Shane

Shane (George Stevens, 1953) George Stevens came back from World War II a changed man...and a changed director. As documented in Mark Harris' book "Five Came Back" and its subsequent documentary, Stevens had started his career a director of comedies, but, after the war, he became a different film-maker. His service in the Second World War was in the combat motion picture unit from 1944 to 1946, where he documented the landing at Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of Paris and the uncovering of the horrors at the Dachau concentration camp, where he stated that he realized his function deepened from simple documentarian to collecting evidence of the greatest atrocities of the century. His footage was crucial in the post-war Nazi trials, but, he found no solace in the role he played. As he wrote to his first wife in 1945 "if it hadn't been for your letters . . . there would have been nothing to think cheerfully about, because you know that I find much [of] this difficult to believe in fundamentally."

 

Coming back from the war, he co-founded Liberty Films with fellow Army Signal Corpsmen Frank Capra and William Wyler, but made no films for the fledgling production house and the company folded. He would not make another film until I Remember Mama (1948), a film that bore some resemblance to his own upbringing in America. Then, 1951's A Place in the Sun, a dark tale of a man's duplicity and fall from grace, won him an Academy Award for Best Director. 

 

His follow-up film was far-afield from the subject matter that was associated with Stevens both pre-war and post-war—a Western that sharply demarcated right and wrong, almost naively making a world where good wins out over bad, without the complications and hollow justifications of an adult sensibility, Shane. 

In the Jackson Hole Valley of the Grand Tetons, the family Starrett are homesteading in a wild area still trod by deer and elk. In fact, in one miraculous shot an elk frames an approaching stranger between its antlers. When Joe jr. (Brandon De Wilde), out stalking deer with his bullet-less rifle, spots the stranger coming onto their land, he alerts his Pa (Van Heflin), who is still trying to get rid of a stump he's been hacking away at for months. He and wife Marian (Jean Arthur) have been homesteading in Jackson Hole for some time, but he is frequently being sabotaged by cattle baron Rufus Ryker (Emile Meyer), who claims the land as his for grazing rights and has made it a campaign to rid the valley of "squatters," by having his men (including Ben Johnson and John Dierkes) run roughshod over Starrett's and the other homesteaders' properties).

So, Joe Sr. isn't altogether welcoming, seeing a stranger enter his property. He tells the buckskin wearing newcomer (Alan Ladd), who is suspiciously vague about what he's dong there, to vamoose.

As bad luck would have it, before Shane can reach the fence, Ryker and his goons show up with news. It seems Ryker is going to be providing beef for the nearby reservation and he needs Starrett's land for them to graze. Joe refuses and things start to get testy, until, finally, Ryker starts making threats.

At which point, the stranger re-enters the scene and introduces himself as "a friend of Starrett's" and seeing how he's armed, too, Ryker backs off with a final warning to clear out or the Rykers will clear them out themselves. The stranger's intervention casts him in a different light to Starrett, and introductions are made.

The stranger's name is "Shane." Just "Shane." No indication if that's christian or surname. And, for his stance on behalf of Starrett's family he's invited to stay the night and have a meal, which he compliments as "an elegant dinner." Then, without any prompting, he goes out and works on cutting out that stump as a thanks. Starrett goes out to help and between the two of them, they're able to clear the stump at night-fall, a task that the homesteader had been working on weeks. Starrett asks if Shane wants to work there, as he most certainly seems to want to help.

So, who is Shane? He doesn't say where he came from, and as to where he's going? "Heading North—one place or 'nother. Some place I haven't been." Some place he isn't known is what he means. That would seem to be a contradiction as he's quiet. Polite. Keeps his counsel. Knows his place even if he doesn't have a place. He's rootless...in a community trying to establish them. He feels comfortable there, despite that, but never so comfortable that he can't be snapped out of it at the first sign of trouble. He doesn't make trouble, but he's seen enough to know trouble will almost certainly come to him as it seems to have come to him in the past.

