The Steel Helmet: Samuel Fuller

In his landmark study The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968, Andrew Sarris wrote of Samuel Fuller:

“[His] ideas are undoubtedly too broad and oversimplified for any serious analysis, but it is the artistic force with which his ideas are expressed that makes his career so fascinating to critics who can rise above their political prejudices...It is time the cinema followed the other arts in honoring its primitives.”

With all due respect to Mr. Sarris, there is nothing primitive about Fuller’s greatest films. His 1951 Korean War film The Steel Helmet may have only been his third film, but it demonstrates a clarity of vision, a ruthlessness of purpose, and a single-minded skill the likes of which eluded many of his contemporaries who were industry veterans.

Largely inspired by his service during World War Two fighting with the 1st Infantry Division of the US Army, The Steel Helmet follows a rag-tag patrol of US Infantry who are tasked with capturing a Buddhist temple and establishing an observation post. First among them is the cynical Sgt. Zack (Gene Evans), the sole survivor of his unit after they were captured and executed by North Koreans. A bitter, grizzled veteran of World War Two, he is rescued by a South Korean orphan (William Chun) that he quickly nicknames “Short Round.” Despite his wishes, Short Round follows Sgt. Zack as he meets up with Corporal Thompson (James Edwards), an African-American medic whose unit was also wiped out.

In a foggy jungle (in reality a tiny set that Fuller tricks the audience into thinking is a sprawling jungle via tight close-ups and clever frame compositions), they meet up with a straggling patrol led by the inexperienced Lieutenant Driscoll (Steve Brodie). Once together, they have their first fire-fight with a small group of North Korean snipers. It is here that the ingenuity of Fuller’s technique comes into focus: the fighting is portrayed as a dirty, terrifying, and intimate affair via close-ups, realistic fighting (weapons jam, enemies are largely obscured and unseen, and the violence occurs in occasional spurts interspersed throughout panicked calm), and a palpable sense of fear.

In creating The Steel Helmet, Fuller had deliberately wanted to portray an accurate cross-section of the US Infantry. Therefore the patrol is made up of characters who defy the traditional war genre stock characters like the ingenue farm-boy and the tough-talking, cynical Joe Whats-His-Name from Brooklyn. There’s the war-weary Nisei Sgt. Tanaka (Richard Loo), an ex-conscientious objector who lugs around his old priest’s hand organ named Private Bronte (Robert Hutton), a soft-spoken radio operator who lost all of his hair to Scarlet Fever nicknamed Private Baldy, and a mute pack mule caretaker known simply as Joe.

Once at the temple, Joe is killed by a hidden North Korean soldier who is quickly taken prisoner. Sgt. Zack wants blood, but Lt. Driscoll’s superiors want a prisoner for interrogation. For the next few hours their prisoner tries to sow discord among their ranks. He asks Thompson how he can fight for a racist country that deprives him of rights and freedoms. He asks Tanaka how he can kill other Asians for a country that locked up Japanese citizens in camps during World War Two. Both of these scenes caused great controversy with the US Army which had provided the production with stock footage. In fact, The Steel Helmet was reportedly the first American film to acknowledge the Japanese internment camps. Ever the hard-hitting reporter, Fuller refused to back down from these controversies.

In one last moment of scandal, Sgt. Zack guns down their prisoner for mocking Short Round after he is killed by sniper fire. The Army was appalled by Fuller’s implication that Americans executed POWs, but he fought back by having his former commanding officer, Brigadier General George A. Taylor, contact the Pentagon and confirm that such instances were historically accurate.

The film climaxes with a devastating North Korean assault on the temple in which most of the patrol is killed. The sequence is both a breath-taking piece of film-making and a semiotically charged phantasm. The entire film was shot in only ten days for $104,000. As per the film’s shoestring budget, Fuller was forced to transform 25 extras from UCLA into the rampaging North Korean Army. For scenes that he couldn’t replicate with stock footage, Fuller filmed the extras in long distance shots and swift medium close-ups that obscured his actors’ faces. Much like how Sam Peckinpah managed to create the French Army in Major Dundee (1965) by filming a small group of costumed extras several times in different locations, Fuller tricks the audience into thinking that they are watching an entire army.

One of the reoccurring symbols in The Steel Helmet is the massive, towering Buddha located in the temple. It is Fuller’s semiotic invocation of the Buddha that proves that he is not an enthusiastic amateur. Utilizing what Christian Metz referred to as “bracket syntagma,” wherein individual shots are grouped together to create certain associations,  Fuller transforms the Buddha from scene to scene. When the soldiers first arrive, the Buddha seems like an imposing enigma from an unknowable culture. When they make camp, Fuller’s continuous framing of the Buddha in the background of shots transforms it into an omnipresent spectator. When their prisoner finally dies, the Buddha’s bleeding hand makes him an angel of mercy. And finally, as the temple is obliterated by artillery shells and gunfire, the Buddha becomes a stoic monument of the impermanence of humanity against the implacable nature of infinity.

Fuller’s means may have been primitive, but his creations were not. The film was a hit when it was released, grossing more than $6 million and becoming the first independently produced film to play at Loew’s State Theater in New York City. The Steel Helmet also brought Fuller to Hollywood’s attention, scoring him a contract with Fox. From there on Fuller would direct some of the most daring and iconoclastic films of the late Hollywood Studio System. Fuller’s ultimate masterpiece is widely considered to be The Big Red One (1980), a film that followed the exploits of his beloved 1st Infantry throughout World War Two. But I still feel inclined to declare The Steel Helmet as his best war film. With its go-for-broke mentality and sweaty aesthetic, The Steel Helmet is as good a war film as was ever made about the “Forgotten War.”

