Book Review: Five Came Back

Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War (2014) by Mark Harris

I had incredibly high expectations for Mark Harris' latest book on film history. His previous work, Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, was one of the most praised books of 2009. I have vivid memories of buying it for my mom for Christmas, thinking to myself, "It's about movies in 1967, Mom was a young woman in 1967, she'll like it." Well, it wasn't two hours after Mom unwrapped it that I ended up being the one sitting cross-legged under the tree and reading away, utterly engrossed. Eventually, I did let her read it, but then I promptly stole it back. It's now got a permanent place of honor on my bookshelf. I've also been reading Harris' Grantland articles for some time; he's one of the few film critics I've found who can dissect Oscar races without sounding like a jaded traveler on the world's longest and most boring tour bus. So when I found out that Harris was going to be tackling a new full-length subject in Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War, I marked my calendar. Expectations like that have crushed books far less modest than this one. So I'm happy to say that Five Came Back is every bit the book I hoped it would be.

Like Pictures at a Revolution, Five Came Back zeroes in on five very different subjects, weaving their histories together and giving full weight to the dreams and ambitions that drove them. But Pictures at a Revolution was the story of a competition; it was the battle between five Best Picture nominees and their radically different attempts to reach out to the audiences of 1967. Here, Harris once again goes back to the number five, giving us the tale of how five Hollywood directors walked away from successful careers and into World War II: John Ford, Frank Capra, William Wyler, John Huston, and George Stevens. But while there was a spirit of friendly competition between these men, it paled next to the camaraderie and artistic respect they all shared. Five Came Back is one of those rare books about Hollywood that can look unflinchingly at the foibles and ambitions of its insiders and lets you walk away feeling more fond of them, not less.

The opening chapters of Five Came Back invite irresistible comparisons to those "assemble a crack team" montages that you would get in a caper film. Even the directors' personalities easily graft onto the old archetypes. You have John Ford, the crotchety mentor figure, dropping paternal and ever-contradictory bits of wisdom. Frank Capra, the energetic and ravenously ambitious promoter. William Wyler, the cerebral perfectionist and, as a European Jew, the only one with a personal connection to the war. John Huston, the hard-drinking, cocksure daredevil, looking to prove himself in battle. George Stevens, the thoughtful and quietly troubled introvert. All of these men voluntarily left Hollywood, putting their own viability and reputation as artists on hold, in order to go overseas and document the war.

World War II was the first time in American history that filmmakers were enlisted in the art of packaging a a war for the American public. It was their images that brought home to viewers the reality of the situation abroad, even as that reality was pressed and molded into a patriotic vision. All of them knew and embraced the fact that they were enlisted in order to make propaganda. Before he started work on his series of wartime documentary films, Frank Capra watched Triumph of the Will and walked away shaken to the core. "I could see where the kids of Germany would go to any place, die for this guy...they knew what they were doing--they understood how to reach the mind...how do I reach the American kid down the street?" The challenge of wartime filmmaking was always to find that perfect combination, balancing the need to educate with the need to entertain. If filmmakers were too brutal with their imagery, the Army protested and refused to let the films be released. If they resorted to reenactments and corny dialogue, the increasingly-jaded audiences back home would jeer at them.

One of the more fascinating and endearing elements of Five Came Back is watching these men forget the demands of the war and succumb to their own artistic instincts. William Wyler, no one's idea of a reckless he-man, ended up risking himself time and time again crouched in a bomber plane, angling for the best shots. It would eventually cost him the hearing in one ear. John Huston was criticized by the War Department because his groundbreaking war film, The Battle of San Pietro, with its emphasis on death and destruction, was "anti-war." Huston snapped back that if he ever made a film that was pro-war, he hoped someone would take him out and shoot him. No matter the physical danger or the army bureaucracy or the interests of the public. Ford, Wyler, Huston, Capra, and Stevens found ways to practice their art.

Despite his full-throttle devotion to the war and the acclaim given to his documentary series Why We Fight, Frank Capra emerges as the only director whose career never recovered from the war. He was the only one of the five who never actually got to film anything on the front lines. Instead, his Army career was spent organizing, wrangling resources, and fighting with government officials. It's hard to feel sorry for anyone as endlessly bombastic and self-aggrandizing as Capra but after reading Harris, I couldn't help but sympathize with the man. Unlike the rest of his colleagues, Capra's post-war career was a straight slope down, fulfilling all his secret insecurities. His bag of tricks no longer charmed audiences. The new interest in realism and soul-searching had no place in Capra's fables. Harris pointedly makes a comparison between the first films Wyler and Capra made after their return. Wyler made a strikingly realistic film about the toll of war on ordinary people. Capra made a fantasy about a man who's lost his youthful dreams and craves the assurance that he's still needed by the world.

George Stevens, despite being somewhat neglected by critics over the past several decades (Stevens is the only director featured here with just one full-length biography to his name) stands out as perhaps the most fascinating character in Five Came Back. Stevens had built up his name as a director of sophisticated comedies, working his way up from Laurel and Hardy shorts to Fred Astaire musicals (including the indelible Swing Time) and polished romances like Vivacious Lady, Woman of the Year, and The More the Merrier. Despite his gift for humor, Stevens in person was contradictory and taciturn. He had a habit of falling into a trance-like state on his movie sets while he pondered what had gone wrong. Carole Lombard memorably summed it up: “I just (realized) what that pacing and thoughtful look of Stevens’ means—not a goddamn thing!"

