Movie Review: City for Conquest

City for Conquest (1940)
directed by Anatole Litvak, starring James Cagney, Ann Sheridan

(Note: This is my entry for the James Cagney Blogathon, hosted by R.D. Finch at The Movie Projector)

All Danny Kenny (James Cagney) really wants from life is to settle down with his childhood sweetheart Peggy (Ann Sheridan) and to see his brother Eddie (Arthur Kennedy) finally complete that symphony he's been writing, a symphony of New York and all its ugliness and beauty. The trio have lived their whole lives scraping by in the slums of the Lower East Side, along with their friend the chronically criminal Googi (Elia Kazan). But while Eddie dreams of music, Peggy dreams of dancing, and Googi dreams of being a big shot, Danny refuses to climb higher. Even if his talent for boxing is more than enough to give him a chance at the limelight. 

But when Peggy is lured away by a sleazy dancer (Anthony Quinn) and Eddie's music scholarship is taken away, Danny decides he has no choice but to fight his own way to success with his fists. Maybe then he can live up to Peggy's ambitions and give Eddie the chance to be heard. With the wise guidance of his manager Scotty (Donald Crisp), Danny does rise high, higher than he ever imagined. But what does it matter, if all he really wants is Peggy?

City for Conquest begins with a twinkly, omnipotent bum narrating the classic saga of New Yorkers that want too much. "This is my breakfast, talking up to the big town...seven million people fighting, biting, clawing away to get one foot on a ladder that'll take 'em to a penthouse." He tells all this to policeman Ward Bond, whose incredulous reaction is the funniest moment in the whole movie. Our self-appointed ringmaster moves on to weave his prophecies over a group of children, predicting that the twirling girl in the center will be a great dancer, that the boy punching a playmate in her defense will have to fight through life with his fists and so on. All through this introduction, my mind kept flashing to an image of Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire, wrapping her Brooklyn drawl around the line, "Brother, that's corn."

I probably had Stanwyck on the brain thanks to a recent back-to-back viewing of Golden Boy and Clash by Night. But the reference has more relation to City for Conquest than you might think since since both films were adaptations of Clifford Odets plays. And City for Conquest feels so much like a movie that very badly wants to be Odets, specifically the Odets of Golden Boy. It wants to celebrate the poetry of the tenements and the scrabbling, hungry masses. It wants to explore their longings in high-flung metaphors. Danny Kenny's boxing becomes a stand-in for material ambition while his brother's desire to distill the essence of the American metropolis into melody is pure Gershwin and treated as a matter of near-celestial magnitude. It's easy to condescend to the pretentious sentimentality that floods City for Conquest (and Golden Boy for that matter) but at the time, this material had deep relevance for audiences fighting through the Depression. This was the struggle of the little guy, living in a world that seeks to bring him down.

The honest performances of James Cagney and Ann Sheridan are what save City for Conquest from sinking into a morass of dated pretension. The story is sentimental but they are not. They play two innocents, desperately in love but always failing to understand each other. Cagney's character Danny is utterly content with his lot in life, making him an unusual role for the actor. The Cagney canon is full of men reaching out to grasp for life with both hands. Here, the grasping is reserved for Ann Sheridan. Her character Peggy is even more naive than Danny but her powerful desire to be a great dancer is the undoing of them both. 

The main problem with City for Conquest is that it wants to tell the story of people trying to conquer the world but centers on a protagonist who has no real ambition in life. How is Danny meant to encapsulate the dreams of the ordinary man when his pure selfless nobility and freedom from doubt make him about as extraordinary as they come? It's James Cagney that lifts Danny Kenny up from a metaphorical street angel into a true human being. As always, he feels too much but can't say it in words. His decision to box for the sake of his brother's musical career is told entirely through a shot of Cagney walking towards the piano, an affectionate smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. In another scene, he listens to Peggy argue with her mother. The mother takes exception to the way the couple sneak around back staircases instead of courting in the parlor and Peggy snaps back that there is no parlor, just a kitchen and a bedroom. The expression that flashes across Cagney's face tells us everything we need to know about Danny's embarrassment over the interruption, his discomfort at the reminder of their shared poverty, and his concern for Peggy.

