The Story of Mankind

Saturday is typically "Take Out the Trash" Day. And while this is not the worst movie I've ever seen, it certainly comes wretchedly close....

The Story of Mankind (Irwin Allen, 1956) Before becoming "The Master of Disaster" of 1970's cinema, and even before his tenure of TV sci-fi schlock-meister in the 1960's, Irwin Allen was making movies of indeterminate quality and low budgets, first with RKO, where he produced movies as package deals teaming actors, writers and directors. We talked about one of them, Double Dynamite, here. That one starred studio boss Howard Hughes' favorite, Jane Russell, a down-on-his-luck Frank Sinatra...and Groucho Marx. He produced another film—also starring Groucho—before making his directorial debut with a documentary version of Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us, a film that Carson loathed—she never again let Hollywood touch one of her books—but it managed to win the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. And because it relied largely of stock footage, it also managed to turn a tidy profit.

After moving from RKO to Warner Brothers, Allen made another documentary and then turned his attention to The Story of Mankind. Based on a Newbury Award-winning children's book,* published in 1921, Allen did a very (very!) loose adaptation**, again relying mostly on stock footage, and a large cast that were paid day-rates and shuffled through production as quickly as possible.

The film centers around "The High Tribunal of Outer Space"—basically a three-tiered court-bench, a couple of desks and a floor of fog, with a circle of extras and as cheap a set as has been used in Hollywood—where the High Judge (Cedric Hardwicke) is holding court. It seems that mankind has created a new weapon, a "Super-H-bomb" and the survival of the species is in the balance. So, a case is being made—not that it would apparently do any good—of whether mankind (or species-kind) should survive. Nothing is said of how the outcome will be dispensed or if any interference is going to be made to influence the outcome. 

At least, with a fantasy like A Matter of Life and Death, the stakes were small enough that events could be altered to accommodate the judgment, but here there is no apparent action—there evidently was no stock-footage available to make the point.

So, we're left with an impotent court-proceeding in judgment of mankind. It was a hoary concept then, and it was a hoary concept when Gene Roddenberry purloined it for the pilot of "Star Trek: The Next Generation". The prosecuting attorney arguing against the mass-plaintiff is Mr. Scratch, aka "The Devil" (played by Vincent Price, who seems to be the only player having a good time making the movie and who, therefore, seems to attract audience sympathy). For the defense is a singular non-entity called "The Spirit of Mankind" played by Ronald Colman (his last role) with the resigned air of a beleaguered "straight-man" going through the motions.

The Devil brings up all sorts of examples of humanity at its worst. Then, Allen illustrates it with set-design at its worst and trots out one of his day-players—John Carradine as Khufu, Peter Lorre as Nero, Virginia Mayo as Cleopatra (the script actually says "Yes, Cleopatra was quite a girl..."), Marie Wilson as Marie Antoinette (the way she squeaks "Let them eat cake!" will set your teeth on edge), and...wait for it...Dennis Hopper as Napoleon.

Peter Lorre's Nero is extremely illustrative of the whole exercise.

"The Spirit of Man" counters with Moses (Francis X. Bushman), Hippocrates (Charles Coburn), Hedy Lamarr as Joan of Arc—with one really unfortunate transition between scenes***—Queen Elizabeth I (Agnes Moorehead) and William Shakespeare (Reginald Gardiner), Sir Isaac Newton (Harpo Marx...Harpo Marx?!!), Christopher Columbus (Anthony Dexter explains his theory of a round Earth to a monk played by Chico Marx!!), Alexander Graham Bell (not Don Ameche, but Jim Ameche), then wraps things up with a plug for The Bible and a kid representing the potential of mankind. Judge Judy would have cleared the room in seconds...with her boots. 

As he did with his earlier documentaries, Allen bridges scenes that he shot with stock footage from other Warner films to make it appear that some money was spent on the thing and it wouldn't surprise if he cherry-picked figures from the History that he had available images for.

