Destination Moon

Destination Moon (Irving Pichel, 1950) As it's the 55th Anniversary of the "Yes, It Really Happened" First Moon Landing with a new movie (however fanciful) and all, it's a good time to look at a past movie about a first trip to the moon—we've done reviews of First Man and Fritz Lang's Die Frau in Mond—like this 1950 George Pal production that had considerable input (co-scenarist based on his novel, technical advisor) from "Mr. Grok" himself, science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein.

 

It's a fascinating little curiosity, by turns both sophisticated and puerile—something you could say about most Pal movies—that can take into account such things as G-forces, orbital mechanics, and weight playing a part in fuel consumption and maintain a strict adherence to science (no sound in space—not even for dramatic purposes—and the advantages and disadvantages of micro-gravity and the ritual of pressurizing air-locks) while having some of the more advanced concepts being explained in a Woody Woodpecker cartoon.*

Bear in mind that Destination Moon was made seven years before Sputnik put the fear of dumbness into Americans** and kicked our fledgling rocket program into "trust" mode. In the movie's opening minutes, researchers and private corporations are on the cusp of launching the first man-made satellite into orbit only to have the rocket launch off the pad and then slam itself into the desert, disastrously. And just a couple of months later, they're talking about sending a manned rocket to the Moon. Baby...steps, guys....

The Woody Woodpecker cartoon attracts investors (it's called "science fiction" for a reason...) and pretty soon construction begins on a Moon rocket using atomic energy to create enough steam thrusters to power it out of Earth's gravity and to the Moon. The entrepreneurial heads of the program are going to be the ones on-board for the flight, not test pilots, and they are Jim Barnes (John Archer) the aerospace magnate whose company built it, famed rocket scientist Dr. Charles Hargraves (Warner Anderson) who designed it, retired General Thayer (Tom Powers) who wants America's presence in space to be used for deterrence and technician Browne (Ted Warde) who supervised the technical aspects of the good ship, Luna.

But, there are complications—political ones. The Atomic Energy Commission (referred to as just "the Commission" here) denies permission to test Hargraves' atomic engine at its launch-site in the desert given protests by local citizens. Barnes suspects foul play by one of our nation's enemies (after all, how could American citizens complain about atomic testing ten miles away from their homes?) and to avoid any legal action...like a pending court order...the crew determines that, instead of further testing and other technical details, they'll launch this brand-new untested space ship in just 17 hours time. 

But, that causes another complication: Browne comes down with appendicitis and has to go in for emergency surgery, his place to be taken by Brooklynite technician Joe Sweeney (Dick Wesson, who suggests nothing so much as Humphrey Bogart's younger, goofier brother) who would rather not, thank you, as not only because he thinks the thing won't get off the ground (he's the technician??) but also he has "a date with a chick" the next day. See what I mean by the movie being a bit puerile?

But, complications aside, the ship launches just moments ahead of a court order, and, for 1950, the sequence isn't bad, suggesting G-forces pressing the astronauts into their couches and distorting their forces from the strain. An unscheduled EVA has to happen to set up radio communications as Sweeney had "greased" the aerial to make sure it deployed, not realizing that the gunk would freeze in the vacuum of space (again...he's the technician?).

About the moon sequences: it's eerie that a movie about Americans reaching the moon should reflect so much of what the actual Moon landing was like with its talk of "for all mankind" and the description of the Moon as "barren and desolate" and a formal phone-call from Earth as the astronauts are standing on the lunar surface—as if they have nothing better to do. Science Fiction illustrator Chesley Bonestell, credited as "technical advisor of astronomical art", provides the vast vistas of the lunar surface as well as shots of earth and the Moon's sphere.

At the time, the gee-wizardry made the film very popular while today it feels like a silly relic with all the risky behavior that goes on in order to get the ship off the ground without so much as a safety check. But, this was made at a time when test-pilots were flying by the seat-of-their-pants and years before the first artificial satellites started educating us about the formalities of near-Earth space travel. It was science fiction for the audiences of 1950.

The ironic thing is that, after the efforts, the chances taken, and the lives lost, and the mission accomplished, a hefty percentage of Americans still think its fiction.

 

Who could have predicted that in 1950? Probably nobody. Some concepts are just too strange to grasp.

