Run Silent, Run Deep

Run Silent, Run Deep (Robert Wise, 1957) One of those general entertainment movies that manages to do so many things exceptionally well that one comes away grateful for the experience. Directed by Robert Wise with a true sense of claustrophobia, the script by John Gay maintains a strict military accuracy while displaying a keen sense of drama, psychology and brevity. A psychological drama, a war film, a story of mystery as well as redemption, the film manages to pull everything off with a propulsive rhythm and fine performances throughout.

Produced by Hecht-Hill-Lancaster, Burt Lancaster the producer takes a back-seat to his star, Clark Gable, the older actor in one of his understated roles that takes into account his age. Gable's the flawed figurehead with shades of Ahab who finagles his way into the command of the S.S. Nerka patrolling the Pacific during World War II, having already lost one sub and and a frustrating convalescence at a desk-job.

Lancaster's exec Jim Bledsoe is torqued because Gable's Cmdr. "Rich" Richardson has pulled rank to get command—his command—and is now drilling the men to dive and shoot a torpedo within a record 35 seconds. The already suspicious crew starts to snarl about all this practice with nothing to show for it. Then a lucky strike convinces some of them the new Captain is golden, while the other half think he's out to torpedo their mission. Lancaster turns into a reluctant arbiter.

But, in their first attempt to sink Richardson's unsinkable Japanese war-ship things don't go so well leaving crew-members dead and injured and Lancaster in command.

Robert Wise is a master of filming people at work with a story-teller's eye for finding the perfect angle (without calling attention to it and himself) and an editor's sense of pace and construction. Wise is also a chameleon of style tamping down his presentation of professionals doing their jobs while also being able to ramp up the spectacle for the unreal worlds of musicals and science fiction. Given his work on this film, you could see why he'd be the perfect choice for the similarly set-bound Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

He also makes goods use of the usual crew of character actors who make up the Nerka's lovable mugs: Jack Warden, Brad Dexter, Don Rickles, Nick Cravat and Joe Maross. The close quarters of a submarine makes the authentic plainness of their faces all the more important and brings them to a prominence near the bright lights of Gable and Lancaster. Both those lights are shaded somewhat, with Lancaster doing subtle, measured work, the kind that would dominate his later career. Gable, even subtler, is the King, here in his twilight, still burning brighter than the vast majority of actors. By this time, Gable was moving slower and had learned the power of economy and his Captain Richardson draws you in.

Finally, the story is a cracker-jack construction. Just when you think you've got it figured out, screenwriter Gay throws in an added complication that ramps up the idea that these are men strategizing in chaos and only repeated dips into the boiling oil of battle can make them seasoned enough to think clearly through the smoke and death.

Run Silent, Run Deep is an intelligent tribute to the fighting services without resorting to jingoism, racism or choired flag-waving. The film-makers' respect for the professionalism under duress of sub-crews runs silent and deep.

The Magnificent Seven (1960)

So, I was talking to a co-worker about movies. Our tastes are different. "What'd you watch last night?" I asked. 
"Oh! Great movie! The Magnificent Seven!" 
"You've never seen The Magnificent Seven?"
 "No-oo." 
"Well, finally, we can agree on something...The Magnificent Seven is a classic!" 
"Yeah. And I lo-ove Chris Pratt!"

(Long Silence)

"What?" I spluttered. "Wha...Chris Pratt?" 
"Yeah, he's so great..." 
"You mean you're talking about that Denzel Washington mess?" 
"Yeah, he's great, too."
"No, no, no, no, no!" (I explained). "You HAVE to see the Yul Brynner version!" 
"Who?" 
"Yu...okay, Steve McQueen's in it!" 
"Who?" 

At this point, I started pulling what's left of my hair out—not to try and explain Yul Brynner, of course (Good thing I didn't lead with Horst Bucholz or Brad Dexter) and explained in the most condescending way possible that if she didn't see Charles Bronson in it, it just isn't The Magnificent Seven. 

I wonder if she ever did.

The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960) Sturges' remake of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai as a Western (more accurately South-western) with cowboys (more accurately gun-slingers) is a rousing crowd-pleaser (while still maintaining the original's final resigned tone). This is not only due to Kurosawa's indestructible original tale of warriors from a by-gone age quixotically trying to save the residents of an agrarian town from bandits, but also for the charismatic cluster of stars vying for screen-time with "The King" himself, Yul Brynner.* Steve McQueen, coming off the "Wanted: Dead or Alive" series was particularly shameless about trying to grab the spotlight from Brynner. 

"It doesn't bother me," the older actor would tell Sturges. "All I have to do to upstage them is take off my hat."

