Movie Review: Test Pilot

Test Pilot (1938)
directed by Victor Fleming, starring Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy

(Note: This is my entry in the Build-Your-Own Blogathon, hosted by the Classic Film and TV Cafe.)

Jim Lane (Clark Gable) was born to ride the skies. He's a test pilot, which is just another way of saying he's rough, reckless, and foolish enough to try anything. His best friend, mechanic Gunner Morse (Spencer Tracy) has had his back for as long as he cares to remember. Gunner knows that Jim is destined to die young, but he still sticks by him, always watching out for danger. But as it turns out, one day, Jim crash-lands and there, sitting in a Kansas wheat field, is the one danger Gunner never expected. Said danger goes by the name Ann Barton (Myrna Loy) and it doesn't take long for sparks to fly between her and Jim. The attraction is so intense, the pair impulsively marry. Gunner disapproves, but before long, he finds that Ann is a warm, wonderful, self-sacrificing woman who worries about Jim just as much as he does. The two form a strange but fierce friendship as they watch over Jim, hoping and praying that this crazy guy they both love will come out okay. But it'll take more than love and luck. It'll take everything they have to give.

Test Pilot is such a textbook example of old-school MGM filmmaking, from the polished heads of its mega-watt stars to the foot-tapping thrills of its action sequences, that I have to think of it as Louis B. Mayer's extended apology for the reviled Parnell. I can just imagine Mayer's directives to the creative team. "Okay, so Parnell was boring. Quick, what's the opposite of Irish politics? High-speed plane racing? Got it, it's gold. And none of that hero of the people jazz, from now on, Gable's back to the boozing and the women. If there's any heavy stuff, let Spencer take care of it. But don't give him too much, it's got to be all about Gable and Loy. Maybe just make it Gable and Loy for the first hour, until we've hooked 'em. Make sure it all ends with marriage and a baby though, we want good, clean fun here."

I kid, but it all adds up to something deliciously enjoyable; Test Pilot is a perfect example of the studio formula firing on all four cylinders. It's essentially two different movies held together by one central conflict. The first half is a pure Clark Gable and Myrna Loy romantic comedy, complete with banter and wrenches and awkward trips to the lingerie department. The second half is a drama about a loyal wife (Loy) and a best buddy (Spencer Tracy) trying their best to stick by a guy who'll probably break both their hearts. While often tagged as a melodrama, the only real plot of Test Pilot is the inevitable tension of being, well, a test pilot, and the toll it takes on those around you.

In so many ways, despite its glossy MGM pedigree, Test Pilot feels like a long-lost Howard Hawks film. It's really more of a hang-out film than a melodrama, closer kin to something like To Have and Have Not or Rio Bravo than it looks on the surface. It's mainly about the chance to hang out with Loy, Gable, and Tracy for two hours and to watch them banter, bicker, and take care of each other. Scenes that a more plot-driven movie would use as a simple gag get drawn out for the sheer pleasure of it. 

For example, there's a sly joke after Loy and Gable are married that Loy, who eloped in a hurry, needs a nightgown. Tracy reminds his buddy of the problem and Gable brings it up distractedly to Loy, who responds with a perfectly timed eyebrow raise, as if to say, "Do I really?" The movie could have stopped there, but instead we get to dawdle over a charming scene of Loy daring Gable into the lingerie department and snickering into her sleeve as he makes a total botch of it. The gag just keeps going and building and you're just so grateful that Test Pilot took the time for it.

Of course, the Howard Hawks film that Test Pilot most closely resembles is the aviation drama Only Angels Have Wings and after seeing both films, I'm firmly convinced that Hawks took Victor Fleming's film as a personal challenge. There's a definite resemblance in both films' central theme of how tough you have to be for aviation and how women who love aviators are forced to be even tougher if they want to hold onto their men. However, the Hawks film takes the position that these men are doing what they love and only the people who can keep up with them are allowed to stay. The Fleming film, on the other hand, is pretty explicit that Clark Gable's choices are wreaking havoc on the nerves of his wife and friend. His recklessness is played up more as immaturity than bravery. While it's not too surprising that an MGM film would ultimately come down in favor of domesticity over macho bravado, it's fascinating to see how both films spin such different morals from the same kind of material.

Incredibly, Myrna Loy ranked the loving, loyal Ann Barton in Test Pilot as her favorite role, ahead of her indelible character Nora Charles and her brilliant performance in The Best Years of Our Lives. However, her choice doesn't seem quite so odd after you've seen the film. The role of Ann gives Loy the chance to play an entire emotional spectrum, taking her from light and flirtatious in her early courtship scenes with Gable to wry and witty during the early part of their marriage and finally to a sadder, more desperate woman in the end, one who's fully realized what kind of bargain she's made. 

 
It's really a perfect role for Loy because she gets to play so many different moods but is never forced to take center stage by herself. She's always playing off the boys and nobody could do that better than Loy. She was never happier as an actress than when she could be the perfect foil for her leading man, matching her moves to his like an expert dance partner. She made six movies with Clark Gable and her style with him is always a little slower and more openly sensual than her rapport with William Powell or Cary Grant. No doubt, Loy knew that the rat-a-tat patter of her screwball roles would tear holes through Gable's more macho delivery and she adjusts accordingly.

For me, Loy proves just how great an actress she is here in the way she can make her character's every action seem like the most logical next step. Myrna Loy standing around in a Kansas wheat field looking like she's waiting for cocktails to be served? Makes sense. Falling for Gable in the span of 24 hours? Perfectly natural. Getting engaged to a local and flirting with Gable all the while? Only sane thing to do. Marrying Gable, the crazy test pilot, after knowing him one day? Of course. Constantly going back and forth between leaving him forever and staying with him? She'll do it and come off like the wisest, warmest, wittiest woman you could ever hope to meet. Clark Gable finding someone like her in a wheat field is like the equivalent of someone shoving the winning lottery ticket into your hand and begging you to take it. Just watch her in the scene where she imitates Clark Gable as a bear; it's impossible not to fall for her.

For fans of Spencer Tracy, Test Pilot is essential: for my money, it makes a far better case for his acting talents than the film that actually won him the Oscar that year, Boys Town. Not only is it a more interesting performance, it's also an amazingly underwritten one; Spencer Tracy just takes the part of the loyal sidekick and runs all the way to Alaska with it. Tracy's character Gunner is not given any particular backstory or subplot to call his own. He seems to be utterly wrapped up in looking after Jim, with no thought for himself. He's also a grumpy killjoy who spends most of his scenes frowning over at his buddy. It's hard to blame Tracy for being annoyed that he'd gotten stuck with playing second fiddle to Gable again.