Cagney's work here lacks the vibrant, unpredictable physicality of his best performances. I suspect that might be due to the direction of Anatole Litvak, who reportedly drove Cagney crazy with his insistence that the actor hit scores of chalk marks in every scene. There's a hint of constraint to his performance here that's suggestive of a man fighting down his own needs and wishes. Not very Cagney-like but wholly appropriate for the character. Cagney relies more on his eyes than his body here. It's an acting choice that becomes bitterly ironic by the movie's end.

City for Conquest was the third teaming of James Cagney and Ann Sheridan. Sheridan had shown scrappy charm in Angels With Dirty Faces and went on to blow everyone away in Torrid Zone, firing off one-liners with superb timing ("You push me one more time and you'll wear this suitcase as a necklace!") so another pairing with Cagney was only natural. They both had an unforced energy and warmth onscreen that always seemed rooted in the behavior of real people. When Sheridan gives Cagney a jab in the ribs or pulls his hat down around his ears, it feels more affectionate than an onscreen kiss. Sheridan's character here is a difficult one to play, a starstruck dancer whose constant flip-flopping over what she wants leads her into decisions that are naive at best and cowardly at their worst. Peggy could have been another monstrous ingenue along the lines of Priscilla Lane in The Roaring Twenties or Joan Leslie in High Sierra. Instead, she's sympathetic and ardent, a woman very clearly torn between love for Danny and the dawning realization that they want very different things from life. Sheridan also manages to subtly convey the effect that Peggy's controlling dance partner has on her, in the way she smiles too quickly and fiddles too much with her hands.

In a way, Peggy might have been the more natural protagonist for City for Conquest since she's the more conflicted and ambitious character. The script however, gives her short shrift. With all the constant references to Danny's boxing name, "Young Samson," Peggy is very obviously meant to be Delilah, another corrupting female that saps the strength of her man and almost destroys him forever. The lesson is driven home further when Lee Patrick shows up late in the film. She's a wisecracking burlesque dancer who reminisces to Peggy about her own lost love and how she wishes she'd chosen the man over the career. Looking at the damage she's caused, Peggy is left with little choice but to agree.

Arthur Kennedy makes his film debut here, as Cagney's ambitious younger brother, the would-be composer. In fact, Kennedy was Cagney's own discovery; he'd spotted him onstage and convinced Warner Brothers to cast him. Kennedy would go on to join that strange class of character actors that included Van Heflin and Richard Widmark. Charismatic enough to be leads and too serious to be comic foils but still relegated to the edges. As he would in later roles, Kennedy brings a watchful intelligence to the part of Eddie Kenny, even if he's given some of the worst lines in the film. When he starts rambling about the music of Allen Street, "with all of its mounting, shrieking jungle-cries for life and sun," there's little to do but take in his reedy good looks and wait for the silent moments. When he looks at Cagney with mingled unease and love, you can see flashes of the actor he'll become.

Anthony Quinn also makes an impression as Murray Burns, the dancer who manipulates and abuses the hapless Peggy. Quinn's slick looks and black heart call to mind all the stereotypes of the time about male dancers, a profession that was often seen as one step away from being a gigolo. But Quinn is no lothario; when he calls Peggy "baby" he snaps it out like the recoil of a gun. He plays it for menace, not seduction. The movie hints many times about just how Murray keeps Peggy in line, including one scene that stops just short of implied rape. 

While Anatole Litvak relies maybe a little too much on montage, there's no denying that his direction of City for Conquest is fluid and fast-paced, his camera gliding down the streets with a grace that echoes his characters and their need for constant movement. James Wong Howe's cinematography manages to convey more of the romance for New York and its denizens than any of the script's little curlicues. And there's a notable scene involving Elia Kazan (surprisingly not so bad as an actor), some thugs, and a tense confrontation in a car that must have suggested something to Kazan for On the Waterfront.

In the end, City for Conquest is a story that, like its characters, reaches too high. The movie's ultimate strength rests not in its stargazing speeches or strained metaphors but in the performances. When the camera just gives in to the struggles that play across the faces of James Cagney and Ann Sheridan, then it becomes something real and moving. When Cagney gently asks Sheridan, "You still my girl?", it would take a pretty hardhearted moviegoer not to want to share in their dreams. If only for a little while.

