Bad Girl (1931-32)

The title character of Bad Girl, Dorothy Haley (played by Sally Eilers), isn’t truly a bad girl at all. She’s tough, certainly, but she’s living in a city (New York) and a time where she and all other women are constantly the target of men’s attention, mostly unwanted and often repugnant. She and her friend Edna Briggs (a tough-talking Minna Gombell) are models for a store, and we get to see them displaying bridal gowns in the opening sequence, only to face the stares and leers and harassment by the men who are watching them. It begs the question of why the men are looking at women’s bridal gowns, but perhaps that’s to demonstrate just how tough it was for a single woman in the early 1930s.

Dorothy and Edna like to have a good time, so they head off to Coney Island after a tough day on the job. The scenes there have a lovely documentary feel, and it’s always fun to see footage from those earlier times and learn how people enjoyed themselves. Dorothy would like to meet a nice guy, but she thinks every man is going to be problematic. When she meets Eddie (a terrific James Dunn), he turns down her advances initially but starts to warm up to her. He lets her know quickly, though, that he wants a serious relationship, not a so-called “good time girl.” Dorothy and Ednar aren’t really those kinds of women, but what’s wrong with them going out and having some fun after work? Oh, that’s right. It’s 1931. I momentarily forgot.

Eddie walks Dorothy home, but he’s rather critical of the tenement life she lives. The movie isn’t clear on this, but she likely has no other choice than to live with her terrible brother in their small apartment. The tenement dwellers waste no time in demonstrating the full range of human experience in just a few minutes. There’s been a death and a birth and even a couple fighting over the husband smelling of limburger. You know, it’s a regular place, in other words. Eddie and Dorothy start to see each other regularly, and you can sense that they’re probably heading for a more permanent relationship.

However, Dorothy is quite tough, and when Eddie is late for a date one night, she shows up at his place to find him caught up in his work repairing radios. She tells him off pretty directly, but he begs her to stay with him and talk. Just talk. The movie doesn’t show anything more than that, and people do sometimes talk into the late hours when they’re falling in love. Unfortunately, she’s worried that being out so late will ruin her reputation and likely upset her controlling brother. She’s right, naturally, even though her brother has been staying up late with his girlfriend, Dorothy’s co-worker Edna. So… hypocrisy, unsurprisingly, shows up early in the film.

The plot then asks us to accept a series of rather silly misunderstandings between Eddie and Dorothy. He asks her to marry him and then can’t be reached for a day or so. Her brother has kicked her out and she has gone to stay with Edna, who is a widow with a young son who seems oddly interested in talking to Dorothy while she’s still in bed. Dorothy tries to call Eddie, but he’s moved out of his old place and apparently lost his job. When he shows up, he explains that he’s found them a new home, one that’s a bit bigger and more appropriate for a couple. They marry, and their relationship crisis seems to have been averted—temporarily.

Eddie has always wanted to own his own radio store, and he finds a nice location just when Dorothy finds out she’s pregnant. She’s frightened because her own mother died giving birth to her, but she won’t tell him that she’s expecting, which I suppose makes sense to her and no one else, including Edna. She seems frustrated about where they live (because it’s going to be too small to raise a family), but he misinterprets her emotions as displeasure with how small their apartment is. She wants to go back to work to earn some money for the baby, but she doesn’t tell him the reason, and he says he doesn’t want her to work because he feels like the husband should pay for everything so that his wife can stay home. Again, what year is this? 1931? You could still live on one person’s salary then?

He takes the money that’s he’s saved to open his own store and buys a new apartment and lots of new furniture because he thought she wanted a new place. She’s upset that he spent his money when she was probably hoping that it could be used, in part, to pay for the baby. It’s really quite silly that they both somehow wind up thinking that neither one wants to have a baby when it should be apparent that both of them are very excited. They clearly love each other; they’re just horrible at communicating their feelings.

The misunderstandings just keep piling on. Again, none of them make Dorothy a “bad girl.” She just doesn’t communicate clearly with her husband, and he doesn’t communicate clearly with her, so they’re always talking and acting at cross purposes. (Does this mean he is also a “bad boy”?) She’s worried about the delivery and mentions this expensive society doctor who would perhaps be more helpful. Eddie starts taking up boxing matches for extra cash and goes to visit this fancy obstetrician and breaks down asking the doctor to help him and his wife. Dunn is particularly effective in this scene, and you can understand why the doctor agrees to take the case.

On the day that Dorothy is supposed to go to the hospital, Eddie takes another match, and it’s quite brutal. He’s left bruised and bandaged, and she is upset when he shows up at the hospital, thinking he didn’t want to be there to see his own son being born. He just can’t seem to say the right things, and neither can she. If it weren’t for Edna’s interference at times, they might have separated or divorced before they could have their happy reconciliation. It is a Hollywood movie, after all, so you expect them to figure out how each other feels at some point before “The End” appears on screen.

The film was adapted from a book that was apparently much more scandalous in terms of what happens to Dorothy. This version, however, seems relatively tame to me. Dorothy and Eddie don’t really do anything that would cause their reputations to tarnish, and most of the plot complications are easily fixable, you know, if they just talk to each other honestly. It is interesting to see the difficult situation that women of that time were in. It’s certainly a professionally made film with some solid performances by the leads and major supporting characters. I’m not just certain that I would consider it to be Best Picture material.

Oscar Wins: Best Director (Frank Borzage) and Best Writing/Adaptation

Other Oscar Nomination: Outstanding Production

The Front Page (1930-31)

  

A lot of the action in The Front Page takes place in a news reporters’ room at a courthouse. The reporters banter with each other and discuss various news events, and from time to time, they seem to write actual articles. Of course, most of their articles seem to be fictions rather than fact, and perhaps that’s part of the central joke of this film. Keeping most of the action restricted to one room is perhaps a holdover from the movie’s origins as a play, but what makes it stand out (and perhaps got it nominated for Best Pictures) is the fast talking and sharp, overlapping dialog. The characters sure say a lot in the film’s brisk 100 minutes.

The central character is “Hildy” Johnson (played by Pat O’Brien with his usual charm), a reporter for the Morning Post who is leaving his job to move to New York and become an advertising man. He’s also marrying his long-time girlfriend, Peggy (Mary Brian), and he’s starting to realize that perhaps he’s devoted more time to his job than to his relationship with Mary. The problem is that a really intriguing news event happens, and his instinct is to write about it. You know, just-one-more-before-I-leave-for-good kind of thinking.

His boss/editor, Walter Burns (played by the Oscar-nominated Adolphe Menjou), also schemes to keep Hildy on the job instead of letting him go easily. Menjou always has a sly look on his face, and his Burns is always scheming to get what we wants, which is usually for his paper to get the scoop. However, just when you think you’ve detected some trend in his behavior, Menjou’s Burns takes a sharp, surprising turn. It’s quite a vehicle for a good performance even though it might be considered a supporting role nowadays.

The plot concerns the impending hanging execution of a prisoner named Williams. It’s set for the next morning, and the sequence of events involving Williams borders on the farcical at times. The sheriff (Clarence Williams) and the mayor (James Gordon) want the hanging because it will help them with the black vote in the upcoming election. (Williams is accused of murdering a black policeman). The sheriff also warns of possible communist rallies at the execution even though Williams is a self-professed anarchist rather than a communist, as the sheriff falsely claims. There’s also a prostitute named Molly (an appropriately acidic Mae Clarke) who witnessed the alleged crime and is angry at the reporters because none of them is printing the truth of what happened.

In an odd turn of events, an alienist asks Williams to help reenact the crime, allowing the convicted man (George E. Stone, funnier than you might expect him to be) to steal a gun and escape captivity. It happens to be the sheriff’s gun, which is certainly an embarrassing detail that the sheriff tries to conceal. It’s little wonder that the reporters mock the sheriff through the film; he really doesn’t seem very competent at his job. The film offers quite a subtle commentary on the corrupt nature of politicians like the mayor and sheriff.

The cast is filled with some other first-rate character actors besides those I’ve already mentioned. Edward Everett Horton plays a news reporter named Bensinger who works for a rival paper. He’s obsessed, weirdly, with smells and illnesses. He also has an old-fashioned rolltop desk that plays a pivotal part in the plot, but more on that later. Slim Summerville shows up as an envoy from the governor, who has granted Williams a reprieve. The sheriff and mayor attempt to bribe him with money and a night at a whorehouse to keep him silent. Clearly, they’ve never seen Summerville’s other movies.

Williams actually never makes it out of the courthouse. He uses a drainpipe to reach the newsroom, where Hildy and Burns and Molly try to help him hide. He winds up in the rolltop desk, and given how many people come and go through that room, it’s crazy that no one suspects he’s hiding there. It’s something of a running gag, and even though the film is sometimes described as a black comedy, it reached slapstick proportions at times like this. The resolution at the film’s ending is quite preposterous, honestly, but it’s a comedy after all, so some creative liberties fit right in.

