Mogambo

Mogambo  (John Ford, 1953) It's good to be The King. When you're Clark Gable, King of Hollywood, you can forgive a lot of shortcomings on the acting front. Mogambo, situated in Africa, and for a large part photographed there, makes Gable the King of the Jungle and no less predatory than some of the denizens. If the film has a shortcoming, and it has a few, it's that it depends so much on Gable's charisma to carry what is essentially an under-written "man's man" of a role—one who will take a woman in his arms and plant one with a mere change in the barometer, his, hers or Nature's. Gable's Vic Marswell is so fragile in his moods, he's practically bi-polar, swinging from cranky to rapacious to "I don't care," running hot and cold and more than a little unreadable either way. And for the women in the film, Eloise "Honey Bear" Kelly (a plucky Ava Gardner), a recklessly adventurous widow—she has a great summing-up line: "There's a lot of snarling in this joint!"—and Lina Nordley (Grace Kelly, still in her neurotic, fragile period), wife of Marswell's current client, it creates a weird triangle that I.Sosceles himself couldn't figure out. 

Maybe it's the heat of Africa, or maybe it's the wild life of the wildlife, but both of these women, with lots going for them, still neurotically slam themselves like meteors into Winslow's orbit. And while the heat and flash are nice, things burn out mighty quick. And the only explanation is "it's Gable," in a writer's shorthand that defies logic, common sense, or understandable motivation (other than box-office). It's just assumed that any woman's going to throw themselves at the King, no matter how much of a tiger trap he might be.

That shaky "given" aside, it's a nice adventure entertainment, directed by John Ford with a painterly eye trained on a new canvas. The Technicolor cinematography—by Freddie Young (doing the English studio shots) and Robert Surtees—is absolutely gorgeous, whether in the blinding sunlight of a native village, or the shadowy slats of a "civilized" encampment (The film's second unit was directed by famed stunt-man Yakima Canutt). Ford is a long way from the locations he favored in his Westerns, but adjusts, employing his fascination with native culture in the same diversions of including the faces of the tribes, distinguishing them from each other and, in a single set up, putting the flavor of the place on obvious display. He's truly recharged and energized by Africa, his camera roaming all over, finding the picturesque and telling details.*

And it's interesting to note (to me, anyway) that Ford is essentially making a Howard Hawks movie: a group of professionals and semi-professionals trying to eke out a living (and a kind of focused community) despite their differences. Hawks and Ford would knowingly tip their hats to each other in their projects—if it didn't interfere with their own process—and there are a lot of the Hawks hallmarks here—the group sing-along, the loaning and sharing of a cigarette as relationship sub-text, the strong females (one of whom is "just one of the boys"), and the alpha male who has a code, few words, and manages to mangle them around the opposite sex.**

Even if the emotions run a little too high and there's way too much drama to get any real work done, there's a lot in Mogambo to like, that is pleasing to the eye. The story's not much, but it sure is interesting to see how Ford tells it.

Gardner and Kelly-revealed in their environments

* One of my favorite shots is a simple one of Gable and company walking the high grass on a trapping trip, shot at ground level, looking up through the wisps at the party.  How much less interesting would that shot have been from any other angle?  How much less would it have said about the conditions there, while making the most of the surroundings?  Ah, I'm probably getting all "academic" here.  Ford probably shot it that way to avoid seeing a garbage heap in the distance.  

** Hawks made his own version of the "African trapper" story—Hatari—ten years later with John Wayne (although internet sources say Gable was to co-star "but who believes the Internet?") with a more cohesive group (the kids have the relationship problems, not the leader) turning the story into a metaphor for a film-making crew).  The differences are night and day—in style and atmosphere—despite the similarities in subject matter.  In Hawks, the relationships are background, while the job is center-stage.  In Ford, it's the other way around.  They'd make an interesting double-bill.

The Valley of Gwangi

This was written in tandem with my appearance on the Forgotten Filmcast podcast, which you can find by clicking here.

