Reviews: The Fallen Sparrow, Castle On The Hudson

Two lesser known films starring undersung noir heavyweight John Garfield

In a better world John Garfield would be better and more warmly remembered than he remains to modern audiences. An actor of both intensity and risk in an age of Hollywood where such virtues seldom paid off, his electrifying screen presence – part iconoclast, part everyman, part unrepentant hood – directly presaged and influenced later bad boy leading men including Jack Nicholson and  Al Pacino, and later (and especially) Mickey Rourke and Nicholas Cage.

Though first coming to widespread media attention before World War II in the 1938 melodrama Four Daughters, with the war’s end Garfield’s career went into overdrive, with more and bigger screen appearances in better films including The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), and We Were Strangers (1949). Yet as with so many of his contemporaries, his work during and immediately before the war years remains scattershot and varied, with hidden gems nestled alongside less-accomplished efforts that perhaps haven’t remained remembered for good reason.

1940′s prison drama Castle On The Hudson offers a good example of such mid-level filmmaking. Directed by Anatole Litvak from a script based on Lewis E. Lawes’ memoir 20,000 Years In Sing Sing (adapted once already, in a 1932 Spencer Tracy vehicle of the same name), the routine plot and somewhat formulaic characterizations drag the film down even while Garfield’s intensity struggles to boost it above the average.  Garfield isn’t alone in turning in a solid performance, which also helps, but like the convicts they play the standout performances are outnumbered and outgunned by the take-no-chances script.

Up and coming gangster Tommy Gordon (Garfield) stages a payroll robbery in which a security guard is accidentally killed. Given a muffed defense by his reptilian attorney (Jerome Cowan), he’s sent to prison expecting a short, comfortable stay courtesy of the gang bosses. But warden Walter Long (Pat O’Brien) won’t stand for it, setting fire to the bearer bonds offered as payoff and sending Gordon to three months in solitary. Gordon sweats out the time alone, going half-crazy but relenting to the prison’s absolute authority; it’s up to Garfield to convey this without chewing the scenery, which he does capably.

Gordon later, and somewhat inexplicably, earns a grudging respect for the tough-but-fair warden after a breakout attempt by a college-educated inmate (Burgess Meredith) ends in disaster. Whether because the scenes have been imitated so many times since, or because each scene is a virtual photocopying of the earlier Tracy version, the breakout and its eventual playout have a rote feel to them, with little to generate suspense besides the tenacious commitment of the actors. It’s also typical of the script’s morality that Burgess’ character’s breakout is motivated by a desire to help his wife give birth. (The rigors of jail aren’t enough to gain sympathy; something homier, it seems, was necessary for the audience to go along.)

When Gordon learns that his girlfriend (Anne Sheridan) lies near death after a fall from a car, he’s given an “honor furlough” by Long to visit her for one day. “I’ll come back if it means the chair,” Gordon tells the warden, but a confrontation with his lawyer (whose advances caused the girlfriend’s fall) leaves Gordon in an airtight frame for murder. The rest of the plot circles around efforts to free him before he’s sent to the electric chair, with all the hand-wringing melodrama that that plot twist can muster.

Garfield brings his effortlessly swaggering confidence, making what might have been a shrill tyro into something at once charismatic and foolish. Guinn “Big Boy” Williams, best known for his work in Westerns, is appealing as a lunkheaded con also headed for the electric chair, and Meredith especially overachieves as the wild-eyed jailbreak mastermind; he almost keeps up with Garfield, though not quite, and his death sequence drives the film’s most suspenseful moments.

Still, they’re evenly balanced by the blandness of O’Brien and Sheridan’s solemnly pious turns, and by an ending seemingly inspired more by running out of film than a conclusion of story. In more daring hands the film might have amounted to more, though perhaps not quite, and making a contentious statement was the last thing on its mind, anyway. Litvak and Garfield re-teamed the following year, on the far superior Out of the Fog.

Garfield’s films improved steadily over the next several years, with starring roles in The Sea Wolf and Tortilla Flat giving his filmography  literary credibility while adventures like Flowing Gold and Dangerously They Live accentuated his action star bankability. 1943′s The Fallen Sparrow combined the two sides of his career into an uneven if often thrilling showcase for his fluorishing dramatic chops.

