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.

Patton

"Patton" (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970) "Patton" was a different kind of war movie. Where most of the genre would concentrate on the cinematic battles, or use the war as a back-drop for soap-stories, "Patton" chose to take the more quixotic route of "Lawrence of Arabia" (or more appropriately, "The Desert Fox" about Patton's "player on the other side" in Africa, Erwin Rommel) by making a personal story about war and how it shapes the human being. The war is the most important story, of course. But the story of General George S. Patton, Jr. (played by George C. Scott, with all the eerie command he brought to every role, probably far more than the real Patton personified) is so intertwined with the war, as a mover and shaker of it, and his fortunes so changed by it (and not for the good) that even as it revels in the eccentricities of the man, it also shows how out of touch a professional warrior and student of conflict can be in this day and age.


"God, how I hate the twentieth century" is one of the laugh-lines of "Patton." But it's one of the truest lines of the script (by Fox scribe Edmund H. North and a very young Francis Ford Coppola). Patton, the soldier, was from another time (he thought so, literally), and his romantic notions of war and warriors made him an "odd duck" of the military, and a "lame duck" when it came to the political strategies inside an Army at war. He held disdain for bureaucratic warriors on both sides of the conflict (including "that paper-hanging son-of-a-bitch" in Berlin), the exceptions being his West Point classmate Eisenhower, and Rommel, who had opposing tank battle scenarios to Patton's own. The movie has the Germans studying Patton and his techniques, more approving of Patton than his fellow Allied Commanders.

Scott's position as the centerpiece of the film is critical, but director Franklin J. Schaffner,* who apprenticed in live television and whose previous film was the better-than-it-deserved "Planet of the Apes," brought his customary expansiveness to the war. With a wide-screen process dubbed "Dimension 150,"** Schaffner created vistas of carnage and blazing battles of ferocity that took a dirtier, grimier and bloodier view of battlefield action than had been seen previously in the "clean-kill" war movies preceding it.

Patton, the man, romanticized war, revelled in it, but the film bearing his name went further than most in de-glamourizing the traditional heroics of the less thoughtful war films, carefully explaining the strategies, viewing the battles dispassionately, almost like a chess-master reviewing the board, and in the after-math, taking stock of the scattered pieces. However planned a battle may be, it ends in chaos. Chaos and death. And in "Patton," you can almost smell the stench of a battle-field's carnage.

Death is omnipresent in "Patton," with detailed shots of dead and wounded in the battlefilds, and the crude graveyards made in haste. Some of the eeriest parts of "Patton" take place in those moments, the cascading trumpets and marching jig of Jerry Goldsmith's score stilled to shimmering strings, and unresolved motifs.

Schaffner used his locations well, taking a page from David Lean, cramming as much information into the frames as he could, or by presenting stark landscapes that seemed to go on forever, showing the regimentation of war, how vast numbers of human beings could crowd a frame, or how solitary individuals could be lost in a landscape, or for that matter, History. The scenarists and Schaffner choose to leave Patton alive, just days before having his neck broken in a jeep accident. They leave him contemplating the transience of Glory walking mythically (and quixotically) towards a solitary wind-mill.

It is also about showmanship. A lot of actors turned down the role (some, like Rod Steiger, to their regret), but it was a tour de force for George C. Scott, who buried himself in the role, studying biographies, running films of the general over and over, doing an extensive make-up transformation—shaving his head to sport a Patton buzz-cut, matching the moles on Patton's face, and even having his teeth capped to make his smile more like the general's. There were some things he wouldn't do, like try to match Patton's voice—Scott felt simulating Patton's high-pitched voice would undercut some of his authority in the role.

The effect was extraordinary. Patton's kids, who were never too keen on the idea of the film, were amazed at Scott's appearance, and the role (which won Scott a Best Performance Oscar—which he famously refused) replaced the real-life General in the imaginations of the Nation, despite ample archival evidence.


Partially, it is the opening. Written by Francis Ford Coppola in an early draft of the script, it is a combination of several of Patton's inspirational addresses to his troops, performed—as if a stage performance—by a solo Scott before an out-sized American flag. It is this section of the script that most intrigued Scott, the stage actor, but also intimidated him. It was the last section filmed, and director Schaffner promised that it would be placed after the Intermission, as the actor—rightly—felt that the address would overpower the rest of the performance.

