The Search (1948)

The Search (Fred Zinnemann, 1948) "Ich weiss nicht" It's the only thing that comes out of the mouth of a small Czech boy (Ivan Jandl), a refugee from a concentration camp, now in post-war Germany. He is mostly silent and that makes it hard for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration to identify him and try to reunite him with family. His only mark of identification is an arm tattoo from Auschwitz—A24328. All the UNRRA staff can do is to keep him fed, clean, and safe...until something, or someone, turns up. Anything else would make looking for a needle in a haystack look easy. But, they keep trying. If no one turns up, the kids move to another location...maybe there, a miracle will happen.

But, they can't stop the kid's memories. When he gets put on a transport to go to another UNRRA site, the memories of the trip to Auschwitz kick in. Uniforms. Ambulances. Like the Nazis used. He and another kid bolt and when they get to the river, the other kid falls in and drowns. His body is found, as well as the cap of the Czech kid, so the assumption is both boys drowned.

But, the boy, Karel, is alive. And he makes his way through the ruined city scratching out an existence among the rubble and refuse.

Unbeknownst to him, his mother, Hanna Malik (Jarmila Novotna) has also survived the camps and is searching for him throughout the UNRRA facilities. And the chances of finding her boy are as unlikely as him finding her. At one Catholic orphanage, she finds that there's a young boy named Karel Malik...but the boy is not hers—he merely responded to the name when no one else did. She goes to find another facility and another chance at hope, finally arriving at the center where Karel was first staying, only to learn that he drowned during his escape. Hanna refuses to give up hope, even in the face of being presented Karel's cap found in the river.

Meanwhile, Karel has found something—a jeep. One being used by Army engineer Ralph Stevenson (Montgomery Clift). Ralph has seen these kids before, but this kid speaks no English, doesn't say anything, and "Steve" determines that he'll try and find out who he is and where he came from. Giving the kid the name "Jim," he sets him up in the billet he shares with Jerry Fisher (Wendell Corey), who's about to be sent back stateside and starts a rudimentary course on English. When Fisher's wife and kid visit, it jogs Karel/"Jim"'s memory that the last time he saw his mother was when they were segregated at Auschwitz, with one last kiss through the chain-link fence separating them. "Steve" concludes that the kid's mother is dead. But, he'll keep looking...and adopt the kid to bring him back to the States if all else fails.

That the two will be re-united is slim, but Zinnemann's film keeps teasing with close calls and missed chances that raise the stakes and increase the tension. It would be maddeningly Hollywood if it wasn't staged in the obvious hell-scape of post-war Germany and shot almost like a documentary (the crew consisted of merely ten Swiss technicians)...and if the performances by all concerned weren't so naturalistic that they feel lived in, rather than performed. It's Clift's first released movie—he'd already filmed Red River—and he's so loose and relaxed—always chewing gum—that you might confuse him for a regular G.I. that the camera just happened to find. Aline MacMahon as the most visible member of the UNRRA seems like a government drone, spouting platitudes, but keeping just enough reserve to keep the hopelessness at bay. Novotna and Jandl are both Czech—and Jandl really couldn't speak English when the movie's filming started, so Clift was teaching him for real—so, the film feels like a cross between a documentary and an Army Training Film. 

To think this was the film Zinnemann made after My Brother Talks to Horses! Those two films couldn't be more different in tone and verisimilitude, the first laden with studio artifice and ladled on saccharine and the second, lean and spare and natural, almost neorealist. The Search serves as the turning point of the director's career, creating something fast, cheap, and compelling, while not under the watchful eye of home studio M-G-M. It's one of those special movies that seems to subvert all expectations and turns into a classic despite all odds, and another one of those post-War films about trying to pick up the pieces and putting something back together...after the world has been torn asunder.

