Something Wild (Jack Garfein, 1961)

Ralph Meeker and Carroll Baker in Something Wild

Cast: Carroll Baker, Ralph Meeker, Mildred Dunnock, Jean Stapleton, Martin Kosleck, Doris Roberts, Charles Watts, Clifton James, George L. Smith, Ken Chapin. Screenplay: Jack Garfein, Alex Karmel, based on a novel by Karmel. Cinematography: Eugen Schüfftan. Art direction: Albert Brenner, Richard Day. Film editing: Carl Lerner. Music: Aaron Copland.

A young woman is brutally raped on her way home, but she tells no one and next day tries to act as if nothing has happened until she is overcome by the crowds on the subway and faints. A policeman brings her home, where her self-centered mother is more concerned that the neighbors saw her in a police car than about her health. Unable to tolerate her mother's whiny self-centered behavior, she runs away, rents a tiny room in a dirty, run-down tenement, and gets a job as a clerk in a five-and-dime store. But her stand-offish behavior, the result of her distaste for being touched, annoys the other clerks, who ostracize her. Wandering aimlessly through the city streets, she finds herself on a bridge and, in a daze, starts to climb over the railing. She is stopped by a garage mechanic on his way to work, and he persuades her to come back to his basement apartment to rest. In her exhaustion, she agrees, but he later comes home from work falling-down drunk and attempts to rape her. She fights him off, kicking him in the eye when he's down, and he passes out. But she discovers that he has locked the door and she can't escape. When he awakes the next morning, he has no memory of attacking her and thinks that he must have sustained the eye injury in a fight at the bar. But when he leaves for work, he won't let her go and locks the door behind him. She becomes his prisoner, while he pleads for her love and eventually proposes marriage. So far, Jack Garfein's Something Wild succeeds as a harrowing, vivid portrait of lost lives in the city. Carroll Baker gives a fine performance as the young woman, Mary Ann, and Ralph Meeker shifts convincingly from tenderness to menace and back again as her captor, Mike. Mildred Dunnock makes the most of her role as Mary Ann's mother, and there are some good performances by future TV sitcom actresses Jean Stapleton and Doris Roberts, the former as the noisy prostitute who has a room next to Mary Ann's in the tenement, the latter as Mary Ann's co-worker at the five-and-dime, who leads the other clerks in shunning her. Best of all are the cinematography of Eugen Schüfftan, capturing New York City at its grandest and grimmest, and the edgy score by Aaron Copland. But just when things look the most hopeless for Mary Ann, Mike goes out one day without locking the door -- perhaps intentionally -- and she escapes. It's a beautiful spring day in the city and she wanders through Central Park, her spirits reviving, and returns to the apartment where she accepts Mike's proposal. Then it's Christmas and Mary Ann has sent a note to her mother telling where she now lives. The mother visits the basement apartment to plead with Mary Ann to return home, but Mary Ann tells her that this is now her home and moreover that she's pregnant. And on a moment that is fairly drenched with Hollywood-style sentiment, though this has been a fearlessly unsentimental and independently gritty movie, the film ends. I suppose it's possible to take this wrap-up as Garfein's parody of the Hollywood ending, but it's difficult to countenance the film's undercutting of itself any other way, not to mention that it seems to suggest that the trauma of rape can be "cured" by another kind of rape: imprisonment. Something Wild seems to me a collection of brilliant moments and skilled performances, and to provide a compelling portrait of urban alienation whose tone is set with the striking opening credits by Saul Bass. But by losing its integrity of vision at the end, it fails to be a whole film.

A Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan, 1951)

Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire

Cast: Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, Karl Malden, Rudy Bond, Nick Dennis, Peg Hillias, Wright King, Richard Garrick, Ann Dere, Edna Thomas, Mickey Kuhn. Screenplay: Tennessee Williams, Oscar Saul. Cinematography: Harry Stradling Sr. Art direction: Richard Day, Bertram Tuttle. Film editing: David Weisbart. Music: Alex North.

