The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1954)

The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (Luis Buñuel, 1954) This is another of those films that seems to be remade every few years (the attraction of the property being in the public domain is irresistible), but it would be tough from an overall perspective to improve on Bunuel's English language version (which was also made in the director's native Spanish) from 1954.

The story is familiar to everyone (it's been around since 1719)—of the British sailor who is stranded on an island after his ship is wrecked and must eke out an existence there without hope of rescue, despite his lack of experience taking care of himself.  Also, there is the man "Friday," who eventually becomes his companion on the island, leading to the "noble savage" mythology that is trucked around whenever somebody wants to point to relative "worth's" of races within the humanoid one.  

But, Buñuel, one of the peskiest of directors has nothing to do with all that, and the surrealist—and realist—in him, takes this Robinson Crusoe to some little-known parts of the island in this version of the adventure.  For example, Robinson Crusoe is on that ship as part of his work as a slave-trader, its wrecking serving as some kind of retribution for its business, and his exile a learning experience for what it is like for a man to have no choices in the world.  

Crusoe is able to swim back to the ship to get a good amount of supplies before it finally succumbs to the sea, and manages to rescue a cat, Sam, from the wreckage.  Once back on his island, with a raft so piled with supplies that it must have been in constant danger of sinking, he finds the Captain's dog, Rex, has also survived and made it to land.  With that troika of inhabitants comes the most interesting part of the film, where Crusoe explores the island, sets up fire-stations in case a ship should sail by, hunts game, starts to raise livestock from the wild goats that live on the island, builds a walled compound around a make-shift cave where he lives.  When he runs out of bread from the ship, he starts to raise his own wheat and grain and makes his own.  A rescued bible provides study, and he even takes up pottery.   He has a lot of time and quite a bit of resources.

Years go by.  Rex dies of natural causes, and Crusoe keeps to his daily routine, living well if eccentric in his ways, until one day he notices that his island has been invaded by cannibals.  Being so industrious, you'd expect him to maybe start a small business, given the new source of traffic, but, instead he manages to rescue one of the intended victims and names him "Friday"* (Jaime Fernández) after the day of the week on which they met (Crusoe has an elaborate calendar).

Not sure of Friday's eating habits, Crusoe returns to his old ways and puts the native under metal restraints that he carried over with him from the slave ship.  Before long, he learns to trust the man, and one begins to wonder what the hierarchy between them is.  The native is "Friday." Crusoe is, disquietingly, "Master."  When Friday is barbering Crusoe's hair and the voice-over says it was a sublime time on the island, one is about to protest, when he gets up, the two exchange places and the former slaver cuts Friday's hair in reciprocity.  Buñuel, you crafty old Marxist. "We found that two working together could do much more than working separately."  We won't spoil the part where Crusoe and Friday debate the Bible.

And as far as surrealism, the closest Buñuel comes to it is in a Crusoe fever-dream, where he is warned by his father (also played by O'Herlihy) never to stray from his native land (Buñuel, a Spaniard was living in Mexico City at the time, after spending a few years in the United States) with the sequence intercut with shots of the father (or is it an elderly Crusoe) drowning.

O'Herlihy is mostly known for his later career of playing ancient, menacing autocrats, but here he is a revelation, and it is, frankly, amazing that the film had enough attention that he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, the same year as Bogart for The Caine Mutiny, Bing Crosby for The Country Girl (an amazing performance, that), James Mason in A Star is Born, and the winner, Marlon Brando for On the Waterfront.  Tough year.

It's interesting to note that Robinson Crusoe on Mars has a release in the Criterion Collection (not to quibble, I regard RCOM fondly), but this adult-oriented family film by one of the great directors of the 20th century is not.

*But, not T.G.I. Friday, because that would be something of a sick joke that nobody'd get until they invented shopping malls.

