Westerns with a Wyatt Earp theme.

Frontier Marshal (1939), directed by Allan Dwan. This is the film that inspired John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946), some scenes actually reappearing in the Ford film. Here Randolph Scott plays Wyatt Earp and Cesar Romero plays Doc 'Halliday' (spelled this way to avoid litigation from the Holliday family). Neither Earp's brothers nor the Clantons appear, and Doc is killed prior to the OK corral gunfight. Most of the scenes take place at night, giving the film a grim atmosphere. This plus the many interior shots and the staging of some riding scenes on a sound stage give the action a feeling of claustrophobia. Eddie Foy, Jr. plays the part of his father. The two women are effective (Binnie Barnes and Nancy Kelly). All in all, this is an effective telling of the OK Corral story. But coming out in 1939, Frontier Marshal had to compete with Ford's Stagecoach, De Mille's Union Pacific, King's Jesse James, and Marshall's Destry Rides Again. It holds up fairly well and Scott and Romero are both convincing.

 

Law and Order (1932), directed by Edward L. Cahn. Frances and I recently completed watching the Wyatt Earp television series, and so I thought I would take a look at my film collection to see what films I might have with Wyatt Earp. I found a few and we began last evening with this film, known as the first film to give us the gunfight at the OK Corral. The film derives from a novel by W.R. Burnett, Saint Johnson, that purports to be based on Wyatt Earp's memories. The script is partly the work of a young John Huston. Huston's father, Walter, stars as Frame Johnson, clearly a stand-in for Earp. The film tells the story of Johnson arriving in Tombstone with his brother and two other friends, one of whom is a gambler. What stands out is the camera work in this early talking picture. Pans and tracking shots are impressive, and the editing gives the action a hectic feel appropriate for the story. We even have some deep focus. The characters are fleshed out, and Wyatt speaks out against guns and he ends the film expressing something of a hopeless vision for the future of the country with its love of and dependence upon firearms. The cast includes, besides Huston, Harry Carey, Andy Devine, Raymond Hatton, Harry Woods, and Russell Simpson. The costumes worn by the extras are suitably ragged. This is an impressive early version of the Earp story.

Wichita (1955), directed by Jacques Tourneur. Here is another Wyatt Earp film, this one directed by the very classy Jacques Tourneur. Tourneur is best known for films such as the haunting Cat People (1942), I Walked With a Zombie (1943), and the brilliant noir Out of the Past (1947). I like his Comedy of Terrors (1963) and Night of the Demon (1957). He also made one of the finest westerns of the 1940s, Canyon Passage (1946). Wichita is a wide screen beauty. No sound stages or rear projection here. The story focuses on Wyatt Earp's early days in Texas and features his brothers Morgan and James, Ben Thompson, and a few others familiar from the Earp story. He even wears a long-barrelled six-gun, although it is not called a Buntline Special. Vera Miles is the love interest. The film is beautiful to look at, and the story features local political shenanigans rather than out and out villains. Wyatt's attempt to remove guns from the hands of average citizens meets resistance. A recurring theme is Wyatt's stated desire to be a business person, but his inability to walk away from the violence and injustice he encounters. He is destined to be a lawman. Here we have once again that peculiar American insistence on a manifest destiny, in this case Wyatt's manifest calling to the protection of the people. Joel McCrea as Wyatt is suitably stoical and strong, if perhaps rather too old for the part (he is some 20 years older than the actual Wyatt Earp would have been at the time this story takes place. And a side note: Sam Peckinpah has a small role as a bank teller in the film. Some seven or eight years later, McCrea would feature in Peckinpah's magnificent Ride the High Country. You can find a discussion of Ride the High Country elsewhere on this blog.

Lady Snowblood: Love Song of Vengeance (1974), directed by Toshiya Fujita. This is the second of the Lady Snowblood films, and yes, we have seen the first one. The first one ends with what appears to be the demise of the intrepid lady, but she turns up again in the Love Song of Vengeance. This second feature begins with a reference to the end of the war between Russia and Japan. I am not sure what this historical setting is supposed to convey, although we also learn that Japan is now a capitalist state. Political allusions run through the film, mostly in the conflict between state authorities and revolutionary "anarchists." Lady Snowblood, threatened with execution for 37 murders, finds herself the agent of a corrupt government. Her mission is to acquire a document that has the power to bring the government down. The power of words! She finds herself drawn to the revolutionaries and their cause. And so we have a bit of mayhem. None of this is particularly clear. What makes the film worth watching are the sets, the locations, the costumes, and several of the compositions. The camera also has affection for Meiko Kaji who plays the indomitable Lady Snowblood. We have some set pieces in which the Lady dispatches numerous opponents, and the choreography in these scenes is adequate, but not as impressive as we might hope for. All in all, this is a B feature with aspirations.