From Here to Eternity

From Here to Eternity (Fred Zinnemann, 1953) One shouldn't study war, but my family has a personal connection with Pearl Harbor. My Dad was there and survived it...barely. And, as a result, never wanted to go to Hawaii again. My mother told me that when he returned from the war—he was in it for the duration—for the first year, he would wake up every night screaming.

That says more to me about the events of Pearl Harbor than any movie, documentary, or chronicling...and there have been many, many of them, starting with Remember Pearl Harbor (in 1942), John Ford and Gregg Toland's documentary—December 7th—from 1943 and Howard Hawks' Air Force (also 1943), which were rushed into production soon after the event, when most of what was known about the incident was heavily censored by the government—relatives got post-cards from attack survivors that allowed them to check boxes about their condition but that was it. And that was all.

There have been quite a few movies since and it seems most of the films coming out of the 40's paid lip-service to Pearl, producer Darryl Zanuck made a by-the-book film about it in 1970, utilizing both American and Japanese directors (at one point Akira Kurosawa was attached) and Michael Bay saw good explosion material when he saw it, so he made his in 2001, which I resented a bit as he paid more attention to the bombs than he did the people.

But, the one that most people (of a certain age) remember is From Here to Eternity because of its rather mature story, its all-star cast at the top of their respective games, and as it's settled into its own folklore—George Reeves' part in it, "that" kiss in the surf (Criminy, it's the scene on the cover of all the video releases), the "Sinatra story"—a timelessness that, even though it couldn't go as far as the book in its themes, keeps it in its status as a classic even today as the people who have claimed to watch it dwindle. It's still fresh, it's still surprising, despite the restrictions put on it "in the day."

The basic idea behind it is a variation of the Casablanca line: "The problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." Pearl Harbor in the days before the attack is a little too concerned about matters other than defense that—along with the strategic issues explored in Tora! Tora! Tora!—sets it up to be a very complacent sitting duck for any well-planned and coordinated attack...for those willing to take advantage of it. If, as the apocrypha says, that Admiral Yamamoto compared America to a sleeping giant, most of the sleeping around, according to From Here to Eternity, was going on at Pearl.

What the novel—and the movie (at least as much as the Armed Forces allowed it)—implied was that there was a lethargy where the company commander, Captain Holmes (Philip Ober) is more concerned about a boxing competition than the defense of the base, so much so that he allows the systemic abuse of Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) for his refusal to participate in that competition. Prewitt is enough of an obstinate outlier that he takes the abuse—the beatings, the extra duty, the demeaning—rather than give in. It's not that Prewett is a bad soldier, he's just different. He plays trumpet, but not for the service. He's more a jazz man, playing outside the lines—disciplined, sure, and will do a by-the-book rendition of taps for his pal, Maggio (Frank Sinatra) because it's right—but Prewitt is not a lock-step marcher. He will take the abuse for his principles, but will not tolerate it being applied to others.

The situation is noted by Sgt. Milton Warden (Burt Lancaster), who cannot go against his company commander, but can encourage Prewett, even defend him in specific circumstances. That this view is complicated by Warden's affair with his commander's wife (Deborah Kerr) only makes him more conflicted, maybe slightly hesitant, to not buck the system, even in the face of seeing things he knows is wrong. Warden chooses his battles. And when one comes to him on December 7th, it is he who leads the defensive efforts.

If you haven't seen it, it's another one to put on the Bucket of Popcorn List. It's intelligent melodrama—although it is melodrama (most movies are, kids)—that dares to not end on a happy or even hopeful note, but ends with shattered men and shattered lives—with a war going on in the background. It also puts a lit to the trope that "All's Fair in Love and War."

No. Nothing's fair. In either. And the only victory is to survive it.

Like my Dad did.

