The Greatest Show on Earth

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day. What's different about this one is it ivolves Oscar's "Best Picture" category.

The Greatest Show On Earth (Cecil B. DeMille, 1952) 

 

Insufferable.

In every way, insufferable. 

Let's leave out winning the 1952 Best Picture Oscar (over High Noon and The Quiet Man*), as obvious Hollywood Industry pandering during the McCarthy Era anti-communist witch-hunt to the Grand Wizard of that cause, Cecil B. DeMille.

 
Let's just take that out of the equation and take the film for what it is.

 
The Greatest Show On Earth is an extended commercial/documentary/drama for The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. Filmed in eye-popping Technicolor (which is where the film, showing off the bright colors in many hues, truly is spectacular), that begins with the Director sepulchrally narrating a series of work-a-day location footage of the circus being prepped for its yearly run. The pompous tone that he sets is akin to a war film, the army metaphors stacked up thick and deep like a chain of marching elephants, with all the accompanying lack of grace and subtlety. Leave it to DeMille to take the fun out of a circus and turn it into something resembling boot-camp.

We transition (roughly, as DeMille's favorite transition is a quick right to left scene wipe, making it all seem like a moving slide-show) to the stars of the film acting roles that the folks who are told to stay out of their way actually do. Charlton Heston is the circus "boss"—the show-runner, if you will—who, in order to guarantee a "full season" (the complete city tour) has brought a marquee name, "The Great Sebastian" (Cornel Wilde, cheerily smarmy) to take the center ring, displacing his aerialist sweetie, the plucky but vain Holly, played by Betty Hutton.

This top-billed character is particularly annoying. Hutton could play dumb well (with a vocal range from A to A-), but here's she's a schizo in need of a pair of padded tongs and a generator, with a change of motivation and character for every change of scene. Buffed up to do her own trapeze stunts (smattering of applause for that), her character is so insecure that she's a harpie spinning like a Tasmanian Devil: "I HATE the Great Sebastian!" "I'm JEALOUS of the Great Sebastian!" "I LOVE the Great Sebastian," "No, now I HATE the Great Sebastian!" "I LOVE you, Sebastian!" "I feel GUILTY about Sebastian" "I'm going to forsake my Ca-REER for Sebastian!") 

I pity Sebastian, myself. As well as Heston, the guy you see rubbing his neck from whip-lash. See, she's in love with his character, although she's annoyed with the fact that he spends all his time trying to keep the Circus going, thus letting her keep the only job she's capable of, besides waving on floats. Hutton's Holly not only wears her heart on her sleeve, but also her ankle, around her pretty little neck as a broach, as a hat, anything but a symbol of commitment. She accuses Heston's Brad Braden** of having "sawdust in his veins"—at least he's got something in his. I wanted her capped in the head with her own trapeze twenty minutes in. Probably sawdust in that, too. 

No such luck. Before one can turn their attention to what Holly would look like in the tiger-cage and quicker than one can shout "Sebastian! No! Don't do it without the net!!," tragedy does befall the circus leading to broken bones and souls, angst and recrimination and another case of Holly-pong in desperate need of a net...held by men in white coats. 

The movie sets up a dull pattern: stentorian documentary section narrated by DeMille on "Circus as War Machine"/slide wipe to melodrama/slide-wipe to an extended sequence of abbreviated cir-cussedness that manages to make you feel slighted while still feeling interminable each time. Along the way, much of the subjects' opportunities are squandered, if not down-right sabotaged. For a scene of DeMille's heavies planning badness, DeMille stages the two Runyon-esque hoods*** (without the quaint patois) in front of a process shot simulating the outdoors. Halfway, DeMille cuts to a tighter shot of the two, but behind them the projection-screen image doesn't move, making it look like they've quantum-jumped closer to the camera. It's an amateurish give-away of a process shot.
And there's a cynical, rather crude attitude towards the circus audience—pandering to the audience while bashing them at the same time by endlessly showing giddy parents consuming ice-cream cones while their bored children look like they to want to erp up their cotton candy. But as the originator of this particular circus so famously said: "There's a sucker born every minute!" DeMille knew that lesson well.