Unlike Huston and Ford, Stevens went into the war without really craving adventure or a test of manly hardship. He was an asthmatic and a family man (Harris quotes extensively from Stevens' affectionate letters to his son back home and it's hard not to like Stevens after reading them). Yet it was Stevens who ended up taking his cameras into the unforeseen horrors of Dachau. It was Stevens who kept his eye to the lens, compulsively recording everything he saw, allowing nobody else to relieve him. "You can send three or four guys out with some weapons to do something, but I couldn't send anybody into the goddamn boxcar," Stevens remembered later. "I had to do it." Audiences of the time would barely get even a glimpse of Stevens' footage. Instead, the reels would be played for the judges at Nuremberg. As for Stevens, after he returned, he never watched the Dachau films again. And he never made another comedy.

The title of Harris' book is Five Came Back, not Five Went to War, and the distinction is an important one. When Wyler, Ford, Capra, Stevens, and Huston came back home, they were irrevocably changed from the men they'd been before. They'd played many roles throughout the war. Sometimes they'd been the decorated officers and sometimes they'd been the lonely cameramen, scrambling for just one perfect shot. They were the stoic witnesses to suffering and the impassioned artists demanding attention. None of them were saints. None of them were born soldiers. But they went to the front anyway and the images they saw would stay with them for the rest of their lives. And fortunately for us, they used what they learned, came back, and gave us some of the greatest movies ever made.

Final Six Words:

Reasoned and just, entertaining and essential

Note: I received an advance copy of this book from The Penguin Press (Penguin Group). It is available for purchase from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. 

Movie Review: The Collector

The Collector (1965)

directed by William Wyler, starring Terence Stamp, Samantha Eggar

(Note: This is my entry for the The Best Hitchcock Movies (That Hitchcock Never Made) Blogathon, hosted by Dorian from Tales of the Easily Distracted and Becky from ClassicBecky's Brain Food)

This is the tale of Miranda Grey, the art student, (Samantha Eggar) and Freddie Clegg (Terence Stamp), the butterfly collector. She's beautiful, ambitious, and naive. Freddie is shy, poor, and utterly obsessed with her. When Freddie wins a fortune in the football pools, he devises the perfect use for his newfound wealth. He buys a remote house and converts the basement into a comfortable prison for Miranda. He furnishes it with everything she could possibly want: art supplies, books, clothes, and cosmetics. Surely if he brings her here and keeps her for awhile, she will learn to love him. Freddie follows through by chloroforming Miranda and dragging her to the basement. When Miranda wakes she discovers, not a brave new world, but a strange, servile man. He apologizes for the use of force, promises to respect her boundaries, but refuses to let her go. Baffled and angry, Miranda soon realizes that escape won't be easy. She strikes a bargain with Freddie, promising to stay a month. At the end of a month, he must let her go. Freddie agrees, confident that she will soon love him. But Miranda's imprisonment will end up changing them both, in strange and brutal ways.

The Collector, based on John Fowles' novel, came to the screen in 1965, during the last years of the studio era. Standards had started to loosen up though, and this darkly twisted tale, which surely would have given Mayer or Goldwyn heart palpitations, was kept faithful to the book, right up to the diabolical ending. William Wyler turned down The Sound of Music to make this film, intrigued by the subject matter. It was really the first proper suspense thriller he'd ever done.

Comparing this film to Wyler's others give it an interest factor beyond the original story. Wyler had tackled dark obsession and villainy before (The Letter, The Little Foxes) but this was more visceral and explicitly sexual. Now, the distinctive mood in a Wyler film is compassion, but at a distance. He will bring you close to characters and then let the camera stand back, as we helplessly watch them suffer, love, self-destruct, or redeem themselves. Wyler invites sympathy for these people and yet there's a conscious restraint, as if he's allowing us to only see so much. So you take that Wyler quality and then look at The Collector. For example, in a scene where Miranda and Freddie struggle in the rain, Wyler holds the camera back from them, letting us see their fight as if from far away, as if we were witnesses to a crime. Then the camera goes down low and we see the tactile reality of the fight, their bodies slipping on the wet grass, the blood mixing in with the rain. The camera is at that same low angle when they return to the basement, Miranda's body flung brutally on the floor. The two gasp for breath, exhausted from the effort and because we are kept so close to them, we can feel it as if we were part of it. Anyone who wants to accuse Wyler of being staid should take a look at that moment again.

When I think about a word to describe Terence Stamp, the first one that always comes to mind is "presence." The man just has remarkable confidence onscreen and he had it right from the beginning. Billy Budd was his screen debut. Stamp took the role of a young man whose sensual beauty and angelic goodness is enough to drive men to destruction and tragedy. And he portrayed it so completely that I can't imagine any other actor in the part.  

The Collector was his third film and it's almost a photo-negative reversal of Billy Budd. Instead of a pure-hearted Christ figure, he's a cold, kidnapping psychopath. Instead of being the object of desire, he's a prudish, probably-impotent loner who obsesses over a woman he can't have. Where Billy is the innocent center in a chaotic world, Freddie is that chaos unleashed. That Stamp was able to take two such disparate roles at the beginning of his career and inhabit them, with no self-consciousness, is amazing. Try as I might, I never catch the man trying to protect himself. As Billy, the otherworldly ideal, Stamp offers himself up for the camera's gaze in a way that makes the villain's obsession with him clear. But for the role of Freddie, Stamp closes himself up, shutting out any hint of charm, slyness, or campy appeal. It's as deliberately uncharismatic a villain as you can get.