Judgment at Nuremberg

Judgment at Nuremberg (Stanley Kramer, 1961) It was Katharine Hepburn who shepherded this film from its origins as an episode of "Playhouse 90"* to this version as a three hour epic.** The movie is padded with shots of Spencer Tracy touring the city (still in rubble in 1960, twelve years after the judges trials at Nuremberg***), and background of the characters, including a chaste meeting of minds with a Nazi widow (Marlene Dietrich, still oozing mystery at the age of 60). Screenwriter Abby Mann makes the citizenry complicit in his expanded screenplay, despite their protestations of ignorance. And the military at the time of the trial was in the middle of the Berlin Airlift, their attention now turned to "the Bolsheviks" and cozying up to Germany for strategic advantage, casting the worth and even the result of the trial in question for political expediency. The movie is allowed much more cynicism than the Playhouse 90 broadcast, where the words "gas chambers" were subject to censorship by sponsor The American Gas Association.

The movie threatens to swamp itself with star-power but leavened it by Tracy disappearing into his role. Maximilian Schell repeats his television performance (winning an Oscar in the process, as did Mann for his adaptation). Of the newcomers, the best performances are Montgomery Clift in face and body language denoting a characters damaged by the brutality of the Nazi regime. And Judy Garland, who'd always seemed like a raw nerve in her films, acts merely from the neck up—and that's all that's required. Not as controlled are Richard Widmark, whose prosecutor is a bit too demonstrative in private for a courtroom strategist, and Burt Lancaster, given a great speech but, a weakness of the actor, aware of it. Laurence Olivier was intended to play German Ernst Janning, but dropped out. I'm not sure that would have been an improvement, but it would have been interesting.

Kramer struggles with the material; he would later become an expert on courtroom directing. But here, he's more intent on making the drama look interesting with camera moves by circling witnesses and, most egregiously, using a fast zoom to zero in on a dramatic moment. It's used sparingly, but even that's too much for the material. He would learn to trust his actors and inherent drama of the scene to carry it.

But, Judgement at Nuremberg manages to be something that eludes most Kramer films—it's a bit more timeless, especially in regards to the short-sightedness of chipping away at bedrock principles for today's political viability and the future's further erosion. One could be speaking of water boarding as torture in Abby Mann's summation speech.

****

Read it. Read the whole thing. But linger on the words after the picture below.

Judge Haywood: The trial conducted before this Tribunal began over eight months ago. The record of evidence is more than ten thousand pages long, and final arguments of counsel have been concluded.

Simple murders and atrocities do not constitute the gravamen of the charges in this indictment. Rather, the charge is that of conscious participation in a nationwide, government organized system of cruelty and injustice in violation of every moral and legal principle known to all civilized nations. The Tribunal has carefully studied the record and found therein abundant evidence to support beyond a reasonable doubt the charges against these defendants.

Herr Rolfe, in his very skillful defense, has asserted that there are others who must share the ultimate responsibility for what happened here in Germany. There is truth in this. The real complaining party at the bar in this courtroom is civilization. But the Tribunal does say that the men in the dock are responsible for their actions, men who sat in black robes in judgment on other men, men who took part in the enactment of laws and decrees, the purpose of which was the extermination of humans beings, men who in executive positions actively participated in the enforcement of these laws -- illegal even under German law. The principle of criminal law in every civilized society has this in common: Any person who sways another to commit murder, any person who furnishes the lethal weapon for the purpose of the crime, any person who is an accessory to the crime -- is guilty.

Herr Rolfe further asserts that the defendant, Janning, was an extraordinary jurist and acted in what he thought was the best interest of this country. There is truth in this also. Janning, to be sure, is a tragic figure. We believe he loathed the evil he did. But compassion for the present torture of his soul must not beget forgetfulness of the torture and the death of millions by the Government of which he was a part. Janning's record and his fate illuminate the most shattering truth that has emerged from this trial: If he and all of the other defendants had been degraded perverts, if all of the leaders of the Third Reich had been sadistic monsters and maniacs, then these events would have no more moral significance than an earthquake, or any other natural catastrophe. But this trial has shown that under a national crisis, ordinary -- even able and extraordinary -- men can delude themselves into the commission of crimes so vast and heinous that they beggar the imagination. No one who has sat at through trial can ever forget them: men sterilized because of political belief; a mockery made of friendship and faith; the murder of children. How easily it can happen.

