Book Review: Five Came Back

Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War (2014) by Mark Harris

I had incredibly high expectations for Mark Harris' latest book on film history. His previous work, Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, was one of the most praised books of 2009. I have vivid memories of buying it for my mom for Christmas, thinking to myself, "It's about movies in 1967, Mom was a young woman in 1967, she'll like it." Well, it wasn't two hours after Mom unwrapped it that I ended up being the one sitting cross-legged under the tree and reading away, utterly engrossed. Eventually, I did let her read it, but then I promptly stole it back. It's now got a permanent place of honor on my bookshelf. I've also been reading Harris' Grantland articles for some time; he's one of the few film critics I've found who can dissect Oscar races without sounding like a jaded traveler on the world's longest and most boring tour bus. So when I found out that Harris was going to be tackling a new full-length subject in Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War, I marked my calendar. Expectations like that have crushed books far less modest than this one. So I'm happy to say that Five Came Back is every bit the book I hoped it would be.

Like Pictures at a Revolution, Five Came Back zeroes in on five very different subjects, weaving their histories together and giving full weight to the dreams and ambitions that drove them. But Pictures at a Revolution was the story of a competition; it was the battle between five Best Picture nominees and their radically different attempts to reach out to the audiences of 1967. Here, Harris once again goes back to the number five, giving us the tale of how five Hollywood directors walked away from successful careers and into World War II: John Ford, Frank Capra, William Wyler, John Huston, and George Stevens. But while there was a spirit of friendly competition between these men, it paled next to the camaraderie and artistic respect they all shared. Five Came Back is one of those rare books about Hollywood that can look unflinchingly at the foibles and ambitions of its insiders and lets you walk away feeling more fond of them, not less.

The opening chapters of Five Came Back invite irresistible comparisons to those "assemble a crack team" montages that you would get in a caper film. Even the directors' personalities easily graft onto the old archetypes. You have John Ford, the crotchety mentor figure, dropping paternal and ever-contradictory bits of wisdom. Frank Capra, the energetic and ravenously ambitious promoter. William Wyler, the cerebral perfectionist and, as a European Jew, the only one with a personal connection to the war. John Huston, the hard-drinking, cocksure daredevil, looking to prove himself in battle. George Stevens, the thoughtful and quietly troubled introvert. All of these men voluntarily left Hollywood, putting their own viability and reputation as artists on hold, in order to go overseas and document the war.

World War II was the first time in American history that filmmakers were enlisted in the art of packaging a a war for the American public. It was their images that brought home to viewers the reality of the situation abroad, even as that reality was pressed and molded into a patriotic vision. All of them knew and embraced the fact that they were enlisted in order to make propaganda. Before he started work on his series of wartime documentary films, Frank Capra watched Triumph of the Will and walked away shaken to the core. "I could see where the kids of Germany would go to any place, die for this guy...they knew what they were doing--they understood how to reach the mind...how do I reach the American kid down the street?" The challenge of wartime filmmaking was always to find that perfect combination, balancing the need to educate with the need to entertain. If filmmakers were too brutal with their imagery, the Army protested and refused to let the films be released. If they resorted to reenactments and corny dialogue, the increasingly-jaded audiences back home would jeer at them.

One of the more fascinating and endearing elements of Five Came Back is watching these men forget the demands of the war and succumb to their own artistic instincts. William Wyler, no one's idea of a reckless he-man, ended up risking himself time and time again crouched in a bomber plane, angling for the best shots. It would eventually cost him the hearing in one ear. John Huston was criticized by the War Department because his groundbreaking war film, The Battle of San Pietro, with its emphasis on death and destruction, was "anti-war." Huston snapped back that if he ever made a film that was pro-war, he hoped someone would take him out and shoot him. No matter the physical danger or the army bureaucracy or the interests of the public. Ford, Wyler, Huston, Capra, and Stevens found ways to practice their art.

