My Long Awaited View of Casablanca

I'm just not sure where to begin.  I would go back to the beginning, but I can't say I really remember it.  I'd seen Casablanca on television several times in my early teens.  I can't be positive of the year.  What I do know for sure is that when I began to date my future wife, I was stunned that she had never seen it.  We set a date to spend the day watching Casablanca along with one of her favorite movies that I had never seen: My Fair Lady.  She was not very excited about Film Noir.  I was not excited about musicals.  We politely watched each other's movies.

As time went by, I sat our kids down to watch Casablanca.  They loved it, or so they said.  Peter Lorre was always a kid-pleaser.  As were the despicable Nazis.  Much of the humor went over their young heads.  But it was fun, and a few people were shot.

Since I was a teenager, I loved Humphrey Bogart.  At that point I had probably only seen him in a few movies (Casablanca, African Queen, We're No Angels, and Sahara), but that didn't matter.  I knew he was the man.  And unlike other stars of the Golden Age, like Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, and Jimmy Stewart, he was a legend from another time, not still alive and appearing on variety shows on TV and still making occasional appearances in new movies.  This gave him an iconic status along with Dean and Gable and Monroe.  Even when diet Coke inserted him into one of its commercials with high-tech smoke and mirrors, it couldn't diminish his status.

Despite his Olympian address, there was one little problem.  And little is the right word.  All we could ever see of him was on a little TV set.  Even the big TVs of the time were only around 30 inches.  And unless you lived in a big city where old movies might occasionally pop up, you just weren't going to see Bogart on the big screen.

I've been plotting ways to make that happen.  The last few years, I've teased my kids, asking them why they don't rent a theater for my birthday so we could see one of the great classics up on a thirty-foot-high screen.  Casablanca, Stalag 17, and Gone With the Wind were early considerations.  The year Jennifer and I were married, Gone With the Wind was shown for a fiftieth anniversary, but we missed seeing it.  So the question became, how many friends did I need to agree to come and see a movie if I spent five hundred dollars to rent a theater?

Along comes Turner Classic Movies.  To my surprise, they arranged for a classic to be shown in theaters nationwide.  It was West Side Story.  Fortunately, thanks to my wife, I have come to enjoy musicals since that long ago viewing of My Fair Lady.  And so I took one of my sons to WST, and we were simply awed by the spectacle of an early sixties musical on the big screen.  And then, on an average day, out of the clear blue, my daughter informed me that TCM announced it was going to present Casablanca.

We cleared our schedule, and marked the calendar.  After all those years, I was finally going to see the giants of Hollywood as they were meant to be seen; as they appeared when they ruled the world of entertainment.

Before taking the family for the night screening, I slipped into the matinee to watch it alone.  (Sadly, I was actually almost alone.  Only seven people were in the theater, which is an awful commentary on the viewing public of today.)  A friend of mine told me he had nearly cried when he saw the Warner Brother's logo come up at the beginning when he had a chance to see it in a theater some fifteen years ago.  I knew just what he meant.  I've been a passionate fan of classic movies for over thirty years, and I was only then getting a chance to see my favorite actor and one of my favorite films as they were meant to be seen.  Many of today's movies are filmed with the knowledge that they will be seen on TV.  Now, they are even taking into account that people will watch them on their iPhone.  But in 1942, they did not even think of movies being broadcast to TVs all over the country.  This was Casablanca as jack Warner and Hal Wallis had intended it to be.  Larger than life.

And so it was.  Bogart mesmerizes.  Peter Lorre cannot move, cannot speak, without overwhelming the viewer.  And because the Hayes Code would not allow the cheap thrills and laughs that can be had from crass language and loose morality, the writers were forced to craft and re-craft their scripts until every line was taut and clever and either funny or dramatic.  Say what you will about the censors of that day, but their refusal to allow sophomoric behavior strong-armed Hollywood into developing some of the best scripts ever written.

I will not give a full review of the movie here.  Perhaps that will come later.  But I do want to emphasize that all of the hype about this movie is well deserved.  Bogart and Bergman are magical together.  I've never seen actors dominate a screen like they did.  The world just seemed to pause as they held us spellbound.  It occurred to me that when people watched this in 1942, this had to be more than just magic for them.  Yes, they could see still pictures of celebrities, even large posters of them.  But there was no TV for most of the nation, no place they could see the actors move and speak and enchant except on that massive silver screen.  No wonder they were called movie palaces.  We cannot imagine what that was like.  But for a brief moment, I caught a glimpse of it.  I hope my kids did too.

