Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956)

Lauren Bacall, Rock Hudson, and Robert Stack in Written on the Wind

Mitch Wayne: Rock Hudson
Lucy Moore Hadley: Lauren Bacall
Kyle Hadley: Robert Stack
Marylee Hadley: Dorothy Malone
Jasper Hadley: Robert Keith
Dan Willis: Robert J. Wilke
Biff Miley: Grant Williams
Dr. Cochrane: Edward Platt

Director: Douglas Sirk
Screenplay: George Zuckerman
Based on a novel by Robert Wilder
Cinematography: Russell Metty
Art direction: Robert Clatworthy, Alexander Golitzen
Set decoration: Russell A. Gausman, Julia Heron
Film editing: Russell F. Schoengarth
Costumes: Bill Thomas
Music: Frank Skinner

In All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Imitation of Life (1959), Douglas Sirk demonstrated his unsurpassed skill with the "woman's picture," centered on the problems women face in trying to conform to society's demands. But in Written on the Wind, Sirk delivered an essential twist on the genre: a woman's picture about men. There may be no keener exploration of impotence than this portrait of the inability of Rock Hudson's Mitch Wayne and Robert Stack's Kyle Hadley to live up to the concept of masculinity. Kyle is the more obvious example of the problem: He is so terrified that he's sterile that when his wife, Lucy, becomes pregnant, he turns on Mitch, his best friend, accusing him of impregnating her. Granted, he's tricked into this by his malicious sister, Marylee (Dorothy Malone), who is taking her revenge on Mitch for spurning her advances. But this also brings into focus Mitch's problem: Everyone -- Marylee, Lucy, and, yes, Kyle -- is in love with him, and he can't satisfy all of them and remain true to himself. He has been set up by Kyle's father (Robert Keith) as a kind of model of masculinity -- a rags-to-riches success story -- so Kyle, who has never known anything but riches, both admires and resents him. No wonder Mitch wants to escape from the turmoil of the Hadley household and go to work in Iran. Seething under all of this psychodrama is a subtext we now know in greater detail: Hudson's secret life as a gay man. It's reasonably sure that Sirk, who boosted Hudson's career, elevating him into a major star, knew about the actor's off-screen life, so Written on the Wind has grown in stature over the years as one of those films in which a star's personal life deepens a character's backstory. As usual, Sirk and cinematographer Russell Metty provide a rich Technicolor environment for the story, with a masterly use of visually metaphoric shadows and (as in the still above) reflections. Sirk also made the most of the Universal art department, crafting a milieu of excess and sometimes dubious taste for the Hadleys: Notice the array of bottles and geegaws on the dresser in that image. And Bill Thomas's costuming, including some retina-burning reds and oranges for bad girl Marylee, contrasting with muted tones for good girl Lucy, is almost eloquent in what it says about the characters. Written on the Wind is usually cited as a precursor of those 1980s prime-time soaps about the superrich, Dallas and Dynasty, but Sirk gives it more edge and wit than they ever showed.

Dogville (Lars von Trier, 2003)

Nicole Kidman and Zeljko Ivanek in Dogville

Narrator: John Hurt
Grace Margaret Mulligan: Nicole Kidman
Tom Edison: Paul Bettany
Gloria: Harriet Andersson
Ma Ginger: Lauren Bacall
Mrs. Henson: Blair Brown
The Big Man: James Caan
Vera: Patricia Clarkson
Bill Henson: Jeremy Davies
James McKay: Ben Gazzara
Tom Edison Sr.: Philip Baker Hall
Ben: Zeljko Ivanek
Olivia: Cleo King
Liz Henson: Chloë Sevigny
Chuck: Stellan Skarsgård

Director: Lars von Trier
Screenplay: Lars von Trier
Cinematography: Anthony Dod Mantle
Production design: Peter Grant
Film editing: Molly Malene Stensgaard

Lars von Trier's Dogville has weathered an initial critical reaction that dismissed it as "Our Town on downers" to become among his most admired films. But that may be in part because von Trier's life and works have been the focus of so much intense controversy since the film was made, so that Dogville looks like a relatively stable and focused work, especially in comparison with Antichrist (2009), which provoked walkouts at Cannes, and Nymphomaniac (2013), his sexually explicit epic-length film. Von Trier has also been plunged into controversy after joking in an interview that he was a Nazi -- he later apologized and said he was drunk when he made the comment -- and by charges of sexual harassment during the making of his films. He has become something of a latter-day poète maudit, whose defenders are as passionate as his detractors. But Dogville, though overlong and perhaps too show-offily "experimental" in its minimalism, tells a strong story with the help of some gifted performers, particularly Nicole Kidman, who gives one of the best performances of a remarkable career in the role of Grace, the gangster's daughter who winds up being abused by and then destroying the titular town. Some of the criticism initially directed at Dogville centered on its supposed "anti-Americanism," which seems to me wrong-headed. Is the barely masked greed and hypocrisy of Dogville's inhabitants indigenous to America? Is its portrayal of the dark side of frontier village life any more an indictment of America than that of the town of Presbyterian Church in Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), a film that I've never heard called anti-American? And anyway, there's nothing more American than the freedom and willingness to criticize America. Why not extend that freedom to Danish filmmakers, too?