I’d like to point out a couple of clever decisions the filmmakers have made. One is the opening credits sequence. Since the film is about reporters, we get to watch as someone flips through a series of newspaper pages, including ones that introduce the cast by having their images on the page with a caption about the actor and their character. It’s pretty cool to watch. The other happens near the end of the film, and it demonstrates some sharp editing skills. We again get a series of images, close-ups of the different reporters calling in to their papers with stories.

The Front Page is now in the public domain, so copies can be easily made and distributed. It’s been preserved by Library of Congress, and I do hope that the print they have is one of higher quality both visually and auditorily. I saw a pretty murky and fuzzy version. Let’s hope someone cleans up the film for a future release.

Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Actor (Adolphe Menjou), and Best Director (Lewis Milestone)

Skippy (1930-31)

 

Skippy is probably easily dismissed by many viewers as a children’s movie. Its hero is a young boy who leaves his prominent family’s home to play almost every day in the shantytown (called, literally, “Shantytown” here) because it’s more exciting and more fun than the boring, staid environment where he lives. However, the film subverts our expectations about the concerns of children, placing the issues that the poor young people face squarely at the center of the narrative. Yes, most of the characters are kids, but they’re living in the Great Depression and facing some very systemic obstacles to survival and happiness.

Jackie Cooper, still the youngest ever nominee for Best Actor, is marvelous as the lead character of Skippy. He’s a mischievous kid whose stern father, a doctor with the Board of Health, tries to teach him manners and the concepts of right and wrong (from the dad’s narrow perspective, of course). Skippy just wants to have fun, and Cooper is quite funny in the scenes where he’s looking for an angle to circumvent his father’s (and mother’s) expectations. Watching him trying to avoid getting ready in the morning is a master class in physical comedy. Skippy just wants to stay in bed, but that’s not permitted in his home, so he finds some shortcuts, such as wetting his hair rather than combing it and making sure that the toothbrush is wet without brushing his teeth.

He likes hanging out in Shantytown across the tracks because there are seemingly no rules there. He defies his father’s order not to cross over the tracks by crawling through a pipe under them, adhering to the so-called letter of the “law” if not the spirit of it. The kids of Shantytown are a diverse group. There’s a bully named Harley Nubbins (played by Donald Haines), a young black boy named Snowflake (which is supposed to be funny, I guess, but it certainly raises a lot of questions), and a new kid named Sooky (Robert Coogan) who befriends Skippy after almost fighting over some wood he’s collected from the boys’ clubhouse so that his mother can have firewood to keep them warm.

The film was based upon a comic strip and novel by Percy Crosby, and it retains a bit of the episodic flavor of a comic strip. The film takes on a very serious subject, though, with its examination of what happens when a child learns a truth about grown-ups and adult life. Sooky’s dog, Penny, doesn’t have a license because it costs $3, money he and his mother don’t have. Skippy’s father, played by Willard Robertson, is trying to raze Shantytown because of concerns about disease and crime in the area. Of course, the residents struggle to survive and have no alternatives to their run-down homes, but that’s not how Dr. Skinner and his colleagues see the place.

It’s a little complicated to explain what happens with Penny, but Harley takes Skippy’s yo-yo and accidentally breaks the windshield of his father’s car. His father just happens to be the dogcatcher, and soon Penny is missing from Sooky’s home. They don’t have the money to pay for the license and when they do obtain it from Skippy’s bank, the dogcatcher takes it to pay for his windshield instead. What follows is a series of frantic and, at times, funny escapades. The boys try to sell glass bottles, run errands for cash, sell lemonade made from a single lemon, and even put on a show to raise the funds. The show is very similar to the ones you’ve seen in the Our Gang/Little Rascals comedies, with a terrible magical act where Skippy tries to saw a box in half that has Sooky in one end and Snowflake in the other. It culminates in the reading of a truly awful poem by Eloise, Skippy’s annoying neighbor.

Penny is a mutt, to be sure, but she’s Sooky’s dog, and he describes her as an “all-around thoroughbred,” and his reasoning has to be heard to be understood. It certainly represents the way a child could rationale something like a thoroughbred designation. When the boys fall a bit short in collecting the necessary amount, they try to bargain with the dogcatcher, only to learn that Penny and all of the other dogs have already been euthanized. It’s so eerie to watch them walk past all of the silent cages, quite the contrast from all of the barking dogs seen there earlier in the film.

How do you console a child with a broken heart? Skippy tries to get Penny’s body so that they can bury her, but all of the dogs have already been disposed of. It’s when he sees his father’s name on the orders for catching dogs that Skippy realizes how complicit his father is in the death of his friend’s beloved pet. He tries to distract Sooky as they walk back to his shack, but Sooky runs to his mother’s arms and says he wants to die now that his dog is dead. It’s heartbreaking to watch this sequence, and Coogan (the younger brother of the great Jackie Coogan) is exceptional here.

Skippy has learned that adults are unconcerned about what children are dealing with, and he returns home so sad that he won’t eat dinner and goes straight to bed. He prays to God to help Sooky and keep him alive. His father overhears the prayers but doesn’t understand the context, and Skippy won’t tell him or even let his father try to comfort him. Cooper secured his Best Actor nomination with this scene, no doubt. The next morning, Skippy cannot even take any joy in the new bicycle his father purchases as a means to cheer him up.

The ending is perhaps not all that surprising. Through a series of odd events, Sooky winds up with two new dogs, including one that Skippy got by trading away his bike. Dr. Skinner changes his mind about Shantytown and decides to help them get rid of the dangers of contagious diseases in the homes there. He also manages to get into a fight with the dogcatcher after accidentally breaking the man’s car windshield himself. It’s quite a turnaround for a man so conservative and limited in his thinking earlier in the film, but I suppose when grown-ups realize that children are dealing with serious concerns too, maybe they can step up to do the right thing.

Norman Taurog won the Oscar for Best Director, no doubt for his ability to wrangle so many child actors and capture such moving performances from them. However, I think he also delicately balances the tone of the film, mixing comic moments with a very serious subject. Taurog was the youngest winner for Best Director until Damien Chazelle won for La La Land (2016). He was also Cooper’s uncle, and if the story is true about how he made the young boy cry by pretending to have Cooper’s dog shot by a security officer, then I’m not sure he should have kept his Oscar.

Oscar Win: Best Director (Norman Taurog)

Other Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Actor (Jackie Cooper), and Best Writing, Adaptation

Trader Horn (1930-31)

  

Trader Horn is based upon the real-life adventures of Alfred Aloysius “Trader” Horn and was reportedly the first non-documentary film to be shot on location in Africa. Horn was one of those white guys who traveled the rivers and jungles and plains of Africa trading goods like salt for treasures like ivory, and he certainly must have had some fascinating encounters. The film reportedly took six months to make as the crew went to the countries of Tanganyika, Uganda, Kenya, Sudan, and the Belgian Congo with the help of “white hunters” who are thanked by name in the opening credits.

It’s best to state up front that the film represents the colonial attitude that many white explorers had towards the continent of Africa and the African people there. Horn (played here by Harry Carey) thinks all of the native tribespeople, including the bearers who do all the work on his expeditions, are savages. It’s Peru (Duncan Renaldo, years away from his performances as the Cisco Kid in the movies and on the TV series) who corrects Horn and says they’re just “happy, ignorant children.” That certainly isn’t helpful since it’s just a different form of condescension. It also isn’t helped any that this line follows Peru looking at a series of African women with bare breasts.

I suppose it would be interesting to know if the filmmakers were truly depicting the native villages with any measure of accuracy. There’s an early sequence involving daily life where we see people getting their hair braided, playing games, and talking with others. We get close-ups of their faces and hairstyles and clothing, and we can only hope that these were all correct depictions, but that does seem rather unlikely. At times, I thought that perhaps some of the rituals performed during the movie might actually be a mixture from different tribes. What could have been an intriguing ethnographic film instead becomes a template for a lot of later movies set in Africa and the continuing misrepresentation of the people of Africa.

One of the interesting aspects of the film is the footage of the various animals Horn and Peru and their company encounter. It’s quite a list, and I’m not even sure I was comprehensive in my accounting: hippos, crocodiles, various birds, monkeys, giraffes, lions, Thompson’s gazelles, waterbuck, hyenas, leopards, impala, buffalo, baboons, warthogs, eland, and many, many more. It must have been like being on safari for the audiences in 1931, and I guess the commentary as these men travel (almost a voiceover) is helpful in identifying and describing the various animals. A bit of editing might have helped, though, so we aren’t just cataloguing every creature they meet. By the way, the threat of crocodiles seem particularly constant. Perhaps it’s because the men travel by water, but you see a lot of crocodiles jumping off the shore into the water as the film progresses. The Africa in Trader Horn is just overrun with crocodiles. Again, a little more editing would have made the film more interesting.