Despite his full-throttle devotion to the war and the acclaim given to his documentary series Why We Fight, Frank Capra emerges as the only director whose career never recovered from the war. He was the only one of the five who never actually got to film anything on the front lines. Instead, his Army career was spent organizing, wrangling resources, and fighting with government officials. It's hard to feel sorry for anyone as endlessly bombastic and self-aggrandizing as Capra but after reading Harris, I couldn't help but sympathize with the man. Unlike the rest of his colleagues, Capra's post-war career was a straight slope down, fulfilling all his secret insecurities. His bag of tricks no longer charmed audiences. The new interest in realism and soul-searching had no place in Capra's fables. Harris pointedly makes a comparison between the first films Wyler and Capra made after their return. Wyler made a strikingly realistic film about the toll of war on ordinary people. Capra made a fantasy about a man who's lost his youthful dreams and craves the assurance that he's still needed by the world.

George Stevens, despite being somewhat neglected by critics over the past several decades (Stevens is the only director featured here with just one full-length biography to his name) stands out as perhaps the most fascinating character in Five Came Back. Stevens had built up his name as a director of sophisticated comedies, working his way up from Laurel and Hardy shorts to Fred Astaire musicals (including the indelible Swing Time) and polished romances like Vivacious Lady, Woman of the Year, and The More the Merrier. Despite his gift for humor, Stevens in person was contradictory and taciturn. He had a habit of falling into a trance-like state on his movie sets while he pondered what had gone wrong. Carole Lombard memorably summed it up: “I just (realized) what that pacing and thoughtful look of Stevens’ means—not a goddamn thing!"

Unlike Huston and Ford, Stevens went into the war without really craving adventure or a test of manly hardship. He was an asthmatic and a family man (Harris quotes extensively from Stevens' affectionate letters to his son back home and it's hard not to like Stevens after reading them). Yet it was Stevens who ended up taking his cameras into the unforeseen horrors of Dachau. It was Stevens who kept his eye to the lens, compulsively recording everything he saw, allowing nobody else to relieve him. "You can send three or four guys out with some weapons to do something, but I couldn't send anybody into the goddamn boxcar," Stevens remembered later. "I had to do it." Audiences of the time would barely get even a glimpse of Stevens' footage. Instead, the reels would be played for the judges at Nuremberg. As for Stevens, after he returned, he never watched the Dachau films again. And he never made another comedy.

The title of Harris' book is Five Came Back, not Five Went to War, and the distinction is an important one. When Wyler, Ford, Capra, Stevens, and Huston came back home, they were irrevocably changed from the men they'd been before. They'd played many roles throughout the war. Sometimes they'd been the decorated officers and sometimes they'd been the lonely cameramen, scrambling for just one perfect shot. They were the stoic witnesses to suffering and the impassioned artists demanding attention. None of them were saints. None of them were born soldiers. But they went to the front anyway and the images they saw would stay with them for the rest of their lives. And fortunately for us, they used what they learned, came back, and gave us some of the greatest movies ever made.

Final Six Words:

Reasoned and just, entertaining and essential

Note: I received an advance copy of this book from The Penguin Press (Penguin Group). It is available for purchase from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. 

Movie Review: China Doll

China Doll (1958)
starring Victor Mature, Li Hua Li

(Note: This is my entry in The Late Films Blogathon, hosted by David Cairns at shadowplay.)

Cliff Brandon (Victor Mature) is a gruff, cynical captain in the American Air Force, leading a crew of cargo pilots in 1943. He and his men are stationed in China, running supplies to the Allied troops and keeping up their spirits with booze and women. Brandon isn't all that popular with his own troops, who resent his humorless, cold personality. His only friends are a little Chinese boy named Ellington (Danny Chang), who translates for the crew, and a priest (Ward Bond), who likes to play chess with him. But one drunken night, Brandon changes his life forever. He accidentally purchases a bonded servant for three months. And the servant he purchases turns out to be a young, beautiful Chinese woman named Shu Jen (Li Hua Li). Brandon has no intention of keeping this girl in his house until the priest warns him that Shu Jen is depending on the money for her family.