Favorite Quote:

"Boy was it crowded tonight on the subway. Talk about sardines. They got it easy. At least they're floating in olive oil."

Favorite Scene: 

The final boxing match between Danny Kenny and the opponent that ends up playing the dirtiest of tricks on him. Litvak and Wong Howe turn the scene into a precisely-melded sequence of montage, action shots, and closeups, letting you feel the weight of every blow, letting you see the emotions of every character that cares about Danny and watch their belief turn to horror. The outcome of the match is telegraphed from very early on but it only adds to the suspense. You keep waiting for somebody to realize what's going on but of course, help comes only too late.

Final Six Words:

More flickering candlelight than scorching neon

Movie Review: Dodge City

Dodge City (1939)
directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland

Wade Hatton (Errol Flynn) is a soldier of fortune, a man who goes wherever the winds of chance and danger take him. Along with his faithful friend Rusty (Alan Hale), he accepts the job of helping the railroad come to the newly christened Dodge City. Its patron Colonel Dodge (Henry O'Neill) swears to the settlers that Dodge City will be a place of prosperity and civilization. But fast forward several years and it turns out that all those plans have gone awry. The ruthless Jeff Surrett (Bruce Cabot) has taken control of the town; he and his gang cheat, steal, and murder with total impunity. The law is helpless.

If only they had a sheriff that wasn't afraid of Surrett, a man like Wade Hatton. But Wade isn't interested in a badge or in putting down roots. He just wants to finish up guiding a wagon train of settlers to Dodge City and he'll be on his way. An easy job that turns tragic when he ends up killing a drunken settler in self defense, a settler that happens to be the brother of beautiful Abbie Irving (Olivia de Havilland). But Abbie and Wade will have to join forces anyway when Surrett's evil becomes too much for the town to handle. He and his gang need to get the hell out of Dodge...

When I think of classic Westerns, I think about John Wayne standing in the doorway and looking at a life that will never be his and Gary Cooper staring down an empty and endless road. I think about Gregory Peck in The Gunfighter, trying hopelessly to tell young toughs not to throw their lives away. James Stewart in The Naked Spur, dragging Robert Ryan's corpse behind him, crying out in anguish, "I'm going to sell him for money!" The little Mexican boys in The Magnificent Seven, putting flowers on the grave of the man who died for them. Regret is the shadow that dogs the steps of all great Western heroes and it's hard to think of a classic Western that doesn't end on a bittersweet note, mourning the slow death of the frontier even as it tries to reconcile the era's bloody hypocrisies.

1939 was the year that John Ford would redefine the Western for all time with Stagecoach.
It was also the year of the uneven but important Destry Rides Again, the movie that stitched the template for future Western parodies like Blazing Saddles. In both films, happiness came to the protagonists in the end but it came quietly, after heartbreak and pain. In Stagecoach, the heroes can only be happy after they're freed "from the blessings of civilization." In Destry's case, the story's darkness ended up choking off all the comedy, with the pacifist hero taking up arms and sloughing off all memory of the woman that took a bullet for him.

And then you have Dodge City, a box-office-smashing 1939 Western that, despite sharing the same genre trappings as Stagecoach and Destry, doesn't even feel like part of the same species. The plot is pure Western, with Flynn's character called in to clean up a lawless town, held hostage by ruthless gunmen. And yet there's none of that bittersweet quality you get from other Westerns. No melancholy commentary on the toll of violence. No longing to escape the bounds of civilization. Most importantly of all, no sense of loneliness. Instead we have a bright-eyed tale of good and evil, two factions facing off against each other in the name of returning things to the natural order. Oh and comic sidekicks do things and beautiful people fall in love. Dodge City is essentially another Errol Flynn swashbuckler, albeit one that just happens to be set in the American frontier.