A great American play with a great mostly American cast. Well, three quarters American isn't bad, if the British fourth quarter of the cast is Vivien Leigh, who gives one of the great screen performances, turning Blanche Dubois into a brilliant sparring partner for Marlon Brando's Stanley Kowalski. But each time I watch the film, I am drawn more and more to Kim Hunter's Stella, who has the difficult role of mediator between Blanche and Stanley. Hunter also superbly captures why Stella is so doggedly faithful to the brutal Stanley, a matter that may trouble us more in an age of heightened consciousness of domestic violence. Stella is deeply, carnally in love with the brute, but also aware of the tormented boy within him. There's no more telling scene than the morning after Stanley, in the notorious torn T-shirt, stands at the foot of the stairs bellowing "Stella!" and bringing her down from her retreat. Hunter demonstrates a full measure of post-coital bliss, looking as rumpled as the bed in which she's lying when Blanche arrives to waken her and is shocked by Stella's about-face. That's why, although the censors tried to eliminate any sense that Stella had forgiven Stanley at the end of the film, we know full well that she'll return to him. For the most part, the avoidance of the censors' strictures is deft, but they do eliminate some of the meaning of the rape scene -- that Stanley's only way to get the upper hand in the power struggle with Blanche is purely physical -- and they turn the ending of the film into somewhat of a dramatic muddle. If it's not a great movie, it's because the play, like most plays, was never intended to be a film. But it's still a great pleasure to hear these actors speaking some of the most potent lines ever written for the theater.

I Wake Up Screaming (H. Bruce Humberstone, 1941)

I Wake Up Screaming (H. Bruce Humberstone, 1941)

Cast: Victor Mature, Betty Grable, Carole Landis, Laird Cregar, William Gargan, Alan Mowbray, Allyn Joslyn, Elisha Cook Jr., Morris Ankrum, Charles Lane, Frank Orth, Gregory Gaye, Chick Chandler, Cyril Ring, May Beatty. Screenplay: Dwight Taylor, based on a novel by Steve Fisher. Cinematography: Edward Cronjager. Art direction: Richard Day, Nathan Juran. Film editing: Robert L. Simpson. Music: Cyril J. Mockridge.

I Wake Up Screaming, in which no one actually wakes up screaming, was not one of 20th Century Fox's priority projects in 1941, witness the fact that it was assigned to one of the studio's second-string directors, H. Bruce Humberstone, who was usually in charge of B-movies like the Charlie Chan films. Even its stars were not of the first rank: Betty Grable would become famous for her "gams" as the GIs' pin-up girl during the coming war, but she had mostly been a decorative element, not a leading lady, in her previous movies. Victor Mature had been in movies for only a year, having worked with Carole Landis in Hal Roach's caveman saga One Million B.C. in 1940. The studio didn't bother with an original score for the film, instead hiring Cyril J. Mockridge to orchestrate the theme music Alfred Newman had composed for King Vidor's 1931 film Street Scene, along with a love theme adapted from the Oscar-winning song Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg had composed for The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939). Today, the reiterations of "Over the Rainbow" against the murder mystery background are among the more unintentionally unsettling things about I Wake Up Screaming, which Fox initially released under another title, Hot Spot. Given all this uncertainty, it's surprising that the movie works as well as it does, generating some real suspense and keeping its plot twists concealed until the right moment. Probably its greatest strength lies not in the performances of its leads, though Mature in particular is perfectly fine, but in that of Laird Cregar, as the sinister cop who wants to pin the murder of Landis's Vicky Lynn on Mature's Frankie Christopher. Cregar is a true heavy in every sense of the word, his bulk playing off well against Mature's own large presence. Cinematographer Edward Cronjager works well with shadows, which has earned I Wake Up Screaming a reputation as one of the first American film noirs. Humberstone unfortunately doesn't have the noir touch, and undermines Cronjager's efforts with some attempts at lightening up the mood, including a silly detour into a swimming pool scene that doesn't do much other than give Grable an opportunity to show off her legs and Mature to bare his chest. But all in all, it's a better film than most of the people connected with it had any right to expect.