In the annals of cinematic psychopaths, you'd think Freddie Clegg would have a thriving fanbase. I mean, he's lonely, despised, romantic, and kidnaps a woman to make her love him. Surely, the fans who obsess over the Phantom of the Opera and Frollo would adore this guy. But nope, in spite of a few Youtube videos. While that can partly be attributed to the relative obscurity of this film, I think it has a lot to do with Stamp's performance. He's awkward onscreen, in a way that evokes discomfort rather than sympathy. He wears his suits like the coat hanger was still inside. His gaze is flat, even when professing love. We've all met people who gave off that same unnerving dissonance. These are the people we move away from on the subway, the people we look away from even if we don't know why. Stamp's performance gives the film that extra shudder of plausibility.

Now prior to this film, the only Samantha Eggar film I knew was Doctor Dolittle, in which she's about as obligatory a female character as you can get. In the scenes where Eggar has to regard Rex Harrison with romantic yearning, Eggar mostly looks puzzled or irritated by turn (which, knowing what an utter debacle the making of that film was, you can hardly blame her). But in The Collector, Eggar is wonderful, taking the naive but resourceful Miranda and making her someone to root for. She's so innocently pretentious at times that you cringe for her (for example, telling Freddie that his obsession is "the kind of dream young boys have once they hit puberty"), but underneath it, you can see a woman fighting tooth and nail to keep her sense of self. When Eggar crumples to the ground at one point, sobbing, "Let me be free," your heart truly aches for her. Actually, considering all that Eggar has to undergo in this film, from nude shots to violent struggles with Stamp, I did wonder if Cronenberg saw The Collector and thought, "Now how could I torture this woman more?"

The worst flaw in The Collector is Maurice Jarre's harpsichord-driven, aggressively-quirky score. Now, readers of my blog might point out that I just finished trashing the music in Wyler's Friendly Persuasion. But that film's music was just sentimental. The Collector score on the other hand, is downright horrible, knocking the mood askew in nearly every scene. It's tinkly, dischordant, and whimsical. Inviting whimsy into your tale of dark romantic obsession is like inviting Christopher Walken into Ophelia's mad scene. I was happy to find out that the author John Fowles was on my side about the music, saying, "Surely silence would be better."

Now, when I listed The Collector among my "fascination films," I also put Hitchock's Marnie on that list. And when you think of it, these two films are close cinematic cousins. Released with a year of each other, they both tell the story of men who wish to posses women, whatever the cost. When Sean Connery mockingly talks about his interest in taming wildlife to Tippi Hedren, it's hard not to think of Terence Stamp showing his butterfly collection to Samantha Eggar, saying, "What difference does one specimen make to a whole species?" But where Marnie was lurid, messy, and deeply personal, The Collector is polished, cool, and cerebral. While certain scenes in The Collector feel like they could have come straight out of the Hitchcock playbook (for example, a moment where Miranda tries to alert an oblivious neighbor by overflowing the bathtub), the overall mood is entirely different. Wyler's matter-of-fact approach to The Collector is both a strength and a weakness. It makes the film consistently uncomfortable to watch; Wyler refuses to make moral judgments or tell us what to think. But at the same time, while The Collector has ample chills and surprises, it's never obsessive or romantic in the way that Marnie was.

And yet I keep coming back to The Collector. Its characters, its direction, its strange, steady-handed storytelling. And the look in Terence Stamp's eyes when his last vestige of sanity snaps and he tells Miranda, "I can do what I like!"

Favorite Quote:

"Marry me. Please marry me. I don't expect anything. I don't expect you to do anything you don't want. You can do what you like...study art...I won't ask anything. Anything of you. Except you live in the same house and be my wife in name. You can have your own bedroom. You can lock it every night."

Favorite Scene:

For me, the film crystallizes in a single perfect scene where Miranda and Freddie discuss The Catcher in the Rye. Freddie's frustration with Miranda and her "la-dee-da" ways has begun to boil over. Angry at what he considers her class superiority, he insists on reading her favorite book and finding out why she thinks it special. When he returns, he tells her flatly that he didn't see much point in it. Miranda tries haltingly to explain, describing her love for Holden Caulfield's character. "The boy, he's so aware...the way he hates everything that's false." Freddie responds, "He sounds a mess to me." The tension builds unbearably as Freddie grows angrier and the increasingly terrified Miranda blunders on. Finally, frustrated with Freddie's determined incomprehension of the book, she snaps, "You don't understand, you're not trying to see how much like... like all of us he is." Freddie immediately knows the meaning of her stumble and says icily, "Like me? That's what you meant, isn't it?" And he's right. 

It's a brilliant moment that turns over our expectations as well as Miranda's. Because we might have believed, as Miranda does, that this awkward loner will gravitate to Holden Caulfield, but when Freddie turns the tables on her, it makes perfect sense. Of course this man, with his suits and class consciousness and "proper respect" would think that Caulfield was a spoiled whiner. On top of that, the scene just works perfectly as the moment in which we can see Freddie finally tipping over the edge into murderous rage, as Miranda tries frantically to say or do the right thing. But there is no right thing. She's alone with a madman. And this time, he's got her pegged.