I am nearly the exact age that Bogart was when he filmed this movie.  He'd been acting for over twenty years by then.  And in just fifteen years he would die from cancer.  Though he was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar, he would not win that year.  He had to wait eight years to finally win one for his performance in The African Queen.  I have no idea how many years I'll have to wait to see him again on that big screen.  I hope it won't be long.  And I hope I'll be able to see Grant and Stewart, and Hepburn (both of them) and many more from that grand era.  My thanks to TCM for their effort to make this happen, and here's hoping they keep it up.

If you had a chance to see it, I would love to hear your comments on it.  Or, tell us what classic movie you would really love to see in the theater. 

Here's looking at you, Bogey.

Five Reasons to watch The Beast with Five Fingers

It is getting close to Halloween, which is a great time to dig up some old, black and white movies of yesterday to warn us of the many dangers that lurk in the dark.  In our present age we spend too much time worrying over the economy, pandemics, the price of gasoline, and who will run for the Presidency.  These might be valid concerns, if you are into reality, but these do not begin to compare to the worries that really ought to keep us up at night.  If people today could only realize the horrific and plausible prospect of giant leech attacks, great globules of furious jellied alien life, and apes run amok in the streets of Paris, our petty concerns about overcrowded jails and teenage bullying would be forgotten in an instant of pure terror.

     Just the other night, around midnight, I came into our bedroom and found that my wife had gone to sleep with the TV on.  In the blackened room, lit only by the pale light of a black and white horrorfest, I watched a poor woman running from a deranged ghoul.  Locking herself in a bathroom, she stared in horror at the water running from the faucet.  Through the miracle of Hollywood, this water was bright red, even though the rest of the film was black and white.  Turning from the crimson flow of bloody water, she stared in catatonic shock at a bathtub full of the same, bright blood.  Rising out of this viscous pool was a hand covered in gooey crimson muck.  The woman, in the face of this incomprehensible yet totally reasonable scene, died of fright.

     This was typical of the macabre scenes we often saw as children when the late, late movie was playing at this time of year.  I hated these things, and only watched a little of them before rushing to the TV and turning them off.  Who could blame me?  Even during the day, watching Creature Feature on Saturday afternoons, I had trouble making it through such terrors.

     Now, older and wiser, I have come to enjoy these movies on a higher level.  Yes, they are often filled with campy scenes and low budget monsters that look like the director’s teenager in a suit made out of old carpet swatches, but that is hardly the point.  What these movies really did was allow us to escape fears of reality through the terrors of imagination.  If you need to do so this season, here are five reasons that you would do well to watch The Beast with Five Fingers.

1.  Gothic Atmosphere and Music

     Right from the start this movie has all the makings of a classic horror.  It is set in an Italian village, which is like so many of the European settings for movies like Frankenstein, The Black Room, and The Masque of the Red Death.  It was a way for movie makers to take American audiences and place them in strange lands that were still highly superstitious and plausibly full of dark undertakings.  This was also a chance to fill out the cast with odd, harsh looking immigrants who were readily available in California to project a disturbed view of the population.  There are rarely scenes that include blond All-Americans with classic facial proportions.

     The house in which the story takes place is full of Germanic decoration, large rooms with startling shadows, and statuary that keeps one wondering if they just might come to life.  The central room is nearly empty with only a grand piano set in the middle of it.  Adding to the gloomy and majestic set is the music of Bach’s Violin Partita in D minor, a dark piece that is not only heard throughout the film by the audience but also by the characters who learn it is a sinister precursor to death.  Again and again we hear the music along with the characters and wonder, who will die next?

