still cutting her teeth, Hoagy Carmichael had composed music for film for over a decade but was just starting to act.

The second decision was Harold Russell. Not just an unknown or rising star, Harold Russell wasn’t even an actor. He’d never had a lesson, maybe he’d never even thought about the profession before being cast. Wyler became aware of Russell after watching the documentary Diary of a Sergeant, which showcased Russell and the prosthetics he wore after losing both of his hands in the war.

Even for an artist obsessed with authenticity, hiring Russell must have been a bit of a gamble, but it’s one that would pay off incredible dividends for the audience, for Wyler, and for Russell himself (who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor on his first try). In fact, Russell would only ever act in three narrative features. The first for Wyler, the second for Richard Donner 34 years later, the third for George Hickenlooper 16 years after that. Instead of acting, Russell spent his life active in AMVETS – one of the most respected volunteer organizations that offers support for military personnel and plain old community service for us civilians.

The Best Years of Our Lives faced a difficult home-side reality with poise and empathy. It’s not one of the hundreds of happy-go-lucky war time flicks that existed at their basest level as morale-boosters, but it also isn’t a stark piece of gristle meant to devastate under a pile of depressive negativism. It, like life, is more complex than that – showing just as many sunrises as sunsets.

As if ramping up deliberately for Memorial Day, we’ll take a look at To Be Or Not To Be next Thursday.

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John Wayne wasn’t the first choice to play Captain Tom Wilder. Or the second. Or third. But he takes the role of a man trying to lead a village through treacherous waters without a map, and he makes it his crazy own.

It’s a middle child of his career and a middle child of the genre (whatever genre that might be), but it manages to be an enduring classic simply because of how strange it is.

Blood Alley (1955)

Directed By: William A. Wellman

Written By: A.S. Fleischman

Starring: John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, Joy Kim, Mike Mazurki, Anita Ekberg

For all intents and purposes, John Wayne is playing an insane person here. We’re introduced to his Captain Wilder as he lights his jail cell mattress on fire and talks to an invisible entity named “Baby.” If that weren’t bizarre enough, Wayne isn’t acting here so much as doing his best John Wayne impression, and it really is a wonder to behold.

Wilder’s replacement mattress has a gun and the means to escape to a small village in it. Fortunately, Baby comes along with him.

Apparently the small populace of a town wishing to leave the grips of Red China has enlisted the captured sailor’s help to navigate them through 300 miles of death that will either come with the salty, cold water filling up their lungs or the unforgiving metal of Communist bullets. They have no map, their ship does little more than float, and Cathy Grainger (Lauren Bacall) keeps making everything far more intense than it needs to be.

Critics at the time thought there was no chemistry between Bacall and Wayne, and that’s because there isn’t. But did Wayne ever have chemistry with any of his leading ladies? He was the kind of star who slapped a woman on the ass, tossed her over his shoulder and made her his own – he didn’t Cary Grant his way into her (or the audience’s) heart. So, no, there’s more chemistry to be found here between Captain Wilder and his imaginary love than there is between the flesh and blood woman in front of him.

Plus, their lack of chemistry is one of the better elements of the story. Here’s a man aided in escaping a Chinese prison, meant to help a group of total strangers, and it thankfully doesn’t shoehorn in a sappy love story where one doesn’t need to be. Plus, Bacall is no wilting flower herself. It’s a role that (despite the hilarious racism of the rest of the movie) cuts a fine balance proving a woman can be an action co-star just as well as any man.

On the other hand, Wayne is his own co-star here because of how much he talks to himself through his unseen Baby. She’s clearly a lost love, and she calmly haunts him through the film, giving him a mirror to his own actions. Robert Mitchum was the first choice for the role, but was fired by Wellman after several incidents (including one where Mitchum apparently shoved a producer into the water). Gregory Peck refused the role, Humphrey Bogart (wisely) wanted too much money to play the part, so The Duke (who was already producing it) stepped into an acting role that kept his head and skill level consistently below water.

With Mitchum or Peck (and maybe Bogart), the result could have been an action film that stood out as a look into one man’s heart of darkness. Instead, Wayne chews the gorgeous scenery and keeps the flick on an even keel toward being a hell of an action film.

That’s really the beauty here. The film is intense. The crew effectively made a jail break movie on a large scale – instead of a group breaking out of barbwire confines, an entire village is attempting to uproot themselves across safe, international barriers. It’s the act of hopping a 300-mile-long fence to freedom.

The Chinese are almost always keeping a watchful eye, Wilder is always having to hide or fight or kill, and the voyage itself has a built-in siren ringing to the heightened beat of pulses pounding. Of course, there is some down time for Wilder to continue being insane and for that previously ignored romance story to find its way to the deck, but with soaring production value and a solid sweat worked up by the action, Blood Alley lives up to its name.

It also lives up to the modern-day, universal excuse for action movies. It’s not like it has to win an Academy Award or anything. All of its strengths are in its muscles, and all of its weaknesses are benignly hilarious. Does it matter if John Wayne keeps talking to no one while drawing a map of China from memory? Does it matter that he pretends to assault his Chinese personal aide after she makes fun of him while cutting his hair? Does it matter that Lauren Bacall has a deeper voice than he does? No. There’s no nuance to this flick, and that’s what makes it great. Let the bullets fly as fast as the anti-Communist rhetoric and let the fires burn the whole place down. What matters is what happens when a group of people and one crazy person set out to free themselves from bondage by crawling on their stomachs through 300 miles of shit known as Blood Alley, and the movie definitely Chinese delivers on that promise.

Next week, we’ll relive The Best Years of Our Lives.

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Last month we celebrated Bette Davis, and this week, it’s time to celebrate the anniversary of another star’s birthday. Audrey Hepburn needs no introduction, but Sabrina gave her a second one. After Roman Holiday, she became a bona fide star, and her follow-up saw her playing romantically confused with William Holden and Humphrey Bogart. It’s an example of all the wrong pieces coming together to make a sweet, romantic, funny film.

Hepburn wasn’t nearly as prolific as other actors, but she managed to find projects that either worked perfectly or were made perfect by her huge brown eyes and powerful innocence. This movie is no different, and it carries all the romanticism of Roman Holiday without ever having to leave the country.

Sabrina (1954)

Directed By: Billy Wilder

Written By: Billy Wilder, Samuel Taylor and Ernest Lehman

Starring: Audrey Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, William Holden, Walter Hampton, John Williams, and Martha Hyer

The joy of this movie cannot be contained. Half of its charm comes from Hepburn, the other half from the splendor of the world she lives in, and a statistically impossible third half from the simple love that two people find while not looking for it. It celebrates the American obsession with royalty so plainly and without pretense. It is a royalty without crowns or titles, a royalty with no pomp or circumstance, but a royalty of immense wealth and taste.

Sabrina (Hepburn) watches the fancy parties held at the Larrabee estate from the outside. It’s a perfect representation of her station in life – the chauffeur’s daughter living on the grounds but not a part of the family. She lives so close to wealth, but she can never touch it herself. She also can’t touch David (William Holden), the younger, mercurial brother of the family who whisks his flirtations off to the indoor tennis court with a bottle of champagne and fickle intentions. After being sent off to Paris to learn cooking (in a school which conveniently overlooks the Eiffel Tower), Sabrina returns home a woman, and finds her unrequited love for David finally requited at the worst possible time. Since it’ll disrupt his multi-million-dollar merger, Linus (Humphrey Bogart) gets David out of the way (by suggesting he sit on some champagne glasses) and starts dating her himself in order to get her on a boat back to Paris.

There’s a rare phenomenon in movie-making where all the right elements come together to make a spectacularly bad movie. When it happens, all audiences can do is throw their hands in the air and question how a thing like that could happen. How do you get a visionary director, a cast with an Oscar winner and several rising stars and still end up with The Black Dahlia? It makes no sense.

But even rarer is the opposite: a movie where the wrong elements come together to make something fantastic. Sabrina is that movie.

By all accounts, Billy Wilder may have been the only director to direct this version of Samuel Taylor’s play because Wilder is the only director in history that could have Audrey Hepburn committing suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning and have it come off as witty and demure. There’s even a cutesy laugh moment when she’s writing her to-the-point suicide note to her father. However, as a romantic comedy, there’s nothing standard about it.

Humphrey Bogart is eyebrow raising-ly miscast here, and not because of his age, but because of his attitude. He walks through the script as if Sabrina were about to get on a plane headed away from a Nazi-controlled hill of beans. He just can’t shake his noir sensibilities, so every line comes out like a punch to the gut (which, arguably, is sometimes necessary when falling in love).

It’s also interesting to see William Holden playing the youthful playboy by way of a mid-life crisis. His character David has been married three times, he doesn’t seem to have a job to speak of, and he is still pulling the same meet-me-in-the-indoor-tennis-courts romance gag on women he meets at parties (even when he’s in an Arthur-esque arranged engagement for the business’s sake). If you think about it a second too long, his character is a pathetic loser with Gob-levels of arrested development, but Holden still manages to be winning somehow (probably in the same way he manages to be sexy two decades later in Network). Science has no answer for any of this.

Then there’s Hepburn. Born on May 4th, 1929, she was forced to become an actor to save her life during the Nazi occupation of Holland where she became Edda van Heemstra in order to hide her British background. Some movie fans seem to focus on her sophisticated upbringing, but spending her formative years trying to dodge Nazi bullets and working with the resistance movement were the foremost defining eras of her early life. When she took that skill to her profession, it was in 1951 as “Hotel Receptionist” in a flick called One Wild Oat. That same year, she had a small, pivotal role in The Lavender Hill Mob. Two years later, she cemented her place as a star in Roman Holiday and followed it up a year later as Sabrina. She was the ideal ingenue. Innocent yet fiesty, strong but fragile. She exuded an effortless vulnerability that made you want to scoop her up, teach her how to speak proper English and take care of her for the rest of her life.

Bogart didn’t think she could act. When asked about working with her, he famously said, “It’s okay, if you don’t mind to make 20 takes.” Somehow they made it through production, although Wilder faced massive script problems, Bogart (who was a last ditch replacement for Cary Grant) could barely stand the people he was working with, and the production at one point hung on Bogart’s willingness to apologize for yelling at screenwriter Ernest Lehman when he didn’t have a rewritten copy to give the actor.

However, the production did cast one element correctly: a celebration of opulence. The manor they shot as the Larrebee estate is the size of a small town (and the first character we’re introduced to), all the clothing is top drawer, all the actors are unbelievably attractive, and Linus Larrabee has every modern gadget that one of the wealthiest men in the world could ask for (he even has a phone in his car!).

It’s this covered base that keeps everything on solid ground. No matter what, the movie features sexy people living a wealthy life, saying witty things, and falling in love. It could have gotten everything else wrong, but Sabrina was always destined to be an escapist dream of a movie.