You could make an argument that it all was an attempt at "camp" if the serious parts weren't taken so seriously and the comedy bits didn't fall flatter than the American accents used by all these international figures. No, it's all "1950's-sincere," which is merely hilarious in retrospect for all the silly import imbued in the thing. "Camp" implies you know what you're doing.

But, I will confess to enjoying a couple of things. Price's performance is enjoyably arch, and played with his typical game commitment to bad material. If he betrayed on ounce of condescension, it wouldn't work or be as entertaining as it is and one has to admit, he's a Hell of a trooper.

And then there's a Groucho Marx moment in his embarrassing segment of Peter Minuit robbing the island of Manhattan from the Natives, who declare the proposition "robbery!" ("That's quite true, but is it a deal or isn't it?"). It's just one line, but it made me laugh out loud. When Groucho/Minuit meets with the all-too Anglo-depicted Indians, he is greeted with the stereotypical "How..." to which Groucho replies "Three minutes and leave them in the shell!"—a Marxian non sequitur of such head-spinning irrelevance that for a moment I thought the movie might actually be turning clever.

Needless worrying. The segment was racist, sexist, inaccurate, and (worst of all) unfunny, showing how off the Marx The Story of Mankind is.

It should be preceded with a warning:

* You can read "The Story of Mankind" at the Project Gutenberg site.

** Star Ronald Colman cracked the movie was "based on the notes on the dust-jacket."

 

*** 

"But...but...I'll be inventing cell-phones and 'Fizzies'!"

M (1931)

M (aka M-Eine Stadt sucht einen Mördor, Fritz Lang, 1931) A rash of child-murderers in the Weimar Republic led Fritz Lang and his then-wife Thea von Harbou to use it for what Lang wished to be a film about "the ugliest, most utterly loathsome crime."

He could only have topped it if he'd stayed in Germany and waited a few years. Indeed, when he was attempting to arrange the start of filming, he was refused the use of Staaken Studios, as the head of production was a Nazi and thought the working title—"Murderers Among Us"—would be critical of the up-and-coming political movement. One wonders why, if he thought that was the case, he wanted to be a Nazi Party member in the first place. Actually, given History and given people, one no longer wonders.

 

But, Lang's M had more things on its mind than just a film about a child murderer. Lang's films usually did.

Lang presents the emotional issue in one shot.

 

The film begins with an ironic sequence—children in a circle out on a street playing a counting-out game (where when a child is pointed at, they drop out, or disappear from the game) with a rhyme that has to do with a "man in black" who makes "mincemeat" out of children with a "cleaver's blade." One by one, children get eliminated. How's that for foreshadowing? The song is an annoyance to one of the women at the tenement who is taking her laundry up to be washed, and when she complains about the kids, the washer-woman says "At least if we hear them, we know they're safe."

Then, it's a good thing this is Lang's first film utilizing sound. And a cacophonous world it is, with street-noises, off-screen alarms and sirens...even the passage of time when her little girl doesn't arrive for her regular lunch is emphasized mockingly with a cuckoo clock. In fact, after the titles, the first thing we hear is that children's on-the-nose game-chant. When the little girl is late, the woman no longer depends on sound and goes looking, asking the other kids coming up the stairs if they'd seen her. Then, as if to emphasize that she's not coming, Lang shows her empty place at the table, the yawning empty staircase to her flat, the still basement—then, outside, telephone wires to which gets stuck a balloon that we had seen a man buying for her, then the girl's ball as it rolls...and becomes still.

Horrible things are done in this film, but Lang shows them off-screen, suggestively, and lets the audience do the dirty work, making us culpable. But, we're not alone in this. As fear grips the city, everyone becomes suspicious of each other. Talking to a kid on the street? You could be the murderer! The accusations are made directly to the camera, as if we're the guilty ones. Suspicions turn into accusations, and the police, under considerable political pressure starts to ramp up their investigation, looking in all those empty spaces for victims, rousting criminal hang-outs for clues, making the city sweat, especially those dens of iniquity where aberrant behavior are ever-present.