The Valley of Gwangi (Jim O'Connelly, 1969) The idea for The Valley of Gwangi had been around since Willis O' Brien—the genius behind the stop-motion animation sequences in King Kong—shopped it around the studios in 1939, with no takers for his cowboys-and-dinosaurs concept. RKO was more interested in a Kong sequel, the result of which was 1949's Mighty Joe Young, a cowboys-and-gorilla movie that O'Brien worked on with a young protege named Ray Harryhausen. 

 

It was not the most stable work to be a stop-motion animator. Special effects movies were no guarantee of box-office, the meticulous one-frame-at-a-time process usually played havoc on scheduling for release, and Hollywood was more interested in what they could do fast and cheap. Plus, special effects...if not done well...had a way of cheapening everything else. Special effects movies were a niche market, as well, even more risky to have a hit.

The Valley of Gwangi began production on a high—Harryhausen's work was featured in a box office success—the Hammer film One Million Years B.C. (although one would argue that people were going to see Raquel Welch in an improbable fur bikini rather than Harryhausen's dinosaur fights). Harryhausen had partnered with Charles H. Schneer, with whom he'd made a few adventure films in the 1950's and early 60's. After One Million Years B.C.—which Schneer had nothing to do with—the two settled on a formula similar to their fantasy/adventure films of the earlier time...only they'd add a buxom female lead to the mix.

Gwangi begins with the discovery of a body in a remote corner of the Mexican desert. Carlos (Gustavo Rojo) finds a member of his gypsy band unconscious clutching a burlap bag in which something is moving. Cut to the T.J. Breckinridge Wild West Show trudging into a small Mexican town, the latest stop in their tour. Watching is Tuck Kirby (James Franciscus), who's working for the competing Buffalo Bill show and wants to buy the Breckinridge outfit out. Two things will get in his way: Manager Champ Connors (Richard Carlson) doesn't like Kirby due to his past history; and T.J.Breckinridge (Gila Golan) who has taken over ownership of the show after her father's passing, and is the other party in Kirby's "past history."

T.J. won't sell—she has a secret attraction that will make the show's fortune. And who better to show it to than her competition/former lover? It's a tiny horse—the one found in the desert—and she's sure that the creature will be a sensation. Kirby thinks so, too, enough that he wants to find out where "My Little Pony" was found. A gypsy boy Lope (Curtis Arden) thinks he knows the answer and in their search they come across a paleontologist (Laurence Naismith), who has a fossilized footprint of just such a small animal that he's also searching for.

The presence of the little horse, called El Diablo at the Wild West Show and eohippus by the paleontologist, is a source of conflict among the local gypsies who believe that removing the creature from its home in the Forbidden Valley will bring about a curse that will doom everyone forever, and the scientist conspires with them to steal the critter and return it home, ostensibly to ward off any evil, but from the prof's standpoint, he'll be able to discover where it originated. When the horse-napping is discovered, Kirby, Connors and Breckinridge all ride out in the desert, following the trail of the thieves.

They get more than they bargained for. The Forbidden Valley is the last vestige of a prehistoric kingdom, home to many sorts of dinosaurs, all ferociously ready to do a lot of biting. Of course, Carlson sees these things and goes into "Carl Denham"-mode* wanting to capture the most lethal of the beasts and make him a star attraction of the Wild West show. Surprisingly, T.J. thinks this is a grand idea. Kirby thinks they're all nuts—"the only thing I want to bring back alive is myself!"

Hubris being hubris and movie formula being movie formula, an allosaurus is brought back to the show...and chaos ensues...right at show-time (it just goes to show you what you miss if you arrive late!). How will a turn-of-the-century Mexican town get rid of a rampaging dinosaur? After all, there aren't any available major power lines nearby...they haven't been invented yet! And history doesn't help as the chances of a big asteroid hitting are a bit remote.

It's entertaining, but, golly, it is dumb. But give credit to the actors to playing their scenes with deadly earnest. The look of incredulity on Franciscus' face when he sees his first dinosaur is a nice study in less-is-more, not over-playing it, just a look of "how the heck am I going to break THAT?"** Franciscus was a small "a" actor who was impressive on the television screen but not so much in movies. His character stays refreshingly consistent as a slightly seedy roustabout, who could turn at any moment despite wearing the whitest of hats...and suits. The other actors are either troopers...or they're dubbed.