In this version, it's a Mexican village being robbed by bandito's led by Eli Wallach's Calvera that cause a trio of farmers to go searching for "gun-fighters"  (they are told that gun-fighters are cheaper than guns) to take on the thieving gang. One by one, the odd troop are assembled including up-and-coming stars McQueen, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, James Coburn, Brad Dexter and Horst Bucholz,** all pistolero's down on their luck and taking on the job—for their various reasons, be it bravado, assumed reward, paternalism, loyalty—until something better comes along. It's a dangerous temporary job, so the stakes have to be personal, beyond the measly compensation for the task. They are all aware that the risk to themselves is high, but not as much as the risk to the farmers.

Each of the seven have their reasons, but each of them have their own style of combat, making the final assault on the town (after a couple of skirmishes and a temporary change of fortune) that much more dramatic as each gun-fighter has to fight their own battles in their own individual style. And it doesn't matter what style they use...they always seem to do it cool.

When one compares the Kurosawa original with Sturges' adaptation, one notices a big difference—Nature. Sturges' stage is a big blue-skied sand-blasted valley-scape that doesn't much change and makes no impact on the outcome, whereas Kurosawa staged the original's dynamic set-pieces in a violent rain-storm, increasing the odds and making them more mythic, with the Heavens themselves having a stake in the conflict. Kurosawa wasn't complaining, though. He reportedly liked the American version so much he presented John Sturges a ceremonial sword.

Momentum is kept up by some sharp writing (by blacklister Walter Bernstein and Walter Newman, both credits replaced after much bickering about changes made on set by William Roberts) but also by a rousing Copland-esque score by Elmer Bernstein*** that manages to goose the action up several notches from how it's paced on screen. This might be sacrilege to say (as the score is so iconic and tied to the movie as much as a pack of Marlboro's), but it's almost like Bernstein is trying too hard in places, as when the theme thumps along when Chris (Brynner) and Vin (McQueen) are riding a buckboard to a confrontation.

Curiously the pacing is a bit slower when the words stop and the action begins, but one hardly notices when Bernstein is controlling the tempo.

The transition (and translation) from Japan to Mexico is a bit seamless, despite the lack of atmospherics, and just as the Samurai have their distinct characteristics, so, too, do the gunfighters--only Horst Bucholz, given an outlandish billing in retrospect, fails to rise to the potential of the others. The genius of the film is Kurosawa's, but this Americanized version still has its own unique charms, enough to make The Magnificent Seven a huge success in its own right. A couple years later, the same tack was used to create a westernized version of Kurosawa's Yojimbo,**** and launched the "Spaghetti Western" and the career of its chief architect, Sergio Leone.


The Magnificent Seven was voted into the the National Film Registry in 2013.

* Brynner cut such a fine figure as a gunslinger (despite his Russian heritage—his character's ethnicity was explained away as "Cajun") that he came back for the first sequel The Return of the Seven, and was the emblematic robot shootist in Westworld and its sequel Futureworld.

** The closest I could come to finding a movie that had so many future stars (and Brad Dexter) in it is Francis Coppola's The Outsiders.

*** Bernstein's theme became known as "The Marlboro Theme" because it was used as the background music for that brand's (now extinct) cigarette commercials. The prolific Bernstein (no relation to Leonard) only won one Oscar for his music--for the musical score to Thoroughly Modern Millie.

**** That would be A Fistful of Dollars, starring Clint Eastwood.

***** The film's story would be used...again...as A Bug's Life. And, anyone remembering Roger Corman's Battle Beyond the Stars will see more than a resemblance to The Magnificent Seven (beyond just the casting of Robert Vaughn).

House of Bamboo (1955)

House of Bamboo (Samuel Fuller, 1955) When is a film noir not a film noir? Well, director Sam Fuller shoved the envelope on that thriller sub-set as far as it could go with this crime drama set in Japan, filmed in Tokyo in Cinemascope and Deluxe color. A remake of The Street with No Name—same script idea by Harry Kleiner (who is credited), but a different setting half a world away, no FBI co-operation, but most importantly, different director—the two films couldn't be more different—although both films boasted extensive filming on location (the earlier film hedged its bets by filming in the grimier parts of Los Angeles, which it dubbed "Carver City").

Tokyo, on the other hand, was a bustling metropolis, something director Fuller sought to convey. This led to a change in casting; originally, Gary Cooper was slated to top-line the film, but he was too big a star not to avoid unwanted attention and ruin shots in crowded streets. So, Robert Stack was picked, as he was not so well known in Japan, and that enabled Fuller to film street-scenes from parked vehicles—to avoid paying filming permits—and get something that seemed authentic without autograph-seekers and the curious looking right at the camera.

The film begins with a train robbery...but not just any train robbery. A military munitions train bound for Tokyo from Kyoto is robbed by a well-timed team of criminals, who are able to steal guns and rounds from Army guards and Japanese police. The heist is done with military precision and a "take-no-prisoners" attitude—if one of their own gets shot or injured on the job, there are no heroics, but are shot and killed on the spot. The Army and Japanese police have no leads, until a subsequent crime is pulled off with the very weapons that were stolen from the train robbery...and, despite the gang's shooting of one of their wounded, that hood, Webber, manages to survive...just long enough to blurt out his wife's name, Mariko (Shirley Yamaguchi), and give the cops a letter in his possession from an Army buddy named Eddie Spanier, who Webber has invited to Japan after he gets out of prison.