 

House (Hausa, 1977), directed by Nobuhiko Obayashi. This film is a smorgasbord of delights, part horror story, part fairy tale, part absurdist fantasy, part exercise in surrealism, part comedy, part satire. In short, it is just plain weird. The colours and sets are surreal. The film seems to have something to do with Japan's experience in the Second World War; it seems to have something to do with cats; it seems to have something to do with gothic stories set in large mansions; it seems to have something to do with family relationships; it seems to have something to do with familiar fairy tale tropes such as stepmothers, children in the woods or in strange houses, and mysterious animals. The action is zany. Perhaps the most famous of its scenes has a grand piano eat a young girl. Need I say more? This film is possibly the most crazy film I have ever seen.

 Dark Waters (1956), directed by Youssef Chahine. This is something of an Egyptian On the Waterfront, the waterfront here in Alexandria, Egypt. Young Ragab, played by Omar Sharif, returns from a three year voyage working on a ship to find his girl friend has formed a relationship with Mamdouh, the son of the wealthy owner of the dockside business. Set in motion is a love triangle that is bound to end in tragedy. The web cite, First Impressions: Notes on Film and Culture has this to say about the film:

"There’s a dramatisation of class in the film with lots of parallelisms between aunt and niece and also what turns out, in typical melodramatic form, two brothers raised on opposite sides of a considerable class divide. One begins to detect patternings in Chahine’s films, the extraordinary compositions, the visual poetry, the excitement of the narrative, the visual beauty of the production, a Hollywood-style story telling with a grand romantic finale that takes advantage of the teaming of Sharif and Faten Hamama, glamorous stars that were then a real life couple. There are long takes that often involve difficult orchestrations of movements of large numbers of people. This and The Blazing Sun are also melodramas where, like in noir, it is the man who’s wounded and suffers for love, often due to his own misapprehensions. In spite of certain macho attitudes now alien to us, the film remains engaging, exciting and revealing."

What interests me in the two Chahine films I have seen is the director's interest in class, especially the working class. In Cairo Station the background of the story is the attempt of workers to form a union. In Dark Waters we have two groups of workers, one group in the employment of Mamdouh's father, and the other group unemployed and following their conniving leader to oust and then replace the dock owner and his workers. Caught in the middle are the young men, Ragab and Mamdouh. The machinations of the power-hungry villain result in dockside turmoil, worker disunity, and even death. Chahine's sympathies appear to be with a settled and fairly treated work force.

The review above mentions "macho attitude," and yes the presentation of the young lovers does contain unpleasant violence. It is, however, noteworthy that the young woman is feisty and fights back. She is hardly passive.

Cairo Station (1958), directed by Youssef Chahine. I know nothing about Egyptian cinema, but if Cairo Station is representative, then I look forward to seeing more films from that country. Cairo Station has elements of American noir, Italian Neo-realism, and Hitchockian thrillers, yet it is quite different from these. Gritty and dark, the film focuses on Kenawi, a lame porter in the Cairo train station. At the beginning of the film Kenawi, apparently a homeless street person (played by the film's director), is offered a job by the news agent in the station, and this person focalizes much of the film, providing an extensive voice-over. The plot is simple: Kenawi sees one of the women who (illegally?) sell pop on the trains, and he is infatuated. She, however, is the fiancé of a worker who is trying to organize a union. So we have a love triangle of sorts. When Kenawi does not find success in his quest of the lovely pop seller, he becomes a murderer, or at least nearly a murderer. But the plot is hardly what matters here. The cinematography is stunning, and the action must reflect a country on the edge of change. Tension is palpable. The characters are convincing and the use of the station is masterful. It is a prison. It is a small world. It is a maze. It is bustling with people and yet a person can feel isolated, alone, beyond reach. The use of the large crate near the end is a touch from Hitchcock. The peripheral story of a well-to-do young man and an innocent young woman who love each other, but who are star-crossed, serves as an undercurrent to the main story and a reminder that all does not always end well.