Other than introducing audiences to a lot of African animals, the film concerns itself with the slimmest of plots. Horn and his company meet a missionary named Edith Trent, whose baby daughter was kidnapped by a tribe many years earlier. Her husband was also taken, but he was killed, so now Mrs. Kent devotes her time to searching for their daughter. She doesn’t get much time in the film, though, as she’s found dead herself in the next scene. Horn and Peru decide that they must find the now grown daughter, so they begin a trek across Africa to find the tribe that took the child.

They themselves are captured after the halfway mark of the film and taken to a village controlled by Nina, the White Goddess (played by Edwina Booth with wild eyes and a lot of frantic aggression and quite a cascade of long blonde hair). She’s the daughter, of course, but now she’s in control of a tribe and seems to maintain her power by beating people. She even beats Peru at one point—right after he tells her “white people must help each other”—but he just takes it, an act that intrigues her a great deal, but more on that later. They’re forced to watch at the bearers are killed, and then they’re tied to crosses and hoisted upside down and about to be lit on fire when Nina finally stops the villagers. Even though she doesn’t speak any English, she’s decided to escape with them across a lake. How she figured out who they are and where she came from and what she has in common with them is all very mysterious.

The film then proceeds to put everyone in the cast in danger. Horn, Peru, Nina and Horn’s most loyal bearer, Rencharo (Mutia Oomulu, giving the part more dignity than it truly deserves) take a wooden canoe across a lake filled with hippos, some of the most aggressive and dangerous animals in the water. They later try to take some meat away from a pack of lions and almost get Nina killed. Horn had already pointed out about the wilds of Africa: “When you're not eating somebody, you're trying to keep somebody else from eating you.” That certainly seems to be the case for most of the film.

The cinematography for the film is quite lovely, but it is rather dark at times so that can make it tough to see all of what’s on the screen. The scenic vista shots are beautiful, and the sequence by a waterfall is quite breathtaking. But the film cannot seem to pick a rhythm to go with the action. At times, it cranks up the movement via fast motion, but why? We’ve had a long, languid walk across the veldt, but now that something exciting is happening, we need to speed it up? I realize it’s not a key plot point, but I was also fascinated by the enormous pith helmet Peru wears throughout the film, and it’s looking pretty rough by the end. Is it meant to be symbolic? Of what exactly?

Nina’s old tribe shows up to scare everyone into running, splitting up into pairs to be more efficient. Ranchero dies by Horn’s side, allowing the film to superimpose his image over the African skyline at the film’s end in one of the most maudlin moments I’ve seen in a while. Nina and Peru get rescued (if that’s the word for it) by a group of pygmies, who take then safely to a village and then to a trading post to be reunited with Horn just before he puts them both on a ship to leave. You see, Nina has to be educated so that she can be her true self; that means she’ll be white again according to the racialized thinking of the movie. Horn will stay behind in Africa and see Ranchero’s face in the sky.

The novelty of the film’s subject matter and the images of Africa must have been the key aspects that got it nominated for Best Picture. Carey plays a crusty old adventurer with a lot of gusto, certainly, and Renaldo makes for a handsome “love interest.” Seeing the two men side-by-side does make a viewer wonder how they both thought that Nina might pick them. Isn’t it clear that she’d choose the good-looking younger man with the impressive sideburns (not to mention the size of his pith helmet)? Then again, watching this movie nowadays raises so many questions. How staged were the animal attacks? Why are there drums in the background for so much of the film? Were there not other, better movies in this year that were eligible for awards consideration?

Oscar Nomination: Outstanding Production

The White Parade (1934)

 

It would be unfair to call The White Parade a “lost film” since there is one print that survives. It’s housed at the UCLA Film Archive, and you can watch it if you make an appointment and agree to follow the rules the archive has. Of course, that means a trip to Westwood for what will likely be a full day if you don’t live in Los Angeles, so I’m not likely to make the trek until I reach a point of desperation I’m not currently feeling. It might not be truly lost, but it’s certainly not readily or easily available to very many people if it’s locked away in an archive.

The plot, according to IMDB, concerns “the hopeful, ambitious students at a hospital training school and is primarily a story of the stern discipline and laborious physical and mental toil they endure in order to become nurses and join the White Parade. It is told mainly through the character of June Arden, who finds romance with Ronald Hall III along the way, with side stories of the other girls who find failure, success, laughter, and tears along the way.” By the way, IMDB’s description includes the following sentence which really isn’t about the plot: “The forerunner of umpteen dozens of TV series over the past 40 years.” Well, someone or something has to be the starting point, doesn’t it?

The film is based upon a novel by Rian James, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jesse Lasky Jr., Sonya Levien, and Ernest Pascal. (Only James and Lasky received credit, though. Such are the vagaries of Hollywood.) The film is dedicated to Florence Nightingale, arguably the most famous nurse in history, a woman who inspired many people to join the profession of nursing to help others. Apparently, she’s referenced many times during the film itself.

The main character of June Arden is played by Loretta Young. June is an aspiring nurse at the Mitchell-Reed School for Nurses, and the film follows her and several of her classmates as they undergo the rigorous preparation they need to begin their practical training at a hospital. John Boles III plays June’s love interest, Ronald Hall III, a wealthy polo player. I guess at one point you could have a job as a polo player, and it was quite lucrative. I suspect that Boles’ character is not as charming throughout the film as might be initially assumed. Rich polo players with a Roman numeral at the end of their names don’t tend to be pillars of compassion and understanding in the movies.

Much of the plot involves the process of becoming a nurse, but there’s enough interaction between the different nursing students to suggest that they are jealous and underhanded and perhaps prone to being unable to keep their work and personal lives separate. There’s also a conflict between June and Ronald over the amount of time she’s spending at her job, but wasn’t that a likely source of disagreement at a time when many women were not expected and certainly not encouraged to have careers of their own? And who couldn’t see this coming from Rich Polo Player III?

Interesting bit of Oscar trivia: Young also starred in The House of Rothschild the same year as The White Parade, and both films were nominated for Best Picture. That is not a particularly common occurrence for the Academy Awards. Young would win an Oscar for Best Actress of 1947 and was one of the most reliable and well-like stars of her era.

Rumor has it the print at UCLA is in pretty bad condition, most likely a result of having just one option for preservation. Maybe the film can be and will be restored some day, especially since it will be in the public domain within the next few years.

By the way, I’m married to a nurse, and he’s never heard his occupation called “the white parade.” Neither has anyone else in nursing that I’ve ever met. Was this perhaps a nickname that was in favor for a very short period time? Or maybe it was a regional designation that never gained widespread favor? Or maybe James just made it up for his novel?

Oscar Nominations: Best Picture and Best Sound Recording

Of Mice and Men (1939)

 

Of Mice and Men is a pretty bleak film set in Depression-era California. It’s based upon the novel by John Steinbeck, and if you’re expecting a happy experience, you’ve clearly never read one of Steinbeck’s books from that era. Two migrant workers keep moving from one job to another, and it’s a tough existence, particularly since one of them suffered a brain injury as a child and cannot fully comprehend most of what people say to him. However, he’s astonishingly strong and a hard worker who listens to and does whatever his friend tells him to do.

The two friends are George (played by Burgess Meredith) and Lennie (Lon Chaney Jr.), and they’ve been together for years. I think I heard George say they were cousins at one point early in the film, but that still doesn’t stop the questioning from everyone about why the two of them are together. It’s pretty simple, though. Lennie needs someone to keep him from using his brute strength to harm someone or something. At the start of the film, the two of them are escaping from Weed because Lennie did some act that upset the townspeople. We’re never told exactly what happened, but we start to imagine what it could be.

We quickly get introduced to a host of characters that will play important parts in the narrative. Curley and his new wife, for example, will keep getting involved in George and Lennie’s lives. Curley (Bob Steele) is the son of the owner of the barley farm the two men show up at. Curley is jealous of any attention his wife gets, and he’s quite hot-tempered, seemingly always up for a fight. His wife (Betty Field, fascinating in a small role) is bored and, to be fair, a bit of a tramp. She wants to see other people, to get out of the house from time to time, but Curley keeps leaving her alone to hang out in the nearby town with other men and, presumably, other women. Make of that sentence what you will.

Charles Bickford plays Slim, the most experienced and knowledgeable hand on the farm and someone who takes little guff from Curley. Roman Bohnen plays Candy, a farm worker who lost his hand in an accident and hangs around doing little odd jobs. He has an older dog that the other workers object to because it’s gotten weak and rather smelly. One of the first terrible incidents in the film is when several of the men convince Candy to let them kill the old dog and he would get a new puppy from Slim (like Curley’s wife has done). You can see from Bohnen’s face just how much it breaks Candy’s heart to let them kill his dog. It’s a tough moment in the film, one that will resonate all the way through until the ending.