The two begin a strange domestic relationship, with Ellington there as translator and errand boy. Shu Jen is sweet and eager to please, tending to the surly captain with a smile on her face. They can't even speak to each other, but even a stick like Brandon can't help but be charmed. Still, it isn't until Brandon is stricken by a malaria fever that he succumbs to her attractions. It results in a night of passion that Brandon immediately regrets, driving away Shu Jen with coldness and absence. But when he finds out that Shu Jen is pregnant, he realizes what an idiot he's been. The only question left is whether he can keep the strange happiness he's found, in a world that's coming apart.

I have to admit that when I chose Frank Borzage's penultimate film China Doll for my entry in David Cairns' Late Films Blogathon, I was expecting either a full-blown romantic triumph or a wet, sputtering firecracker. My main motive for picking it was the desire to see whether Borzage's brand of redemptive romance could survive contact with leading man Victor Mature and his bored machismo. Think about it. One of Hollywood's most genuinely spiritual directors and the man who described his own success in Bible epics with, "I make with the holy look." The director who drew career-best performances from Janet Gaynor, Charles Farrell, Loretta Young, Jean Arthur, Margaret Sullavan, and others. And a proudly-lazy actor whose performances could be serviceable, but totally lacked inspiration. Maybe with China Doll, a tender romance between Mature's gruff captain and his Chinese servant, Borzage could lead both Mature and himself to a small but rewarding success in the twilight of his career.

My predictions, however, were way off the mark. Because China Doll fails to be either a satisfactory romance or a train wreck. It's just a weak movie with flashes of Borzage's style and themes, but no real magic. And the blame for that doesn't really lie with Mature, even if he's never more than adequate. No, the problem is with the story. Even Borzage can't do much with such a cliche East-West romance. This movie turns its heroine into a literal "China Doll," a beautiful fantasy devoid of wishes or desires outside of her man.

I've ragged on Victor Mature in the past, but truthfully I find him one of Hollywood's more inexplicable leading men. His particular brand of gargoyle-ish handsomeness never appealed to me. As an actor, he never rises beyond the level of the script. The only two movies I've ever enjoyed him in are The Shanghai Gesture and My Darling Clementine, where he plays a poetry-spouting gigolo in a fez and a bitter, dying Doc Holliday, respectively. But left without a strong director, one who's willing to either draw out his darker emotions (John Ford) or craft him into a bizarrely arch bit of scenery (Joseph von Sternberg), Mature ends up as a blank. In something like Kiss of Death, he's one of the most forgettable noir protagonists ever.

China Doll doesn't do a lot to redeem Mature. He looks older and more tired than he should be, making the romance less passionate than it should be. He has one great moment of truth in the movie, in a scene where he's discussing Shu Jen with his friend Father Cairns. "All she wants to do is give--I can't understand someone like that!" he says. Mature doesn't overplay the line; he just sounds confused, giving us a real look at how this man lives. Otherwise, Mature gives another okay performance. 

But okay isn't good enough when the script keeps contradicting itself. In one scene Brandon's drinking alone at the bar, ignoring both his men and the slinky advances of an old flame. He's cold and terse. The very next scene, he's stumbling out blind drunk and grinning, eagerly purchasing what he thinks is a prostitute, never mind that he just rejected one. The movie means us to think that he's a tough killjoy whose men resent him. Yet he's constantly getting stumble-down drunk in front of his crew, something no self-respecting captain would do. Truth be told, there's not much that's really admirable about Captain Cliff Brandon. He's grumpy, petulant, not very good at his job, and while he comes to adore Shu Jen, he never shows her any respect.

Li Hua Li takes home the acting honors for China Doll. Since her character speaks almost no English, Li is reduced to a lot of smiling and nodding, with only subtle changes of expression to indicate how she's really feeling. And Li's character Shu Jen ("precious jewel") isn't given much complexity of feeling. She falls in love with Brandon and that's all you need to know. But give it up for Li, who really does have the talent to hint at a deeper intelligence and maturity underneath the yearning. I like the look she gives Mature when he comes to her and confesses his love at last. He's babbling and tugging her into his car and Li get in with an enigmatic expression that makes her look suddenly so much older and wiser than her captain. When the boy Ellington teaches Shu Jen how to salute Brandon's plane, Li does so with a look of total conviction that transcends corny sentiment and becomes genuinely moving.