While the populace looks over their shoulders, buying up the hysterical headlines in the newspaper, squinting at any suspicious activity (or even not suspicious!), the criminal element begins to feel the heat and they determine to catch the pedophile by the means the police don't have at their disposal—their own spider's web of a network utilizing beggars on the street to keep an eye on every child. The police, meanwhile, are narrowing down their suspects and starting to close in. It's just a matter of who catches him first, the authorities or the outlaws.

We already know who it is: we've watched him (Peter Lorre) work, watched him write taunting letters to the paper, watched at how close he gets to getting caught and slip away. But, it's the investigations that take him out of the shadows and provide him with a name and a familiarity. We've listened as he whistled "In the Hall of the Mountain King" and fretted, even if we haven't seen him, but felt the tension increase. Then, when he's been marked, we watch as he struggles to avoid detection only to realize that it's not the police he has to fear, but everyone around him. The tables have been turned. The populace are no longer potential victims, but potential threats.

Murderers as victims. Criminals as detectives. The audience as co-conspirator. Lang's film—his favorite of his career—subverts so many elements to such devastating effect that's it's no wonder anyone who wants to make a thriller—at least a smart, cynical one—has borrowed from Lang's playbook for many years. And his parlaying of a black and white world into one where the colors are switched was so alarming to the Nazi's that once they seized power, they banned the film in July of 1934 (although they did use clips of it in their anti-Semitic propaganda). Seems they didn't want any moral complexity for the masses. Black is black and White is right and they got to choose what was good and evil in the Universe (they chose wrong). Lang saw child murderers as vermin. But, he also saw vigilantism and mob-think as dangerous, as well. The message he said he wanted to convey was "watch your children" not only to keep them from harm, but prevent them from becoming monsters, as well.

Casablanca (1942)

Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) Of all the films in all the film-houses in all the world...I've never written a review of Casablanca.

At least, I've seen it (only about a million times). A recent story on NPR's "Weekend Edition" had host Scott Simon interviewing a fellow who'd just gotten around to seeing the 1942 film for the first time (evidently that's what constitutes "news" these days). It reminded me of the time, my buddy-in-Bond, Frank, proudly announced that he had finally watched Casablanca (was it at the premiere of Skyfall or Spectre?) I think I asked him what he thought of it after congratulating him and I recall he said "Great!" (or something like that). 

It did, after all, win The Best Picture Oscar of 1944.

I've never written a review of Casablanca—not here or on any previous movie blog. Oh, there was the five-part series of "Don't Make a Scene" entries centered around what other character's think of Humphrey Bogart's character (under the collective title of "Deconstructing Rick") and that said a lot. There's no formal review of the film Casablanca, however, anywhere. It doesn't even show up as one of my "Anytime Movies"—those that I can watch anytime and have the power to keep me to the end, fascinated, over and over. Again, that series is most interesting to me for what's NOT on it than for what's on it.

And Casablanca isn't there.

Casablanca is legendary, because it should NOT have "worked." Production was a mess. Bogart got the role because George Raft and Ronald Reagan didn't play it. Ingrid Bergman was an unknown. Paul Heinreid had more audience appeal. The actors frequently didn't know "why" they were playing the scenes they were playing and were not sure how it would "end" (it's a rather brilliant strategy to not have the actors betray any fore-knowledge lest the audience catch on, but...really, they were still working on the script). It is not a movie of strong "auteur" sensibilities—but its Hungarian director, Michael Curtiz, manages to fill every frame to bursting and his filming strategies have been copied in the decades since, probably as much for nostalgic recognition factor as for the fact that the strategies are so...apt. It was based on a play that flopped, but it was cobbled together by two twin-brother writers and the estimable Howard Koch into a crazy quilt of conflicts and various sides.

Director Michael Curtiz told Bogart to nod, but didn't tell him what he was nodding for or at.
It's to cue the band to play "La Marsellies," an emotional high-point in the film,
and the first instance of Bogart resisting his urge to "stick my neck out for nobody."