Georgy and Lennie have a plan to earn enough money to buy a farm, a place where they can escape the constant difficulty of being someone else’s worker. Lennie will get to raise some rabbits, and he never stops talking about the rabbits. He really, really gets excited about them. That’s how Candy finds out about the farm and asks if he can join them. He has a lot of money, probably from being paid off after losing his hand on the job. Even Crooks, an African American farmhand who isn’t allowed to sleep in the bunkhouse with the rest of the men, asks to join them on the farm. It’s clearly meant as a representation of the American Dream, and it’s interesting to see that the downtrodden, the disabled, and the marginalized are the ones most invested in trying to escape their current situation and achieve that dream.

A series of misunderstandings leads Curley to attack Lennie, and the larger man breaks Curley’s hand even though he was just trying to stop the temperamental Curley from continuing to hit him. Lennie just cannot control himself; he doesn’t understand how strong he is and how dangerous he is as a consequence. Chaney was dismissed as a character actor and later as a horror film actor, but he’s very effective here. He is more expert at conveying someone with the lingering effects of a brain injury that a lot of other actors could muster.

The acting overall is particularly first rate. Several of the cast members came from the original Broadway production of the play adapted from Steinbeck’s novel, including Leigh Whipper who played Crooks and then went on to have a long career in Hollywood. Bohnen was also a stage actor, but he embodies Candy in a very naturalistic way here. Meredith had already performed in a few films, and Chaney had more than fifty film credits by the time he was cast as Lennie. Field was starring in just her second film here, but she brings a fitting sense of world-weariness to the role. She makes quite an impression in the few key scenes she has in the film.

It’s a sequence between Chaney and Field that serves as the climactic moment of the film. Curley has kicked his wife out of the house, so she goes to the barn to get the puppy that Slim gave her. She discovers Lennie there, sad because he’s accidentally killed his puppy by petting it too hard. Field makes the most of this scene, giving quite the monologue about how she wound up with Curley and how she’s going to Hollywood to be discovered. Lennie, of course, doesn’t follow most of this. He just keeps repeating the same lines, which prompts the rather low-class, rough woman to call him “goofy.”

Lennie talks about how much he likes soft things, perhaps the fur of the puppy or the fur of a rabbit, as examples. She talks about how soft her hair is and asks him to touch it to feel for himself. He hurts her because he doesn’t realize how strong he is and winds up killing her by accident. It’s a tragic moment in the film because we realize rather quickly that Lennie and George will have to leave again and keep looking for a new place.

When George and Candy discover the body, it doesn’t take long for the rest of the men on the farm to show up and figure out that Lennie is to blame. They form a search party, and it’s a race to see who can find Lennie first. This final sequence really allows Meredith to shine. He demonstrates the heaviness of the burden he’s been carrying trying to look out for Lennie all these years. It’s quite exhausting, so when he reaches a fatal decision that harkens back to an earlier scene in the film, the audience might be horrified, of course, but they will fully comprehend why he takes the action that he does. Meredith had a long and distinguished career in film, and this early role demonstrates how suited he was to the medium.

I don’t always talk about musical scores for dramatic films because, to a degree, they’re meant to serve as background music. However, Of Mice and Men features a marvelous original score by the great American composer Aaron Copland. This was only three years before he completed “Fanfare for the Common Man” and just five years before “Appalachian Spring,” two of his masterpieces. It’s tough to watch the film and not pay careful attention to the music that underscores the dramatic tension.

Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Sound Recording, Best Scoring, and Best Original Score 

Wuthering Heights (1939)

 

Wuthering Heights is one of the greatest love stories in fiction even though it ends tragically for the lovers. (No, I won’t apologize for spoiling the ending of a novel that’s been around for almost two hundred years now.) This film adaptation of Emily Bronte’s novel features less than half of the full plot of the novel, but that allows it to focus more on the central romance, and that’s probably the reason that so many readers, particularly English majors, still love the book.

The film begins and ends with the arrival at the estate called Wuthering Heights of a stranger named Lockwood. He’s been caught in a snow storm and seeks refuge at the home, but the owner, Heathcliff, is less than hospitable. When Lockwood sees and hears what appears to be the figure of a woman in the snow, Heathcliff runs outside into the storm, leaving the housekeeper, Ellen (the great Flora Robson), to share with Lockwood the details of the love between Cathy and Heathcliff. What follows for much of the film is a flashback narrative told by Ellen. A small complaint here, and perhaps it was just the print that I watched, but Robson’s voiceover sounded like it had been recorded in a well.

Heathcliff comes to Wuthering Heights as an orphaned young boy from Liverpool. Cathy’s father takes him in, and Cathy and Heathcliff become friends as children. Hindley, Cathy’s brother, is a different matter, though, and he never accepts Heathcliff as belonging to the family or the home. Heathcliff and Cathy fantasize about having a future together that is more fairy tale than realistic, but when Cathy and Hindley’s father dies, Hindley takes over control of the home and becomes a drunk. He also becomes even more dismissive of Heathcliff, who has been forced to live in the stables with the horses.

As adults, Cathy and Heathcliff are played by Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier, certainly one of the most attractive couples to appear on film. The two young lovers have been meeting in secret atop Penistone Crags overlooking the Yorkshire moors. It’s there that they profess their feelings for each other and make plans to be together. Yes, the class distinctions and Heathcliff’s unknown origin will present difficulties, but they seem unwilling to consider that they might ever be separated.

The two of them sneak into a neighboring home to watch a party from outside, but two dogs attack them, leaving Cathy’s leg wounded. The young man of the house, Edgar Linton (played by a young David Niven), takes charge of her recovery but demands that Heathcliff leave. Cathy stays at the Linton estate for months healing and gets caught up in the word of rich people. Edgar falls in love with her and proposes to her. After all, Heathcliff (who is frequently dismissed as being a gypsy) hasn’t been around, Edgar is handsome and she is beautiful, and why shouldn’t they be together? Who has ever heard of a romantic storyline that didn’t involve at least three people?

Cathy now wants fine things and confesses to Ellen that she’s planning to marry Edgar. Heathcliff overhears their conversation and gets upset when he thinks she no longer loves him. I mean, she does say that it would be degrading for her to marry him, and this is not long after she’s criticized him for having dirty hands, which is probably pretty common for stable boys, to be honest. Those are some rather unkind things to say about someone you love. Of course, he doesn’t hear the entire discussion and misses the part when Cathy says that she realizes that they are meant to be together. He rides away, and she runs after him in a storm.

Once again, Cathy takes months to recover. They had very delicate constitutions in those days, and a good soaking from a rain would make them ill for a long time, I suppose. After she recovers, she marries Edgar and moves into his home. She and his sister, Isabella (Geraldine Fitzgerald) become friends, and everyone seems happy. You know where this is headed, right? Yes, Heathcliff returns after being away for a long time, and he’s now a gentleman. You can tell by the change in his clothes. He’s also acquired enough money to pay off Hindley’s gambling debts and liquor bills, making him the owner of Wuthering Heights.

His success shocks everyone, naturally, but Cathy claims to be happily married. It’s Isabella who finds herself attracted to Heathcliff. Edgar vows to prevent them from seeing each other, but everyone knows how that’s going to turn out. Heathcliff has become especially cruel now that he has money. He lets Hindley live at Wuthering Heights, but he regularly demoralizes the man and reminds him constantly of his cowardice. He also plans to make Cathy suffer by marrying Isabella.

You could see why someone young and perhaps naïve like Isabella could find Heathcliff appealing. He’s handsome and has a lot of money. He doesn’t seem to suffer fools easily. (Plus, he’s played by Olivier when he was perhaps his most handsome.) I have always suspected, though, that she is more aware of what’s going on than most viewers or readers think. Look at the scene where Isabella and Cathy fight over Heathcliff. Isabella clearly knows that Cathy is still in love with him, and he’s unable to look at anyone but Cathy. It’s only after living in the miserable home that is Wuthering Heights that Isabella herself starts to regret her decision.

Cathy then falls ill to one of those mysterious ailments that no one in the movie can name, perhaps for fear that it will be catching. It might just be love sickness or heartbrokenness, but as Ellen puts it, she’s willing herself to die. I guess if she cannot be happy with Heathcliff, she’d rather just perish. Heathcliff finds out that she’s ill and shows up in her bedroom to, basically, tell her off for leaving him, not just now but all those years ago when she chose Edgar, a pretty rough way to say goodbye to someone you love, certainly. She asks for forgiveness, tells him that she’s always loved him, and asks him to take her to her window so that she can see the moors again.