 * But then, Steven Spielberg did the somewhat the same thing in Jurassic Park, didn't he?

 

** I wish we had that NOW!

Dinah Washington's "Destination Moon" which was the End-title song for the recent Fly Me to the Moon

City of Fear (1959)

Saturday is "Take Out the Radioactive Trash" Day.

City of Fear (Irving Lerner, 1959) An ambulance containing two escaped San Quentin convicts careers down a back-road to Los Angeles. Both men are (described in a radio bulletin) "desperate and considered extremely dangerous."

They're half-right: one of them is dead, wounded in the break-out that left one guard dead, one wounded, and the prison doctor in his own hospital. The survivor, Vince Ryker (Vince Edwards) matches the psychological description, anyway. He's desperate, but he's also got big plans once he hits L.A. He's got a steal container which he snatched from the prison medical facility. He thinks he's got a full pound of heroin with him. It's going to guarantee him a big score and an easy life. He pulls over a passing motorist, takes his car, but not before disposing of his dead pal, the unfortunate driver, and the ambulance by torching them and leaving them off to the side of the road. The bodies are starting to pile up.

But, they're potentially just the beginning. What Vince is actually carrying is a pound of cobalt-60. And as the "radiological coordinator" of the Air Pollution Control district (played by one of the screenwriters Steven Ritch) it's a bad radioactive thing "easily dissipated and spread. In a granular form, it's the most deadly thing in existence. Contamination begins almost immediately. Within 84 hours, you're dead." 

If you're going to have a McGuffin, make it a big one.

Lyle Talbot and John Archer play city officials who decide to keep the threat under wraps (in order to avoid a panic) while scouring the city (with geiger counters) for Ryker and any of his cronies before any of the stuff gets released into the water supply or worse. Meanwhile, Ryker reaches out to his girlfriend (Patricia Blair) and pals in the drug trade to set up a deal.

Trouble is, he can't get the cylinder open to look at the stash which he's convinced will net him a million dollars. It's a race against time for both parties as everyone who comes in contact with Ryker and his radioactive nest-egg starts getting sicker...but, without the canister, the city will never be safe. Face masks and social distancing are not going to help.

It's a tight little film noir, bouncing back and forth between the clueless hoodlums and the complicit authorities while the city just goes about its business without a clue that there's any danger. You'd think there might be some heat generated from the thing sitting in Ryker's pocket, but, if so, nothing is made of it.

The film is helped by some wonderfully pulpy cinematography by Lucien Ballard, some clever editing sleight of hand by Robert Lawrence, and an itchy, early score by Jerry Goldsmith, which can be summed up as "primitive." It's all a little primitive, in the same sort of modern quagmire as Kazan's Panic in the Streets, but with the added complication that the police aren't asking the public for help—they're avoiding the issue altogether and keeping it under wraps.

If that isn't noir...and reflective of our current world...nothing is.

White Heat (1949)

White Heat (Raoul Walsh, 1949) Did a podcast for the Large Association of Movie Blogs the other night with MovieRob—he's in charge of the "Acting School 101" segment, where they focus on a particular actor for the month (there's also a "Directing School 101") and the contributors post links to relevant posts they've made. This month's Acting 101 subject if James Francis Cagney (which is why you've seen seemingly irrelevant Cagney posts lately—I'm cleaning out the attic of the old blog I wrote and bringing them over here) and we had a rollicking discussion—I could've gone another couple hours on the subject, it was so much fun. But, my No. 1 pick of Cagney performances (Rob's was Yankee Doodle Dandy, a great choice) was White Heat, which Rob had never seen. "Ro-o-o-b," I bleated in my best Mary Tyler Moore imitation. "You've GOT to see White Heat!"

Everybody should. It's a late-forties return to form with Cagney in gangster mode...but with a big difference. Cagney's early gangsters were opportunists, falling through the cracks of bad economics and bad situations to eke out a living by the easiest way possible—crime.

