A Word on Roger Ebert

The fact that I never got to meet Roger Ebert and say "thank you" for inspiring me to pursue film criticism will haunt me for the rest of my life. All I can think of is the scene in LIFE OF PI when Richard Parker left Pi.

"And then Richard Parker, my fierce companion, the terrible one who kept me alive, disappeared forever from my life. I wept like a child, not because I was overwhelmed at having survived, although I was...I was weeping because Richard Parker left me so unceremoniously. It broke my heart...I wanted to say 'Thank you Richard Parker, you saved my life. I love you.'"

Well you saved my life, Roger.
And you left before I could say goodbye.
You left before I could say, "I love you."

But I guess it's like Pi said:

"I suppose in the end, the whole of life becomes an act of letting go, but what always hurts the most is not taking a moment to say goodbye."

Goodbye, Roger Ebert.
I'll miss you.
I will always love you.

The Ballad of Little Jo

Directed by Maggie Greenwald
1993
The United States of America

In the American Western, there seem to be only three kinds of women: schoolmarms, hookers, and cowgirls. The schoolmarm, representing the encroachment of civilization in the savage West, is atypical of her harsh surroundings; a stranger in a strange land bringing culture and knowledge to the brutal and ignorant. The hooker, on the other hand, is an extension of the frontier itself. While they may get gussied up in French perfume and fancy finery, they are nevertheless an embodiment of lawlessness and exploitation; of disease and carnal commerce. And then there is the cowgirl. Donning the etiquette, manners, and iconography of her masculine counterparts, she is frequently framed as the object of desire and fetishization for a stalwart male hero; an untamed filly that must be broken in for a role of domesticity (or at the very least lassoed into a traditional heterosexual relationship).

These three women all have established spaces with the fictionalized world of the Old West that sustain and provide for them: the schoolhouse for the schoolmarm, the saloon for the hooker, and the ranch for the cowgirl. Though very different, they all play crucial societal roles.

But the mythology of the Old West is just that: a mythology. Not every woman who braved the Western frontier had a place carved out for them by society. Many had to improvise their own role. Those that did were faced with more than just the hostility of the unknown, uncontrollable wilderness. These women had to contend with an insidious, institutionalized misogyny that was ready and more than willing to prey on those who didn’t stay “in their place.”

Josephine Monaghan was one such woman. The true story of her life seems more of fiction than fact: after being disowned by her parents for having a child out of wedlock, she moved to Idaho and became a successful rancher for 30 years, all the while masquerading so successfully as a man that her true identity was only discovered upon her death. How did she manage such an illusion for so long? How did nobody find out? And why did she feel like she needed to dress as a man?

Maggie Greenwald’s The Ballad of Little Jo attempts to address these mysteries by charting Jo’s years of exile. The film begins with young Josephine traveling alone on a road on her way West. Immediately she is beset upon by men who view her as sexual prey. After escaping from a group of soldiers who try to rape her (after an older man that she thought was her friend attempted to sell her), she cuts her hair, scars her face, trades her skirts for pants, and becomes ‘Jo.’ Notice the scene where Josephine buys a set of men’s clothes. The shop-keeper, an old lady, scowls, “It’s against the law to dress improper to your sex.” This, of course, happens right after a muddy, terrified, and disheveled young woman bursts into her store asking if she’s seen two soldiers. She doesn’t say it out loud, but the look in the shop-keeper’s eyes reveal that she has put two and two together: this poor young woman was sexually assaulted. And yet, when she tries to buy men’s clothes to prevent future attacks, the shop-keeper chastises her. Herein we discover one of the most unsettling yet vital truths about the Old West: to act outside of one’s societal role is inexcusable. If Josephine must be raped, then so be it. Better for her to get sexually assaulted as a woman than for her to pretend to be a man.

Eventually Jo arrives at Ruby City, a crude mining camp populated by filthy workers searching for gems and gold. There are few, if any women. If there are wives, sisters, and daughters, then we do not see them. Periodically a traveling band of prostitutes come by and all of the men dutifully take their turn. Little Jo, having already been accepted as a man, is viciously mocked for refusing one of the prostitute’s advances. “Little Jo, I think you should reconsider. A man can get diseases he don’t do it regular,” one of them wisely explains. It’s not enough that Little Jo looks, acts, and talks like a man. Jo must go through the motions expected of a man to be accepted as one.