And one has to admit that a Blu-Ray presentation of this feature won't be an improvement unless they do some major tweaking of the special effects sequences, especially in the colorization. It's been pointed out that "Gwangi" (with a soft 'g") keeps changing hue without any mention of having camouflage ability. And in most of the stop-motion scenes, the dirt surrounding the creature is consistently a different shade than the dirt in the film-footage. It's as if Gwangi is being followed by a spot-light. Those details are heard to tweak when you're going one frame at a time...or the film-stock used in the process let them down. In whatever case, it's enough noticeable on video to slightly disappoint.

Still one can't do anything but marvel at what Harryhausen was able to do at the time, going frame per frame, with the film footage projected behind it. The subtle lip curls, the almost required animal behavior—before Franciscus notices Gwangi, there's a moment or two of waiting, so the dino scratches its head!—the intricacy, even given the jaded perspective of a CGI-niverse is a wonder to behold. 

 

King Kong was the 8th Wonder of the World. Harryhausen was the 9th.

 * Carl Denham is the relentlessly crass entrepreneur who insisted on bringing King Kong from Skull Island to New York, presenting it as "the 8th Wonder of the World."

 

** 

Gideon of Scotland Yard

Gideon of Scotland Yard (aka Gideon's Day, John Ford, 1958) You think you know a guy. Take John Ford. I couldn't have been more surprised to see Ford listed as an executive producer (along with King Kong producer Merian C. Cooper) on that mixture of cowboys and "Kong" stop-motion/live action hybrid, Mighty Joe Young (with effects work done by King Kong magician Willis O'Brien and a young apprentice by the name of Ray Harryhausen). It featured Ben Johnson, one of Ford's stock company, so I shouldn't have been too surprised.

But, years after being escorted off Mister Roberts and making his masterpiece The Searchers, there is this curiosity that Ford produced and directed in Britain, far afield from his westerns and military dramas. Soon after making The Bridge on the River Kwai (and starring in Ford pal Howard Hawks' Land of the Pharoahs), Jack Hawkins was picked by Ford to play Scotland Yard sleuth George Gideon from John Creasey's series of novels starting with his "Gideon's Day," written in 1955.

Now, Gideon is a Detective Chief Inspector and with that goes a lot of responsibility. But, that doesn't mean that you're immune from the vagaries of life, like getting enough time in the bathroom in the morning, or parking tickets from too-earnest young bobbies, family matters like making it home in time to attend your daughter's concert—her first (she's played by Anna Massey...and it was her first...film), or acquiring the salmon for the dinner you have to have with the in-law's...if you're not held up at the office by the demands of the job.

For Gideon, on this day of days, has to deal with the possible bribery charges of one of his sergeants—and that will mean personally interviewing the informant (if he can find him), the escape of a violent sex maniac rumored to be on the road to London, not to mention a couple attempted murders, bankroll robberies by a dinner-jacketed mob...and that bobby, who pops in Gideon's Day like the proverbial bad penny.

The film is an oddity, but only because it should be more well-known, as Ford, the picture-maker is working on high-gear here...with some sterling talent in the British film industry: T. E. B. Clarke (The Lavender Hill Mob) wrote the screenplay, premier art director Ken Adam designed the look, and it was photographed by master cinematographer Freddie Young. With such talent behind the scenes, the film would at least be a curiosity, but it's directed by Jack Ford, which warrants a must-see for those who "like them the way they used to make them," or need to be convinced that Ford could do more than westerns...or work with John Wayne.

Those who know Ford's work know that there is a constant struggle for the appropriate tone: Ford, especially in his later years, was fearlessly tackling darker material—making him somewhat unpopular with his studio's—while balancing it with comedy, whether it's the popping of societal balloons or muddying stuffed shirts, or merely exposing the follies of the needlessly pretentious. Characters are in constant danger of barking "Lighten up!" both to their on-screen film-peers but also to the film at large. 