No one knows why Cary Grant dropped out only a week before shooting, but his involvement conjures fantasy images of how he would have played the dashing, serious, debonaire businessman Linus Larrabee. It would have been a much more enjoyable romance, but it might have meant a far less memorable movie. It’s the contradictions, all those strange puzzle pieces, coming together to make something unexpected that works because the story is about romantic tension to begin with.

Bogart didn’t hide his disdain for Holden on screen, which makes their brotherly relationship strained and dismissive. As for falling in love, Linus makes it clear from the outset that his passion is for business and the creation of new things for people to use. He has no interest for women, which is why all that dry delivery seems natural. The reason it works is because when he finally does say something heart-melting, it packs a far bigger punch than if he’d been fawning the entire time. A love-sick Romeo finding his mate is one thing, but a sarcastic deluxe model with leather exterior opening his eyes to a profound human connection is truly transformative. Our eyes light up at his kindness along with Hepburn (whose eyes manage to get somehow larger).

The reason the movie works is because none of it should work. Billy Wilder was a master of this – never forcing pieces into parts they didn’t fit into, he had a way of molding them or turning them over to create an entirely new picture that slowly came into focus. He has the sweetest actress writing suicide notes, a playboy laughing his way through a butt injury, and a walking puff of cigar smoke finding his heart.

How charming is that?

Next week, we’ll continue the streak of sweet romantic comedies by focusing on John Wayne in Blood Alley.

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All this month, Old Ass Movies will be celebrating the 103rd anniversary of Bette Davis‘s birthday. The iconic film star acted in far too many movies to care to count, but it seems as though she’s been reduced to a pair of eyes in popular culture. She’s the subject of a 80s pop tune, not the star that she should be recognized for being, and that needs fixing.

This is our last week of exploration, and even though we’re not ending on the last film in Davis’s career (or even her last iconic role), we’re ending on the last time a character matches the actress. She would go on to such triumphs as Whatever Happened to Baby Jane and Hush…, Hush Sweet Charlotte and Return to Witch Mountain (seriously), but Bette Davis playing the mercurial, demanding Queen Elizabeth I at the height of her career is just too-fitting.

The Virgin Queen (1955)

Directed By: Henry Koster

Written By: Mindret Lord

Starring: Bette Davis, Richard Todd, Joan Collins, and Robert Douglas

Bette Davis enters into the film as a God. In the short time it takes for us to meet Sir Walter Raleigh (Richard Todd), watch him wipe the floor with a man in a sword fight, see him use a little cleverness to earn favor from a man high up in court, and to steal the French ambassador’s cloak right off the tailor’s rack – Queen Elizabeth I gets mentioned half a dozen times. The movie is definitely Raleigh’s, but she steals every scene she can from right under his doublet.

It’s funny, considering she was in a movie called All About Eve that was all about her (she wasn’t Eve), and now she show’s up in a movie called The Virgin Queen that’s not really about the Virgin Queen (who she played).

Still, she’s a presence. She enters as if from nowhere and begins holding court whether she’s with one person or one hundred. Every line of hers is calculated, witty, evasive, and just tender enough to keep those close keep coming back for more than just her riches. If it’s better to be feared than respected, Davis makes it clear it’s even better to be both.

Raleigh desperately wants three ships to take sailing to the New World, so after winning Lord Leicester’s (Herbert Marshall) admiration, he gets an invitation to court and impresses Queen Elizabeth I with his straight talk. That doesn’t mean she’ll grant him the ships, so he’s forced to embark on a non-romantic courtship of the most powerful woman in the world while navigating the choppy seas of love with Mistress Throgmorton (Joan Collins), the murderous jealousy of ousted right hand man Sir Christopher Hatton (Robert Douglas) and the danger of getting too well fed and too comfortable on the striped cushion of the Queen’s favor.

A period piece about 16th century British royalty might scare a few away (or suck a few in), but it’s got all the splendor of the genre without all of the air. It’s fast-paced both in action and dialogue (with writing that challenges the actors to speak as fast and sharply as possible), and with a 90-minute-long runtime, it sails by at a brisk clip. Every scene is utilized fully, twisting the plot into a knot and delivering some sick 16th century burns.

The intrigue and romance is distilled into its sleekest form, which makes the courtship between Raleigh and Throgmorton seem even more chaotic but never gives a chance for the audience to catch its breath. This flick is not a deep exploration of the cold air inside a castle. It’s the celebration of the hot hearts beating inside its walls.

The most important heart is Queen Elizabeth’s, and Davis plays her unflinchingly (just as she did years before in Essex and Elizabeth (with the same shaved-back hairline and shock of curly red on top)). She could walk into a room, grab a man by the testicles, remark plainly that she owns them, and the man would thank her for it. In fact, she does that verbally on several occasions in the film.

She’s not a monarch that rests on her titles for respect. She’s a tornado stuffed into human skin, holding firm to every ounce of reverence and fear with every word and every silence she offers.

It wouldn’t be surprising to find out that Meryl Streep based her Prada-wearing Devil on Davis in this role.

Ultimately, it’s the strength of the writing (particularly the tennis game of back-and-forth dialogue and the essence of the treachery of offending the wrong person in court) that sets the foundation for success, but it’s Davis who takes a sledge hammer to that foundation and rebuilds something entirely more beautiful out of it. Due credit goes to Todd, Collins and Douglas for rising to the task of holding their own next to the master (something that Errol Flynn couldn’t do in Essex and Elizabeth), but watching Davis demanding attention without needing to move many muscles at all is a glory to behold.

It breaks the slow-burn genre rules of what we know period pieces to be nowadays, offers a ton of buckled swash, and commands the viewer to fall in love (out of fear) with a woman projecting herself from the 16th century through a massive movie star in the sweltering heat of her prime.

Next week, we leave Bette Davis behind, but we celebrate another birthday with Sabrina and Audrey Hepburn.

Celebrate more ancient flicks by reading more Old Ass Movies

Your weekly fix of great movies made before you were born that you should check out before you die.

All this month, Old Ass Movies will be celebrating the 103rd anniversary of Bette Davis‘s birthday. The iconic film star acted in far too many movies to care to count, but it seems as though she’s been reduced to a pair of eyes in popular culture. She’s the subject of a 80s pop tune, not the star that she should be recognized for being, and that needs fixing.

This week’s movie is an ensemble where Davis proved once again how to stand out even in a distinguished crowd. She plays the famous stage star Margo Channing who is getting on in years at the ancient age of forty. But this isn’t her story, and it’s also not the story of Eve – a young woman who slinks her way into Channing’s world with supreme modesty and sly trickery. It’s the story of all actors. It’s also the story of all audiences.

All About Eve (1950)

Written and Directed By: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Starring: Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Gary Merrill, and Hugh Marlowe

There’s a lot of talk about meta-stories these days, but it takes more than commenting on the nature of performance and film to be great. In fact, if a movie is too overt about commenting on movies (or commenting on commenting) it ends up seeming like the kid waving his hand violently in the back of the class. He may get the answer right, but you hate him for it.

All About Eve succeeds by caring more about story than commentary. In doing so, it provides all the commentary it needs. The movie belongs to that disgusting sub-genre of movies about the arts. It’s a despicable little group because it mostly consists of writers and directors trumpeting how clever they are for having their head completely into their own lower intestine. Yes, we’re fascinated by the theater and by movie-making, but we often don’t need it shoved back down our throats.

Digestive tracts aside, this sharp flick manages to deliver all sides of the argument tucked away inside a compelling story that could have been about anything. It’s a story about power, trying to achieve it, and what it all means. That it takes place inside a theater is almost irrelevant.

In fact, the movie opens with a voice over (the narration will change hands several times) in which the critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders) speaks over an old actor about to give an award – directly mentioning that it doesn’t matter if we hear what the performer is saying. This same theme is repeated later once Eve Harrington (the recipient of the award, played by Anne Baxter) is shown sliding herself into the inner circle of diva Margo Channing (Bette Davis), playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe) and Lloyd’s wife Karen (Celeste Holm). She tells her life story in brief, talking about growing up and playing make believe. She mentions that the things she made up weren’t important. Her desire to act is all that matters, and the film makes a note of never showing her actually acting (even once she’s secured a role). Her performance in real life is really what matters.

What we know is that Eve is receiving an honor. What the movie sets out to do is explain how she rose so quickly in the ranks. All of that starts with her seeing every performance of a play that Margo stars in. Karen invites her to meet Margo, and Eve tells a sob story about her Air Force husband being killed in the war. The only thing that comforted her was a stretch of performances Margo did in San Francisco. When the play ended its run there, Eve headed for New York City.

Through the movie, there’s a considerable Single White Female feel. Eve is modest to the point of annoyance – constantly not wanting to be a bother, constantly helping out without being asked, constantly praising other people and insulting herself. Margo begins to grow paranoid and at any given time, someone in her friend group is suspicious of Eve or raving about how great she is. All of it first comes to a head when Margo reveals her fear to long time love (and director) Bill Simpson (Gary Merrill) – a scene which is immediately followed by Eve asking for the same drink Margo requests.

It all takes place at a party that’s negative turn is foreshadowed by the mention of Macbeth (well known in the theater for being bad luck to name). That moment is, of course, followed by Bette Davis turning flashily at the stair and uttering the immortal line (that should have acted as a warning at the beginning): “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”

And it is. Eve shows the first hints that she’s conniving instead of earnest. Margo erupts at everyone before going to bed. The onlookers are left to somehow choose sides.

It’s also notable for a scene in which a hot, young thing named Ms. Casswell (and played hot and young by Marilyn Monroe) sits opposite Eve on the stair. The critic sits with Casswell, the director sits with Eve. Casswell represents politicking your way to the top. She’s demure and slightly sexual as she charms the producer into giving her an audition. He relents, but he isn’t happy about it. She has flirted her way into a shot. Eve represents the concept of working hard to achieve greatness, and she says as much – lavishing praise on the concept of lavishing praise. She lets loose her deep desire for applause while vehemently agreeing with Simpson that it’s the blood, sweat and tears that one grinds out on the way to success.

It won’t be until much later that the scene is revealed to be ironic. Casswell and Eve are both falsely selling themselves. Eve is just far, far better at it. Her self-centered nature is a different brand from Casswell’s or Margo’s, but it’s absolutely there.

How does Davis stand out in a story that’s not even hers? For one, she’s the sun that the characters revolve around. For two, she’s just that damned good an actress. She’s so good that she doesn’t need a spotlight. The writing here is a perfect blend of cynicism, sarcasm, and sincerity. Margo is self-aware, so she’s far from being a tragic figure. She knows exactly who she is to the point that she apologizes and truly feels regret for the bigger diva moments of her life. Even with stardom, her true goal is to keep her friends and lover close.

By the end, this is what separates Eve from Margo. Eve wants to be what Margo appears to be – to have the trappings of wealth and fame, to say witty things, to be loved by strangers. But Eve is willing to sacrifice real relationships to get it, and that’s something Margo was either never willing to do or something she learned better of along the way.

