House of Bamboo (Samuel Fuller, 1955)

Robert Ryan in House of Bamboo

Cast: Robert Ryan, Robert Stack, Shirley Yamaguchi, Cameron Mitchell, Brad Dexter, Sessue Hayakawa, Biff Elliot, Sandro Giglio, DeForest Kelley, Eiko Hanabusa. Screenplay: Harry Kleiner, Samuel Fuller. Cinematography: Joseph MacDonald. Art direction: Addison Hehr, Lyle R. Wheeler. Film editing: James B. Clark. Music: Leigh Harline.

More slickly made and visually spectacular than the typical Samuel Fuller movie, House of Bamboo was the product of his flirtation with a major studio, 20th Century-Fox. Made on location, it gives us some fine CinemaScope images of mid-1950s Tokyo, though it sometimes drifts away from the story into tourist mode to justify them, as in the scene in which the guy we know as Eddie Kenner (Robert Stack) tours a Buddhist temple on the pretext of having a clandestine meeting with the cops he's secretly working for. There's also not much reason why Sandy Dawson (Robert Ryan) should climb to the rotating observation platform on top of Matsuma department store for the final shootout, other than to provide some views of the city below. There's also an infusion of romance between Eddie and his supposed "kimona girl," as Sandy calls her, Mariko (Shirley Yamaguchi), that's a little more sugary than we expect of Fuller's men and women. Despite his concessions, the studio wasn't happy working with Fuller, and he went his independent way again. It's certainly not a bad movie -- it has action and suspense and fine work by cinematographer Joseph MacDonald -- but it feels a bit superficial.

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.

The Tarnished Angels (Douglas Sirk, 1958)

Rock Hudson and Dorothy Malone in The Tarnished Angels

Burke Devlin: Rock Hudson
Laverne Shumann: Dorothy Malone
Roger Shumann: Robert Stack
Jiggs: Jack Carson
Jack Shumann: Christopher Olsen
Matt Ord: Robert Middleton
Col. Fineman: Alan Reed
Sam Hagan: Alexander Lockwood

Director: Douglas Sirk
Screenplay: George Zuckerman
Based on a novel by William Faulkner
Cinematography: Irving Glassberg
Art direction: Alexander Golitzen, Alfred Sweeney
Music: Frank Skinner
Costume design: Bill Thomas

CinemaScope and black-and-white are an odd combination. The former was developed and premiered in 1953 as a way for exhibitors to give audiences something they couldn't find at home on their television sets, which were of course black-and-white. It was meant for color and spectacle, and hastened the making of films in color toward its now default status. But although Douglas Sirk was noted for his use of color, and although The Tarnished Angels has scenes that would have benefited from both color and the CinemaScope extra-wide screen, such as the Mardi Gras sequences and the airplane races, he chose to make the film in black-and-white. And it works: It imposes a kind of film noir chiaroscuro on the story, which could easily have devolved into yet another routine action melodrama. The Tarnished Angels was not well received by contemporary critics: Bosley Crowther in the New York Times called it "badly, cheaply written" and "abominably played." (It might be noted that Crowther wasn't paying too close attention to those abominable players: In his review he misidentifies Jack Carson as Jack Oakie.) Today, however, the film has benefited from the wholesale reevaluation of Sirk's oeuvre, and it feels like the work of a master, if one not always fully in control of his art. Sirk creates a shadowy milieu for the story of barnstorming pilots in the Depression, including the shabby interior of the apartment to which Devlin invites them. And there's a wonderfully creepy use of Mardi Gras masks as motifs. But is there any way to excuse the ridiculously fake and exploitative scene in which Dorothy Malone is forced to dangle from a parachute against a process screen while an unseen wind machine blows up her skirts? None, except to blame it on the insistence of producer Albert Zugsmith, who followed up this film with a series of exploitation flicks starring Mamie Van Doren, like High School Confidential (Jack Arnold, 1958) and Sex Kittens Go to College (Zugsmith, 1960). Otherwise, however, Sirk managed to steer clear of Zugsmith's bad taste. It's true that Rock Hudson is miscast as the alcoholic, chain-smoking Times-Picayne reporter Burke Devlin, a part that demands someone who can look less healthy and strapping than Hudson does. But in fact he gives one of his best performances, emphasizing Devlin's vulnerability. Sirk chose to use long takes in the scene in which Devlin delivers an impromptu eulogy to Roger Shumann in the newsroom, beginning drunkenly but gradually sobering as he warms to the topic. Hudson rises to the acting challenge beautifully. Malone doesn't allow the studio's determination to show off her legs to prevent her from also showing the weary, hard-bitten side of Laverne Shumann. Of the leads, I find Stack's performance the least satisfying: There's not enough ambiguity and conflict in Roger's decision to prostitute Laverne to Matt Ord so he can fly Ord's plane; as Stack plays him, Shumann just comes off as an irredeemably obsessive shit. The Tarnished Angels is based on Pylon, one of those William Faulkner novels I've never got around to reading, but Faulkner reportedly said it was his favorite among all the films that have been made from his works. That's not saying a lot, I fear: Faulkner has been sadly mishandled by filmmakers. But judging it purely as a study of characters enduring what life throws at them, a favorite Faulknerian theme, the film stands on its own.