The Three Musketeers (1948)

The Three Musketeers (George Sidney, 1948) Every few years, a new generation has to put their imprint on Alexander Dumas' adventure tale on the chicaneries and hidden agendas during the rule of King Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu, when it seems everyone was challenging the rule of theocracy masquerading as monarchy.  Every time, a group of four actors can be found to collaborate rather than hog the show, a new version is produced and a different spin is put on the first part of the d'Artagnan Romances, telling of a sword-skilled Gascony bumpkin who goes to Paris to join the King's Musketeers of the Guard—knights on the cusp of a new technology who prefer their battles to be sharp and personal—and learns the ways of the world in love, loss, and politics and how they all cross swords.

My favorite version is still Richard Lester's one-and-a-half film epic The Three Musketeers: The Queen's Diamonds and The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge for their bawdy humor, down and dirty sword fights and occasional stunt-casting, breezily written by George MacDonald Fraser, lovingly photographed by David Watkin, and (for the first one) cheekily scored by Michele LeGrand in his mock heroic style.

But there have been so many others, going back to the silent era.  One of the oddest, despite being a fairly straight adaptation is the Technicolor M-G-M version from 1948, starring Gene Kelly as d'Artagnan, high in the step and long in the tooth, where the fights are choreographed more as dance in natural settings.  All movie fights are choreographed to some extent, but the '48 version of "3M" has a particularly dancerly feel with Kelly.  There's a "lark" aspect to the whole thing, with a winking feel as if to say "isn't this all preposterous?"  It feels even more so in Kelly's love scenes with June Allyson playing Constance, confidante to the Queen (Angela Lansbury) and daughter (in this one) of his landlord.  Their scenes have a campy, artificial leaning, layered over with a version of Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet" theme, which was probably a cliche for love in '48.  It makes any emotional investment in the romance so much embarrassing vapor.

Impressive cast, though, with Lana Turner top-lined (probably to assuage her fears that it was a secondary role) as the villanous Milady deWinter, Vincent Price is finely oily as Prime Minister Richelieu (evidently he was defrocked for the film, owing to pressure from the Catholic Church), Van Heflin a good, but not great Athos, Gig Young as Porthos, and Keenan Wynn providing comedy as d'Artagnan's servant Planchet.

And it has one scene that makes the highlight reels—Kelly's tribute to Douglas Fairbanks, vaulting over French roof-tops to rescue his lady-love.  It's nicely staged athleticism, marking a sharp contrast to the play-acting of the rest of the film.

Walking Kurosawa's Road: The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail

The inability to write about the films of Akira Kurosawa to my satisfaction led me to to take a different path: start at the beginning, take each film in sequence, one after the other, and watch the progression of the man from film-maker to Master. I'm hoping I can write more intelligently and more knowledgeably about his work by, step by step, Walking Kurosawa's Road.

The Men Who Tread On the Tiger's Tail (aka 虎の尾を踏む男達 aka "Tora no o wo fumu otokotachi?") (Akira Kurosawa, 1945) Set-bound tale of a feudal lord's attempt to make it back to friendly territory after a successful naval campaign against his enemies.  But, to get there, Lord Yashitsune Minamoto (Hanshirô Iwai) must travel through land controlled by one of his enemies, Togashi (Susumu Fujita), who is on the lookout for him and will kill him if he is found.  To get through, he poses as a porter, accompanied by six samurai, led by Beiko (Denjirô Ôkôchi), acting as monks on a religious pilgrimage to raise funds for a temple to be built in Kyoto.

It's a tale of suspense, with very little action, save for the subterfuges, disguise, flummery, and appeals to Kataoka's patriotism and faith (which are legitimate but used for false purposes), knowing that any slip-ups will mean death by sword by a very large collection of border guards.  So, in other words, all of the heroes are lying and using the best instincts of their foe against him.  Hardly the high-minded ideals one associates with dedication to country or God.  In fact, the only of the group that isn't decidedly two-faced is the comic relief, another porter (played by Kenichi Enomoto), who could be Japan's answer to Jerry Lewis in his early career, whose frequent panic attacks could give it all away at any second.  You'd want to strangle Enomoto's porter, if he wasn't so entertaining and a tonic against the heavy earnestness of the rest of the movie.