 

The Apu Trilogy

Pather Panchali (1955), directed by Satyajit Ray. We have recently watched a couple of late films by Ray, including his final film, The Stranger. These films have prompted us to revisit his early films, and last evening we watched his first film, Pather Panchali. This film has received both accolades and criticism over the years, including a negative response by none other than Francois Truffaut. However, it remains a stunning first film. It took Ray three years to make because of problems finding funding. The result is a film of poetic beauty that shows a deep reverence for humanity. The film focuses on children, adults, and the elderly presenting each with delicacy and understanding. The old aunt moves slowly and with obvious pain, her body emaciated and bent. Yet she shows spunk and determination. The adults deal with problems of raising a family in dire poverty. The children, the girl Durga and her young brother Apu, often focalize the action and their world is a world of wonder, fear, buoyancy, curiosity, experiment, rebellion, and the vulnerabilities of innocence. In Ray's final film, the stranger speaks of the attractions of living in the forest, living a simple life on the land. In Pather Panchali we see that such living is not all simplicity and relaxation. This is a life of hardship and anxiety. Mortality is just around the corner, and it touches both the old and the young. Nature is both beautiful and nurturing and terrible and destructive. Instrumental in Ray's making of the film is the film maker, Jean Renoir who encouraged Ray, and whose films at times deal with similar themes. Also influential is de Sica's Bicycle Thieves in its realism and sympathy for those who struggle for subsistence.

Aparajito (Unvanquished) (1956), directed by Satyajit Ray. This is the second film in the Apu trilogy, and it follows young Apu as he enters school and proceeds later to college in Calcutta. During the time this film encapsulates, Apu experiences life in the city and his father's untimely death. Then he grows into a young man with hopes of leaving home for future study. He does leave and enters college in an even bigger city. Here he meets a friend, finds work in a local press, and studies for his exams. While away from home, Apu writes, but not often, to his mother. She longs for his return, but he remains steadfast in his quest for a different future from the one his father and mother had cast for him. This film is somewhat slower than the first Apu film, but no less poetic. Shots of the father and mother's passings captured delicately in the flight of birds or the swirling of fireflies are "pure cinema." We may encounter a culture that differs from ours, but we have no difficulty understanding the human emotions the characters express. This is a deeply felt film.

The World of Apu (1959), directed by Satyajit Ray. This is the final film in the Apu trilogy and it sees Apu in his early adult years, alone in a rented room in Calcutta, eeking out his existence by tutoring now and then. He is also trying to complete a novel. His rent is overdue and he struggles to get along until a friend from school turns up and asks him to accompany him to his uncle's home in the country for his cousin's marriage. Apu makes the trip. He returns from this trip with a new wife and a job as a clerk! How did this transpire? Perhaps I will not explain because you might like to see the film for yourself. Anyway, young Apu finds himself a married man, something he had not reckoned on. But he adapts well and develops deep affection for his young bride. She also has to adapt to circumstances she had not foreseen. The two get along well and she becomes pregnant. Then she dies in childbirth, and Abu is devastated. He leaves his young son with the bride's family and begins a wandering life. The film does not stop here, but I will, but not before noting that Apu tosses his novel away (a terrible moment). Once again we have Ray's deep affection for humanity. Scenes unfold slowly and emotions are always clear and compelling. We have splendid tracking shots and lovely close-ups. We get a sense of life lived intensely and in densely populated places. Life is not easy, it has its surprises and its ups and downs (lots of downs), but in the end we have some hope, some promise that life goes on and human relationships are what matter.

Notorious (1946), directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This is the one about drinking, about patriotism in the extreme, about government callousness, and about a mother and a father, especially a mother. Oh, it is also a spy thriller, set just after the Second World War and involving uranium (the atomic threat). The film uses rear projection extensively and the technique seems somehow appropriate in a film dealing with subterfuge and sleight of hand (literally in the scene with the key exchange). We also have many close-ups of bottles, of glasses, of cups and saucers to drive home the ominous aspect of drinking. It can be lethal! The morality of using a young woman's sexuality to obtain information is questionable, and the hero is possibly less likeable than the villain. Leopoldine Konstantin, in her only American film, plays Claude Rains's mother; she is memorable. Hitchcock appears about an hour into the film, drinking a glass of champagne at a party. He exits quickly. This is not my favourite of Hitchcock's films, but it just might be his first fully-formed Hitchcock movie with all his signature elements, a central love story that centres on trust and suspicion, a camera that has a voyeuristic lens, a playful manipulation of objects, framing that limits the characters' actions, and so on.