Another lesson is the one of justice, where kindly Dr. Buttons (James Stewart in perpetual clown make-up...Richard Kimble never used that trick!), a surgeon on the lam for murder, unselfishly sacrifices himself by helping injured people on a train-wreck, exposing his true identity and is rewarded by getting cuffed and hauled off to the iron bar hotel. It was the '50's, after all—he could have been lynched. That would have to wait for prison, I guess. Thanks, doc! Take him away, boys. 

Another little game of the movie is a sporadic "Spot the Stars." There's Hopalong Cassidy! There's...somebody? Is that dewey debutante Jeanne Crain or a DeMille "ingenue?" And Bob Hope and Bing Crosby show up during Dorothy Lamour's number because its a Cyclical Universe on the Paramount Lot, with very tight gravitational rules; you could almost make a case for Creationism.

"Hey, is that Roddy McDowell?"

 

At some point during this megalith, you begin to realize with butt-numbing certainty, that if DeMille had cut out any of his "Circuses aren't some pink clown-show, they're American Hard Work" lectures, or maybe cut a "Tribute" sequence or parade or two, or one of the forgettable songs (or allowed Holly one less seizure) that the movie wouldn't have had to clock in at 2 1/2 hours in length.

2 1/2 hours is a longish book, with...ya know...subtleties, not a circus movie. But DeMille must have seemed unable to strip whole sequences, however redundant, away. Like Spielberg wanting to over-stuff 1941**** with beloved-by-none-but him-gut-and-budget-busting sequences, DeMille super-saturates the screen until the Technicolor fairly bleeds. And he couldn't bear, or didn't know enough, to cut any of it.

The only thing never mentioned in the many of DeMille's "Bozo Marches On!" narrations, is the requisite shoveling of the tons of manure. Why bother? The evidence is all there on the screen.

In a brilliant "meta" move, DeMille stages a train-wreck in a train-wreck.

 
* ...and the not-even-nominated Singin' in the Rain.

 

** ?...Brad Braden...of the "we-couldn't-come-up-with-a-better-last-name" Bradens? I think he became an "Ewok" trainer in later life.

*** One of them being Hollywood bad boy/guy Lawrence Tierney. He and Heston have a seething scene of clashing testosterone blasts.  

**** It was this very movie that inspired the Spiel-boy-g to pursue a career directing films. Spielberg learned his lessons concerning movie elephantiasis in his 20's. DeMille was in his 60's.

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.

In a Lonely Place

In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950) Risky Hollywood-noir/murder mystery/psychological drama produced by Humphrey Bogart's Santana Production Company and directed with a sure grip by the great Nicholas Ray. Bogart plays Dixon Steele, a hot-headed screenwriter on a cold streak. His temper has gotten him into a lot of violent scrapes that the studios have managed to sweep under the rug. Now, a hat-check girl that was in his apartment the night before has turned up strangled and the police are certain he was the culprit.

His one alibi is his neighbor, Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), part-time actress, who has a fairly air-tight alibi for Steele, and the two of them subsequently begin an affair that keeps Steele on the straight-and-narrow and the police suspicious. They'd be less tenacious if he didn't have that long rap sheet, the sick sense of humor and the unhealthy glint in his eyes when the subject of murder comes up. Steele is an odd bird who can't control his temper and pretty soon the police's suspicions make Laurel have her doubts which Dix only amplifies by his actions.

Can love survive? Can Laurel?

This is a great mystery in which the central murder ultimately doesn't matter; the players and their ability to destroy each other in a cynical battle of survival when they're at their most vulnerable does. Gloria Grahame, who would endure a career of also-ran women's roles, displays the gifts of a great character actress in the lead. And Bogart exploits his dual persona playing a bad-good man (or is that the other way around?) who has no control and betrays a self-loathing that's painful to watch. 

He and Grahame are great together—she's one of the few women who doesn't kiss Bogart awkwardly, and their relationship feels real and not phony—and the screenplay crackles with the good dialogue that makes great Bogart movies. That the movie is taking shots at Hollywood and the loungy L.A. lifestyle is merely a refreshing bonus (What was it about 1950 that turned out all these anti-Hollywood movies?). Bogart is at his best when he's taking chances with his material, and In a Lonely Place provides a wealth of opportunities: a creative murder mystery with a great romance and the possibility of mutual self-destruction. It's a stunning noir that's a highlight of the careers of all parties.