Oddly enough, the snobbish critic DeWitt ends up representing all audiences. At the beginning, his claim of the critic being essential seems like self-aggrandizing, but as a representation of the audience, he’s exactly correct. Eve loses the plot as far as that’s concerned. She sees the audience from behind the shine of the spotlight in her eyes. When DeWitt finally reveals that he knows all about her, his claim that she belongs to him becomes clear. The actor needs an audience. It’s the audience that propels her. It’s the audience that gives her love. It’s the audience that holds the power to destroy her. Even with his dry, East Coast accented delivery, the things he says in that moment of truth prove that he is all of us. It’s the audience, not the critic, that’s essential.

This is a vital film – one that was nominated for an unheard of 14 Oscars and won 6 of them (including Best Writing, Directing and Picture). Bette Davis was nominated, but didn’t take the gold as she had 3 times before. It’s a brilliant ensemble cast, and the name on the marquee reads Eve, but it’s undoubtedly Davis’s movie. She is the star that shines brightest, and her character that earns the audience’s true respect and admiration. She’s not young or exciting anymore – she’s something much, much more important than that.

Next week, we head into the future of her career by heading into the past. We’ll be looking at Davis’s 66th movie (but not nearly her last), The Virgin Queen. For now, here are the 7 steps to becoming a star:

1. Make yourself stand out by attending every single performance that an actor gives.
2. Find a way to meet that person and deliver a tragic tale (whether true or not) of why you’ve come to worship them. A war hero husband’s death works fairly well.
3. Appear like a victim by consistently putting yourself down, raising the star up, and becoming indispensable as an assistant.
4. Tell everyone what they want to hear and slyly suggest yourself as the new understudy. Asking as a favor will make it seem like the person helping you is doing a good deed.
5. Wait for your moment to prove your acting talent.
6. Get the critics there, and impress the writer, director and producer.
7. Get ready to be friendless.

Celebrate more ancient flicks by reading more Old Ass Movies

Your weekly fix of great movies made before you were born that you should check out before you die.

All this month, Old Ass Movies will be celebrating the 103rd anniversary of Bette Davis‘s birthday. The iconic film star acted in far too many movies to care to count, but it seems as though she’s been reduced to a pair of eyes in popular culture. She’s the subject of a 80s pop tune, not the star that she should be recognized for being, and that needs fixing.

The year 1939 is regarded by many to be the best year of cinema in recorded history (just in case there were neanderthals making films). It saw Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Of Mice and Men, Stagecoach, Goodbye Mr. Chips, and this gem about a woman who is diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor. Bette Davis stars as a bold socialite who must decide how she wants to live her life in light of being able to count on a calendar the days until her death.

Dark Victory (1939)

Directed By: Edmund Goulding

Written By: Casey Robinson

Starring: Bette Davis, George Brent, Humphrey Bogart, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Ronald Reagan

Last week we covered Davis’s launch onto the scene in Of Human Bondage – for which she was nominated for an Oscar. She continued that streak into the next few years with Jezebel and Dangerous, earning herself not only nominations, but two wins.

What’s notable is that whether she won or not, or whether she was even nominated, Bette Davis always gave the same strength of performance. She burned up scenes and left them on the ground of the theater like so much ash from a cigarette. No matter the role, no matter the film, she gave a smoldering turn, and her presence as heiress Judith Traherne in Dark Victory is no different. In fact, had it not been for the unreal performance from Vivian Leigh in Gone With the Wind (which also won Best Picture that year), Davis would have had another statue for her mantel.

So what’s so damned special about this role?

For one, the raw humanity of it all. Davis was used to playing cruel-eyed characters, but this was her most soaring opportunity to take that apathy and turn it into something that everyone in the audience could recognize in themselves. When Traherne is diagnosed with cancer, it levels the playing field. When the operation isn’t entirely successful, it rips up all the grass and plants a tombstone at the fifty-yard line. Suddenly, her salty exterior becomes just transparent enough to see the frightened soul hiding inside.

That’s basically the entire plot of the movie. It’s more character study than beat-by-beat story. Traherne is a symbol of wealth that ignores any and all signs of weakness while lounging, horse riding, and being generally set for life. When she finally agrees to see Dr. Frederick Steele – played with sweet detachment here by George Brent (in the, like, billionth movie they made together) – the dire reality of her situation is laid out for her. A surgery cannot excise the entire tumor, she’ll go blind, and shortly thereafter, fade into a painless eternal sleep.

Nowadays, this plot turn would give Queen Latifah the freedom to go shopping and skydiving, but Dark Victory has something simpler in mind – an internal struggle between being happy and feeling in control.

Traherne is a tragic figure, but her journey is one of learning to let go. Not of her mortality (because, like all of us, she no choice in the matter), but of her self-righteousness. She was above everything else, and she would have continued down that path, but the diagnosis hooked a car battery up to her heart and jump started the realization that being cool is far less important than truly being alive.

This is as rounded a character as you could hope for, and Davis sells her on every level. She’s both bombastic and subtle as she dives headlong toward eternity. Alongside her is George Brent’s Dr. Steele, who Traherne falls for and who represents the ultimate change she must make. If she believes he loves her out of pity, can she really love him? Can she really be loved? The answer (for part of the movie) is so loudly affirmative that they carried that love off the screen while both were in the middle of separate divorce proceedings.

There’s also Humphrey Bogart as her stableman – a character that has loved her in secret for so long, but ultimately pushes her toward happiness even if it’s in another man’s arms. The two had worked together previously on The Petrified Forest, so it’s interesting to see Bogart take a backseat role in the prime of his career. He’d made dozens of movies by 1939, but of course, he was still a few years away from The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca.

Geraldine Fitzgerald is the true mirror of the story, though. As Judith’s best friend Ann, Fitzgerald shines as an intuitive, caring person who is constantly saving Judith’s life by coercing her into getting help. At the beginning, it’s seeing the doctor. After the surgery, it’s forcing her to be honest about her illness and what it means. Long before she played the wealthy mother in the original Arthur, Fitzgerald was building a career of these types of characters, and it’s a shame she wasn’t nominated for a Best Supporting Role for this flick.

Ronald Reagan is also involved because he looks incredibly dashing in a tuxedo. As usual, it’s always a little jarring to see him in this movie and think about how he’ll become President in about forty years. Other than that, he’s a walking smile.

Over all, Dark Victory succeeds for a number of reasons, but the two elements that see it above and beyond even the best are the story and Bette Davis. This was a critical, difficult role for her to play. She was working with a director who had been making 2 to 3 movies since 1911, and she was already firmly ensconced in the upper echelon of movie stardom and acting talent. Of course, she doesn’t fail to deliver.

She takes Judith Traherne and turns her into a far more compelling character than most actresses would have been able to. I doubt most today could handle it. As a result, the final moments of the movie are made all that more poetic by a cold woman who chooses to live even as she’s dying.

Next week, we’ll take a look at what might her most famous role in All About Eve.

Celebrate more ancient flicks by reading more Old Ass Movies

Your weekly fix of great movies made before you were born that you should check out before you die.

All this month, Old Ass Movies will be celebrating the 103rd anniversary of Bette Davis‘s birthday. The iconic film star acted in far too many movies to care to count, but it seems as though she’s been reduced to a pair of eyes in popular culture. She’s the subject of a 80s pop tune, not the star that she should be recognized for being, and that needs fixing.

She had been in over twenty films before appearing in Of Human Bondage, but it was that film that really launched her career as a leading lady. In it, she plays a cruel, vile, deceitful woman who destroys the life of a young man while destroying her own. So, naturally, she emerged being loved by audiences everywhere.

Of Human Bondage (1934)

Directed By: John Cromwell

Written By: Lester Cohen

Starring: Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Frances Dee, and Reginald Denny

While it’s a fine film, there’s not much truly remarkable about Of Human Bondage beyond Davis’s portrayal of the despicable Mildred Rogers. The rest is a par for the course drama, but Davis somehow manages to reach out from the screen and choke you to death as slowly as her little hands can afford.

She’s a character of chaos and dark charisma. The weak, simpering Philip Carey (played with eternal sympathy by Leslie Howard), has quit art school in Paris in order to study medicine in London. He’s not particularly good at either, or anything for that matter, and his attention is stolen by the aloof blonde slinging tea at a local restaurant. She flirts with men for her wages, but she refuses even to acknowledge half of what Philip says, turning her back and avoiding him. When he asks her out, she simply says, “I don’t mind,” an uncaring refrain that becomes the mantra of their relationship.

Mildred may be quieter, but her character is the offspring of Marla Singer and The Joker. She’s a figure that cuts through the action of Philip’s story, disrupting everything, and making him fall deeper in love with her the more she treats him like pig waste.

The first chapter of their relationship ends when he proposes marriage to her. With incredible detachment, Davis flashes those big bright eyes and turns Philip down uninhibitedly before rising calmly to leave.

Fortunately, his obsession won’t ebb that easily, and every time he’s close to blissful memory loss, she comes back into his life to ruin it further. This is the game of tiger and mouse that continues until they’re both destitute, homeless and/or dying of consumption.

So why does Davis standout?

For one, Leslie Howard – as talented as he was – played the club-footed Carey beyond the pale of weakness. The character is sympathetic, but he’s so damned ineffectual and puke-y that he deserves to be hit with heavy objects. He crosses the threshold that lies perilously between a tragic figure and a doormat, and by the end of the movie, you start to think of Carey more as a gazelle that got eaten because he refused to run.

The look in the image below pretty much says it all.

Bette Davis fills that space by playing the greatest acting trick in the book. She seduces with evil. Unlike Summer and her 500 Days, there are no redeeming qualities to Mildred except her youth and beauty. She’s not a mix of mood swings and romanticism. She’s an asshole who keeps emotionally torturing a man who inexplicably comes back for more.

She’s a Manic Pixie Nightmare Girl.

Philip’s attraction might be questionable, but the audience also falls in love with her. Not in the way that would make us waste all of our money and fail our med school finals, but in the way that admired how captivating she is. She holds attention effortlessly, and it’s to our own detriment.

Honestly, Of Human Bondage might be a little hard to watch for a modern audience because the scenes jump in time without much assistance. In some ways, it’s incomplete writing, but in others it’s the simple storytelling of the theater world transported onto the screen. For example, Phillip falls for a romance writer, and their relationship just sort of happens. There’s no work to it. Philip has been devastated by Mildred, but he trips into love with this new woman over the course of only a few scenes. Some of it is fairly jarring, and you have to catch up mentally more than with most modern movies.

