More Tales from the Socialist Literary Collective*

"Call Northside 777"(Henry Hathaway, 1948) There was a brief period in American films where Hollywood embraced the neo-realist school coming out of Italy--where stories were filmed out in the streets, not in the rarified atmosphere of a film-studio (Italy's huge studio, Cinecitta, was being used to house refugees), and it dove-tailed with the gritty world of film noir and crime-thrillers. Elia Kazan made one, even Hitchcock did. But the most well-remembered of them was "Call Northside 777" with James Stewart as blasé "Chicago Times" reporter Jim McLane, who, upon taking an assignment he doesn't want, turns it into a cause celebre and his own obsession to see Justice done.

This was one of the first movies Stewart did after his Air Force service, as he was beginning to challenge and even destroy his callow image at the beginning of his career. Now, with an added maturity he could actually pull off the cynical journalist role he wasn't too convincing as in "The Philadelphia Story" (which won him a "sympathy" Oscar after losing the previous year for "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" the year before) He returned from the war determined to play characters with a darker edge.

Henry Hathaway directed with a subtle eye, finding interesting deep-focus shots in lackluster surroundings. McLane's first encounter with a scrub-woman washing the stairs of a cathedraled office building carries the visual weight of years of work needed to raise the reward-money to help spring her imprisoned son (Richard Conte). The jailhouse of the visitation scenes IS the jailhouse, and the arrest of Conte's character looks and feels like actual newsreel footage. Finally, you get to go back in time and watch vital clues produced by the old technology of wire-photo transfer. It's another instance where the straight-laced neo-noir style goes a long way in selling the truth of a story, however implausible it might seem.

"The Wages of Fear " (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1952) Some movies are so good they defy time, place and stay universally fresh, seemingly like they were made yesterday. Clouzot's "The Wages of Fear" is that kind of movie, and I would call it the best film 0f 2007 if it was released today instead of 1952. It tells the story of four vagrants scratching out a living in a South American village existing in the shadow (and under the thumb) of an American oil company. One of the distant oil rigs goes up in flames, and these four are hired to drive two trucks of nitro-glycerin over unforgiving roads to the inferno to snuff it out. Why take on this task? $2,000 per man--enough money to fly out and make a new life. Why these four? They're not union workers, and should they die--the odds are fifty/fifty, hence the two trucks--they have no families who might sue or require compensation.

It's a neat little trap, and that doesn't cover the obstacles that Nature (and uncaring road-workers!) have along the way. All these desperate times call for desperate measures and the efforts taken can be undone in the blink of an eye, or a flash of fire. For the four, the journey strips them down to their real selves, all pretense and masks disappear in the face of impossible challenges that must be overcome, and the looming threat of death riding behind them. The wages of fear may be death, but "The Wages of Fear' is a bleak metaphor for life itself.

All of this is played out over a blasted landscape, the results of the presence of Big Oil, and the journey feels like going back through time as well as space, through the spare white jail-bars of a denuded forest, back to the primordial ooze and finally ending up in Hell. By the end one can't help wonder if the fate of Nature and the nature of Fate are intertwined. Except for one fairly amateurish performance this is a near-perfect movie.






"Tom Jones" (Tony Richardson, 1964) I have been hearing for years and reading in books of the freshness and originality of "Tom Jones," and after seeing it, one wonders what all the fuss was about. Yes, it's fun and frivolous. Yes, it won the Academy award for Best Picture. Finney is marvelous, but one also looks at the techniques used and must admit that it has not aged at all well. One must be careful, though, as a film should be considered as it was of its time. The current discussion (one could hardly call it a controversy) where "The Searchers" is a classic--for the simple reason that its sensibilities are of another time and picture-making makes one wary of arguments like this. I've also had to defend "2001" for being full of cliches--yes 'tis, considering every "space" or sci-fi movie since then has ripped it off--merely because it was of a time and sensibility. To someone growing up on MTV cutting "2001" must look stunningly tame (Be that as it may, I'll bet an MTV movie-goer, would still be affected by "long-take" syndrome, where the longer a film-scene goes on, the more nervous-making it becomes.

They'd never have that problem with "Tom Jones." But after sitting on it a week, dissipating the expectations and prejudices and going in for another viewing, one has found the context: the past is not a pageant. Historical dramas before it, were as stiff as the multi-layered costumes and as formal as a ball-waltz. "Tom Jones" got rid of the tracking camera and the stately walks, and made the 2-dimensional costume-fillers 3-dimensional people, and did so with a markedly ribald sense of humor, and the understanding that what drove them, drives us. Since then, Richard Lester and Ridley Scott (and Merchant/Ivory and everybody else making historical dramas of classic novels) has taken Richardson's path and taken the "hit-the-marks" formalism out, and lensed with a satirical eye to show us the past and how we repeat it. "Tom Jones" bursting on the scene must have felt as relieving as removing a whale-bone corset!

"The Spirit of the Beehive" (Victor Erice, 1973) Victor Erice is the Terrence Malick of Spain (though to be correct it should be the other way around). His films are precise and planned so carefully that he has made three films since 1972's "The Spirit of the Beehive." "Spirit" tells the story of two children; Father is a bee-keeper, Mother is a repressed housewife. The children go to see a matinee of James Whale's "Frankenstein," which deeply affects the youngest, Ana. She wonders why, in a pivotal scene, the monster kills a young child (in the film it's never seen) and if the monster is real. She's told by her older sister that the monster is a spirit who will come at her call--"Hello, I am Ana." This sets in motion a series of events that juxtaposes life and freedom, identity and society, death and repression. This film was made in the last echoes of the Franco regime and the people walk around in a form of zombie-state, their expressions impossible to read. That the Frankenstein monster is seen in this context as a symbol of life and freedom shows what a palpable symbol it remains, and how malleable.