Following years in a fascist prison camp in Spain, John McKittrick (Garfield) comes to New York to investigate the death of a police detective childhood friend. The friend helped him escape the Nazis, it seems, even if McKittrick is still severely rattled by years of sensory deprivation and torture. Returning to the elite social circles he knew before his service (a clumsy bit of backstory splicing explains that McKittrick’s father was a tough cop who got rich), he exploits his old friends’ sympathy to cozy up to the wheelchair-bound refugee Dr. Skaas (Walter Slezak) who’s preparing a study on modern torture methods. A series of plot twists allows McKittrick to suspect the doctor figured prominently in his friend’s death. 

As his investigation unfolds McKitrick finds he’s still pursued by his old captors for information they never managed to break out of him, and that his old society friends – including his friend’s cousin (Martha O’Driscoll) and his ex-girlfriend (Patricia Morrison) may be in league with enemy agents. Complicating events more (as all that weren’t enough), he finds himself increasingly drawn to a storekeeper (Maureen O’Hara) who may be a shill for the enemy agents or possibly an agent herself.

Helmed by prolific silent movie director Richard Wallace, the film often bears the texture and frenetic energy of that earlier format, especially in a gripping scene in which McKittrick’s barely managed PTSD returns with a vengeance. Garfield, again, acts the hell out of the scene without going overboard, and Wallace’s juxtaposition of images raises the paranoia several notches above what was likely considered sufficient at the time. Slezak is also terrifying as the doctor who’s more voyeur than observer into the world of cruelty, and O’Hara is spiderlike in her equal parts flirtation and menace.

The script is based on a novel by Dorothy B. Hughes, and like her better known In A Lonely Place (adapted by Nicholas Ray in 1950) issues of sexual identity and reliance on substance abuse both figure heavily into the characterizations’ subtext. McKittrick responds to the doctor’s descriptions of torture with effeminate body flourishes and gesticulations, and remains too quick to retreat into drunken fogs to compensate for his self-doubt. Meanwhile Skaas’ feigned infirmity is an unsubtle cue for concealed sexual domination that, once revealed, leaves the hapless McKittrick frozen in terror. O’Hara, her hair pulled tautly back to reveal her masculine facial structure, makes an effectively predatory foil for Garfield’s roiling emotions, calm when he’s emotional and wavering whenever he grows determined.

Ultimately, Wallace can’t find a balancing point between all that text and subtext, and much of the third act – in which everything ought to get stripped away to its essence, as Ray did in his own Hughes adaptation - is short-changed in favor of resolutions that abet the war effort. McKittrick gets his nerve back on the turn of a dime, returning at the end of the film to assist his old brigade’s re-formation. Skaas is dispatched handily, and O’Hara’s spy is taken into unimpeachable police custody. It’s a clean conclusion for a film that couldn’t get too dirty but does its best anyway, with Garfield the first one fearlessly wading into the psychological mire.

- Michael Kabel

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Film Noir Cinema: Ray of Night

Remembering the early noir work of legendary director Nicholas Ray

Though the public is probably best familiar with his seminal 1950s classics Rebel Without A Cause and King of Kings, and film historians point to his groundbreaking Bigger Than Life and Johnny Guitar, film noir aficionados know Nicholas Ray for his innovative, revelatory direction of such classics as In A Loney Place and They Live By Night, among others. Completing seven noirs between 1948 and 1952, Ray’s sensitivity to the isolation felt by the the nation’s youth, his fascination with sexual identity, and his willingness to depict violence would influence both the French New Wave (especially Jean Luc Goddard) as well as Arthur Penn, Terrence Malick, and the new generation of American filmmakers of the 1960s and 70s.

A libertine sometimes as infamous for his decadence as respected for his body of work, Ray came to filmmaking only in his mid-30s, having studied for a time as an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright and working in radio and on Broadway. In 1944 he learned to direct film by following Elia Kazan through the making of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, that director’s own first feature. In time Ray would do most of his best work at Howard Hughes’ RKO Pictures, where Hughes’ influence likely protected his hedonist lifestyle from attracting unsavory publicity, directing whole films and parts of films as Hughes demanded.  

The Live By Night (1948) – Ray’s début feature begins with a dizzying overhead chase sequence and doesn’t break tension for a moment throughout. Teen escaped convict Bowie (Farley Granger) and gas station attendant Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell) fall in love and go on the run after Bowie participates in a bank heist gone bad; the ending (shown below) is not “happy.” Violent and shocking in its criticism of law enforcement and “the system,” its early impressionism directly influenced later works such as Bonnie and Clyde and Badlands. Robert Altman made Thieves Like Us, his own version of Edward Anderson’s source novel, in 1973.

