The Sea of Grass

The Sea of Grass (Elia Kazan, 1943) It's Kazan's third feature as a director, playing in Louis B. Mayer's sandbox (literally—the film is shot in-studio at M-G-M, making use of stock-footage of rolling fields already in the can, with some location back-projection), and the founding member of The Actor's Studio has a cast of anybody but—Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn (in their third film together), Melvyn Douglas, Harry Carey Sr. and Edgar Buchanan, all pro movie actors who'd already figured out the best way to project on film, without having to rely on sense-memory for it.

Kazan hated this film and discouraged anybody who'd listen from seeing it.  But, despite its soap-ish tendencies as a romance, it has an underlying ecological message.  Colonel Jim Brewton (Tracy) is a very well-landed cattle baron and resists any efforts by the "guv'mint" towards granting homesteading rights or development on the open range.  For him, its a matter of keeping it unspoiled.  "God's work," as he calls it.  That's his purpose, but he's a might surly, mulish and uncommunicative.  Along comes city-girl Lutie (Hepburn) into his life, and he bends slightly, like the trees she insists be planted at the entrance to their estate, as they sway in the harsh prairie winds. He'll bend with a "wait-and-see" attitude, as in "Wait—you'll see."  He yields to Lutie on her friends's homesteading near his property.  But, a clash is inevitable.  "Fences are a curse word in these parts, he informs her.

There are other complications.  She's a city girl on the prairie and distances between people are daunting.  Then, there's the town lawyer, Chamberlain (Douglas) who has two strikes against him in Brewton's suspicious eyes—he wants the land open to homesteading, and he has his own eyes for Lutie, waiting to pounce whenever there's a crack in the Brewton marriage, which is inevitable.  What his motivations are in both areas are suspect—Brewton Chamberlain are bitter enemies, politically and socially.  Chamberlain just might be making the fight personal and can't help himself.  With both the open fields and Lutie, he can't leave well enough alone.

The rise in Chamberlain's political career (becoming a judge in the district) dooms Brewton's ecological dreams, and soon the prairie becomes home to sodbusters, dependent on weather for their success, and when the rains stop, the crops fail and the farmers leave, the countryside becoming a barren dust-bowl.  It's a hollow, dry victory for Brewton—he's proven right (which no one will admit) and the land goes to waste.  And, in the meantime, Lutie has left, leaving Brewton and cook Jeff (Buchanan) to raise the kids: loyal but neglected Sara Beth (Phyllis Thaxter), and black sheep son Brock (Robert Walker), who it is more than suggested may be Chambelain's child.

One can see why Kazan, Tracy and Hepburn were attracted to the material.  The ecology theme (even if espoused by a bull-headed "protect-what's-mine" cattle rancher) should have been close to the sod of anybody who'd come out of the depression, and the "unbranded scarlet letter" theme must have been attractive to Hepburn who enjoyed tilting at societal windmills.  At this point, Tracy and Hepburn knew each other's tricks on-set.  And it's interesting to see that their personal back-and-forth's in this film are much the same as they are in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner decades later.  She's adoringly passive with a steel spine, and he's remote until his face collapses with emotion.  Kazan would come out of this film feeling compromised—and, indeed, this film about the vastness of open land and the prairie feels like it was filmed inside a glass ball—and would explore other ways to make movies, as opposed to being stuck on the sound-stage.  He'd start insisting on location work and even filming with a documentarian's eye.  His search for authenticity in artifice could not be held behind stage-doors and artificial light.

Boomerang! (1947)

Boomerang! (Elia Kazan, 1947) Not to be confused with the Eddie Murphy vanity project made 45 years later.  No, this one is an Elia Kazan film when he was still learning the ropes in film-making and experimenting with what he could do.  This one was shot on location in a semi-documentary style and based on a Reader's Digest article (written by the author of The Greatest Story Ever Told and the book the film Boy's Town was based on) about a true incident involving a murdered priest, a vagrant scapegoated for the crime after a public outrage, and a prosecutor ethical enough to not follow "procedure."

Boomerang! tells the story of the murder in Connecticut of a popular minister, gunned down in the street on a pleasant evening.  There are many witnesses, but the description—medium-build man in a dark coat and light hat—creates few helpful leads.  But, the public outcry for "justice" (or something like it), considering the slow speed of the investigation, fueled by an ambitious newspaper publisher, puts government officials in panic mode, and the resulting pressure on the police department—chief investigator played by Lee J. Cobb—creates too many suspects and the arrest of a drifter (Arthur Kennedy) who protests his innocence.

When the District Attorney (Dana Andrews) goes over the facts of the case for trial, he is unconvinced, but instead of doing the politically expedient thing—try the case on the flimsy evidence anyway and mollify the city—he decides to present the facts of the case as he sees them, in effect shouldering the roles of both prosecutor and defense, attempting to prove that the defendant could not actually have committed the crime.