But still Jo refuses. Suddenly Jo is looked upon by the other men with a confused curiosity and a growing resentment. So after learning the basics of frontier life from Percy, an exiled Englishman who nurses a grudge against the female sex, Jo spends five years as a shepherd tending the flock of a man named Frank Badger. Periodically spending months without human contact, Badger worries that Jo might go crazy. But Jo assures Badger that the loneliness “suits me.”

After saving enough money, Jo purchases a homestead way out yonder where her only neighbor is Badger. But one day while visiting Ruby City, Jo encounters Badger and a group of men lynching a ‘Chinaman’ for trying to “take our jobs.” After saving him, Badger and the others force Jo to employ him as a housekeeper so he won’t simply wander to another town and take a job away from another honest white man. Jo refuses, but eventually relents, adopting the ‘Chinaman,’ whose name is revealed to be Tinman Wong. At first, Tinman seems to be mentally slow and stupid. But after just three days, he reveals that he knows Jo’s secret. But Tinman explains that he has a secret, too: he is only pretending to be stupid. After 15 years of inhuman treatment while working on the railroad, Tinman, whose real name is ‘Tien Ma,’ learned that the best way to survive was to keep his head down and play the part of the stupid ‘Chinaman.’

The two strike up a passionate love affair, living a kind of role-reversed life where Jo is the masculine bread-winner and Tinman the feminine home-maker and cook. Both living in a society that affords them no place, Jo and Tinman find sanctuary in both their little homestead and in each other. It is here that Greenwald’s genius as a director and a social commentator truly emerges. Take one scene where Jo longingly stares at Tinman while he bathes. The visual grammar of the scene is directly reminiscent of the traditional male gaze.

Later, during a scene where Jo and Tinman cuddle together in bed after making love, they share a fascinating conversation that seems to summarize both the film and Greenwald’s artistic intent:

Tinman: [Regarding a picture of Jo before she got pregnant] Who is this society girl?
Jo: It’s me. Can you imagine?
Tinman: I like you much better as you are.
Jo: Why?
Tinman: This white girl would never do this with me.

Looking back over what I’ve written so far, I’ve noticed that I’ve skipped over much of the film’s plot: Jo’s tragic friendship with Percy, Jo’s relationship with a family of homesteaders, an Eastern corporation’s attempts to buy out all of the local land via terrorism and groups of men in white masks, and even Jo’s inevitable death and discovery. But the plot is secondary in importance to the character of Little Jo. The film is not necessarily concerned with what happened to Josephine Monaghan when she moved out West, but instead with why and how they happened. How did a refined, educated high society woman survive for 30 years on the Idaho frontier? Why did Josephine become Jo? How did she manage to deceive everyone for decades? Why were the men so easily duped?

I like Roger Ebert’s theory that the men of Ruby City were fooled into thinking Little Jo was a man because on some sub-conscious level they chose to believe it. As he wrote: “So ingrained was the notion that only men could do "men's work," Greenwald says, that if a woman could ride and rope and run a ranch, she was accepted as a man even in the face of other evidence.” How ironic. Could it be that the very societal forces that damned Josephine in the first place were in part responsible for the success of her transformation into Jo? Perhaps. Perhaps not. All that’s clear is that the Old West was no place for a woman who wasn’t a schoolmarm, a hooker, or a cowgirl. Make of that what you will.

Bangue Bangue (Bang Bang)

Directed by Andrea Tonacci
1971
Brazil

In a stark white bathroom, a young man wearing nothing but grey shorts, a pair of sunglasses, and a cheap monkey mask pours himself a drink. Bringing it to his lips (or rather, the flimsy monkey ones), he spills most of it into the ruddy sink below him. He is surrounded by two large mirrors: the first, on the bathroom cabinet, capturing his bizarre visage and the second, on the wall, a massive film camera. Picking up a small electric razor, the man begins to buzz away at the mask’s whiskers. Slamming the cabinet shut, he turns around and stares directly at the camera, the giant machine now reflected in the sunglasses. He begins to sing.

“I dreamed that you were so beautiful/at a party of rare splendor.
I still remember your ball gown/it was white, white, all white, my love.
The orchestra played some plaintive waltzes/I took your arms and we started dancing, both in silence.”

In a hotel lobby, three muddied bandits cavort and crawl on the floor. The first, a beefy transvestite, crams fruit and foodstuffs into her mouth in large chomps. The second, a blind man, trips over onto the ground and fires his pistol randomly at the walls. The third, a smartly dressed man in a white suit, herds them into an elevator. They head up, up, up...but to where?