The great charm and the great weakness of this film is that when it tries to be serious or heartfelt, it fails miserably. As in the scene where Random but Honorable Citizen has just been murdered by the villain Surrett and his heartbroken moppet of a son pulls the world's silliest crying face at the funeral:

On the flip side, when the movie gives up on drama and just embraces a spirit of fun, it can be quite enjoyable. I liked the comic interlude of Alan Hale (an underrated character actor who always seemed like pleasant company, no matter how dimwitted the role) falling into the clutches of the town's temperance league and vowing repentance. I liked the rowdy bar fight in the middle of the film that comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. I liked watching Flynn stride around in neatly pressed, colorful Western wear, blithely explaining away the accent by calling himself a wandering Irishman.

I was reminded of Errol Flynn when I saw the unfairly-maligned John Carter last year. Watching Taylor Kitsch struggle to hit all the required character notes of dashing rogue, battle-scarred veteran, romantic lead, and compassionate hero made me think of just how effortless Flynn could make it all seem. I feel like I could stop a Flynn performance frame by frame and point out all the mechanics of it ("here comes the hearty laugh, now the noble frown") and yet somehow the magic remains. Watching him onscreen is an invitation to adventure. The greatest tribute to Flynn I can give is that over fifty years after his death, we're still looking for him. Kitsch by comparison just looks and sounds like any other earnest young actor, buffed up for his big break.

While Flynn took (and continues to take) plenty of knocks for being cinema's most courtly cowboy, Olivia de Havilland is hardly any more natural as a frontierswoman. In Dodge City, she's got the cutest little rolled-up sleeves you can imagine and the manners of a princess who's just had her luggage stolen. When Flynn tells her that out here men sometimes have to take the law into their own hands, de Havilland wrinkles her nose and responds with, "Oh yes, pioneering, I believe you call it." By all accounts, Dodge City was a rotten experience for de Havilland, who was completely fed up with being the decorative frosting in every Flynn movie. According to TCM, she would have preferred to play the sexy saloon girl, a part that went to Ann Sheridan. Looking at the film though, it's hard to see why since Sheridan gets absolutely nothing to do.

That is, except to model the latest in Black Trash Bag and Fake Flower Couture:

And to lead the chorus of the Dancing Cupcake Liners:

I suspect something was left on the cutting room floor. That or de Havilland was just grasping for anything even slightly different from what Warners usually gave her. Actually, as Goatdog points out in his excellent run-down of Olivia de Havilland's action career, Dodge City gave the actress more to do than some of her other Flynn roles. Instead of being relegated to the parlor, she gets to work in a newspaper office, scowling at Flynn when he jokingly tells her to go find a man's buttons to sew back on. 

What really saps her character of interest is the lack of a true emotional arc. There was potential for it, though. Wade Hatton is the man that killed Abbie's brother, which makes for a darker and more unsettling obstacle to the Flynn-de Havilland romance than most of their films. However, the impact is dulled because a) her brother is a complete tool, a man so obviously gunning for the pre-modern equivalent of a Darwin Award that his death is more comic than tragic and b) the death is treated as something Abbie's just got to get over, silly female emotions be damned. Come to think of it, isn't that how most Flynn films treat the romance, with Flynn alternately mocking de Havilland and waiting for her to realize that he was right all along? However, Dodge City's romance lacks the kinky energy of Captain Blood ("I look at you as the woman who owns me") or the sweetness of The Adventures of Robin Hood so it falls flat. 

Still, we're left with the ever-powerful chemistry between the two performers and their incredible physical beauty, made even more mesmerizing by Technicolor. Watching them banter under sunny skies is just one of those classic cinematic pleasures that can't be taken away by bad writing and the knowledge that de Havilland was counting the hours until she could get off this set.

Michael Curtiz's direction keeps the film moving along briskly even if it's essentially a game of stalling until Wade Hatton finally decides to take down Surrett for good. Curtiz was an old hand at the swashbuckling genre by now and even in scenes where it's just people talking, the camerawork is alert but unobtrusive. His characters are in constant motion, but he knows how to keep an audience focused even as he dollies back through enormous crowds of extras. I'm sort of in love with the way Curtiz films always make the dialogue sound interesting. In the case of Dodge City, I never realized how pedestrian the wisecracks were until I tried to rummage through them for a favorite quote. And of course, when the action does pick up, Curtiz ratchets up the excitement for a hair-raising and fiery climax on a moving train. 