The key here is that Leslie Howard turns in a strong performance as a greatly unlikeable character who is brought back to light and life by Frances Dee (who you may remember from when we covered I Walked With a Zombie). Dee plays Sally – a young woman who is beautiful, sweet and seems to worship the ground Philip Carey limps on. It’s their happiness that truly begins to grow and get interrupted by Mildred storming back into Philip’s life. But Philip is just too weak-willed to stop it. Even when he’s cold to Mildred during one of his final moments of charity, he still lets her live in his apartment. This is the ultimate frustration of the film because Sally is the genuine article. She’s everything Philip could dream for, and he’s still wasting time on the soul-sucking Mildred. Even as he claims to despise her, he hasn’t grown apathetic toward here – and only that can save him.

But ultimately, Davis steals the movie from Howard (and she earned a write-in Oscar nomination for her efforts). Mildred is the far more interesting character. She’s crazed, obsessed with herself, insincere, mercurial, and all of those things transform her outward beauty into the inward scum by the end. Of Human Bondage was one of the first movies made during the true enforcement of the Hays Code which stated, amongst other things, that bad characters had to have a comeuppance. The fruits of evil labor had to be shown. Criminals couldn’t get away with their crimes. Davis took that lead and ran with it, creating make-up for her character in the end stages that made her look like a 3-day-old corpse that had been thrown into a microwave for safe keeping. By the end, Mildred is whoring herself out, dying of consumption (and whatever else), a baby she treated as a prop has died, and she’s penniless.

How’s that for comeuppance?

After rebuking Mildred (finally), Philip makes a complete turnaround to become aggressively average. His reward for being an altruistic sucker is that he can finally soar to the heights of mediocrity. The final act belies how damaged he is and how little he can really, truly feel. It may, on the surface, be a fairly standard drama, but the last act is worth it to show that even a happy ending might come with a whimper instead of a bang.

Next week, we’ll skip ahead a few years in her career to cover Bette Davis in the Oscar nominated flick Dark Victory. Gird your loins and get ready.

Celebrate more ancient flicks by reading more Old Ass Movies

Your weekly fix of great movies made before you were born that you should check out before you die.

This week’s Old Ass Movie celebrates one of the funniest flicks about capital punishment ever made. Roxie Hart takes the wrap for killing her lover so she can make it big in Chicago. Her smooth-talking lawyer promises to get her off and get her out on the town as a starlet, and everyone from the judge to the press seems to be in on the gag. What? You trust everything you read in the papers?

What’s a newspaper? Go look it up first and come back to discover how funny hanging someone can be.

Roxie Hart (1942)

Directed By: William A. Wellman

Written By: Nunnally Johnson, adapted from the play “Chicago” by Maurine Dallas Watkins

Starring: Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou, George Montgomery, William Frawley, and Lynne Overman

In a modern context, Roxie Hart is a faster-paced version of Chiacgo without the musical numbers (although Ginger Rogers does get to show off a few dance moves).

In its own context, it’s just a funny film that lampoons the legal system, the idea of stardom and the press.

Everybody here knows the story (some have fabricated extra parts). The 2002 Oscar winner featuring Renee Zellweger is what we’re all most familiar with, and even though this movie doesn’t feature John C. Reilly singing “Mr. Cellophane” (to its detriment), it tells the same basic tale of Mrs. Hart, a murder, and a show trial featuring a lawyer named Billy Flynn.

The film makes its intentions known even before the action gets started; the opening credits feature drawings of a girl dancing on a gallows with a noose above her head while hot jazz plays in the background. It then dedicates the picture to all the beautiful women who have ever shot their man full of holes.

There’s not a serious bone in this movie’s body, and all of that humor is derived by how deadly serious everything should be coupled with characters that refuse to see a life or death situation as anything more than fodder for the afternoon news. It’s a movie inhabited by big egos and big talk. There’s no surprise that veteran Ginger Rogers more than holds her own here amidst the noise. Even playing the blondest red-head in history, she creates a ridiculously entertaining Roxie who seems like she’s got everything under control even though there’s no way for her to get a grip. She wants fame, she sees her chance, and she reaches for it by claiming she reached for a gun and shot a man down.

The only person capable of up-staging her is Adolphe Menjou (who was also in the fast-talking Front Page). He plays Billy Flynn here, and he does so with even more flair than Richard Gere did in Chicago. He’s a showman so good that you don’t know he’s playing you, even while he wears his act on his sleeve. He exists in a courtroom universe where the judge regularly strikes the same pose behind the defendant for the slew of camera-slingers. Actual legal rules are upheld (like hearsay being tossed out), but that just goes to show how little the law really matters. What really counts is the amount of knee Roxie can show the jurists, how well she cries when she’s cross-examined, and how well Flynn can pontificate to distract from the truth.

The “truth” of Roxie Hart is fascinating, because it came out during the Hays Code, so the writing had to reflect Roxie as an ultimately moral character. Thus, she’s innocent. She didn’t kill the man at all, but it’s important to her that the papers never print that information. It’s far better for her career if people think she’s taken a man’s life…in self defense only of course. Plus, her infidelity is only really hinted at, even though it’s hinted at strongly.

What’s funny ultimately is that the Hays Code demanded that a likable character display strong moral fortitude, so they changed the story, but that change ultimately makes Roxie a lying opportunist who makes a mockery of murder and the court system in order to launch a dancing career. So much for pathos.

Swing has two meanings here. It’s the fast music they listen to down at the clubs, and it’s also the motion Roxie’s neck will make if she’s found guilty. Both are constantly in view, but it’s only the music that’s taken seriously. Somehow, without saturating the picture in jazz tunes, there’s still a dirty feeling of the Chicago syncopation throughout. The actors practically sing their lines, and everything is truly choreographed even though nobody’s dancing (until they’re actually dancing in the jail in a moment that shows that the press really are big buffoons).

Ultimately, this is the story of the manufacturing of a star. What she needs is a hook, a story, a reason to be in the papers. Then she can use that to launch her stardom from because the people already love her. The biggest joke here is that the formula for fame that everyone involved seems to unquestionably follow doesn’t work. Roxie has fifteen minutes, but that’s it.

Fortunately, there’s a man who’s fresh to the newspaper business and has loved her since he met her. George Montgomery pulls double duty here as the storyteller – regaling a bar crowd with stories of the biggest news sensation of 15 years ago, back in the bad old days – and as a character who falls in love with that news sensation. He’s the only one left when all the onlookers and rubber-necked reporters run away to the next story.

It’s not just fame under the gun here. The legal system and the journalism profession are run through the muck. The entire court sequence is a mess that pauses every so often so that cameras can set up shots for the new edition. It’s all a play, and even the judge seems to casually lament having to enforce legal proceedings when they get in the way of the narrative everyone’s agreed on. For the press, it’s a similar situation. Roxie’s first interview with a gaggle of them is a sympathy-fest where everyone has already agreed on the story and does their best to lead her answers in the right direction to fill their column lines. In fact, the truth and the value of life are dismissed as meaningless early on when a cameraman sets up a shot of Roxie and asks another journalist to lie down and pretend to be the stiff. The dead man is as replaceable as the truth.

So, what’s best about this movie is that it’s a movie. In the mechanical sense where a group of people decide on a story to tell, and the audience agrees to be told the story by sitting in the theater, William Wellman and company have created a story about a group of people who all agree on a story to tell and the audience that agrees to it. Ultimately, it’s the audience that’s satirized for allowing storytellers to feed us lies and excitement. It’s fun in the theater. It’s not as fun when someone’s neck is on the line.

Just kidding. When someone’s death is on the line, that’s when things get downright hilarious.

Celebrate more ancient flicks by reading more Old Ass Movies

Your weekly fix of great movies made before you were born that you should check out before you die.

This week’s Old Ass Movies celebrates the nonsense of the best American comedians of all time. Groucho, Harpo and Chico move in on Bogart’s territory by setting up camp at a hotel in Casablanca, mocking Nazis, playing with a toupee, and remembering to set their watches.

A Night in Casablanca (1946)

Directed By: Archie Mayo

Written By: Joseph Fields & Roland Kibbee

Starring: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Sig Ruman, Lisette Verea, Lois Collier, and Charles Drake

Selling someone on watching a Marx Brothers movie should be as easy as standing on the street corner offering free bacon, but A Night in Casablanca isn’t the typical Marx movie. It certainly shouldn’t be the first a newcomer should see, since that distinction goes to Duck Soup. It shouldn’t even be the second or third film. Possibly the fourth. Maybe fifth.

This almost-spoof of the famous Bogart and Bergman classic came after a five year break from the big screen for the brothers and seventeen years after their first film. That’s a lot like if Eddie Murphy’s movies were still funny. A Night in Casablanca has its missteps, but it’s pretty impressive to be batting .750.

Even though it wasn’t the last movie they ever made together, it was the last time that the Marx formula truly worked. Love Happy was released three years later as a shadow of their former glory, and for some time Groucho made movies on his own. They all made one last appearance together in 1957 for Irwin Allen’s The Story of Mankind, playing comedic elder statesmen (Harpo as Isaas Newton was a nice touch), but the movie definitely didn’t focus on them or their formula.

At this point, their comedy is over eighty years old, which is like two-thousand in comedy years. While the things that make us cry stay the same over the years (dogs dying, cancer, child slavery), the things that make us laugh change almost weekly. It’s a wonder that the Marx Brothers have survived this far in the cultural conversation, and it’s a testament to them truly being the best of the best.

It’s also a testament to a style of comedy that worked because it didn’t make fun of anything. For all of Groucho’s hemming and hawing, he does more to be inappropriate than to mock. Harpo drives people crazy and pulls off physical stunts. Chico manages to meet both in the middle on wordplay and insanity. Zeppo, who had parted ways long before Casablanca, played the straight man (even though he was the funniest of them all). They weren’t making strident political satire (even when they were). They weren’t making fun of time-sensitive subjects (even when they were). All they ever ended up doing, especially in A Night in Casablanca was to make fun of linear thinking and good taste.

As it turns out, making fun of logic and manners are universal.

Here, Groucho plays Kornblow, the new manager of the Hotel Casablanca and therefore the latest in line to be killed by the ruthless Nazi Heinrich Stuble (played by Sig Ruman in another bad guy role for the Brothers). The war is over, and Stuble wants to be the manager so that he can take control of some expensive artifacts hidden in the building. Sadly, the old Hitlerite can’t leave his hotel room because Rusty (played silently by Harpo) sucked Stuble’s toupee into a vacuum cleaner, and he’ll be recognized as a Nazi by a huge scar on his forehead. The triumph of the Third Reich thwarted by suction.

There are some moronic one-liners that are set up by too much effort, but there are also some moments of pure genius. Harpo shines most with his physical comedy here, despite years of Groucho taking center stage. For whatever reason (perhaps the writing) Groucho is never allowed to let loose and destroy with his quick wit. Instead, he’s relegated to tossing out some smart comments while trying to avoid being killed. Even a situation where he’s trying to get the beautiful Bea (Lisette Verea) alone in a hotel room is a chore to watch instead of what it might have been with older collaborators writing.