Final Six Words:

Cold and clammy tale of obsession

Movie Review: Friendly Persuasion

Friendly Persuasion (1956)
directed by William Wyler, starring Gary Cooper, Dorothy McGuire

(Note: This is my entry for the William Wyler Blogathon, hosted by R.D. Finch at The Movie Projector)

The year is 1862. The Civil War has taken hold of the American people and all across the nation, people are hearing the call to take up arms and fight. And even for a family of devout Quakers, the choice is not an easy one. Jess Birdwell (Gary Cooper) is a peace-loving farmer and his wife Eliza (Dorothy McGuire) is a Quaker minister. They are happy with their quiet life in Indiana. Jess's attractions to music and horse racing and Eliza's insistence on following Quaker tradition may cause friction but their love remains true. Their children Josh (Anthony Perkins), Mattie (Phyllis Love), and Little Jess (Richard Eyers) are likewise content. But the War draws ever closer, as Mattie falls in love with a Union soldier (Peter Mark Richman) and Josh struggles to reconcile faith and the desire to fight. It's a decision that all of them must face.

Hollywood doesn't like pacifism. I feel comfortable making such a broad generalization because well, how many pacifist cinematic heroes can you name? There's Atticus Finch, of course, and Gandhi and the many versions of Christ. But compared to the vast sea of bullet-plugging, sword-swinging fighters cutting a swath through our movie screens, those guys are a drop in the bucket. I don't think this is a comment on morality so much as the idea of what carries the forward momentum onscreen. A hero who decides to take direct action against evil registers more forcefully on film than a hero who's willing to be passive and restrained. When Gary Cooper was asked to take the lead role of the Quaker farmer in Friendly Persuasion, he was uneasy about the expectations of his fans, knowing that they would want him to pick up his gun in the final reel. He said as much to Jessamyn West, author of the original novel. She encouraged him to resist, telling him it would mean just as much for his audience to see a "strong man refraining."

I'll admit that when I decided to revisit Friendly Persuasion for the William Wyler Blogathon, that was the vague memory I had of this film: a Quaker family struggling through the Civil War until the father goes all Gary Cooper in the finale and finally picks up his gun. I remembered enjoying the film, but I thought of it as very simple and morally muddled product. But the surprise of Friendly Persuasion is that it isn't really about the will-he-or-won't-he of Gary Cooper. Instead, it's shockingly mellow and funny, a portrait of a family whose lives are taken up by problems like a violent goose, the purchase of an organ, and the father's desire to beat his neighbor in a race to church. The Civil War's there of course, but it's more of a distant rumble than a thundering climax. The themes of violence versus restraint call Witness to mind, but in fact, this film is a closer cousin to Meet Me in St. Louis. It's focused on incidents, on the rhythms of daily life. How much you like this film depends on your willingness to follow along with that, to spend time getting to know this Quaker family and see how they live. For myself, I enjoyed nearly every minute of it.

Wyler isn't normally thought of as a very funny or relaxed director, in spite of great romantic comedies like Roman Holiday and How to Steal a Million. But I think Friendly Persuasion shows that all that charm can't be placed on Audrey Hepburn's shoulders alone. Wyler manages to take what are, in essence very simple jokes (Jess's attempts to hide his organ from the visiting leaders of his church, for example) and make them work, simply by taking the time to set them up. He knows the rhythm of his situations. In the scene with the organ, he's already shown us Jess's hidden desires for music, his wife's desire to behave like a proper Quaker minister, the physical reality of trying to hide this damn thing, and the parallel situation of his daughter and her flirtatious suitor. All of it come together in a comic scene with the daughter and her lover playfully tinkering with the organ upstairs while Jess frantically tries to pray loud enough downstairs to drown out the music. All while the ministers of his church are praying very seriously for a solution to the Civil War. The longer it goes on, the louder and more incoherent Gary Cooper's prayer gets. When it's over, the ministers turn to him with great respect. "Thy prayer carried me so near to Heaven's gates, I thought I heard the choiring of angel voices," one tells him.

Gary Cooper responds to the relaxed nature of this film with a performance that feels very casual and warm; you'd have to really squint to see the actor's backstage fears over his age and character. The dramatic weight of the film falls not so much on Cooper as it does on Anthony Perkins, playing his troubled teenage son Josh. Josh is loyal to his family and church but feels the need to fight in the war. It was Perkins' first major role and while I think giving him a Supporting Actor nomination for it was a bit much, he does rise to the challenge, giving us the image of a boy who doesn't really want to fight but can't bear the thought that he might secretly be a coward. The moment when Josh finally kills a Confederate soldier is perfectly rendered by Perkins who squeezes the gun, his whole body racked with a silent sob, before blindly reaching to fire again.

However, good as Perkins and Cooper are, it's Dorothy McGuire who's the standout to me. The role of straight-laced, devout Eliza Birdwell was originally meant for Katharine Hepburn, who turned it down, and Wyler went through several possibilities, even saying to Jessamyn West, "How about Jane Russell? She's a very pious girl." Yet it's hard for me to imagine anyone handling this role as well as McGuire. She takes a character who could so easily have come across as the killjoy nag and makes her seem passionate and kind. Much as I love Hepburn, I can't help thinking that she would have been too inflexible as Eliza, playing up the sterner aspects of her character. McGuire is more evasive, more inclined to lead by gentleness than sharp lectures. It makes Eliza's relationship with her husband Jess into something that rises above a sitcom-style dynamic of "strict wife, boyish husband."