And yet, damn it all if Tracy doesn't draw your eye in every single scene he's in. Tracy was a canny enough actor to realize that he didn't have to resort to any silly stage business like waving a hat or flipping coins to steal attention from Gable. All he has to do is watch him. He's always watching Gable, always aware of him. The audience can't help but care about Gunner because he cares so much. He cares better than his friend can understand. And when Gunner forms a platonic bond with Ann, it's surprisingly sweet and touching. They become almost like parents to Jim themselves, both of them fretting and worrying and fervently trying to buck each other up. Tracy's performance here should be studied by character actors, to remind them that sometimes you're better off on the sidelines.

Of course, Tracy himself wasn't above hamming it up on occasion. There's an anecdote about the filming of one particular scene that demonstrates the Gable-Tracy rivalry perfectly. At the time, Gable had the box office clout but Tracy had the critical praise. Tracy had no interest in playing sidekick to Gable in another MGM film and the insecure Gable was always nervous that Tracy would blow him off the screen. So during the filming of Tracy's death scene, Tracy deliberately tweaked Gable's nose by drawing out every single gasp and dying groan and twitch and mumbled word. Gable had to cradle Tracy in his arms all while his costar died a more drawn-out death than Camille's. Finally, Gable got so frustrated, he let Tracy's head go with a loud thunk and shouted, "Die, goddamit, Spence! I wish to Christ you would!"

As the rowdy, immature Jim, Clark Gable is admittedly playing a pretty standard Gable role. He's gruff but flirtatious with Loy, devil-may-care when it comes to his job, and mortally afraid that something will reveal his hidden heart of gold. There's nothing wrong with Gable's acting here, far from it. It's just that to anyone who's seen plenty of Gable movies, it leaves very few surprises. Loy and Tracy both act rings around him in this one. 

However, Gable does get one indelible moment, one that Howard Hawks would outright steal for Only Angels Have Wings. After losing a fellow aviator to a brutal crash, Gable and the other pilots retreat to a bar. One well-meaning patron starts up a toast to the winner and they drunkenly join him. But when he raises his glass and says the name of the dead man, Gable snaps to his feet, dead sober in a flash. "Who's he? Never heard of him." The other pilots also forswear the name of their fallen friend, honoring him by refusing to speak of him. It's the only code they can live by. The scene is every bit as powerful as the "Who's Joe" moment in Only Angels Have Wings and while I would normally take Howard Hawks over Victor Fleming in a heartbeat, I think it's a damn shame that Hawks' film is the only one that's remembered.

Test Pilot actually took a Best Picture nomination in 1938, one of those odd cases of a film with no big social relevance, no big acting moments, and no particular importance that manages to sneak onto the awards list solely because it's a very well-made film. For me, however, I think Test Pilot is worth watching, not because it's deep or weighty or important. It's because it's such a sterling example of old-fashioned MGM filmmaking back in the days when they really did know what the public wanted. They knew they could spin a good yarn just by taking three great actors and giving the audience the chance to spend plenty of time with them. Watching Loy, Tracy and Gable together is exhilaration enough. Whether they're up in the sky or down on the ground, they're stars.

Favorite Quote:

"She's crazy, I broke all the records, too. I entered high school a sophomore and came out a freshman!"

Favorite Scene:

Isn't it obvious? Myrna Loy's impression of Clark Gable as a bear. I defy anyone to watch it and not find their hearts set a-fluttering by Loy.

Final Six Words:

It bounces more than it soars

Note: The Myrna Loy gif is credited to norascharles tumblr.

Movie Review: The Queen of Spades

The Queen of Spades (1949)
directed by Thorold Dickinson, starring Anton Walbrook, Yvonne Mitchell, Edith Evans

(Note: This is my entry in The British Invaders Blogathon, hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts.) 

Night after night, Captain Herman Suvorin (Anton Walbrook) goes with his fellow officers to a club, where the laughing sons of nobility stare at the gypsy dancers and play the card game faro until the sun rises. Suvorin, a strange, solitary man, never spends any time with the dancers and never spends any money, but there's a furtive hunger in his eyes as he watched the cards. Andrei (Ronald Howard), the only one in the company nice enough to try to be Suvorin's friend, is puzzled by his behavior, but Suvorin, a poor man who despises his wealthier comrades, is determined not to play faro until he's certain he'll win.

One night, Suvorin discovers a book that promises him the key to unbelievable wealth. The book tells the story of the Countess Ranevskaya, a beautiful, desperate woman who sold her soul to the Devil in order to win the secret of the three winning cards. With the secret of the cards, she won enough money at faro to keep herself from ruin. Suvorin is excited beyong measure at the story, especially when he discovers that Ranevskaya is still alive now an old and irascible crone (Edith Evans) who's never once breathed a word of the secret cards to anyone. Suvorin becomes obsessed with learning the three cards at any price. Even if it means seducing the countess's innocent young ward Lizaveta (Yvonne Mitchell). Even if it means loss of life or sanity. Even if he throws his own soul onto the fire...

 
For a film that Martin Scorsese himself referred to as a "masterpiece," The Queen of Spades has been strangely overlooked for decades. Even now, while it's attained a certain small cult status with those who've seen it, in the U.S., it still only pops up on a dual DVD with Dead of Night (not that Dead of Night isn't a good film in its own right) and it doesn't usually pop up when people are chatting about all the great films of Britain's postwar period. Maybe it just has too much competition; The Queen of Spades was nominated for a BAFTA in 1949, the same year as another little film you might recollect, oh, The Third Man that was it. Maybe it's because Thorold Dickinson, the film's director was born under an unlucky star since despite his own good reputation, his movies (the 1940 British Gaslight, Secret People, Hill 24 Doesn't Answer) haven't always been the easiest to get a hold of. Or maybe it's because The Queen of Spades is easy to mistake for just another cozy British ghost story. 

In fact, the film is tremendously arresting in its visuals, its set design is amazingly elegant for its shoestring budget, and its performances are all topnotch. It's creepy, it's thrilling, and it horrifies in all the right place. Finding The Queen of Spades kicking around on Youtube or in out-of-date DVD releases is like realizing that the eccentric little old lady neighbor you've been ignoring for years was really Miss Havisham all along.

Adapted from a Pushkin short story, The Queen of Spades tells the story of Herman Suvorin, a man who becomes convinces that the riches and esteem he craves will be his if he can learn the secret of how to win at cards. It's a simple enough tale that teases you as to whether our hero is literally selling his soul or just going completely off his head. But for me, The Queen of Spades takes that simple story and makes it beautiful. Despite the fact that director Thorold Dickinson was given the assignment only five days before it started, despite the fact that they had the budget of a mayfly supper, and despite the fact that it showcases little actual horror, The Queen of Spades is a visual feast, creating a cold, haunted vision of Imperial Russia that could rival The Scarlet Empress.

Much of the credit has to go to Dickinson, who's endlessly inventive in his distorted camera angles, twisted mirror shots, and imagery. In one moment that made me literally catch my breath, he goes from a shot of Herman Suvorin scratching out a love letter while a spider spins a web in his dusty room to a shot of Lizaveta swooning away on her bed, her fingers suggestively reaching under the pillow to caress his letter as the transposed image of the spider keeps spinning over her face. 