The film was made during the last days of the Pacific War during World War II, which is why the only segment filmed on location is the forest scenes at the beginning.  The rest was filmed at Toho Studios and filming was briefly interrupted to listen to Hirohito's surrender speech ending hostilities.  Toho and Kurosawa were visited by John Ford during the filming, and one of the first people to see The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail upon completion was British director Michael Powell.  However, the film was banned by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (led by General MacArthur) for its depictions of feudalism (in the attempt to make the Japanese less tied to their heritage and more embracing of American culture), but if they'd taken a more careful look at the film, they'd find that it was making a statement against the very cultural fanaticism the SCAP was trying to prevent.  Oh, well. The result was that the film was banned until 1952.  

One can't help but think that this might have had an influence in his next two films, where the war's ending and the Allied occupation of Japan played very important roles.

Life With Father

Life with Father (Michael Curtiz, 1947) "Oh, GAD!" Another one of those movies I've always had the opportunity to see but never did.  A perennial for local television stations to have in their "libraries" for weekend programming (this was back in the day when local stations didn't fill their schedules with info-mercials), I had plenty of chances to catch this one on the tube, (and I would for fifteen minutes—tops—then move on) but I never did.  My bad.  This one needs to be taken in in one sitting, (preferably in a theater because the Technicolor is breath-takingly sharp), telephone off, and at full attention.

"I am the character of my household!" booms Clarence Shephard Day, as he's choosing the latest in a long line of maids, which he has chased out of his employ int he last few months, many of them in tears and some in hysterics.  Truer words were never spoken. He is the titular patriarch of Life with Father, from the hit Broadway play,* based on the remembrances of Clarence Day, Jr. of turn-of-the-century living with a father-figure who paces slowly in his own grooved path.  William Powell plays the role, one he actively petitioned for.

It's a charming film, full of easy irony about the mores and prejudices of the time, where male pomposity poses as dignity, and more separates people than unites them—easy excuses for keeping things nice and orderly on the surface, while underneath, they are broiling with chaos that is easily ignored and denied.   Clarence Gray, Sr. denies at the top of his lungs, and his monologues—against politics, taxes, unnecessary expenses, and organized religion (organized against him, it seems)—built individually in intensity and volume, are performances for an audience of one—himself.  His barely suffering wife (played by Irene Dunne as if she were singing the entire role) has more influence over him than he is willing to admit, or recognize...or even remember.  And his kid's are "mini-me's" of him, all boys, all carrot-tops, and as they age they morph further into miniature versions of The Old Man, down to his expletives and bluster.

Michael Curtiz directs formally and breezily, with his actors performing at top gear, and the director altering pace in editing and filling the frame with as much set decoration as it can hold.

The material doesn't need much else.  It's strongly forced, comically subtle and has an undercurrent of mature content, that you just don't see in movies nowadays.  Life with Father is from a far subtler era in which sub-texts flew over kid's heads, while the adults exchanged knowing glances and suppressed chuckles (that way you don't have to explain it to the youngsters with a simple "you'll understand some day").

And the sub-text is sex.  Clarence, Jr. is growing up, voice changed (but his violin playing still has noticeable cracks) and he's noticing girls—and when it's Elizabeth Taylor as a visiting friend's daughter, one can't help noticing.  At the time of the film, it was still early in Taylor's career and her performance is breathy, needy and comes from the same type of ingenue training that produced Marilyn Monroe's early performances.  Clarence wants to impress Taylor's Mary, but he can't do so in Dad's ill-fitting hand-me-down suits.  The excuse is they're practical, but, as he says, "I can't do anything in Dad's clothes."  But, the truth is he gets...uncomfortable...in Taylor's presence.  It's not bluntly said, it's danced around, implied, suggested, but never spelled out (as would be the norm today).  It's hilarious, charming, and pays off in some ironically comic laugh-lines throughout the film.