Few directors are as warm and perceptive on the subject of marriage as Wyler. You could put the relationship of Jess and Eliza Birdwell in a triptych with the disintegrating marriage of Sam and Fran in Dodsworth and the complex but loving Stephensons in The Best Years of Our Lives. Wyler's great ability with actors is revealed in how real these couples look onscreen, from Myrna Loy leaning in to kiss a snoring, hungover Fredric March to Ruth Chatterton tentatively trying to reassure the husband she is abandoning. And because Wyler always stressed nuance and ambiguity, the relationships in his films don't feel etched in stone. If the Stephensons tried to evade their problems, maybe they could one day become like the unhappy Dodsworths. And if the Dodsworths had been more patient and understanding, their relationship could have endured and improved into something like the contentious but happy Birdwell marriage.

Jess and Eliza rarely speak of their love in Friendly Persuasion but we're never in doubt. It's in the way they lean towards each other, the way he teases her, the way she graciously tries to ignore his little weaknesses. It's all there. Along with a strong sexual attraction that the movie is surprisingly open about. In one of the film's best scenes, Jess and Eliza quarrel over an organ that Jess has purchased. Eliza takes herself off to the barn to spend the night. But as she tries to make herself comfortable in the straw, Jess shambles in, clutching blankets and pillows. "Cooling down a bit, isn't it?" "I find it quite pleasant," Eliza responds. "So do I," he says, testing the straw with his foot as Eliza tries not to smile. They emerge the next morning, disheveled and grinning, holding hands and trying not to laugh. It's a brilliant romantic moment that makes the film's actual pair of young lovers look like paper dolls by comparison.

I'll admit here, to the likely horror of some of my readers, that I've never found Gary Cooper that sexy. Handsome sure, but he so rarely achieves chemistry with his leading ladies. His characters always seem to be gazing off into the distance, like they'd rather think about love than react to the woman in their arms. But that's not the case with Dorothy McGuire here. They look great together. 

 
There's a fly in every ointment and for Friendly Persuasion, it's the music. The worst part of this movie, hands-down, is that horrible, sugary theme by Dimitri Tiomkin that pops up periodically like an unwelcome shower of Hallmark cards. Pat Boone sings the pop version across the credits and all I can say for him is that he can take a lyric like "Thee pleasures me in a hundred ways," and starch it pure white. You can't even giggle at the innuendo. But more importantly, the sentimentality of the music jars with a film that takes great pains to show its characters as mature and wise.

On a more serious note, I do think there's a case to be made that Friendly Persuasion, in its focus on gentle comedy and slice-of-life storytelling, fails to reconcile the Civil War plot with the rest of the film. Not that the wartime scenes aren't good, because they are. Josh's decision to fight, the invasion of the home by a Confederate raiding party, the death of a beloved friend, everything's handled very well. Even the question of whether to fight or not to fight is done well; Friendly Persuasion doesn't judge these people on whether or not they choose to fight but simply shows them to us, free of prejudice. But I do think the film can't quite make the two elements cohere. The film is so bluntly comedic for over an hour that Anthony Perkins' stark question, "I wonder what it feels like to die?" just splits it in two. Either you've been getting tired of the farm life and praying for this interruption or you've been enjoying the humor and now feel blindsided. And the movie's ending, with its all's-well-that-ends-well tone, just can't stitch it all together.  I feel that if Wyler had been able to explore the wartime aspect as well as he does the Quaker lifestyle, he might have had a truly great film on his hands rather than one that's just very good.

In spite of its nomination for Best Picture, I feel like Friendly Persuasion is a film that's been unfairly forgotten over the years. Partly because it's overshadowed by the inordinate number of great films that William Wyler made, but I think more due to the public's terror of "wholesome" entertainment. That Pat Boone song, the enthusiastic Bosley Crowther review ("loaded with sweetness and warmth and... cracker-barrel Americana"), the threat of piety and sermons and Oscar-bait...it's no wonder classic film fans have given it a wide berth. Critic David Thomson dismissed it as "one of the dreariest pictures (Gary) Cooper ever made." But this film is far smarter than it's given credit for. It's more interested in characters than in preaching. There are no pat answers, just people enjoying their lives and wanting to hang onto that. In the hands of a sentimentalist, maybe that would have been dreary. But as it stands, it's a testament to the skill of William Wyler, a director who could find just as much to value in a carriage race as he could in a battle scene.

Favorite Quote:

"I want you to know, sir, I honor your prejudices--um, uh, convictions." 

Favorite Scene:

My favorite scene has to be the final race to church between Jess and Sam Jordan. It's such a simple scenario and the stakes are small but the buildup to it has been perfect. For the sake of propriety, Jess can't admit that he wants to beat Sam on the way to church, but everybody in town knows it. Even Eliza knows it deep-down but (Dorothy McGuire's performance is pitch-perfect), she is trying so hard to pretend as if everything is normal and proper. The tension between Jess and Eliza, Jess's purchase of the butt-ugly but feisty Lady, the sly winks of his sons when they hand him the reins. All of it leads into a great race scene with the rickety carriages roaring down the road as the participants choke and cough from the dust. And as they round the corner, everyone in town cranes their heads to watch for the winner. All for a race that nobody wants to come out and actually acknowledge is happening. It's a scene that makes me laugh every time.