Chico, on the other hand, plays the same old Italian-voiced goof he always does, but doesn’t seem to be paired with Harpo enough or get as much screen time as usual. Standing in for Zeppo is Charles Drake as the random hero that has to help save the day since the bumblers can’t get their act together, and Lois Collier plays his beautiful love.

Like aging action stars, the speed just doesn’t seem there with this effort. Even so, the Marx team runs circles around other comedians. The movie is undoubtedly hampered most by Archie Mayo who was a capable filmmaker, but who plops the greatest comedians in scenes as though he’d never seen a Marx Brothers movie in his life. He was on the way out of his career as well, and his crime/romance/drama sensibilities just didn’t make for a good match.

The biggest victim is the nonsense. With the script from Joseph Fields & Roland Kibbee, there are moments where Groucho and Harpo do things that actually make sense (which just doesn’t make sense). They move the plot forward (how ridiculous is that?) by finding the hidden Nazi treasure, by rallying the police, and by engaging in an elongated fist fight to take down the scarred Stuble. It’s painful in parts – the equivalent of watching a neurosurgeon throw a pie into his patient’s face. Doctors are serious, the Marx Brothers are not, and when they are, disaster strikes.

But calling this a disaster is unfair. It’s still a supremely funny movie. It’s just not their best effort. It’s probably buried in someone’s memoirs why they switched from doing a straight forward send-up of Casablanca, but the mish-mash of different “war drama” jokes doesn’t work as well, and it makes my mind tingle to imagine getting my hands on the original script.

There are a large amount of laughs here – especially during an extended sequence where they drive Stuble crazy by packing and unpacking and re-packing all of his clothes for him – but perhaps the most fascinating thing about A Night in Casablanca is that the Marx Brothers managed to make a movie that was leagues away from being their best while still being better than most comedies out there. There’s a reason it’s lasted as long as it has, and after fans dig into Duck Soup, Horse Feathers, Animal Crackers and A Night at the Opera, they should absolutely give this one a shot knowing that the last hoorah for most comedians isn’t as loud as their first.

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Your weekly fix of great movies made before you were born that you should check out before you die.

This week’s Old Ass Movies celebrates the birthday of a movie that saw theaters for the first time a century ago. On March 10, 1911 (one hundred years and three days ago), L’Inferno played at the Teatro Mercandante in Naples, Italy. It was the first Italian feature-length film, it was a massive financial success, and it still exists for our viewing pleasure today.

The question is, can it be seen for pure enjoyment or solely as a curious historical artifact of a more primitive filmmaking time? Can an audience in 2011 love a movie from 1911?

L’Inferno (1911)

Directed by: Francesco Bertolini, Adolpho Padovan, and Giuseppe de Liguoro

Starring: Salvatore Papa, Arturo Pirovano, Giuseppe de Liguoro, and Augusto Milla

Production Design by: Francesco Bertolini

It’s a testament to mankind’s dedication to art that this film is available on a viewing format that was invented 84 years after it first premiered. That alone should speak to its enduring legacy and importance.

But legacies alone aren’t enough to invest an hour and a half of your life. Legacies are fine for museum placards and conversation pieces, but they can’t be seen on screen while the movie’s rolling. Legacy or not, the movie has to entertain on its own, and L’Inferno manages to reach back from a century ago to do just that.

It’s fortunate that we have the re-issue DVD, since it’s the only home version out there, but it’s unfortunate that the original score was replaced by one from the band Tangerine Dream. For one, the music does not at all go with the movie (which isn’t a slight against the band since they didn’t record the music specifically as a sound track). For two, their music is unbelievably annoying (which is a slight against the band because they most often sound like an old man fell asleep on a Moog keyboard). My solution was to turn the sound completely off. It was honestly the only way to make it through the movie, and that’s a shame, because the new soundtrack does a great disservice to a visually stunning flick. There’s just something jarring and inappropriate about listening to music made by computers against the backdrop of a film so old, and you can call me a purist, but there’s something wrong with lyrics being sung for a silent film score.

Sound aside, this movie is a celebration of production design and special effects. In fact, the visuals may be the only things that excite a modern audience. The scale of the project is epic. Director Giuseppe de Liguoro took the opportunity (and three years) to craft the first feature film his country had seen and made sure that it was gigantic. Everything is shot on craggy mountain ranges, deep rivers flowing through canyons, and outcroppings of forest and field.

The visuals also take center stage by virtue of the source material. Dante’s “Inferno” is largely flat exposition swallowing up grandiose descriptions of abject torture at the hands of eternity. People are buried in the ground up to their faces, bodies lie helpless against a rain of fire, demons whip hordes of sinners, giants stand strapped by chains to a mountain side, and Lucifer himself writhes in a frozen lake with the bodies of Cassius and Brutus shoved into his mouth.

These images are adapted without embellishment for the screen here, and the results are greatly successful. The bulk of the imagery is breathtaking – especially considering that these filmmakers were some of the first to be solving special effects problems. Super-imposing an enormous Lucifer onto a frozen lake of hundreds of bodies was no small task in 1911, and the image ends up looking fantastic. The same goes for most of the shots, although there are a handful of creative opportunities not taken. For example, the lake of filth looks like every other body of water, and the look of most of the sinners is more poetic than viscerally agonizing.

Still, there’s plenty to marvel at. The falling fire? The body-munching Lucifer? The creepy Cerberus puppet? All are very, very cool.

Do the special effects of today trump every second of screen time? Of course, but just as we can still appreciate classic architecture, we can absolutely appreciate the unique look of what’s been done here. It’s grotesque theater transferred to living film.

As pure entertainment, the visuals are often hypnotic, and when thinking too deeply about them, they seem to mirror the fog that floats throughout the entirety of Hell. Everything is done slowly, deliberately, and dream-like. Even as Virgil leads Dante further and further down with a clear path, the places they find themselves in appear ethereal and directionless.

The movie also features a few flashbacks that tell the short stories of the lives and deaths of several sinners down below. These vignettes offer a welcome break from the desolation of Hell by showcasing the desolation of life.

The acting here is difficult to judge because it’s mainly done by gesturing broadly. Technical limitations and a theatrical heritage show up here in big sweeping arm movements, but it makes sense in the context. Everything has to be exaggerated, and whereas some silent films struggle with that, the epic nature of the story, the fantasy element, and the design here actually make those overly emotional movements seem right at home in the slime.

It’s joyously appropriate that the first Italian movie would be from a famous Italian work of literature. There’s something sweetly fitting about that, and the film even ends with a shot of the statue of Dante which celebrates his importance as a literary figure as much as it celebrates the character of Dante rising up and leaving Hell. It’s also fitting that the very first Italian movie was the one responsible for ushering in their trend of featuring large groups of naked people in films.

It hasn’t aged perfectly, but there is still a lot of entertainment to be had from this early masterwork. From bleeding trees to souls swimming around in mid-air, L’Inferno is doing well at the ripe old age of 100.

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Your weekly fix of great movies made before you were born that you should check out before you die.

This week’s Old Ass Movie goes line for gritty line down the Western Genre Rules and twists them all up with a one-armed stranger, a Japanese farmer, a conspiracy, and a handful of deadly secrets. It’s Noir in the desert.

Director John Sturges takes all of it and works it into a sweat out in the southwest at the tail end of WWII. As a silent, enigmatic man gets off a train that never runs, everyone is in for a Bad Day at Black Rock.

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

Directed by: John Sturges

Starring: Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Anne Francis, Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, and Walter Brennan

This film is not set in the right time period to be a Western. There are car chases instead of horses pounding the dust after a man in a black hat. There’s a man in a black hat, but he stepped right out of a Noir flick and accidentally made it to the southwest. Basically, it’s a Western that gets things right by getting them wrong.

The black hat here is John J. Macreedy (played with the quiet intensity of Spencer Tracy) who is threatened by an unwelcoming town that distrusts unfamiliar faces. Probably most of all because he’s in the wrong genre entirely.

This is absolutely a mash-up of Western and Noir (which I’ll go ahead and creatively call Western Noir), and it only works because the underlying feature of both is tension that leads to death. When played strictly for drama, the tight-lipped, quick with the quips stranger could be Mike Hammer just as easily as The Man With No Name. They are lone figures with a strict code to which they determinedly adhere. One pounds the pavement, the other pounds the prairie, so it’s fascinating to see the former dropped into a near-ghost town much in the same way it’s fun to watch the Coen Brothers do the opposite today.

The dichotomy is also one of the modern squaring off against the old. The town of Black Rock is a living time capsule where the people have kept right along in the same manner they’ve been accustomed to for years. They’re hidden from a world that continues to move forward, but Macreedy’s arrival shatters that insular nature. Not only is he a stranger, he’s a symbol of everything they’ve avoided for a half century.

There’s one shot in particular where Sturges goes Panorama-style on Spencer Tracy standing by himself in the middle of a huge expanse of empty land. He either looks like a time traveler dropped from the sky or like the costume designer was about to get fired, and the effect is so damned incredible. It’s a pure visual of isolation and displacement that continues right along metaphorically even when Macreedy has people and buildings surrounding him. Even then, he might as well be standing in a field all alone and unstuck in time.

Bad Day at Black Rock is also the only opportunity to see all of these actors together. Tracy was too busy working with Katherine Hepburn to cross paths with Robert Ryan, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin, or Anne Francis until this picture, so it’s a unique chance to see a few different acting styles attempt to meet somewhere in the middle (since everything else is trying to).

This film is the culmination of the first part of John Sturges’s directing career. He began in the crime world – his first film being The Man Who Dared, about a reporter who fakes a murder in order to prove the death penalty should be banned. Sturges made several other crime and Noir stories before making his first true Western in 1949 called The Walking Hills. After working with both genres, it must have seemed natural to press them together into a delicious genre sandwich with the crust not cut off.

If it suffers from one flaw of aging, it’s that some of the acting seems a bit too forcefully done. It’s occasionally soap opera time in Black Rock, and it honestly takes away from some of the tension being built up by a town threatening to kill a stranger who won’t be missed.

There’s also not much of a plot to speak of. It’s high concept. A man comes looking for answers and finds them. It’s really the way in which he asks and the way in which he learns the secrets (and the manner of those secrets) that churn the engine here. The movie is an excuse for great actors to stand together and combat one another with words and sneers and wildflowers.

But it should not be missed. It’s a fantastic movie filled with sandpaper scratched dialogue, rough and ready performances, and a mystery that comes into focus like a sharp steppe vista. It’s also a too-rare example of an experiment in genre. If you love Westerns, if you love Noir, you’ll love this. Just try not to get dirt on your fedora.

You can check out the trailer for Bad Day at Black Rock here

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This week, Old Ass Movies presents the story of a brilliant psycho-analyst, an impostor, some trademark Hitchcock, a little aiding and abeting, and the dreams of Salvador Dali. All of these elements are wrapped up in an Oscar nominated movie (that did not win) that Scientologists probably banned from their video library.

