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.

It's a Wonderful Life

It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946) It's a legendary movie that was a failure upon release. It was the first movie by an Oscar winning populist director, an immigrant to the U.S., after serving as the chief propagandist for the Armed Services during the horrific days of World War II.

The war had changed him. And when Frank Capra started work on a new project, it was a tough sell. But, Capra started a new production company, Liberty Films (with two other director-veterans, George Stevens and William Wyler) and the first project was an adaptation of a self-published short story by Phillip Van Doren Stern, "The Greatest Gift." RKO bought the film rights and after several drafts (by such as Dalton Trumbo, Clifford Odets and Marc Connelly, RKO encouraged Capra to read the short story, and Capra championed it, starting work on a script with a handful of writers—along with the credited husband-wife team of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, there were contributions by Michael Wilson, Jo Swerling, and even Dorothy Parker.

It is Christmas Eve in Bedford Falls. The thoughts and prayers there are causing a stir in Heaven and an angel-in-training (Henry Travers), but not—to use Lincoln's phrase—one of the "better angels," is dispatched to help one man, George Bailey (James Stewart) from throwing away his greatest gift—his life. But, what has transpired in that life to reach that point? For fully 99 minutes of the film's 129 minute length, the potential angel Clarence—and we—are given his history. 

George has big dreams, but they are always dashed by circumstance and sacrifice for "the right thing." George is a victim of that old saw "life is what happens while we're busy making other plans." Life, the Depression, the decisions of others, all conspire to make George's life one of desperation, stuck in his hometown at a job he didn't intend...that makes him forget that he has an adoring wife (Donna Reed) and a clutch of kids at home, which might be taken away from him if the prominent banker in town (Lionel Barrymore) makes good on his plot to destroy George and his family's little savings-and-loan, made possible by the banker's theft of its assets.

It's a good life, but not the one George wanted, but he might even lose that, and so on that snowy dark Christmas Eve, he contemplates taking matters into his own hands and taking his own life, before it can be taken from him. For 3/4 of the movie's length, George is put through the grinder, sees all the work and sacrifice gone to naught, and the realization—from the banker's words—that he's worth more dead than alive. In a monetary sense, it may be true, but worth is more than dollars and cents. And with incarceration looming over him, George is only looking at the bottom line. And he's reached it.

What could be worse?

It is only by heavenly intervention that George can be shown the ledger of his life by contrast. Clarence grants him a look into an alternative version of the Universe—one in which he had never been born. And everything has changed—the people he's known, the people he's helped, his families that never knew him and never existed, the city he grew up in, all are a Dark Universe version of what he had known. The big difference is that no one knows him; he was never born. He is shown the significance of his life by the void that is left in its absence. His Christmas gift is the revelation of just how much his life is worth and the difference it has made.

It's a novel way to look at life, not too far different from the fantastical approach The Archers had with A Matter of Life and Death (released at approximately the same time) in dealing with the affairs on Earth—elements of fantasy are mixed with the hammering bluntness of recognizable reality to deal with matters that might be common with the audience. At the same time, Capra uses the flashback technique (ala Citizen Kane) to tell most of his story and compress a life into pertinent highlights, the better to mix and match the contrasting realities and make them as recognizable and significant to the audience as they do to George. We experience his horror to the alternate "Non-George" reality as soon as he does.

The film starts in Heaven, takes us through Purgatory and Hell as surely as "The Divine Comedy," and lands us back to Capra's version of Heaven—a democratized solution to the issues that have, given George's nightmare vision, been reduced in significance. For Bedford Falls, thoughts and prayers are not good enough—little do they know their significance to George—but grassroots actions, good-intentioned, save the day. Money, the root of George's depression, is volunteered, and George's worth is satisfied, both in their actions to his charity, but also in a way that would impress even a banker.

Significantly, the film begins and ends with the ringing of a bell—a call to action and attention. 

The film is a depressive's nightmare, yet it has endured, long past its lackluster run at the box-office, and despite—and probably because of—a slippage into the public domain due to clerical neglect, as a Christmas classic since the 1970's, cheering and warming the hearts of millions for the special film that it is. There isn't much dissension in that, and its message of the worth of one life and its impact can touch anybody.

For example: I had an acquaintance, a quite brilliant writer, who, after battling a long and terrible disease, joined with his family one night, all together, to watch It's a Wonderful Life, and, satisfied, went to bed where he passed away in his sleep. I can't think of It's a Wonderful Life without thinking of him, as little interaction as I had with him, and the two are inextricably linked. That's the significance of one life, how powerful it can be, and how it can influence the lives of others. We are "The Greatest Gift" to the world when we can make it a better place, when we can change it—for the better—and when we can see the individual value of the person, despite the attempt to turn us all into statistics, metrics, hits, followers, samples or net worth.

As baseball announcer Red Barber used to say, God doesn't count the net worth or toys at the end of a life, He counts the scars.

Merry Christmas to you all.

The Yearling (1946)

The Yearling (Clarence Brown, 1946) One of the seminal children’s films that still holds much appeal for adults. Based on the novel by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings,* it is the story of a post-Civil War family (Gregory Peck, Jane Wyman, Claude Jarman Jr.) trying to scrape a living together in rural Florida, it may be one of the most beautiful of the '40's Technicolor films (which is saying something), reflecting as it does a storybook perspective of a child.

But, it is not all sugarplums and ‘coon-hunts for young Jody.  He spends his time, long hours, in nature at one with it.  Back at home, his mother, Ora, is brittle and cold, not only to Jody but to husband Ezra (or “Penny” as he is known). The only woman in a house of child-like males, she is stern at the chances taken by “the boys” and displays no warmth.  As if in compensation, Penny is both father and best friend to young Jody and the demands on him take their toll.  At one point, Penny is bit by a rattlesnake, and shoots a deer to use its liver to draw out the poison, an act that leaves an orphan fawn, which Jody adopts as a pet.

This is all warm and fuzzy and makes for wonderful moments of bonding with no mention of ticks or lice.  But it also provides ample lessons in the burdens of responsibility.  The fawn, named "Flag" by Jody's friend, may act tamed, but it is still a wild animal with wild instincts, including running away, ignoring and defying man-made barriers and even destroying crops which provide the meager livelihood and subsistence of the Baxter clan. With Penny being laid up so much of the film, it is on Jody to take on more duties around the farm, but his focus is on himself and Flag—he has to grow up in many ways: he must take responsibility for his errant pet; he must deal with the death of a friend; he must contend with a Nature that must be worked and tamed, rather than observed and serving as a playground; he must understand the complexities of the human soul and deal with people at their worst, rather at their most playful.

That last one is the most important: much more than the pet he must deal with, he has to understand his Mother on more than the surface level, and empathize with her nature, and understand a person's past to fully comprehend why they are who they are—he must dig a little deeper, just as surely as he must till a field. He can't merely observe anymore. He must understand.

It's a great film. A beautiful film, at times (when big-sky landscapes fill the screen) looking like a muted, rural Maxfield Parrish painting. But it may not be the ticket for very young children who will be captivated by the surface aspects of the film, but traumatized by the subject matter. Bear in mind: this is not a baby-sitter movie. Animals die. And Mom is mean. Adult supervision is required. In fact, it is well worth any adult's time to watch this film...with or without being accompanied by a child.

* The story of the author of "The Yearling," Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, is told in Martin Ritt's very good film Cross Creek, starring Mary Steenburgen, Peter Coyote, Rip Torn and Malcolm McDowell.  Check that one out, too. But it might not be for kids.