But China Doll doesn't have the integrity to keep up with Li. The movie betrays its intentions early on by giving the beautiful Li a true Hollywood makeover, turning her from a smudge-faced waif into a stylish knockout. It's a long way from Janet Gaynor shyly discovering her own beauty in Seventh Heaven to Li Hua Li cleaning Victor Mature's house in tight cheongsam dresses. And if Mature is so adamant about keeping her on strictly as a housekeeper, why the hell does he buy her tight cheongsam dresses in the first place? 

The real diving line between Gaynor and Li is that Seventh Heaven gave itself over to the woman's point of view, allowing us to see her growing delight in having a home and in caring for Charles Farrell. We get to see her change and grow stronger, as love drives out fear. But Li Hua Li, stuck in a movie with no subtitles and no real interest in developing her character, is utterly devoted to Mature right from the beginning, completely willing to mold herself to his needs. The only time she ever goes contrary to his wishes is when she initially refuses to marry him. But of course, the only reason she does is because she loves him too much to cause him any problems. 

China Doll was only one of many films in that late '50s, early '60s period when Asian-Caucasian romance was suddenly a cultural fascination. You have Marlon Brando finding love with a Japanese woman in Sayonara, James Shigeta wooing Victoria Shaw in The Crimson Kimono and Carroll Baker in Bridge to the Sun, and Nancy Kwan finding happiness in William Holden's arms in The World of Suzie Wong. And you know what? I much prefer the romance of Suzie Wong, even if it does feature a hooker with a heart of gold. Because at least Suzie is allowed to be witty, cynical, demanding, loving, and fun. The movie is at least interested in what Suzie does when she's not pining after William Holden.

 
I've spent so much time on the teeth-grinding simplicities of China Doll that I've neglected its interest points. Because the movie is of interest to anyone who likes Frank Borzage. It ended up being Borzage's last romance film. It carries the same themes and images as so much of his early work. The gruff, unreachable man and the sweet, self-sacrificing woman, drawn together in a fragile situation. The threat of war coming up against the purity of love. And Borzage doesn't shy away from repeating a lot of what he's done before. The shot of Li covering a feverish Mature with her body to keep him warm is a direct crib from The River. The repeated image of Shu Jen saluting Brandon's plane has the same kind of significance as the lovers watching the clock in Seventh Heaven. Victor Mature striking a match to look at Li Hua Li's face for the first time echoes a scene in Street Angel with Janet Gaynor.

His visual compositions here aren't as interesting as they've been in the past. Brandon's crew, for example, have a tendency to remain in stock positions like store mannequins, with one at the piano, one leaning his head towards his girl, etc. But he still knows how to use his close-ups. In the scene between Mature and Li where Mature pours out his feelings to her for the first time, confessing his fears and affection at the same time, Borzage keeps Li at the forefront. He gives Mature all the words but lets Li's face tell the story. And in the film's shocking finale, he actually finds an equal amount of heartwrenching emotion in Victor Mature's face.

I haven't talked much about the movie's finale. That's partly because it's such a shocking, frankly nihilistic ending that it barely seems to connect to this movie. Everything that followed before was so sweet and stubbornly optimistic and then suddenly, we're confronted by something that seems to cruelly wave off everything that's happened. Even though the movie is set in World War II, it's an ending that seems to speak more to the atomic anxieties of the late '50s. Other Borzage movies have ended in bitter tragedy, but this seems more violent and even more cruelly pointless. In his earlier work, death came like a whisper. Here, it's nothing but brutality. Was it a sign that Borzage was getting more cynical in his old age? 