Dark Passage (Delmer Daves, 1947)

Houseley Stevenson and Tom D'Andrea in Dark Passage

Vincent Parry: Humphrey Bogart
Irene Jansen: Lauren Bacall
Madge Rapf: Agnes Moorehead
Bob: Bruce Bennett
Sam: Tom D'Andrea
Dr. Walter Coley: Houseley Stevenson
Baker: Clifton Young
George Fellsinger: Rory Mallinson

Director: Delmer Daves
Screenplay: Delmer Daves
Based on a novel by David Goodis
Cinematography: Sidney Hickox
Art direction: Charles H. Clarke
Film editing: David Weisbart
Music: Franz Waxman

Time doesn't just heal wounds, it also makes bad movies into interesting ones. Dark Passage is, on the face of it, a bad movie, a silly thriller whose plot depends on a series of absurd coincidences. But it has survived and achieved almost cult status because of several things: the eternal chemistry of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and its wonderful views of San Francisco in the late 1940s among them. And, I think, because writer-director Delmer Daves knew enough to take its absurdities with a straight face, keeping his tongue only slightly in his cheek as he unspools the story of convicted wife-murderer Vincent Parry, who manages to escape from San Quentin in an open barrel precariously perched on the back of a truck, to survive a barrel roll from the truck on Highway 1, to be picked up first by a guy we later learn is an ex-con who had done time in San Quentin and then by Irene Jansen, who is convinced that Parry is innocent. She takes him to her handsome apartment -- an Art Deco building at 1360 Montgomery St. that still attracts movie-loving tourists -- and gives him shelter, even though she's also friends with Madge Rapf, who testified against Parry at the trial. Leaving the safety of Irene's apartment, he hails a cabbie named Sam, who recognizes him but believes he's innocent, and who takes him to a back-alley plastic surgeon who -- for $200! -- gives him a new face. And so on. Much of the first part of the film is done with a subjective camera, giving us Parry's view of things, including the film's best -- that is, funniest -- scene: the doctor explaining the procedure as Sam kibitzes over his shoulder. His face bandaged, Parry returns to Irene, who nurses him until the bandages come off and we see Bogart's face for the first time -- though even with bandages on, he's identifiably Bogart. And so on as Parry gathers evidence that proves the real murderer was Madge, who inconveniently takes a header through a plate-glass window, robbing him of his proof. Pauline Kael was representative of the earlier response to the movie, calling it "miserably plotted" and "an almost total drag," but if you have an easily willing suspension of disbelief, a taste for old-style star chemistry, and an interest in seeing the Golden Gate Bridge without bumper-to-bumper traffic, Dark Passage can be a lot of fun.

The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946)

Humphrey Bogart and Martha Vickers in The Big Sleep

Philip Marlowe: Humphrey Bogart
Vivian Rutledge: Lauren Bacall
Eddie Mars: John Ridgely
Carmen Sternwood: Martha Vickers
Book Shop Owner: Dorothy Malone
Mona Mars: Peggy Knudsen
Bernie Ohls: Regis Toomey
Gen. Sternwood: Charles Waldron
Norris: Charles D. Brown
Lash Canino: Bob Steele
Harry Jones: Elisha Cook Jr.
Joe Brody: Louis Jean Heydt

Director: Howard Hawks
Screenplay: William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, Jules Furthman
Based on a story by Raymond Chandler
Cinematography: Sidney Hickox
Art direction: Carl Jules Weyl
Film editing: Christian Nyby
Music: Max Steiner

