The Invisible Man (1933)

Oh. It's October (still). Guess I need to pay attention to Horror Films.

The Invisible Man (James Whale, 1933) There have been so many versions of "The Invisible Man"—in movies and television, including a version released this year just as the COVID-19 virus started emptying theaters directed by Leigh Wannell and starring Elisabeth Moss—but, this one, directed by the ingenious James Whale (he of the classic Frankenstein and The Old Dark House and portrayed in Gods and Monsters) hews very closely to H. G. Wells' original novel (sub-titled "A Grotesque Romance" and both serialized and published in 1897), both in circumstance and (and this is crucial) in tone. I'm reading Wells' story now (and so can you here) and, although there is always a sense of the fantastical with Wells, it is apparent that in this one Wells was having a bit of a jape at the village-life residents among whom he grew up. With the exception of the demented Griffin ("The Invisible One" he's called in the film's credits), the other characters are bumpkins and simple folk, who fall about themselves in states of slapstick buffoonery at the sight and pranks of the one who can't be seen.

It's less a novel of horror or of adventure as it is a sadistic comedy. The Invisible man, Griffin, comes to the village of Iping, having finished his experiments, completed them on himself, and emboldened with his power to be a covert agent of destruction, made his way to the village to try and find the process to reverse the change. Swathed in bandages, bulky stolen clothes, a floppy hat, dark glasses and a prosthetic nose, he's a mummified presence as he makes his way through a snow-storm (the better to see him with when he's invisible later in the film). It's a stark sight as he bursts through the door takes a sitting room with his notebooks and flasks, demanding privacy for his task. To pay his way, he resorts to thievery, shedding his clothes and invading a local vicar's home to steal the funds. He is confronted by the constabulary and town officials, he dis-robes and, in naked invisibility, tweaks and thwarts his would-be captors who are helpless to defend themselves from his attacks. 

This must have seemed like a gaudy feast for Whale, who was fond of combining the horrorific with a giddy, satiric chauvinism towards "the others" of whom, as a closeted gay man, he felt apart from, hid from, but also could feel superior to for hiding in plain sight with his secret. It's certainly a delicious visual opportunity for Whale to portray Griffin's mummified presence as he makes his way through a snow-storm (the better to see him with when he's invisible later in the film) then bursts through the door of an Inn—with the same progressively closer jump-cuts he employed in Frankenstein and The Bride of.... Whale (and his screenwriter R.C. Sherriff hewed close to the book—Wells was still quite alive and visible enough that he had script approval—but inserted a sympathetic mentor with a daughter enamored of the mad-man (had they ever talked?) and turned the novel's colleague, Kemp into a spurned rival for his affections.

Whale ramps up the comedy—there is a lot of slapstick of rabble being tossed about with mocking color comedy from the unseen Griffin. Dis-embodied bicycles run through the street and gets thrown at the chasing mob (one of whom is supposedly Walter Brennan, although you can't recognize him in the film). Whale-favorite Una O'Connor is encouraged to play her "shocked" scenes to a delightfully strident hysteria, and the villagers portrayed as yokels—swear to god, the initial arresting bobby walks into the room and "Python's" "Wot's all this, then?" The giddiness reaches a peak when a room runs down the street pursued by a skipping pair of pants while Griffin sings "Here we go gathering nuts in May..." It's all fun and games until somebody gets hurt, and Whale features a couple on-screen murders—Griffin bashes a policeman's head in with a chair—and a train sabotage ensures that the Invisible Man wins the body-count tally of the Universal monsters.

He's helped immeasurably by the on-screen non-presence of Claude Rains—making his American film debut and he was cast when Whale, in an adjoining room, heard his voice in a failed screen-test for another role. Rains had grown up in a theatrical family, had enjoyed stage roles and was a well-regarded teacher at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Good Lord, he taught Olivier, Gielgud and Laughton!) and it's a tour-de-force of acting without expression, as you don't see Rains' face until the final shot. Where Whale's other actors in the film sometimes act as if they're still in silent films, Rains has the best of both worlds, acting by mime and the sound of his vibrant voice (and he can over-act because he's playing crazy, but without any betraying mugging)!