Yeah, they "don't make 'em like this anymore."  More's the pity.  Life with Father deserves its classic status—for some reason, it's not in the National Film Registry—because it's smart, pointed...and hilarious.  

GAD!

* It still holds the record for the longest run of a non-musical stage-play.

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.

Gentleman Jim

Gentleman Jim (Raoul Walsh, 1942) It's all background in this Errol Flynn vehicle, as the audience focuses on Flynn portraying boxer "Gentleman" Jim Corbett as he serves as point-man (chin variety) for the gentrification of the pugilistic sport.  As we fade in the first rule  of the fight game is "nobody talks about the fight game." Not in polite society anyway.  As it is, floating boxing matches are staged hectically before the police can find out and they regularly end, not with the sound of a bell, but the sound of a gavel in a courtroom.  Once "Johnny Law" gets wind of the fight (or hears the sound of one, they're fairly rambunctious affairs), they descend, the crowd scattering as they round up fighters and fans alike.  It's all strictly word-of-mouth, grudge matches, really, the only civility being those of the Marquis of Queensbury—and anybody who's seen Wilde knows what a toad he was.

But Corbett brings some civility to the hammering blows, even to the point of impressing heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan (Ward Bond), who goes so far as to meet up with Corbett at a post-match soiree to congratulate him for being the man who took him down.  

Walsh contrasts the match fighting (which takes up relatively little screen-time) with Corbett's efforts to rise in the ranks of Society, as well as in the ring standings, learning to exploit his victories to promote himself to the hoi polloi as well as fight promoters.  It's the burgeoning of the age of sports figures as superstars, and not thugs, rising above gutter tactics and championing their skills as valuable commodities to the elite, giving the rich a taste of the hard-scrabble competition they've left behind.

It's a natural extension of Flynn's persona as a cavalier, being the winking bad boy who's naughty to all the right people, but especially to the really bad ones—the jaunty trickster with a gleam in his eye, who'll find a way to get ahead...by left hook or by crook, the competent high-wire artist in marked contrast to buddy Walter Lowrie (Jack Carson, one of my favorite character actors), the lovable schlub who plays pilot-fish to Corbett's shark, never ablt to achieve success, but omnipresent to enjoy it for him.

Mary of Scotland

When Orson Welles was asked what movies he studied before embarking on directing Citizen Kane he replied, "I studied the Old Masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford." This week, we're looking at little-seen films from The Old Master, each different in tone, temperament and subject matter, but all unmistakably the work of America's storied film-maker, the irascible, painterly, domineering, sentimental puzzle that was John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.

Mary of Scotland (John Ford, 1936) The film, written by Dudley Nichols from Maxwell Anderson's play, begins with an odd preamble, giving an overview of the whole Mary, Queen of Scots/Elizabeth R situation, and ending with the hopeful suggestion that they are "all equal now," buried close to each other in Westminster Abbey.  Cheery thought, and, despite what the play and movie say, the only time that Elizabeth and Mary were in the same room together.

It's a problematic film. betraying its stage roots (the speeches are very formal, stylized, and performed theatrically, with no overlap and AT THE TOP OF EVERYBODY'S LUNGS, as if trying to reach the last row of the balcony) although Ford works overtime to find interesting angles to shoot from.  So much Hollywood gossip swirls around this film—part of Hepburn's "box-office poison" cycle—that one is hesitant to bring it up as sources for the film's problems, which are many. But the main fault lies with Anderson's play, which lionizes Mary (Katherine Hepburn) while demonizing Elizabeth, and the production goes right along with it—Mary's first lines are a prayer to God for returning safely to Scottish shores, while Elizabeth's is ordering people around and played (by Florence Eldridge) as if she were Edward G. Robinson.  It would have been nice if this subject were a little more nuanced, as it involves two strong women in positions of power with men as being subjective, if constant irritants. One wishes that the two could have gotten together and agreed that all the men surrounding them were jerks and done something about that, rather than engaging in power plays for England's throne.

