Hondo (1953)

 

Hondo is a pretty solid genre picture, an almost archetypal John Wayne Western. However, one you get past the standard conventional traits such as a conflict between the Apache and the settlers, the arrival of the cavalry to rescue the settlers, even the circling of a wagon train trying to escape the Apache, the movie’s real focus is upon the romance between Wayne’s title character of Hondo and Page’s Angie Lowe. The growing trust between them mirrors the growing tensions with the Apache, and the emphasis on the love story elevates the film above the standard genre fare. It’s an interesting pairing of an established star and a new performer making her first credited screen appearance. They’re both rather understated, Wayne being his usual almost silent self and Page bringing her very interior-focused Method acting. She’s rather expressionless throughout the movie. For example, Page’s Angie is unafraid of the Apache, particularly the chief who has made her son a blood brother because he admired the youngster’s courage. The movie was filmed in 3-D, a common strategy at the time for competing with the growing phenomenon of television, but it’s not really used much here. Interesting historical note: The movie’s nomination for Best Motion Picture Story was removed after author Louis L’Amour said the story was actually an adaptation of a short story he had published in Collier’s magazine and not a story originally created for film.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Geraldine Page) and Best Motion Picture Story (later removed as nominee)

The Band Wagon (1953)

 

The Band Wagon may be a backstage musical about the creation of a Broadway show called The Band Wagon, but it’s really a showcase for the professionals who worked for MGM’s musical division. The film stars Fred Astaire as Tony Hunter, a “washed-up” star once known for his dancing on stage and screen. (It must have been odd for Astaire, then already in his 50s, to take on this role given its implications.) His friends, Lester and Lily Marton (played with style by Oscar Levant and Nanette Fabray), have a written a new show to revive his career and even lined up one of the hottest producers/directors/actors in New York to produce it. However, this pretentious hotshot, Jeffrey Cordova (Jack Buchanan), wants to transform what was designed as a light romantic comedy into a heavy-handed, metaphorical adaptation of Faust. They choose a co-star, a talented young ballerina named Gabrielle Gerard (the amazing Cyd Charisse), setting up an inevitable clash between the classical style of dance Gaby performs and the song-and-dance style of hoofing to which Astaire’s Hunter is accustomed. Of course, this just means that Tony and Gaby will inevitably fall in love; it’s just that this plays out against the development of a musical seemingly destined to fail, given how it just keeps getting larger and stranger and more monstrous in scope under Cordova’s direction. The initial tryout in New Haven is, naturally, a disaster. Hunter then takes over the direction of the show, and we get to see a series of production numbers that make it into the final version that appears on Broadway. To be honest, as wonderful as these performances are, they make absolutely no sense together in a single show: the very stylized “New Sun in the Sky” with Charisse and several male dancers; the more traditional tuxedo-and-tails number “I Guess I’ll Have to Change my Plan” performed by Astaire and Buchanan; a country-inflected “Louisiana Hayride” with Fabray and some quite talented singers and dancers; and one of the most famous numbers from the film, “Triplets,” with Astaire, Fabray, and Buchanan as infants. By the time the show has made it through Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, and Baltimore, another number has been finalized, the 12-minute “Girl Hunt Ballet: A Murder Mystery in Jazz,” based upon hard boiled crime novels like the ones by Mickey Spillane. The length of this number was perhaps designed as a way to capture the “magic” of the ballet that ended the Oscar-winning An American in Paris from two years earlier. The dancing and the singing throughout the film are certainly top-notch, with Charisse and Astaire evenly matched in their numbers together, and the songs (although many are from previous shows) were well-chosen to comment effectively on the action of the film. The MGM unit under producer Arthur Freed did add one new song that has certainly become a standard, “That’s Entertainment,” which gets a huge delightful production number of its own early in the film and a touching reprise at the end. The Band Wagon represents some of the best of what the so-called Freed Unit accomplished: great dancing, wonderful singing, astounding production numbers, and a great deal of fun.

Oscar Nominations: Best Story and Screenplay, Best Color Costume Design, and Best Scoring of a Musical Picture

From Here to Eternity (1953)

Winner of the Oscar for Best Picture of 1953, From Here to Eternity depicts the lives of Army soldiers in Hawaii in the months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. This is an interesting examination of the roles of masculinity in the military, and I found Montgomery Clift's story as Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt to be particularly fascinating. Certainly, the scene on the beach with Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr making love has gotten much of the attention over the years--and perhaps rightly so, given how erotic it remains even now--but Clift's Prewitt is a man who refuses to follow everyone's expectations of what a soldier should or must be. He's a model of individualism and nonconformity, if it's not too much of an oxymoron to say that.

The film begins with Prewitt showing up to his new army base after being demoted and transferred from another unit. Almost immediately, he fails to fit in. Despite a reputation as a gifted boxer, he refuses to participate in the base's team, and the other soldiers set out to make him miserable until he relents and joins them. He's also a bugler, far more talented than any other who's had the position at the base. When he plays "Taps" in honor of one of his friends, it brings tears to all of the men in the company (whether they allow themselves to show the tears or not). And he falls in love with a "hostess" at a local club, a woman who has obviously taken the job for the money and who starts out with a intensely pragmatic sense of who and what she is. Of course, in 1953, the filmmakers had to make her a hostess, but any adult watching the movies knows that she's a prostitute. Yet Prewitt still loves her because he sees past all of the stereotypes associated with such women. Given all those narrative details, how could Clift not be the focus of the movie? How could he not command our attention?

Lancaster and Kerr's storyline is much more conventional. He's a sergeant who reports directly to her husband, the captain of the unit. Her husband, as you might expect, is frequently absent, leaving her alone and lonely, emotions she has felt before at other bases where her husband has been stationed. (Yes, that means she too has a reputation.) Lancaster slowly makes her fall in love with him just as he falls in love with her, and the chemistry between him and Kerr is strong. The scene where he shows up at her home in a rainstorm is almost as sexually charged as that moment on the beach that people are more familiar with. Throughout their scenes together, you can sense how much their characters yearn for each other's company, and you also sense the strain that the secrecy of their relationship has on them both. Both Lancaster and Kerr are good--they always were--and he's particularly adept at showing us a man who's figured out how to work the system of the army to his advantage.

Still, I'd rather watch Clift. His very presence in the movie calls into question what it means to be a man. He's capable of feats of strength, certainly, yet he also shows genuine affection and even tenderness for both his lover Alma (played by Donna Reed) and his friend Maggio (played by Frank Sinatra). That mixture of intelligence and sensitivity is what makes Clift such a compelling actor to watch. When he stares down the brute who's been abusing Maggio, you sense just how much strength is coiled in that body of his. And the endurance that he shows while undergoing "the treatment" by his fellow soldiers, his willingness to allow them to continue to abuse him, shows how much more of a man he is. It's a intriguing study of masculinity, as were many of the films that he appeared in. His performance alone is worth the time to watch From Here to Eternity.