And great lines. Quotable lines. Lines so memorable that they're mis-remembered:  "Play it, Sam." (NOT "play it again, Sam") "Here's looking at you, kid." "I am shocked, SHOCKED to find out that GAMBLING is going on in this facility." "I don't mind a parasite, I object to a cut-rate one." "I was misinformed." "Be careful! There are vultures, VULTURES everywhere." "I remember every detail—the Germans wore gray. You wore blue." "I'm going to die in Casablanca, it's a good spot for it." "We mustn't underestimate 'American blundering.' I was with them when they 'blundered' into Berlin in 1918." "I stick my neck out for nobody." "It would take a miracle to get you out of Casablanca and the Germans have outlawed miracles." "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." "Go ahead and shoot. You'll be doing me a favor." "Well, there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to try and invade." "And remember this gun is pointed right at your heart"--"That's my least vulnerable spot." "You'll get along beautifully in America." "Well, that's the way it goes—one in and one out." "Of all the gin-joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine." "I'm no good at being noble." "The problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." "We'll always have Paris." And the line that the Epstein brothers realized simultaneously in the middle of L.A. traffic would solve all their script problems: "Round up the usual suspects."

It's a film that exudes the exotic even though it was filmed in Burbank, on Warner stages combined with matte shots (like the one above--see any waves in that ocean?) filling in the details. Other legerdemain done on the cheap complete the picture; the scene below has the actors performing in front of a screen back-projected with model airplanes to improve the scope. It's something they did in the finale at an airport, where to give the proper distance they had model planes attended to by "little people," and lots of fog to increase the illusion.

They could get away with it because Curtiz directed and edited fast and the audience was concentrating on a convoluted plot with equal parts conflicted romance and cloak-and-luger politics played out by a terrific cast of Warner contract players and a new fresh-faced import from Sweden named Ingrid Bergman. Everything resonated. Women liked it...even though Bogart was hardly considered a romantic lead...until then. Men liked it...even if things didn't turn out by the dictates of billing.

And, it's hardly a glamorous story: an ex-pat American, Richard Blaine, is running a saloon in Casablanca where booze flows freely, the gambling is questionable and all the authorities are paid off; Rick's Cafe Americain is a going concern because it is a black market hide-out in a desperate city and its owner, Richard—call him "Rick" (but everybody calls him something different*)—keeps a surly dispassionate view on things. But, don't approach him unless you're working for him. He doesn't drink with the guests, he doesn't fraternize, he sits in lordly isolation at a table against the wall playing chess against himself and keeping an eye out for the glance directed his way by an employee looking for direction. Then, he simply nods and that's the last word. He doesn't get involved in the deals, in the tables, nothing. He keeps things orderly, but for the under-the-table dealings going on in the saloon he has one comeback: "I stick my neck out for nobody." 

On this particular day, there are rumors and desperation flying around: two German couriers who have "letters of transit" out of Morocco to Lisbon, gateway "to the Americas," have been found murdered, their much-sought-after documents missing. They mean freedom for anyone seeking asylum, but the police are stymied, doing what they normally do when they have no other option—"round up the usual suspects." Roust some people to intimidate and see what you can scare out of them. Under pressure from the Nazi's, their interest is in both the murderer and in the papers; but, the letters are in safe-keeping in the one place they don't suspect—hidden in the piano at the Cafe American, hiding in plain sight, Rick's non-commitment being their best camouflage.

But, even a Rick Blaine has his limits. As the original play-title says "Everybody Comes to Rick's" and that includes one particularly prominent (too prominent) Czech partisan named Victor Laszlo (Heinreid). Rick would only have a dispassionate on-looker's interest in Laszlo's struggles to evade Nazi capture, if not for one key element, one a burden that he will not neglect: he has a wife Ilsa Lund (a radiant Bergman).

Both Laszlo and Lund are unfamiliar travelers to Casablanca, but it is Ilsa who arrives at Rick's with extra baggage. She recognizes Sam (Dooley Wilson)—whom she refers to as as "the boy," the only hint of racial inequity in the film—the piano player, and where Sam is, Rick can't be too far away. It's obvious that Ilsa and Rick (and Sam) have a shared past, and he is determined to keep Rick from Ilsa. But, a song request brings on Rick, charging on Sam like a bull, with an accusation of...well, betrayal. But, that protest is cut short when a larger betrayal is brought to mind when he notices Ilsa, and he realizes he was pulled by a siren song, whose first line ("You must remember this...") is both a promise and a curse.