On the streets of São Paulo, a man gets into a fight with a taxi driver when he keeps missing his turn. In a crammed bedroom a magician summons birds and human beings instantly with the snap of a finger. On a rooftop a woman dances to the sound of a guitar. In a bar, a drunk harasses another patron. Another fight breaks out between taxi driver and customer. Somewhere a car chase ends in death and destruction. Again the three bandits, shooting and eating. Again a man singing in a bathroom, this time sans monkey mask. A man and woman repeat the same conversation five times in a row. At long last, one bandit tries to explain the plot, but is quickly silenced by a cream pie.
As bizarre scene cuts to bizarre scene, the audience grows restless. What is the point? Who are these characters? What are they doing? Do these questions even HAVE answers?

If they do, director Andrea Tonacci isn’t telling. For these are questions borne from watching Bang Bang (1971), one of the most radical, infuriating, intriguing, and bold Brazilian films ever made. A self-described “Maoist detective comedy,” Bang Bang is a film that, for one reason or another, never quite begins. There are characters, but no motivations. There are story developments, but no explanations. There are chase scenes bereft of impetus, explanation, and resolution.

Do not make the mistake of dismissing Bang Bang as a meaningless exercise in cinematic deconstruction. There was a distinct method to Tonacci’s madness, one rooted in the chaotic maelstrom of late 60s, early 70s Brazilian society. Between 1960-1972, a new movement known as Cinema Novo swept through Brazil. Largely inspired by Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave, and early Soviet filmmakers, the directors of Cinema Novo sought to re-invigorate Brazilian cinema, which had become artistically stagnant thanks to Hollywood saturating the Latin American film market, and politically mobilize the public against Western cultural imperialism. Their films sought out the dark, destructive areas of Brazilian life where social and economic contradictions were most endemic. They were more than just films; they were calls to action within Brazilian society.

 The poster of Nelson Pereira dos Santos' Vidas Secas (1963), one of the most important films from the early days of Cinema Novo.

However, as the 60s lumbered forward and the Brazilian government was swallowed by a military coup and a subsequent coup-within-a-coup, Cinema Novo began to evolve into a parody of its past self, adopting deliberately kitschy, gaudy stories and aesthetics in a desperate attempt to remain publicly, politically, and culturally relevant. By the end of the decade, Cinema Novo had polished itself to such a staggering extent that it had transformed into a cheap reflection of the very cinema that it had attempted to distance itself with in the first place.

 Compare the poster for Vidas Secas with this poster for Joaquim Pedro de Andrade's Macunaíma (1969). Macunaíma was one of the later Cinema Novo films that deliberately tried to appeal to the masses.

Disgusted with the state of Cinema Novo, a new movement began in the city of São Paulo: Udigrudi (the Brazilian pronunciation of ‘underground’) cinema. Udigrudi cinema basked in all that was dirty and provocative. While Cinema Novo desperately tried to court the general populace into the movie theater, the Udigrudi spat in their mouths and kicked them out the door. As Udigrudi director Rogério Sganzerla announced: “I will never deliver clear ideas, eloquent speeches, or classically beautiful images when confronted with garbage.”

 Compare the previous two posters with this one for José Mojica Marins' At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul (1964), the first entry in the Coffin Joe series and one of the earliest Udigrudi films.

The most popular and enduring films of the Udigrudi movement were the Coffin Joe horror series by José Mojica Marins. But while Marins managed to court financial success with his films, the other Udigrudi filmmakers were less enthusiastic about appealing to the public. Of these remaining films, Tonacci’s Bang Bang was one of the three most notorious. The other two were Sganzerla's The Red Light Bandit (1968) and André Luiz Oliveiraʼs Meteorango Kid: Intergalactic Hero (1969). The Red Light Bandit told the story of Jorge, a criminal in Boca do Lixo who robbed and raped the rich. Comprised mostly of disjointed scenes and episodes, the film eschews what Ismail Xavier termed “psychological coherence” and functioned more as a collage of film genres and a meta-textual statement on the nature of cinema. Meteorango Kid: Intergalactic Hero, on the other hand, follows Lula, a disenchanted teenager from Bahia, amidst the political turmoil of the late 1960s via a kaleidoscopic wash of pop music, bizarre images, and abstract daydreams.

The posters for The Red Light Bandit and Meteorango Kid: Intergalactic Hero.