In another sequence where a younger and more beautiful version of the Countess makes her bargain with the Devil, Dickinson blurs the edges of the scene, as if we're watching something not quite of this world. To hint at the doom that will befall her, all he has to do is show a shot of some mysterious figure's gnarled hands slowly working out the details on a tiny doll, a little miniature of the Countess. And when the Countess does make her fateful visit to the place that, in the film's cryptic words, "left a mark on her soul," Dickinson leads up to it by showing us the Countess walking through a shadowy tunnel, coming to a door that enters into pitch blackness. We hear her scream and we hear the scream of her horses but nothing more. And when the light comes back,  the tiny doll is being trapped under a glass bowl by those same unknown hands. When the movie cuts to the real Countess, she's pleading to a painting of the Virgin Mary for mercy but in a merciless answer to her prayers, the faces of Virgin and Infant slowly turn to black. It's as great as anything you'll find in a Val Lewton film.

The legendary stage actress Edith Evans, here playing the old, crabbed Countess Ranevskaya, is the film's most impressive visual effect. Just watching her hunch across the screen, with her huge powdered wig teetering on her head and her eyes darting around suspiciously is like watching some grotesque oddity from Alice in Wonderland come to life. The Queen of Spades was actually Evans' screen debut, but she's so assured onscreen that you'd think she'd been doing films for years. In her line delivery, Evans is a perfectly banal, constantly complaining old woman, but you can't help but notice something haunted and despairing in her eyes. She strikes the perfect balance, keeping you guessing as to whether Evans is an ordinary woman who's become the unfortunate target of Suvorin's delusions or a soulless crone who knows far more than she's telling.

Dark-eyed, regal Yvonne Mitchell, also making her screen debut after years on the stage, is surprisingly very good as the naive, romantic Lizaveta, the Countess's companion. She's lovely and good-hearted, but her life with the Countess has kept her sheltered from the outside world. Despite Suvorin's brusque manners, poor situation, and unattractive appearance, his ardent love letters (diligently copied out of books) are enough to set her head spinning. It would be easy to write off Lizaveta as just another ingenue, a helpless pawn in Suvorin's schemes. But Mitchell has too much dignity in her manner to let you dismiss her entirely. Instead, you get the sense of a woman who could very well grow into strength and intelligence, given the chance to experience the world. By forcing her ward into seclusion and servitude, the Countess has ironically turned her into the same reckless, unhappy woman she herself once was, seeking relief in a faithless lover.

Ronald Howard, son of Leslie Howard, gets the film's most thankless role as the pure-hearted Andrei, Suvorin's aristocratic foil. As the only character not to originate from the original Pushkin story, his main purpose is to provide Lizaveta with a happy ending. Still, Howard shows more than a few sparks of his father's talent, giving Andrei a genuine warmth and sensitive watchfulness that makes you root for him to bring Suvorin down. Judging by his work here, Howard should have had more of a career.

Like his other great obsessive role, Lermontov in The Red Shoes, Anton Walbrook is again the cold, vaguely inhuman creature whose eyes light up and whose hands tremble, not for a fellow human being, but for something intangible. In this case, it's privilege, not art. He looks at the beautiful, adoring Yvonne Mitchell as if he can stare right through her to the life of wealth that awaits him. Considering that the only other character he spends any time with is an attractive young man, who seems rather fond of him for no apparent reason, it's tempting to try to work in a gay subtext here. However, Walbrook doesn't play it that way; he's just as bored making small talk with Andrei as he is writing love sonnets to a woman. 

That chilly detachment certainly fits for the character, but it did leave me feeling a little removed from Suvorin for a good part of the film's runtime. Unlike Lermontov, who can at least boast that he's bringing beauty into the world, Suvorin's concerns are all wrapped up in himself and so his downfall doesn't feel particularly tragic or shocking. I'm not one to complain about characters being likable or not, but I couldn't help wishing for a little more insight into Suvorin.

Still, that minor complaint aside, Walbrook's performance is knock-out spectacular once Suvorin goes from pinched misanthropy to complete insanity. Intensity was Walbrook's great gift as an actor and he brings it full-force to this role, commanding your attention simply because his needs are so raw. He wants the secret of the cards and he wants it so much that everything else in the world has turned to ashes for him. His one scene with Edith Evans is a stand-out, but I'm also enthralled by the moment when he finally feels he's won. Walbrook mutters to himself, hardly daring to believe it. He closes his eyes in relief. And then he stands up as if to stretch but instead, Walbrook put his hands to his chest, clawing at his own skin in some kind of bestial triumph and then makes this undefinable noise. It's like a bird of prey cawing, I quite literally can't think of another actor ever doing anything like it. And then to cap it all off, Walbrook lifts his hands up, lets out a few hysterical sobs, and ends with a glass-rattling scream that would unnerve even the most jaded horror fan. You don't know whether to be more terrified of him or for him. There's plenty of actors who can make a meal of a mad scene, but Walbrook truly makes this unique and memorable.  

In a lesser film, the director would have just let Walbrook's performance carry the whole thing, but Thorold Dickinson creates a movie that's just mad enough to keep pace with its feverish hero, using mirrors, shadows, sounds, and eyes to tell the old story of what happens when we want too much. More people should know it and more people should talk of it. And more people should be talking about Thorold Dickinson, a man who played his best even when fate dealt him an unlucky hand. The ghosts of the other great movies he could have made haunts The Queen of Spades just as much as the story's ghosts do.

Favorite Quote:

"Take life as you find it."
"I'd rather take it by the throat and force it to give me what I want."

Favorite Scene:

For me, the most thrilling scene in The Queen of Spades comes when Suvorin hides in the Countess's room in order to beg the secret of the cards from her. Dickinson carefully draws out the suspense. He shows us every slow step of the Countess being made ready for bed, her body suddenly shrunken without the weight of her wig and jewels. She mumbles to herself the same prayer we heard the younger Countess make, "Holy virgin, have mercy on me." In the darkness, Evans' eyes look like two black holes. Suddenly she sees a black apparition next to a painting of the Virgin. She rears up and the shadow steps forward to reveal himself as Suvorin. He comes forward, pleading, presenting himself as a supplicant. The Countess looks away from him, mute. Suvorin falls to his knees, asking her to help him in the name of God and any human feeling, but she moves away. Suvorin's pleas turn to demands and then finally to threats. And still the Countess refuses to answer. By this point, the audience is almost as maddened as Suvorin, wanting desperately for this woman to share what she knows. But what if he's a madman tormenting an innocent old woman? The film doesn't tip its hand either way and it ups the tension immensely, as you keep trying to figure out who's most in danger here.