It's an unusual chapter in jurisprudence, but, in reality, it's how the process should work. The norm is for the culprit (alleged) to be in the dock and the prosecutor makes the case, presents the evidence, states the facts of what happened.  The defense must refute or explain.  But, even if the prosecutor doesn't stand behind the facts, it's only for political reasons, laziness, ego, or protecting his job that would compel the P.A. to go ahead with a flimsy case.  By rights, such a case shouldn't even be brought forth, wasting court costs and time.  It's only because of the incorruptibility of this D.A. that events unfolded as they did and in a way, demonstrated in court, that paralleled the risks the official was taking in his efforts.

Kazan seems an unlikely director for the project—his penchant for heightened drama only displayed in the citizen's cries for justice, if only trumped-up justice.  But, as produced by Darryl Zanuck (for whom story was everything), Kazan takes a docu-drama approach, taking it to the streets, as he would throughout his work in the '50's, emphasizing the grit, even in the well-scrubbed and groomed city-squares of Connecticut.  And Kazan assembled a low-key group of character actors—Andrews, Cobb, Karl Malden, Sam Levene, Ed Begley, Kennedy—to underplay the drama.  Only Jane Wyatt betrays any genteel theatricality.  It ain't noir—too many foot-candles—and it's not cinema verite, as in the style of some of the Fox pot-boilers of this type.  No, this one's set on "simmer," but it's a good preamble to the director's work as he transitioned from theater, outside into the real world.

Baby Doll

Baby Doll (Elia Kazan, 1956) On December 16, 1956, the Catholic Church's Cardinal John Spellman denounced this film in his sermon as "grievously offensive to Christian standards of decency."  Calling the film "revolting" and "morally repellent," he extended his reach with a Power Grab, declaring "In solicitude for the welfare of souls entrusted to my care and the welfare of my country, I exhort Catholic people to refrain from patronizing this film under pain of sin."

In order to drum up business he might have said, "If you see it, say two Hail Mary's and call me in the morning."  Ironically, he probably ended up driving up attendance for the film, whose worst sin was bad timing, but more questionable booking decisions have been made during the Christmas season.

A week later, Time Magazine, in its review of it led off with this line: "Baby Doll (Newtown; Warner) is just possibly the dirtiest American-made motion picture that has ever been legally exhibited." Then, in the same paragraph, goes into double-Time-speak stating "Baby Doll is an almost puritanically moral, work of art."  Thanks for the clarification.

Well, lightning bolts notwithstanding—and all the participants in Baby Doll led nice, long lives—it can be seen with the perspective of time (rather than "Time") that Spellman just had a bee in his biretta, using his bully pulpit (emphasis on the "bull") to pass Holy Judgment on a film he probably didn't see, or, if he had, mis-read.  Suggestive, yes.  Baby Doll is very suggestive, in the style of Italian comedies coming out at the time, where everything is implied, but nothing is seen, portrayed or shown.  What happens off-screen (or off-frame) is in the prurient mind of the beholder, and if such is the case His Eminence probably should have broken out the birch branches and started flailing.

Tennessee Williams' original screenplay features Karl Malden as Archie Lee Meighan, a Southern gentleman of Benoit Mississippi who's fit to be fried.  Archie Lee gets no respect, y'all, not from the town, not from his employees, and not from his child-bride Baby Doll (Carroll Baker), on the cusp of her twentieth birthday, a significant event for the couple.  Baby Doll has moved from father-figure to father-figure, agreeing to her father on his death-bed to marry the middle-aged cotton-gin owner, who might be able to provide for her.  Part of the bargain is that Archie Lee would buy her a fabulous mansion, the biggest in Benoit (although it is in disrepair), and wait until her 20th to consummate their marriage.  This leaves Archie Lee is a peripatetic state of frustration.

But, the tamped fires at home aren't his only reason for agitation—his cotton-gin business is failing, due to the conglomerate cotton-gin run by Silva Vaccaro (Eli Wallach) doing big business downtown.  In a fit of pique, Archie Lee burns down the demon gin, leaving him open to negotiate a deal to do the work.  But Vaccaro has other things in mind.  He suspects Meighan as the arsonist, and so he hangs back from the mill, in an effort to gain information from the rather vapid Baby Doll, who is very susceptible to falling for Vaccaro's tricks.

Suggestiveness ensues.  But also hilarity.  It is, after all is said and done (rather than implied and imagined), a comedy—a Williams "Southern"—like a Western, a story about the civilizing of an uncivilized situation, where the brutes are dispatched and the naive gain some wisdom, balancing the scales to Williams' own vision of the charming, graceful South he knew and wanted to recreate.