9/10

C-Man: Joseph Lerner

First, I was confused. Then, I was frustrated. Afterwards I was angry, then apathetic, and then, by the very end, I was simply bored. Joseph Lerner's C-Man is a disastrous miscalculation of aesthetics, tone, and storytelling. It tries to be a murder mystery, a police procedural, a romantic melodrama, and a gangster flick all at the same time. But in overreaching, the film fumbles all of its bits and pieces into a cluttered, ugly mess. The film follows U.S. Customs Department Agent Cliff Holden as he goes undercover (I think) to try and track down a group of jewel thieves whose activities led to the death of one of his childhood best friends. Along the way he meets a strange assortment of characters who stumble in and out of the narrative with all of the grace and tact of an inebriated circus clown. Trying to keep them all straight is a nightmare: there's the mysterious Hollander woman, the alcoholic surgeon, the wealthy older woman, and a whole host of generic looking tough guys in sharp suits. It takes a risk on several complex narrative techniques such as prolonged sequences with little dialogue and gritty on-location shooting. But all of the film's gambles come up short. In trying to be clever, we are left with a film that frequently leaves the audience completely confused as to what in the hell is going on. Gerald Hirschfeld's studio cinematography is frequently uninspired. And Gail Kubik's score (which would later be the inspiration for a piece that would win him the Pulitzer Prize) is loud, chaotic, and brutal. It even occasionally drowns out the actors. At one point, it literally gave me a headache. I had to turn the volume down so that my head would stop hurting. C-Man is an unpleasant mess.

3/10

Chameleon Street: Wendell B. Harris Jr.

Wendell B. Harris Jr's Chameleon Street is a tumultuous explosion of raw talent, skill, and cinematic ingenuity. Based on the real-life exploits of con-artist William Douglas Street, the film charts his picaresque odyssey through an American wasteland of racism and poverty. From home security installer to extortionist to Ivy League student to surgeon (actually performing several hysterectomies without any formal training), Street desperately tries to keep one step in front of the authorities in his journey to escape the confines of the Detroit slums. Curiously, Harris (who wrote, directed, and starred in the film as the lead character) can't seem to decide whether or not Street was a victim of circumstance forced to do whatever he had to in order to survive or if he became a con-artist because it was an essential part of his nature. Perhaps being a con-artist was merely an outlet for Street's desperate desire for an intangible something, a longing for that which society would never afford him due to his economical and racial background. The film is also extraordinarily funny. Filled with Brechtian asides and stylistic diversions like bizarre "hip-hop" editing and thematic bait-and-switches, Chameleon Street plays like a one-sided dialogue with the audience. So what is Harris trying to say with this film? Perhaps like Street's endless quest, it isn't the answer or end-game so much as it is the journey and debate.

9/10

Slattery's Hurricane: André De Toth

It is my professional opinion as a film scholar and critic that André De Toth's Slattery's Hurricane is not just a drama, but a full-blown film noir. First, almost the entire film is told in flashback as the protagonist, former World War II navy pilot Will Slattery (Richard Widmark), narrates and provides bitter, cynical commentary on his actions. Second, the film involves characters who have been left adrift psychologically after World War II. Having been unfairly passed over for recognition for heroic actions in the Pacific Theater, Slattery is angry and callous. He works as a pilot transporting "candy bars" for a corrupt tycoon. In reality, he is transporting illegal drugs. But he doesn't mind turning a blind eye to the whole thing. As Lynyrd Skynyrd once said, "Don't ask me no questions and I won't tell you no lies." So we have the self-reflexive narrative techniques of film noir and a brooding film noir protagonist. I've seen movies widely accepted as film noir that have fulfilled fewer criteria of the genre. Anyhow, the film charts Slattery's redemption as both a pilot and a man after he strikes up an affair with his friend's wife and becomes explicitly involved with the drug trade. The film is framed by Slattery heroically sacrificing himself to fly a navy plane into the heart of a hurricane so that local authorities can chart the storm's development and evacuate threatened areas. But the film's greatest weakness is that it ultimately cops out of punishing Slattery. Against impossible odds he survives his suicide mission, is forgiven for his involvement in the drug trade, and is accepted as a hero. So the ending isn't emblematic of film noir. But that shouldn't discount all of the other indicators.