It's hard to overstate just how brilliantly matched Walbrook and Evans are in this scene. Walbrook brings all his vocal gifts to Suvorin's shifting, increasingly savage speech and Evans uses the power of her face alone to show both great dread and a strange, mute contempt. I won't give away how the scene ends or the little shock coda afterwards, but it left me very grateful for directors who know how to let actors bring the horror all on their own. Sometimes you don't need CGI demons coming up through the floorboards or overacting Satans (actually scratch that--you practically never need that). Sometimes all you need is the terror in two people's eyes as they slowly realize they're staring into the face of their own damnation.

Final Six Words:

Sends shivers of delight and horror

Movie Review: Young Mr. Lincoln

Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)
directed by John Ford, starring Henry Fonda, Alice Brady

(Note: This is my entry in the John Ford Blogathon, hosted by Krell Laboratories.)

Young Mr. Abraham Lincoln (Henry Fonda) is a man of weighty thoughts but light experience, at least when it comes to the rule of law. All he really knows, he's only learned from books. But after he loses his first love Ann Rutledge (Pauline Moore), Lincoln makes up his mind to study the law in earnest. However, his first case will prove to be as great a challenge as he could ever have imagined.

The Clay family have come to town for a Fourth of July celebration. At the fair, the two brothers (Richard Cromwell and Eddie Quillan) get into a fight and a man ends up dead with a knife in him. Both Clays are accused of murder. Both are determined to take the blame, trying to spare their brother from a hanging. Their mother (Alice Brady) is a witness to the crime but absolutely refuses to say a word; she'll never sacrifice one to save the other. The other key witness to the crime is J. Palmer Cass (Ward Bond), a friend of the victim; he insists that he saw the stabbing by the light of the moon and refuses to budge on that point.

Lincoln agrees to take on the case, but all the fates seem against him. He's got a town braying for the blood of the two Clay boys, a town that's ready to lynch them at any second. He's got a jury that's already biased against the case. He's got no testimony to counter the accusations. His defendants won't tell the truth of what happened. And he himself is as green a lawyer as ever walked into a courtroom. But that won't stop him from putting up one hell of a fight. Little does he know that it's only the beginning for him.

Of all our presidents, Abraham Lincoln is arguably the most cinematic. Theodore Roosevelt and Andrew Jackson had more bombastic personalities and George Washington was the more standardized hero, but Lincoln stands out as uniquely well suited to the big screen. He's both the approachable, folksy "rail-splitter," the common man striving to better himself, and the mythical, untouchable paladin for human rights. He's a figure we can look up to in awe, but, to snag an old election phrase, someone we could also imagine wanting to share a drink with. Consider that in the very same year, we got both a big-budget, prestigious, Oscar-nominated film inspired by Lincoln's efforts to pass the Thirteenth Amendment and a splashy fantasy action flick about Abraham Lincoln, the vampire slayer. Lincoln presents, in many ways, the archetypal image of what Americans want to think about themselves. Sharp and tricksy but also reasoned and wise. Compassionate yet stern as steel. A humble background but the will for power.

John Ford's 1939 biographic film, Young Mr. Lincoln, is a testament to those ideas of Abraham Lincoln and in that regard, it's a beautiful, modest, rather slippery piece of work. "Biographic" is a term I use very loosely here, because the movie has little interest in retelling the facts of Lincoln's life. It marks off a lot of the famous little anecdotes about his early career, like the time when he told the story of the dog and the pitchfork in court or the time he asked Mary Todd to dance ("I want to dance with you in the worst way"). But it carries precious little in the way of facts. The movie invents wholesale a story about him defending a pair of accused murderers and devotes most of the runtime to that. With the overwhelming abundance of storytelling material in Lincoln's actual life, the choice to depict him as a crusading Atticus Finch seems oddly limiting at first glance.

However, once you get past that mental hurdle, Young Mr. Lincoln offers a portrait of Lincoln that is deeply affecting and more complicated than you might expect from the synopsis. In fact, the Lincoln here has a lot in common with the 2012 Spielberg version of Lincoln. They're both presented as canny, thoughtful men, not above using a little trickery or insults to get their way. The Lincoln in this film cracks lowbrow jokes, hems and haws over his true intention and calmly manipulates people. He even cheats to win a game of tug-of-war at one point and John Ford cuts away without tipping his hand as to whether we're supposed to applaud his smarts or be disconcerted by his casual disregard for rules. Without showing Lincoln's political career, the 1939 film manages to throw in a great many hints about his political aptitude. This film also highlights Lincoln's essential isolation from other people, ending in a famous scene of him walking alone up a hill that surely must have been in Spielberg's mind when he filmed the final scene for his version. The key difference between the 1939 and 2012 biopics is that the Spielberg story is about the collaboration and compromises Lincoln and other people must make to form that more perfect Union. Ford's film, by contrast, presents Lincoln as a singular figure, one whose struggles are not truly shared or understood by anyone else. 

Sometimes, an actor's star persona is virtually indistinguishable from his offscreen one, as in the case of Clifton Webb. Other times, it's almost a night and day contrast; the down-to-earth homemaker turns into a sultry temptress on silver nitrate or vice versa. Personally, I hold to the theory that you can usually unearth bits and flashes of the actor's true self underneath the performance, no matter how wide the gulf seems at first. Vincent Price's joy in living, Joan Crawford's drive for self-improvement, Rita Hayworth's need to please. It's there if you know where to look for it. But Henry Fonda is one actor that strains that theory of mine to the breaking point.

On film, Henry Fonda is the purest personification of honesty. He isn't just a good guy. He's the hero struggling in the dark, his eyes fixed on some distant mountain peak of perfection that the rest of us can only imagine. He could take characters as decent and honorable as Tom Joad, Juror No. 8, Wyatt Earp, and Abraham Lincoln and convince you that they were possible. And yet in real life, Henry Fonda was a cold, unreachable man who alienated his loved ones and quite frankly, acted like a shit to them much of the time. After you've read a few of the Fonda family bios, it seems frankly unbelievable that this man could dig deep enough to find the fathomless generosity and compassion of his most famous roles.

However, when you look at Henry Fonda and compare him to the other famous "good guy" actor, James Stewart, the connection snaps into place. The hallmark of a Fonda hero, as opposed to a Stewart hero, isn't heartfelt emotion, it's thought. Fonda heroes are always staring off somewhere into the middle distance, thinking their way towards a solution. Unlike Stewart, who so often ends up loving too well and not too wisely, Fonda is more isolated, more cerebral and less open. In Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stewart's climactic speech has him distraught and anguished, voice cracking, fiery and exhausted. In Grapes of Wrath, Fonda's famous speech has him looking offscreen, patient and undaunted, slowly struggling his way towards the understanding that he himself belongs to a larger whole. And there is a certain coldness to that kind of hero. He can't belong to us in the way Stewart can. 

All this is leading up to a notion of mine that when Henry Fonda plays the John Ford hero, it results in films that tend to be quieter and less easy to pin down than Ford's films with John Wayne. My Darling Clementine, The Grapes of Wrath, and Young Mr. Lincoln all have their fair share of Fordian humor and American nostalgia, but they keep us at more of a distance (I have a feeling that Mr. Roberts might be the exception that proves the rule but don't tell me, I still haven't seen it).