Spellbound (1945)

Directed by: Alfred Hitchcock

Starring: Ingrid Berman, Gregory Peck, Michael Checkhov, Leo Carroll, and Rhonda Fleming

Let’s get the record straight. The Academy (which is really thousands of individual voters and not some secret cabal meeting in the basement of the Kodak Theater) has gotten some things wrong over the years. For example, Alfred Hitchcock never won an award for Best Director.

However, the numbers are there for his films.

With his first nominations in 1940, Hitchcock actually had two films in the Best Picture race – Rebecca which ultimately won and Foreign Correspondent. The following year, his film Suspicion – which he also produced – was up for the big prize but lost to How Green Was My Valley. A few years after in 1945 when the Academy had pared down the amount of Best Picture nominees to 5, Spellbound was in contention. It ultimately lost to Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend, a brilliant film in its own right.

In total, 16 of his movies were nominated for Oscars of some flavor (accounting for 50 total nominations), he snagged 6 nominations himself (1 for producing), but the real deficit is in wins. That’s where the voters fell short in their appreciation of Hitchcock. Some could say he was snubbed, but a look at the list of directors he lost to tells a different story: John Ford, Leo McCarey, Wilder twice, Elia Kazan. These are masters in their own right.

Besides, as we’ve all been reminded within the past month with increasing volume – The Academy Awards don’t matter.

Where the real criminality lies is in the list of Hitchcock’s movies that have somehow made it above and beyond his other films. Spellbound may have been nominated for Best Picture but it was never chosen by the National Film Registry for special recognition. Movies like Psycho, Rear Window, and North by Northwest have rightly earned the attention of audiences throughout generations. That there are truly brilliant works that aren’t nearly as iconic speaks to just how unfairly talented Hitchcock was.

So maybe the Academy gets ‘em right sometimes and get ‘em wrong others, but on the morning of an Oscar broadcast that sees a film like Black Swan up for Best Picture, it’s interesting to look back at a time when psychological horror was being nominated prolifically because of one directing presence.

In the film, Bergman plays Dr. Constance Petersen – the sort of self-assured figure who can trust her brain but not her heart. She discovers that the man set to replace her hospital’s begrudgingly retiring director is not who he pretends to be. Dr. Anthony Edwardes is played with angst and fear by Gregory Peck here in a role that was not wholly unusual for Hitchcock’s movies. Edwardes is a figure that is terrified of himself. Like John Ferguson in Vertigo, Edwardes cannot trust himself, his phobias or his own memories. He believes he’s killed the real Edwardes and replaced him, but amnesia has caused him to forget who he is, and Petersen (who quickly falls in love with him) must use her psychological expertise to bring those haunting memories into focus to solve the mystery and (hopefully) clear the fake Edwardes (who starts going by John Brown) of a murder charge.

The grace and sweat filling the screen because of Bergman and Peck is understandable. Hitchcock brought out the best talent from the best talents, and here is no different. The film is filled with intrigue and could have been good with lesser actors, but it becomes great in the hands of two figures who so completely disappear into a complex and confusing world where something as simple as the lines on a night gown can crush a man’s psyche.

In the acting category, Leo Carroll as the retiring Dr. Murchison is understated and clever, acting as an ironic anchor of common sense and logic. Carroll of course appears in 6 Hitchcock films (starting at the beginning of the director’s Hollywood run), the second most of any actor (not counting Hitchcock himself).

One of the more confounding things about the strained partnership between Hitchcock and producer David O. Selznick was the inclusion of a dream sequence (pictured above) in the film from none other than Salvador Dali. The rumor is that Dali created 20 minutes worth of footage (most of which doesn’t exist anymore) to paint the subconscious picture of John Brown. Hitchcock had nothing to do with its creation, and that’s pretty obvious based on the style. It both works wonderfully and stands out like a bald spot in a full head of hair. Oddly enough, the dream itself is the cipher for the mystery of the movie. It provides all the elements to Brown’s possibly murderous past, and it becomes the map for how Petersen begins to figure out what really happened.

It would be the last time Hitchcock made a movie for Selznick, and the last time he’d work with Dali.

In some ways, the movie was experimental for Hitchcock, but at its most fundamental it has all the standard cogs and wheels. A beautiful, dynamic woman in love with a dangerous man, a mystery and MacGuffin, and the kind of tension that few directors seem capable of.

Add to that roster the ever-present Oscar nominations and the inevitable losses. Spellbound was nominated for 6 awards including Best Picture and Best Director, but won solely for Best Score.

But the Oscars don’t matter, right? The real tragedy here is that such a captivating thriller could fall out of notice simply because the director has too many incredible movies to count. Hitchcock is a legend, but he’s the kind of legend that gets in his own way. Even if the average movie lover has seen ten of his movies, they’ve still only scratched the surface. The body of work (there’s always a body, isn’t there?) is just too big. Even so, Spellbound deserves to rise to the top alongside his other famous works. It’s a masterpiece buried beneath other masterpieces, and it demands to be unearthed so that its performances can be reveled in and its mystery can be solved again and again.

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This week, Old Ass Movies presents the story of a burning love in the poorly fire-coded Barbary Coast of San Francisco. A beautiful opera singer is given a break and finds herself in the bosom of showgirl life, under the thumb of nightclub owner, and falling in love.

San Francisco (1936)

Directed by: Woody Van Dyke

Starring: Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, Spencer Tracy, Jack Holt, and Clark Gable’s Ears

Most disaster movies start with an introduction to the characters in an attempt to make us care about them before dropping a forest fire, tornado (never thought about Wizard of Oz as a disaster film before, eh?), earthquake, or some other terrifying destructive force into their laps. San Francisco may be the only disaster film that waits to show the disaster at the very end.

For those wondering, that’s not a spoiler. The movie calls its shot by pointing to the bleachers in the opening written narration. It also opens with a massive building fire in the heat of New Year’s Eve celebration. In a way, it’s safe to say that tragedy bookends the film, but the more personal brand of tragedy tends to happen throughout its run time, too.

Clark Gable plays Blackie – a character who has to be seen to be believed. He’s an asshole, but he’s a special, unique asshole who says things that shouldn’t be said. Sure, that sounds like most assholes, but it’s the types of things that Blackie delivers unto the masses or unto the woman he claims to love that sets him apart in the pantheon of despicable humans. Of course, he’s the heroic focus.

Blackie runs a popular night club, but he has a marketer’s mind. When the gorgeous Mary Blake (Jeanette MacDonald) tells him that she’s a singer looking for work, he asks to see her legs. When she tells him her name, he notes how catchy it is. For Blackie, Mary is a commodity, so it’s only until someone else is interested in her (Tivoli Opera House runner Jack Burley (played with equal parts smarm and mustache wax by Jack Holt)) that he steps up his sexual harassment to uncomfortable measures. And gets the girl. And then loses her.

In some movies from the past, there are cultural differences (like, say, putting a lock of hair under a pillow to show romance) to consider when watching the characters interact, but even those aren’t a good defense for why Blackie is so creepy. He just is. He doesn’t understand romance. He’s forceful, abrupt and rude. He cages Mary through ultimatums and thinks only of himself. Basically, he stands as a scion of non-romantic romantic leads.

Jeanette MacDonald on the other hand is a being of pure romance and innocence. She fends off Blackie’s initial advances (and continues to do so), but she also shows him loyalty since he plucked her from homelessness (her apartment building is the one on fire in the opening) to give her an opportunity to sing. In truth, she connects more with Blackie’s best friend Father Tim (played with a softness rarely seen by Spencer Tracy). Still, it’s important to keep in mind that Blackie is the one who sent her to Father Tim’s church to start singing in the choir for night mass. Somewhere under there, is a heart of gold that’s been covered in ash.

It’s Mary’s voice that acts as the catalyst for almost everything trans formative and pure in the story. MacDonald was a classically trained opera singer which made her an interesting asset for movie studios. In a time where dubbing actresses was as common as not crediting the actual singer, MacDonald did it all herself. In the movie, no matter what conflict is facing which characters, Mary’s singing cuts right through it. It’s the one constant that acts as anchor in a confusing love triangle.

Like China Town and There Will Be Blood, San Francisco is also a movie about a thing. A thing of great importance. A thing of great desire. There’s mild political intrigue when a committee gets Blackie to run for a position that will give him the power to change fire codes and make life safer for the tramps and scabs down on the coast. With elites (specifically his adversary in the quest for Mary’s love, Jack Burley) threatening Blackie, it seems like those fire codes are the water or oil of the story, but the thing most desired turns out to be Mary. She is what the town and Blackie need to turn everything around. Well, her, and the devastating earthquake that wiped the city off the map in 1906.

It’s an incredibly fun movie with just the right amount of complexity to be satisfying. Plus, you can’t go wrong with Gable. The supporting cast (whatever that means) is a powerhouse of talent both vocally and emotively. Director W.S. Van Dyke also makes every shot count amongst a production design that’s rich and vibrant with the sweat and fog of the setting.

It lost to The Great Ziegfeld the year it was nominated for Best Picture (alongside 9 other films), and the reason is lost to history, but it might have something to do with Ziegfeld being a highly entertaining movie that happens to focus on a beloved entertainer that Academy voters were well acquainted with.

That loss doesn’t matter, because its brilliance and entertainment exists to this day waiting to be discovered – the only disaster film that makes you wait an hour and a half to see the disaster.

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This week, Old Ass Movies presents the movie behind the movie that everyone else knows in an attempt to prove that remakes aren’t necessarily all bad.

Also to prove that the Academy doesn’t always know what they’re doing even when they know what they’re doing.

The Front Page (1931)

Directed by: Lewis Milestone

Starring: Adolphe Menjou, Pat O’Brien, Mary Brian, and Edward Everett Horton

The Front Page didn’t win the Oscar for Best Picture the year it was up for it (the 4th annual). In fact, it didn’t win for Best Actor or Best Director either. By all accounts, it didn’t deserve to win. The expansive Cimarron (which was based off an Edna Ferber novel, just like last week’s Old Ass Oscar entry) won that year, and it’s certainly stood the test of time better.

That’s partially because there was never a better version of Cimarron dedicated to screen. Even the most fervent fans of The Front Page (if you can find one), would probably admit that less than a decade later, a much better version was released.

That version was called His Girl Friday. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

The 1931 version is the same story – a newspaper man (Pat O’Brien) is planning to get married (to Mary Brian) and head for New York City when a man meant to hang (George E. Stone) escapes jail, and said newspaper reporter has to hide him out until he can get the scoop.

Sadly, there are not many great-looking prints left of The Front Page, but the comedy is all still there even if some of it is a bit too quick to catch (or too fuzzy to see). Pat O’Brien plays Hildy Johnson, the reporter who has just violently told his boss where to stick it, thinking he’s on the way out. His situation is sit-com level bad (all that’s missing is the wacky neighbor), but O’Brien plays the character with only one emotional motivation: to talk faster than everyone else and throw mop buckets out windows.