2.  Robert Alda’s Performance as Bruce Conrad

     A nice treat in this movie is the performance of Robert Alda.  The father of Alan Alda, Robert Alda plays the heroic lead.  We first see him as a scam artist, with a wisecracking attitude around the local law enforcement as well as those who live in the main house.  It is easy to see the seeds of Alda’s son’s character “Hawkeye Pierce” in this smart-alecky role.  As the plot progresses, we see Alda slip into the familiar horror hero role, maintaining an easy-going skeptical presence, intent only on keeping near the heroine and securing her attentions by protecting her from whatever silly thing is worrying her.  He will of course have to both seduce her and save her while keeping above all the horror.



3.  J. Carrol Naish’s Performance as the Commissario

   

Naish (left)



     Naish is one of those character actors that would never get a chance to perform today.  An Irishman by birth, he played nearly every ethnic role (with accent) but an Irishman.  In The Beast With Five Fingers, Naish plays the local lawman, known to all as The Commissario.  An over-the-top character, Naish delivers an unmistakable (and some would now say unforgivable) Hollywood Italian accent, complete with-a the added a on-a every-a word-a.  (Naish had done the very same thing just three years earlier as the tragic Italian in the World War II thriller Sahara alongside Humphrey Bogart.)  Yes, many would shun such nonsense and shake their fingers at this kind of condescending thing, but why?  It’s a foolish performance to be sure, but it is so over-the-top that it can’t be taken seriously.  I suppose if I were Italian I might take offense.  However, as a good German, I don’t take offense at the equally silly performances of actors like John Banner’s Shultz in Hogan’s Heroes.  Why would I?

     Here in Five Fingers, Naish plays a police chief who does a more than competent job investigating the murders.  He does a good job of throwing his authority around, with sincerity at times, and he moves the story along quite well.

4.  The Hand!

     What horror movie would be complete without a monster?  And here, in brilliant black and white, we get to see a most horrifying sight: the murderous, finger-walking hand!  Now here I must spoil the movie for you and warn the faint-hearted that this movie does indeed have a disembodied hand scampering about and killing willy-nilly.  It might just make you ill to see it, so don’t watch if you have a weak stomach.  This hand is so realistic you can see the remains of the radius and ulna where it is cut at the wrist.  Even worse, at times this hand, animated by the magic of Hollywood, looks just like a fake hand that cannot move unless manipulated by Peter Lorre as he hugs it to his chest.  It is almost too terrifying to behold!  (Ummm, never mind.)

     There is, in fact, an intense scene in which the hand crawls through fire, and I am sure it must have been pretty dramatic for audiences in 1946.  As we watched this movie just the other day, my wife remarked that she well remembered the fire scene from watching the movie as a young girl.  Such things are nightmares made of!

  

5.  The Always Perfect Performance of Peter Lorre

You can buy this poster at Amazon, check it out!

       One can never say enough about the screen presence of Peter Lorre.  A mild-mannered, creepy scholar who only wants to be left alone with his books, Peter Lorre’s character, Hilary Cummins, carries the movie with his large sad eyes, and his halting thin voice that never ceases to both repel an audience as well as win them over.  Lorre has always been able to do this.  Even in one of his greatest roles, as the murderer in Fritz Lang’s M, the audience is quickly repulsed by his degenerate behavior, yet equally filled with compassion for him.  Lorre never passed up the chance to exploit this advantage with the audience.  He does so in Five Fingers and then lures the audience along with him as he descends into madness.

     Lorre can’t help but steal the show.  He cannot even walk into a room with the other characters without grabbing your attention by the throat.  In one scene, as all of the characters follow the lawyer into the main room to sign a document, Lorre is the last to enter.  Sliding off to one side, he sits with his back to the others, pausing a few moments before turning to look over his shoulder at them with those big eyes, as if to say, okay, I know I have to be here, just don’t make me join the group.  I don’t like groups!  He never says a word, and that’s the best part of it.

     I know it will come as a shock that Lorre is revealed as the villain.  Who could have seen that coming, right?  But the great bit of writing here is the way in which Lorre loses his mind.  He is no mad-dog monster who charges blindly around attacking the females in the house.  His near sleepwalk attack of Andrea King’s character is as subtle as his transformation to madness is hysterical.  It is easy to quit mocking the Gothic camp of the film and allow yourself to get caught up in his insanity.

In the following scene, Lorre explains what he has done with the Horrible Hand! 