6/10

Dredd: Pete Travis

At its best, Pete Travis' Dredd, an adaptation of the infamous 2000AD comic character, is a smart, captivating action film that ultimately triumphs due to its fantastic effects work, sound mixing and editing, and razor-sharp screenplay. When three drug dealers are savagely executed in a 200-storey slum tower named Peach Trees by a psychotic drug lord named "Ma-Ma," two Judges, members of Mega-City One's authoritative police force, are dispatched to investigate. The first is the illustrious Judge Dredd, a man who's fascistic devotion to law and order is tempered by the fact that he is one of the only law enforcers in Mega-City One who actually gives a damn about the people. The second is rookie Judge Cassandra Anderson, the most powerful psychic ever discovered. After they arrest one of Ma-Ma's officers with the intent of taking him to HQ for interrogation, she has the whole tower locked down with an ultimatum for the inhabitants: kill the Judges or you all suffer. So in Dredd we have a film that is equal parts Assault on Precinct 13 (1976) and Die Hard (1988): the Judges must navigate a closed environment while fending off seemingly endless waves of criminals. As such, every action sequence, every gunfight, and every battle scene has a distinct purpose for progressing the plot. Alex Garland's screenplay manages to capture the spontaneity of the 2000AD "progs" via episodic plot developments that blend seamlessly with the rest of the story. The traditional 3-act storyline is eschewed in favor of mission-based objectives: first the Judges must investigate the murders, then they must get to a medical lab after the building is locked down, then they must establish radio contact with the outside, etc, etc. This makes the entire film's story feel organic and alive. However, the film is frequently hobbled by uncreative cinematography and poorly framed action sequences. For a siege film such as this, consistent spatial awareness of fighters within and without their environments is a basic necessity. But many scenes (especially a cat-and-mouse kitchen shoot-out near the end) leave us confused as to where everyone is in relation to each other. It's one thing for that confusion to be a deliberate stylistic choice, thereby echoing the protagonist's disorientation. But in Dredd it seems more like a failing on the part of the filmmakers.

8/10

Man of Tai Chi: Keanu Reeves

For his directorial debut, Keanu Reeves' released Man of Tai Chi, a surprisingly mature martial arts flick framed within a China that is devouring itself in its desperate dash to modernize. The film follows a frustrated young practitioner of Tai Chi named Tiger Chen. The only remaining student of the Ling Kong Tai Chi style, Tiger is frustrated with the meager salary he makes working as a delivery man. So when the enigmatic Donaka Mark (Reeves in a surprisingly terrifying villainous turn) offers him money "to fight," Tiger quickly accepts. Eager to prove that Tai Chi can be used as a fierce fighting style instead of merely a defensive, meditative one, Tiger swiftly becomes corrupted by the battles. Later, it is revealed that Donaka has been recording and broadcasting all of his fights. But Donaka isn't just selling Tiger's fights. It is actually part of a larger plan to make a documentary charting the corruption of an "innocent" fighter and the style of Tai Chi. It is the very destruction of Tiger's soul and the integrity of Tai Chi that Donaka wants to sell. For Reeves, the corruption of Tai Chi is inextricably linked with the corruption of Chinese culture by outside (specifically Western) forces: Donaka manipulates Tiger into working for him by having Chinese authorities condemn his master's 600+ year old temple, Donaka's wealthy and blood-thirsty clientele all dress in lavish Western styles, and one of Donaka's main employees can best be described as the Chinese equivalent of a "wigger." The fight scenes are well captured with hand-held cameras. It is to the film's credit that the fights never become painful or difficult to watch despite the erratic camera movements during these sequences. There are occasional green-screen shots, particularly during travel in-betweens, that are unforgivably amateurish, however. But Man of Tai Chi's intelligent story and excellent fight scenes (particularly an early one involving Tiger, a business suit, and a nice tie) are enough to warrant a view by any action cinema enthusiast.

7/10

Lightning: Mikio Naruse

I'm beginning to feel like I've been duped. Lightning marks the seventh film by director Mikio Naruse that I've seen. Lauded by many critics as an under-appreciated master of Japanese cinema, I have done my best to give Naruse the benefit of the doubt and to expose myself to as much of his cinema that I could get my hands on. But I find myself tired of trying. I cannot stand Naruse's films. I've given some of them decent reviews before, but even now I find myself wondering whether or not those films deserve a reassessment. Of course, that would require me to actually go back and re-watch his films, and that seems unthinkable. Lacking Ozu's technique and Mizoguchi's pathos, Naruse's domestic dramas (like Lightning) are flat, tedious affairs that sap the energy from my body. Take Lightning: the film is about a young woman dealing with her squabbling three half-siblings and weak-willed mother. The woman feels trapped in a life going nowhere, not unlike the viewers of this film. Revelations are made and trusts betrayed and broken. One sibling becomes a widow only for her late husband's mistress to come knocking on her door for money. Such a development should have elicited some kind of response from me, but I felt nothing but bland despondency. When the film climaxes with the young woman and her mother arguing to the point of tears while a thunderstorm rages in the background, I didn't feel emotionally fulfilled in the way that a basic story arc should leave me. It was climax without catharsis. I would give the film a lower score, but that would suggest that it was less than mediocre. And, truth be told, the film does have a few decent performances and the cinematography, while flat, is competent enough. Although, the piano soundtrack's constant imitation of the Aquarium movement from Camille Saint-Saëns' The Carnival of the Animals suite is almost enough to tip the scales against the film's favor even further.