Whale knew talent and high up in the cast are two actors who would burn brightly and not fade: Henry Travers—who played the angel Clarence in Capra's It's a Wonderful Life and the unsuspecting father in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt—is a bit stifled (that we're used to, anyway) as Griffin's mentor and Gloria Stuart, who appeared in Whale's The Old Dark House, but is most well-known for playing "Old Rose" in James Cameron's Titanic (and, yes, she was "a bit of a dish") plays the ingenue/love interest for audiences who were looking for some kind of normalcy amidst the madness—her and Travers' characters do not appear in Wells' narrative.

In the interest of transparency (*cough*), one should say the special effects of the Universal house-technicians run from some ingenious wire-work and primitive "blue-screen" (actually black velvet) opticals to some dodgy miniature work for that train derailment. And there are some shots that you just look at and wonder "how'd they do that?"—even 87 years on. It makes a little thrill that, even in the era of CGI's Uncanny Valley, makes even un-seeing believing.

Claude Rains makes his only appearance in The Invisible Man.

The Old Dark House (1932)

The Old Dark House (James Whale, 1932) It is a dark and stormy—one might say "dreadful"—night. Trying to negotiate the way to Shrewesbury amidst a blinding rain on a road prone to crippling muddiness and threatening landslides are Philip Waverton (Raymond Massey), his wife Margaret (Gloria Stuart...from Titanic?) and friend Roger Penerel (Melvyn Douglas), slap-dasherly young people without a care in the world, except for what little irritations cross their bourgeois path—like how full is the whiskey flask? On such a night, maps and directional instincts can become stymied. Finding a large, sturdy house (more importantly, the lights are on), they pull up and knock on the large and imposing door. They are allowed entrance by the master of the house, Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger), self-described as "rather a nervous man" who allows his hulking man-servant, Morgan (Boris Karloff) to give them access from the deluge outside, although he is less welcoming than one might wish.

If he is reluctant, his sister Rebecca (Eva Moore) is even less so. A bit of a religious-hysteric, she is more than a little bitter at her treatment within the family, feeling persecuted, and if her perception of her family is skewed, her reaction to outsiders, and, worse, these particularly un-devout young people is openly hostile. She has one bottom-line: "No BEDS!" She's probably fearing orgies under her roof.                                                          

The guests will have to be comfortable in the drawing room, although Margaret is soaked to the skin and insists on changing clothes, which she is allowed to do in one of the Femm bedrooms under Rebecca's watchful, judgmental eye, who tells a brief history of her treatment within the "sinful and godless" Femm family*, and revealing that the father of the Fenn's, 102 year-old Roderick Femm, is still alive and living in the house. Despite this one consideration, the Femm's are determined to keep the Waverton's and Penerel in the drawing room and discourage them from trying to access any other part of the house for their safety. They are particularly warned about Morgan, whom Horace describes as an "uncivilized brute" and "rather dangerous"—he has a tendency to drink a little and molest a lot. Femm fortunes evidently preclude them from hiring a replacement.

Just as the first guests are getting comfortable being uncomfortable at the Femm's, they are joined by two others: Sir William Porterhouse (Charles Laughton), a genial and bellicose bloke, with his evening companion "Ducane"—a chorine whose real name is Sophie Perkins (Lillian Bond), who are far more free-spirited and liven things up a bit, but create a bit more frisson, adding a little more chaos in the mix bottled up in the barely-contained Femm house. Libations are provided and a dinner served, But on such a night, things can not go smoothly. The electricity goes out in the storm, and when Philip goes to retrieve an oil lamp from upstairs—Horace, it seems, is too scared to go—and he notices a couple of locked rooms, one of which has a voice coming from inside it.

Penerel and the chorus-girl start to get chummy, and the brute Morgan (it seems) has gotten into the liquor and he attacks poor Margaret the first chance she is alone. At this point, lines are drawn in the wood floors and the night becomes one of survival and the discovery of secrets that have been hidden away for years. And although it has all the trappings and tropes of a horror film, under Whale's direction there is a giddy, giggling sense of humor bubbling just under the surface that is campy and knows just how far to push the material as far as commentary and suggestiveness.