I realize that I have spent almost this entire review talking about Henry Fonda and not the supporting cast, which includes some famous names, including Ward Bond, Donald Meek, Alice Brady, and Richard Cromwell. And that's for the very good reason that this film is really Fonda's showcase the whole way through. When he's not onscreen, you're waiting for him to come back. The other characters don't really register, although I appreciate the sly touch of having the aptly-named Donald Meek play Lincoln's slick, confident opponent. Alice Brady's performance as the anguished mother of the defendants is also good, but the script rarely gives her more than one note to play. Truthfully, Young Mr. Lincoln, while a great character study for its protagonist, does suffer a little by making the supporting characters so simple. John Ford films in general rely heavily on archetypal characters, but I can't help feeling that they came across as richer and deeper in movies like How Green Was My Valley or Stagecoach than they do here.

The greatest joy this film has to offer for John Ford fans, aside from Fonda, is the aching beauty of its camerawork. His shots of Lincoln rambling through the woods look like something you want to hang in a gallery, they're so well framed. Ford's ability to find both emotion and mythic resonance in his stories is also just as evident here as it is in his more famous films. There's an early scene with Lincoln talking to his first love Ann Rutledge out near the river. She encourages his dreams, he compliments her hair. The sun is shining. The mood is tentative and hopeful; their romance is just barely beginning. When she walks away, Lincoln tosses a stone in the river. The ripples slowly transition to shifting blocks of ice in the dead of winter. The camera finds Lincoln making a slow, deliberate walk to Ann's grave to replace the flowers there. The cruel, lovely simplicity of the image cuts straight to the bone.

For me, the best John Ford films are built on moments like that. Moments that make us feel like we're seeing an elemental truth of human experience. While I wouldn't rank Young Mr. Lincoln as one of his greatest films, if only because his best is so very great, it carries enough of those moments to make me very glad that John Ford and Henry Fonda chose to make their idea of Abraham Lincoln. In 1939, they were without a doubt the best men for the job.

Favorite Quote:

"What I'm afraid of is that some of the jurors might not know you...and that'd put me at a great disadvantage."

Favorite Scene: 

The scene in which Lincoln takes on an angry lynch mob. It's a simple scene on the surface, but it's so elegantly constructed that if I taught film classes, I'd make it required viewing for all my students. Abraham Lincoln has just taken on the case of the two Clay brothers and a raging mob descends on the cell, ready to storm it and kill the boys then and there. Lincoln appears just in time and throws himself between the crowd and the door, armed with nothing but his lanky body and the sound of his voice. Rather than just appealing to their better natures or diffusing the situation with humor or angrily calling them out, Lincoln applies all these strategies in one speech, revealing his incredible political aptitude for the first time. 

I love the way that Ford matches the shifting camera angles to Lincoln's shifting tactics. In the first part of the scene, when Lincoln appears in front of the door, Ford's camera goes for a jarring, extreme close-up of his back turning around. When he turns, the camera has traveled sharply away from him and he's a distant, almost frightening figure in black, loudly proclaiming that he'll beat up anyone who tries to pass him. As the crowd argue with him, Lincoln gradually turns the conversation into subtle mockery, poking fun at himself in order to draw a laugh from them ("I'm just a fresh lawyer trying to get ahead...and you boys act like you want to do me out of my first clients"). Ford brings the camera closer and now Lincoln is in the middle of the frame. He's more approachable now, but rather cool and dispassionate. The crowds starts to calm. Ford cuts to a beautiful closeup of Lincoln, now leaning against the doorframe, his head bowed. He begins speaking regretfully of the nature of lynch mobs, subtly drawing the conversation away from the comical waste of money to the real moral cost. The humor's gone. Then he actually calls out one of the mob by name, reminding him of his honorable name and piety. He paints a picture for the crowd of this same man going home to read his bible and turning to the passage, "Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy." By now, the crowd has been thoroughly subdued. Their battering ram is almost slipping from their hands. Lincoln looks up and says softly, "Why don't you put it down for a spell, boys, ain't it getting heavy." He has won a total victory. Moreover, Ford's camerawork matches Fonda's performance so perfectly in this scene, Lincoln can't help but win over the movie audience as well.

Final Six Words:

Wise, wistful portrait of elusive legend

Movie Review: Odds Against Tomorrow

Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)
directed by Robert Wise, starring Robert Ryan, Harry Belafonte, Ed Begley

(Note: This is my entry in the Fabulous Films of the 50s Blogathon, hosted by the Classic Movie Blog Association.)

Earle Slater (Robert Ryan) is a man with little to offer the world. An ex-con twice over, middle-aged and penniless, Slater is staring down the barrel of a merciless future and he knows it. All he really has is the unconditional love of Lorry (Shelley Winters), but that love comes attached with small gifts of money that Slater hates himself for using. He needs to get some kind of score or his chance for happiness will be gone forever. So when crooked ex-cop Dave Burke (Ed Begley) comes to him with a too-good-to-be-true plan for a heist, Slater snatches it up with both hands. There's a snag, though. Burke's plan depends on the cooperation of smooth-talking musician Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte) to play a delivery boy. Thing is, Ingram's black and Slater is a racist. Even with everything at stake, Slater can scarcely bear to share the same room with Ingram, let alone cooperate on a crime with him. For his part, Ingram loathes Slater completely but his own massive gambling debts force him to go along. Dave has his hands full trying to keep this shoddy little trio together. As the clock ticks down to their one chance for fortune and freedom, these three men will have to ask themselves if they really have what it takes to beat the odds.

Odds Against Tomorrow is film noir's answer to The Defiant Ones. When asked the question, "Can a bitter white racist and a proud black man put aside their differences in the interests of survival," the answer here is simply, "No." Hate is enough to overpower all other instincts. 

The canny trick of Odds Against Tomorrow is the way it eases into that question. It doesn't immediately announce itself as a social problem movie or even as a caper flick. Instead, it spends most of its running time slowly introducing us to our three main characters: the old, blindly optimistic Burke, the desperate Slater, and the troubled young Ingram. We get insight into the fears that push them forward. Burke took a fall as a crooked cop and wants to get a little of his own back before it's too late. Slater is violent and miserable, lashing out at a world that doesn't want him. Ingram is addicted to gambling and weighed down by responsibility for his ex-wife and daughter. By the time the movie gets around to the actual heist, we're fully aware that hatred isn't just a social disease or an impediment to common sense. For men like these, hate and anger are tools for survival. One way or another, they've become life's losers and the only way they can put one foot in front of the other is by finding something else to blame for their problems.

The performances in Odds Against Tomorrow are uniformly excellent, from the trio of inexperienced thieves to the unhappy women that love them, but what really knocked me out in Odds Against Tomorrow was the visual style. There was an unwritten rule in Hollywood for decades that movies about social issues had to be in a gritty, unadorned black-and-white in order to underline the seriousness of the story. Director Robert Wise takes that rule and slices right through it, avoiding both the boring, TV-episode look of other '50s kitchen sink dramas, and the gorgeous, slick camerawork of the classic film noir. 