I've cited Keats's "negative capability" before in warning about getting too involved with the literal details of a movie at the expense of missing the total effect, and it still seems appropriate here when it comes to figuring out exactly who did what to whom in Howard Hawks's The Big Sleep. Screenwriters William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman are said to have consulted Raymond Chandler, the author of the novel they were adapting, about certain obscurities of the plot, and Chandler admitted that he didn't know either, which is as fine an example of being "in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason" as even Keats could come up with. So ask not who killed the Sternwoods' chauffeur, or even who really killed Shawn Regan -- if, in fact, Regan is dead. This is one of the most enjoyable of films noir, if a movie that has so many sheerly pleasurable moments can really be called noir. It's also one of the most deliciously absurd -- or maybe absurdist -- movies ever made, including its persistent presentation of Humphrey Bogart's Philip Marlowe as an irresistible hunk, who has bookstore clerks, hat check girls, waitresses, and female taxi drivers swooning at his presence. The only thing that makes this remotely credible is that Lauren Bacall, and not just Vivian Sternwood Rutledge, actually did. In his review for the New York Times, Bosley Crowther, one of the most obtuse critics who ever took up space in a newspaper, called it a "poisonous picture" and commented that Bacall "still hasn't learned to act" -- an incredible remark to anyone who has just watched her exchange with Bogart ostensibly about horse racing. This is, of course, one of Howard Hawks's greatest movies, and of course it received not a single Oscar nomination -- not even for Martha Vickers's delirious Carmen Sternwood. Vickers was so good in her role that her part had to be trimmed to put more focus on Bacall, who was being groomed for stardom. Sadly, Vickers never found another role as good as Carmen. Dorothy Malone, who did go on to stardom and an Oscar, steals her scene as the bookstore owner amused and aroused by Marlowe's charisma. And then there's Elisha Cook Jr. as a small-time hapless hood not far removed from the Wilmer who stirred Sam Spade's homophobia in The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1946). Except this time his demise elicits something Marlowe would seem otherwise incapable of: pity.

Key Largo (John Huston, 1948)

This was the fourth and last of the films that Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made together, but the movie was stolen by Claire Trevor, who won a supporting actress Oscar, and by Bogart's old partner in Warner Bros. gangster movies, Edward G. Robinson. It's a little too talky and stagy, partly because it was based on a 1939 Broadway play by Maxwell Anderson, a once-admired playwright whose specialty was blank-verse dramas. Huston and co-screenwriter Richard Brooks took great liberties with the play, changing the characters and the ending, and updating the action to the postwar era, but occasionally you can hear a bit of Anderson's iambic pentameter in the dialogue. Bogart's Frank McCloud was originally called King McCloud and was a deserter from the Spanish Civil War; in the movie he's a World War II veteran, something of a hero, who comes to Key Largo to visit the father (Lionel Barrymore) and the widow (Bacall) of an army buddy who was killed in Italy. He finds them being held in the hotel they own by a group of gangsters, headed by Johnny Rocco (Robinson), a Prohibition-era mobster who is trying to sneak back into the States after being deported. As so often -- cf. Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1943) and To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944) -- the Bogart character is called on to make a choice between taking the kind of action he has renounced and remaining neutral. Bacall's role is somewhat underwritten, and what few sparks she and Bogart strike seem to be the residue of their previous films together, especially To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep (Hawks, 1946). Having to play opposite that scene-stealing old ham Barrymore doesn't help much, either. But Trevor fully deserved her award as Rocco's moll, an alcoholic club singer known as Gaye Dawn. She has a big moment when she's forced by Rocco to sing "Moanin' Low" on the promise that he'll let her have a drink -- which he then sadistically refuses her. As usual, Robinson is terrific, and also as usual, he failed to receive the Oscar nomination he deserved and was never granted. Karl Freund's cinematography helps overcome the studio's decision not to film on location.

To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944)

Beatrice and Benedick. Rosalind and Orlando. Viola and Orsino. "Slim" and "Steve"? Is it just the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death that made me think of To Have and Have Not in terms of Shakespearean romance? Or is it that this most enjoyable of movies has a lot in common with those grand predecessors? Actually, it's all Howard Hawks's doing, with a little bit of help from screenwriters Jules Furthman and William Faulkner. Hawks had done this sort of romance before, in his comic masterpieces Bringing Up Baby (1938) and His Girl Friday (1940), but leave it to Hawks to see World War II (and Ernest Hemingway's "grace under pressure" fiction) through the lens of screwball comedy. And to do it with the movies' most famous tough guy, Humphrey Bogart, and an unknown 19-year-old actress who had her name changed from Betty Perske to Lauren Bacall. And to treat it all as a semi-musical, with Hoagy Carmichael at the piano. Blood is shed and causes are espoused, but nobody takes it terribly seriously. Instead, Bogart and Bacall surf through the film on some of the best dialogue ever written, working out their fine romance as deftly as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers ever did on the dance floor. Walter Brennan adds another memorable figure to his impressive gallery of old coots, and Marcel Dalio brings the kind of charm that might threaten to upstage lesser performers than these stars. It's certainly not a perfect film: Dolores Moran (clambering from shore to ship in heels) and Walter Szurovy are rather tediously noble as the de Bursacs. (Watch the bit when Mme. de Bursac faints and spills the chloroform and Bacall's Slim, sensing a rival for her Steve's affections, casts a stinkeye on the fallen form and intentionally fans some of the fumes in her direction.) As the Vichy police captain, Dan Seymour seems to be trying to do a Sydney Greenstreet impersonation with the worst of all French accents. And does anybody really believe that the odd company that sails off at the end to rescue a Resistance fighter from Devil's Island is going to succeed? But no matter. It's all the stuff of which legends are made.