Possibly, but I prefer to think that he was merely finding a different way to expressing the same question that haunted him through his entire career. Can love reach into the eternal, beyond mortality or reason? For fans of his work, even in lesser movies like China Doll, the question is always worth the journey.

Favorite Quote:

"He's in the third stage. The first four months you're in China, you catch up on reading. The next four months, you catch up on women...He's been here ten months."

Favorite Scene:

The final scenes are brutal and truly startling, but I have to admit that I like the wedding scene between Brandon and Shu Jen even more. There's a straightforward tenderness about it that appeals to me. We get to see Father Cairns walking Brandon through the rituals of a Chinese wedding, correcting him as Brandon keeps trying to look Shu Jen in the face, kiss her, and all manner of inappropriate things. But the touch that really makes it is the way Brandon's crew and friends turn up to participate in the wedding. Since neither his parents nor Shu Jen's are there, his friends have to stand in for them during the ceremony. And the way his friends go through the rituals, bowing their heads, and receiving the tea, is very sweet. They do it without a hint of condescension or mockery. It's the first time we've ever seen this bunch of wisecracking cynics unite to support their captain. It's the first time we've ever seen Brandon willingly bend his pride in order to make Shu Jen happy.

Final Six Words: 

Love outlasts life but not cliches

Movie Review: Friendly Persuasion

Friendly Persuasion (1956)
directed by William Wyler, starring Gary Cooper, Dorothy McGuire

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

The year is 1862. The Civil War has taken hold of the American people and all across the nation, people are hearing the call to take up arms and fight. And even for a family of devout Quakers, the choice is not an easy one. Jess Birdwell (Gary Cooper) is a peace-loving farmer and his wife Eliza (Dorothy McGuire) is a Quaker minister. They are happy with their quiet life in Indiana. Jess's attractions to music and horse racing and Eliza's insistence on following Quaker tradition may cause friction but their love remains true. Their children Josh (Anthony Perkins), Mattie (Phyllis Love), and Little Jess (Richard Eyers) are likewise content. But the War draws ever closer, as Mattie falls in love with a Union soldier (Peter Mark Richman) and Josh struggles to reconcile faith and the desire to fight. It's a decision that all of them must face.

Hollywood doesn't like pacifism. I feel comfortable making such a broad generalization because well, how many pacifist cinematic heroes can you name? There's Atticus Finch, of course, and Gandhi and the many versions of Christ. But compared to the vast sea of bullet-plugging, sword-swinging fighters cutting a swath through our movie screens, those guys are a drop in the bucket. I don't think this is a comment on morality so much as the idea of what carries the forward momentum onscreen. A hero who decides to take direct action against evil registers more forcefully on film than a hero who's willing to be passive and restrained. When Gary Cooper was asked to take the lead role of the Quaker farmer in Friendly Persuasion, he was uneasy about the expectations of his fans, knowing that they would want him to pick up his gun in the final reel. He said as much to Jessamyn West, author of the original novel. She encouraged him to resist, telling him it would mean just as much for his audience to see a "strong man refraining."

I'll admit that when I decided to revisit Friendly Persuasion for the William Wyler Blogathon, that was the vague memory I had of this film: a Quaker family struggling through the Civil War until the father goes all Gary Cooper in the finale and finally picks up his gun. I remembered enjoying the film, but I thought of it as very simple and morally muddled product. But the surprise of Friendly Persuasion is that it isn't really about the will-he-or-won't-he of Gary Cooper. Instead, it's shockingly mellow and funny, a portrait of a family whose lives are taken up by problems like a violent goose, the purchase of an organ, and the father's desire to beat his neighbor in a race to church. The Civil War's there of course, but it's more of a distant rumble than a thundering climax. The themes of violence versus restraint call Witness to mind, but in fact, this film is a closer cousin to Meet Me in St. Louis. It's focused on incidents, on the rhythms of daily life. How much you like this film depends on your willingness to follow along with that, to spend time getting to know this Quaker family and see how they live. For myself, I enjoyed nearly every minute of it.