But not White Heat's Cody Jarrett. When Cagney returned to Warner Brothers Studio to do it, he read the script, recognized the form but found it a little formulaic and, thus, dull. Cagney had a suggestion: "Let's make him nuts," and the script was altered and Cagney's criminal thus had no justifying excuses—Jarrett is psychologically damaged ("like his old man" says a gang-member)—all id, with no ego or conscience to curtail it. He's mother-fixated, greedy, jealous, and subject to debilitating headaches ("like a buzz-saw in my skull," he describes it). Whether it's caused by blood pressure, stress, PTSD, or just bad humours, he's due for a stroke if he doesn't curtail it. But, before he does, he's going to take out as much as he can, monetarily or in collateral damage. "Top of the world, ma" he toasts his mother in a perverse version of The American Dream. "Top of the world."

Jarrett's gang goes in for The Big Scores, robbing trains, pilfering payrolls, stuff that involves high risk with high rewards (except for those who succumb to the high risks). When the job's done, the gang splits up, finds a hide-out to lay low, with Mom Jarrett (Margaret Wycherly) in tow to monitor police efforts and plan the next heist. But, not for too long, as Jarrett gets antsy and the headaches start. Plus, there's Cody's wife Verna (Virginia Mayo) who loves the spoils, but not having Ma breathing down her neck and nagging. Jarrett keeps her under a watchful eye and a short leash, because he's just as suspicious of her as he is of weasels in his gang like "Big Ed" (Steve Cochran), who Jarrett knows would love to take over the Jarrett game and serve divorce papers to him from the barrel of a gun.

All that time keeping his enemies close also makes him a little myopic. After a train-heist that scalds one of the gang-members, Jarrett orders the mug shot rather than have to carry around a guy wrapped like a mummy everywhere.  But, the chosen executioner has a soft heart, he leaves the stricken thief alive, but only for so long. Police find the man, finally dead of his injuries, and do some forensics. It leads to a stake-out that traps Jarrett, Ma, and Verna, but Jarrett shoots chief investigator Philip Evans (John Archer) and starts a reckless police chase that ends, when Cody pulls into a drive-in.

But, Jarrett has an idea; at the same time he was pulling the train job out West, he knows a hotel job that was going down in Illinois by an acquaintance in crime, who has gone to ground. Jarrett is going to go to Chicago and turn himself in for the hotel robbery. He'll go to prison for two years, but not to the gas chamber for the deadly train robbery, and, when he gets out, he's got a lot of loot stashed. He leaves Ma in charge, and Verna stewing.

But, the Treasury Agents have a plan. They agree to Jarrett's light sentence—they don't kick at all—and they bring in "undercover specialist" Hank Fallon (Edmond O'Brien), who's just finished another long stretch in prison...posing as a con to get information, you understand. His job is to get close to Jarrett, find out what he can, what he did with the train job loot, and find the name of the mysterious planner who's been giving Jarrett his big ideas. Oh, and stay alive in a federal pen with a bunch of cut-throats.

That's the movie's set-up, and things, as they should, get complicated, but except for big issues like Life and Death, the details don't amount to much. What matters is Jarrett's reaction to them and Cagney's performance is the entire key to it. One hesitates to call it a "one-man" show (O'Brien is properly stalwart and Mayo and Wycherly do wonderful, vaguely comic work), but Cagney so dominates an audience's attention and challenges it, that the details seem to disappear.

Cagney's advice to actors was to "plant your feet and tell the truth," even though he was the most theatrical of performers. You believe him and what the character is going through. White Heat proved one thing—there's no over-the-top with Cagney; even the scenes where his crazy behavior scares the crap out of you, what he does feel genuine and, for all the hyper-emoting, and occasional jibbering, authentic. One also cannot argue with the visceral way he throws a punch.

The extremes of behavior of the Jarrett character would make any death scene a little disappointing, and so, director Walsh stages the most hysterically dramatic death for a character in the movies (short of Godzilla, anyway). It's almost supernatural in its implications, and as much as supporting characters are given lines to tone it down and bring it down to Earth a bit, it doesn't douse the ecstasy that comes out of Cagney as he shrieks his send-off line. It is spectacular, but more than that, it feels apt and right, because of the bigness of the portrayal. Cagney makes you realize that you just can't kill a creature like Cody Jarrett. You have to atomize him. And in a post-Hiroshima era, that takes a lot of will to not have qualms about it. 

And the scary thing is; Jarrett wants it, relishes it, and even helps it along. He feels he's earned it.

But, it's Cagney's performance that justifies so grand and volcanic an exit. And it's too intense and good to leave you wanting more.