Street Scene (King Vidor, 1931)

Estelle Taylor, Beulah Bondi, and Eleanor Wesselhoeft in Street Scene

Rose Maurrant: Sylvia Sidney
Sam Kaplan: William Collier Jr.
Anna Maurrant: Estelle Taylor
Emma Jones: Beulah Bondi
Frank Maurrant: David Landau
Vincent Jones: Frank McHugh
Steve Sankey: Russell Hopton
Mae Jones: Greta Granstedt
Greta Fiorentino: Eleanor Wesselhoeft
Bert Easter: Walter Miller
Abe Kaplan: Max Montor
Shirley Kaplan: Ann Kostant
Dick McGann: Allen Fox
Karl Olsen: John Qualen
Willie Maurrant: Lambert Rogers
Filippo Fiorentino: George Humbert
Laura Hildebrand: Helen Lovett
Alice Simpson: Nora Cecil

Director: King Vidor
Screenplay: Elmer Rice
Based on a play by Elmer Rice
Cinematography: George Barnes
Production design: Richard Day
Film editing: Hugh Bennett
Music: Alfred Newman

Eighty-seven years later, King Vidor's Street Scene remains one of the best translations ever made of a stage play into a movie. I think it's largely because Vidor and screenwriter Elmer Rice, adapting his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, avoided the temptation to "open out" the play. The focus of both play and film has to be the façade of the tenement house in which the characters live. Director and writer resist the temptation to go inside, even to show the double murder that forms the climax of the drama. Vidor does give the setting a little more context, with shots of the street and the city rooftops, and there's a scene inside a taxicab arriving at the brownstone, as well as a swish-pan montage of faces popping into windows along the street as people hear the gunshots. But virtually all of the action takes place where it should: on the front steps and in the flanking and upper-story windows of the tenement. What keeps Street Scene from bogging down as one-set films tend to do is the constant mobility of the camera, seeking out a variety of angles on the characters as they come and go. Several of the actors, including Beulah Bondi, John Qualen, Eleanor Wesselhoeft, George Humbert, and Ann Kostant, had performed their roles on Broadway, so they were already keyed into the kind of ensemble playing that Street Scene demands. This was Bondi's film debut, and she's a standout in the key role of the malicious gossip Emma Jones, a hypocrite whose son is a bully and whose daughter behaves like what Emma would call a tramp if she were someone else's daughter. The newcomers to the play also handle themselves admirably, especially Sylvia Sidney and Estelle Taylor as Rose Maurrant and her mother, Anna. The weak link in the cast is William Collier Jr. as Sam Kaplan, who comes across as something of a wuss, unable to defend himself against the bullying Vincent Jones, and a sap in his love scenes with Sidney's Rose, making us wonder what she sees in him. Street Scene also trades a little heavily in stereotypes: the Italians who love music, the Irishman who's a drunk, the Jews who are somewhat isolated from the rest of the tenants, and even the Swede with a comic accent -- one of John Qualen's specialties. Like most of the films produced by Sam Goldwyn, Street Scene has high production values, particularly Richard Day's set, which was modeled on Jo Mielziner's Broadway set; the cinematography by George Barnes with some uncredited assistance from Gregg Toland; and Alfred Newman's score, which features a bluesy Gershwinesque theme that he would re-use in half a dozen other movies even after he left Goldwyn for 20th Century Fox.

Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937)

Barbara O'Neil and Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas

Stella Dallas: Barbara Stanwyck
Stephen Dallas: John Boles
Laurel Dallas: Anne Shirley
Helen Morrison: Barbara O'Neil
Ed Munn: Alan Hale
Mrs. Martin: Marjorie Main
Charlie Martin: George Walcott
Miss Phillibrown: Ann Shoemaker
Richard Grosvenor: Tim Holt

Director: King Vidor
Screenplay: Sarah Y. Mason, Victor Heerman
Based on a novel by Olive Higgins Prouty and its dramatization by Harry Wagstaff Gribble and Gertrude Purcell
Cinematography: Rudolph Maté
Art direction: Richard Day
Film editing: Sherman Todd
Costume design: Omar Kiam
Music: Alfred Newman