There are those in our own country too who today speak of the "protection of country" -- of "survival." A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient -- to look the other way.

Well, the answer to that is "survival as what?" A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult!

Before the people of the world, let it now be noted that here, in our decision, this is what we stand for: justice, truth, and the value of a single human being.

* if you want to see it, it is here. 

 

** Probably to give her love and paramour Spencer Tracy another plumb acting role. His health (owing to his tendency to drink to excess) was always improved when he was working.

*** Although shots of Richard Widmark driving through the city are obvious process shots.

**** William Shatner's sitting in front of Tracy. Tracy was Shatner's hero and when he saw Tracy do the speech in one take, he blurted "I didn't know film actors could DO that!" Tracy shunned him for the rest of the shoot.

The Defector

The Defector (Raoul Levy, 1966) The Defector is mostly known for being the last film starring Montgomery Clift. That casts a pall over a minimalist spy film that already has a dark melancholy tone in stark relief to the high-contrast spate of spy films bring released at the time that had more to do with Fu Manchu and Dr. Mabuse than with anything to do with the real-life geo-politik of the Cold War. The Defector is a few Hitchcock steps below even his rather sedate Cold War thrillers Torn Curtain and Topaz, resembling the former in outline, but not in form.

The film is based on a 1963 Paul Thomas novel "L'Espion" which took advantage of the recent construction of the Berlin Wall (ground-breaking and barbed wire installed August 13, 1961) to expose the porousness of the wall (or its lack) in the early days of the physically divided city (as did the similar "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold," published the same year). Crossing over—by any means—became an act of heroism and defiance. It was the very stuff of drama in real life. But, what sort of person would make the attempt?

American physicist James Bower (Clift) is approached by a CIA operative (Roddy McDowell) who proposes Bower take a detour on his vacation to West Germany by making contact with an East German associate named Grushenko, who is willing to smuggle microfilm containing results of Russian missile tests to the West...but only if Bower will be the one who couriers it. The two are distant colleagues—one's in the U.S. and the other behind the Iron Curtain, so Bower is a little reluctant. But, when the CIA threatens to interfere with his grant processes, Bower agrees.

When Bower gets to the East, he is met—"welcomed" is too strong a word— by "Public Relations Counselor" Heinzmann (Hardy Kruger, the movies' second favorite Aryan after Oscar Werner), who has been tasked by party operative Orlovsky (David Opatashu) to take Bower's visa with the assurance that it will be returned once Bower gives him the location of Groshenko—which, at this point, Bower doesn't know. The American protests, but is powerless to do anything about it and so is released, but under surveillance. When he gets to his hotel, he finds that he's been moved, without his authorization, to another room. He calls the management, but they insist he stay in that room.

There's a reason for that,  Bower begins to hear voices, the phone rings with no one on the other end of the line, the room begins to spin and pretty soon Bower is completely disoriented as the East tries to brainwash Bower into revealing Grushenko's whereabouts. While Orlovsky pushes for more invasive means of persuasion, Heinzmann tells him that Bower will be his responsibility solely.

After the surreal brain-washing sequence, the movie turns into a true cat-and-mouse game as Bower attempts to make contact with Grushenko and must come up with a plan to cross the border into West Germany without the benefit of papers. Clift, despite being in poor health, does his own stunts, in a long semi-tense sequence where he must negotiate a waterway that is routinely guarded by soldiers who are alerted to looking for an American physicist.

The Defector is a perfunctory spy movie—one cannot use the word "thriller" ("confuser" might be a better term)—that is not without irony (can you make a spy film that doesn't have that?) and at least accomplishes its goal of having a beginning, middle and end...and a final bitter denouement, in which anything pure must be expunged. Nothing, really, can be done without sacrifice.