Whale is clearly having fun with the project (based on J.B. Priestly's 1927 novel "Benighted"), the second project he made after his success with Frankenstein, and although he turns down the German Expressionism he wrought in that film, the film is richly textured, not only between levels of light and dark in subject and dialogue, but also pictorially, thanks to his Frankenstein cinematographer Arthur Edeson, who would move from Universal to the Warner Brothers and make his mark on such films as The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca. It appears to be a stepping-stone to the extreme arch-tone he took in his subsequent The Bride of Frankenstein.

The Old Dark House also marked the Hollywood debut of actor Charles Laughton, who would quite quickly rise in the ranks from talented character actor to star and eventually director. 

The Old Dark House is one of those wonders of the pre-Code era, where the subject matter could be broadened (as well as the moral implications of characters' actions), leaving audiences with endings with moral ambiguities, and troubling implications, rather than satiate them with happy endings. You could almost look at The Old Dark House as a hybrid of the horror, Romantic Gothic, and even noir genres to create an unsettling thrill-ride that leave one disturbed even after one has exited the theater.

The trouble with those pre-Code films, however, was that once the Hays Code came into play, many films, to ensure further booking into theaters, were censored, or even re-shot to meet the new stringent standards placed on movie entertainment. The ones which could not be "rehabilitated" were confined behind locked doors in the vaults of the studio and, in many cases, forgotten and abandoned.

The Old Dark House was considered a lost film until it was dug up from the Universal racks in 1968 and restored, saved from the depredations that time and its storage on flammable nitrate film would inflict on it. Rather than left to rot, it was exhumed, and another classic Horror film, one of its most curious and perverse entries, was saved from the grave.

*

"They were all godless here. They used to bring their women here - brazen, lolling creatures in silks and satins. They filled the house with laughter and sin, laughter and sin. And if I ever went down among them, my own father and brothers - they would tell me to go away and pray, and I prayed - and left them with their lustful red and white women!"
Director Whale goes to town during this sequence—probably because it's so talky—with distorted mirror and lens effects to disorient the viewer, and to add his own visual commentary on sister Rebecca's rant.

The History of John Ford: The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936)

When Orson Welles was asked what movies he studied before embarking on directing Citizen Kane he replied, "I studied the Old Masters, by which I mean John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford." 

Running parallel with our series about Akira Kurosawa ("Walking Kurosawa's Road"), we're running a series of pieces about the closest thing America has to Kurosawa in artistry—director John Ford. Ford rarely made films set in the present day, but (usually) made them about the past...and about America's past, specifically (when he wasn't fulfilling a passion for his Irish roots). 

In "The History of John Ford" we'll be gazing fondly at the work of this American Master, who started in the Silent Era, learning his craft, refining his director's eye, and continuing to work deep into the 1960's (and his 70's) to produce the greatest body of work of any American "picture-maker," America's storied film-maker, the irascible, painterly, domineering, sentimental puzzle that was John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford.

The Prisoner of Shark Island (John Ford, 1936) I've always been fascinated by the events surrounding the assassination of Lincoln. The nation, just after the surrender at Appomattox, was hit once again by a revenge killing by a Southern sympathizer, whose own grandiose ego put the Nation into an uproar, and generated an hysterical government response that usurped the judicial process in the quest for its own vengeance in the prosecution of half-hearted conspirators and acquaintances. 

One of those was Dr. Samuel Mudd, who was visited the night of Lincoln's assassination by a fleeing and injured John Wilkes Booth, and who treated a leg fracture sustained in the assassination.* The film would have you believe that Booth and his accomplice—one could call him a "getaway driver" if you transposed it to horses—stumbled on Mudd's house that night, and Mudd, helped the man without any knowledge of the man and his murderous deeds at Ford's Theater of that night.

But it simply wasn't true. Samuel Mudd did know Booth, and had often seen him on-stage, and being a Southern sympathizer himself, had even met with Booth and his followers a few times. The movie depicts them as strangers, which is a stretch of credibility considering Booth's notoriety as an actor. And the two were well-acquainted. And although it can be said that Mudd was not guilty of Lincoln's assassination, he was hardly innocent, either, aiding and abetting the man who was. Mudd was an accessory after the fact, at the very least. But not here.