"The House on 92nd Street" (Henry Hathaway, 1945) Another of those neo-realist films, filmed in the locations in which they occurred. But this one goes a step further--except for the lead actors, everybody's a real FBI agent--you can tell, the line readings are merely that, line readings. "Bob, let's get this over to the Cryptanalysis boys to see what they think." "O-kay, Wendell!" And the actors, mostly unknowns except for the always-natural Lloyd Nolan stick out because they're at ease and have better hair-styles. Real surveillance footage of the German Embassy during the war is used in this story of a Quantico-trained double-agent tracking a Nazi plot to discover the secrets of The Manhattan Project (or "Project 97," as its called in the movie--it was made in 1945, after all). It's a stunt-film, a propaganda document, an early film-noir (without the noir stylistics). And the blend of styles almost gives it a documentary feel. Henry Hathaway does some ingenious work making this all work together, at the cost of making the staged segments feel extremely staged in a D-budget sense.

"The Hound of the Baskervilles" (Terence Fisher, 1958) I'll go see any Sherlock Holmes story (as long as it's not a spoof), not so much because the story's are compelling--they're fascinating for the glimpse of salaciousness in Victorian England, but the story-template is rarely altered--but because the portrayal of Holmes is an actor's showcase. Holmes by Doyle is something of a blank slate, so an actor can infuse him with whatever qualities they choose to emphasize: Basil Rathbone, the heroic; Jeremy Brett, the neurotic; and on down the line to the worst--Stewart Granger who was content to make Holmes merely British (we won't get into Hugh Laurie as "House"). So, it's interesting to see the Hammer Studios' "take" on Holmes. Hammer was the British equivalent of Roger Corman's AIP, but with a distinct advantage. They also purloined classics in the public domain, but they had Terence Fisher, with his flawless eye of direction (and cleavage) and a repertory cast that included Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Here Cushing plays Holmes and he's obviously devoured the Doyle stories for Holmes quirks, stabbing documents into his mantelshelf and writing notes on his cuffs. His Holmes is energetic and flinty, bordering on rude with a relish of the melodramatic. His skull-like face even recalls Sidney Paget's original drawings. Until Brett came along, Cushing, to this Baker Street Irregular, was the best of the Holmes portrayals. Christopher Lee plays the put-upon Henry Baskerville, and as the actor is quick to point out in a "Special Features" interview, it's one of a handful of romantic leads that he's played in his long, long career. What makes this "Baskervilles" different from the countless others? Holmes is absent for less time, a lurid flash-back acquaints us with the origins of the Baskerville curse, there is a romance (of sorts) and the death by quicksand is given to someone entirely different. It is, though, faithful in spirit, if not in detail.

"The World's Fastest Indian" (Roger Donaldson, 2005) A labor of love for Donaldson, who first did a documentary of the man in 1971, "The World's Fastest Indian" tells the story of New Zealander Burt Munro who fulfilled a dream of testing the 1920 Indian Spirit motorcycle he'd been tinkering with his entire life at the test track on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Everything seems to be against him: he's old, lives in a shack, has a pension and angina, but his basic subsistence-level, his spirit, energy and resourcefulness (and his not inconsiderable charm) are enough to get him to America during "Speed Week" in Utah. Recommended by FarmerScott, K. was a little underwhelmed by the prospect--"I'm not into "engine" movies," she said--but was charmed by it, and so rooting for the man, that any set-back was felt keenly. It helps that Anthony Hopkins plays Munro as a slightly-distracted charmer, who, when he goes off on a story or a philosophy turns away from his audience as if he's addressing the world, but takes things in great genial strides and an attitude that it can all be overcome. It's one of those "Based on a True Story" tales that actually is a true story, as the documentary that Donaldson originally wrote and directed is also provided on the DVD, and the real Munro's words and manner are displayed. It's a truly heart-warming, uplifting tale, made doubly so by its provable authenticity. It is easily Donaldson's best film, and a tragedy that so few people went to see it in a theater. It's always asked, "Why don't they make movies like they used to?" And the answer is--because people don't support them. "The World's Fastest Indian" is one of those that "got away."





"The Innocents" (Jack Clayton, 1960) One of the truly great horror movies ever made, though without a drop of blood in sight. Jack Clayton's film of William Archibald's play (based on Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw"), with a polish by Truman Capote, and a final coat of lacquer by John Mortimer, is a creepily finessed horror story/psychological thriller depending on your point-of-view. Miss Giddens is given her first governessing job by "The Uncle," a cold bon-vivant, who wants her to "handle everything" and "leave me alone." Arriving at the country estate, she finds a world alive with life...and some dead stuff, too. Isolated and buttoned-up (minister's daughter) she starts to suspect that her little charges are more than they seem to be, finally convinced that they are in the thrall of the dead care-takers previously employed. Deborah Kerr treads a fine line between gentility and hysteria, and Michael Redgrave, appearing briefly, is the coldest of rakes. The stars of the film, though, are little Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin, she, vibrating like a thing possessed (well...) and he, all-stillness and eyes that are fathoms deep. There has rarely been two kids as quietly malevolent as these two. Then, too, are the presences of Peter Wyngarde (Britain's epitome of the degrading satyr) and Clytie Jessop, as the figments of Quint and Jessel, who have gone before. The image of Jessop, standing ethereally among the reeds of a lake still is one of the singularly creepy images in all of cinema for me. Freddie Francis did the outstanding cinematography, and A.G. Ambler and John Cox, who provided the outstanding sounds evocative of things both natural and not. Talk about the road to Hell paved with good intentions...



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