Like The Red Light Bandit and Meteorango Kid: Intergalactic Hero, Bang Bang abandoned traditional narrative devices. But whereas those two films did so in order to make broader examinations of the cinema and Brazilian culture, Bang Bang concerned itself with the dissection and destruction of narrative storytelling. With Bang Bang, Tonacci stripped the diegetic world of cinema of context, interpretation, and relevancy. With a mere 85 minutesʼ worth of celluloid, he forced narrative cinema into obsolescence.

So ignore the monkey mask, the bandits, the magician, the conversations, the arguments, the car chases if you can. You will find no narrative solace. Here there be dragons. With Bang Bang, Tonacci has presented the world with a cinematic Möbius strip: a story-less story, a narrative-less narrative.

Skidoo

Directed by Otto Preminger
1968
The United States of America

 
The year was 1968 and the writing was on the wall. Vietnam was burning, students were rioting, hippies were dancing, and Hollywood was failing. As ticket prices dropped, studios began selling their backlots and props just to make ends meet. The legendary stars of the past were shoved aside to make room for teenage heartthrobs like James Dean and Elvis Presley. Hollywood just couldn’t comprehend these bizarre Baby Boomers who craved sex and violence, rebellion and rock ‘n’ roll. The first faint glimmers of the Hollywood New Wave could be seen on the horizon, heralding the birth of a new generation of filmmakers and actors at the expense of the old. It was from this environment that Otto Preminger’s Skidoo seemed to burst into existence both fully-formed and irrevocably apathetic. With nothing left to lose, the film saw a mixture of the Hollywood old guard and a pantheon of 50s television stars throwing up their hands towards the future and saying with one voice, “Screw it. We give up.”

In a quiet, picturesque neighborhood nestled somewhere in the American suburban wasteland of the late 1960s, retired hit-man Tony Banks (Jackie Gleason) is suddenly ordered back to active duty by his old mob boss “God.” At first Tony refuses, having grown quite comfortable with his new life of Teflon frying pans, tacky furniture, and color television. But when one of his close friends is soon discovered in a car wash with a bullet in his brain, Tony reluctantly agrees.

His target is his old pal “Blue Chips” Packard (Mickey Rooney), a crook with a date with the US Senate’s Crime Commission. In order to “silence” Packard before he gets a chance to testify, Tony gets sent to Alcatraz Island where he is being held in an impervious prison cell of the future. To get to Packard, he must team up with Fred the Professor, a draft-dodging, brown rice eating electronics genius who just happens to be one of his cellmates, so they can modify a television set to communicate with him inside his cell. But after making contact, Tony realizes that he can’t go through with it. Knowing that “God” will never rescue him from Alcatraz if he doesn’t perform the hit, Tony begins to plot one of the strangest prison breaks in history.

But while Tony languishes in Alcatraz, his wanna-be hippie daughter Darlene (Alexandra Hay) and her spaced-out boyfriend Stash (John Phillip Law) decide to confront “God” on his yacht located deep (and permanently) within international waters. They find “God” (played by Groucho Marx in his final film appearance) unwilling to change his mind despite having long since grown tired of his self-imposed exile. When her mother Flo (Carol Channing) discovers that “God” has effectively taken her prisoner, she rallies a massive group of hippies and storms his yacht like pirates.

To make matters even worse, at that moment Tony and Fred arrive at the yacht in a massive hot air balloon made of freezer bags and garbage cans that they used to escape Alcatraz after spiking the prison’s food supply with LSD. In a sequence that seems oddly reminiscent of Groucho’s earlier film Duck Soup (1933), the characters scurry around like madmen in a bacchanalian frenzy of outrageous costumes, music, and crowded sets as a couple are married, a family is reunited, and an old mob boss suddenly dressed as a Hare Krishna smokes a joint and slips away.

For a film by Preminger, a director most known for his legendary output as part of the Hollywood studio system during the 1940s and 1950s, Skidoo displays an unusually vicious contempt for the entertainment industry, American society, and new technological advancements. It’s very easy to miss considering the film’s music and tone, but it is definitely there. Take the virtuoso sequence that occurs during the film’s first five minutes, for example. An animated title sequence featuring a dancing caricature of Preminger zooms out to reveal a television set. Suddenly, the television rapidly changes channels through a kaleidoscope of bizarre programming. First a Senate hearing. Then a skinny blonde woman with a pink pearl necklace, “Now you, too, can be beautiful and sexually desirable like me.” Back to the hearing. Now back to the woman, “Instead of that fat, disgusting, foul-breathed, slimy, wallowing sow that you are...” Now John Wayne on a battleship. Now a fat Bavarian drinking foamy beer. John Wayne. A noisy pig. “You’ll never lose your man if you drink ‘Fat’ Cola.” John Wayne. Two children and a dog smoking cigarettes. The hearing. “Get a gun for everyone in your family. Remember, for family fun, get your gun!” And all the while Flo can be heard complaining, at one point even chiming: “No, Harry, I don’t like films on TV. They always cut them to pieces.”