The Prisoner of Shark Island gets the basic story right, though. Mudd is soon swept up by the law in the hysterical days following the murder, tried with the other conspirators, but is spared the gallows and is, instead, sent to the Dry Tortugas, a prison off the coast of Florida (there is no "Shark Island" in the U.S.—the name is purely exploitative). Mudd was sent to Fort Jefferson on that island, and whether the place was surrounded by a shark-infested moat, as the movie has it, is probably more part of the fabrication that is woven throughout the movie. All the details are wrong. Including a local black sharecropper named "Buck" (played by Ernest Whitman) following Mudd to Dry Totugas at the behest of Mrs. Mudd (Gloria Stuart—you might remember her as the elderly Rose in a little movie called Titanic).

An aside on that: Race relations in the movie might be a bit unsettling for some—the film was made in 1936 and a few years later in 1939, Gone With the Wind (where Whitman has an uncredited role) proved to be as condescending, if not more so. However, the cast of black actors is a bit more extensive, most of them are guards or prisoners, but Mudd treats them (despite his Southern leanings) as peers in the prison situation. I did smile when some of the characters refer to Mudd as "the white boy." You don't hear that every day in early movies.

Anyway, the best part of the movie and where Ford seems to have his interests highest (aside from the dramatically acute assassination sequence) is in an early attempt by Mudd to try escaping from the island, by means of friendly guards, makeshift ropes, and a boat commanded by his wife's father (Claude Gillingwater) who fought for the South. Ford has loved the play of light throughout his career and the sequence is not only suspenseful, but beautiful as well. In Shark Island, Ford has already established an atmospheric way of portraying the prison by dousing it in inky blackness, with any luminescence a metaphor for freedom, but the escape (photographed by Bert Glennon, who worked with von Sternberg—in black and white—and de Toth—in color—and who photographed Ford's Stagecoach, Rio Grande, Wagon Master, and Young Mr. Lincoln in black and white, and Drums Along the Mohawk in Technicolor) is a showcase of interesting angles, shadowy depths, and mastery of light surrounded by darkness.

The escape only worsens his plight, once he is re-captured (John Carradine's malevolent villainy as a vengeful Northern guard is never more apparent than when he casually confronts Mudd with a "Hiya, Judas!") he is thrown into a sweltering pit with Buck, until a yellow fever epidemic overtakes the Fort, killing the only physician on the premises. As the only prisoner with medical experience, he is charged by the Fort's Commandant (played by Ford's first cowboy star, Harry Carey) with trying to halt the spread of the disease (which, despite its conventionality as a "Hollywood" type of idea is historically accurate), for which Mudd is ultimately pardoned.

Warner Baxter, Harry Carey, and Ernest Whitman (lying down) in "the pit"

The true bones of the story make for a good historic melodrama (despite the messing with details and the white-wash of Mudd's relationship with Booth) and that always held an appeal for Ford and the producer that he would collaborate with on some of his greatest films: Darryl F. Zanuck, who was only a year into running his motion picture conglomerate 20th Century Fox. This was their first work together in a string of legendary films that would cement the careers of both men.

The conclusion of Ford's depiction of the assassination—
a veil is drawn across the stricken president, becoming abstract
"Now he belongs to the ages."

Dr. Samuel Mudd

* The legend is that Booth sustained it jumping from the Presidential viewing box in Ford Theater to the stage, where he vaingloriously quoted Shakespeare—"Sic semper tyrranus"—to the horrified crowd and made his escape (this is how it's depicted in the film). Some accounts speculate that Booth got the injury when his horse stumbled and fell on him during his frantic run from Washington D.C. Not as dramatic. In Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a newspaperman says at one point "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Ford was a frequent activist for that practice, as The Prisoner of Shark Island shows throughout its story, which has the basic story right, but the details are enhanced for dramatic effect. Sic semper dramatis (which is a podcast with John Hodgman).