He's twitchy. When little Joey pumps his unloaded rifle, Shane whips around, ready to draw down on him. He's haunted, probably because of his skill with a gun and having had to use it. And he's ridden into a situation where trouble could come from across the fence, ready to tear that fence down if it's in the way. Ryker is one of those breed of men who fought hard to establish his stake and will fight just as hard to keep things the way they were when there was no one else but him. He's not interested in community—he's all the community he needs—and he resents seeing what he thinks is his from being parceled out to newcomers. To "others."

It's why the homesteaders are being harassed. Some have suffered enough intimidation that they're threatening to leave and it's only the entreaties of Starrett that keep them from leaving. Shane, himself, is on the receiving end of those taunts from one of Ryker's men, Calloway (Johnson), which ultimately leads to an old-fashioned bar-fight that wrecks the Grafton bar. Given the intervention of Shane into the struggle, Ryker brings in reinforcements, a sadistic gunfighter named Jack Wilson (Jack Palance), who takes a satisfied glee in gunning down anyone he can provoke into a fight.

For a Western of that era, Stevens ramped up the level of violence than what audiences were used to. His fights were messy affairs that were tightly edited to maximize the cuts and scrapes one associated with the usual dust-ups. And anyone seeing Shane remembers the shoot-outs where a bullet could propel a person backwards like they were yanked off their feet (which they were, due to some discrete cabling).

In such a world it's no wonder that Marian Starrett tells her young son "Joey, don't get to liking Shane too much." There's always the possibility that a man such as Shane won't be sticking around for too long, whether riding out of town or being buried in the cemetery that overlooks the slip of a town. But, the kid can't really help himself. Shane is something of a mystery, not saying much, but giving the child the same level of attention as he does the father and the mother. That makes an impression on a kid. And his proficiency with his fists and his guns—all fascinating to little Joey—endears the man to the boy.*

Stevens is playing with Myth in Shane, and nowhere so boldly as in little Joey's hero-worship of the competent stranger, his version of a White Knight, who gives him a lesson in strength in restraint (something Joey doesn't quite comprehend) as well as the cold competency in "doing what has to be done." To standing up in the face of wickedness, not backing down, no matter the consequences, and fighting the good fight. At times, it's almost too much, with Stevens cutting back and forth between fights and Joey's wide-eyed reactions to the fireworks.

And it all comes to a head when, once the killing is done, Shane takes his leave, having brought resolution—but hardly peace—to Jackson Hole. The dirty work is done, and just as there was no place for a killer like Wilson, there isn't for Shane, either. And despite the child's entreaties, there is no going back...not from what you've done. And not from what you've seen. It's a weird scene, simultaneously a bit over the top, but also punches the gut on an emotional level. Even more so when you take in George Stevens' history in the war.

That ending resonates...and haunts. Not so much as a small child's plaintive pleas, but of the echoes embedded in them of a director who had seen the worst atrocities perpetrated by man, and, through that boy, implores the darkening wilderness for a world of forbearance and a return of the merely and simply decent. 

In context, Shane is so much more than "a Western", and is heart-breaking. Fundamentally.

 

* And to the point, author Raymond Chandler (who'd written a couple of Ladd's noirish movies) had said this about Ladd some years earlier: "Ladd is hard, bitter and occasionally charming, but he is after all a small boy's idea of a tough guy."

The Big Knife

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day

The Big Knife (Robert Aldrich, 1955) 

"Odets, where is thy sting?" George S. Kaufman 

How much you like this movie depends on how much you like Clifford Odets and his writing. 

Me, not so much. 

Clifford Odets has always grated on me, his writing seeming like a creative writing parody of Tennesee Williams. He's of the "cookie made out of arsenic" school,* where every metaphor is tortured and every character is an overwrought drama-queen, pontificating in the most flowery way possible their transparently obvious thoughts, often at the top of their lungs. Their world comes down to good and bad, the bad being moustache twirling scene-stealers and the good down-trodden martyrs. It's a theater-world as realistic as a proscenium arch and as subtle as projecting to the back of the house. 