Skidoo’s America is one of artificial people trying, and failing, to put up a better front around others. Gleason’s Tony is a bloated, short-tempered grouch. Stash and the hippies are ignorant, easily manipulated morons. The local mayor occupies himself with “anti-ugliness” campaigns. Fred claims to despise technology while neck-deep in circuitry. Even the futuristic, technological creature comforts that dominate the film’s interiors fail to work properly. Take one scene where Flo tries to seduce a gangster in order to gain information on Frank’s whereabouts. His “pad” is an automated No Man’s Land of malfunctioning gadgets and gizmos: the remote-controlled lights and stereo go haywire, a liquor cabinet sputters open and closed, and a mechanical bed that rises from the floor accidentally drags her underground.

And then there are the drugs. LSD, marijuana, birth control pills...the film is a cornucopia of chemical delights. During the prison-wide LSD-fueled freak-out, garbage cans dance, guards collapse in laughter, and visiting government officials...*ahem*...lose their composure. In an earlier scene, Tony unwittingly licks an LSD-laced envelope, resulting in one of the best drug-trip sequences of the 1960s (“Mathematics! I see mathematics!”). Preminger seems to condemn them one moment as the playthings of the stupid and unmotivated and then at other moments praise them as the means through which individuals can escape the conformist nightmare of Vietnam-era America.

So what’s the point of the film? Perhaps there isn’t one. Perhaps Preminger merely wanted to air out a career’s worth of dirty laundry within the confines of a film that his producers would overlook and the critics would casually dismiss. Perhaps the film finally gave voice to Preminger’s long-held frustrations with his adopted culture. But perhaps we’re over-thinking it. Whatever the case, Skidoo is a technicolor enigma of pop culture detritus. It must be seen to be believed. But don’t expect to understand it instantly. As some are wont to point out, you never get high your first time.

They Were Expendable: John Ford

As you may have noticed, I haven't had much time to update this blog recently. It's crunch time to complete my Master's Degree work at NYU. But I don't want to end the year without one last review. So here, in its completion, is a paper that I wrote for one of my classes on John Ford's great and underrated They Were Expendable.

Ten days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt appointed former aid Lowell Mellett as the government liaison between Washington and the Hollywood motion picture industry. In his letter of appointment, Roosevelt made it clear that the cinema was a vital part of both American society and the war effort: “The American motion picture is one of the most effective mediums in informing and entertaining our citizens.” What followed in the ensuing years was one of the most astonishing transformations of American cinema in history. The Hollywood machine began to churn out patriotic movies, shorts, and newsreels with incredible speed and enthusiasm. One of these films was John Ford’s They Were Expendable, the true story of a doomed flotilla of PT boats that participated in the catastrophic American retreat from the Philippines between December 1941 and May 1942. And yet, the film is a curiosity of World War Two cinema. While it’s true that the conception and production of They Were Expendable was emblematic of war-time Hollywood films, in many ways, Ford looked beyond the cinematic conventions of his time to make a statement that was both unique and unusual for the era.

First, They Were Expendable must be examined as an entry of the combat film genre. By 1944-1945, Hollywood had developed two new narrative formulas that eventually coalesced into distinct genres: the home-front melodrama and the combat film. The combat film developed its own themes, character archetypes, and plot devices. In a near exhaustive study, Jeanine Basinger identifies some of the most basic attributes of the combat film genre:

“The combat film from World War II can indeed generate such a list: the hero, the group of mixed ethnic types (O’Hara, Goldberg, Matowski, etc.) who come from all over the United States (and Brooklyn), the objective they must accomplish, their little mascot, their mail call, their weapons and uniforms.”