She vows that she’ll wait for him at the crags after she dies, and he prays that she will haunt him until his own death. That brings us back to the frame story that began the film. The doctor, played by the reliable Donald Crisp, shows up and says that he thought he saw Heathcliff and a woman walking together on the moors. When he climbed to Penistone Crags, he only found Heathcliff’s dead body in the snow. The film then provides a fantastical image of their “ghosts” (for lack of a better word) walking away from the camera.

It’s an emotional story, true, and you can see why it still resonates after so many years. I could point out that it seems from this version that Heathcliff was more in love and devoted than Cathy, but that might draw the ire of the Cathy-lovers out there. I will say that musical score by Alfred Newman is so evocative and lush, and the rather dark cinematography by Gregg Toland certainly fits the overall tone of the film. Olivier received his first of twelve Oscar nominations for this film, and Fitzgerald was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Oberon was overlooked for her performance, but it was a very tough year for Best Actress.

I’d like to single out one performer who didn’t get any Oscar attention. Robson is marvelous as Ellen. Watch her face during that pivotal scene where Heathcliff overhears the wrong part of a conversation about Cathy’s impeding marriage to Edgar. Look at how emotional she gets when she has to tell Isabella and Heathcliff that Cathy is dying. Robson takes a small role as a housekeeper and turns it into a pivotal one to the plot without the kinds of overacting that normally gets attention in small roles.

Oscar Win: Best Black-and-White Cinematography

Other Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Actor (Laurence Olivier), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Geraldine Fitzgerald), Best Director (William Wyler), Best Screenplay, Best Art Direction, and Best Original Score

The Love Parade (1929-30)

 

The Love Parade is a charming musical presentation of the consequences of a reversal of gender roles. It seems to ask, what if men were the powerless ones in relationships? Until the ending, it makes some good points about what might happen if partners were truly equals rather than having an imbalance in importance or power or authority. The ending cheats the audience a bit because it seems so retrograde in its implications, but until that point, we’re given some opportunities for moments of reflection.

Maurice Chevalier plays Count Alfred Renard, a military attaché to the ambassador to France from the country of Sylvania (no relation to the television set, apparently). While in Paris, he’s had numerous affairs, including one with the ambassador’s wife. He’s sent back to his home country to face the queen for punishment. By the way, even his servant (played by the delightful Lupino Lane) and the dog had flings with numerous partners. All of this is related through the song “Paris, Stay the Same,” suggesting that the French city is perhaps more open-minded than Sylvania. Everyone, save the ambassador, seems to have had a good time.

Jeanette McDonald, in her first major film role, plays Queen Louise of Sylvania, and she gets a nude bathing scene that’s quite shocking considering the image of most of her late films. She comes across as so prim and proper in her career that it’s a surprise to see her starting this film with such a sequence. Everyone in the government and, really, in the country wants her to marry someone, but she’s not interested in any of the options that are presented to her. When Renard shows up, she gets intrigued by reading the report about his escapades. It must be pretty racy stuff, after all.

She must punish him, of course, but cannot think of a suitable way to do so. He vetoes her plan to make him grow a beard, certainly an odd way to show your displeasure with someone. When he suggests instead that he be forced to remain at her side, she seems quite happy even though she wonders aloud if that’s truly a punishment. The song “Anything to Please the Queen” (which sounds like the title of a great anthem for a drag performer) accompanies this sequence, and it’s a rather charming romantic number.

Everyone in the queendom, it seems, watches the Queen and the Count’s first dinner together. In fact, this is the most voyeuristic country in history. Almost everyone seems to be either watching the two through the windows or gossiping about what they’ve seen or heard from others. The Queen and the Count do seem to have immediate chemistry, and why not? It is a romantic comedy musical after all, and it was the first sound film directed by Ernst Lubistch, who had such a wonderfully light style for these kinds of films.

They get married quickly, and the count becomes the prince consort. Unfortunately, that means he has no power because he’s not the king and most definitely not her equal in decision making. He realizes this when the wedding vows are all about her. He has to obey her, for example, no sharing of that aspect of marriage. The phrase “I now pronounce you wife and man” is a clear and clever reversal of how it is commonly phrased. The wedding night is continually interrupted by cannon fire, which is quite suggestive for a film so early in the sound era. He cannot stop the noise so that he can concentrate upon lovemaking, though, because he has no power or authority, and besides, the Queen has asked for it. I suppose even she appreciates a good metaphor.

Each day she gets to go out and do queenly tasks, like inspecting the grenadiers, and he only has activities like tennis and bridge. He even has to wait for her to eat breakfast, so he feels like he is not useful to anyone.  The song “Nobody’s Using It Now” suggests just how useless he feels, and exactly what “it” is makes for quite a naughty song. He tries to be helpful, even creating a budget for the country that would be self-supporting rather than depending upon a loan from other countries, but because he is the prince consort, it’s rejected. He tells her that he’s going back to Paris on the night she’s supposed to attend the opera because he serves no purpose in Sylvania. They fight because their appearance together has implications for the country’s success at raising money and for its reputation among other nations. He shows up after all, of course, because this is romance, and he gets a standing ovation from the audience. Why they applaud him so vigorously is a source of confusion. What exactly has he done to deserve such a response? Why is he so much more popular than the Queen? Does everyone really know what’s been going on in their private chambers?

When they return to the palace after the opera, he makes her beg him to stay. They discuss a suitable punishment for her, and what do you know? She has to stay by his side the way he stood by hers. This is the second Oscar nominee from this year that starts with an interesting premise about women’s equality but ends with the men resuming control over a relationship. It must have been very tough to be a feminist in this era.

There’s a cute subplot involving his loyal servant (Lane) and one of the queen’s maids (played by Lillian Roth). They have a comic number entitled “Let’s Be Common” that verges on slapstick or burlesque. It’s very physically demanding, and they are both more than able comic actors. That moment is perhaps only topped by “The Queen Is Always Right,” which involves numerous supporting cast members in a debate over the nation’s future, but Roth and Lane are the highlights of that number as well.

The filmmakers don’t translate the occasional use of French in the dialog. There’s even a joke about it. Chevalier asks someone if they know French, and when he replies no, Chevalier clearly says something quite derogatory. Later, when another person replies yes, Chevalier simply shrugs and says, that’s too bad.

Here’s a bit of Oscar trivia for you: The Love Parade was the first film to be nominated for six Academy Awards, but it lost all of them. As I’ve noted earlier, it was MacDonald’s first feature film in a leading role and Lubitsch’s first sound film. As slight an entertainment as this appears to be to a viewer nowadays, it certainly has a place in Oscar history.

Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Lubitsch), Best Actor (Chevalier), Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Sound Recording

The Divorcee (1929-30)

 

The Divorcee is an intriguing Pre-Code examination of double standards. A married couple break up not because the husband cheats on his wife, which he does first, but because she later cheats on him and he cannot accept her infidelity. The script makes a rather impassioned plea for fairness in the ways that the different genders are treated when it comes to these kinds of behaviors, but the story fails women, in particular, with its rather retrograde ending.

We first meet Jerry (Norma Shearer) and Ted (Chester Morris) with their group of wealthy friends at some sort of cabin retreat. They get engaged during this trip, but their friend Paul (Conrad Nagel) gets jealous because he’s in love with Jerry himself. He gets drunk and then has a horrible car accident that leaves another one of their friends, Dorothy (Helen Johnson), disfigured. Out of guilt, Paul marries Dorothy in her hospital room while intercutting scenes show us Jerry and Ted’s wedding. You might think that Jerry and Paul will later have an affair, but you’re already off base. That would be too simple.

On the day of their third anniversary, Jerry and Ted seem very happy together, but when their friends show up with a woman named Janice (Mary Doran), Ted gets very uncomfortable. He’s leaving for Chicago the same day for business, but Jerry quickly realizes that he’s upset because he was unfaithful with Janice. He tells Jerry all the usual lies: he was drunk, it wasn’t planned, it doesn’t mean anything, blah blah blah. She’s angry and disappointed with him, and he leaves for a week.

Ted does try to get in touch with her to apologize, but she manages to avoid or ignore his attempts. Their friend Don (Robert Montgomery) takes her home, and he’s a little bit drunk like Ted was with Janice. Don takes her to a club where she’s clearly thinking about what she’s going to do with Don later on. There’s a very determined look on her face. Initially, she’s tearful over her own fidelity, but she gets angry quickly when Don asks her not to tell Ted. How does she tell her husband? “I’ve balanced our accounts. That’s all.” That certainly seems like one of the coldest announcements possible, and he winds up angrier over her infidelity than she did over his own infidelity. It’s quite a double standard, and she points it out to him directly.