Instead, Wise's compositions borrow the best from both styles, alternating between slanted shadows and corner and disorienting, overexposed location shots. This technique creates a bleak, chilly landscape with blindingly white flashes of light along the horizon. Far from looking seductive or glamorous, the city in Odds Against Tomorrow looks almost as if it's gone through some kind of nuclear winter. Wise even adds in a few infra-red shots here and there, so Ryan at times is walking under a black sky with distorted white clouds. The effect is desolate and eerily beautiful. Just as Ryan and Begley's middle-aged thugs are fighting against the realization that life holds no more chances for them, the movie itself looks like the last document of a world slowly being burned out of existence.

It is a hard, perilous business, trying to steer the ship of Robert Wise Appreciation through the dark waters of film criticism. No matter which direction you go, you hit sharp rocks.  Turn the conversation to Citizen Kane and Wise's editing career and you run smack into the film fans who will forever hate Wise as the scissors-wielding mediocrity who butchered The Magnificent Ambersons. Turn the conversation over to Wise's directing success and you inevitably run up against someone grinding their axe against The Sound of Music or West Side Story. Try to find some calmer waters with the auteurists and you find a general sense of frustration at the slippery Wise, a man who went from beguiling fantasy-horror flicks all the way to gargantuan Hollywood crowd-pleasers without much hint of personal connection to his stories. Really, the only safe place for Robert Wise love is with the film noir fans, who are quite happy to hold up Born to Kill, The Set-Up, and Odds Against Tomorrow with the best that film noir has to offer.

I think one of the reasons Wise never quite achieves critical darling status is that he was one of the most chameleon-like of directors, subsuming himself to the demands of his story. Given a classic haunted house tale like The Haunting, he delivers exactly that. Given a blockbuster musical property like West Side Story, with its uneasy blend of passionate feeling and vague attempts at social relevance, he delivers that, too. His background in film editing seemed to give him an edge in making films that moved fluidly and consistently in whatever style he chose. With a great story, he can be superb.  With Odds Against Tomorrow, he had a simple idea but a sharp script by Abraham Polonsky (yes, that Abraham Polonsky, blacklisted screenwriter of Body and Soul and Force of Evil, here relegated to sneaking his work in through an alias). Wise seems particularly inspired by the material and his direction here is as beautiful as anything he accomplished under Val Lewton. It's an unusual thing, to see a '50s movie about racism that looks as good as this one does.

In addition to scripting and direction, Odds Against Tomorrow also has the benefit of a jagged, nervous jazz score by John Lewis. The score careens back and forth from a restless background rhythm, like an onlooker tapping his toe in the background, to blasting, dissonant crescendos. The music is practically screaming at these characters to get out while they still can, but they're living in a film noir and so they don't take the warning.

While Begley, Ryan, and Belafonte all do excellent work, it's no surprise that Robert Ryan emerges as the central protagonist and the most compelling character in the movie. Ryan was already a practiced hand at playing bigots (Crossfire, Bad Day at Black Rock), bullies (Caught) and out-and-out villains (The Naked Spur). Despite being shy, compassionate, and devoted to liberal causes in real life, Ryan had the ability to tap into something dark and raw onscreen that seemed to go beyond the hammy theatrics of villainy. His characters always seemed to be running away from human connection. Ryan's 6"4" frame made him tower over costars and yet there was a painful vulnerability to his tormented loners. Nobody could do self-loathing like Ryan. 

As Earle Slater, he's a fascinating mess of contradictions, a man who's both tender and vile. Ryan's introductory scene has him scooping up a little black girl running on the street and telling her, "You little pickaninny, you're going to kill yourself flying like that, yes you are." Ryan's voice is so gentle that the impact of the words doesn't fully register until you see him coldly rebuffing the friendly overtures of the black elevator operator, his whole body vibrating with disdain that this man dares to approach him. Slater is no less cruel in his treatment of women, either. He's brusque to girlfriend Shelley Winters, using her and cheating on her. And yet, there's a moment early on where Winters embraces him and Ryan buries his head on her chest, his eyes aching with the need for affection and understanding. 

No less striking is a scene where Ryan responds to the goads of a group of teenagers and ends up decisively punching one out. In a John Wayne movie, this would be the classic moment of the Duke proving his mettle against a callow younger generation. Here, the moment quickly turns embarrassing and awkward for Slater as the boy's whimpers and obvious pain make him look like a sadist. A bartender chastises him and Ryan's face, briefly flushed with triumph, turns confused, even childlike. "I didn't mean to hurt him." Slater's long since given into his worst impulses as a person and these brief flashes of a better nature reveal how painful life is to such a man. He knows enough to know he'll always be in the wrong.

As Slater's forgiving girlfriend Lorry, Shelley Winters gets one particularly good exchange with Ryan. When he tries to explain his scheme as something in her best interest, because what will she do when he gets old, Winters bites back, "You are old now!" Her face briefly reveals a tired certainty that this man will lie to her and fail her, no matter what he promises. It says a lot for the nature of the typical Shelley Winters role that the part of Lorry, hopelessly devoted to an ex-con, is relatively confident and astute in comparison to her standard role. At least nobody's trying to murder her this time.

The other two parts of the criminal trio, Begley and Belafonte, are both excellent in their respective parts. Begley has the least showy part; Burke's just the old-timer trying to make good. But Begley brings the man to life by focusing on his blind, grinning optimism. Burke is a man who knows he just has to score, he just has to make good, there are no other options. 

Belafonte plays Ingram, the only one in the trio who's still young enough and outwardly confident enough to make good without resorting to crime. His first introduction reads like a photo-negative of Ryan's; Belafonte turns up in a shiny car, playfully offers money to all the neighborhood kids to leave the car alone and then makes friendly conversation with the same elevator operator on the way up to Burke's flat. It's only later on that we get a glimpse of the demons that torment Ingram. When charm and persuasion fail to keep his debt collectors off his back (helped along by Burke's machinations), Ingram reveals a simmering resentment and outraged pride, pounding out his frustrations at the night club and yelling out interruptions to his friend's song. 

Even better is a scene with his ex-wife Ruth (Kim Hamilton in a brief but lovely part). The two reveal that they're still desperately attracted to each other and they'd gladly marry again if not for their little girl. Ruth can't trust this gambler to be a good father for her daughter. Ingram reacts to her blunt resignation with a blistering tirade about his wife's white friends. "Drink enough tea with them and stay out of the watermelon patch!" Just like his mirror image Slater, Ingram can't accept that his own faults have driven him into this corner. He'll grasp at anything to avoid taking on the responsibility and this need for blame will carry him away from the real love that he wants.