     When all is said and done, and the ghastly hand is finally revealed, The Beast with Five Fingers satisfies on many levels, leaving five reddened finger marks at the base of your neck.  Dare I say, it will really grab you?  The solid screenplay is from the pen of Curt Siodmak, who earned his monster chops writing during Universal Pictures’ golden age of monsters, including the screenplays for The Wolf Man, The Son of Dracula, and The Invisible Man Returns.  (Other notable screenplays by Siodmak include I Walked with a Zombie and Donovan’s Brain.  He also developed the story for Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers, a favorite Sci-Fi of mine.)  The creepy atmosphere includes a mausoleum in the center of a graveyard, desecrated bodies, and creeping hands.  Along the way you will be entertained by the performances mentioned above, as well as the heroine played by Andrea King.  The best line of the movie might just be Robert Alda’s.  As he hears Peter Lorre hammering in a far corner of the house, he asks King, “what’s he hammering on down there?  He’s a sick man!”  Priceless!  Also, keep a sharp eye out for William Edmunds, known for his role as Mr. Martini in It’s a Wonderful Life as one of the servants.

     As in all movies of that age, the greedy will be punished, of course, and the lovers will be united.  It was imperative in that era that the criminals always paid for their crimes; a sentiment that has disappeared in Hollywood.  Once the horror has come to an end, all ends well as the Commissario enjoys a last joke and reminds us just how fun and absurd it has all been.

This movie is not available on DVD, but there are several online movies sites that list it available for download. Amazon is presently providing it for download rental, or you can buy it for download.

  





 

Six Reasons I Love Film Noir

     My theater room is covered in movie posters and movie stills, most of which have to do with Film Noir.  I have no idea how I came to this obsession.  I love all sorts of movies.  But Film Noir is just the bomb to me.  Those dark, shadowed scenes with bumbling heroes and sharp-witted femme fatales always knock me over.  With all manners of oddball character actors peppered throughout every movie, it is a delight to see these dark, twisted worlds.  Time and again these movies are parodied and held up for ridicule over their melodramatic atmospheres.  Well, I don't care.  For me, it just doesn't get any better than this.
     The usual lists of great Film Noir contain the well known movies Out of the Past, The Big Sleep, Laura, and The Asphalt Jungle.  I don't agree that all of those are the better ones, though I will undoubtedly add a few of them to a few more lists later on.  These six reasons should not be considered the only six reasons I love Film Noir.  There are plenty more where this list came from.  
(You can click on the titles to see more about these movies at wikipedia.org.)

1.  Pushover (1954)

There's almost nothing about this movie that isn't done perfectly.  The femme fatale is the spell-binding Kim Novak.  The spell-bound detective that stumbles knowingly to his doom is the big lug MacMurray.  There is remarkable cinematography and lighting, with the ever important play of shadows throughout.  Dorothy Malone plays a nice supporting role.  This movie gets little credit, but it is a personal favorite of mine.  Well worth the time. 

"Money isn't dirty, only people."  Priceless.  She should have gone home.

2.  The Glass Wall (1953)

     This little gem stars one of my favorite actresses; Gloria Grahame.  Her co-star is the sensitive Italian Vittorio Gassman.  This is a different sort of Noir, with a villain that is not the usual suspect.  What gets my attention here is the great location shots of New York City, especially as a search is conducted through the bright lights of Times Square.  (That's my guess, anyway.  Let me know if I'm wrong.)  I love the little vending machine lunch room.  All very techno/space age looking.

     There's a bit part with Jerry Paris (later appearing regularly on The Dick Van Dyke Show), and a delightful performance by Robin Raymond as an aging stripper who saves the day. 

     The highlight of this is, of course, Grahame's scene in her tiny apartment as she describes how a girl ends up stealing a coat.

 

     It is interesting to note that during a lengthy scene, it is obvious that the street scenes that were shot at night in New York City and at the United Nations were shot with a double for Gloria Grahame.  These are mixed in with shots of Grahame in studio shots.  I'm terribly curious why she couldn't get to the location shots, but Gassman obviously could.  This kind of thing doesn't ruin a movie for me.  It just adds to the mystery of the filming process.