But, that's not how history went, and the play plays fast and loose enough with the facts as it is.  And this is Mary's movie, to the point where Hepburn is the only cast member with close-ups—jarring close-ups that have the feel of insert shots as the lighting changes dramatically from the establishing shots—Elizabeth is only seen in full shots that emphasize costume over performance.

There are joys to be had, though.  Ford's penchant to use unruly horses is much in evidence, and the animals are particularly out of control on the sound-stages that dominate the film.  And Frederic March is something of a revelation, boisterous and accented, his is the best performance in the film.  And Ford's presentation is never less than spectacular, as has been mentioned, giving the film a scope that it wouldn't have had in other's hands.

A not-altogether successful film, but interesting to see.

Drums Along the Mohawk

When Orson Welles was asked what movies he studied before embarking on directing Citizen Kane he replied, "I studied the Old Masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford." For the next three days we'll be looking at little-seen films from The Old Master, each different in tone, temperament and subject matter, but all unmistakably the work of America's storied film-maker, the irascible, painterly, domineering, sentimental puzzle that was John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.

Drums Along the Mohawk (John Ford, 1939) "Every generation must make its own way—in one place or another"—so director Ford caps the start of his career-long history of the United States...with a wedding, for this earliest episode in that timeline.  The year is 1776, but instead of the politicians haggling over language in Philadelphia meeting rooms, he's—again—on the frontier, a couple day's ride from Albany, New York. Gil Martin (Henry Fonda) and his new wife Lana (Claudette Colbert) are embarking on a mission, just as the newly formed states are, "to form a more perfect union."  

It won't be easy for either organization, with threats, both internal and external.  There are attacks by Natives against the encroaching settlers (but, even here, Ford has them blameless—if brutally opportunistic—as the Iroquois are taking their orders from a Tory agent, played by an eye-patched John Carradine, who is paying the tribe for their berserker destruction of the homesteads, burning everything—buildings, crops and possessions—down to the bare Earth, leaving nothing, not even anything the tribe could steal or profit by), internal strife among the villagers, and the hard-scrabble existence that tests the fiber of the town-folk.

Before long, the citizens are driven to the local fort housing the militia, always at the ready for a call to arms from General Washington.  In the meantime are the struggles to maintain a family, order, and petty grievances that threaten to disrupt the community from within.  But, a shared sense of purpose—community-building reflecting the larger picture of nation-building, pulls the majority of them through.

Early on, Gil and Lana are burned out of their humble cabin-home, built by Gil. They take up lodgings with the widow McKlennar (Edna May Oliver) as workers and soon, are back on their feet, on a par with everyone who has suffered hardships.

This is Ford's first film in color, and it's eye-popping Technicolor, and the director, who was discriminating in his choice of which format to use—his last two were in monochrome—fills the screen with detailed color; the very first shot, after the needle-pointed credits, is a pull-out from the bouquet that Lana is holding at her wedding, and there are fiery sunsets and sunrises framed in the same Ford-fashion, with just the right amount of horizon for contrast.  The greens are the most verdant, and fire seems to play an important part of the scheme of things, the flaming colors unnatural against a pastoral backdrop.

Fire figures in a violent double-whammy that strikes one unexpectedly towards the end of the film, as a scout (played by Francis Ford, the director's brother) is wheeled out in front of the fort in a wagon of straw, which is then set alight by torches and flaming arrows.*  Just when that scene is set in the mind, one of the settlers (played by Ford stock-player Ward Bond) is shot in the shoulder with a flaming arrow.  A flaming arrow.  Okay, sure, the arrow is a special effect on a wire, but the fire is real and Bond and his clothing are just as flammable as the next guy and his clothing.  The level of violence is turned up just a notch from what one might expect, and one is taken aback by it.  