One of the wildest scenes follows. Ted shows up drunk at a friend’s wedding, demolishes the cake, and punches a man that he thinks might have been the one she slept with (he’s wrong, of course). He then goes home to pack so that he can leave her. Morris is particularly good in this sequence, and he’s especially strong when Jerry is pleading for forgiveness out of a sense of fairness. He cannot see that what she did is no worse (or better) than what he did, and she witheringly condemns his male pride.

After they divorce, Jerry dates a series of men in a brilliantly edited sequence that only shows pairs of hands (one male, one female) in the shots. The dialog establishes that she’s seeing men from a wide range of nationalities based upon the accents. She’s also acquiring quite a bit of jewelry, it appears. Her hair has gotten looser, curlier than before, suggesting the freedom that she now feels, and she claims to be having a good time even if she admits that none of these relationships are serious.

You remember the unfortunate Paul from earlier, yes? Well, Jerry and Paul meet on a train, and he tells her that he still loves her. She breaks down at his admission and admits that she’s very tired of all these so-called good times. His marriage to Dorothy has been an unhappy one for them both, and he wants to divorce his wife and marry Jerry. He’s got a new job in Japan, so it could be a fresh beginning for them both. She accepts his proposal only to be confronted by Dorothy, who comes to see Jerry and finds Paul there. She tells Paul that she wants to stay married because he’s all she has at this point. This scene is a bit tough to watch because the actress playing Dorothy is wearing a very dark veil to cover her disfigured face. How could she even tell who she’s talking to? Can she see through all that black fabric?

Jerry decides that she wants to reunite with Ted. Remember what I said about the movie’s ending unraveling its premise that women might have as much right to have an affair as men do? Of course, everyone who does so must still be punished, and this was before the Production Code went into effect. She moves to London for a new job and keeps going out in Paris with the hopes of finding Ted. They do meet again, and the film provides its happy Hollywood ending for two people who have, I suppose, both realized that they’ve each done the other wrong. It still seems rather unrealistic given all that’s happened.

Shearer was chosen as the Best Actress for her performance, it’s quite easy to see why. She does get to show a wide range of emotional responses, and her face is very expressive about what’s happening to her. She doesn’t need dialog all the time; she can convey emotions very directly. I know that the Academy had not yet started awarding Best Supporting Actress yet, but if they had, I’d fully expect that Zelda Sears as Hannah, the maid who remains loyal to Jerry through the film, would have been nominated. She’s great comic relief and knows how to deliver her lines with a lot of zing. When she tells Jerry at one point that she has a date with the butcher, Jerry asks if he has “honorable intentions.” Hannah’s reply: “I’m afraid they are. He just wants to keep a good customer.” It’s nice to have these moments of fun.

Oscar Win: Best Actress (Norma Shearer)

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Director (Robert Z. Leonard), and Best Writing

Hello, Dolly! (1969)

 

Hello, Dolly! is the film adaptation of the enormously successful Broadway musical, which was based upon a 1954 play from Thornton Wilder, The Matchmaker, which had already been adapted into a non-musical film in 1958. I say all of that because the film itself is such an old-fashioned picture that you have to remember that the source material had already been quite thoroughly worked over for decades. Besides, the whole plot is set in 1890 and involves a widowed matchmaker (the title character of Dolly Levi) trying to help others get married but also focusing on landing herself a rich husband. It’s not exactly breaking new ground in storytelling.

Much of the criticism of the film nowadays has to do with the selection of a young Barbra Streisand, just 26 at the time of the film’s release, to portray the lead character, Dolly Levi. The Broadway musical famously starred Carol Channing, who was apparently not even considered for the role because the studio was going to spend so much money on the film and she wasn’t a big enough “name” to carry it. I think the criticism of the casting choice is a bit unfair even if I would enjoy seeing what Channing’s legendary performance might have been like on film. Perhaps Streisand was too young for the part as originally written, but young women become widows too and she certainly brings a great deal of energy to the part. Yes, she borders on slapstick at times, but the story itself is so… wild? that it fits.

Besides, when you hired Streisand in the 1960s, you got that voice. She was already a music superstar, and all you have to do is listen to “Before the Parade Passes By” or the title song to realize how much she truly brings to the enjoyment of the film. Her voice is perfect for all of the Jerry Herman songs from the Broadway musical that are included here, and I enjoy the range she brings to “So Long, Dearie” near the end of the film. She had just made her film debut in Funny Girl the year before, a role that won her the Oscar for Best Actress, and she was as reasonable a choice for the time as any other person besides, perhaps, Channing.

By the way, if you want to talk odd casting decisions… Walter Matthau was certainly an odd choice to play the male leader, Horace Vandergelder, a half-a-millionaire from Yonkers who becomes the object of Dolly’s attempts to get married again. He’s certainly no singer, as his big number, the misogynistic “It Takes a Woman,” proves beyond a doubt. He’s also not a dancer, as the production number associated with the song ably demonstrates. Throughout most of the film, Matthau wears that typical hang-dog expression of his, and it doesn’t really do much to help us understand what Dolly sees in him. He does know how to deliver a punchline, though, so perhaps that was in his favor.

Director Gene Kelly (yes, that one) and his team of filmmakers take a very slow pace to the plotting of the film. As delightful as some songs are, they just seem to go on forever. Take “Put on Your Sunday Clothes,” which was used to such great effect in WALL-E (2008). It’s certainly a fun song, but as I was rewatching the film, I kept thinking that it could be half as long and would maybe be twice as effective. It’s not a sung-through musical, but you might be mistaken in believing it is after watching “Before the Parade Passes By” amid the 14^th Street Parade and all of the intertwining storylines that merge there.

The filmmakers do pay great attention to detail, particularly the costumes and the sets. Streisand wears some magnificent gowns, which I dubbed “the red one” and “the purple one” and “the gold one.” The spectacular gold beaded number during the climactic musical moment in the film is certainly worthy of the Oscar nomination for costume design. Besides, you can’t miss the succession of impressive big hats that she gets to wear. The production design justifiably won an Oscar, and all you have to do is look at the details in Irene’s millinery shop or the Harmonia Gardens restaurant to see why. Even the sheer scale of the production is impressive. I can’t imagine who difficult it was to wrangle all of the extras for the parade or for the restaurant sequence.

The supporting cast is filled with talent, and the secondary plots sometimes become much more interesting than the central one. Tommy Tune, here in his first film role before he became a Broadway legend, plays an artist in love with Horace’s niece, Ermengarde (Joyce Ames). The pairing of the tall Tune and the not-so-tall Ames is used to great comic effect, especially in a sequence involving a dance contest. As Cornelius Hackl, a clerk in Vandergelder’s store, Michael Crawford, pre-Phantom of the Opera, is a comedic delight. He’s also a very gentle singer, bringing a nice delicacy to “It Only Takes a Moment.” and he acquits himself nicely in all of the many dance numbers he’s in. It’s tough to see how the sexy Phantom emerged from the skinny fellow in this film, but you can tell he’s already a talent.

Marianne McAndrew makes an impressive debut as Irene Malloy, the owner of the hat shop who was Horace’s initial choice for a prospective wife. McAndrew is quite charming and funny. She knows how to deliver a line with the right amount of delicacy or sarcasm, and she makes for a solid secondary romantic lead here. Barnaby, the other store clerk, is played by Danny Lockin, who is a fantastic dancer. He steals whatever number he’s featured in. He’s well paired here with E.J. Peaker as Minnie Fay, who isn’t given much more to do than giggling and dancing, but she’s still delightful to watch at both.

Dolly’s job is to find Horace a wife (she already has, but he doesn’t know it’s her), get Cornelius and Barnaby together with Irene and her assistant Minnie Fay, and get Horace to support the marriage of Ambrose Kemper (Tune) and Ermengarde. No small feat, certainly, given all of the moving parts. Everyone shows up together at the Harmonia Gardens for a sequence that serves as the highlight of the film. It has it all—music, dancing, slapstick, energy—and it moves more quickly than much of the rest of the film.

The title song for the movie takes place in the restaurant and is the biggest production number of them all. Since all of the plotlines lead to it, it takes up quite a bit of time. The dancing waiters have their own number first, and the choreography by the great Michael Kidd is just astonishing—so energetic and precise. At one point, Cornelius and Barnaby get caught up in all the dancing and help with putting on quite a floor show. If all the restaurants did this nowadays, it might be more fun to dine out although you’d likely be quite hungry if you’re waiting for someone to serve you while they’re busy prancing about the restaurant.