6/10

The Miracle Woman: Frank Capra

Frank Capra's The Miracle Woman is an excellent film about faith and an early sound triumph for actress Barbara Stanwyck. After her minister father is fired by his congregation on his deathbed after years of dutiful service, Florence Fallon (Stanwyck) renounces her faith and joins forces with con-man Bob Hornsby (Sam Hardy) to establish a phony nationwide evangelical movement with her as their spokeswoman. But after she falls in love with a blind-man named John Carson (David Manners) who believes her to be the real deal, she realizes that she can't continue her scam any longer. As I mentioned, The Miracle Woman contains one of Stanwyck's best early film performances. Her opening monologue where she chastizes her late father's congregation for their hypocrisy is particularly effective. Her emotions range from calm and collected to wild hysterics without missing a beat. After viewing it, one could easily be forgiven for believing that it was either a later performance by Stanwyck or the work of a seasoned professional. It is also nice to see a role where Manners, well known for his work doing friendly, sympathetic characters, is allowed to stretch his acting muscles a bit. Here he exudes more than just light charm; he is downright charismatic (although the ventriloquist bits quickly overstay their welcome). Frequent Capra collaborator Joseph Walker displays his usual brilliance as cinematographer, demonstrating his skill at effortlessly transitioning between chaotic crowd scenes and intimate moments between two or three characters. His cinematography in the scenes taking place inside Fallon's "church" are particularly striking in their scope and dolly/zoom-lens acrobatics.

7/10

Black Lizard: Kinji Fukasaku

Perhaps it was destiny for Black Lizard to become a celebrated cult classic. After all, the film represents a culmination of input from three of Japan's greatest modern artists. Based off a novel by Edogawa Rampo and its subsequent theatrical adaptation by Yukio Mishima (yes, the same Mishima who attempted a failed coup of the Japanese government which led to his committing seppuku), Black Lizard was directed by none other than genre genius Kinji Fukasaku of Battles Without Honor and Humanity (1973) and Battle Royale (2000) fame. The result is a stylistically dazzling kaleidoscope of bizarre imagery and outrageous plot twists. The film's hero is Kogoro Akechi, a detective little known in the West but beloved as Japan's answer to Sherlock Holmes. Akechi must outsmart the sinister Black Lizard, a flamboyant criminal (played by noted drag queen Akihiro Miwa) intent on kidnapping the daughter of a wealthy businessman so she can ransom her for a rare and beautiful diamond. As the film progresses, the Black Lizard becomes fascinated with Akechi and falls in love with him. But after successfully getting the diamond, she decides to keep the businessman's daughter so she can turn her into a doll for her amusement. For the Black Lizard, turning people into dolls is the only way to eternally preserve their beauty (a sentiment that reflects the main character's thoughts in Mishima's The Temple of the Golden Pavilion). So Akechi must rescue the girl before she is killed, stuffed, and mounted in an eternal embrace with a missing musician also under the Black Lizard's employ. The characters' behavior in this film is informed by their personal philosophies first and foremost. The Black Lizard doesn't steal because she wants money, but because she sees diamonds as a perfect, soulless form of beauty. Akechi isn't a detective because he loves justice, but because he has a strange fascination and affection for criminals. Even the musician decides to sacrifice himself to become a doll so that the Black Lizard will finally love him. As such, the film is full of opaque philosophical discussions between characters, especially between Akechi and the Black Lizard. But for what it's worth, Black Lizard also succeeds as a basic detective story. I loved the Black Lizard's scheme for kidnapping the daughter the first time: she announces that she will kidnap her exactly at midnight, forcing Akechi and her father to stand vigil outside of her room while the Black Lizard's men, who had actually kidnapped the girl earlier, were given extra time to escape. Here is a film with enough style, smarts, and pizzazz to keep itself from collapsing under the weight of its own esoteric philosophical underpinnings.

7/10

The Hitch-Hiker: Ida Lupino

Ida Lupino's The Hitch-hiker is a film as audacious as it is brilliant; a tight, taut, high-concept film noir that is relentlessly suspenseful and nerve-racking. Based on a true story, the film follows two men on a fishing trip who pick up a hitch-hiker who turns out to be a murderous psychopath on the lam. He immediately takes the two men hostage with a revolver and orders them to take him to Mexico so he can escape the authorities. For the entire trip the murderer, named Emmett Myers, takes a childish glee in mocking, abusing, and psychologically torturing the two men. He is one of the great villainous creations of film noir. Indeed, he is practically a spoiled child: when the two men outsmart him, he is frantic and horrified, but when he inevitably gets the upper hand again, he acts like it was all part of the plan and trumpets himself as a mastermind. His demeanor towards his victims practically bespeaks arrogant insouciance. Unlike many other film noir, Lupino fills her film with bright, open spaces instead of dark, urban ones. But Nicholas Musuraca's cinematography manages to make the film's environment seem no less threatening and sinister. I do have one complaint: there are occasional scenes that grind the movie to a halt where we see a clean-cut, chiseled policeman review facts of the case. Even though they happen so fast you might miss them completely, these scenes nevertheless hamper the film's narrative. Why does the film have to spoon-feed us information from a third party? What sets The Hitch-hiker apart from so many film noir is its relatively few set-pieces, only a couple of actors, and an emphasis on the psychological torment felt by the two hostages. Why couldn't the entire film have been told from the point of view of the hostages? Why couldn't we as the audience have learned about Emmett in the same manner that the hostages did, mainly via brief radio broadcasts? One can't help but think of Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974) which told its story exclusively from its protagonist's viewpoint. We knew only what Jake Gittes knew and every discovery he made during his investigation was as much a revelation for the audience as it was a revelation for him. But despite this lapse, The Hitch-hiker is no less essential a piece of filmmaking.