Final Six Words:

Conflict and love rise up together

First image credited to the Gary Cooper Scrapbook

Blogathon Post

The blogathons are coming, Milady

After a long, cold season, the blogathons are sprouting up everywhere. I've been planning a news post for a while, but each time I go to click "publish," someone announces a new event. Anyone who follows me knows that I love blogathons. Even more than I love hearing the sound of my own voice, I love the conversation. I love the chance to jaw with fellow film fanatics and find out what they've got to say. So here's a relatively current list for the moment. And yes, I've signed up for quite a few of these.

Blogathons in May

For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon III (May 13th-18th), Hosted by Ferdy on Film, This Island Rod, and The Self-Styled Siren, Facebook page here

The annual Film Preservation Blogathon has pulled into town again, like an old and elegant past acquaintance, promising a round of drinks and some exciting new stories. Each year, this blogathon offers film lovers a chance to use their talent, time, and money to save the many lost and languishing films out there. Last year, the blogathon tackled film noir, earning the money to restore the 1950 film The Sound of Fury. The year before that, the topic was film restoration and the goal was the salvation of previously lost silent films. For 2012, the topic is Alfred Hitchcock and the goal is the restoration of 1928's The White Shadow, directed by Graham Cutts, with the enthusiastic help of his assistant director Alfred Hitchcock.

"NFPF estimates that it will cost $15,000 to stream The White Shadow for four months and record the score. It is the mission of this year’s For the Love of Film Blogathon to raise that money so that anyone with access to a computer can watch this amazing early film that offered Hitchcock a chance to learn his craft, with a score that does it justice."

But it isn't just about money, it's also about the blogging, which is open to everybody who's interested: 

"Remember anything to do with Graham Cutts, Alfred Hitchcock, film preservation, film scores, silent films, etc. etc. etc. is fair game. The idea is to provide people with a sense of interest and excitement and get across why this project and film preservation in general are so important."

The Horseathon (May 25th-27th), Hosted by Page from My Love of Old Hollywood

And now a little something for the animal lovers out there. The talented Page from over at My Love of Old Hollywood has cooked up a blogathon, devoted to the many fascinating, funny, and fearless equines that have lit up the silver screen, from Trigger to last year's War Horse.

"I thought it would be fun to do a Horseathon. There's been so many great films made that are either horse centric or revolve around our favorite western stars and their trusty sidekicks with hooves...Write about anything you want to as long as there's a horse involved. (Yes, if your favorite film had a rocking horse as part of the plot then that's fine too!)"

Blogathons in June

The Mary Pickford Blogathon (June 1st-3rd), Hosted by KC from Classic Movies

For any silent film lovers who hoped that The Artist would restore respect to the legacy of artists like Douglas Fairbanks and King Vidor, the answer (in a true twist of Billy Wilder-style cynicism) was the demolition of the Pickford-Fairbanks Studios in Hollywood. Still, even if contemporary Hollywood seems determined to live by the motto of "Today, today, today," that's all the more reason to pay homage to one of cinema's great leading ladies and innovators, Mary Pickford.

 "Mary Pickford was a funny, riveting and ridiculously entertaining performer. The little girl image may make her seem old-fashioned, but Pickford’s movies are alive; they pulse with her irresistible energy. These flicks are entertaining by any standards. It is easy to see why people loved her so much...So on June 1, 2 and 3, I invite you to send me new and previously-published posts about any aspect of Mary Pickford’s life and movie career."

The Queer Film Blogathon II (June 18th-22nd), Hosted by Caroline from Garbo Laughs and Ashley and Andreas from Pussy Goes Grrr

Here's another blogathon that has become an annual tradition, the Queer Film Blogathon, hosted by the always-delightful Caroline at Garbo Laughs, as well as her new co-hosts Ashley and Andreas. It offers an exciting mix of opportunities for bloggers to discuss non-cisgender representation onscreen. I participated last year and had a blast.

"Since last year‘s Queer Film Blogathon was such a tremendous, staggering, fabulous, amazing success, it’s only logical that we do it again this year. And so, I ever-so-proudly announce, the second annual Queer Film Blogathon, celebrating lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, or otherwise non-heterosexual, non-gender-binary depictions or personages in film!"

The William Wyler Blogathon (June 24th-29th), Hosted by R.D. Finch at the Movie Projector 

Have I mentioned that William Wyler is one of my favorite directors?  Dodsworth, Roman Holiday, The Letter, The Heiress, and Best Years of Our Lives are all on my all-time favorites list. That's not to mention the pleasure I get from films like The Little Foxes, How to Steal a Million, The Collector, Friendly Persuasion, Jezebel, and Ben-Hur. You can try to tell me that Wyler's overrated, that he's dry or overly polished or that Andrew Sarris doesn't  like him. But you might as well try to tell me that ice cream tastes like sawdust. I'm sorry to say that this blogathon isn't accepting any more entries, but bloggers are still welcome to stop by, comment, and add their applause for Wyler.

