Nevada Smith: Henry Hathaway

Henry Hathaway's Nevada Smith is one of the most thematically fascinating of all of Hathaway's Westerns. It charts its protagonist, a half-Indian man named Max Sand, as he charts down the three outlaws responsible for the gruesome torture and murder of his parents. At the beginning, he's a fresh-faced teenager. But as his quest for revenge lengthens, he slowly changes into the very thing he hates most: a murderous outlaw. During a conversation with Jonas Cord, Sr. (Brian Keith), a traveling gunsmith, he learns that to truly hunt these men down, he'll have to become as mean as them, as cruel as them, as merciless as them. The question, then, is whether or not Sand will allow himself to fully transmogrify into a monster. It's a fascinating film, aided by a surprisingly leisurely Picaresque plot: it takes a loose approach to Sand's quest, instead charting different sequences in his life and all the people--usually women--he meets and uses up along the way. The film is done in, however, by the grotesque miscasting of Steve McQueen as Sand. First off, they didn't even bother to make him look young or half Native American (although I guess we should be thankful they didn't put him in brownface). He was a whopping 36 years old when he played the role of a young teenager, and it's frequently painful to see other actors and actresses treat him as such. And McQueen's performance is scattershot: in some scenes he'll be befuddled and naive, in others he'll be wooden and/or coldblooded. And sometimes they'll happen within the space of a single scene.

6/10

23 Paces to Baker Street: Henry Hathaway

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7/10

North to Alaska: Henry Hathaway

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8/10

Garden of Evil: Henry Hathaway

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6/10

The Shepherd of the Hills: Henry Hathaway

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6/10

From Hell to Texas: Henry Hathaway

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8/10

Call Northside 777: Henry Hathaway

Henry Hathaway's Call Northside 777 feels like an odd middle stage between the early film noir shot mostly on studio sound stages and the middle era film noir shot mostly on location in cities and suburbia. Based on a real-life court-case about a man wrongfully arrested and imprisoned for eleven years for the murder of a police officer, Call Northside 777 sometimes feels like the dying embers of Expressionism. I was particularly interested in its depiction of a culture of corrupt cops more than willing to imprison possibly innocent people in the name of vengeance for the murder of one of their own. In this sense, it seems eerily timely considering the rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement. I kind of wish that this sub-plot had extended beyond the second act. But unfortunately it is largely dropped for a rather tedious third act where we watch the characters repeat investigative information we largely already know. The ending where the exonerated man reunites with his family also seems bizarrely anti-climactic. Maybe some music would have helped?

7/10

Fourteen Hours: Henry Hathaway

There's a famous anecdote which says that Federico Fellini was inspired to cast Richard Basehart for his role as the Fool in La Strada (1954) after seeing his performance in Henry Hathaway's Fourteen Hours, a gripping drama-thriller about a man who spends fourteen hours contemplating suicide on the ledge of a New York City hotel and creates a media circus. The film is remarkable and rivals the work of Billy Wilder in its contemptuous, cynical examination of how the public reacts to the spectacle of a man threatening to kill himself. In a curious move, it also features a number of brief vignettes of bystanders whose lives are changed by the events that they witness, including scenes featuring Grace Kelly in her cinematic debut. But I opened this film discussing Basehart's performance and I feel I should return to it. It is absolutely flawless. And yet, I find myself being drawn to a different performance as the one which I consider to be the most memorable: Paul Douglas as Charlie Dunnigan, a street cop who becomes the first responder to the crisis and eventually Basehart's confidant and friend. His performance is remarkable: restrained yet punctuated with intense emotional outbursts. We truly get the sense that he is a no-nonsense blue-collar joe with a big heart who is in way over his head. I've been sitting on this movie for months, waiting to get through a queue of foreign movies before I returned to good ol' Hollywood. And let me tell you...Fourteen Hours was worth the wait.