These Three (1936), directed by William Wyler. Adapted from Lillian Hellman's "The Children's Hour," this film tells the story of three people whose lives are ruined by malicious lies and gossip. The lies first come from a young schoolgirl, played by Bonita Granville, who is as bad as they come. She reminds me of the character in the 1956 film, The Bad Seed. She is selfish, mendacious, hysterical then sweet, bullying, and without an ounce of compassion. She is, as they say, a piece of work. Granville and Marcia Mae Jones, as the other principle schoolgirl, play their roles convincingly. The sets strike the right notes. The cinematography is in the best tradition of studio, in this case MGM, work (Gregg Toland is the cinematographer). The camera works seamlessly in order not to distract from the action or the actors. This is an impressive film about a plausible and disturbing subject.

Today We Live (1933), directed by Howard Hawks. From the story "Turnabout" (1932) by William Faulkner. Faulkner also wrote the dialogue for the film. Hawks and Faulkner, a potent duo, somehow miss the mark here. Oh the film has Hawks's familiar themes: men in groups, professionalism, and a hearty woman in the midst of things. But the story has all the excitement of a fight between cockroaches, something that, by the way, takes place in the film. One character, played by Roscoe Karns, keeps a cockroach named Wellington in a matchbox and brings it out to do battle with other cockroaches. No, I am not making this up. Late in the film Wellington takes one for the gypper, as it were. The film contains sequences of aerial battle taken from Howard Hughes's Hell's Angels (1930). It also contains some strange wardrobe worn by Ms Crawford. For some reason the film reminded me of Jules Dassin's later Reunion in France (1942), also starring Joan Crawford. All in all, this is for those interested in Howard Hawks and his friendship with William Faulkner.

 

The Man With Two Faces (1934), directed by Archie Mayo. Mayo is perhaps best known for Humphrey Bogart's breakout film, Petrified Forest (1936), but this little gem has its virtues. Its virtues are mostly in the acting category with Edward G. Robinson playing a dual role with finesse and Louis Calhern playing the slimy Vance with abundant scenery chewing. Calhern plays a Svengali character who dominates his wife, played by Mary Astor. He has been married previously, but his wife (or was it wives?) died mysteriously. He also is more attached to his two pet mice than to the women in his life. Anyway, this little closet drama plays out with charm and commitment on the part of the actors. The film provides a distraction for these strange and troubling times.

 For a while now I have been posting short notices/reiews of films. In order to preserve these reviews, I am posting them on this blog. Here are the first three:

Another Man's Poison (1951), directed by Irving Rapper (he of Now, Voyager). Talk about chewing up the scenery. Bette Davis lets out all the stops in this crime melodrama. It plays something like Sleuth in that it has the staged play claustrophobia, and the jockeying for position between the principle characters. In short, we have a British country house, somewhere in the country of the mind, where a horse-loving crime writer lives. She has an untimely visitor, her husband's partner in crime. He arrives to find his partner, the woman's husband, dead, dead by nefarious means. The woman and the man find themselves unwanted partners in concealing their crimes, especially from a nosey veterinarian who keeps popping by. The sets are about as believable as they are in a Merry Melodies cartoon. The acting, especially Davis's, is over the top. The story is, well, okay. The ending gives us a bit of mild Grand Guignol, if Grand Guignol can be mild. Truth to tell, I dozed off during the middle of the film.

 

The Tingler (1959), directed by William Castle. This is the film that gave us Percepto, a buzzing/tingling device attached to the underside of some theatre seats in order to encourage the audience to scream at an appropriate time. Vincent Price gives a splendid performance as the kindly scientist who has discovered a parasite that lives in humans, along the spine, and that creates a tingling sensation when a person experiences fear. Unless the person releases the tension created by fear, he or she could, and in some cases will, die. The only defence against the tingler is a loud screaming noise. Near the end of the film the screen goes black and Price's voice instructs the audience to scream. The film is not without its charms, one of which is a colour sequence in which a woman who can neither speak nor hear sees a bathtub filled with blood, a bloody hand and arm emerging from it. The film boasts the first LSD trip on screen - oh the walls, the walls! Dear Vincent has to deal with a wife who is adulterous. Some of the action takes place in a movie theatre that specializes in old silent films. The tingler itself is a magnificent large rubber centipede thing that moves along drawn by a string. This is film making at its most audacious. The movie begins with an introduction delivered by Mr. Castle, something akin to the introduction to Universal's Frankenstein, not quite 30 years earlier. Here is what he says:

"I am William Castle, the director of the motion picture you are about to see. I feel obligated to warn you that some of the sensations—some of the physical reactions which the actors on the screen will feel—will also be experienced, for the first time in motion picture history, by certain members of this audience. I say 'certain members' because some people are more sensitive to these mysterious electronic impulses than others. These unfortunate, sensitive people will at times feel a strange, tingling sensation; other people will feel it less strongly. But don't be alarmed—you can protect yourself. At any time you are conscious of a tingling sensation, you may obtain immediate relief by screaming. Don't be embarrassed about opening your mouth and letting rip with all you've got, because the person in the seat right next to you will probably be screaming too. And remember—a scream at the right time may save your life."

