In short: The Tall Target (1951)

1861, just before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration. New York police sergeant John Kennedy (Dick Powell) has discovered a plot to assassinate Lincoln during a pre-inauguration speech in Baltimore. Nobody wants to believe his report on the matter, so he takes it upon himself to get on the night train to Baltimore to try and get the information into the hands of people who’ll take it seriously.

On the train, it becomes clear very quickly that Kennedy isn’t wrong. At least, somebody likes his ideas so little, they attempt to murder him. For the rest of the night Kennedy tries desperately to survive murder attempts, manoeuvre through very dramatic versions of more quotidian problems like the lack of a train ticket, and finds himself hindered and helped by various characters on the train, like Colonel Caleb Jeffers (Adolphe Menjou), a very dutiful train conductor (Will Geer), and an enslaved girl named Rachel (Ruby Dee, who steals every scene she is in). Someone certainly is part of the conspirators against Lincoln. Kennedy’s life isn’t made any easier by the fact that he ended his last meeting with his boss by throwing his badge into the man’s face, making the small bit of authority he usually has rather shaky, and impossible to prove.

As far as I understand, The Tall Target is one of the first films of Anthony Mann not made for the B-slot in an evening at the movies, so he could work with a budget of about a million dollars here, which must have opened up some possibilities.

The resulting film is a pretty fantastic example of what we’d today call a thriller in the Hitchcockian vein, where a mostly normal guy stumbles into a situation that’s really rather out of his depth, but fights on regardless. Sure, Kennedy may be cop, but he has no authority beyond his word, and even has to try to beg, steal, or borrow a gun. And while he has some experience with violence, the traits that help him survive are tenaciousness and sheer luck. So, the film would make a pretty great double bill with the (later) North by Northwest.

Mann here is particularly great at creating a sense of place, the feeling of spending a rather dangerous time in the very enclosed space of the train, as emphasised through the pretty spectacular looking work of DP Paul Vogel. Because most of the film takes place by night, even the handful of scenes taking place outside share the feeling of claustrophobia, of darkness hanging over and enclosing Kennedy, a darkness that will not always turn out to his detriment in moments of danger.

There’s no fat at all to the script by George Worthington Yates and Art Cohn – every scene, every character interaction, every shot carries import and meaning, helps the plot along, defines the characters Kennedy meets along the way, and creates just the right amount of historical context. As a result, The Tall Target is a tight, enormously suspenseful film, yet one that never feels too breathless.

The Heroes of Telemark (1965)

Nazi occupied Norway during World War II. Norwegian resistance fighter Knut Strand (Richard Harris) ropes scientist Rolf Pedersen (Kirk Douglas) into his attempts to destroy the German production of Heavy Water for their H-bomb projects. Pedersen would really rather spend the occupation tending his own garden and being a bit of a playboy, usually arguing that the Nazi repressions following an act of resistance aren’t actually worth what something like a destroyed Nazi truck wins. Obviously, this particular case is something different, so he at first reluctantly, then later somewhat heroically, helps in Strand’s struggle.

And wouldn’t you know it, turns out Pedersen’s ex-wife (Ulla Jacobsson) and ex-father-in-law are part of the resistance too.

The problem with the whole affair is that the Germans take their project as war-changingly serious as it is, so it is exceedingly difficult to destroy the heavy water production without getting a lot of innocent people killed.

Which, apart from being a World War II resistance adventure, is where the main interest of Anthony Mann’s Heroes of Telemark rests. In fact, much of the film’s running time does its best to work against the “hero” word in its title, talking about the decisions people in war time feel compelled to make, and exploring, horrified, fascinated and knowingly the kinds of inhuman equations these people believe they need to follow.

Again and again the film returns to this, showing its protagonists weighing up how many lives their mission is worth, whose lives it is worth, and how one can – and even if one should -compartmentalize the responsibility for the innocent lives destroyed in a good cause. It doesn’t come to any pat or simple answers here, never falling into the “The Cold Equations” style trap of embracing inhuman solutions wholeheartedly yet still finding itself as helpless as its characters not to use them. Though it is also clear that the film knows and understands but can’t fully approve; there’s a reason why the film’s most heroic act is in its final set piece when the protagonists risk their own lives to mitigate the cost in civilian lives their final desperate plan calls for. Inhumane decisions, the film argues, still need to be mitigated by actual humanity, if that humanity is costly, or not.