If we use these as the basis by which to classify examples of the combat film genre, then we must identify these within They Were Expendable. First we must examine “the hero.” There are actually two main protagonists in the film, both of which were based on the flotilla’s real life commanders: Lieutenant John Brickley (Robert Montgomery) and his second-in-command Lieutenant “Rusty” Ryan (John Wayne). They are accompanied by their men, the “group of mixed ethnic types.” Together they struggle to accomplish not one, but two objectives. First, they must help defend American fortifications at the Philippines against Japanese attack. Second, they desperately try to prove the worth of the PT boats as a useful weapon to their superiors who remain skeptical about their capabilities. They have a “mascot,” a black cat named “Bad Luck” that they have to shoo off their boats before a mission. While there isn’t a traditional “mail call,” there are several scenes where dying or doomed men give letters to their superiors to send home. Their “weapons?” The PT boats. Their “uniforms?” Those of the US Navy.

But beyond these specifics, Basinger gives a much more sober definition of the combat film genre: “The combat film is about death and destruction, and how we have to fight to avoid it.” Indeed, at the core of They Were Expendable is the desperation felt by the American soldiers who realize that they are fighting a battle they are doomed to lose. The film watches as the PT boat flotilla is gradually annihilated by the Japanese. Friends and comrades are picked off one by one. They are shuffled from one base to another. By the end, the last boat is commandeered to deliver messages for the Army. Brickley and Ryan are stripped of their command and ordered to the states to train sailors. While the last shot displays a promise that “WE WILL RETURN,” it is clear that Brickley and Ryan will not.

While this may seem unusual for a film about American soldiers during World War Two, it is actually characteristic of internal trends within the combat film genre. In addition to defining the genre, Basinger categorizes these trends as well:

“In screening the films released between December 7, 1941, and August 8, 1945, I saw the combat genre emerge. The definition appeared out of the fog of war, as it were. From the development I observed in these films I discerned three divisions:

Introductory Stage: December 7, 1941 - December 31, 1942.
Emergence of the Basic Definition: 1943.
Repeat of the Definition: January 1, 1944 - December 31, 1945.”

The “Introductory Stage” represented a transition period within Hollywood where the film industry struggled to adapt to the nation being at war. The “Emergence of the Basic Definition” focused on military defeats as a mean of patriotic inspiration. Indeed, by 1943 the tide of the war had finally begun to slowly shift in the favor of the Allies after a number of hard-fought victories at battlefields like Stalingrad, Sicily, and Guadalcanal. But America was weary of fighting. Hollywood realized that the best way to keep America going was to galvanize them with tales of bitter defeats like Brickley’s doomed men in They Were Expendable.

They Were Expendable began shooting in February 1945. As such, it was part of the third period of the combat film genre: the “Repeat of the Definition.” If the “Emergence of the Basic Definition” looked towards the past with outrage, this period looked towards the past with sorrow, despair, and even disgust. Basinger explains:

“The films of 1944 tend to repeat this pattern, or to inspire by a sense of we ain’t licked yet. As American forces began winning the war, our films grew even darker. Even when we survive and take our objectives, the overall sense is one of death and sacrifice.”

Therefore, despite its somber content, They Were Expendable is not asymptomatic of its place in Hollywood history, at least in terms of content.

But as previously mentioned, Ford’s film had several idiosyncrasies which in hind-sight separate it from the rest of World War Two combat films. The first was the casting of John Wayne in a lead role where he played a serviceman. Between 1939-1945, John Wayne appeared in thirty films. During this time, he only played as a soldier seven times. Perhaps due to the fact that his studio prevented him from serving, Wayne seemed out of place among all of the authentic veterans on the set of They Were Expendable. Ford, Montgomery, cinematographer Joseph H. August, screenwriter Frank Wead, and second unit director James Havens had all served in the military and had brought that experience to the film.  

But perhaps the most bizarre thing about Wayne being cast as Ryan was that in the end, he didn’t get the girl. He entertains a brief flirtation with one of the Army nurses named Sandy Davyss after he is sent to the hospital with a case of blood poisoning. But as the Japanese get closer and closer, they drift apart and realize that they cannot be together again. This came as a massive blow against the public’s image of John Wayne at the time. By that point, Wayne had already entered America’s imagination as the embodiment of the American fighting man. To see him fail to “get the girl” would have been preposterous for audiences in the 1940s. By casting Wayne, the American Male, in this role, Ford seemed to be making a statement about the indiscriminate nature of war: in actual combat, not even legends are invincible.