Sure as shootin', Eddie (Robert Stack) gets off a boat in Tokyo and makes his way to Mariko, after first trying to track her down with a dance company and then at a bath. She's scared that Eddie is actually part of the gang who killed her husband, but after telling her about the letter he sent, and showing her a photo of him and Webber together, she begins to trust him...and trust him even more when he tells her to lay low, lest his old gang-mates try to find her. 

Eddie, however, is  disappointed. That letter promised a job, but no way to contact the dead man's gang. He decides to freelance, and see how far that will get him. He goes to local pachinko parlor's and shakes down the owners for protection, garnering just enough to get him some seed money...and the attention of criminal Sandy Dawson (Robert Ryan), whose territory Spanier has managed to cross. When he tries to shake down another pachinko hall, Spanier—who also dabbles in the protection business—has him beaten up and crashes into a meeting with his gang to provide a warning to get out of Japan. And "sayonara".

Eddie doesn't scare that easily. So, Dawson has him framed for a robbery and arrested, thereby allowing the Japanese Police to get his rap sheet wired to them, and an insider at the force forwards the info to the mob-boss. Dawson's intrigued. Intrigued enough to invite Eddie into his gang of dishonorably discharged ex-servicemen. But, he has to met certain standards: he has to swear an oath of loyalty, and he has to clean himself up—get a good suit and stop looking like a bum. He's an Organization man now.

Truth is, he always was. Because Eddie Spanier is actually Eddie Kenner, an Army investigator sent to infiltrate Dawson's gang for the joint Military/Japanese Police investigation of that train heist in the opening. He recruits Mariko to be his "kimono girl" so that if he gets embroiled in gang activities, she can go warn the authorities about any jobs going down...and maybe she'll find out who killed her husband.

From then on, it's a cat and mouse game, Eddie playing along with the Dawson gang, Mariko playing along with Eddie, while the authorities hang back expecting word from an operative who could get smoked if he so much as twists his ankle during a job. Except something curious happens: during a robbery on one of Japan's docks, Dawson's crew comes under fire from the guards—one gets hit and is immediately shot, lest he get captured and can give evidence. But, then Eddie gets shot in the leg and just as he's about to be put out of the gang's misery, Dawson himself grabs him and helps him escape.

That's not S.O.P. for the gang and pretty soon, Griff (Cameron Mitchell) who is Sandy's "ichiban" in the group starts noticing that Dawson is favoring Eddie over him, and is wondering if he has lost his position and prestige. Griff is a hot-head, Dawson knows that, so right before a big raid, Sandy tells him he's out of the gang until he cools down. That job, though, is cut short when Eddie sends Mariko to tip off the police, and when Sandy's informant in headquarters lets the boss know that plans are set in motion to capture them, he calls off the operation in mid-heist, and thinking Griff tipped off the cops, sets out to personally exact revenge in one of the most abrupt and shocking murders in noir.

Fuller's direction in House of Bamboo is tight and formal, even in the scenes shot undercover in the streets, but never more so than in that assassination scene—all done in one shot as Dawson breaks in on Griff taking a bath and then shooting him point blank, the bullets going through the wooden tub, the water draining through the bullet-holes. But, the scene continues as Ryan's Dawson stares into the dead face of his former number one boy and tries to understand "why'd you do that, Griff? Why'd you betray me?" Stack may be the erstwhile hero in the film, but he's just stiff enough to be unsympathetic, whereas Ryan's mob-boss comes across as a competent, slick operator, well in command and capable of feeling betrayed.

That ups the stakes in the game that Kenner is playing because Dawson may be a cool customer, but any sense of betrayal turns him murderous, and once the bath-murder scene occurs, one is never certain just how unhinged Dawson may become where no one is safe. This is a far cry from the movie's source The Street with No Name, but Fuller has been playing fast and lose with that original story from the moment he kept Kenner's identity a secret. With the unfamiliar Japanese surroundings, and his manipulations of the original story, the House of Bamboo is, quite literally, a world apart from its origins.

DeForest Kelley caught in the shadows of The House of Bamboo

The last scene, a final reel shoot-out, makes it explicit: where The Street with No Name ended in a night-time chase and shoot-out in a warehouse, the one in The House of Bamboo takes place in an office building with an amusement park on the open top floor. There's no rushing around in the shadows; it all takes place in the open daylight overlooking the city on a preposterous merry-go-round around a world sculpture. Surreal and dangerous, it is an over-the-top ending to an exotic blend of dark and light, in bright eye-popping colors using a movie musical's pallete to a story of the dark side of society.