Watched on Turner Classic Movies

To Be or Not to Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942)

Carole Lombard and Jack Benny in To Be or Not to Be

Maria Tura: Carole Lombard
Joseph Tura: Jack Benny
Lt. Stanislav Sobinski: Robert Stack
Col. Ehrhardt: Sig Ruman
Greenberg: Felix Bressart
Rawitch: Lionel Atwill
Prof. Siletsky: Stanley Ridges

Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Screenplay: Melchior Lengyel, Edwin Justus Mayer
Cinematography: Rudolph Maté
Production design: Vincent Korda
Film editing: Dorothy Spencer
Music: Werner R. Heymann

Topical humor and satire has always been a risky business, as Kathy Griffin learned recently with her gag involving a severed Trump head. When a joke about current events offends rather than amuses an audience, producing stunned silence or at best nervous laughter, comedians usually try to defuse the situation by asking, "Too soon?" For Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be, it was "too soon" for a very long time. Begun before Pearl Harbor and completed after the United States had declared war on Nazi Germany, To Be or Not to Be had the further misfortune to be released shortly after the death of its star, Carole Lombard, in a plane crash while on a tour selling war bonds. The unavoidable bad timing resulted in a critical and commercial failure, with many critics echoing the reaction of the New York Times's Bosley Crowther, admittedly a man not known for his lively sense of humor, that To Be or Not to Be was a "callous and macabre" treatment of "a subject which is far from the realm of fun." Even the father of the film's star, Jack Benny, walked out of the picture when he saw his son wearing a Nazi uniform. (He was later persuaded to sit through the movie and liked it.) Critical nervousness about To Be or Not to Be lingered for a very long time, especially among the generation that fought in or grew up during the war. Andrew Sarris, who placed Lubitsch in his "Pantheon" of great directors in his 1968 book The American Cinema, took notice of the film's reputation as "an inappropriately farcical treatment of Nazi terror," and rather oddly commented, "For Lubitsch, it was sufficient to say that Hitler had bad manners, and no evil was then inconceivable." As late as 1982, in her collection of short reviews, 5001 Night at the Movies, Pauline Kael said that "the burlesque of the Nazis ... is so crudely gleeful that we don't find it funny." That last is, incidentally, a prime example of the Kaelian "we," her tendency to include the reader in her own experience of films. As Sam Goldwyn reportedly said, "Include me out." I'll admit that the first time I saw To Be or Not to Be, I was a little shocked by its tone, and especially its portrayal of the Gestapo as a gaggle of brainless schnooks, epitomized by Sig Ruman's easily duped Col. Ehrhardt. Yes, the Gestapo was a formidable instrument of terror, to the point that they remain emblematic of the utmost viciousness of Nazism, especially when countless movies made after the entrance into the war freed Hollywood filmmakers from their obligation to remain neutral. On the other hand, the Spanish Inquisition was an equally formidable instrument of terror, and is anyone really offended when they turn up as a gag line -- "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" -- in Monty Python sketches? Time allows us to distance ourselves from horror, so today most people acknowledge and admire the skill and wit of Lubitsch's satiric farce, which is also a pretty good spy thriller, with genuinely suspenseful moments. Lombard is at her most poised and glamorous, as well as a surprisingly effective foil for Benny, who as the "great, great Polish actor Joseph Tura" for once in his rather undistinguished career in movies -- which never showcased him as well as radio or TV did -- has a chance to display his perfect comic timing. Tura's reaction -- an indignant slow burn -- when the start of his "To be or not to be" soliloquy cues Lt. Sobinski to leave his seat for an assignation with Mrs. Tura is Benny at his best. But the film is also laced with moments of real awareness of the horrors beneath, an awareness that is not really compromised by being made part of a comedy. The most famous line of the film is probably Ehrhardt's observation, in response to the disguised Tura's request for an evaluation of his work on the stage, "What he did to Shakespeare we are now doing to Poland." How this double entendre made it past the Production Code censors, I don't know, but it's evidence that Lubitsch was certainly aware of the reality and not just being "inappropriately farcical."