I'm bothered by an inconsistency in the title character of King Vidor's Stella Dallas. When Stella's estranged husband, Stephen, shows up unexpectedly at Christmastime bearing gifts for her and their daughter, Laurel, Stella makes a determined effort to look "respectable": She rummages through her closet, rejecting all the flowery, overtrimmed dresses she usually favors, and chooses a black dress, removing most of its trimmings, and even goes so far as to wipe off the lipstick she has just applied. But later, when she takes Laurel to a snooty resort, she's a blowsy horror again, swaggering vulgarly through the amused upperclass crowd -- and thereby precipitating the final separation between her and Laurel. What happened to the self-aware Stella who knew how to present herself as a suitable mate for Stephen Dallas? But the thing about this inconsistency, and other little melodramatic clichés that infest the film, is that it doesn't matter: Stella Dallas triumphs because Barbara Stanwyck believes in her and because King Vidor knows how to manipulate our responses to the characters. Stella's appearance at the resort is played as simultaneously comic -- who doesn't laugh at the way she's dressed, swanning around with a white fox fur? -- and tragic -- Stella's insistence on being herself is her fatal flaw. Similarly, when Ed Munn shows up drunk, wagging around a large turkey he has brought for Stella and Laurel's Christmas and stuffing it head, feet, and all into the oven, the scene is hilarious -- Alan Hale is wonderful here -- until it isn't, until we realize the damage it is going to do to Stella and her daughter. And the celebrated final scene, of Stella watching Laurel's wedding through the window, is beautifully performed by Stanwyck, chewing on her handkerchief, and magisterially staged by Vidor. Tears are flowing in the audience as Stella strides across the street, but she's beaming, having accomplished her chief goal: to see Laurel happy. Critiques of the movie's treatment of maternal self-sacrifice, or of marriage as the consummation of a woman's happiness, are many and cogent. But let's just take a moment to reflect on the skill with which these ideas and attitudes, retrograde as we may find them, have been presented on film.

Come and Get It (Howard Hawks, William Wyler, 1936)

Frances Farmer and Walter Brennan in Come and Get It

Barney Glasgow: Edward Arnold
Lotta Morgan / Lotta Bostrom: Frances Farmer
Swan Bostrom: Walter Brennan
Richard Glasgow: Joel McCrea
Karie: Mady Christians
Emma Louise Glasgow: Mary Nash
Evvie Glasgow: Andrea Leeds
Tony Schwerke: Frank Shields
Josie: Cecil Cunningham

Director: Howard Hawks, William Wyler
Screenplay: Jane Murfin, Jules Furthman
Based on a novel by Edna Ferber
Cinematography: Rudolph Maté, Gregg Toland
Art direction: Richard Day
Film editing: Edward Curtiss
Music: Alfred Newman

William Wyler had just finished Dodsworth (1936) when the producer to whom he was under contract, Samuel Goldwyn, called on him to finish Come and Get It, which had been started under the direction of Howard Hawks. Goldwyn was unhappy with the way Hawks had treated Edna Ferber's novel Come and Get It, so he fired him. Goldwyn, a man of little education, was impressed with writers of big reputations, and liked to think of his movies as prestige items. Ferber was a big bestselling author of the day, best-known for multigenerational historical novels with colorful settings like the Mississippi riverboats of Show Boat and the Oklahoma land rush of Cimarron. The former had become a celebrated musical that had been filmed twice, first as a part-talkie by Harry A. Pollard in 1929 and then by James Whale in 1935, though it was not released until 1936. Cimarron had been made into a best-picture Oscar winner by Wesley Ruggles in 1931, so Goldwyn had been eager to cash in on the novelist's celebrity. He hired Hawks as director because the raucous frontier section of Ferber's novel reminded him of the director's Barbary Coast (1935), but when Goldwyn was sidelined by illness, Hawks jettisoned much of Jane Murfin's Ferber-approved screenplay and brought in one of his frequent collaborators, Jules Furthman, to rewrite and to build up the part of Walter Brennan's Swan Bostrom. Hawks shifted the focus away from Ferber's novel, much of which was about the exploitation of the land by timber interests, and built up the relationship between Bostrom and the protagonist, the ambitious lumberman Barney Glasgow. He also replaced Goldwyn's original choice for Lotta, Miriam Hopkins, with an actress he had discovered, Frances Farmer. Wyler was reluctant to take over from Hawks, and not only resisted Goldwyn's plan to give him sole billing as director but also insisted that Hawks receive top billing as co-director. In any case, Come and Get It turned into a rather curious mess, not least because Hawks was a notoriously freewheeling director with an intensely personal style whereas Wyler was a consummate perfectionist who seldom let his personality show through his work. Although there's some Hawksian energy to the film, it feels like it has been held in check. Moreover, the central character, Barney Glasgow, has been miscast. Goldwyn wanted Spencer Tracy for the part, knowing that Tracy could play both the romantic lead and the driven businessman that the part called for. But when Tracy couldn't get out of his contract with MGM, Goldwyn settled for one of his own contract players, Edward Arnold, a rather squat, rotund character actor with none of Tracy's sex appeal. The best thing about the film is that it gives us a chance to see Farmer before her career was derailed by mental illness. She sharply delineates the two Lottas, mother and daughter, playing the former with a kind of masculine toughness and the latter with a defensive sweetness. As the mother, she growls out the song "Aura Lee" in a Marlene Dietrich baritone, but later as the daughter she sings it in a light soprano. She also sometimes looks strikingly like the actress who played her in the biopic Frances (Graeme Clifford, 1982), Jessica Lange. The other impressive moments in the film are provided by the logging sequences directed by Richard Rosson and filmed by Rudolph Maté. Brennan won the first of his three Oscars for his "yumpin' Yiminy" Swedish-accented character.