But the other major factor that makes They Were Expendable seem out of place with other World War Two combat films was its portrayal of Asian-Americans and civilians. Not once did Ford actually show Japanese soldiers and sailor on-screen. He refused to demonize the Japanese a decision which was shocking for its time. As Anthony Navarro explains that “[Hollywood and the army] wanted to send the message that Japan, and the other Axis powers, were a loathsome group of villains who would wreak havoc upon civilization not stop unless America and the rest of the Allies stopped them.” What’s more, Ford seemed to have went through pains to depict the Asian-American civilians trapped in the middle of the conflict as sympathetic. In one of the film’s most emotional scenes, a Filipina lounge-singer tearfully sings “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” when it is announced that the United States has entered the war. By masking the Japanese as an autonomous, impersonal force and sympathizing with Asian Americans, Ford makes a much more powerful statement about man’s suffering during war-time than the other combat films of the era. Once more, Basinger succinctly summarizes the film’s distinction: “With its sense of dignity and truth and its rejection of false battle heroics, They Were Expendable is almost an anti-genre film - something it couldn’t be if the genre were not already fixed.

While They Were Expendable may have been a product of its time, it was nonetheless a singular accomplishment in director John Ford’s career. It was a combat film full of action and patriotic vigor that simultaneously condemned the very war it was depicting. It was a film about loss that didn’t demand violent retribution against the enemy. The central characters failed in almost all of their main objectives: they couldn’t stop the approaching Japanese and they couldn’t keep their unit together. Even one of the leads (played by non-veteran John Wayne) didn’t get the girl that he had spent most of the time courting. Truly, They Were Expendable was an oddity: a film that followed and broke the rules at the same time.

Guest Post: THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE

Editor's Note: You all may have noticed that activity has been...well...slow. That's because I'm doing my final projects and exams for my Film Studies Master's Degree. So, in the meantime, I've asked some of my friends to do guest reviews. Next up is ClassicBecky with a review of Robert Siodmak's THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE!!

In my part of the country, November shows its unique face with winds moaning and sighing through the trees in the dark of night, sudden storms of lightning and thunder and cold rain –- could there be a more perfect time for a movie of terror and suspense? If you don’t have such weather, you can experience it if you turn off the lights and watch The Spiral Staircase. Released in 1945, it is a story of a mad killer on the loose in turn of the century New England, raging storms and a house with plenty of shadows and fear at every turn. Imagine yourself on a stormy night with no electricity, moving through such a house with only a candle or dim lamp, and imagine making your way down a spiral staircase to a basement where horrors may lurk. Now you are in the mood.

The lovely Dorothy McGuire plays Helen, a lonely, vulnerable girl who was rendered mute by a mysterious traumatic experience in her childhood. She is companion to Mrs. Warren, played by Ethel Barrymore, a strong-willed, cranky invalid confined to her bed but sharp and domineering. George Brent and Gordon Oliver play step-brothers Professor Warren (born of the father's first wife) and Steven Warren, (born of the invalid Mrs. Warren). Mrs. Warren believes, to her sorrow, that she has reason not to trust her son Steven, the prodigal son who turns up periodically. Whenever Steven is around, bad things happen. The supporting cast is perfection, with Kent Smith as the sensible Dr. Parry, whose visits to Mrs. Warren fit perfectly with his desire to see Helen, Elsa Lanchester as the amusingly drunken cook, Rhys Williams as her rather sullen caretaker husband, a young Rhonda Fleming as the Professor’s secretary, Blanch, and the redoubtable Sarah Allgood as Mrs. Warren’s long-suffering and often insulted nurse

Mrs. Warren (Ethel Barrymore) and Helen (Dorothy McGuire)

This household of complicated relationships, indeed the whole community, is shocked by the murders of young women, all with some kind of handicap. In a wonderful piece of film-making, we are allowed to see only the killer’s eye in extreme close-up as he hides in wait for his victim, and then see the victim through the killer’s eye as he stalks and kills. This perspective is chilling, and the music of composer Roy Webb heightens the chills.

Professor Warren (George Brent)

Steven Warren (Gordon Oliver)

As the mystery unfolds, it becomes apparent that the killer must be someone in the Warren household, with the mute Helen as his next possible victim. A great storm rages without, and fear rules within. The spiral staircase plays its part beautifully, shadowed, with each turn bringing unknown terrors.

Turn off lights, listen to the wind blow, and treat yourself to a suspenseful and frightening piece of film-making that stands the test of time. The Spiral Staircase will not disappoint.