And then Streisand as Dolly makes her grand entrance at the top of the restaurant’s grand staircase. She’s in that stunning golden dress and has long feathers of gold and green in her hair. It’s just her and the male dancers (quite a handsome group) for almost eight full minutes. She even encounters the delightful Louis Armstrong as the orchestra leader and duets with him for a few lines, even providing a little jazz vocalizing with one of the greatest jazz artists of all time. It’s interesting to note that Armstrong had a number one hit with the title song in 1964 and even won a Grammy Award for it. It is wild to watch once again as an entire restaurant comes to a halt while she belts out a song and dances around the place. Is no one impatient for their food? I guess realism isn’t the point, though, is it?

The film was released in a so-called roadshow version that included an intermission with music. That must have made for quite a long day. It’s not a great film overall, honestly, despite being fun to watch. Streisand and the supporting cast and the production design are all worth some attention, but it certainly seems odd that in the year that saw Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy, the Academy was still nominating old-fashioned films like Hello, Dolly! I think the exclamation mark is mandatory, by the way.  

Oscar Wins: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Sound, and Best Score of a Motion Picture—Original or Adaptation

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, and Best Film Editing

Jaws (1975)

 

Jaws begins, somewhat innocently enough, with a group of young people around a fire on the beach at night. They’re smoking and drinking and talking with each other in small groups. A young woman and young man make eye contact, and he starts to follow her after she walks away from the fire. He winds up having to try to catch up to her as she runs toward the water, but he’s too drunk to run as fast as she is and take his clothes off at the same time. She dives in, leaving him lying on the beach. A few horrifying moments later, we watch as something beneath the surface violently attacks her. She will be the first victim of an especially aggressive and particularly vindictive shark. We just don’t know that yet (unless we have read the best-selling novel by Peter Benchley upon which the film was based).

The overall plot is certainly familiar to people who haven’t even seen the film. After it’s clear that a shark is swimming off the shore of Amity, the police chief and a couple of other people try to keep people safe. They find themselves stymied by the townspeople who worry that closing the beaches and keeping people out of the water during the summer would be disastrous to the island’s financial success. That they would personally benefit from the beaches remaining open is certainly an important factor. However, the town can withstand only so many deaths, and the killing of a young boy in full view of a crowded beach leads to a ridiculous bounty hunt to rid the island of this dangerous predator.

Much of the second half of the film takes place aboard the Orca, the ship owned by Quint, a local “expert” shark hunter. He, the police chief, and an oceanographer the chief has consulted venture into the ocean in search of a so-called “rogue” shark, and that’s when the real adventure begins. The banter aboard the Orca is some of the best dialog in the film, and even if many of the lines have become justifiably famous (“you’re gonna need a bigger boat”), they still resonate. It’s a back-and-forth hunt that builds in intensity the longer they’re at sea, and the talk about the journey is a welcome relief from the long stretches of waiting.

The acting in Jaws is uniformly good. As Police Chief Brody, Roy Scheider is stoic, deadpan, and solid as the only person in this small island town who tries to do the right thing and close down the beaches. Richard Dreyfus plays oceanographer Matt Hooper with a great deal of humor and smart ass attitude. Hooper is the one who tries to convince the leaders of Amity that the threat from the shark is significant, but he only manages to convince Brody. As Brody’s wife, Lorraine Gary brings a warmth and vulnerability and tenderness to a role that she would play over and over again in most of the unnecessary sequels that followed.

I’d like to single out Murray Hamilton, though, a great character actor, in the role of Mayor Larry Vaught. He’s so good as the guy who puts money first, the guy who gets it all wrong, the guy whose misguided decisions cause so much death. He’s so representative of the kind of small-town politics where personal interests and private agendas become the reasons for decision making. Who counts as an “islander” and who doesn’t clearly matters in Amity, and Hamilton is especially adept at showing the mayor’s ability to undermine Brody’s authority because the chief wasn’t born on the island. Yes, a shark might be killing people in the waters off Amity, but the Fourth of July holiday is one of the biggest moneymaking days of the year, you see? Well, you would see if you were from Amity.

Robert Shaw as Quint deserves a special mention as well. He’s wild. It’s as if he’s decided that this is a pirate movie, and he’s the most seasoned pirate of them all. He looks at everyone else with a sense of derision and yet finds most of their behavior amusing. Shaw can also play drunk better than almost anyone. Still, he’s quite capable of being spellbinding such as when Quint shares stories about what happened on the U.S.S. Indianapolis at the end of World War II, one of the most famous shark stories of all time. Yes, of course, he’s clearly riffing on Ahab from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick at times, but when it’s this entertaining, who cares? Shaw takes what is truly a supporting part and steals the movie from the actors with the larger roles.

As almost everyone knows, it’s almost an hour into the film before the shark actually makes an appearance on screen. Famously, the mechanical shark would work just fine until it entered the water, and then it would not cooperate. Director Steven Spielberg and his crew had to become very creative in building tension and giving a sense of the shark’s presence without it physically showing up on the screen. One of the mechanical sharks is now on display at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, and it’s a treat to have it dangling above you in clear view as you ascend a staircase.

The cinematography and editing in Jaws are first rate. Watching it again after taking and teaching film studies classes makes me appreciate its achievements even more. It’s particularly good at conveying a sense of panic and fear in the crowd scenes. They’re very carefully choreographed and effective. I didn’t know what a “Vertigo shot” was in 1975, but even without that knowledge, when the camera zooms in on Scheider’s face on the beach as he watches a shark attack, you feel tense even if you couldn’t explain how or why. That famous music by John Williams certainly adds to the film’s suspense. Who could have guessed that two memorable notes would have such an impact, but without the shark itself on the screen for much of the film, the music carries a lot of power with those notes.

Jaws was one of the first and biggest summer blockbusters of the modern era of filmmaking, and it’s nice to see that the Academy still had respect for a film that was released in the middle of the year. Nowadays, it might have been forgotten by the time the Christmas rush of “prestigious” awards-bait movies appears. Spielberg was famously snubbed in the Best Director category, but I think the Academy has perhaps made that oversight up to him in the intervening years.

I recently watched Jaws on an IMAX screen for the 50^th anniversary of its release, and I’m both in awe of what I missed back in 1975 by seeing it on a much smaller screen and very grateful that I didn’t see it in such a large format back then. I saw it for the first time at the beautiful Genesee Theater in Waukegan, Illinois, and was forced to sit in the front row of the theater because my younger brother, who brought his babysitter with us, was obsessed with sitting in the front row for movies, not a location I’m particularly going to choose myself if there are any options.

So many people have seen this film, so I don’t think I’m spoiling any key plot points by telling you about a moment that was scary enough for me on the regular screen at the Genessee. Police Chief Brody and Hooper are investigating a seemingly abandoned boat owned by one of the local fishermen. Hooper dives into the night waters and discovers an enormous hole on the side of the boat. There’s also a large tooth embedded in the hole, clear evidence that a shark is responsible for this destruction. At the moment that this was happening onscreen, I was trying to see the color of the M&Ms my brother’s babysitter had given me. (There was this thing about green M&Ms back then, but you can check out that urban myth for yourself.)

The babysitter, in her eagerness to make sure that I didn’t miss this dramatic moment involving the discovery of the tooth, tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up from my M&Ms-filled hand just in time to see a head pop out of the hole in the side of the boat. Frightened, I threw M&Ms all over the rows of seats near us. Needless to say, this has become THE story of our watching Jaws during its initial release, and I am reminded of it from time to time on social media. Having the 50th anniversary screening being so prominently advertised did not help.

Oscar Wins: Best Sound, Best Editing, and Best Original Dramatic Score

Other Nominations: Best Picture

Disraeli (1929-30)

 

The film Disraeli depicts a key moment during the reign of Queen Victoria and Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. It has something to do with the purchase of the Suez Canal and ensuring British control of India in 1874. There are also Russian spies who are trying to find out what Disraeli and his government are doing, but to be frank, I’m not sure that any of this is all that interesting to a current audience. The film’s origins as a stage play are too obvious, and the quality of the print that I had access to was quite bad.

Today, Disraeli is perhaps best known for starring George Arliss, who became the first Best Actor Oscar winner to portray an actual person and the first British actor to win the honor. Since then, of course, neither of those is rare. Oscar voters have shown their preference for actors portraying real-life people, and British actors have certainly accumulated quite a lot of Oscar gold over the following decades. The rest of the cast of Disraeli is, comparatively, a bit amateurish, including Arliss’s own wife, Florence Arliss, playing Lady Beaconsfield, Disraeli’s wife. Oddly enough, she seems to be calling him Dizzy throughout the movie, or is she trying to say Dissy? I could never figure that out.

At the start of the film, Disraeli is already old and quite controversial. He’s denounced – to his face – by fellow politicians in the House of Commons and regularly spoken of in unfavorable terms in Hyde Park. He also has to deal with those Russian spies, one of whom he hires to be his personal secretary in order to keep tabs on the fellow and the other a very nosy woman who has access to the gossip of high society types. Disraeli pretends to be ill in order to get Mrs. Travers (Doris Lloyd) to reveal what she knows, and he’s able to turn the information around on her. That sequence might be the most entertaining in the entire film.