And the part that everyone was hung up about—the scene on the swing between Baker and Wallach that Kazan shot in tight close-up?   Seems the fact that you couldn't see the hands of the players was extremely questionable and prurient to outraged viewers.  The documentary included with the film has the answer: Kazan shot the scene in close-up, so you couldn't see the very large heaters keeping the actors warm on that supposedly very hot day shot in the cold temperatures of Benoit.  One more example of the mystical power of film—and why what isn't in the frame is just as important as what is.

A Face in the Crowd

A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan, 1957) The cyclical rise and fall of media pundits makes this prescient diatribe against the dangers of television consistently fresh and relevant.  Sure, it might have been talking about Arthur Godfrey, but it fits the bill for "The Glenn Beck Story," too.  A rube gets built up as a "voice of the people," and then, given money, power and a platform turns into a little  cathode-ray god, his TV-face just being make-up over a manipulative withered soul drunk for power...or love...or advantage over his neighbor.  It's why MSNBC's Keith Olbermann always refers to Beck as "Lonesome Rhodes"—that's the "aw-shucks" nom-de-tube of the character in the movie—but it could be any of the sensations over the years, like Morton Downey, Jr. (Remember him? Good, if you don't), briefly, Jerry Springer, or any of the kiss-and-televangelists who've grabbed the spot-light, only to have scandal take it back, shine it on them, and see them scurry back, cockroach-like into the wood-work ...until they think people have forgotten.

So, on this day of the repeat performance of the "Glenn Beck-Broke" Tour slamming into theaters tonight, let's take a look back at A Face in the Crowd...even though the story is still being played out ad nauseum by Beck and his future issue in an endless cycle of hucksterism and snake-oil.

It's the dark side of a Frank Capra "everyman" movie.  Capra always flirted with fascism in those films, but Budd Schulberg's screenplay tackles it head-on: Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) discovers an Arkansas drunk, Larry Rhodes (Andy Griffith, never more brilliant than he is here) in a small-town jail, and coerces him to sing on a local radio station.  He develops a following, and soon wins a sponsored television gig in Memphis, then moves up to New York.  His folksy homilies and willingness to make fun of his sponsors endears him to the public at large, and soon his influence begins to spread, attracting political machines who want to attach their candidates to "a man of the people."  In a time before "red states" and "blue states" divided rural and urban political boundaries, it was still a goal to reach the "real" America in the heartland.  While Rhodes gains his following, he also starts to spend his capital in his sequestered private life: he begins an affair with Jeffries, then throws her under the tour bus for a cheerleader.  At this point, Rhodes thinks he's Teflon, and nothing can besmirch his reputation. 

But, he who lives by the sword, dies by it.  A microphone deliberately unmuted shows his true colors to a public fed only the rouged mask, and "Lonesome" Rhodes begins the quicker descent down the hill of notoriety.  No homily can save him.  No tears.  No hysterics.  No more.  Hopefully, he has some gold stashed away.

It's a cautionary tale...for everybody.  Edward R. Murrow not only suggested television could be "merely wires and lights in a box," but that it could also be a weapon.  And in a world where to exploit can lead to success, it's primed and cocked.  It's just an instrument, at the beck and call of those who would use it to reach into our homes and our hearts.  The message of A Face in the Crowd, although a might heavy-handed in presentation at times, still applies today, just as it did in the past, and just as surely as it will in the future. 

Panic in the Streets (1950)

"Panic in the Streets" (Elia Kazan, 1950) Kazan's gritty "N'Orleans noir" with pneumonic plague substituting for the rot in men's souls. Richard Widmark steps away from playing giggling gangsters to take on a too-earnest-by-half Naval doctor who is alerted to a murder victim's communicable disease and must find the killers and anyone they've come in contact with before the people of New Orleans start falling in the streets. He's given grudging help by the police commisioner (Paul Douglas, great in a non-comedic role), but it's the targets of the man-hunt that are the real interest. One of the perpetrators is played by Zero Mostel, looking a hundred pounds lighter but with the same crazy comb-over and the quicksilver reactions that threaten to spill into comedy. As his boss Blackie is one Walter Jack Palance--yup, him, in one of his first movies--very young, very tall and with a face of so many concave facets that Kazan's naturalistic lighting schemes pay off in wierdly evocative ways. There's an extended chase through a coffee warehouse where the stunts, some of them a bit risky, are performed by Palance...and Mostel! Seeing the slightly svelter Zero leap from a ceiling transom to a stack of coffee bags is pretty scary to consider. Filmed on location with a lot of "real" folks playing "real folks" (and a lot of them are really good!), this kinetic movie keeps wanting to drop into hysteria at any moment--a Kazan trademark--but, that lends credence to the whole impending disaster.