The Unseen #39: Angel Face

Why I Bought It?: Came in the Robert Mitchum boxset I bought.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: I don’t know, why haven’t you? Oh you have? In that case I have absolutely no excuse.

How Was It?: Is there an actor whose collective poon hounding has gotten him into more trouble then Mitchum?

Oh sure, there are plenty of movie characters led to their doom by a pretty face, but only Mitchum seems to go out of his way to do so. Time and time again he leaves the nice girl he has at home to forcibly attach himself to man devouring succubae who drag him down to his doom.

It might be misogynistic, but that’s just how they rolled in back then and you can’t say that Mitchum wasn’t asking for it.

Angel Face follows Mitchum as a hapless race car driver turned paramedic, who ends up called to the house of a rich lady who left the gas on. Its somewhat obvious that the accident wasn’t really an accident, or for that matter an “accident”, but instead an attempted murder by the victim’s daughter. Mitchum reacts to this news by falling head over heals with the crazy leaving his nice fiancé for a chance at fame and fortune, and owning his own maintenance garage (?) . The results go predictably awry, given you know, bitch be crazy.

The film is directed by Otto Preminger. A director whose reputation has been somewhat on the wane lately despite having a few bonafide classics, and a whole lot of interesting messes under his belt.

Preminger’s hand is evident both in the story’s cynicism, Mitchum is charming as always, but his character is kind of a shit, and the passive aggressive boundary pushing that was his forte. Incest, homosexuality, premarital sex, and other things not considered polite subject matter for dinner conversation in the nineteen fifties are all hinted at. But that’s all they are, hints, inferences, its what drove the Code folks crazy about Preminger, and part of why so many of his films have aged so badly.

Preminger’s great skill was shredding taboos, that are no longer taboos, ironically thanks to in a large part him. But it takes all the gas out of his films today, like Anatomy Of A Murder, whose entire existence is based around the fact that it allowed Preminger to have his characters say “Sperm” and “Panties” on film. All very shocking then, but hardly a suitable payoff for a two hour movie today.

While Angel Face does incorporate this technique it is not dependant on it. Mitchum as always is a heavy lidded source of charisma, the plot is pretty tightly wounded, hinging on the character’s neurosis’s rather then fate (same difference). It also features two spectacular car wrecks which make such fantastic use of its dummies that I can only hope that The Flying Maciste Brothers, the folks behind The Destructible Man spontaneously ejaculate whenever someone watches this film.

I mean come on. That's a car wreck!

Postscript:

(I couldn't in good conscience not show this beautiful poster)

Summer Of Samurai: The Unseen #37: Samurai Pt 1: Musashi Miyamoto

Why’d I Buy It?: I think I probably picked it up at a Criterion sale a while back. Hearing that it was the inspiration for the Crazy 88 fight in Kill Bill didn’t hurt either.

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: I truly have no idea.

How Was It?: None too shabby. The first part of The Samurai Trilogy, Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto, is a well made and at times truly beautiful piece of old school epic storytelling.

The film may not have the poeticism of a Kurosawa film, but its about as far as you can get in tone from the exploitation style Samurai films that this event has spent the most time covering. More then anything it resembles a forgotten work of Hollywood golden age filmmaking. More a piece with the work of Raoul Walsh or King Vidor, then Seijun Suzuki. The film seems more likely to appeal to fans of Errol Flynn and John Wayne, rather then those of Ogami Itto and Hanzo.

Not that it doesn’t do the job of being an awesome Samurai film as well. The film follows Musashi (played by the inimitable Toshiro Mifune. Making what is somehow his first appearance in Summer Of Samurai) and his friend as they leave their small village to seek fortune and glory in the war. After a few, surprisingly stark, disillusioning battle the two wounded Samurai take refuge with a mother daughter team of grave robbers (giving the uneasy feeling that we have accidentally rented Onibaba). And before long the two have split ways, with Mifune attempting to return home, and his friend making his way with the mother daughter duo. Thus abandoning his fiancé, and giving Mifune ample time to feel guilty about his feelings towards her. It doesn’t take Mifune long to end up on the wrong side of the law, with a death sentence on his head and in need of redemption the likes of which only a good woman and an ornery Buddhist Monk can provide.

If Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto has a flaw it is that it is too obviously the first part of a larger story. As that’s exactly what it is, and Samurai II and III sit readily at hand, it seems an odd thing to hold against the movie. But it doesn’t change the fact that the film abruptly stops its adventuring and sword fighting and takes on a much less dynamic, “Mifune is tied to a tree while people berate him”, narrative structure. The movie ends not with a physical victory, but an internal one.

The film itself is beautiful to look at, striking that perfect Fordian mean between realism and romanticism. Like the Hollywood Classical era, there is an admirable amount of information in every shot. Take an early scene in which Musashi and his friend talk about leaving. The tracking shot that has found them in a tree together pauses, and we can see in the background both the life of the villagers and behind them a column of Samurai marching to war, all three plains of action have perfect shared focus. And there’s an abrupt wistfulness to the shot that was not expected.