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Colonel Blimp is the creation of David Low, first appearing in 1934. Blimp, as his name might suggest, is a rotund, blustering old fellow with a walrus moustache. Powell and Pressburger turn him into something of a folk hero, following his time in the British army from 1902 when he receives the Victoria Cross for valour during the Boer War, until the early 1940s when, as an old man, he joins the Home Guard. His name in the film is Clive Candy and he rises from Corporal to General. Martin Scorsese has noted that the film is a major influence on Scorsese's Raging Bull, both for its depiction of a slim young man turning into an older blimp and for its manner of storytelling. He especially notes the duel scene in the first third of the film, and also the way Powell handles the marriages of Clive Candy's German friend and of Candy himself. Powell presents these events by, in effect, not presenting them. Also noteworthy is the look of the film, its cinematography and contrasting colours. The opening sequence, as well as the moments throughout the film, have, perhaps strangely and surprisingly, something of a Bunuel cast to them. As for the story, Roger Ebert nicely encapsulates things:

"The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" has four story threads. It mourns the passing of a time when professional soldiers observed a code of honor. It argues to the young that the old were young once, too, and contain within them all that the young know, and more. It marks the General's lonely romantic passage through life, in which he seeks the double of the first woman he loved. And it records a friendship between a British officer and a German officer, which spans the crucial years from 1902 to 1942."

Someone asked me recently if I was a postmodernist. I replied that I do not know the answer to this question. First, I need to know what postmodern means, and I recall my teacher saying that anyone who sets out to define his or her terms will end up hanging himself or herself. Having acknowledged this, I will begin with the notion of relativity. Everything is as solid as air for the post-modernist. Human identity is fluid, constructed from social pressures. Notions of good and bad are relative. Truth is something one encounters only when one encounters something one agrees with. Things fall apart and the centre cannot hold. That last sentence contains not my words, but William Butler Yeats's words, and Mr. Yeats was not a postmodernist, as far as I know. Or was he? Anyway, I return to my teacher who was decidedly not a postmodernist. But here we have a problem. In terms of art and aesthetics, modernists have this curious notion that what matters derives mostly, if not entirely, from white male persons with a European background. Postmodernism smashed the notion of the so-called "western canon." And this is good. Postmodernism smashed the notion of a hierarchy in the arts, this poet is great and this other one is mush, this genre is worthwhile and this other one is unworthy of serious attention, and so on. Postmodernism takes everything seriously and at the same time unseriously. Contronym is the condition of postmodernism, and I have much attraction to contronyms. Does this make me a postmodernist? I don't think so. I am, sigh, a humanist, and as such I take humanity as something of a universal. I know, in the large scheme of things, humanity is hardly universal. We might even say humanity is ugly, unjust, selfish, greedy, and stupid. It is all we have and so we ought to make the best of it by remaining hopeful that humanity can lift itself from the mire and become universally "better." But if we think of universal as that which unites a species, then what unites the human species is humanity itself, what William Blake called the Human Form Divine. He did not mean this in some airy-fairy transcendental sense, but rather in a very material sense. What creates the Human Form Divine is simply the human imagination, the creative imagination, that esemplastic thing that Coleridge tried to explain in the Biographia. This is a universal and so I guess I cannot be a postmodernist because I accept this universal. However, postmodernism does have its attractions. Its willingness to question and to analyze and to parse and to welcome scrutiny and difference (differance!) is refreshing and politically daring in its offence to dyed-in-the-wool conservatism. In short, postmodernism has much to teach us. But am I a postmodernist? Formally perhaps yes. Ideologically perhaps not. Are you thoroughly bored?

Oh, and about that "post" in postmodernism, post means after. But it also means a statement of, a posting of news or of information. And somehow it also makes reference to all that came before. Prior. It is a contronym, is it not? It also has something to do with quickness, perhaps even in the sense of quick and the dead. Posthaste. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick. This is postmodernism. And Jack has been around for a long long time, since the beanstalk came down or since he accompanied Jill up the hill or since he set out with all the animals or since he sailed the Carribean, or since he .... endlessly. Jack is a very postmodern fellow; he keeps popping up in all sorts of places: Jack Ryan, Jack Reacher, Jack Straw. He is a trickster and the trickster is as old as old and is also post-modern.