However, and this is the only major fault I can lay on this movie, Belafonte's rage is never as well-defined as Ryan's. His character is not so complex and while it's implied that he harbors a resentment against the injustices of the white community, his actual history is never explained. This muddles the motivation for Ingram at the end of the film, in a climax that depends on our willingness to believe that both Ingram and Slater have passed the point of reason. We've already seen that Slater has little to live for and might even welcome death. Ingram, on the other hand, has quite a lot to live for and still has plenty of hope for the future. It doesn't make much sense that he would choose hatred and vengeance over simple self-preservation.

While I may quibble at the journey we take to get there, the ending of Odds Against Tomorrow fulfills every bleak promise that it makes. Our heroes are rewarded, maybe not as they all deserve, but by the pitiless rules of the world they live by. They are made equal in spite of themselves. And isn't equality the shining hope of every Hollywood social problem film? Odds Against Tomorrow is what happens when such cockeyed optimism gets rewritten in the icy language of film noir.

Favorite Quote:

"Aren't things ever easy for you, Earle?"
"Only when I get mad. Then they get too easy."

Favorite Scene:

Gloria Grahame has a brief but unforgettable part as Ryan's neighbor, a married mother who starts out knocking on Ryan's door for a babysitter and turns out to be a secret sadomasochist, thrilled by the ex-con's murderous past. Grahame starts out a little stilted in her line delivery, almost as if she's asking for a cooking recipe rather than for detailed descriptions of a manslaughter charge, but the old black magic comes out when Ryan gives into her demand and starts talking. She wants to know what it's like to kill someone and before she can backpedal back into respectability, Ryan leans in. "I enjoyed it," he murmurs into her ear, offering it up like the seduction she wants. Grahame's lids flutter with arousal, and in response, Ryan's whole body seems to relax for the first time. He keeps talking. Even before he tugs Grahame's top off to reveal her bra and the movie cuts to black, you realize that this right here is the climax he's been waiting for. This is the moment where he can live out his sadistic impulses with no shame. And yet, you can't fully be sure how much Ryan's character is really revealing himself and how much is him playing up to the desires of this woman. The performance is that good.

There's something poignant and almost sweet about the casting of Grahame in such a small but still memorable part. If any woman represented the greed, desire, and masochistic longing of the film noir genre (The Big Heat, In a Lonely Place, Human Desire, Sudden Fear), she did. In 1959, Grahame was still beautiful, still sensual, but the trampy, troubled women she'd played through the decade were starting to be replaced by different types. Back in 1947, she'd co-starred with Robert Ryan in Crossfire, another film that blended social issues with crime drama. She'd been the tart, he'd been the racist. But back then, Grahame and Ryan had been fresh on the scene and their incendiary talents had won them critical acclaim. They were new, they were modern, they were exciting. Now fast forward to Odds Against Tomorrow, twelve years later and they're playing the same noir archetypes. They're older, wearier, and the regrets of time are palpable. Having them together again in a movie like this feels almost like a true goodbye to the golden age of film noir.

Final Six Words:

Men hanged by their own dreams

Movie Review: Boys Town

Boys Town (1938) 
directed by Norman Taurog, starring Spencer Tracy, Mickey Rooney

(Note: Review requested by Silver Screenings during my Reader's Choice Event. You have my humblest apologies for its lateness.)

Father Flanagan (Spencer Tracy) has always been a friend to children in need, giving comfort to the guilty and succor to the innocent. And all his experiences have driven him to a single conclusion: There is no such thing as a bad boy. Such talk goes against the grain for the prison wardens and business owners that have to contend with the roving gangs that tear up the slum streets. His friend, Dave Morris (Henry Hull) thinks he's a deluded fool. But after hearing one death-row confession too many, Flanagan is convinced that the only way to save these boys is to give them a proper home, away from reform schools and gangs. He talks the reluctant Morris into financing him and opens up Boys Town.

After many hardship and sacrifices, Flanagan and Morris succeed in building up Boys Town into a genuine refuge for boys in need.  Everyone is clamoring for Flanagan to take their boy in hand; some boys walk miles and miles to be admitted. But there's one boy who swears he'll never fall for that phony racket, a boy who just might turn out to be the first failure of Boys Town. That boy is Whitey Marsh (Mickey Rooney), a fast-talking delinquent who only wants to cut out and join his gangster older brother Joe (Edward Norris). Father Flanagan and all the boys under his care will find out if tough talk and tough love will be enough to straighten out Whitey before he drags the whole community down with him.

Spencer Tracy is the perfect rebuttal to that old chestnut about never working with children or animals. Because not only did he win back-to-back Best Actor Oscars in 1937 and 1938, he won it for playing the exact same role: a virtuous, plain-spoken mentor who manages to win over a bratty boy, turning him into an honorable and good-hearted young man. Both movies featured popular child actors (Freddie Bartholomew and Mickey Rooney, respectively). Both movies belong to that slick, familiar, wears-its-corn-on-its-sleeve MGM style. And yet, I find one distinct and undeniable difference between Captains Courageous and Boys Town, one that completely divided my reactions to the two films.  

Captains Courageous was fun. It was a fun coming-of-age adventure story with a great child actor to carry it (yeah, I like Freddie Bartholomew) and no big ambitions beyond that. Boys Town, however, is not fun. It is nothing less than a hymn of praise to a saint of a man who hems and haws and waits for his problems to just melt away. Delinquent boys flock to his side and he wins over everyone while barely seeming to lift a finger (I have to wonder what the real Father Flanagan thought of his portrayal here). 

Now the sugar-frosted approach is not too surprising, given the era and the studio. But Boys Town gives me the nagging feeling that it wants to be fun, too. It wants to be the perfect little angel sitting at the front of the class and lecturing you on the true meaning of Christmas, but it also wants to be the irresistible class cut-up making faces in the corner. 

 So what we end up with is a movie that begins with Father Flanagan's noble quest to give boys an alternative to the streets or reforms school. But instead of showing us how he built Boys Town, it skips ahead several years and the place is already an amazing success. The movie stops being about Flanagan and shifts to the story of Mickey Rooney's character Whitey Marsh, apparently the only boy who ever rebelled against Boys Town. From there, the movie follows the comic hijinks of Whitey, who gets into one scrape after another, including class elections, cow milking, and blackface (errr). But then the movie shifts gears yet again and suddenly Whitey gets mixed up in a gangster plot that feels like it was airlifted over from Warner Brothers. Hell, there's even a scene where Father Flanagan and his boys march over to the gangsters' hideout, armed with bats and looking like a genuine lynch mob. I won't be giving much away by telling you the movie has a happy ending, but I was genuinely shocked that a movie with this much plot and this many tonal shifts could wind up feeling so averse to conflict, so afraid to really examine its hero and his lifework.