Wyler isn't normally thought of as a very funny or relaxed director, in spite of great romantic comedies like Roman Holiday and How to Steal a Million. But I think Friendly Persuasion shows that all that charm can't be placed on Audrey Hepburn's shoulders alone. Wyler manages to take what are, in essence very simple jokes (Jess's attempts to hide his organ from the visiting leaders of his church, for example) and make them work, simply by taking the time to set them up. He knows the rhythm of his situations. In the scene with the organ, he's already shown us Jess's hidden desires for music, his wife's desire to behave like a proper Quaker minister, the physical reality of trying to hide this damn thing, and the parallel situation of his daughter and her flirtatious suitor. All of it come together in a comic scene with the daughter and her lover playfully tinkering with the organ upstairs while Jess frantically tries to pray loud enough downstairs to drown out the music. All while the ministers of his church are praying very seriously for a solution to the Civil War. The longer it goes on, the louder and more incoherent Gary Cooper's prayer gets. When it's over, the ministers turn to him with great respect. "Thy prayer carried me so near to Heaven's gates, I thought I heard the choiring of angel voices," one tells him.

Gary Cooper responds to the relaxed nature of this film with a performance that feels very casual and warm; you'd have to really squint to see the actor's backstage fears over his age and character. The dramatic weight of the film falls not so much on Cooper as it does on Anthony Perkins, playing his troubled teenage son Josh. Josh is loyal to his family and church but feels the need to fight in the war. It was Perkins' first major role and while I think giving him a Supporting Actor nomination for it was a bit much, he does rise to the challenge, giving us the image of a boy who doesn't really want to fight but can't bear the thought that he might secretly be a coward. The moment when Josh finally kills a Confederate soldier is perfectly rendered by Perkins who squeezes the gun, his whole body racked with a silent sob, before blindly reaching to fire again.

However, good as Perkins and Cooper are, it's Dorothy McGuire who's the standout to me. The role of straight-laced, devout Eliza Birdwell was originally meant for Katharine Hepburn, who turned it down, and Wyler went through several possibilities, even saying to Jessamyn West, "How about Jane Russell? She's a very pious girl." Yet it's hard for me to imagine anyone handling this role as well as McGuire. She takes a character who could so easily have come across as the killjoy nag and makes her seem passionate and kind. Much as I love Hepburn, I can't help thinking that she would have been too inflexible as Eliza, playing up the sterner aspects of her character. McGuire is more evasive, more inclined to lead by gentleness than sharp lectures. It makes Eliza's relationship with her husband Jess into something that rises above a sitcom-style dynamic of "strict wife, boyish husband."

Few directors are as warm and perceptive on the subject of marriage as Wyler. You could put the relationship of Jess and Eliza Birdwell in a triptych with the disintegrating marriage of Sam and Fran in Dodsworth and the complex but loving Stephensons in The Best Years of Our Lives. Wyler's great ability with actors is revealed in how real these couples look onscreen, from Myrna Loy leaning in to kiss a snoring, hungover Fredric March to Ruth Chatterton tentatively trying to reassure the husband she is abandoning. And because Wyler always stressed nuance and ambiguity, the relationships in his films don't feel etched in stone. If the Stephensons tried to evade their problems, maybe they could one day become like the unhappy Dodsworths. And if the Dodsworths had been more patient and understanding, their relationship could have endured and improved into something like the contentious but happy Birdwell marriage.

Jess and Eliza rarely speak of their love in Friendly Persuasion but we're never in doubt. It's in the way they lean towards each other, the way he teases her, the way she graciously tries to ignore his little weaknesses. It's all there. Along with a strong sexual attraction that the movie is surprisingly open about. In one of the film's best scenes, Jess and Eliza quarrel over an organ that Jess has purchased. Eliza takes herself off to the barn to spend the night. But as she tries to make herself comfortable in the straw, Jess shambles in, clutching blankets and pillows. "Cooling down a bit, isn't it?" "I find it quite pleasant," Eliza responds. "So do I," he says, testing the straw with his foot as Eliza tries not to smile. They emerge the next morning, disheveled and grinning, holding hands and trying not to laugh. It's a brilliant romantic moment that makes the film's actual pair of young lovers look like paper dolls by comparison.