Mary Brian does a fine job of being huffy and impatient, and Edward Everett Horton does his usual act of being foppish and haughty for unnamed reasons. Probably because he can’t tell what Hildy is saying because he’s speaking so fast.

Unlike most entries in this column, there is no ringing endorsement for this movie. There is no call to action, asking movie fans out there to (literally) watch it instantly. The question at this point (80 years in the future) is why to watch the movie at all, especially when there is a better version lurking around out there. It’s a good question.

Here is where things in the remake world get a little tricky. Our modern cynicism makes it easy to dismiss every remake that gets announced while a select few start shouting about The Thing, and how not all remakes have to be atrocious. While that’s true, The Front Page is one of those rare examples of a film that was nominated for Best Picture (out of an admittedly smaller pool considering the Oscars were 4 years old at the time) that was remade with far more skill. The much better remake, ironically, was never nominated for an Academy Award of any kind.

It’s confusing. Is The Front Page proof that the Academy gets it wrong (because it’s an average movie up for Best Picture) or proof that the Academy gets it right (because it lost to a superior film)? Is it proof that not all remakes are bad or is it proof that remakes are inherently less worthy of Oscar love?

Does True Grit negate all of that?

Maybe it’s none of these things. Maybe it’s just a fun screwball comedy where every character is essentially too dumb to do their jobs, but none of it really matters. At the end of the day The Front Page is a perfectly funny movie with some interesting performances and a heavy dosage of nostalgia for the style of the 1930s.

The mark of the Academy Award can carry a lot of water. Even though the awards are completely immaterial (you can love what you love without it getting accolades), we still look to them as a litmus test for quality. It raises the question of what might have happened if The Front Page had never been nominated and gotten the attention (and the albatross of recognition). It’s unclear why Howard Hawks chose to remake (or re-adapt the play) the movie years after the play had finished its hit run on Broadway. It’s also unclear whether The Front Page would be better known if it didn’t disappoint on the Oscar scale.

Whatever the case, it’s a good movie and a fascinating piece of historical art. It’s a completely forgettable movie recognized by the Academy that was followed by an unforgettable movie that wasn’t. It’s an early look into some of the first films that were celebrated by the Oscars and a last look at the style of the 20s that was fading out to an onslaught of new technology.

But who cares about all that? It’s funny, and that’s what matters.

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This week, Old Ass Movies presents the story of a gritty ranch hand who makes it big with black gold, a feud between two families, and the emptiness of wealth in making a man complete.

No one drinks anyone else’s milkshake, but a bunch of wine bottles get smashed. So do a lot of lives.

Giant (1956)

Directed by: George Stevens

Starring: James Dean, Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, Dennis Hopper, Carroll Baker, Mercedes McCambridge

The 80th anniversary of James Dean‘s birthday is two days away (on the 8th), and I wouldn’t be surprised if modern audiences know absolutely nothing about him. But he’s an icon, a legend, a name that will live in notoriety for all time, you say. That’s all well and good, but if audiences have never seen Rebel Without a Cause, East of Eden or Giant, then they don’t really know his skill. They can only repeat the name and say, “didn’t he die young or something?”

The idea of him growing old is something I’ve given a lot of thought to over the years. Like the fake interview with Jimi Hendrix created for Guitar World a few years ago, it’s fascinating to think of our fallen artists surviving well into banal normalcy. What would have happened if James Dean had lived? His career was already off to a stellar start, and if he’d survived past 24, it seems likely that he would have continued creating great work in the following years. Could we have seen James Dean instead of Anthony Perkins in Psycho? Would he have been part of Ocean’s 11? Would his career remain vibrant into the 70s? Would he start playing comedic father figures in the 1980s? Could he have played the jerk from the EPA making the Ghostbusters turn off their ghost trap? Could he have been in Die Hard With a Vengeance instead of Jeremy Irons?

All of this is predicated upon him not dying in that fatal car crash, but none of it is a far stretch. Had he stayed in the game, Dean would have taken on more roles. He would have been in that talent pool always striving to get that next gig, and if he chose to keep steadily working into our time, we might have seen James Dean nominated for Best Actor for Venus instead of Peter O’Toole.

Released after his death, Giant is a master work in acting from a star much older in talent than in years. It tells the story of Bick Benedict (Rock Hudson), a wealthy rancher with over half a million acres of land. Benedict travels to Maryland for a horse and finds a bride alongside it in Leslie (Elizabeth Taylor) who he brings home to the sprawling emptiness and bustle of Texas. The ranch is run by Bick’s sister Luz (Mercedes McCambridge giving a performance covered in salt and spit), and the main ranch hand is a brooding Jett (played by James Dean (who never seems to open his eyes)).

The result is a first act that takes an hour to unfold, but director George Stevens is a master at drawing out the scenes, getting challenging performances from his actors, and giving the scenery its due. There’s nothing going to waste here because it’s the story of a lifetime rivalry between two men. Bick is a cocky yet awkward presence who is incredibly sensitive about Texas, treats his Mexican hired help like cattle, and has no problem making the occasional shady business deal.

Jett doesn’t fair much better, even if he earns some initial sympathies for being the target of Bick’s wrath. He’s a dusty ranch hand that doesn’t have much rattling around in his head, but Luz has a soft spot for him. When she dies (after being tossed off of Leslie’s horse for spurring it too harshly), Jett inherits a bit of the Benedict acreage and sets it up for himself.

Then, he finds oil.

The moral ambiguity of Giant is apparent from the beginning and it never becomes clearer through to the end. It’s a little surprising that Stevens, the director who gave us the sweet comedy of The More The Merrier could tap into the mind of David Lean to deliver what amounts to Lawrence of Marfa, Texas. Rock Hudson might give the only performance of his career where he’s a racist, sister-whipped millionaire with massive insecurities. James Dean delivers the angst his early (and only) performances were known for, and Elizabeth Taylor stands out against type as sweet but tormented (and thankfully non-racist).

Plus, even though it’s a movie focused on the men, Leslie is the catalyst for almost everything. She changed Bick’s life by coming into it, she riles Luz into jealousy which directly causes her death, she discovers oil for Jett simply by walking on his land. She’s compassionate (treating her Mexican employees with a kindness they don’t seem to know from anyone else), but she becomes hearty and hardened from facing the challenge of Texas head on. She also might be the only truly likable character in the whole flick.

What results is the proto-type for There Will Be Blood. The oil aspect is the same, the greed is the same, the reality of life never working out quite the way you want it to is the same. Even though Dean’s Jett is no preacher, he still maintains the sort of dumb naivete that Paul Sunday has when dreaming of a bigger church and higher stature. He’s a simpleton who falls into money and doesn’t know what to do with it. He certainly doesn’t know how to use it to make himself happy. Unless you count dating the much-younger daughter of his enemy. Which, come to think of it, totally counts.

As Jett makes his life about sparring with the man he thinks he’s bested, the rest of his world becomes hollow. Here is where Dean was at his best. Even in the happiest of moments, Dean’s smile could make it seem like the earth was about to split in two and the sea was about to catch fire. He took those painful emotions of his characters (especially Jett) and turned them into physical manifestations. On the outside, he may have just fought with a woman he used to secretly pine for, but on the inside, a tiny torturer was putting his guts on the rack.

That’s what he needs to be known for. Not that he died early, but that he made art while he was young and alive. There’s no telling what might have happened if he’d survived – and that includes the possibility of his career fading just as fast as it began, but I like to think he would have made his mark and continued thriving in a time where movies were about to change forever.

In this alternate universe, I like to think that there are many other movies as great as Giant out there with Dean’s stamp on them, and that a few days from now, he’d be blowing out 70 candles on a birthday cake shaped like Texas.

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This week, Old Ass Movies presents the story of two star cross’d lovers who find themselves miles and years away from their origin. A retelling of the tragic Orpheus and Eurydice tale, Black Orpheus ditches the classical Greek setting and opts instead for the rich sights and sounds of Brazil during Carnaval.

It’s a beautiful story set to unending drum-beats and a madness to which everyone succumbs.

Black Orpheus (1959)

Directed by: Marcel Camus

Starring: Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn, Lourdes de Oliveira, Lea Garcia, and Adhemar da Silva

Even though Orpheus (Breno Mello), a trolley driver, is engaged to be married to the beautiful and showy Mira (Lourdes de Oliveira), he’s not exactly enthusiastic about it. Sure, she can shake her God-given talents like no other woman in the whole city of Rio de Janeiro, but she’s also viciously jealous, short-tempered and demanding.

Enter Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn), a shy young girl from the country trekking to see her cousin Serafina (Lea Garcia) in Rio in order to run away from a man she claims is trying to kill her.

Orpheus and Eurydice don’t fall in love at first sight, but that hardly matters. Soon they will, and they’ll do it to the undulating rhythms of sweat and celebration as the Brazilian night explodes with colorful music, grinding bodies covered in ostentatious costumes, and adult beverages flowing like the Atlantic coastal waters.

Director Marcel Camus seemed to give equal weight to the love story and the celebration of the new setting. Half of the film (and that’s no exaggeration) is filled with singing, guitar playing, dancing, and picture postcard shots of Rio. It’s part incredibly effective advertisement for the festival and part tragic love story. Still, both elements feed off each other in equal measure – so much so that it’s easy to imagine that Eurydice might have not given Orpheus the time of day if it hadn’t been Carnaval. As a result, unlike most movies that seem to use sprawling geographical shots and party scenes as filler, Camus and company fill the movie with tourist enticement that’s filled to the brim with story and character-altering plot.

And how beautiful it all is. From the multi-colored dresses to the clean arpeggios of a rickety acoustic guitar that sings for the right player, this movie is an experience for every sense. It puts on display the environment in which we all hope to fall in love.

Of course that’s just what happens. After enough dancing and staring into each other’s eyes, Orpheus and Eurydice create a bond that’s soaring in its simplicity. There is no question. They love each other. It’s fundamental, a part of their DNA and destiny.

Unfortunately, that love comes with a price. Not only is Mira none too pleased about her man’s sudden disinterest in her, but the man Eurydice was running from has caught up to her, and he’s wearing a Carnaval-appropriate skeleton costume and a Carnaval-inappropriate desire to commit murder.

As innocent as it begins, the film takes a sharp detour with the ironic joy of the festival in the background. People are celebrating as hard as they will all year while the lives of a few of their neighbors are unraveling. Duality is the featured player in Black Orpheus. The casual love of Mira vs the unending love of Eurydice. The bright costumes and music vs the sense of terror that a mindless, drunken mob can bring. Carnaval vs Lent. Love vs Death. The hope of a new companion vs the fear of losing that precious person.

Perhaps the most important duality here, though, is reality vs mythology. This is a mythic story after all, and it would be difficult to retell it without a little big of magic. For this, playwright Vinicius de Moraes (whose play was the basis for the script written by Camus and Jacques Viot) turns a man wearing a skeleton costume into the spectre of Death, a staircase into the descent into Hades, a stray dog into Cerberus, and a hoodoo ritual into the chance for Orpheus and Eurydice to reunite.

