Raintree County (1957)

 

The passage of time in Raintree County frequently gets marked by newspaper headlines, and by the time we get to “Lincoln Assassinated,” the film seems to have lasted as long as the Civil War itself. Much of the film covers the life of John Shawnessy, a high school senior in 1859 who’s a bit of a dreamer, an idealist, someone others describe as a poet. You could start groaning now. He’s in love with fellow high school senior Nell (Eva Marie Saint), who never loses her feelings for him even after he meets and marries Southern belle Susanna Drake (Elizabeth Taylor). Susanna fears that she’s of mixed parentage, and her increasing mental instability and offensive racist attitudes consume much of John’s life. He’s an abolitionist, and she still keeps two slaves even when they’re living in Indiana. He’s also still in love with Nell but faithful to Susanna out of a sense of duty or obligation. When she runs away with their son Jim (weirdly named after a partly-burned doll she kept from the fire that destroyed her home and killed her father and his mistress, a slave woman), he joins the Union Army two-thirds of the way through the film in the hopes that he will cross paths with her. It’s an extremely odd decision to make, and when he has to escape from Confederate territory with his son on his back in the middle of the night, you realize how astonishingly bizarre the turns of the movie have been. By the time John finds his wife in an insane asylum, and Taylor appears made-up like the movie queen that she was, you’ll be hoping that the ending will be soon. (By the way, the famous Windsor Ruins in my home state of Mississippi stand in for Susanna’s childhood home. You never know when you might encounter a familiar place when watching a movie.) One of the themes of the film is the search for a mythical (?) golden raintree that was allegedly planted in the county by Johnny Appleseed. John is obsessed with finding the tree at the film’s beginning, and Susanna takes on the quest by the film’s end. In fact, she becomes almost as obsessive about the raintree (and what is reportedly represents) as her husband had been as a younger man. There are some hard attempts to make the raintree a metaphor for… pursuing something, I guess, but given how muddled the narrative is overall, it never fully gels. Clift is a very internal actor, prone to quiet, mannered moments, and his performance never outshines Taylor’s showier role as Susanna. It’s unsurprising that she got nominated for this role even though the racist dialogue that the script demands of her diminishes the impact of her performance. Saint is solid as the ever-faithful Nell, and a subplot involving the verbose, egotistical teacher (Nigel Patrick) falling in love with one of his married students serves as a comic highlight. Among the supporting cast, Lee Marvin gets quite the narrative arc as “Flash” Perkins, who dies as a brave soldier, quite a shift from the drunken braggart who challenges John to a race at the movie’s beginning. Agnes Moorhead plays John’s mother, and even though she has too few lines, her sharp wit is a welcome astringent to some of the sillier dialogue. What movie isn’t improved by the appearance, however brief, of the great Agnes Moorehead? And there’s even a brief appearance by DeForest Kelley, Dr. McCoy of Star Trek fame, who plays a Confederate soldier captured by Marvin’s Flash. The film does have lush production design, and the gowns worn by the actresses are amazing and spectacular. Raintree County marked a reunion for Taylor and Clift, who first appeared alongside each other in A Place in the Sun six years earlier. During the filming, Taylor saved Clift’s life after he was severely injured in a car accident after leaving her home. He endured a great deal of pain and several surgeries before he returned to filming. It is apparent which scenes were filmed before and after the accident. It’s just sad that Clift’s accident and its aftermath are among the most notable things about Raintree County.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actress in a Leading Role (Taylor), Best Art Director-Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, and Best Music Scoring

Perri (1957)

 