One thing I notice about the old Flynn swashbucklers is that they almost always leave a sour aftertaste in regards to their theme of restoring the rights and privileges of white men. They Died with Their Boots On is the most obvious example of historical awkwardness, with General Custer burnished as a hero and the U.S. government absolved of any responsibility in the destruction of native lives and land. But there's also Santa Fe Trail, which practically ties itself into a Viennese pretzel trying to decry the fanatical actions of John Brown while hemming and hawing over just what he was so fanatical about. In that one, Flynn's character just kept repeating that slavery could not be destroyed so quickly. As opposed to Captain Blood in which he's leading a white slave rebellion. Dodge City smoothly elides the question of native rights by just ignoring them entirely, aside from a brief mention that Surrett is shooting buffalo that rightfully belong to the Native Americans. 

Ultimately, Dodge City remains a mildly enjoyable footnote in one of the greatest years for American cinema. The most interesting aspect of the film is how little relation it has to the Westerns that came after it. This is the Western reinvented for pure spectacle, a Technicolor adventure starring one of the most beloved screen teams of all time. It's an ice cream soda in a genre stocked with straight whiskey. Looking at Flynn and de Havilland, it's hard not to feel a pang that swashbucklers have died out. But it would be equally difficult not to sigh in relief that movie Westerns would follow a rockier and more complicated path in the decades to come.

Favorite Quote:

"You're not suggesting that I'm a native?"

"No. The only real native of Kansas is the buffalo. He's got a very hard head, a very uncertain temper, and a very lonely future. Apart from that there's hardly any point of comparison between you."

Favorite Scene:

In my recent review of Epstein's Lee Marvin biography, I mentioned the actor's open disdain for the smooth, harmless violence of typical movie brawls. "Tables and bottles go along with mirrors and bartenders, and you end up with that little trickle of blood down your cheek, and you're both pals and wasn't it a hell of a wonderful fight...that's phony." Marvin had a very good point, but I think the epic barroom brawl in Dodge City is so enjoyable that it deserves to be taken on its own terms. Michael Curtiz clearly decided to stage the fight in much the same way Busby Berkeley handles his musical set pieces. It's big, glorious, and defies you to make sense of it or its relation to the plot. Just about everything you could imagine in a Western saloon fight happens in this sequence. People are sent flying off of balconies. Chairs and tables are crashed over so many heads that the furniture is eventually whittled down to toothpicks. At one point, a cowboy tries to lasso his opponent into submission. What looks like hundreds of Warner Brothers extras are all there, swinging and hollering away. When the camera finally pans away, allowing the viewer to look at the full extent of the destruction, it's hard not to marvel.

Final Six Words: 

Effervescent adventure, more charm than heart

Tentpole Characters

In his review of Sunset Boulevard, Roger Ebert spends nearly half of it talking about Erich von Stroheim's character Max. It's my favorite kind of Ebert review, the kind where he just throws out trying to sum up a film classic and instead just follows his own interests.

"The performance that holds the film together, that gives it emotional resonance and makes it real in spite of its gothic flamboyance, is by Erich von Stroheim, as Norma's faithful butler Max...We might not take (Norma) seriously. That's where Max comes in. Because he believes, because he has devoted his life to her shrine, we believe. His love convinces us there must be something worth loving in Norma."

His description of Max always fascinated me because I think it nails down a very important concept. The idea that a film can rise or fall, not just on the protagonist, but also on a supporting character, shoring up the film's foundations without calling attention to the fact. Without Max, Norma Desmond could so easily have been a campy parody, despite Swanson's superb performance. Without Alida Valli's haunted devotion, would Harry Lime be nearly as memorable a villain? Well, I got to thinking about the subject and just had to make a short, by-no-means-conclusive list. For the sake of a title, let's call them "tentpole" characters.
 