Maybe my perspective on Boys Town is hopelessly tied to my own life. You see, my mom was an elementary school principal. And when I was a kid, I would ask her about her day. This meant that I got to hear all the stories about every problem kid in our district and beyond. I got to hear about the nine-year-old whose mental problems could drive him into an uncontrollable frenzy of rage, enough so that even a team of paramedics couldn't restrain him without a straight-jacket. I got to hear about the twin girls who got placed in a loving foster home, only to be separated when one girl tried to beat her sleeping sister with a bat. This same sister was put under medication. When a different foster situation tried to take her off the drugs, she promptly tried to burn her school down. Another kid was reasonably bright and liked to please but if he saw a kid who'd fallen down, he would be compelled to run over and jump up and down on their head. Now don't get me wrong, I got to hear all the great, inspiring stories too. All the cute things kids say. But I can't get with a movie that tries to tell me helping troubled children is easy.

It's a shame really, because I think Boys Town does have an interesting story to tell. Father Flanagan was a real person and his goals were admirable. Boys Town still stands today. It's downright maddening to see that potential squandered. 

In a weird way, the movie actually seems to be on surer ground with Mickey Rooney's character than Spencer Tracy's, even if Rooney acts more like a runaway game show host than he does a real kid. The movie is far more interested in showcasing his antics. It's like the creators started out with good intentions but said to themselves, "Slums? Misery? The root of criminal behavior? To hell with it, let's stick to what we know! Letting a child actor steal all the scenes!"

My pet theory on Spencer Tracy is that he was much, much more interesting when his movies acknowledged he was kind of a bastard. Give me the cocky, fast-talking Tracy of the pre-Code era over the upright, honest Tracy of later flicks. I wish MGM hadn't decided to make Tracy the moralizing voice of so many movies because it really works against him as an actor.

His Oscar-winning performance in Boys Town is a complete turnaround from his more self-conscious turn as the Portuguese sailor in Captains Courageous. He's very underplayed here, very smooth. Many of his scenes have him just listening while a louder, more obviously troubled character pours out their heart to him, and Tracy is always an active listener. He never tries to wrest the scene away, but he makes it very clear what Flanagan is thinking and feeling. The movie sets Tracy's dial to "patience and kindness" so many times, it's impressive he manages to bring any reality to it at all.

However, I have a confession to make. I was kind of glad when the movie switched from Spencer Tracy to Mickey Rooney. Because Rooney, despite giving a performance with more bells and whistles than a hundred Christmas concerts, is way more fun to watch.

It may be bizarre, but it's oddly enjoyable to watch a bow-tied Rooney strutting across the grounds with a walk that's half barnyard rooster, half used-car salesman. It's fun to watch him tent his fingers together like a plotting supervillian when he decides to upset the boys' election. His conversion to good is less fun, but Rooney does manages to dig up some genuine feeling here and there. The brotherly relationship he develops with Pee-Wee, the adored baby kid of the school, actually succeeds in feeling fairly genuine and Rooney has good chemistry with little Bobs Watson.* 

But overall, you know what Rooney's performance reminded me of? Christian Slater's Jack Nicholson impersonation in Heathers. I'm dead serious. Every nasally, fast-talking, sneering line he says? It's all delivered in the exact same tone that Slater used. Hell, I could just imagine Mickey Rooney saying the line, "Football season is over, Veronica. Kurt and Ram had nothing left to offer the school except date rapes and AIDS jokes." And now that I've imagined that, I'm going to go on to imagine an alternate universe where I could cast young Mickey Rooney as the wisecracking psychotic killer running rampant through a high school. I want that movie.

Boys Town gives us a perfect summary of the difference between Tracy and Rooney in this film in the scene where Father Flanagan arrives at Boys Town on Christmas, lugging a heavy bag. "What is it?" the boys demand. Tracy hesitates before answering. "It's good cornmeal mush, not a tummy ache in the carload." The boys are outraged. "If I was home, my old man would wallop me, but we'd have turkey Christmas," one of them says. And that's just the way I feel here. Tracy's acting here is good cornmeal mush. It's straight and simple and perfectly unobjectionable, but there's just not much flavor. Rooney is an overcooked Christmas turkey. He may be overflowing with fats and juices and stuffed with more than you need, but dammit, at least he's giving you something resembling a meal. I can't honestly call it a good performance but without it, all of Tracy's sincerity would just turn to sand in your mouth. 

The best performance in the movie is actually given by Henry Hull. He plays Flanagan's reluctant, beleaguered business partner. And by partner, I mean the guy who funds everything and handles the business aspect and all the practicalities while the other guy just smiles and asks him to find a solution. Really, Hull is the true hero of this movie. But he also manages the trick of giving a performance that balances the movie's comedy and its drama. He's tearing his hair out at Tracy's nonchalance, but he's genuinely moved to see the positive results. He's like the bridge between Rooney and Tracy's different approaches. I enjoyed him in every scene and I was always sorry to see him go.
 
I haven't given much space here to the movie's director Norman Taurog, but frankly, I have no kind words for him. His direction here is pure hack-work, plain and simple. The film opens with a stark scene of a prisoner on death row, begging for some understanding and decency in his last moments. Imagine the angles a good director could bring to such a scene, the lighting, the close-ups. Instead, Taurog just stages and shoots it like a play, with the other actors standing around awkwardly as the prisoner physically moves to each of them in turn to plead his case. There's another scene later where Rooney breaks down emotionally in a chapel, giving way to doubt and pain at last. This could have been deeply profound. But Taurog just lets the actors get into position and flail around, keeping everything in a standard medium shot. I can't think of a single visually interesting shot in this movie. Taurog leaves everything to the actors.

So, with all that said, am I panning this movie? I can't quite bring myself to do that. It's not really bad and in parts, it can be quite entertaining. It's just that those parts never fit together into an emotionally coherent whole. It's like the movie is actively fighting against itself, wanting to praise its hero but deliberately ignoring him. It wants to argue for social justice, but doesn't want to live in the real world. I think the children and founder of Boys Town deserved something more honest than this.

Favorite Quote:

"Can't you stop that singing?"

"It's his turn next. You confess. He sings."

Favorite Scene:

 I'm especially partial to an early scene with Spencer Tracy and Henry Hull arguing over money. Tracy tries to pawn his watch for a hundred dollars and Hull, with just the right touch of irritation and humor in his voice, shows him his watch collection. "You can have any one of those for sixty-five cents--and any one of them is better than yours!" Tracy keeps trying, even pulling out a kid's puzzle and passing it off to Hull. Hull stares back in disbelief. "This is a ten-cent toy!" Tracy beams. "Yeah, you can have a lot of fun with it!" "Not a hundred dollars worth I can't!" And yet Tracy keeps working at him, still smiling, still sincere and you can see Hull slowly come around, even though he's snapping angrily at Tracy the whole time.

Final Six Words:

Plate of wholesomeness, served room temperature

*Incidentally, I made fun of Watson back in my Dodge City review--but I feel a little guilty for it now. It wasn't his fault that shedding copious tears was his trademark. And apparently he had such a good experience acting with Tracy in Boys Town that it inspired him to become a real minister. Good for Pee-Wee!