Ford could do that—make you feel all-complacent and tear the Navajo-rug out from under you.

But it's a great movie.  Action-oriented, with the only difference being that the significant events—the bigger picture—is all happening off-screen, rather than being part of the tapestry of events.  Ford would be doing that in the future (both in his career and the events that shaped the country), but this is a very fine beginning.

Ford's first film in color—and Technicolor, at that—does not disappoint.

* It works just as dramatically here as it did in 1987, when Kubrick used something similar in Full Metal Jacket.

The Ox-Bow Incident

The Ox-Bow Incident (William A. Wellman, 1943)  Guy (Henry Fonda) walks into a bar with his buddy (Henry—nee Harry—Morgan).  He just came off the trail and is a might ornery.  His girl's left town, without a word, he hasn't had a bath in...well, he can't remember...but, the whiskey's good, even if the company ain't.  Then the fight happens; before too long, Fonda's character is just full enough of piss and vinegar (and whiskey, which from the looks of the bar, could be the same thing) that he picks a fight with a local tough (Marc Lawrence) using the bar to support him while delivering a nasty double kick to his head, until the barkeep clobbers him with with a bottle which shatters over his thick skull, and sends him (rather blissfully) into the arms of Morgan, who drags him like a sack of potatoes to a waiting cane-chair.


Welcome to the rough-and-tumble world of "Wild" Bill Wellman, a director of such sensibilities that you can practically smell the sweat coming off the denizens of Bridger's Wells, Nevada.  In a simple scene, Wellman differentiates himself from the more genteel sensibilities of Ford and Hawks, and into his own greasier, meaner, no-nonsense view of the West.  He's the better choice to present an immorality tale like The Ox-Bow Incident. about rough, western "justice" being meted out for the murder of a local rancher by a team of cattle rustlers.  The Sheriff's out of town, the deputy's itching for action, the local judge is ineffective blow-hard, and the posse-in-lynch-mob clothing have motivations, diverse but petty, such as false moral rectitude, mean-spiritedness, opportunism, and just plain boredom.  Truth to tell, they're a pack of wolves waiting for prey to abuse.


They find three men—a new rancher nobody knows (Dana Andrews), who's had recent dealings with the dead man, an old, demented hand (Francis Ford, John's brother), and a Latino tough (Anthony Quinn) just corrupt enough to know not to play along...with anybody.  Lip-service is paid to justice, process, and prayers, but ultimately the purpose is to string the three up and get revenge as quickly as possible.  In this court by mob rule, the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence is not as important as the sturdiness of the rope, and waiting for facts just gets in the way of the excitement—it's a necktie party in all senses, except common ones.  The cooler heads are seen as weak, obstructing, or just plain kill-joys.


No good can come of it and Wellman (working with Lamar Trotti from Walter Van Tilburg Clark's 1940 novel) writes a case for due process whatever the cost, even if the only thing wasted is time.  Vigilance is not the same as vigilantism and the two should be frequently opposed.  And if one were to be so foolish to think that Westerns are no longer relevent to the issues of today, you haven't been reading the papers.


This was one of Henry Fonda's favorite films he appeared in, and in 1998, became part of the National Film Registry.