"The Movie Projector is hosting a blogathon June 24-29, 2012, honoring William Wyler, one of the great directors of Hollywood's studio era...Between 1925 and 1970 he directed seventy-one films, working in nearly every genre. Wyler was known for the demands he made on actors, sometimes shooting a scene thirty or forty times, but also for the quality of the performances in his pictures. Actors working in his films received thirty-one nominations for the Academy Award in the acting categories and won thirteen times. Wyler was nominated for the Oscar as best director twelve times, more than any other person."

Blogathons in July

The Best Hitchcock Movies (That Hitchcock Never Made) Blogathon (July 7th-July 12th), Hosted by Becky from ClassicBecky's Brain and Dorian from Tales of the Easily Distracted

As if an actual Hitchcock-centric blogathon wasn't glory enough, we're also getting a blogathon to honor those films that feel "Hitchcockian." For everyone who's ever sat down to a spine-tingling thriller and had that moment of, "Hmm, this seems a little familiar." In the words of those bewitching bloggers Dorian and Becky:

"...Simply a fun, casual blogathon open to all who love Hitchcockian (as opposed to just Hitchcock) movies, and wish to participate. Again, the idea is to not review Alfred's own films, but those that have a Hitchcockian feeling and Hitchcockian elements in them.  For example, North by Northwest shares a lot of themes with The Prize (1963), Psycho surely inspired DePalma's Dressed to Kill (1980) not to mention more than a couple more. A film doesn't have to be based on or inspired by any particular AH film, either: Charade (1963) and Arabesque (1966) certainly have the freewheeling terror that a great Hitchcock film does."

Blogathons in August

The Gene Kelly Centennial Blogathon (August 20th-25th), Hosted by the Classic Movie Blog Association

It may be coming up on one hundred years since Gene Kelly came into the world, but it sure doesn't feel like it. When I watch a clip of Kelly dancing on roller skates in It's Always Fair Weather or of him planting big smacking kisses up Jean Hagen's arm, I don't feel like I'm watching an entombed legend. I feel that shiver of recognition, that feeling that this performer is still real and vivid and part of us. That's what a great artist can do. This blogathon is restricted to CMBA members only but that still means a whole host of riches for Kelly fans and movie lovers.

Has all this given you an appetite for blogging?

Mary Pickford image credited to Dsata at Pictures Blog
Gene Kelly pic snagged from Classic Cinema Gold

The Fascination Films

On my list of Indispensable Bloggers, there would be a place of honor for Greg Ferrara, who always manages to stir up the most thought-provoking film discussions. Just a casual glance at his posts for Movie Morlocks and I guarantee you'll find something to jolt your movie-lover's brain. Anyway, Greg's latest topic for Movie Morlocks is "I Half-Heartedly Recommend This Movie," about the films we sorta-kinda-maybe want our friends to see except for the fact that the good is matched with just enough bad to make it a little embarrassing. We all have movies like that.

But Greg's post got me thinking, not so much about mediocre films, but about what I think of as my "fascination films." Have you ever had that moment of walking down a street and suddenly swiveling your head to stare at someone, thinking, "Huh, they're not my type, maybe they're not even that attractive, but there's something there?" Some films I don't consider great, hell maybe I don't even like them all that much, but they fascinate me.

I'm not talking about the feeling of guilty pleasure as in, "Holy shit, guys, I'm starting to find myself actually invested in the love story of Samson and Delilah. Hold me." Nor am I talking about the nostalgia you feel for much-flawed, much-loved films of your childhood (which is where I'd put something like Desiree). I'm talking about the films that I find myself thinking about, weeks, even years afterward, possibly more than I think about genuinely better films. For example, The Ox-Bow Incident is a fantastic film, but I don't think I've given it half the mental space I've given to the muddled, murky Pursued.

What is it about these films that intrigues me? Do they hit some kind of emotional trigger? Am I drawn by their tantalizing possibilities or by their grating flaws? Well, before this post is lost in a sea of rhetorical questions, here's a look at some films I can't help but find...fascinating.

The Collector (1965)

I'll be tackling this one for an upcoming blogathon. The Collector is William Wyler's adaptation of the classic John Fowles novel about an insane, working-class butterfly collector and the beautiful posh girl he captures to make his own. It's got Terence Stamp  in a frightening performance as the creepy collector (the fact that Stamp can look so genuinely repulsive while at the height of his beauty is a feat in and of itself) and Samantha Eggar was never better. And of course it has Wyler, probably one of the greatest "actor's directors" that ever lived. But somehow, The Collector ends up stranded somewhere between a polished but airless film translation and a brilliant, gripping thriller. It's got far more subtlety and nuance than your average thriller yet, watching it, I can't help thinking that the film needed a director with more willingness to be lurid and animalistic and sexual. More like Nicholas Ray or Samuel Fuller. Something in Fowles' harsh, class-conscious novel doesn't translate to Wyler's reasoned, reserved style. And Maurice Jarre's goofy score just tears a gaping hole through the film's mood. And yet, I find this movie so compulsively watchable. If it only took that one step forward into being truly twisted, it would be a genuine classic.