8/10

Niagara: Henry Hathaway

Without Marilyn Monroe, I doubt very many people would remember Henry Hathaway's Niagara. It's a clunky film about a honeymooning couple who vacation at Niagara Falls and accidentally become involved in the (deadly) destruction of another couple's marriage. This doomed couple is George and Rose Loomis. George is a shell-shocked veteran recently released from a military hospital (read: mental institution). Rose, played by Monroe, is much younger, much more sexually hungry, and much, much more ruthless. She conspires with a lover to murder George and throw his body over the falls. But something goes wrong and it is the lover who ends up dead. Now the already mentally unstable George is on the war-path to give Rose what's coming to her. The highlight of the film is a stunning scene where George finally confronts Rose in a bell tower and strangles her to death. This sequence is one of the rare times when color has actually helped a film noir instead of merely serving as a distraction: the siren-red wall behind the cornered Rose, the dull, yellow bells that held a special significance for Rose and her lover, and the bright tones that make the two actors stand out like a pop-up book compared to the stale building. Hathaway also gives us a truly remarkable bird's-eye shot that places the gigantic bells in the extreme foreground and George and Rose in the background. It is a brilliant moment of visual storytelling that perfectly highlights how they have trapped each other, one physically, one mentally. Of course Rose winds up dead. But whereas a sensible film would either end right there or immediately afterwards, Niagara putters along for a while as George tries to escape the police in a protracted sequence where he steals a boat (and the woman from the other couple) and accidentally runs it over the Falls. It's completely unnecessary. In fact, the other couple is entirely unnecessary! Why couldn't the film have just been about George and Rose? Why did they have to frame the narrative with a pair of outsiders? The other couple doesn't serve as a foil to the Loomis'. They don't try and unwrap the Loomis' mysterious past and current crimes. They're just there because...they're there. Hathaway tries to endear us to them with a number of forcibly cheerful relatives and friends, but because their relationship is too perfect and lacks any sort of emotional conflict, they come across as narrative dead weight. Niagara is a bloated, occasionally beautiful film that should get down on its knees and thank heavens for Marilyn.

6/10

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Saw the film again at the New York Film Festival. The experience changed my opinion of it. You can read my new review here: http://theretroset.com/henry-hathaway-portrait-of-an-underratedd-artist/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=the_retro_set&utm_content=Henry%20Hathaway:%20Portrait%20of%20an%20Underrated%20Artist.

8/10

Kiss of Death: Henry Hathaway

Henry Hathaway's Kiss of Death is a delicious film noir that understands one of the genre's most fundamental aspects: that the main character is doomed from the very start. Many of the all-time greatest noir like Double Indemnity, Detour, and Out of the Past feature protagonists who are destined for failure from the very beginning. The tragedy comes from the fact that they fail even though they frequently try to disassociate themselves from their pasts and move forward in life, yet are drawn back into oblivion for one reason or another. In Kiss of Death, the troubled protagonist is Nick Bianco, a crook who is captured during a jewelry heist gone terribly wrong. The police offer leniency if he would squeal on his accomplices. However, Nick firmly believes in the unwritten code of thieves: no snitching. As a result, he is given a 20 year sentence. However, his world is shattered when he discovers that his wife has committed suicide and his young daughters have been packed up and sent to an orphanage. His love for his daughters transforms and convinces him to cooperate with the police in order to be released so he can take care of them. Along with Assistant District Attorney Louis D'Angelo, a man who is genuinely sympathetic towards Nick's situation, they hatch an elaborate scheme to point the finger at his accomplices while protecting his own identity. The scheme works and Nick is released on parole. However, he soon finds himself at odds with Tommy Udo, a psychopathic killer who personally dispatches "squealers" whenever he can. In one of the film's most famous scenes, he pushes the wheelchair-bound mother of a suspected squealer down a flight of stairs, killing her instantly. Through a series of unfortunate events, Nick is outed as a squealer. Suddenly, his entire family is at risk of being "visited" by Tommy. Nick decides that he must personally stop Tommy from hurting his family, even if he has to die to do so. Kiss of Death is a remarkable film noir that dives headfirst into a desperate story of redemption and love. It is a taut thriller, of course, but its emotional core is firmly rooted in one man's love for his family. You know, it's funny. Not many film noir are really about Love, with a capital "L." Sex, lust, and desire? Of course. But Love? That is a much rarer thing. And Kiss of Death is all the stronger for embracing it.

8/10

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Saw the film again at the 2016 New York Film Festival. Still liked it, but wasn't quite as enthused as I was the first time I saw it. Here's the link to my new review:

http://theretroset.com/henry-hathaway-portrait-of-an-underratedd-artist/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=the_retro_set&utm_content=Henry%20Hathaway:%20Portrait%20of%20an%20Underrated%20Artist

7/10

The Sons of Katie Elder: Henry Hathaway

Four years before John Wayne and Henry Hathaway made history with the legendary Western True Grit, they collaborated on another great Western that not many people have heard of these days.  The film is entitled The Sons of Katie Elder.  A story of loss and revenge, the film finds four separated brothers reunited by their long-suffering mother's funeral.  The four brothers, two of which are played by John Wayne and Dean Martin, never quite lived up to their mother's expectations.  One is a gunfighter, another a rancher, another a gambler wanted for murder, and the last, also the youngest, became a college student when falsely accused of stealing a horse.  Now the four brothers decide that they want to atone for abandoning their mother by finding who murdered their father and stole their land from them.  Since the Western genre has been so explored and meditated on by countless filmmakers, most Westerns have to be judged by the strength of their story and how it holds up against the rest of its kind.  But The Sons of Katie Elder does one better.  Not only does it contain an original and compelling storyline, it has genuine chemistry between the four leads.  There is an honesty to their performances and emotions that really sells the film.  The Sons of Katie Elder would later be remade twice in 2005 and 2007.  But neither remake lives up to the power and conviction of the original.

8/10