Schaffner, having a showman's instinct, reneged. And that speech, setting the tone and tenor of the performance that dominated the film, went immediately into pop iconography. It has been parodied and propagated for decades, a radical introduction to one of the more colorful players in the second World War. A thesis, a preamble, if you will, a first movement...but, more appropriately, a shot across the audience's bow.

* Few men were as suited as Schaffner to film this story: during WWII, he was part of the contingent landing at Sicily...under the command of Patton.

** It was camera-maker Todd AO's challenge to Cinerama, and presented a viewing range, or scope, of 150. Only two movies were shot in "Dimension 150"—"The Bible" and "Patton." George C. Scott appeared in both of them.

Olde Review: One-Eyed Jacks

This was part of a series of reviews of the ASUW Film series back in the '70's. Except for some punctuation, I haven't changed anything from the way it was presented, giving the kid I was back in the '70's a bit of a break. Any stray thoughts and updates I've included with the inevitable asterisked post-scripts.

This Saturday's films in 130 Kane Are Marlon Brando's "One-Eyed Jacks" and Robert Altman's "McCabe and Mrs. Miller."

"One-Eyed Jacks" (Marlon Brando, 1961) This one's something of an oddity--it's the only film directed by the greatest "method" actor, Marlon Brando. But what you will see on the screen is really not the film that Brando made. You see, it's one of those stories where nothing really works right. Brando and a number of script-writers worked onthe screenplay for a couple of years. Stanley Kubrick was signed to direct and pulled out.* Then, Brando decided to direct it himself and shot a quarter of a million feet of film over a six month period at a cost of five million dollars. Supposedly, there was about 35 hours of film to edit down to a watchable size. Brando's cut was five hours long, but with some noticeable studio shooting, plot summaries were accomplished and got it down to its current two hours and twenty minutes. So it isn't totally Brando's concept.

What is there in those two hours and twenty minutes? A superbly acted film, based on a script that at times is intriguing and at times is dull cliche. It's a very wierd movie. It's wierd, but it does show that Brando certainly had an artistic eye for shots, camera angles, sequences that sometimes take the breath away. You'll also see excellent performances from a cast of Brando, Karl Malden (before TV neutered him),** Katy Jurado, Slim Pickens, Pina Pellicer, Elisha Cook, and Ben Johnson..especially Ben Johnson.

Johnson first worked for John Ford in his westerns and evolved into more than a great actor, but one of those genuine screen presences working in film today. When Johnson and another screen presence, Brando, play off each other in a scene, sparks fly across the screen. Those sparks were expected to fly between Brando and Jack Nicholson in "The Missouri Breaks," and never appeared. To see these two greats square off is one of the joys I had watching this film, and also, this film contains my favorite epitheit in all of cinema....

"Get up, you scum-suckin' pig!"

They just don't write 'em like they used to.

Broadcast on KCMU-FM on November 19th and 20th, 1975

Or over-write them. The parts that you can glean from the current cut of "One Eyed Jacks" (and no one is rushing to restore the full length version, certainly not Paramount Studios) suggest an idiosyncratic western with a gritty, grimy feel, which would have made it unique in the western-glut that was happening across theater and televison screens across America. Brando's fights were inelegant, and people looked like they got hurt. But the film is a cliche about Authority Figures and Oedipal Conflicts--Karl Malden plays a once-friend-turned-lawman named..."Dad." At one point, Brando's character is whipped in the street before a crowd of on-lookers, and if that doesn't convince you he's a Christ-figure, his tied outstretched arms just might.

Ulp! It starts to get so thick with things like that, you need hip-waders out in that desert.

* Kubrick says he quit because Brando was wasting a lot of time, and really wanted to direct it himself, so he moved on to a more worthwhile project.

** Malden was appearing in an American cop series called "The Streets of San Francisco," with a young actor of good parentage named Michael Douglas.

"Get up, you scum-sucking pig!" occurs at 3:55 in this video