Mann practices a bit of humanity himself by not letting the characters fall into the obvious patterns you’d expect, so Pedersen may treat his life in his occupied country like a bit of a moral coward, and is often more careful in his approach, but the film does suggest that much of this is part of him looking at the cost more clearly than the more traditional man of action, Strand. And Strand for his part is actual softer and less ruthless than Pedersen when he has made a cruel decision he deems necessary. Nobody here’s just the asshole of the film, even though both men do act like one at times.

That Mann, pretty much at the end of his career here, is a rather sure hand at action sequences and their intelligent staging doesn’t exactly come as a surprise to anyone who knows his body of work. That he manages to integrate the action and the moral and ethical concerns of his script and his characters without weakening either side isn’t a surprise either. I found myself particularly impressed with the first, stealth, attack of the Norwegians on the Nazi production facility, a long sequence that is indeed shot only with the few natural noises the word “stealth” suggests, without dramatic music, only driven by tension, and all the more exciting for it.


And really, that’s The Heroes of Telemark for you, showing thought and care even in its big action set pieces.

In short: Two O’Clock Courage (1945)

When a man with a head wound (Tom Conway) and a bout of amnesia stumbles in front of the taxi of spunky cab driver Patty Mitchell (Ann Rutherford), it’s the start of a very interesting time for both of them. The man, it turns out, may very well be a murderer; at least, there are a couple of hints that suggest it. Patty’s clearly charmed by him, and decides this means he can’t be a murderer, and so she starts going above and beyond everything you know about the job of a cab driver, helping him to evade the police, as well as a silly reporter. She more than aptly assists the mysterious yet increasingly quippy stranger in investigating who he is and who actually did commit the murder he’s be a prime suspect for.

The basic set-up of Anthony Mann’s – still working in the B-slot movie mills for RKO here – Two O’Clock Courage may suggest a noir, but the script by Robert E. Kent and Mann’s light-handed direction turn this into a comedic murder mystery romance closer in spirit to the Thin Man films than the Cornell Woolrich style affair it may sound like. It’s a fun little example of this particular type of film, though, directed with a bit of style and a whole heap of pizazz, merrily going from one pretty improbable sequence to the next with a spring in its step and a merry little tune on its lips, probably a little drunk. With such a fun tone, who cares that the mystery plot’s pretty weak and that the abyss is yawning elsewhere? I certainly do not.


Conway and Rutherford work rather well together too, quipping, pretending to be married, and walking through the whole affair with a bit of ironic distance, chemistry and a certain unflappable (well, very difficult to flap) charm. It’s a lovely little film, not at all suggesting anything of the movies Mann would turn out just a few years later on a regular basis, but a very worthwhile watch nonetheless.

Strangers in the Night (1944)

Sergeant Johnny Meadows (William Terry) is sent home from the war with a back injury. He’s making his way to the home of Rosemary Blake (Linda Stirling), a woman he fell in love with by letter and through a shared love of “A Shropshire Lad” (you certainly can’t say much against her taste), hoping to finally meet and talk to the woman he plans on marrying.

On the train, Johnny has what would be a meet-cute under different circumstances with Dr Leslie Ross (Virginia Grey). Leslie just happens to be the – scandalously! - female physician who has just taken over the practice in the small town where Rosemary and her family live, so they’ll probably have time to further pretend not to be attracted to one another later on.

When Johnny arrives at the Blake mansion, he is greeted by Rose’s mother Hilda (Helene Thimig) and her live-in friend Ivy Miller (Edith Barrett). Hilda is very happy to meet Johnny, but Rose is apparently away for a couple of days for very vague reasons. Johnny’s very welcome to stay until she returns, though. Which he does, only to become increasingly convinced that something’s not quite right about this whole business. Isn’t Hilda’s behaviour peculiar, even creepy? And why is Ivy so nervous? On the positive side, Leslie is drawn into the affair too and turns out to be a decent amateur detective, and a good woman to have at one’s back.