Crossfire (1947)

Crossfire (Edward Dmytryk, 1947) Shadows of a fight splay out diagonally across one apartment wall. Then a body flies across the room, knocking out the one remaining light. Everything goes black until hands twist alight the bulb in the lamp on the floor, exposing only the lower part of the room. One man is dead on the floor, another is conked out in an over-stuffed chair. The third is busy: he checks the body for signs of life, runs for the chair and rousts the man out of it. Then, more light as a door opens and two back-lit figures rush into the corridor, and are gone. 

It's film-noir done by two of the best Hollywood had to offer in the genre, writer John Paxton and director Edward Dmytryk, making a scene of violence with no dialogue and an efficient way of shooting that tells you what's going on but not by who, keeping the mystery alive in that movie short-hand that seems to have gone out of fashion in an expositioned-to-death world. Paxton and Dmytryk had done the Dick Powell version of "Farewell, My Lovely" (retitled Murder, My Sweet in case anybody thought that it was another Dick Powell musical) and in this Dore Schary production for RKO, they were using the form in the call for social justice in the case of antisemitism. This B-movie was taking on the subject the same year as the A-list Gentleman's Agreement.

Except the book it was based on wasn't about anti-semitism. That novel, "The Brick Foxhole," written by future movie writer-director Richard Brooks, didn't have a Jewish murder victim. In it, the man was homosexual, but it would take a few more decades before Society and Hollywood would have the grit to tackle that, without putting its own derogatory coloring on it. But, Dmytryck was determined to make a statement out of it, especially in light—or dark—of the Holocaust of the recent war. And he couched it in a film noir with two separate investigators, three actors named Robert, and a whole lotta flashbacks.

That opening scene is a chiaroscuro portrayal of the murder of one Joseph Samuels (Sam Levene) and it's up to police Captain Finlay (Robert Young) to track down the culprit who beat Samuels savagely to death. The first to talk is Samuels' girlfriend who found the body. From her and a wallet found at the crime scene, Finlay finds out with whom she and Samuels had drinks with earlier. Then, a knock at the door reveals "Monty" Montgomery (Robert Ryan), who knows what the girl-friend is talking about and tells his side of the story, giving Finley leads...and three suspects. But, no motive.

What's different is that the three suspects are all pre-deployment soldiers in the U.S., not unlike Monty himself. And the most suspicion falls on Mitchell (George Cooper), who was there that night, and has had a rough time of it in the Army. His sergeant, Keeley (Robert Mitchum) explains: "He's homesick. He's wifesick. Maybe she said something in one of her letters that made him suspicious of her love life. I don't know. Anyway, he's got snakes. He's been nuts. But not nuts enough to kill somebody." Keeley's friends with Mitchell and has tried to get his wife to visit him to straighten him out. Instead, Mitchell's been going sweet on a bar hostess (Gloria Grahame), who may or may not be married, but is only interested in him for the booze he buys while she's keeping him company.

Sgt. Keeley starts his own investigation, trying to protect his pal, Mitchell, from Finley and the cops and to find out what happened that night in Samuels' apartment before Finley can find and arrest him. He finds Mitchell in a movie theater and is able to find out that Mitchell and two other soldiers had drinks with Samuels before going to the scene of the crime. And then murder happened. But why? Finley's interview with another soldier, Floyd (Steve Brodie) doesn't reveal any motive.

It's when Finley and Keeley's parallel investigations stop working at cross-purposes and they begin to collaborate that it becomes clear that it was a hate crime, and their interview with Grahame bar-hostess and another pertinent murder points them to the real culprit and his impulses which seem to run counter to what the war that was just won was all about, and that the underlying issues of that war have their own parallels imbedded inside the United States, as well. Finley sums it up in one of the tidy little speeches in the film: "Hating is always the same, always senseless. One day it kills Irish Catholics, the next day Jews, the next day Protestants, the next day Quakers. It's hard to stop. It can end up killing men who wear striped neckties. Or people from Tennessee."

The film was a wake-up call hidden inside a police thriller, with the dark hues of the grimier, more cynical post-war sensibilities that were the underpinnings of the film-noir genre. But, rather than cut-throat gangsters and the criminally-motivated, Crossfire hit closer to home. It garnered Academy Award nominations for Grahame and Ryan, as well as for director and screenplay. It also is one of the few films in the B-movie domain of the noir films to be nominated for Best Picture.

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.