I don’t recall from my British history classes all of the fuss that the film makes about the Suez Canal’s importance to Great Britain and its empirical tendencies. It’s dismissed by one of the characters as being nothing more than an “Egyptian ditch.” Nowadays we understand the significance of such canals, but I’m not sure I ever fully understood from the film how securing the canal would give control of India to Great Britain and make Victoria the “Empress of India,” which seems to be Disraeli’s goal. Certainly, British expansionism was a key aspect of this period in their history, so the film is rather accurate in that respect, I suppose.

There’s a subplot involving Lord Charles Deeford (Anthony Bushell), a young and handsome and dull fellow, trying to woo Lady Clarissa Pevensey (Joan Bennett), who finds him just as boring as the viewers do. He’s certainly handsome, but he only becomes truly interesting when Disraeli dispatches him to help negotiate for British control of the canal. When he’s gone from the screen, she and we get a chance to forget how stuffy he is. His return, at least, guarantees success for Britain and a sense of how he might actually be smarter and more energetic and even useful than he initially appears.

I’m surprised – even though I probably shouldn’t be given when the film was made – that more wasn’t made of Disraeli’s Jewishness. Yes, the “old money” class of Britain certainly didn’t look favorably on him because he wasn’t “one of them,” but how much of their dislike of him might be attributed to antisemitism? The movie only mentions his Jewish identity a couple of times, and once is in connection to a Jewish banker who supposedly will help Disraeli secure the money to pay for the canal. Otherwise, the film remains rather silent on how the reactions to Disraeli might have been motivated by the feelings of British aristocracy to his ethnicity.

Like many stage productions that were adapted into films in the early years of “talkies,” Disraeli is really, truly quite talky (talkie?). Dialog takes clear priority over action, and the sets too often reveal the stage origins of the film. When you don’t have to change the sets as often, you could provide more furniture, for example, to represent better what Victorian homes and offices looked like. I mean, they weren’t known for this kind of rather comparatively austere minimalism.

The version of the film that I saw had a very hazy quality to its cinematography that I can’t quite determine where it was the result of deterioration or just how it was almost filmed originally. It almost looks out of focus at times. Some of the outdoor sequences are quite nice, but I didn’t understand the camera’s obsession with the swans and peacocks that populate the Disraeli home. The DVD (probably a bootleg copy) I watched was actually recorded from a Turner Classic Movies screening, so I’m wondering if we just don’t have access to a good print nowadays.

I’ve often said that you shouldn’t rely on a movie to provide historical accuracy. If you want what really happened, a book or a documentary might be more helpful than a fiction film. However, after watching Disraeli, I was left wondering if the actual events were truly this boring. If you need evidence that this is a fictional story, look at the Hollywood ending the film gives you. Disraeli’s wife is suddenly sick even though I don’t recall any sense that she’d been all that frail throughout the rest of the movie, but she makes an astonishing recovery just in time to join her husband to meet Queen Victoria at the film’s end.

Oscar Win: Best Actor (George Arliss)

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Picture and Best Writing

Sound of Metal (2020)

 

I don’t normally start a discussion of a film with an examination of the sound design, but Sound of Metal does such an amazing job that, even though it’s odd to point it out, you can’t really experience this film without acknowledging it. The central character learns that he’s suffering from severe hearing loss, and we as viewers and listeners get to experience what he’s going through. The film features subtitles throughout – although it does withhold telling us what’s going on at a couple of key moments – and the difficulties that we have in hearing replicates for us what Ruben (played with great physicality by Riz Ahmed) experiences. When he cannot hear anything but distorted voices, that’s what we hear. When the sounds for him almost disappear, they do the same for us. It’s a spectacular aspect of the film, and it truly helps to make the impact even greater for us as an audience.

We may not realize it when the film starts, but we’re already in Ruben’s auditory world. We see him on stage with his girlfriend. It’s a loud blast of music, which contrasts to the many moments of absolute silence we get later in the film. They’re a heavy metal act – or punk metal or something like that – and much of her singing is rather inaudible. We might think at first that it’s the quality of the singing or the music more generally, but we’re already getting a sense of how much difficulty Ruben is having. When he cannot hear at all on a subsequent night, he realizes (as do we) that he is suffering from hearing loss. A doctor’s appointment arranged by a pharmacist reveals that he only has 24-28 percent of his hearing capacity. The film really only takes about ten minutes or so at the beginning to convey how much Ruben’s life is going to change.

Ruben is also a former addict, and he wants a solution quickly so that he can resume his life on the road. He would need $40,000-$80,000 for cochlear implants, money that they don’t have as struggling musicians. Lou (Olivia Cooke) is worried about him, though, and they contact Ruben’s sponsor, who finds him a spot in a deaf community in a rural area. She has to leave him there because the community is only for those who are deaf or hard of hearing; those who are not hearing impaired would be a distraction, according to the rules of the community leader, Joe (played with great stoicism by Paul Raci). It’s tough for her to leave him, and it’s tough for him to let her go. Their separation is painful to watch.

Ruben doesn’t immediately fit in, of course, and we also get to be a part of feeling his alienation. The others in the community mostly use American Sign Language, but he doesn’t know how to sign yet. He senses they’re talking about him sometimes, but he cannot respond. Only those who can lipread can understand what he’s saying, and he feels rather isolated at first. However, Joe is committed to getting Ruben to become more integrated into the community. Ruben goes to classes for ASL with children and slowly begins to bond with them. He even brings in music and drumming to their classroom so that they can get a sense of what his life was like. The moments with the kids are really some of the more delightful ones in the film.

His comfort in the rural community – which is beautifully photographed, by the way – is short-lived, though. He becomes impatient when he sees online that Lou has gone to France to live with her father and is now singing a very different style of music. His career as a rock drummer might be coming to an end, and he wants to return to that life if he can. He sells almost everything he owns: the music equipment, their RV they used to tour, whatever he can. Of course, he also is impatient for the implants to work immediately after surgery, but what he hears first is really distorted and painful to listen to. He’s warned by the audiologist to give it time, but Ruben leaves almost immediately for France to meet with Lou. He seems to think that if they just get back to their music, he’ll regain some sense of what he considers “normalcy.” The film has repeatedly questioned what “normal” is, but Ruben isn’t quite to the point of accepting his new life as normal just yet.

The pacing of the film is rather interesting. Very intense moments are followed at times by very slow passages. We even see how Ruben’s reactions can mirror the film’s pacing or vice versa. He’s often very quiet or still, but then he will have an explosion of emotions. He holds in his feelings at times when you know he’s not as happy or accepting as he claims to be. It’s a thrilling performance in many ways, and you can sense how very committed Ahmed was to learning how to play the drums and how to use ASL to communicate. The film editing was honored with an Oscar, as was the sound design, so you do have a sense that the voters really appreciated what the filmmakers were doing.

Even when he’s in France, we get to experience what Ruben is hearing. The distortion returns at times, and he has to adjust the implants to accommodate the volume at other times. When Lou and her father duet in French at a party, we don’t get subtitles telling us what they’re singing. If you know French, it’s probably a charming song. However, Ruben apparently doesn’t understand French, so we aren’t allowed to experience a moment differently than he does if we also don’t understand French. It can be distancing or alienating at times, certainly, but once you’ve caught on as to what’s happening with the sound, you can’t really help but appreciate the commitment of the filmmakers to let us into the world of someone experiencing the loss of their sense of hearing.

Sound of Metal also teaches us a bit about the technology available to the deaf or hearing impaired. We witness the use of sign language and lipreading and speech-to-text programs, all of which help us to see what someone just learning how to live with hearing loss might experience. The deaf community of the film is a rather insular one, but the movie takes some time to introduce us to the controversy surrounding cochlear implants. Some fear there’s nothing to be fixed in someone who cannot hear, so they oppose the use of implants. That’s why Ruben has to leave after he gets them. He no longer fits into the community like he did before when he was learning to accept himself as someone without full hearing.

I’ve mentioned the cinematography already, but it’s exceptional and was overlooked by the Academy. The rural landscape would likely be what many would notice, but watch the camerawork as Ruben and Lou are traveling in the RV from gig to gig, or look at how beautiful Paris looks as he walks to her father’s place. The wind in the trees, the wheat moving gracefully, the kinds of moments that those of us with full hearing take for granted are presented here as the marvels that they are. You may be able to hear that wind blowing, but the subtitles on the screen remind you that not everyone experiences it the same way. Our immersion into Ruben’s experience is likely not to be replicated easily after the stellar achievements of this film.

Oscar Win: Best Sound and Best Achievement in Film Editing

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Riz Ahmed), Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Paul Raci), and Best Original Screenplay