9/10

Dark Waters: André De Toth

[Warning: Spoilers Ahead]

The strength of André De Toth's Dark Waters can be explained by its sinister atmosphere and its director's brilliant stylistic flourishes. This is a film that is meant to be watched and felt on a basic, primal level. For when you take the time to examine the actual plot, the film falls apart. The film follows a young woman named Leslie suffering from intense psychological anguish after watching her parents drown when the Germans sunk their ship while on the high seas. Her doctor recommends that she travel to rural Louisiana where she can be with her estranged aunt and uncle and recuperate. But her relatives aren't what they seem and soon she is submitted to a devious plot to gaslight her. It's revealed that her "relatives" are imposters and that they want to drive her mad so they can get money...through some system which is either feebly explained or ignored altogether. Here's my question: if they are willing to outright murder her by the end of the film, why didn't they do just that at the start? Why couldn't they have thrown her into a quicksand pit the moment she arrived and claim that she got lost in the swamp? But despite this fumbling plot, Dark Waters is an engrossing film. De Toth's methods are those of restraint and almost subliminal stylistics. Take an early scene where Leslie drives up to their New Orleans mansion for the first time. Most of it is done in a medium long-shot with no edits. Creating a strange, detached atmosphere, the audience is made to feel like a bystander instead of merely a voyeur. John J. Mescall, the noted cinematographer of genre classics like The Black Cat (1934) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), brings both his claustrophobic interiors and dark, muggy exteriors to brilliant life. Additional sequences involving local French Cajuns may be unnecessary for the narrative, but they give the film an additional boost of energy and joy. They help make the audience feel like they aren't watching a low-budget potboiler. But there is no sin in meager means, particularly for a film as inventive and hypnotic as Dark Waters.

7/10

A King in New York: Charlie Chaplin

As a comedy, Charlie Chaplin's A King in New York is serviceable but ultimately uninspired. Some of the gags hit the mark, such as a wonderful sequence where Chaplin's character, a European monarch in New York City who was recently deposed by a revolution in his home country, attends a theater and discovers that widescreen cinematography can wreak havoc on a spectator's neck. But many of the gags are either rehashes of earlier routines from his older films or painfully contrived even for a director who earned his stripes during the silent era (why DID Chaplin put his finger in that fire-hose in the first place?!). But as a quasi-autobiographical memoir, A King in New York is a bittersweet film that satisfies. Chaplin's king follows a career path not dissimilar to Chaplin's: he comes to America, achieves success in the media, and is ultimately kicked out of the country by HUAC investigations. I was surprised by Chaplin's restraint in painting America as a land of rabble-rousing ultra-patriots. Chaplin draws a clear distinction between regular Americans and ordinary American life and the people "working" for the government. He still finds time to mercilessly skewer some of the more extravagant aspects of American culture, in particular the ravenous news media and opportunistic government agents. But again, he views these problems for what they are: problems. And Chaplin, the eternal dreamer and optimist, makes clear that hopefully one day America can regain its sanity.

7/10

Hollywood or Bust: Frank Tashlin

Frank Tashlin's comedies exist in a candy-coated, Technicolor universe where the laws of physics, reality, and sanity can be stretched and twisted like taffy. What matters is the Joke. And in order for the Joke to work, Tashlin will suffer no prop, sight gag, or bizarre set-up. In Hollywood or Bust, the last film to feature the comedy duo of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin, Tashlin combines their frantic antics with loving tributes to the American movie machine. The basic set-up is simple enough: a strange series of circumstances see Martin and Lewis on a cross-country road-trip to Hollywood accompanied by a giant Great Dane named Mr. Bascomb and later on by a dancer named Terry. Lewis wants to go to Hollywood to meet his dream gal Anita Ekberg. Martin, on the other hand, couldn't care less about Hollywood. He just wants the car to use as collateral to pay off a loan to a blood-thirsty bookie. Of course, to do so he has to get rid of Lewis, Terry, and Mr. Bascomb. And oh, what shenanigans! It's said that Lewis and Martin didn't speak to each other off camera during the entire shoot. But watching the film you wouldn't know that. The on-screen chemistry between them is as strong and irresistible as ever.

8/10

Avanti!: Billy Wilder

Roger Ebert was right when he wrote that Billy Wilder's Avanti! was about half-an-hour too long. But despite this, the film is a charming late career effort by one of the great creative geniuses of the Hollywood studio system. Warm as a summer breeze from a sunny Italian afternoon, Avanti! tells the story of American industrialist Wendell Armbruster as he travels to Italy to retrieve the body of his recently deceased father. When he arrives, he is horrified to learn that he had died in a car accident along with a female passenger who is revealed to have been his mistress for almost ten years. As Wendell wrestles the jungles of red tape that stand in the way of bringing his father's body back to the States, he starts up a romance with Pamela Piggott, the daughter of his father's mistress. Pamela delivers one of the film's best lines: "Italy is not a country - it's an emotion." And indeed, Avanti! is best related not by its plot but by its emotions: the palpable sorrow when Wendell and Pamela identify their parents' bodies, the mellifluous calm when they sunbathe in the nude, the good-natured insouciance that accompanies Wendell's transformation from up-tight businessman to unapologetic romantic, and the bittersweet melancholy that arises when they have to leave each other. So yes, Avanti! may have been a bit too long. But it was too long in the same way that a lazy afternoon reverberates with heat and pleasant stillness as it beckons for the weary to nap and dream.