Walt Disney Studios made a series of acclaimed documentaries entitled True-Life Adventures that purported to show nature at its most intimate and realistic. Perri, which follows a year in the life of a female pine squirrel, was designated instead as a “True-Life Fantasy,” the only such film to be so identified by Disney’s filmmakers. Perhaps they wished to acknowledge that they were creating a narrative from what they had captured, a narrative that perhaps required some severe manipulation of the imagery in order to follow the outline of the source material, a 1938 children’s book. The film ascribes thoughts and intentions to the animals depicted, something that some of the other True-Life films had also done, but not to the extent found in Perri. Doing so raises some troubling questions. Are animals always truly aware of the threats that they face? Are they self-conscious? Are squirrels capable of the kinds of emotions we recognize in humans, such as love? Do animals dream or fantasize? The film, perhaps following the novel’s direction, doesn’t truly answer these questions, but then again, the intended audience (most likely, younger children) would be more inclined to accept such possibilities without question anyway. We follow Perri’s life from when she is a baby and learns to venture out into the world beyond her home within a tree. She fumbles a few times along the way, of course, but she learns. It’s very early in the film that one of the most dominant themes emerges: the constant threats of danger and violence and death in nature. A marten is clearly meant to be the movie’s primary villain, especially given its relentless pursuit of squirrels, particularly Perri. But the forest presents many dangers: foxes, raccoons, wildcats, weasels. The quest for food seems endless, but the threats are not limited to merely other animals. A forest fire and a harsh winter storm also endanger Perri and the other forest dwellers. As you can see, the film is not meant to be merely entertaining. We manage to learn a few bits of interesting information along the way. For example, male squirrels behave like bachelors. They do not live with their families after mating even though they tend to stay nearby just in case danger presents itself. Porro, a young male squirrel with whom Perri finds love (if such a thing is possible), mirrors the behavior of Perri’s father, who lived near his family and even sacrificed himself to protect them. Despite its efforts at realism, though, Perri just has too many moments that force adult viewers to wonder about what they’ve just seen. For example, when Perri first sees a flying squirrel in action, does she truly dream of flying the way that they do? Do squirrels really dream, as Perri does during an extended sequence involving being hunted by owls in a snowstorm that features disappearing rabbits? The presentation of this sequence is the most obviously artificial moment of the film, but it makes you wonder just how much more the filmmakers have toyed with the events on screen. To be honest, I’m not even sure that it’s the same squirrel portraying Perri throughout the film. The coloring seems somewhat inconsistent. Still, you have to acknowledge and appreciate the amount of time the filmmakers spent acquiring the footage that resulted in this movie. The cinematography is exquisite, reflecting the changing seasons with beautiful shots of the scenery, and it is accompanied by a lovely musical score and a series of gentle songs that reflect the transition of those seasons.

Oscar Nomination: Best Musical Scoring

Witness for the Prosecution (1957)

Witness for the Prosecution, a Best Picture of 1957 nominee, surprised me in a couple of ways. First, it's a very entertaining film, an interesting mix of humor and suspense, and the Academy is not always prone to rewarding such films. Entertaining and complex? Not typically their favorite mix, judging from what I've seen so far. Second, it features some great performances from an interesting range of actors: Charles Laughton, Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Elsa Lanchester, and a raft of British character actors. Next, it's very much a courtroom drama; almost all of the action takes place inside a British court, so it's rather close to its stage roots in its use of one primary set for much of the film. Finally, it's directed by Billy Wilder. I guess I just wasn't familiar with Wilder's full range of movies, but it did catch me off guard when his name appeared during the credits. As good a film as this is, it didn't initially strike me as being a particularly Wilder-esque movie. By the end of it, however, I was fully convinced.

Power plays Leonard Vole, who has been arrested for the murder of a wealthy widow he has befriended. Laughton plays the criminal trial lawyer Sir Wilfrid Robarts, who has been hired to represent Vole even though he (the lawyer) is supposed to be recovering from a heart attack by taking things easy and giving up smoking and drinking and taking his pills and only eating a bland diet. His nurse, played by Laughton's real-life spouse Lanchester, is there to ensure that he sticks to the rules (and to allow her to provide comic relief from time to time). Vole's alibi for the evening of the widow's murder depends upon his wife, a German refugee named Christine, played by Dietrich. She is particularly cagey, choosing her answers carefully and rarely showing emotion when one would expect a wife to do so.

The trial is beset by one surprise after another, not the least of which is Christine's decision to serve as the title "witness for the prosecution" rather than for the defense. On the stand, she contradicts the story she told earlier to police and to the attorneys, thereby implicating her husband directly in the murder. Needless to say, Laughton and company do everything they can to impeach her testimony, including the retrieval of some damning letters Christine allegedly wrote to a male accomplice. The ending of the trial is not the ending of the movie, though, as there are still a couple of surprise twists left for the audience.