For probably his first time in Casablanca, things get personal for him, and he is pulled into a series of complex triangulations that he is uncomfortable with—triangulations of loyalty and partisanship that he has avoided since coming to the Moroccan city at the edge of freedom and despair. He finds himself just another fish in a small pond.

Rick recovers well, but he spends that eventful evening in an indulgent, sodden reverie (which we see, conveniently, in flashback) over a bottle (or five) in which he reaches the depths of his own personal despair, and for the rest of the movie, he conducts an inner battle with himself and his character, walking the maze of morality while trying to betray...nothing.

The character of Rick is a cypher—to the audience as well as the characters surrounding him in the movie, whether strangers or intimates. He is the big mystery in Casablanca, a man with no past (and professing no future), who must deal when confronted with it, and whose best weapon is his own veneer of inscrutability, walking among the powerful and the weak, with equal contempt showing for both. He is the puzzle at the center of Casablanca, the mystery that cannot be solved...except by himself.

So, why has Casablanca lasted so long? It has been 75 years.

Perhaps it has survived because it lays out a  landscape familiar to us as we shuffle through life—a morally indifferent cesspool where "life is cheap" and everything is expensively out of reach. The only thing worth less is one's word—loyalties are betrayed, women are not only not respected but treated like disposable playthings, authority is corrupt (quite happily and never apologetically), and where even a high-roller like Richard Blaine can stare at the business end of a gun and come to say "Go ahead and shoot, you'll be doing me a favor," but it's the best that one can do when one has been pushed to the water's edge by the Nazi's, and who do all of these things and worse, and have all the charm of a rubber stamp...and all of the conscience.

In such an atmosphere, an air of nihilism abides, irony substitutes for humor, sarcasm for philosophy, cynicism instead of the naive impulse of positivism or faith. All of that abounds in the film, which exudes sophistication and entertainment value with vast displays of all of it in witty, pointed  rejoinders...but no one laughs. No one dares to. It's a comedy for people with withered hearts.

So, that takes care of the sophisticates (poor, wretched souls!). But, where does that leave the rest of us? Why does Casablanca survive in our minds...and in our hearts?

I would contend that it presents us a fable, a choice that we can live with and hope with. It is because, despite desperation, despite the hopelessness, it shows us, in the most romantic of terms, that—even in that landscape—an instance of nobility—of conscience—is a candle in the darkness and that is heartening (whether it's in the middle of WWII or the Trump Administration). Cities may crumble, all may seem lost, but one act by one lone angel of mercy can dissipate the fog and make it clear again. It may take generosity, it may take courage, it may take inspiration or love, but, whatever it takes, the noble effort is still the best way to fight the ordinary tendency of sloth or indifference. March on. You must remember this.

 

So, it has been 75 years. We will always have Casablanca. The fundamental things still do apply...as time has gone by.

The last of the Casablanca principles to pass on:
Madelein Lebeau, who played Yvonne ("Because, 'Ewonne'...I luff you")
the saloon girl of divided loyalties, who also has her own reckoning.
I've always loved the sauciness of Captain Renault's rude
remark of her: "In her own way, she may constitute a third front!"
She died May of last year at the age of 92. Vive la France!

Casablanca through the years

*That's a telling little detail hidden in the screenplay's infrastructure (and part of the point I was making in "Deconstructing Rick") everybody sees him differently and so all call him something different. He owns, and is central to, "Cafe Rick" so mostly people call him "Rick." But, to Renault, he's "Ricky." To the staff, and most importantly, to Sam, he's "Boss." To the Nazi's, he's "Monsieur Rick" but to Victor Laszlo, he's "Monsieur Blaine." Ilsa calls him something nobody else in the movie does. To her, he's "Richard."