The Unseen #35:The Young Philadelphians

Why’d I Buy It?: Came in the Paul Newman Box set I ordered (Last One!)

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: I thought It might be a little dry. When you read the below section you will realize how ridiculous that is.

How Was It?: AWESOME. There are panting Melodramas. And then there are melodramas which come with a coat and an extra pair. The Young Philadelphians is a hot tranny mess of a film (Dignity here at TTDS. Always Dignity). Supposedly about the young Paul Newman as a bright young lawyer continuously pushed into the upper crust of Philadelphia (and really isn’t being a part of Philadelphia’s aristocracy like being the smartest man in Turlock?), by his well meaning but social climbing mother. The Young Philadelphians gloriously revels itself to be one of those uber melodramas where in everything is happening all the time. Its not about anything as much as it is about packing in as much smut into a fifties picture as a mainstream audience could stand and still bare to call itself respectable.

Why the first five minutes alone feature Alcoholism, Closeted Homosexuality, or this being the fifties a rather euphemisimtastic light in the loafers lavender fellow (Portrayed by Adam West!!!!), Suicide, Sweaty Passionate out of wedlock Irish sex, illegitimate birth and other assorted awesome. And this is before a shirtless sweaty Paul Newman shows up to beat the tar out of a brute in his very first scene.

Now even Tenessee Williams would agree that’s a little overstuffed.

But the movie is, like Al Pacino before he gets the Hoo Hahs going, just getting warmed up. Before the runtime is over it will feature, murder most foul, lovers kept apart by dread circumstance, the Korean War, more suicide, adultery, more alcoholism, cougar fucking, more controlling dowagers, trials before a jury in defense of an innocent man’s life, black mail, more implied repressed homosexuality, Brain Tumors, and a little dog named Carlos.

It’s the type of movie where when the idyllic interludes do come you look greedily at your watch knowing something truly dreadful can’t be more then five minutes out.

Paul Newman is magnetic and hot enough to fry several eggs on. He’s matched by a game cast and Vincent Sherman, who is some how manages to keep this overheated mess from boiling over.

The Young Philadelphians, is one of those films like Picnic, or the films of Douglass Sirk that is as much fun to watch for the way it subliminates its subject matter as much as anything that makes it onto the screen. Not since I saw Dorthey Malone jack off an oil derrick in Written On The Wind have I seen the strength of trashiness strain so valiantly against the bonds of respectability. Repression might not be healthy, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

Something like The Young Philedelphians carries a whiff of the forbidden that’s all the stronger because the people who made it actually did believe that some things where better left unsaid. That’s something in rather short supply these days. “They don’t make them like this anymore.” Is a phrase that’s tossed around an awful lot. And I’m as guilty of it as anyone. But in The Young Philadelphian’s the phrase is depressingly literal. No one outside of this time period, circumstances and mores could make this film. And I can’t help but feel it’s a little bit of a shame.

The Unseen #31: Somebody Up There Likes Me

Why’d I Buy It?: Came In Paul Newman Boxset

Why Haven’t I Watched It?: No real reason.

How Was It?: Pretty damn good. Somebody Up There Likes Me is one of those films you get pissed about not seeing sooner, and a prime example of the kind of film I love doing this column for. One second it’s a film I only knew about in sketchy historical terms, the next it’s an essential. A film I would easily rank among my favorite Biopics, Sports movies, and New York Films. A fast paced, well written and acted, stylish, and vastly entertaining bit of old school studio craftsmanship.

Robert Wise never gets as much credit as he deserves, but he’s always been one of my favorite of the old studio directors, out of the unabashed hired hands. Sure he made some fairly dreadful films like The Hindenberg, and Star Trek The Motionless Picture. But When given the right material Wise knew how to make a picture work. And he made some truly great ones.

If nothing else he was a fantastic adapter. Capitalizing and improvising with the freedom’s that other filmmakers pioneered. And here, especially in the first third of the film he apes Jules Dassin to fantastic effect, using the then new style of location based shoots for shots that have a depth and life to them that are just startling. Wise was of course one of Welles’ first disciples, and he shoots the city sequences with a startling depth of field. It’s a film with the kind of detail that only life can provide, and so many of the frames are so rich with it that its difficult not to use your freeze frame with every long shot. (DOP Joseph Ruttenberg won an Oscar)



The film tells the true story of “Rocky Graciano” a small time hoodlum, who after stints in prison and the brig, builds himself up to a respectable fighter. Only to have his past come back to haunt him, when he really makes it big.