The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (Ernst Lubitsch, 1927)

Norma Shearer, Ramon Novarro, and Jean Hersholt in The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg

Prince Karl Heinrich: Ramon Novarro
Kathi: Norma Shearer
Dr. Jüttner: Jean Hersholt
King Karl VII: Gustav von Seyffertitz
Lutz: Edgar Norton
Kellermann: Bobbie Mack
Young Karl Heinrich: Philippe De Lacy
Old Ruder: Otis Harlan

Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Screenplay: Hanns Kräly
Based on a book and play by Wilhelm Meyer-Förster
Cinematography: John J. Mescall
Art direction: Richard Day, Cedric Gibbons
Film editing: Andrew Marton

Though The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg sometimes seems as overextended as its title, given the slightness of its love-or-duty plot, it gets a good deal of zip from Ernst Lubitsch's direction and from the charm of its leads, Ramon Novarro and Norma Shearer. The latter, especially, is seen to good advantage in a role that doesn't call on her to over-emote, a trap she sometimes fell into in many of her sound roles. Lubitsch inserts sly gags here and there to leaven the obviousness of the plot. After perhaps one too many scenes of students quaffing beer, there's a card to remind us that they were at the university to learn, too, followed by a shot of a professor droning away at a lectern to a classroom of a single student. Eventually, the film bogs down a bit when Novarro's Karl Heinrich is called away to princely duties and has to forsake Shearer's lovely barmaid. 

Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky, 1948)

John Garfield in Force of Evil

Joe Morse: John Garfield
Leo Morse: Thomas Gomez
Doris Lowry: Beatrice Pearson
Freddie Bauer: Howland Chamberlain
Ben Tucker: Roy Roberts
Edna Tucker: Marie Windsor
Bill Ficco: Paul Fix
Detective Egan: Barry Kelley
Hobe Wheelock: Paul McVeigh
Wally: Stanley Prager

Director: Abraham Polonsky
Screenplay: Abraham Polonsky, Ira Wolfert
Based on a novel by Ira Wolfert
Cinematography: George Barnes
Art direction: Richard Day
Film editing: Art Seid
Music: David Raksin

John Garfield was one of the few movie stars who could play leading man to Joan Crawford and Lana Turner, and then turn around and appear in a gritty drama like Force of Evil without letting his star power outshine the supporting cast of character actors and unknowns. In Abraham Polonsky's film, he's a lawyer connected to the big players in the numbers racket, an illegal lottery that flourished before the legal ones took over. Joe Morse is torn in two directions: his work for the gangster Ben Tucker, who wants to take over the numbers game from the smaller "banks" that work in New York City neighborhoods, and his ties to his brother, Leo, who runs one of those banks. The numbers, posted in the daily newspapers, are based on the amount of bets placed on a day's horse races. Theoretically, the trio of numbers -- the last digits in the amount -- should be completely random. But Tucker has discovered a way to rig the numbers so that they'll come up 776 on Independence Day -- a day when a lot of bettors choose that number -- thereby causing a lot of the banks to go bust. When Joe learns of the scheme, he tries to tip off Leo, but his brother is having none of it. Joe also becomes involved with one of Leo's employees, Doris Lowry, who is grateful to Leo for having given her a job when she first came to New York, but now wishes to quit the shady business. Beatrice Pearson, who made her debut in the film but gave up movies for the stage, is a fresh and engaging presence, making the "love interest" feel less obligatory than it might. Garfield, of course, is terrific in one of his best roles, striking the right note of moral corruption while still retaining an essential attractiveness. George Barnes's cinematography is superb, whether he's working with Richard Day's sets or New York City locations. There's a haunting shot of Joe Morse in a deserted Wall Street, and the film's emotional climax is Joe's descent to the river beneath the George Washington Bridge to find where his brother's body has been dumped. Force of Evil is a downer, but a surprising one, and it makes one feel all the more bitter about the damage that the blacklist did to Polonsky and to Garfield, whose persecution by the commie-hunters may have contributed to his early death.