Knock On Any Door (1949) – Humphrey Bogart stars as a successful corporate attorney compelled by guilt to defend a Skid Row youth (John Derek) charged with the murder of a police officer. The film remains notable for its complicated structure and intricate plot, even while its aggressive social commentary and heavy pacing make it seem melodramatic and pedantic by modern standards. Still, Bogart is masterful as always, and the final courtroom speech prefigures later cinema courtroom barnstorming including Compulsion, A Time To Kill, and dozens more.

A Woman’s Secret (1949) - This “women’s noir” only marginally fits inside the genre, thanks to Ray’s moody mis en scene and the complicated interpersonal dynamics between stars Maureen O’Hara and noir arch-femme fatale Gloria Grahame. The two play singers at different ends of the same career – O’Hara on her way down, Grahame on her way up - and in love with the same man (Melvyn Douglas). The plot and suspense are fairly straightforward, though all the principals give solid performances. Ray married Grahame shortly after production concluded, a miserable union for them both that began and ended in adultery.

In A Lonely Place (1950) – The marriage lasted long enough, however, for Ray to get Grahame into the role that would become her finest performance. Co-star Bogart wanted his own wife Lauren Bacall for the part of Laurel Gray, the steadying presence that promises to redeem screenwriter Dixon Steele (Bogart) after years of self-destructive rage. Based on Dorothy B. Hughes’ pulp novel, the story is the stuff of which Gender Studies dissertations are made: full of exploration into gender roles, emotional and sexual dominance, and Freudian symbology. Ray expresses such moody ideas through careful screen composition, stark pacing, and by finely tuning Grahame and Bogart’s chemistry.

The Racket (1951) Ray returned to the noir genre after the melodrama Born To Be Bad and the war actioner Flying Leathernecks, reteaming with those films’ Robert Ryan to remake the 1928 silent movie about a crime boss (Ryan) on a collision course with an honest police captain (Robert Mitchum). Under Hughes’ micromanagement Ray directed only part of the film, and his style never entirely meshed with co-director John Cromwell’s more straightforward aesthetic. The stars’ performances are meanwhile odd and uneven, turning what should have been a promising rematch (after the two squared off in 1947′s semi-noir Crossfire)  into a routine genre exercise.

On Dangerous Ground (1952) – The fourth Ray-Ryan collaboration produced some of the actor’s best work, playing a live wire police detective sent from the city into the hinterlands as much to avoid a brutality inquiry as to solve a murder. While pursuing a suspect with assistance from the victim’s father (Ward Bond), Ray’s detective falls for the suspect’s blind sister (Ida Lupino), a relationship that threatens his precarious self-respect while simultaneously tempting him with a cleaner way of life. Working from an adapted script by A.I. Bezzerides, Ray takes the noir out of the city and into the countryside, finding  just as much isolation and paranoia in the wide open spaces as the tight corners of the city, and just as much human capacity for violence and cruelty. Bernard Herrmann’s tripwire-taut musical score brings everything together.

Macao (1952) – Sometimes considered a road company Casablanca, this adventure in the titular Far Eastern port stars Mitchum as an ex-G.I. and Jane Russell as a nightclub singer falling in love while while falling over each other in a seedy casino. Grahame appears as the moll of a local crime boss, while William Bendix also co-stars as an undercover cop. The sexual equilibrium between the leads harkends back to Ray’s earlier work, but the framing of the exotic port of call never really gets below the setting’s surface. Still, fans of the stars will find it entertaining nonetheless.

Ray filmed Rebel Without A Cause in 1955, but innuendo surrounding an illicit romance between he and 16-year-old star Natalie Wood, along with increased substance abuse, took its toll on his reputation. After collapsing on the set of 1963′s 55 Days in Peking, he went more than a decade without a directing credit, eventually settling down to a teaching position at Binghampton University. That career too was rocked with controversy, when footage from the student film We Can’t Go Home Again displayed Ray smoking marijuana with his students. His last film effort, 1979′s experimental Lightning Over Water, was completed with assistance from long time fan Wim Wenders. Ray died of lung cancer that same year.

- Michael Kabel

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Up All Night With Too Many Movies

Five films we recently recorded and then stayed up too late checking out.

What film insomnia sometimes feels like.

For the movie addict, DVR’s are the enemy of sleep. With their easy to use onscreen plot summaries and simple recording features, it’s nothing to set something to record, day or night, and come back to it when you’ve got the time. Besides the premium networks, Fox Movie Channel, American Movie Classics, and the incomparable Turner Classic Movies all show dozens of films a week, most of them – to us, anyway – too tempting not to hit the jolly, candy-like record button.