The Big Knife is no better. An "exposé" of Hollywood corruption written in the '40's, but filmed in 1955—a decade saturated with industry self-loathing—the film suffers from its over the top theatricality. Robert Aldrich has never been the most tasteful of directors, but his stylishness with dreck has never been questioned. He can make chopped liver look like foie gras (even though it still tastes like chopped liver). Directing The Big Knife** (the year after directing the brutal, but terrific Kiss Me Deadly) he barely leaves the ornate living room of screen idol Charlie Castle, nee Charlie Cass (Jack Palance), well-payed but agonizing over signing a seven-year contract with a studio that might not be artistically fulfilling. At the time of the signing, he's artistically throwing himself into a boxing picture, so already his motivations are suspect. Mrs. Castle (Ida Lupino), recently separated from Castle, doesn't want him to sign (they're separated for Castle's philandering—what does she care?).

The reason Charlie's even considering signing is the hit-and-run accident that the studio has covered up to keep Castle's reputation with the public spot-less. And studio chief Stanley Shriner Hoff (Rod Steiger) is only too willing to spill the beans if Castle doesn't co-operate and limits his work to his studio. As a signing bonus the studio just might eliminate the only witness to the case (Shelley Winters).

Odets prided himself on being of the "Kitchen Sink" school, but here he expects you to feel sorry for the plight of the privileged boo-hooing through their silk handkerchiefs rather than tissue paper. By the time of writing "The Big Knife," Odets was making good money, so maybe it was more artistically fulfilling to write about his contemporaries "in the biz," than take on the troubles of Ma and Pa Average. He also has no problems with Charlie being a perpetual letch and philanderer, but "a sell-out?" Horrors! One might ask Frances Farmer her opinion of his choices. 

John Garfield, who was Odets' stage mouth-piece, played Castle on Broadway in 1949. But the role is beyond Jack Palance—he didn't yet have the polish to play (or be) a Hollywood leading-man, so he mostly just seethes and heaves himself around the room. Ida Lupino, one of the best actresses around, is reduced to soap opera sop work here. The only actors who seem able to cope with Odets' purple prose are Winters with a force of cluelessness and Steiger, who just powers his way through like a bull—no hesitations, no apologies, which works well for the character—a studio mogul of the Louis B. Mayer/Harry Cohn ferocity. 

The final act of the film is a mess of theatrical hysteria and misdirection that compresses a lot of story and reactions off-screen, while a running narrative informs us (or rather misinforms) about what all that hub-bub is upstairs. Perhaps Aldrich rushed through it to cut through the giggle factor, but the material is lumpen at any speed. You need a bigger knife than this movie's got to make it play.

 

* A bit "on-the-nose", that, as Odets wrote that line for The Sweet Smell of Success.

** I keep seeing The Big Knife being referred to as a film noir. Nah. Sure, it's got a gritty title, and it's filmed in black and white, and the souls are sordid and Aldrich directed noirs--but, this is as much a film noir as The Oscar is!

The Professionals

The Professionals (Richard Brooks, 1966) In this post-modern Western (post-A Fistful of Dollars and pre-The Wild Bunch), a ranching tycoon (Ralph Bellamy) hires three soldiers-of-fortune, late of the Mexican Revolution, to rescue his wife Maria (Claudia Cardinale), who has been kidnapped by a Mexican revolutionary-turned-bandit, Jesus Raza (Jack Palance), the ransom being $100,000. The wages are $10,000 per man for a 9 day job. The three are Henry "Rico" Fardan (Lee Marvin), Jake Sharp (Woody Strode) and Hans Ehrengard (Robert Ryan), all with different skill-sets and temperaments, for a job that will require stealth, intricate planning, and an assault on an extremely well-guarded encampment deep in Mexico.

Fardan is a weapons expert, Sharp, a former Apache scout and expert with a bow, silent and precise, while Ehrengard is a horse wrangler, with a regard for his charges, more than he does for human beings. 