7/10

Stromboli: Roberto Rossellini

The island of Stromboli is dying. The end of World War Two saw many of this small Italian island's men either killed or forced abroad to find work. The island's volcano towers over the remaining population, choking the air with soot and smoke. The earth is barren and lifeless. The few men remaining work thankless hours fishing for tuna. Though there are some children left, the island of Stromboli seems doomed for abandonment. It is this environment that Karin, a Lithuanian refuge who married one of the island's fishermen as a means to escape an internment camp, finds herself in. Unendurable monotony, inescapable poverty, and the hostility of the other locals drives Karin almost mad. But in her desperation, Karin will undergo nothing less than a spiritual transformation. This is the plot of Roberto Rossellini's Stromboli, the first collaboration between the legendary pioneer of Italian neorealism and actress Ingrid Bergman. Much like their later collaborations like Europe '51 (1952) and Journey to Italy (1954), the film tells a story of emotional and spiritual interiors set against Italy's majestic exteriors. The island of Stromboli is vast and imposing. The islanders, many of whom were actual residents of the island, are harsh and hardy. A brilliant sequence where the men work together to bring in a catch of tuna provides a rare glimpse of explosive kineticism, the kind which must have once been the rule instead of the exception on Stromboli. And at the center is Bergman, brilliant and believable as a woman forced by circumstances beyond her control into a life which she cannot help but view as a dead end. Many of her scenes, particularly the spiritual rebirth sequence on the volcano's rim near the end of the film, required her to act by herself with little to no dialogue. Carrying a scene with nothing but body movements and facial expressions takes a kind of talent rarely seen in screen actors outside of the silent era. Critics of the time dismissed her performance, but in hindsight we can see it for what it was: brilliant.

8/10

Around the World in 80 Days: Michael Anderson

Michael Anderson's Around the World in 80 Days is a sprawling epic that encapsulates the best and worst of Hollywood excess. A massive 3+ hour adaptation of Jules Verne's novel of the same name about an Englishman who sets out to traverse the globe in 80 days to complete a bet, the film is crammed with every set-piece, action beat, and Hollywood guest-star imaginable. The part of me that loves whiz-bang Hollywood super-epics like Gone With the Wind (1939) and Ben-Hur (1959) was delighted by its dazzling on-location shooting, jaw-dropping production values, and willingness to err on the side of excess. But alas, the critical side of me was disappointed by its many faults: narrative cul-de-sacs that really only serve to lengthen an already tortuously long film, sequences which go on far too long (bull-fighting, anyone?), and some of the most offensive racism that I've witnessed in a Hollywood film in a long time. Anderson's efforts to shoot on-location with local actors can't make-up for the plethora of racial stereotypes. Indeed, for a scene where the Englishman's party is attacked by Indians while on the Transcontinental Railroad, hundreds of authentic Native Americans were used...after their skins were literally dyed red. If there is one area where the film's treatment of the racial Other should be commended, it is in its depiction of Mexican superstar Cantinflas as the Englishman's well-meaning but clumsy valet, Passepartout. And while he is depicted as a skirt-chasing soft-head, his character is provided with a shocking amount of dignity. The prolonged aforementioned bull-fight sequences actually make him the primary hero upon which the entire narrative depends on. While watching Around the World in 80 Days, I talked with a good friend and fellow film specialist who explained just why the film was a travesty instead of a masterpiece. And while I do still think that there are some positive things about the film, his words helped me realize the truth about Around the World in 80 Days: too much of it is unnecessary.

6/10

Julius Caesar: Joseph L. Mankiewicz

James Mason was right to fear Marlon Brando in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's production of William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. During production, Mason, who played Brutus, repeatedly tried to get Mankiewicz to cut Brando, who played Mark Antony, out of scenes or, at the very least, refocus their scenes together so that the audience's sympathy would be directed more at him. Mason's meddling resulted in Brando threatening to walk off the film. But thankfully, the film was finished. And when the ending credits begin to roll, Mason's competent performance as Brutus is overshadowed by one word: Brando. His two big scenes, the Dogs of War monologue and his address to the Roman public following Caesar's death, crackle with raw electricity and power. Brando may have been dubbed "The Mumbler," but in this film his words are clear, concise, and devastating. There are more merits to Julius Caesar than the acting, though. Mankiewicz and his cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg manage to keep the film from growing static and stale like so many other early Hollywood adaptions of Shakespeare. They employ a restless camera which swoops, glides, and careens throughout the film's impressive set-pieces. This is not just a filmed stage production; it translates the play into the language of the cinema.

8/10

Tol'able David: Henry King

Henry King's Tol'able David, a film based on a short story by Joseph Hergesheimer about a young man living in rural West Virginia with his family, was widely lauded by audiences and critics upon its initial release. A box office smash, the film also received accolades such as a "medal of honor" from Photoplay Magazine. Russian critics and filmmakers such as Vsevolod Pudovkin were particularly impressed by its mise-en-scène and use of montage. And yet, Tol'able David struck me as a well-crafted, competent, yet unremarkable silent melodrama. One day I hope to read a break-down of just how Tol'able David used such techniques to such revolutionary effect. If I can truly gain an appreciation for its innovations, then I might be inclined to give it a better score. But failing to locate such information (not for a lack of trying, mind you), I can only grade Tol'able David on its merits as viewed from a modern perspective. The story concerns young David Kinemon's coming-of-age when a group of ruffians move into town, kill his dog, inadvertently kill his father, cripple his brother, and prey on Ms. Esther Hatburn, the apple of his eye. The three actors playing the criminals are the highlight of the film. Alternatively psychotic, degenerate, filthy, and downright evil, they provide what all great stories need: great villains. But the pace of the story is ruined somewhat when the audience realizes that the story takes place over a series of months. This leads us to infer that the community, and by extension our hero, has let these bandits invade and dominate Esther and her father for months without doing anything. If the story's time-scale had been reduced, then the film would have had more dramatic weight.