I really enjoyed watching Witness for the Prosecution. Dietrich is a marvel here, and yet she wasn't even nominated for an Oscar for her performance. She's remarkably cold at times, but she is quite capable of unleashing a torrent of fury when confronted on the witness stand with her contradictory testimony. Power is also good; you just won't realize how effective he is until the very end of the movie. Laughton is almost playing a parody of himself here, replete with all of the usual gestures and tics that he had perfected over the years. I still liked his performance, but if anyone wants to develop a Laughton impersonation, here's a good film to watch first.

Knowing that he directed this film makes me admire Billy Wilder even more. Look at a partial list of films he helmed: Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, Sabrina, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, and on and on. And then you can add all of the ones that he wrote or co-wrote, such as Witness for the Prosecution, which started life as an Agatha Christie play. (Confession time: I'm a huge Christie fan. I own a lot of novels she wrote, and realizing that this movie is based upon one of her works just made it all the more exciting.) Perhaps the Academy, which honored Wilder six times during his career, recognized in this film his usual skillful direction. Despite being somewhat different in tone from his other movies, it still bears the stamp of a Wilder film. And that's certainly a reason to watch it on its own.

The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

The Bridge on the River Kwai, winner of the Oscar for Best Picture of 1957, is a film about willpower. A group of British soldiers are taken to a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp and forced to build a bridge to help the Japanese cause during World War II. An English colonel, played brilliantly by Alec Guinness, must clash repeatedly with the POW camp commander, played by Sessue Hayakawa. They differ greatly over the application of the Geneva Convention rules to the camp, and Hayakawa's Col. Saito tries any number of ways to break the spirit of Guinness' Col. Nicholson. He fails, of course, in this class of wills and then finds himself in the position of having Nicholson take charge of the bridge's construction. (Nicholson wants to prove the superiority of the British soldiers in completing a task.)

The other major plotline involves an American soldier, Commander Shears, played by William Holden, who escapes from the camp only to be "forced" into returning to help destroy the bridge that Nicholson and his men have built. Shears is a reluctant warrior, to say the least, particularly after spending time in the military hospital and being treated as a dignitary. However, he too must force himself to see the project through to the end. And there are numerous scenes of the shirtless Holden throughout the movie. I'm starting to wonder if Hollywood cast him on his chest alone rather than his considerable acting talent.

There's much to be admired in The Bridge on the River Kwai. The acting is all first-rate; each member of the cast is well-suited to his or her role. The location shooting in Sri Lanka captures the teeming, humid jungle that is the locale for the action, and the sequence involving the explosion of the bridge just as a train crosses it is justifiably a highlight. The screenplay itself, originally credited to novelist Pierre Boulle but really written by blacklisted authors Michael Wilson and Carl Foreman, is sharp in its insights into the men and the military structures that they represent. Among the actors, Guinness stands out for the cleverness with which his Col. Nicholson takes over control of the camp from Col. Saito, and Holden is able to bring his usual level of charm to the role of the American who would much rather lie on the beach with a beautiful nurse.

The Bridge on the River Kwai was directed by David Lean, and it's really a masterpiece. His ability to control massive numbers of actors is unparalleled. You sometimes have to remind yourself that this film uses no computer-generated imagery. Those are real mean standing in formation each day. Lean's movies tend to be large-scale films, movies about historical events with personal stories embedded within the larger framework.

I like the tension of this film. Col. Saito has a deadline of May 12 to complete the bridge and please his superiors, and he's willing to do almost anything to ensure its completion. Hayakawa portrays Saito's monomaniacal nature well; he was a very deserving nominee for Best Supporting Actor that year (ironically, the only Oscar the film lost out of eight nominations overall). He's particularly good when he tries to bribe Guinness' Nicholson with food after placing the Englishman in "the box" for several days in tropical heat. You sense that he knows he's going to lose to Nicholson all along.

This film is a good example of how the Academy does, sometimes, get it right. The Bridge on the River Kwai won seven awards in 1957, and it deserves its standing as a classic film. It's less a film about war than an examination of the different motivations that people have, about what makes them "tick." As such, it provides some keen psychological insight that is just as potent today as it was more than fifty years ago. It also has one of the greatest ending sequences in the history of film. If you've never experienced it yourself, you'll relish it upon your first viewing.