We’ve recently checked out these five films, going over them in multiple sittings and then browsing the web for background information to give their virtues and faults some (often much-needed) context. A few of them are markedly better than others, while one or two are just about at their proper level as a late-late-LATE feature. But, we realize every old film is probably somebody’s favorite, and the opinions below are just our own.

FM (1978): Long on style and short on character development, this loose dramedy is a pleasant enough romp about disc jockeys at a freewheelin’, free-format Los Angeles radio station, one seemingly a million miles away from both the disco and punk revolutions. The rambling plot sometimes tries too hard to embrace Robert Altman’s formlessness via legendary cinematographer John A. Alonzo’s (Chinatown) direction, while too many characters clutter up the proceedings. Cleavon Little and Martin Mull do impress, however, as jockeys using their star power mostly to get laid. Thoughts before turning off the light: A missed opportunity to make a true cult classic, unfocused and trying too much at once to settle on a tone or meaning. Like the vanished AOR format it celebrates, it’s only fun until something comes on you don’t care for.

Music Within (2007): A feel-good, true-story movie that wants you to like it, and you want to, too, except it doesn’t quite come together like it should, despite a hell of a lot of advantages. Ron Livingston (Band of Brothers) stars as Richard Pimentel, who overcame a strained childhood with a schizophrenic mother and then almost total deafness sustained during the Vietnam War to crusade for disabled persons’ rights. The film follows Pimentel as he gives up a safe corporate job to follow his dream and talent of public speaking, as well as his long friendship with a writer almost completely debilitated by cerebral palsy (Michael Sheen). Thoughts before turning off the light: Too many cliched scenes and too much underwritten dialogue spoils a great story. Though it’s not exactly the case, in retrospect two-thirds of the film seemed to take place in musical montage. Pimentel, for all his accomplishments, probably deserves a better tribute. Livingston is almost always better than the films in which he appears.

Thieves Highway (1949): When his truck-driver father is crippled by a crooked San Francisco fruit merchant (Lee J. Cobb), war veteran Nick Garcos (Richard Conte) drives a truckload of apples up the pre-freeway California coast to get even. Gorgeously directed by noir master Jule Dassin (The Naked City) and tautly written by A.I. Bezzerides, adapting his own gritty novel. The performances are all flawless, especially Valentina Cortese as a hooker put into Garcos’ line of fire and Millard Mitchell as the doomed trucker trying to do right by the Garcos family. Thoughts before turning off the light: Criterion deserves props for including this film in its catalog; the chase sequence was riveting.

A Woman’s Secret (1949): A singer with a burned-out throat (Maureen O’Hara) stands accused of shooting her more successful, though far more uncouth, protege (Gloria Grahame). Her piano player lover (Melvyn Douglas) sets out to prove her innocence, instigating a series of flashbacks. Director Nicholas Ray (Rebel Without A Cause) does the best he can with the potboiler material, though there’s a going-through-the-motions feeling throughout. Grahame, always disdainful of her singing voice, lip-syncs her musical numbers. (The film’s production brought about Ray and Grahame’s disastrous marriage). Thoughts before turning off the light: Were it made today, this sleek little b-movie would be a centerpiece of any ratings period for the Lifetime Movie Network, or even a comeback project for Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony.

Deterrence (1999): Set in the then near-future world of 2008, the nation’s first Jewish president (Kevin Pollak) and his staff scramble to deal with Iraqi aggression while stranded in a snowbound Colorado diner. Far from having a mandate, President Emerson is an appointed veep who came to the office through attrition, and his races, ethnic and campaign both, only complicate the rapidly escalating tension. Critic-turned-filmmaker Rod Lurie (The Contender) wrote and directed this, his debut feature, and his grasp and reach haven’t quite come together yet. Pollak is energetic, while Timothy Hutton is convincing as his pragmatic chief of staff. Thoughts before turning off the light: The ending is a total cheat, as frustrating as a lesser episode of The Twilight Zone but without the creepy ambience; Pollak’s presence is missed on the current movie landscape.

For what little it’s worth, here’s what up next in our DVR queue: The 70s sci-fi classic Westworld; The ebullient mystery Shadow of the Thin Man; Noir heavyweights Sterling Hayden and Dan Duryea facing off in Manhandled; and the early-career Marilyn Monroe suspenser Don’t Bother To Knock. Feel free to post your own recommendations below.

- Michael Kabel
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