 

Clift died three months after making this movie.

Raoul Levy committed suicide six moths after the film hit theaters.  

Suddenly, Last Summer

Suddenly, Last Summer (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1957) A tawdry gothic-noir that was so compromised by concessions to the moral powers-that-be that nobody associated with its production ended up liking it, not the original author of the play, Tennessee Williams, not his co-screenwriter Gore Vidal, nor the director Joe Mankiewicz. Pity, as its an example of how Mankiewicz could juice up material directorially in a truly unsettling way when given the chance. And he had a great cast in Katherine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift (even in the semi-drug-addled condition he was in), Elizabeth Taylor and Mercedes McCambridge.

What's missing is the person everyone talks about—the late Sebastian Venable, (poet and narcissist) who died (suddenly) last summer, ostensibly of a heart attack, as the whispers state, but has nothing to do with the truth, which is damaging enough that his doting mother Violet (Hepburn) will do anything to keep it secret, even if it means lobotomizing her niece Catherine Holt (Taylor) who witnessed his death and has blanked it from her memory. Mother Violet entreats the local psychiatric hospital and its brilliant lobotomist Dr. Cukrowicz (Clift) to see if Catherine is a suitable case for treatment, with the promise of a large endowment if she can be "cured." "Cured" of the memory stuck in her head, and if not cured, silenced, whether institutionally or medically.

But what those memories are of that led to Sebastian's death "suddenly, last Summer" are only implied for the first 3/4 of the movie. In the first couple of movements battle lines are drawn as Cukrowicz first gets Vi's version of things (as he investigates why she wants to donate so much money to his institute), then, once questions are raised, tries to coax it out of the mostly comatose Catherine without success. The gist of it is that Catherine, at Sebastian's request, had replaced his mother as his traveling companion on his world-traveling jaunts from which he would produce his yearly published book of poems. That Summer, in the town of Cabeza De Lobo, Sebastian died, leaving no book and no issue.

Except for Catherine.  The play's third scene is the explanation in the drawing room scene if this were a detective novel, where Catherine, under the influence of sodium pentathol reveals all (from her point of view), and Mankiewicz goes to directorial town (his point of view) in a weird silent flashback that threatens to crowd out Taylor from the frame, and that veers wildly from realism to German expressionism to surrealism within the course of its run, containing some of the most bizarre imagery just outside the horror realm (or Salvadore Dali's dream sequence from Spellbound).

To tell you what it all means ruins the ending, except that the movie itself doesn't come right out and say anything, owing to the tenor of the times (meaning you couldn't be too explicit) and to the so-called community standards that this particular era of film-making was challenging. This was before ratings systems—G, PG-13, M, R, X and NC-17—but there was The Legion of Decency, over-run by the Catholic Church, that crossed itself, said five "Hail Mary's" and then banned your movie from being advertised. You couldn't talk about homosexuality, procurement, prostitution, drug use, pedophilia, and cannibalism except in closeted code, and the "Truth Serum" sequence obfuscates what's going on to the point of obtuseness. Williams wasn't entirely guilt-free of this; he was just as capable of pulling the shade over a naked light-bulb or turning pleurosis into "blue roses"—he made an art of it. But here, the mother-love perversity at the heart of so many of his plays runs on the hysterical side, and, try as he might, Mankiewicz can't make more of the empty book of poems than he can. All he can do is try and push Hepburn over the brink of sanity, after she's been doing wheelies near the edge that entire movie (Vivien Leigh nearly played the part; can you imagine?)

How far we have come since then—except, of course, for the cannibalism part (unless you were voted to the House of Representatives in 2010).

P.S. there's an excellent breakdown of the film, courtesy of The Last Drive-In, that did an excellent job of pulling screen-caps-two of which I cribbed above.

Liz Taylor glamour shot draped over the rail of an asylum