7/10

Stalag 17: Billy Wilder

Do you know what Billy Wilder doesn't get nearly enough credit for? His writing. He has always been lauded as one of the great Hollywood directors, but many forget that he was also one of the industry's most accomplished writers. Stalag 17 is one of the best testaments to his literary acumen. It's astounding how easy Wilder makes screenwriting look with this film. The story of a group of Americans trying to escape the eponymous Stalag 17, a German POW camp during World War Two, the film alternates between effective comedy and even more effective suspense as the inmates try to root out the identity of an informant who has been feeding the guards info on their activities and escape attempts. William Holden is predictably incredible as Sefton, a cynical bastard who happily runs gambling rackets for cigarettes among his fellow inmates. But when his self-centered activities begin to make the other prisoners suspect him as the mole, he decides to do whatever it will take to root out the real culprit. Some of the comedic relief scenes go on a bit too long, though. A sub-plot concerning one love-sick soldier with a Betty Grable obsession begins to wear on the nerves as the film goes on. I have nothing against comedic relief, but some of the examples in this film seem to thwart its overall tone. If the film is a suspenseful thriller, does it really need a slapstick scene of two soldiers sneaking into a camp for female POW? If the film seeks to document the everyday experience of being a POW, then why feature such a prominent espionage angle? But when Stalag 17 focuses on its actual plot, the results are wonderful.

7/10

Scrooge: Brian Desmond Hurst

With a story as widely loved and frequently adapted as Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, there are really two main questions that must be asked when reviewing a film version: a) how good is the Scrooge, b) how good are the Ghosts? Brian Desmond Hurst's Scrooge is a solid film that competently tells the immortal story of a greedy moneylender whose heart (and soul) is changed by three ghosts on Christmas Eve. Scrooge is played by Alastair Sim. Sim's Scrooge is somewhat different from the other Scrooge's that I have encountered over the years. His makeup and costume accentuates his oddly shaped head and face, thereby transforming Scrooge into a character who is equal parts heartless businessman and macabre grotesquerie. Whereas other Scrooges became corrupt by choice, Sim's Scrooge seems destined for it. But what about the Ghosts? The Ghost of Christmas Past is largely forgettable, being depicted as an old man sans head-candle. Francis de Wolff was excellent as the larger-than-life Ghost of Christmas Present. As for the Ghost of Christmas Future...this film's incarnation didn't leave an impression on me. If my comments on Scrooge and the Ghosts has made you uncertain whether or not you should seek out Scrooge, then I would hasten to recommend it anyhow. The film still has the beating heart and noble soul of Dickens' original story.

7/10

Father of the Bride: Vincente Minnelli

Vincente Minnelli's Father of the Bride is a sweet story about a loving but stern father who tries to preserve some semblance of sanity amidst the hustle and bustle of his daughter's engagement and marriage. Stanley T. Banks (Spencer Tracy) is a well-off suburban lawyer who loves his daughter Kay (Elizabeth Taylor). However, when she suddenly announces one day at the dinner table that she is engaged to a young man named Buckley Dunstan (Don Taylor), Stanley's life is turned upside-down. The film is rich with a humor that is at once melancholy and warm. A montage of Kay's past beaus is particularly effective as well as a perfect utilization of the kind of visual grammar that Minnelli picked up doing musicals and comedies. The film's comedic high-point comes during Kay's engagement party where Stanley is trapped in the kitchen mixing drinks the entire time. Much of the film's emotional impact comes from Tracy's narration which is framed as taking place after the wedding. The result is that the film is reflexive and bittersweet, much like the memories of parents, and fathers in particular, who have to cope with the "loss" of one of their children. My one complaint is that during the actual wedding scenes, Tracy's narration becomes grating and unnecessary. It would have been wiser to let the visuals inform the audience's emotions during this sequence. But this minor complaint aside, Father of the Bride is a wonderful movie and a curious glimpse of American culture's perspective of fatherhood circa the 1950s.