Which, honestly, is one of the more remarkable elements of the film, symptomatic for the way director Anthony Mann – here very much at the beginning of his career shooting a short programmer for Republic – treats his female lead as a complete character, still fully competent in her job and in life even when she’s falling in love, which is usually the point in movies of this time when a woman turns all damsel-y. Even better, the film portrays the crap a female physician like Leslie has to go through sympathetically, with a couple of scenes of her and her nurse (Frances Morris) rolling their eyes companionably at the world feeling particularly true to life.

As a suspense movie with Gothic elements, Strangers in the Night isn’t completely successful, though. In this case, the brisk 59 minute running time simply isn’t quite enough for everything the film is trying to do, leaving Mann little room to fill out the ghost story without the supernatural, the grown-up reading of a conventional movie romance (which of course makes it pretty unconventional), and the proto Evil Biddy film this turns out to be. Even this early in his career, Mann is a highly efficient storyteller, but even he can’t quite make a viewer ignore that the main characters could really use at least a couple of scenes to flesh out their characters, and that the film simply doesn’t have the space to go further into its more interesting ideas, or to explore its clear interest in portraying nonjudgmentally how World War II has shifted the relationships between women and men in the USA of its time as deeply as the theme deserves.


Still, the film has quite a few effective moments of creepy mood and effective suspense, Mann, aptly supported by DP Reggie Lanning who does quite a bit of John Alton-like work with depth of field and chiaroscuro, turning what would be a cheap little programmer in lesser hands into something that is at the very least always interesting to watch and think about, rather beautiful to look at, and entertaining even more than seventy years later, even though one might wish it to be a bit deeper.

Three Films Make A Post: Enter the mutant

Blackwood (2014): I found Adam Wimpenny’s film immensely frustrating. On one hand, I really appreciate the efforts it makes to do something different with the most clichéd haunted house movie set-up you can get right now (psychologically troubled man, wife and kid move to a lone house in the country to retry the whole family thing; spookiness ensues), as well as Wimpenny’s eye for landscape and the fine cast (including Ed Stoppard, Sophia Myles and Russell Tovey). On the other hand, for a film that is completely character based, the characters never really come to life, with most of the character development that happens feeling more like a contrivance to keep the plot going. And then there’s the whole climax that’s just a big heap of your usual horror movie bullshit that pretty much managed to sour me on the film completely. Filmmakers don’t seem to know, but it’s actually legal to end a supernatural tale in a quiet way.

Housebound (2014): Gerad Johnstone’s horror comedy on the other hand, is neither frustrating nor prone to tone deafness, but rather a joy from beginning to end, starting with the central performances by Morgana O’Reilly, Rima Te Wiata and Glen-Paul Waru, a flawless pace, and a sure sense for how to shift the tone around between the silly, the macabre, and the pleasantly grotesque while never betraying one’s characters and ending with some joyfully clever subversions of various genre clichés. This one would really deserve a longer piece instead of being sandwiched between two films I’ll never want to see again but how many words do you really need to call a film brilliant?

A Dandy in Aspic (1968): When it came out, this final film of the great Anthony Mann (finished by its leading man, Laurence Harvey) got roundly trounced by critics; by now, there’s a bit of a critical renaissance for it. Frankly, though, I think the old guard was absolutely right about this one. At the very least, the film’s a terrible mess, permanently fluctuating between the more greyish realist elements of the spy film and the kind of psychedelia you get when a director of 60 years tries to make a movie for the kids (which is to say, people under fifty) without the psychedelic elements ever making sense in the context of the film. Add to that an incredible annoying performance by Mia Farrow as a 60s manic pixie dream girl, and Harvey’s typical lack of affect, and you can count me among the displeased.

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,new zealand movies,horror,comedy,spies,in short,adam wimpenny,ed stoppard,sophia myles,russell tovey,gerard johnstone,morgana o'reilly,rima te wiata,glen-paul waru,anthony mann,laurence harvey,mia farrow