Red Tails

Why We Fight
or
The Brother Gets It First*

Like Francis Ford Coppola's Tucker: The Man and His Dream (which he also financed), Red Tails is the movie that George Lucas has waited the longest to make.  In development even before the "Star Wars" prequels, the story of the Tuskeegee Airmen has been on Lucas' mainframe for over 20 years.  And as with most director "Dream Projects," this one had the potential to soar into great summits of excellence or tail-spin into an exercise of excess and pretentiousness.
Red Tails is neither one of those, but it does do some interesting things along the way.  Respectful of the airmen, and "gung-ho" enough to end with "America The Beautiful" playing out over the End Titles,  it does remind one, in spirit, of the old war films, that appeared during and immediately after the second world war,** tough, haggard, slightly cranky, and all-too-willing to bring up some risky aspects of the vet's experience that would be tossed under the rug of homilies that later "recruitment" war films would present.  At the same time, it plays things a bit safe, dramatically, while, in subtle ways, taking chances that modern audiences—thank God—might not be aware of.***  It follows a typically diverse group of air-men with defining cliches—the "hot-shot" (David Oyelowo), the alcoholic (Nate Parker), "the kid" (Tristan Wilds) "the yokel" (Ne-Yo)—through their story-arcs, fighting on two fronts—against the Nazis and their own brass and fellow soldiers, who, if not wanting to shoot the pilots out of the sky, didn't want them in the air in the first place.

One good thing that sets Red Tails apart from the other "yes, they fought too" films is there's no "white-wash" element (as one finds in a good effort like Glory, where a forgotten story about the participation of black soldiers in the Civil War, has to feature Matthew Broderick and Cary Elwes over Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, and Andre Braugher). These guys are on their own. There's no angelic white-devil's advocate that has to make the condescending "these are men" speech and, if anything, here, the white guys are pushing against back, making this film a lot more dramatic than your standard "liberal guilt" trip, where everybody's mind miraculously changes once "they're" "given a chance."****  The pressure never lets up on them and the only time they don't have to be on the defensive is in the air, fighting. Their inclusion in the war effort is a convenience, taking pressure off the other guys, and nothing noble. Doesn't matter to the pilots, though, as long as they're free of Earthly bonds, fingers on the triggers and Nazi Aryans in their sights.

And the battle scenes—complex, nasty and dangerous as the dog-fights are— are where Red Tails excels.  The same visceral energy of the Death Star battles (which were pre-visualized with edited WWII dogfight footage) is here, but with a rougher edge, bumpier, and more of a sense of true danger than a battle in space could provide.

Why'd it take so long?  Probably because Lucas wanted to do this one right (and also because studios were reluctant to finance a movie this black-centric), so he took the back-seat producer job, wrote the frame-work, hired John Ridley to write it and director Anthony Hemingway to film it, then doing some re-shoots (reportedly written with "Boondocks" creator Aaron McGruder) to do some dramatic streamlining.*****  Usually, it works with Lucas projects, especially when the director is strong, like Spielberg; there's a dramatic frisson that happens when it's not a "one-man/one-vision" project—something that was missing from the "Star Wars" Prequels, which suffered from too many "yes-men"—and Lucasfilms always seem to be better when he has to compromise and think off the top of his head...or someone else's.

One still gets a sense, though, of pandering.  The film Tuskeegee's don't need the "hey, these guys are good" comments that drop like leaden bombs throughout the film's second half.  As an audience, we can see it, we don't need to have it re-inforced by the white pilots they're escorting, especially considering those flight sequences are the best thing in the film.  The energy, thrills and derring-do (with their frequent "Yahoo" moments) are far more emotionally satisfying and communicative of the pilots' excellence.  Those sequences make Red Tails reach great heights, when everything else is trying to keep it grounded.  They didn't play it safe.  There's no good reason the film should.

Red Tails is a Rental.

The first wave of Tuskegee pilots

* A variation of the "trope" "Black Dude Dies First," which is a truism in "easy" drama and always struck me as being seminally racist.  In a war situation, with an all-black cast, it isn't true, and feels far less manipulative than in most war films.  In this war film, people die because "war is dangerous and people die in war."  It's random, unfair, and serves no purpose—not even dramatically.  That was an important take-way from this particular war film.

** This was in the 1940's, kids.

*** It's a bit soapish, but there's a romance between "hot-shot" pilot "Lightning" and an Italian girl, where nothing (blissfully) is mentioned about race, making the sequence seem idyllic, but also not clueing modern audiences in to the fact that if the same events happened in the country the pilots were fighting for, he would have stood a good chance of going to prison or being lynched for it.  It passes without comment or explanation, which might be dramatically risky, but sure feels good.  Real progress is made when the un-usual becomes commonplace and antique words like "miscegenation" disappear like disgarded, rusty tools.  Racial prejudice is SO "last century."