Pursued (1947)

It's not every day you get to watch a Freudian Western noir. Not to mention one with Robert Mitchum as an amnesiac hero, Teresa Wright as his semi-incestuous love interest, and Judith Anderson as the stoic homesteader who adopts Mitchum. Hell, just trying to wrap your head around the idea of Judith Anderson in a Western is hard enough. The film's plot is so bizarre I don't dare summarize it (go watch it yourselves), but it is an oddly enjoyable film. Give credit to director Raoul Walsh and cinematographer James Wong Howe for making such an incredible mishmash of ideas into a coherent film. Howe's cinematography in particular; he manages to make the wide open vistas of New Mexico into a space as dark and cramped as any film noir alleyway. And I have to admit, I'm a sucker for Teresa Wright and watching my favorite cinematic good girl get all vengeful and seductive is a real treat. True, the Niven Busch script stumbles pretty badly at times, as if Busch really, really wanted to make this another Duel in the Sun and had to be forcibly restrained. But man, this film is a trip. If nothing else, it proves my theory that film noir and Westerns have always really been two sides of the same coin.

Stella Dallas (1937)

Ah, Stella Dallas. The film that's essentially required watching for any Barbara Stanwyck fan. I have to admit though, even as a Stanwyck fan, that this movie pisses me off. I don't like how ridiculously manipulative it is. I don't like the Jekyll-and-Hyde nature of Stanwyck's Stella (who is poised and attractive enough to charm a rich man into marrying her, but suddenly displays the taste and subtlety of a circus clown whenever the film wants her to be embarrassing). I don't like the way the film asks me to believe in the beauty and selflessness of the love between Stella and her daughter Laurel and then tries to tell me that Laurel could be so easily tricked into believing that her mother doesn't love her. Even Laurel's actress, Anne Shirley, said this was a load of crock and she had no sympathy for this ninny she was playing.

However, and I hate to admit it, there is a great deal of truth in Stella Dallas. There's Stella's anguish as she slowly comes to see herself as a burden. There's Laurel's teenage desperation as she practically hurls her long limbs off a stool in an attempt to keep her mother away from the boy she likes. There's the brittle condescension and forced "understanding" of the upper classes, when faced with their raucous inferiors. Unlike many critics, I don't think the film agrees with Stella's decision to abandon her daughter to a better life. I don't think this film even likes rich people that much. The movie looks at the American cultural divide of the time and sees it as a self-perpetuating tragedy. When it focuses on that and Stanwyck's performance, it's a sharp and heartbreaking film. If only the film didn't take such ham-handed methods to get us there.

Peter Ibbetson (1935)

Peter Ibbetson is that rarest of cinematic unicorns, a unique film. Peter Ibbetson (Gary Cooper) fell hopelessly in love with Mary (Ann Harding) when they were children and when they reunite, circumstances force them apart. Yet, through some kind of miracle, they find that they can meet together in each other's dreams, living out their pure, deathless love in their minds even as their bodies age. There was a flood of romantic fantasy film in the 40s (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Portrait of Jennie, A Matter of Life and Death, etc) that handled this kind of material with humor and longing and sophistication. But Peter Ibbetson, especially compared to other 30s films, is like a Victorian aunt that suddenly wandered out into a crowd of wisecracking showgirls. Mary becomes Peter's spiritual guide,  the symbol of absolute purity and devotion, essentially the Beatrice to his Dante. It's the kind of romantic ideal that's been pretty much killed stone-dead for the past century or so; nowadays we like our romances a little more human. And I can't really say I like Peter Ibbetson. Cooper and Harding are stiff as boards, the child actors are dreadful (and they call each other Gogo and Mimsey, no really) and outside of the dream sequences, the film doesn't really convey any kind of otherworldly charm. But it's the kind of film which compels me to ask people, "Have you seen it? What did you think?"

Marnie (1964)

Well, you all knew by my intro picture that this one was coming. A lot of critics like to call Vertigo Hitchcock's most personal film. But for me, this is the one that feels like it sprang fully forth from somebody's Id. All of the Hitchcock obsessions are here: blondes, Tippi Hedren, sadism, rape, traumatic memories, flashing colors, bad matte paintings, and a suspense plot that's more about attraction and repulsion than whether anyone actually commits evil. It's like Hitchcock had so much he wanted to say that he no longer cared whether his audience would follow his lead. The first time I saw Marnie, as a middle-schooler speeding my way through every Hitchcock film, I thought it was okay but a little off. The next time, I saw Marnie, I thought it was dreadful. And then the next time I saw it, I was completely enthralled. It's just that kind of film. Half the time I don't know whether I should be giggling or shuddering.

Robin Wood's famous salvo ("If you don't love Marnie, you don't love cinema") doesn't do the film any favors and my opinion of Hedren's performance sways with every passing breeze. And all that "red is the color of blood" imagery is even worse than the matte paintings. But even so, the film's incoherent passion and darkness and cruelty still give it the power to draw you in. The relationship between Marnie and Mark is one of the most fascinating in all of Hitchcock. And the character of Marnie herself, childish, sarcastic, cold and tormented, is compelling enough to defy any schlock psychology about frigid females. She's more interesting perhaps, than even Hitchcock knew.

While writing this post, I struck up a conversation with one of my co-workers and, hoping to get some inspiration from her, asked her if there were any films she found, not just good, not just bad, but fascinating. With a puzzled smile, she told me, "I don't feel that way about moves." To which I can only respond, like Barbara Stanwyck, "What a life!"