Barbary Coast (Howard Hawks, 1935)

Miriam Hopkins and Edward G. Robinson in Barbary Coast

Mary Rutledge: Miriam Hopkins
Luis Chamalis: Edward G. Robinson
Jim Carmichael: Joel McCrea
Old Atrocity: Walter Brennan
Col. Marcus Aurelius Cobb: Frank Craven
Knuckles Jacoby: Brian Donlevy
Jed Slocum: Harry Carey
Sawbuck McTavish: Donald Meek

Director: Howard Hawks
Screenplay: Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur
Cinematography: Ray June
Art direction: Richard Day

The chill, clammy hand of the Production Code's Joseph Breen is detectable in Barbary Coast, and only the diligent playfulness of director Howard Hawks and the cheeky irreverence of screenwriters Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur make it watchable today. That, and the performances of Miriam Hopkins, Edward G. Robinson, Joel McCrea, and Walter Brennan, each of whom knows the whole thing is nonsense as far as actual history and human behavior are concerned, but are happy to go along with the joke. Hopkins's Mary Rutledge is a shady lady -- perhaps a prostitute and certainly the mistress of Robinson's Luis Chamalis -- but she becomes a Hawksian woman, who gets along in the world of men by keeping them at arm's length with wisecracks and wry condescension. She arrives in San Francisco supposedly to marry a man who has struck it rich in the gold fields, but finds out that he's dead and his winnings have been confiscated by Chamalis after losing at the roulette wheel. She's greeted with enthusiasm by the waterfront crowd, who keep exclaiming, "A white woman!" But in the face of bad luck she neither faints nor falls but instead takes her turn running the crooked wheel for Chamalis while coyly locking her door against him at night. Eventually, she will find her true love, McCrea's Jim Carmichael, who will have his own fortune robbed at the wheel, but through various improbable turns will wind up sailing back to New York with his recouped fortune and Mary herself. Brennan, after removing his false teeth, plays a character called "Old Atrocity," cackling and spitting his way through the scenes he steals. Though the film was produced by Sam Goldwyn,  Robinson is nothing more than one of his Warner Bros. gangsters wearing a frilled shirt and an earring, with Brian Donlevy, as a character called "Knuckles," to rough up his enemies, which include the newly arrived newspaper editor played by Frank Craven, who wants to clean up the town and install "law and order." Eventually, the cleaning up is done by vigilantes, who string up Knuckles, which is not exactly the kind of law and order that the editor had in mind. When he's rounded up by the vigilantes, Chamalis turns noble and releases Mary from her promise to marry him if he'll spare her true love's life. Melodrama never got more blatant than Barbary Coast, but there's wit in the lines and spirit in the performances.

Dodsworth (William Wyler, 1936)

Walter Huston in Dodsworth

Sam Dodsworth: Walter Huston
Fran Dodsworth: Ruth Chatterton
Edith Cortright: Mary Astor
Arnold Iselin: Paul Lukas
Captain Lockert: David Niven
Kurt Von Obersdorf: Gregory Gaye
Baroness Von Obersdorf: Maria Ouspenskaya
Matey Pearson: Spring Byington
Tubby Pearson: Harlan Briggs
Renée de Penable: Odette Myrtil
Emily: Kathryn Marlowe
Harry: John Payne

Director: William Wyler
Screenplay: Sidney Howard
Based on the play adapted by Sidney Howard from a novel by Sinclair Lewis
Cinematography: Rudolph Maté
Art direction: Richard Day
Music: Alfred Newman
Costume design: Omar Kiam