7/10

Blackboard Jungle: Richard Brooks

By and large, I usually have issues with Hollywood social commentary films. I know that many of them are born of sincere intentions, but they usually collapse under poor execution, hammy performances, and clunky moralizing. Richard Brooks' Blackboard Jungle, on the other hand, is everything that a social commentary film should be: bold, brash, honest, and devastating. A film about a teacher named Richard Dadier (Glenn Ford) at a tumultuous inner-city school, Blackboard Jungle is a powerful condemnation of racism. But what separates the film from other Hollywood anti-racist diatribes is its refusal to view systematic racism from only one angle. The vitriolic racism demonstrated by the students towards each other is condemned, but the film's harshest words are for the white school teachers and administrators who doom their students by neglecting them and refusing to take them seriously. Perhaps the most incredible moment of the film is when Dadier furiously argues with Gregory Miller, a black student played by a young Sidney Poitier. In a moment of anger, Dadier almost calls Miller a slur. Miller pounces on the opportunity, goading Dadier to say it, to hit him. And in that millisecond, Dadier realizes that he has become the very evil that he has tried to fight against. One of the film's most fascinating dynamics concerns Dadier's slow realization that the student ringleader, the one responsible for their destructive behavior, isn't Miller, but a white student. A regular film would have simply seen Dadier come to terms with his own prejudice against Miller. But Blackboard Jungle goes one step farther and condemns the system which made Dadier blind to the true criminal perpetrator in his midst. The film is also aided by Russell Harlan's expert cinematography, Brooks' ability to choreograph large groups of actors simultaneously, Ford and Poitier's earth-shattering performances, and a ruthlessly honest and tight screenplay.

9/10

Room at the Top: Jack Clayton

Two years before they would collaborate on The Innocents (1961), one of the defining horror films of the 60s, director Jack Clayton and cinematographer Freddie Francis made a feature-length adaptation of John Braine's novel Room at the Top. A film of arresting beauty and unspeakable cruelty, it is a devastating indictment of the British class system. The film follows a young professional named Joe Lampton (Laurence Harvey) who becomes romantically involved with two women: Susan Brown (Heather Sears), a demure beauty who just so happens to be the daughter of a local industrial magnate, and Alice Aisgill (Simone Signoret), an older woman trapped in a possessive, loveless marriage. At first he pursues Susan for the promise of social advancement. But when her father forces him to stop, his friendship with Alice evolves into love. But when they finally agree to run off together, Susan's father returns with horrible news: Susan is pregnant. Shanghaied into marriage with a woman he no longer loves, Joe is powerless to stop Alice from self-destructing when he leaves her. Of course, it would be remiss to excuse Joe's behavior. After all, he was manipulating Susan's affections for his own selfish ends. But that sin was compounded by a social system which regarded Joe and Alice as pawns to be discarded or sacrificed as they saw fit. Before I finish this review, I must mention Francis' cinematography. I don't know if I've ever seen such intimate visual language before. Here is a movie that exists almost entirely in medium close-ups and close-ups. The faces and bodies of the performers become a living architecture sand-blasted by light and swallowed by shadow. Entire scenes go by comprised of nothing but two lovers talking and cooing in tight close-up, their faces bleak continents. For such an intimate story about People, Francis' cinematography and mise-en-scène are sublime and perfectly matched with their content.

8/10

George Washington Slept Here: William Keighley

There's really only one joke at the heart of William Keighley's George Washington Slept Here: Jack Benny is right and Ann Sheridan is wrong. The conflict and humor in the film almost exclusively arises from this dynamic. For instance, Ann Sheridan buys a run-down house in the countryside (that George Washington was rumored to have slept in) and insists that she and her husband, Jack Benny, can rebuilt it. Benny disagrees. And lo and behold, the house is a crummy piece of junk that is more trouble than it's worth. Even worse, it turns out that it wasn't George Washington that stayed there, but Benedict Arnold! As the film progresses Benny and Sheridan's situation gets worse: an unpleasant neighbor tries to evict them from their property, attempts to drill a new well fail, and all of their attempts to renovate the house end disastrously. There is an odd, out-of-place subplot where Benny suspects Sheridan to be cheating on him, but it is so inconsequential that it barely warrants mention. The biggest problem with George Washington Slept Here is that it never cynical or frantic enough to be anything memorable. I know that Benny's character is influenced by his cheapskate comedic persona, but the film itself is too sweet, too unoffensive to take advantage of it. I can't help but think of W. C. Field's films that matched his unpleasant characters with even more unpleasant universes that matched him blow for cynical blow. In George Washington Slept Here, Benny's cynicism and cheapness exists in a vacuum where it can only fizzle into nothingness.

6/10

I Want to Live: Robert Wise

In hindsight, the evidence that Barbara Graham, a woman executed in California in the 50s for participating in the murder of a 64-year-old, was actually guilty of her crime is almost definitive and indisputable. Robert Wise's recounting of her arrest, trial, and execution entitled I Want to Live! argues that she was innocent. But even if she was guilty, the film makes a powerful case that the systems of justice used in America are so broken and hyperbolic that wrongful executions are not only probable but inevitable. First Barbara's friends set her up with a phony murder rap to save their skins. Then an undercover policeman essentially commits entrapment by offering to create a phony alibi for her. The press savages her in the headlines, thereby turning the public against her. And finally, as a last indignity, on her last day her execution is delayed several times by the courts. The process turns her into a blubbering mess crying out for them to get it over with. The last 15 minutes are honestly more intense, suspenseful, and terrifying than anything ever engineered by Hitchcock. In a move seemingly reminiscent of his earlier triumph The Set-Up (1949), this sequence is largely depicted in real-time (or at the very least a painstaking facsimile of it). The different devices of execution are laid out and displayed for the audience much in the same sterile, clinical manner as the bombing procedures near the end of Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). By forcing the audience to confront the machinery and the rituals of execution, Wise reaches new terrains of dread and terror that most filmmakers can only aspire to. Susan Hayward truly earns her Oscar as Graham. At times nasty, at times defiant, at times pathetic, and, most of all, at times utterly sympathetic, Graham is one of Hayward's greatest creations.

8/10