I'll admit here, to the likely horror of some of my readers, that I've never found Gary Cooper that sexy. Handsome sure, but he so rarely achieves chemistry with his leading ladies. His characters always seem to be gazing off into the distance, like they'd rather think about love than react to the woman in their arms. But that's not the case with Dorothy McGuire here. They look great together. 

 
There's a fly in every ointment and for Friendly Persuasion, it's the music. The worst part of this movie, hands-down, is that horrible, sugary theme by Dimitri Tiomkin that pops up periodically like an unwelcome shower of Hallmark cards. Pat Boone sings the pop version across the credits and all I can say for him is that he can take a lyric like "Thee pleasures me in a hundred ways," and starch it pure white. You can't even giggle at the innuendo. But more importantly, the sentimentality of the music jars with a film that takes great pains to show its characters as mature and wise.

On a more serious note, I do think there's a case to be made that Friendly Persuasion, in its focus on gentle comedy and slice-of-life storytelling, fails to reconcile the Civil War plot with the rest of the film. Not that the wartime scenes aren't good, because they are. Josh's decision to fight, the invasion of the home by a Confederate raiding party, the death of a beloved friend, everything's handled very well. Even the question of whether to fight or not to fight is done well; Friendly Persuasion doesn't judge these people on whether or not they choose to fight but simply shows them to us, free of prejudice. But I do think the film can't quite make the two elements cohere. The film is so bluntly comedic for over an hour that Anthony Perkins' stark question, "I wonder what it feels like to die?" just splits it in two. Either you've been getting tired of the farm life and praying for this interruption or you've been enjoying the humor and now feel blindsided. And the movie's ending, with its all's-well-that-ends-well tone, just can't stitch it all together.  I feel that if Wyler had been able to explore the wartime aspect as well as he does the Quaker lifestyle, he might have had a truly great film on his hands rather than one that's just very good.

In spite of its nomination for Best Picture, I feel like Friendly Persuasion is a film that's been unfairly forgotten over the years. Partly because it's overshadowed by the inordinate number of great films that William Wyler made, but I think more due to the public's terror of "wholesome" entertainment. That Pat Boone song, the enthusiastic Bosley Crowther review ("loaded with sweetness and warmth and... cracker-barrel Americana"), the threat of piety and sermons and Oscar-bait...it's no wonder classic film fans have given it a wide berth. Critic David Thomson dismissed it as "one of the dreariest pictures (Gary) Cooper ever made." But this film is far smarter than it's given credit for. It's more interested in characters than in preaching. There are no pat answers, just people enjoying their lives and wanting to hang onto that. In the hands of a sentimentalist, maybe that would have been dreary. But as it stands, it's a testament to the skill of William Wyler, a director who could find just as much to value in a carriage race as he could in a battle scene.

Favorite Quote:

"I want you to know, sir, I honor your prejudices--um, uh, convictions." 

Favorite Scene:

My favorite scene has to be the final race to church between Jess and Sam Jordan. It's such a simple scenario and the stakes are small but the buildup to it has been perfect. For the sake of propriety, Jess can't admit that he wants to beat Sam on the way to church, but everybody in town knows it. Even Eliza knows it deep-down but (Dorothy McGuire's performance is pitch-perfect), she is trying so hard to pretend as if everything is normal and proper. The tension between Jess and Eliza, Jess's purchase of the butt-ugly but feisty Lady, the sly winks of his sons when they hand him the reins. All of it leads into a great race scene with the rickety carriages roaring down the road as the participants choke and cough from the dust. And as they round the corner, everyone in town cranes their heads to watch for the winner. All for a race that nobody wants to come out and actually acknowledge is happening. It's a scene that makes me laugh every time.

Final Six Words:

Conflict and love rise up together

First image credited to the Gary Cooper Scrapbook