There's just one man missing: Bill Dolworth (Burt Lancaster), explosives expert. Fardan wants him for that expertise, but also because he and Dolworth rode with Pancho Villa during the Revolution, alongside Raza. But, sentimentality aside, they've been hired for a job and will ride against their former band-mate, and their history with him may prove valuable in the task. It's a job, pure and simple. It won't remain either.

The four start tracking Raza's gang to get a sense of tactics and escape routes. Dolworth sets up explosives in a particularly tight cliff-pass for their end-game, that can be abetted by a train route, the government transport which they spy Raza's men commandeering, while slaughtering all of the Mexican troops on-board. The small troop of professionals don't interfere and Ehrengard is aghast, but Dolworth explains that those troops were dangerous cut-throats who had been responsible for the destruction of a village, killing Fardan's wife in the process.

But, the train will making a handy means of escape to the mountains after the attack on Raza's encampment, so the four take on Raza's men and take it over. Now, they have a quick way to retreat. But now, the tough part begins: an assault on Raza's stronghold under cover of darkness and try to take Maria back. Ehrengard stays behind with the train while Fardan, Dolworth and Sharp continue the rest of the way, three men against a well-armed fortress.

Raza's place is scouted, the sentries timed, dynamite placed, the two biggest targets being a water tower and a machine-gun placement. For Fardan and Dolworth, it's set and forget, giving them an opportunity to get to the area where Maria is being kept, while Sharp—with arrows tricked up with dynamite—provides cover and distraction. Dolworth has the explosives on timed fuses, so there will be ample explosions to send Raza's men scurrying, with Sharp given the opportunity to improvise.

But, when professionals plan, God laughs. There's always got to be a surprise and The Professionals turns on a single phrase: "We've been had, amigo..." Their mission turns out out to be made on a false premise, and it's then that the four have to make decisions of conscience, for which the time in the revolution has provided ample experience. "Maybe there's only one revolution since the beginning: the good guys versus the bad guys. Trouble is, who are the good guys?" And can good guys do inherently good, even when their job is bad...

Oh, and since they have the woman, they have to find a way to get her back...and stay alive while doing so. It won't be made any easier by the fact that the train they have in waiting has been taken back by Garza's men, who have taken Ehrengard hostage...and they're not interested in any ransom—but maybe a trade will do. Maybe.

Brooks' film (based on Frank O'Rourke's "A Mule for the Marquesa") is a nifty little variation on John Ford's The Searchers, but has nothing to do with that film's underlying motivation of family cohesion and race hatred or hysteria. Here, it's all business that sets the search in motion, not family, and in the course of the film, it happens to turn that film's premise on its ear. Things are done for convenience, things are done for commerce, things are done for compromise. There's no passion here, it's a transaction. But, passion wins out in the end.

It's another of those macho films with a woman at the center of it, and its focus—even when Cardinale's Maria isn't on the screen, the characters are always pondering "What makes a woman worth $100,000?" It finally succumbs to a rough-hided romanticism, as if any of the characters would admit to it (which they wouldn't as their credo is usually demonstrated by actions and not words) that might be revolutionary echoes or merely respect. The dialog does get a little too philosophical in intent, but it does have one heck of a clever come-back at the end. And it's an entertaining ride.

There'll be another of the Western genre's "Searchers spin-off's" next week.

The Silver Chalice

The Silver Chalice (Victor Saville, 1954) Legend has it that when The Silver Chalice was first scheduled to appear on television, Paul Newman—who made his debut in the film—purchased an ad in Variety emploring people not to watch it. The movie was horrible and he was terrible in it, being the reasons.

Paul Newman was rarely wrong. And I can only hoist a glass of Newman's Own Virgin Lemonade to him that he was right on the money about this one.

No doubt designed to repeat the success of 20th Century Fox's 1953 adaptation of The Robe, The Silver Chalice is quite another kettle of loaves and fishes. Sure, they're both religious epics based on historical novels surrounding Christian relics and filmed in Cinemascope (to lure the crowd from their little television boxes). Sure, they have charismatic young stars making names for themselves (Richard Burton, Paul Newman). Sure, they're both movies.