Given the material, Clarke's script provides Ford an almost seamless balancing act between familial follies and often deadly serious police work, showing the pressures of maintaining a civil head while dealing with the lowest of criminal creeps. Yes, the family stuff can be a bit frothy—Anna Lee (mentioned here two days in a row!) plays Gideon's wife, hailing as she does from the county of Kent—but contrast it with the escaped rapist, which Ford films in a way eerily similar to Hitchcock's sense of dread.

Also, unusual for Ford, is a little narrative side-track of what makes a man. Now, this was something he might not have been able to try in his American Westerns...and certainly not around his apprentice, Wayne. When a vicar of a local parish is jeered by the local children for being "a sissy," he stoically turns the other cheek, refusing to talk about his commando service in order to not glorify war, but when he is attacked by a criminal, he does what he has to do to stop the violence. Both he and Gideon are appalled by violence—one preaches against it and one tries to prevent it—they face and take action when confronted by it, but, in their separate ways, avoid resorting to it.

It's a good film, by a master film-maker, but try to see it in color—that's the more complete British version. The U.S. version is in black and white.

Oh, one other thing: at the time Ford was in London filming Gideon's Day, he had the opportunity to meet one of his biggest fans, a Japanese director named Akira Kurosawa.

The Man Who Never Was

The Man Who Never Was (Ronald Neame, 1956) I first read the story of the off-beat plan to distract the Nazis from British invasion plans in grade-school with a scholastic printing of Ewen Montagu's fascinating book. I knew there'd been a short-lived TV series with Robert Lansing in the 60's—more live-spy than the actual event—but this had nothing to do with that.  This one was a true story. It started a fascination with the morally ambiguous world of spies (in WWII and beyond) that still fills my trench-coat to this day.

But this story was true; the name of the corpse washed ashore was changed to protect the Allies on the invasion route to Sicily.  

On April 30, 1943, the body of Major William Martin of the Royal Marines was washed ashore on the beach of Huelva, Spain. Chained to the loop of his trench-coat was a briefcase containing personal documents (so they wouldn't be transferred through official channels) that hinted that the invasion, code-named Operation Husky, would land at Greece and Sardinia, and that  deceptive intelligence efforts would be made to convince the Germans that the invasion would take place attacking Sicily.

It was all a hoax.  There was no Major Martin (although his obituary did appear in The London Times), and the body was a plant by British intelligence forces to sway the Germans from the actual Husky invasion of Sicily, a strategic "must" for the invasion of first Italy, and then the Eastern pincer move on Germany. (Winston Churchill once remarked that "Everyone but a bloody fool would know that it's Sicily").  The plan, dubbed "Operation Mincemeat"—in the hope that the Germans would "swallow" it—was concocted by Flight Lt. Charles Cholmondeley* and Lt. Cmdr. Montagu. A corpse (that of a 34 year old Welshman Glyndwr Michael, who had no immediate family) was obtained, an elaborate back-history created, documents forged (including love letters and family correspondence), and dumped by submarine off the Spanish coast.

The Germans bought it...to the point where they still anticipated the attack two weeks after the Allies landed in Sicily. The film of the book by Montagu (played in the film by Clifton Webb) takes a few liberties—it romanticizes some of the incidents (for instance the authorship of the love letters) and creates a follow-up operation that ensures the information is transferred by a German agent (Stephen Boyd, in his film debut) without embellishment to the enemy, but it's an interesting dramatization ("It's the most outrageous, disgusting, preposterous, not to say barbaric idea I've ever heard, but work out full details and get back to me in the morning!") about one of the weirder operations in a war full of them. 

* Cholmondeley got the idea from a multi-schemed memo by one intelligence officer named Ian Fleming (who was inspired by a novel by Basil Thomsen), who in 1953 would create his own intelligence agent, James Bond.

Sink the Bismarck!