I have a feeling that Dodsworth is not quite as well known as it ought to be. It's one of the few Hollywood dramas of the 1930s that seem to have been made for grownups, avoiding melodrama and sentimentality in its treatment of marriage and growing old, and sidestepping the Production Code's infantilizing attitudes toward adultery and divorce. And most of all, it has a wonderful performance by Walter Huston, who was nominated for an Oscar but lost, rather shamefully, to Paul Muni's hammy turn in The Story of Louis Pasteur (William Dieterle, 1936). Huston's Sam Dodsworth is a captain of industry, founder of an automobile company, who decides to sell the business and spend the rest of his life figuring out what to do with himself. His wife, Fran, knows exactly what she wants to do: Sail to Europe and flirt with all those interesting men who can't be found in the Midwestern city of Zenith -- which was also the setting for Sinclair Lewis's novel Babbitt, whose title character became a byword for Midwestern fatuousness. Fran is a few years younger than Sam -- Chatterton was 44, Huston 53 -- and unwilling to grow old gracefully, claiming to be 35 and unwilling to reveal that she has just become a grandmother. Opportunity presents itself immediately on shipboard in the form of a British military officer, but after flirting shamelessly with him, Fran takes fright when they reach England and he wants to take their relationship another step. But when the Dodsworths move on to Paris, Fran becomes bolder and after Sam, bored with life in Europe, returns alone to the United States for a visit with their daughter and her husband, she begins an affair with a suave European. Getting wind of the affair, Sam returns to Paris and confronts Fran, who breaks it off. But their efforts to patch things up fail and Fran asks him for a divorce. In Vienna she finds another suitor, a younger, rather effete aristocrat named Kurt Von Obersdorf, and is ready to marry him once the divorce goes through. Meanwhile, Sam travels on his own and in Naples is reunited with Edith Cortright, a divorcee he had met earlier. Sam moves in with Edith in the villa she is renting, but their happiness is interrupted by Fran's misery: Kurt's mother, the baroness, forbids their marriage on the grounds that Fran is not only divorced but also too old to provide an heir for the family line. A distraught Fran, facing up to failure, urges Sam to return to America with her, presenting him with the dilemma of continuing a marriage that has proved hopeless or exploring the new vistas that have opened for him. Lewis's novel is more in the satirical vein of Babbitt than the film version; Sidney Howard's screenplay, based on his Broadway play, which also starred Huston, evokes Henry James's stories about American encounters with Europeans. William Wyler, with his smooth, unobtrusive professionalism, is the perfect director for the film, which was made under the aegis of producer Samuel Goldwyn, who aimed for polish and prestige and for once achieved it. Given that Dodsworth was made in the mid-1930s, when Nazism was on the rise in Germany and fascism had taken hold in Italy, it seems a bit out of its time. Sam and Edith's dream of traveling the world together feels more than a little naive in the context of the period. The only reference to the rumblings of war perceptible in the film comes in Sam's comment that he prefers the United States because there are "no soldiers along the Canadian border."

Watched on Turner Classic Movies

On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)

While not the masterpiece that it was once thought to be, On the Waterfront has held up in spite of the charges that director Elia Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg made it into an apologia for informing -- as both of them did when they appeared as "friendly witnesses" before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and in spite of the fact that its once-praised "grittiness" has been surpassed in the era after the Production Code ceased to hold its grip on Hollywood filmmakers. What it has going for it is the Oscar-winning performance of Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy, even though Brando can't quite overcome some of the inconsistencies in the script: Is Terry a punch-drunk, self-pitying "bum" or just an average guy who, after knuckling under to pressure, rises to heroism? Eva Marie Saint, also an Oscar-winner in her debut picture, and Rod Steiger, also shine. Less convincing are the scenery-chewing Lee J. Cobb as the mob boss Johnny Friendly and Karl Malden as the two-fisted Father Barry, a character that almost seems designed to please the Catholic-dominated Breen office. Richard Day won a well-deserved seventh Oscar for his art direction, and Boris Kaufman's cinematography also took an award. Leonard Bernstein's only original score for the movies was nominated, but didn't win. An uncredited contribution to the film was made by James Wong Howe, who was called on for some shots that Kazan felt necessary after production had finished. In the concluding scene, in which Terry Malloy, having been savagely beaten, struggles to walk toward the warehouse, Kazan wanted a point-of-view shot that would show how difficult it was for Terry to make the walk: Howe gave the cameraman a hand-held camera, then spun him around to make him dizzy, so he couldn't walk straight. Editor Gene Milford, another of the film's Oscar winners, then cut the unsteady point-of-view shot into Kaufman's shots of Terry walking toward the warehouse.