**** Even so, there's still a little too much of it, done mostly in voice-over behind masks, as if in post-production after-thought.  The screen-actions speak louder than any number of patronizing words.

***** Not sure where those sequences are—I'd only be speculating—but at one point "the kid" is shot down and put in a Nazi POW camp—the same camp that was the origination of the events and the film of The Great Escape.  Amusingly, there is one sequence that looks shot-for-shot like a sequence from the John Sturges film with "the kid" in the role played by Steve McQueen!  Heh.

War Horse

"The Lives That Pass Through a Horse"
or
"Come On, Joey!  Come On!"

The one-two punch of two Spielberg movies opening within a week of each is almost an embarrassment of riches, and in going from Tintin to War Horse it's a journey from the ridiculous to the sublime.  We've seen what happens when Spielberg tries to make a Kubrick film (A.I.: Artificial Intelligence), a David Lean film (Empire of the Sun) or cut up like Hitchcock (Jaws), but what happens when he makes a John Ford film?

The answer is War Horse, based on the 1982 children's book by Michael Morpurgo, which was subsequently staged as a play adapted by Nick Stafford at London's National theater.  Somewhere on this journey, Spielberg got wind of it, and the tale of World War I told from a horse's point of view became Spielberg's second Christmas release.  Horse movies have all the sentimental elements of fables, which is why children love them, but the circumstances of this one have little to do with childhood concerns, but have more to do with kinship between man and beast in an unsentimental, often brutal world of adults. 

It has all the elements of Ford: the Irish flavor as it begins in Devon, with the Narracott family acquiring a noble, unbreakable horse for plowing their hard-scrabble field; the horse—named Joey—learning to trust its first master, young Albert (Jeremy Irvine); the family being threatened with eviction by an uncaring bank (personified by David Thewlis' examiner); the "it takes a village" atmosphere that Ford engendered in his films (and not necessarily to come together in a common purpose, so much as to comment and gossip on it); the low comedy relief of animals—Spielberg makes goofy use of a particularly belligerent farm-goose and Ford favored horses that acted against training and merely acted like horses.  Even the town of Devon looks precisely like the 20th Century Fox backlot recreation of the Welsh mining town in Ford's How Green Was My Valley.

But tough economics trumps sentimentality here and the horse is sold into service in WWI to keep the family going, and The Great War passes the horse from hand to surviving hand, some gentle, some harsh as the battles change the landscapes and fortunes of those in the European theater.  The war goes from planned charges to muddy trench warfare, Spielberg opens it up with a spirited run where, Joey, alone and ownerless for the first time in the film, makes a desperate run for freedom (something possibly learned by a former caretaker), through, over and past the soldiers huddled in the trenches and ironically ending  his gallop in the middle of No man's Land, where warring parties must watch and wonder at the sight between them that has nothing to do with the concerns of Man.

But, where War Horse most resembles Ford's work is pictorially—Spielberg sticks to close shots for moments of drama, but when he opens up, it calls to mind advice that the old Commander gave the young director when he was still dreaming of making movies (see video below).  He's definitely paying attention to the horizon in this one, and the film, especially in its final moments, seems to come from a different era, one more rich in design and purpose.

In its color, both in sentiment and photographically, War Horse hearkens back to another period of cinema, one that was simpler and more direct, but it never betrays anything less than sophistication of subject matter and maturity of purpose, while still maintaining a high level of entertainment value.  At this point in his career, Spielberg is presenting a master class in film-making, evoking the past when it suits him, but maintaining a personal growth that seems to never flag.

War Horse is a Full-Price Ticket.  Caution should be exercised if the kids want to go.