Sink the Bismark! (Lewis Gilbert, 1960) Like the titular ship, this is another film that was well-known to me but managed to get away anyway. Based on C.S. Forester's 1959 book "The Last Nine Days of the Bismarck," it tells of the British Navy's concerted effort to stop the Nazi fabled super-ship, the battleship Bismarck, feared for its ability to attack ruthlessly in the channels of the North Atlantic, the largest of any battleship built in Europe and festooned with guns that could blow ships out of the sea and planes out of the air. Its potential for destruction was what made its name and reputation as a Naval "Boogey-man." The ship's entire sailing career lasted but eight months.

Kenneth More plays Captain Jonathan Shepard, who's a bit of a cold-fish, but also appointed by the Admiralty to head the operations to take down the Bismarck, which is the backbone of the Nazi U-boat attacks against shipping and supply vessels on the seas. Shepard is cold, but he has a History that he won't reveal and considers irrelevant. To show he's a bit of a new broom, he's shown noting the surface sloppiness of the command center (junior officers out of uniform, lunches at one's desk) and promptly makes it clear that things will be ship-shape or the offenders shipped out. The script was fashioned from Forester's best-seller by Edmund H. North—a Fox hand who specialized in military themes, even with The Day the Earth Stood Still—who wrote a similar scene in his script (with Francis Ford Coppola) of Patton.  

More, Geoffrey Keen and Naismith: 
"We have to sink the Bismarck, 'cause the world depends on us."

What is occupying Shepard's mind, besides the operation, will become readily apparent in the film's second act once the HMS Hood is blown out of the water by the Bismarck, and other ships are detoured to take part in the battle. At this point in the war, many of the characters have suffered losses that stiffen their upper lips and weigh heavily on their decisions, made hundreds of miles away in theory on charts and display-fields and played out in the waters off the Northern European shores. The film pinwheels between base-command and the conference rooms of various ships in the maneuvers. One can easily get lost, if one doesn't keep an eye on key players like Laurence Naismith, Michael Hordren, and Esmond Knight. But, it's easy to spot the Nazi commanders, like Karel Stepanek's blowhard Admiral, constantly extolling the future of Der Fatherland and vaingloriously associating the Bismarck's fortunes with his own in contrast to his more practical Captain (played by Carl Möhner), who obeys orders, but keeps his counsel.

Director Gilbert has a nice painterly way with widescreen, filling the frame with movement and detail, and the final battle is full of the trademarks of his action films with catapulting bodies, shaking explosions and large battles portrayed with details. They're also fought with models, filmed at a distance to keep the lack of detail hidden and the simulated expanse of ocean dominant. Composition is his strong suit here, as the work directing the actors is as restrained as the performances, not giving up much information about themselves, but constantly discussing "ramifications." Even a rather unnecessary sorta-semi-romantic sub-plot is given a tentative quality as the two are more concerned with their jobs and their effectiveness in them than any shilly shallying.

"Raise the Cinema-scope!"

The most amusing aspect about the film for me was the realization that it would make a very good "drinking game." There is one shot of a German artillery officer in close-up, looking at the camera, yelling in a thick Teutonic accent "Fire!" This shot is used (and often the same "take") repeatedly throughout the film, the reason for which I am not sure. Perhaps it's to goose the drama of the moment of engagement. Maybe it's to bridge the gap between the genuine shots of torpedoes being loaded to those barely-working model shots in a studio tank. Maybe he was Lewis Gilbert's brother (although there appears no resemblance) and he was paying him for a major speaking part consisting of one word used over and over. You'd think that (unless it was a last minute editorial decision by editor Peter Hunt, who was the cutting wizard behind the early Bond films), they might have spared another angle to keep it from being so monotonous. It's inexplicable. But, it's pretty damn funny. Any time a torpedo is sent from the Bismarck, there's "Otto von Feur-Lautsprecher" with his single syllable of dialogue, never to be seen or heard from again...until, of course, the next torpedo (and there are many). As I said, "Spotting Otto" would be a good drinking game.

Die gefälschten Bismarck

The Last Run of the Bismarck (The Real Thing pictured above)