All of these elements flow perfectly from the exotic nature of the locale. Every element of the production is meant to confuse and disorient (which makes the calming effect of Marpessa Dawn’s smile all the more welcome). It’s a movie that excites and relents only long enough for the viewer to catch the breaths he or she lost during the dancing and revelry. It’s simultaneously a frivolous movie about outfits and dance-styles and an important work about the nature of our deepest, most transcendent emotions.

It’s also important to note that Camus never uses the poverty of the film for shock value. The entire story takes place in a favela (and was shot in one) that overlooks the big, rich city skyscrapers, but the people are joyous, have their humble homes, and never seem to be in need of food. In fact, economic status is never even really brought up (except when Orpheus picks up his working class weekly paycheck, and Mira calls him “loaded”). These people are all of us, every single one of them an everyman (that has the good fortune to be able to sleep outside on hammocks under the stars).

Over all, the movie’s beauty cannot be overstated. It’s language and characters are as vibrant as the samba steps being paraded down the streets. Yet, it’s a tragedy that’s simply found its way to a more lively, tropical locale. The passion between Orpheus and Eurydice radiates on screen, the fear of death (and his inevitability) strikes at a carnal level, but the sun continues to rise (and the music continues to play) even when those we love are gone.

A story of hope vs a story of loss.

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This week, Old Ass Movies presents the story of two women who kill old men for charity, their nephew who wants to get married without being sent to prison, his brother who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt and his other brother who looks like Boris Karloff and has killed plenty of people himself.

Insanity might run in the family, but it’s also the story of the bodies buried in the basement and the one still hanging around the living room.

Yes. It’s a comedy.

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

Directed by: Frank Capra

Starring: Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre, Josephine Hull, Jean Adair

Arsenic and Old Lace proves one thing about classic era Hollywood: that a mainstream studio wasn’t always afraid to go a little off-kilter.

There’s a rightly earned perception that older movies from the 30s and 40s are a bit corny. A bit cheesy. Maybe even a bit too sweet and Golly-Gee-Happy. Sometimes, this is true. Of course, it’s always easy to pull out Tod Browning’s Freaks to show that people making some of the earliest films were just as messed up as we are.

This movie gives an even better example because 1) it’s not horror 2) it’s from Warner Bros. 3) it’s from an incredibly well-known director at the height of his career and 4) it features one of the biggest stars of his day.

However, even though the movie delivers the morbid sweetness of murder served with a cup of chamomile tea, Warners can’t be given total credit for sticking its neck out since it was based on an insanely popular play. Creative content, sure, but it was matched with a healthy economic incentive.

The gist of the play (and the movie) is simple. Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) is on the cusp of getting married to the lovely Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane) despite being a famous theater critic and outspoken advocate for the bachelor life. He comes home to his Aunts Abby and Martha (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair) – the sweetest women in all of Brooklyn – to tell them he’s taxi-ing away to his Honeymoon and discovers their secret. There are 11 dead bodies buried in the basement and one more stashed in the window seat. They smile. They coo. They ask if he wants something to drink while explaining how they poison each lonely old man to save him from a painful life.

It’s hilarious.

The great thing about this movie is its complete disloyalty to convention. It was made after a decade-long sweep of success from Capra (and just two years before his It’s A Wonderful Life) during the tail end of World War II. Actual, brutal, unspeakable death was happening overseas and all around the news hour, but this play and this film somehow allowed people to safely laugh at it from a distance. This is the same director who had Jimmy Stewart raving about freedom and honor in front of Congress, had Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert sticking their legs out for a ride, and had Lionel Barrymore teaching us to love the people in our lives instead of the possessions we can amass. After all that, he somehow gets possessed by Alfred Hitchcock’s spirit and makes a far better version of The Trouble With Harry.

Old Lace was also uncharacteristic for Cary Grant. He’d been working in Hollywood for around 12 years by that point and had managed to play the dapper gentlemen charming the petticoats off the young women. He’d also managed to get into Hitchcock’s roster as the slightly terrifying dapper gentleman charming the petticoats off Joan Fontaine in Suspicion, but his role as Mortimer Brewster is unlike any other he’d play in his career. Mortimer is frantic, he’s unhinged, a bit of a jerk, and he feels like he’s going insane while surrounded by insanity.

His closest mother figures are both brimming with the complete ignorance as to the dastardly nature of their crimes – seeing them as merciful – and they openly talk about them without much care. As a farce, it works like a slice of fried comedy gold, but if you think about it one minute too long, it becomes almost sickening (like thinking of the way Ed Gein was caught with a bunch of body parts casually lying around the house). Not only do they see nothing wrong with killing old men, they equate it with donating toys to the local orphanage. Just another good deed for the day.

Then there’s his brother Teddy, who thinks he’s Theodore Roosevelt and provides a (literal) running gag of charging up the stairs like they’re San Juan Hill every time he needs to go to his room. Fortunately, there’s also the other brother – insane criminal Jonathan (Raymond Massey displaying the commanding boom that made his John Brown in Sante Fe Trail works so damned well) who shows up at the house in the midst of the chaos with his fake doctor cohort Dr. Einstein (played with creepy subtlety by Peter Lorre).

Of course, with all the body hiding and attempts to commit his brother to the Happy Dale Sanitarium and blackmail is other brother into leaving the house, Mortimer shoves his new bride away at ever turn, making her more and more hurt and suspicious.

It’s difficult to describe the farcical nature of the plot, but in simple terms – Mortimer falls all over himself, Teddy is trying to dig graves in the basement while thinking they’re for the Panama Canal, and the aunts are both being incredibly sweet while talking about burying the innocents they’ve dispatched. It’s dark satire done better than almost all other examples of the genre.

It stands out for feeling totally mainstream while dealing with topics (and dealing with them in a strange way) that seems completely foreign to the way we think of the happy-go-lucky 40s and the movies meant to lift wartime spirits. Yes, Arsenic and Old Lace is unrepentantly funny, but instead of drawing its humor from sex or relationships, it takes it from death.

The flick still holds up today (as do most farces), but it also still stands out as an odd specimen of movie history. It can’t be repeated because there are no modern contemporaries for either Capra or Grant, but imagine a modern director steeped in Americana (even if that means it’s Michael Bay’s star-spangled bluster of explosions) making a movie about a couple of old ladies killing people and laughing about it over afternoon tea, while getting a massive star known for his charm to be considerably un-charming.

It’s almost unthinkable, but that’s exactly what Arsenic and Old Lace is – a movie that uses the brightest smile of the day to laugh in the face of murder.

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This week, Old Ass Movies presents the story of a sheriff who was too proud to run, but also the story of one man who refused to give his home up to murderers and thieves.

It’s a western with a clock ticking constantly in the background, promising the carnage to come when the sun hits its highest point in the sky and one man has to take on four.

High Noon (1952)

Directed by: Fred Zinnemann

Starring: Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly, Ian MacDonald, Lloyd Bridges, Lon Chaney, and Henry Morgan

It’s not all that culturally important to watch High Noon. If it is, the argument would go something like this:

• Many seem to think John Wayne was the only actor in westerns besides Clint Eastwood.
• Gary Cooper could beat both of their faces bloody and use their neckerchiefs to wipe their blood of the saloon floor just because he’s courteous.
• Therefore, more people need to know the genius of Cooper.
• Double therefore, more people need to see High Noon.

That’s fair, but the real reason to watch High Noon has nothing to do with the greater context of film appreciation or movie knowledge. The real reason to watch High Noon is that it’s a great damned movie.

Cooper plays Marshal Will Kane, a lawman who is hanging up his spurs and star to settle down (elsewhere) with new bride Amy (Grace Kelly). The plans are foiled when the town learns of the return of Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald) – a vicious killer sent to the gallows by Kane who got off on a technicality and will be getting off the noon train to seek his revenge on the man who sent him up the river.

Kane is urged to leave town, and he does, but he turns back because 1) he doesn’t want to run and 2) he feels like it may put the town in danger. That second sentiment is returned with spit in his eye when he searches for compatriots to help him face down Miller and his gang. In a heartbreaking scene inside the church (where the symbolism is all too apparent), he pleads for someone to be deputized and fight alongside of him. The result is a mass of high praise for the man, but no one – not a single soul – willing to go out into the streets with him at noon.

So, being a man of true conviction (and true grit), he faces four murdering marauders alone. Somewhere in the distance, his wife is boarding a train to leave for safety and the security of her non-violent religious beliefs. All hope is lost. The hero is outgunned.

By looking at the cast list, there’s no need to go into detail about how great the acting is. These are all veterans and names that have lasted throughout history as icons. Although, Cooper’s veteran status upset some of the producers that felt he, at 50, was too old to play the lead with his co-star, Grace Kelly, being 22. Nowadays, it seems strange that producers (especially) would think it unrealistic for a 50-year-old to date someone fresh out of college.

On the surface, High Noon is a phenomenal western because it didn’t really need to be a western. It’s set in New Mexico Territory and there’s a sheriff, sure, but the setting could have been just about anywhere and Cooper could have played just about any style of lawman. There are no rousing horse chases, no sweeping vistas, and there’s very little in the way of fist-fighting or gun play. However, it’s a drama that promises violence to come and places the audience on the same inevitable track of fighting time that Kane feels (the movie takes place in real-time). The danger is shaped with expert writing so much so that you forget that there was never a bar fight and a posse was never rounded up.

In fact, the entire point of the film is that sometimes a posse refuses to form.

On a deeper level (if you’re looking for that sort of thing), it’s the story of a man who feels isolated for doing what’s right. He stands up to the deadly gang on behalf of the town, and the thanks he gets is dirt flown into his face as they high tail it to safety. It’s about a man wrestling with the love of his wife, and the ultimate disagreement between them. It’s also the story of a man fighting a life he wants to leave behind and trade for the love of that beautiful woman.

On an even deeper level (if you’re into that sort of thing), the film is an allegory about good people doing nothing in the face of evil. Screenwriter and producer Carl Foreman, though, meant it specifically to mirror the situation with the rising Red Scare and the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was called before the committee during production but refused to testify or name names, and was ultimately blacklisted by the studio system. The writer was forced to move to Europe to find work, but his movie lived on and eventually became one of the favorite films of Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton.

Oddly enough, while (that other cowboy) John Wayne called High Noon “the most un-American thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life,” the commie bastards of the Soviet Union blasted the film for being “a glorification of the individual.” Wayne made Rio Bravo as a response to High Noon‘s perceived politics, but it’s unclear if the Soviet Union ever made its own movie-form rebuttal.

So maybe there is a cultural reason for seeing the movie. Maybe it can be seen as both completely American and completely un-American at the same time. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s a killer western featuring a tight story and a brave man who faces down evil because it’s his job and his duty.

Maybe it’s just a great movie.

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