1. Lew Ayres in Holiday

In Holiday, Katharine Hepburn plays the upscale but troubled Linda Seton, a free spirit who's been stifled all her life by her controlling father. Now, when it comes to fiction, I'm usually quite willing to sympathize with rich, beautiful people, but man does Linda test that limit. And I say that as someone who loves this film. This is a wealthy woman in 1938 with the gall to say this: "Compared to the life I lead, the last man on a chain gang thoroughly enjoys himself." It's all I can do not to yell, "Oh cry me a river, rich girl!" This is where Lew Ayres comes in. He plays Linda's brother Ned, a melancholy alcoholic who has given up his musical ambitions to grind his soul to death in his father's office. He is Linda's confidante as she slowly comes to realize her love for Johnny Case (Cary Grant), her sister's fiancee. Ayres plays this witty, unhappy man to perfection. Without once even raising his voice for sympathy, Ayres shows us how this man has been worn down by convention and family duty. He has no fight in him, except when it comes to Linda. He shows us everything Linda stands to lose. And because of that, we're on their side.

2. Patricia Neal in The Day the Earth Stood Still

The Day the Earth Stood Still cuts its way through the overheated, pulpy jungles of '50s science fiction like some vast, frozen iceberg. It's a smart, suspenseful movie, but so cold. Even the scenes of Klautu bonding with the little boy carry that feeling of unease. We are faced with the unhappy prospect that these advanced aliens will come down and intone, in the wise voice of Michael Rennie, that humanity better get with the program or else. But the humanity personified in scenes of generals barking orders or by the furrowed brow of Hugh Marlowe doesn't really put up much of a show for itself. Thank God then, for Patrica Neal. She's the only fully realized human character in this film; it's her warmth, confusion, and courage that we cling to. Neal had the great gift for creating characters who feel lived-in, from the practical but yearning Alma in Hud to the coolly cynical lover in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Her characters never feel like they started existing the moment the director yelled "Action." Would "Gort, Klaatu barada nikto" have been half so memorable without that tremor of mingled fear and determination in Neal's voice? Klaatu may be Space Jesus but Helen is our true savior.

3. Gladys Cooper in Now, Voyager

People like to cite Now, Voyager as one of the definitive romantic films. But for my money, the real force behind the story isn't the swoony love story of Bette Davis and Paul Henreid, it's the battle of wills between Davis and Gladys Cooper. Cooper is one of the bitchiest mothers ever put on screen, a woman so ruthless she would throw her rickety body down the stairs just to make her own daughter feel guilty. She torments poor Bette Davis (how often do you get to say that?) into a nervous breakdown, simply by refusing to give any kind of affection or freedom to her offspring. Cooper's performance in such a juicy role is understated. She delivers Mrs. Vale's constant stream of complaints in the kind of everyday, distracted tone you might expect from someone who's been speaking poison so long they've forgotten how to talk any other way. Now, Voyager tells a pretty old story: the ugly duckling who finds love and beauty. It's wish fulfillment. But it would all collapse into a soggy mess without Cooper, who shows us how much heft and emotion there can be in these kind of stories. Especially when the freedom of a human soul is at stake.

4. Ann Sheridan in Kings Row

This selection might be a little biased due to the fact that I love Ann Sheridan and wish she'd gotten more roles like this. Warner Brothers liked to advertise Sheridan as the "Oomph Girl," branding the gorgeous Texan redhead like she was a flavor of bubble gum. But when she got the chance, Sheridan proved she was plenty more than that. She had energy and humor and an irrepressible down-to-earth attitude. There's always a normalcy peeking out from under her performances. In Kings Row, she plays Randy Monaghan, the tomboy from the wrong side of the tracks who grows up into the loving, courageous wife of Ronald Reagan's character. Sheridan gives Randy an overlying pragmatism and intelligence that grounds the romance perfectly. She's the kind of woman who would always be a friend first, a lover second. As the spiritual predecessor to films like Peyton Place and Picnic, Kings Row is the kind of "small-town, dark secrets" melodrama that risks becoming too overblown. Lucky for us that Ann Sheridan is there to remind us that loving people can also just be good common sense.