Newman, trying to look casual in a toga.

But, The Robe is big in scope and epic in scale. A "cast of thousands" kind of thing. The Silver Chalice looks like it was shot in the studio with available crew as extras. It starts out with crowded street scenes, but eventually everybody goes home and the streets are deserted and bare, often resembling a bare stage with some odd architecture that might fit well in a movie designed by William Cameron Menzies. The interiors are "Star Trek" (the series) simple, done with an emphasis on stretched space for Cinemascope and design. The exteriors are achieved by model overlays obscuring the stages and lights.

The sets are "Star Trek" simple. 3rd SEASON "Star Trek" simple.

The plot is rather simple, too: Basil (Newman as an adult), a talented sculptor in Greece, is sold to a rich childless nobleman (E.G. Marshall) to be his son and heir, much to the consternation of Mr. Noble's brother. When the patriarch dies, Basil is sold into slavery, due to the corrupt machinations of the brother, the magistrate, and the craven testimony of one of the witnesses. Basil becomes a sculptor for a local artisan wanting to increase his trade. Upon adulthood, he is sold to Joseph of Arimathea, one of Christ's apostles, who tasks Basil with creating a silver chalice for the cup Jesus used at the Last Supper, to be designed with the faces of the Apostles and Christ.

Things are tough in Lego-Jerusalem

There is a side-story of the slave girl Helena (Natalie Wood as a child, Virginia Mayo as an adult—which defies belief) who becomes the courtesan and assistant of Simon the Mage (Jack Palance), a magician of simple illusions. Simon is approached by a sect leader (Joseph Wiseman) in Jerusalem, who sees the rise of Christianity as a "sapping of manhood" of the populace rising against Rome by following the ways of love and peace. In Simon, he sees an impressive, less passive alternative to Jesus and his miracles ("A true miracle is nothing but a good trick," says Wiseman's rabble-rouser, "They were VERY good," says Simon admiringly).

Helena and Basil have a "thing," but he is attracted to Deborah (Pier Angeli), a devout Christian. Although Basil does wonders with the faces of the Apostles, he has a block when it comes to Jesus, unable to capture his face to anyone's satisfaction. It is only when he travels to Rome, and with the love of Deborah, that the true face of Jesus is revealed to him.

Let's just call this bust of Jesus a work in progress.

The design of the The Silver Chalice (credited to Rolfe Gerard) is cheesy, a low-budget compromise to the vistas and exotica of DeMille and The Robe and the religious mainstays of the 1950's. But, the dialogue is the issue, a too-formal-by-half torturing of "marmish" speaking that turns lines of dialogue into paragraphs.* Nobody does well with this falderal, but Newman can't seem to find a grasp of it or any sense of human feeling to it. He sounds like he's reciting. The ones that fare best are the stentorians—like Alexander Scoursby and Lorne Greene—who deal with the purple dialogue by playing it without any sense of humor or irony, reading it like it was the Gettysberg Address, not unlike the way DeMille's actors intoned their way through his films. A lot of the acting is egregious with Wiseman coming off the best—he plays everything like he's grousing about a bad meal—Newman the worst, and Palance...Palance is off doing his own thing, but then, he's playing something of a demented charlatan, which is sometimes amusing, sometimes very puzzling.

Palance: what the hell is he doing...what the hell is he WEARING?

It's a mess, not unlike watching an Ed Wood movie, but with the disappointing sense that there is taste and intelligence not working somewhere. It just goes to show that if you're making a religious movie, you need a miracle or two to pull it off.

* Shakespeare is easier than this drivel. Harrison Ford threw a great line at George Lucas during the filming of Star Wars: "You can't speak this shit. It can only be typed." But that stilted B-dialogue of the old serials is brilliant next to this narration posing as dialogue. Newman must have had a hell of a time trying to dig out "the truth" of this doggerel with $5 words. There is no "method" here, only madness.