Wise directs the boxing sequences with a startling realism (though not quite the brutality he used in The Set Up). He strings the film together with sequences that are just perfect. Such as the ending title fight, (a bruiser in itself) which Wise intercuts between the fight, the crowds listening to it in the neighborhood, and the sounds of the radios echoing in the empty tenement street, in a perfectly crafted montage. There are other little touches that make the film feel different. The film is gritty beyond the usual studio style "realism" actually feeling like the inner city. Then there's the fact that watching it you actually know that there are black people in New York, and two of the main characters (Including Graciano’s wife) are Jewish. It might not be much now, but in the era of Gentleman’s Agreement, it still was a big deal.

Newman famously ended up subbing for James Dean in this his first starring role, and as a result that Newman cool isn’t a hundred percent there yet. Its not just the fact that he’s about as Italian as Charlton Heston is Mexican. He’s as much playing James Dean as he is Rocky Garcianno (as he would again, to a much lesser extent in The Left Handed Gun). There are times where he fidgets and mumbles in a way that you can actually SEE Dean coming out in the role. Its frankly pretty eerie. (Especially the scenes where Newman plays against Dean foil Mineo)

And yet, his performance is not Dean, and Dean would have probably been horribly miscast in the role. Oh sure, he could have done the tortured, brooding scenes. Fighting with fathers was Dean's raison d tere. Dean could play persecuted better then just about anyone who ever lived. But Newman has a capacity for pleasure that Dean never seemed to have. Try imagining a scene like the one where Newman strolls around his old neighborhood with his new family, surrounded by adoring fans, sporting a fur coat, cigar the size of a baby’s arm, and a shit eating grin the size of Tulsa with Dean in it. Its impossible.



And while the classic Newman character would be a lot more humble then Graciano, and a lot smarter for that matter, he would always walk with that same swagger. This movie could be subtitled, “Birth Of The Cool.”

A Star Is Born

Andrew At Encore Entertainment has asked for entries in a musical blogothon. Coupled with The Self Styled Siren’s excellent write up on the subject of this film’s precurrser, I was more then happy to review A Star Is Born.

A Star Is Born tells a simple story, or a drunken nearly washed up star who takes the time to train a protégé on the way down. Her star begins to rise as he crashes to the bottom. And they have a doomed romance on the way down.

A Star Is Born’s problem is that it peaks in its first fifteen minutes. It’s a stunning scene that threads between off stage and on at a Hollywood benefit. in which a lifetime of resentment finally boils over for James Mason. At his worst Mason coasted by on a sort of bored ultra feyness. At his best, as in here and Bigger Then Life, he has a kind of curdled grandeur to him, turning self destruction to an art. It’s a collage of styles taking both full advantage of Cinemascope’s grandeur and color, while using handle camera’s, lighting, and if my eyes didn’t deceive me even a jump cut or two in a way that’s almost cinema verite. Truth be told, I have purposefully avoided this film, familiar with this sequence through Martin Scorsese’s A Personal Journey Through American Film, and convinced the movie couldn’t live up (ala My Dream Is Yours) and while to a certain extent this is the case, the movie never loses sight of the dark heart and bitter taste of its opening scene.

Its not the type of expirimentation that Cukor is known for, having more often credited to his contemporary Vincent Minnelli. Similar, less successful, experimental scenes run through the film. Such as an abstract production number that looks like Bubsy Berkley via De Stijl (It also features Judy Garland crying “Mammy” backed up but a chorus in black face playing banjos. A sight just as surreal as anything the production design might have to offer.) Cleverly Cukor uses another scene to take the opposite approach, with Garland pantomiming an entire elaborate production number for Mason, alone in her living room.

Cukor was of course one of the most skilled comedy directors of the forties, which in turn makes him one of the most skilled of all time. And he’s able to keep the film from becoming a slog, putting in some deft comic scenes that never feel out of place, including one nice sequence that turns a killer running gag out of the simple phrase, “Glad to have you with us.”

Garland was a little old for the role, but that just adds pathos to the part. Even in something as light as her parts with Mickey Rooney Garland carries with her a certain air of fragile, doomed sadness. In a part as relentlessly melodramatic as A Star Is Born she looks as though she’s performing with a death sentence over her (Did she and Montgomery Clift ever star in a movie together? And if so how was it didn’t open up a rift in the fabric of time and space and consume the Earth in a black hole of infinite sadness when it was released). And Mason matches her beat by beat, clearly showing the good man inside even at his worst.

Oh yeah, there’s music here to. I’ll admit I’ve never payed to much attention to Garland before, ubiquitous as she is. In musicals I’ve always been attracted more to the great dancers then singers, and though Garland could certainly dance she was no Astaire. But the screening of Girl Crazy in Austin that I attended changed my mind to a certain extent. She just has a natural charisma and screen presence, and few know how to use a close up better. Her singing voice like her persona is a beautiful fragile thing.

She, Mason and Cukor turn A Star Is Born into a real rare and wonderful thing, a piece of artifice that unlikely cuts straight to the heart.