5. Thomas Mitchell in Only Angels Have Wings

Only Angels Have Wings might go neck and neck with To Have and Have Not for the title of most Hawksian Howard Hawks film. A wisecracking and sexy woman (Jean Arthur) falls in with a group of daredevil men and quickly becomes fascinated by their tough and emotionally distant leader (Cary Grant). The leader is quick with the quips but slow to open his heart. Lucky for poor Jean Arthur, she has Grant's loyal number 2 on her side, "Kid" Dabb (Thomas Mitchell). Mitchell would have had my everlasting gratitude just by virtue of not being Walter Brennan ranting about dead bees but his portrayal of Kid is worth more than that. Mitchell had a way of watching his fellow actors that always gets to me. There's kindness there and understanding, but he never tries to draw too much attention. He bides his time. His gentle regard for Arthur is such a relief after seeing her get constantly embarrassed and berated by Grant. And of course, his character here is a powerful reminder that Grant really is a great guy. He'd have to be to win the loyalty of such a man.

6. Rita Moreno in West Side Story

It's funny how growing older has flipped my perception of West Side Story. As a kid, I was dazzled by Natalie Wood and couldn't understand why Rita Moreno and George Chakiris got all the attention. Now, I get it. In the original Romeo and Juliet, the tragedy isn't just about two lovers who can never be together. The tragedy is also about two families who have mindlessly destroyed all their best, brightest, and most cherished children for an empty rivalry. This is soft-pedaled in the musical by turning it into a very '50s style story of teenagers and grownups who just can't understand. We never see the parents, only ineffectual police officers and a head-shaking storekeeper ("You kids make the world lousy!").  When you take out the family aspect of the story and replace it with street gangs, it muddles everything. Why would street gangs react with such outsized horror at the thought of actually killing each other? It makes characters like Tony and Riff and Maria seem a little like suburban kids who've been teleported into the wrong story. This is where Rita Moreno is so essential as Anita. She's the only one who seems to truly feel the passion and pain of the situation. The near-rape she suffers at the hands of the Jets is still the only part of the film where I want to cringe and look away. But it's more than just one scene. Without Moreno's sexy, vibrant presence at the beginning (I love her back-and-forth with Chakiris), the film would lose a lot of its charm. Just as it would lose so much of the tragedy without her. If we hold onto the Romeo and Juliet connection, then Anita is clearly Mercutio.  A plague on both your houses, all right.

7. Julie Harris in East of Eden

I have an ingrained resistance to love triangles and the way they cause presumably intelligent characters to flutter around as indecisively as little kids choosing snow cone flavors. It's even harder when one character stands at the apex, wittering over the hardships of life. In East of Eden however, Julie Harris manages the incredibly tricky feat of convincing us that she really is as sensitive, intelligent, and loving as the other characters think she is. Even as she flirts and falls in love with her brother's troubled boyfriend, Harris never seems truly petty. Offscreen, Elia Kazan would credit Julie Harris for giving James Dean invaluable support, adjusting her acting rhythm to his and calming her shaky costar with long car rides and talks. East of Eden may be a tale of fathers and sons, but Harris is the film's heroine.

8. Diana Lynn in The Major and the Minor

Billy Wilder's The Major and the Minor belongs to that rarefied class of romantic comedy where you never know whether to laugh or to be disturbed. Ginger Rogers pretends to be twelve years old so that she can afford a train ticket. In the process, she falls in with Ray Milland, who's charmed by her but believes she's only an innocent kid. Through one of those comedy contrivances, she ends up at Ray Milland's military academy, having to dodge amorous cadets while falling in love with Milland herself. Thankfully Rogers doesn't look even remotely twelve, so watching her prance around as baby-voiced "Su-Su," cooing and smiling and calling Milland "Uncle Phil" isn't nearly as unbearable as it could have been. But the true saving grace of the film is Diana Lynn, as the smart and snarky kid sister of Milland's fiancee. She takes one look at Rogers' Baby Snooks routine and tells her, "Oh stop that baby talk, you're not twelve. " The way Lynn's eyes light up with pure glee as she then offers Rogers a cigarette is unforgettable. Lynn is a blessed dash of cold water in all the movie's silliness; as all the other characters are falling for Rogers' machinations like cartoon lemmings, Lynn sees through it. She forges an alliance with Rogers that is undoubtedly the film's only healthy relationship. And because of that, she becomes the film's greatest ally as well.