Check out ClassicBecky's website: http://classicbeckybrainfood.blogspot.com/

Guest Post: MYSTERY STREET

Editor's Note: You all may have noticed that activity has been...well...slow. That's because I'm doing my final projects and exams for my Film Studies Master's Degree. So, in the meantime, I've asked some of my friends to do guest reviews. Next up is the amazing Dorian Tenore-Bartilucci with a review of John Sturges' MYSTERY STREET!

 

Mystery Street:  The CSI of Its Day!
By Dorian Tenore-Bartilucci

John Sturges' taut, tense thriller combines a documentary style—including location shooting in Boston—with intense performances, striking photography, and a fresh-for-its-time approach to its murder mystery plot. Floozy Vivian Heldon (Jan Sterling from Union Station; Ace in the Hole; The High and the Mighty, for which Sterling earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination) hijacks a car belonging to grieving father Henry Shanway (Marshall Thompson), whose baby had just died in labor.  But selfish Vivian couldn’t care less about the heartbroken Henry.  She only cares about finding and shaking down James Joshua Harkley (Edmon Ryan of The Breaking Point; The Americanization of Emily; Alfred Hitchcock’s Topaz), the upper-crust father of her out-of-wedlock baby-in-progress.  

The next time we see Vivian, she’s a skeleton washed up on a Hyannis beach. Lt. Pete Moralas (Ricardo Montalban) enlists the help of Harvard forensic criminologist Dr. McAdoo (an avuncular yet no-nonsense Bruce Bennett, a favorite of mine since The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; Dark Passage; Mildred Pierce).  The results are as riveting as a good episode of one of the "CSI" TV series. I liked the way the investigation and forensic evidence rang true, while the story by Sydney Bohem, Richard Brooks, and Leonard Spigelgrass (the latter got an Oscar nomination for Best Writing Motion Picture Story) kept me on the edge of my seat with twists and turns, including a monkey wrench thrown into the works by the late Vivian's blackmail-minded landlady, Mrs. Smerrling, well-played by sly, crafty scene-stealer Elsa Lanchester. 

When Henry is wrongly accused of Vivian’s murder and is thrown in prison, the ripple effect on him and his wife Grace (Sally Forrest of The Strip; Hard, Fast, and Beautiful; Vengeance Valley) is enough to put any family in a deep depression.  With Henry in jail, housewife Sally is broke; the crumbling of the Shanways’ finances were movingly and believably rendered. I found myself both empathizing with the Shanways and frustrated with Henry at the same time, thinking, “You dope, what good was it getting drunk and despondent?  Why the hell didn't you stay with Grace in the hospital when your baby died, instead of going off in your misery to get drunk at ‘The Grass Skirt’? Sheesh, you think you're the only one mourning?!” 

The performances are uniformly excellent, although I was particularly impressed with Montalban. Having grown up watching Montalban in relatively lighthearted fare like TV's Fantasy Island, I was impressed at how good he was as tough, cynical Pete, the kind of cop who thinks a suspect is guilty until proved innocent. Even when I was angry at Pete for refusing to believe Grace when she swears Henry's innocent, I could feel his frustration when he realizes that, after all his hard investigative work, his airtight case against the accused man has crucial cracks in it after all. There's also a great moment when the smug Harkley notices Pete's accent (smoothly explained away as Pete being from the Portuguese district) and starts trying to pull rank on Pete, class-wise. There are even some witty moments, like when Pete and his partner end up walking all over Harvard Square trying to find out where the heck the department of legal forensics is.  In the past, this all-but-neglected post-war film noir gem occasionally turned up on TCM, but now it’s included in the Film Noir Classic Collection, Volume Four.  If you’re interested, it’s available from Amazon.com!

http://www.amazon.com/Classic-Collection-Violence-Mystery-Illegal/dp/B000PKG7DE/ref=sr_1_2?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1353348111&sr=1-2&keywords=Mystery+Street

 
Dorian Tenore-Bartilucci, who writes fiction as “Dorian Tenore” to give the world’s typesetters a break, is Communications Director for the sales/leadership coaching firm Performance Based Results.  She was a researcher for David Hajdu’s books Positively 4th Street  and The Ten-Cent Plague (2008). She writes about suspense movies and fiction on her blog site Tales of the Easily Distracted (http://doriantb.blogspot.com/). Dorian is also marketing her suspense novel The Paranoia Club; wish her luck! <smile>