3.  Double Indemnity (1944)

     I love this movie for the solid (and not overplayed) role of Barton Keyes, played by Edward G. Robinson.  His measured, relentless trailing of MacMurray's character is fun to watch.  I have never been a big fan of Stanwyck, but she shines in this perfectly icky role.  This movie, however, is really worth it for the final scene, which I won't spoil for you if you've never seen it.  It is just one of the more perfect Noir endings. 

     MacMurray has a sublime line as Walter Neff when he says of Stanwyck; "I wanted to see her again, close, without that silly staircase between us."

4.  The Maltese Falcon  (1941)

     I just don't know where to begin here.  Maybe at the scene where Bogart pulls that little stunt on Elisha Cook Jr. when he disarms him.  Or maybe the wonderfully insane plot that is rather dizzying to follow.  Sydney Greenstreet is magnificent as the large and sinister Kaspar Gutman.  He is only outdone by the unmatchable Peter Lorre in one of his greatest roles ever, second only to his disturbingly horrific role in Fritz Lang's M.

Here's one of the best scenes of the movie.  Bogart and Lorre at their best.  This was John Huston's directorial debut, and Bogart was offered the role when George Raft said he didn't want to work with a first-time director.  Fool.  And thank you George Raft.

5.Panic in the Streets (1950)

     Here's yet another overlooked gem that gets practically no airtime.  What a shame that is, since you can see great performances by Richard Widmark (one of the toughest banty-roosters ever caught on film), Jack Palance as a thoroughly wicked guy, Barbara Bel Geddes in the sweet-hearted wife's role, and a surprising little appearance by Zero Mostel.

     The real treat here is the location work in New Orleans.  I know this city pretty well, and I can tell you that this is great location work.  There are even a few little roles played by locals.  The French Quarter bar/cafe has some real charm and had to be real.  You can see them pass in and out of it right on the streets of the Quarter.  The climax down at the waterfront warehouse is just magical, since these scenes are no longer visible in New Orleans, the warehouses having all been torn down to make way for the tourists on the river.

     Elia Kazan, far more famous for his other films, crafted a great movie.  Incredibly, at least for now, the whole movie is available on youtube.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVJo2aSOp_Y)  Don't miss the oddball scene when a man on a stretcher is dumped down a staircase.

6.  In a Lonely Place (1950)

     I have, you might have guessed, saved the best for last.  This dark movie is full of humour, the better to offset the intensity of the dark character played by Humphrey Bogart.  In this thriller, Bogart is Dixon Steele, a cold-hearted writer with a red-hot temper.  He meets his match in Gloria Grahame, as Laurel Gray, the shrewd next-door-neighbor who sees the good in Steele.  When Steele declares they will have dinner together that night, she retorts "We'll have dinner tonight.  Just not together."

     But two detectives let her know right away that Steele might just be a murderer.  And so the story begins to tighten.  As their passion heats up, so does Steele's temper in response to the dogged persistence of the police.  If he is the murderer, doesn't that mean Laurel is in danger?

     Watch for two great supporting roles.  The first is a small role by the actress Jeff Donnell (who I would swear is the same actress in the Dorothy Malone role in Pushover).  Her perky, chatty portrayal of a cop's wife is not only fun, but she has a pivotal role in turning the screws on Bogart to begin to ratchet up the tension.  The other supporting role worth mentioning is Steele's agent Mel Lippman, played by Art Smith.  This guy is golden from start to finish.

     There is a priceless scene near the beginning where a hat-check-girl gives Bogey a book report on a novel he doesn't want to read.  A genuinely funny scene.

     Here's a quick clip with Bogart and Grahame together.  I can watch them over and over again.

     This was directed by Nicholas Ray, Grahame's husband at the time.  They were, however, going through a rather nasty divorce even as they were filming.  Now that's dedication to your craft.  I can't imagine how they did that. 

     And to top it all off, this has that great line that only Bogart could deliver--"You annoy me."  The clip can be seen in the Steve Martin Noir send-up "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid".

     Can you believe those last two came out the same year?  Oh to have been able to see them as a double feature!

     The best way to watch these intense movies is to take them seriously, sit back with some popcorn, and enjoy the melodrama.  My daughter, a faithful companion who does not shy away from watching these classics with me, can tell you that I have shed a tear more than once during these tragic masterpieces.  I would deny it, of course, but she would tell you anyway.