Young Cassidy

Young Cassidy (Jack Cardiff, 1965) The titles say "Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer presents a John Ford Film." But John Ford only completed five minutes of it. Ford was 71 when he tackled what would be his last "Irish" film, based on "Mirror in My House", the autobiography of Irish playwright Sean O'Casey (Ford had directed a film of his The Plough and the Stars in 1938—the result of which, due to studio interference, neither the director or author liked—and Hitchcock directed Juno and the Paycock the same year). For the film's purposes, the author's name is changed to John Cassidy (O'Casey was born John Casey, but Gaelicized his pen name to Seán Ó Cathasaigh), but it's O'Casey's story, and first, Richard Harris, and then, Sean Connery were in line to play him in a cast that also included Julie Christie (ever so briefly, despite her prominence in the release poster), Edith Evans, Sian Phillips, Michael Redgrave (as W.B.Yeats), Maggie Smith and previous Ford players Flora Robson and Jack McGowran. Connery, however, was in the midst of his Bond commitment (between Goldfinger and Thunderball) and barely had time to squeeze in Hitchcock's Marnie. So Rod Taylor, an actor too under-appreciated for his consistently good work, took the role instead (and probably contributed a more accurate accent than Connery's Scottish burr), turning in what may be his best performance.

It's a good film with a great cast, and an unconventional script, and one wonders what it would have looked like if the septuagenarian Ford had not fallen ill and been replaced by The Archers' favorite cinematographer Jack Cardiff.* Ford prepared the film, after all, doing the location scouting all in advance of shooting, so there are touches here and there—shots of mourning women, lots of colorful townsfolk, a brutally rapacious pair of undertakers, and a subtle death scene all feel like Ford, even if the painterly framing is missing, replaced with something a little more fussy: for example, there's a worker's strike that Ford would have probably shot using a few master shots, whereas Cardiff's style is all inserts and quick shots ala Eisenstein. Still, the man got it completed at a moment's notice, something of a miracle. And as some of the film is centered around The Abbey Theater—whose company Ford used when casting his Irish films, the film is steeped in Ford's sense of Irishness.

The film follows Johnny Cassidy (Taylor)—laborer by day and pamphleteer by night, caring for his elderly mother (Robson) trying to improve their lot through hard work and political action, training with revolutionaries in the hills, but leaving when the concern is more about uniforms than tactics in fighting the British. Pubs are the center of activity for drinking and for the airing of grievances which can result in fisticuffs. At least it's in the neighborhood, as in the streets, the fighting gets serious and deadly. Cassidy takes solace in books, though his rough appearance is out of place in book-stores, which leads to a relationship with a clerk, Nora (Smith), who finds a living example of a book worth more than its cover indicates.

Through it all, Cassidy writes, both to celebrate and inspire the Irish working class, from pamphlets to newspaper articles and poems, getting published and then turning his attention to theater-plays, where he attracts the attention of The Abbey Theater and its artistic director, W.B. Yeats (Redgrave). But, Cassidy is conflicted: he wants to be a success as a writer, but as his world and his ambitions grow, they take him further and further from his roots. And that conflicts with his romance with Nora, who sees Cassidy's true spirit, but fears she may never be a part of it...not in a lasting way. 

The story, the cast, the locations are amazing. There is just a slight lack of lyricism to the enterprise that might have been readily apparent if things had been different on-set. There's just that element of magic that's missing that would have made this a must-see, instead of a pleasant movie-watching experience.

* Ford would complete one more film, the studio-bound 7 Women (featuring Anne Bancroft in a gender reversal of "the John Wayne role"), before Hollywood put him out to "Awards Pasture" where they say they honor you, but don't hire you ("We love ya, Pappy, and you made us a lotta money and Oscars, but we don't think you should make films anymore. Have a plaque.").

Ford said after this scene: "You son of a bitch Aussie," he said. "You made me cry. That's a wrap!"

The Time Machine (1960)

The Time Machine (George Pal, 1960) We are all time-travelers, really, moving forward into the future one second at a time, for that is the natural order of things. The trouble comes when we want a little more speed...or go back, which is unnatural and out of order. Perhaps there is a core-wisdom to not want to live in the past or skip ahead to our future. But, folks have been writing time-travel stories since the Mahabharata (if we're to believe Wikipedia) because wouldn't it be nice to go back in time to meet this person, or to right a wrong, or because just now you thought of the perfect come-back you wish you had then.

It is speculated that time slows down, relatively, the closer you get to the speed of light (299,792,458 meters per second—it's just not a good idea; it's the law) or, more recently conceived, to a massive gravity source—say, a black hole. And there is speculation that by going faster than the speed of light, one could out-race time and catch up with it (as if it was a single-stream device, like a TIVO). Anyway, it worked (or will work) on "Star Trek."* 

Either way, back, or forth, it seems it takes a lot of effort and energy for so little time.

It's all theory, though. Tick-tick-tick is the speed of things. At least for now.

And...now.

In George Pal's version of the H.G. Wells novel, the time is January 5th, 1900. H. George Wells (Rod Taylor) stumbles (just in time) into the pre-arranged meeting with his friends and acquaintances, David Filby (Alan Young), Dr. Philip Hillyer (Sebastian Cabot), Anthony Bridewell (Tom Helmore), and Walter Kemp (the ubiquitous Whit Bissell), and he looks bruised and bedraggled. He has a story to tell them about how he got that way—over his last few hours—and it has a lot to do with their meeting the week before—one that ended with much scoffing and condescension about George's crazy ideas. 

At that meeting (as he reminds them), he posited the invention of a machine to cross "the fourth dimension"—time. He showed them a model, which—at the press of a switch—disappeared, and explaining to his gob-smacked and uncomprehending friends who wondered where it went that it was not a question of "where" it went but "when." The little model is still there, in that room, it's just in another time—where they are not. Philosophically, George is concerned that, with the Boer War going on and strife everywhere, that the answers to man's struggles must be in the future and he intends to see.

To a man, they are practical...and skeptical. His ideas and skills would be better put to helping the war effort, but George cannot be dissuaded. Fearing for his mind, Filby encourages George to see in the New Year with his family, but Wells refuses but assures his friend that he won't walk beyond his door that night. And, indeed, he won't. George decides to do that thing that all visionaries should be wary of—experimenting on oneself—and tests his full-size version of his time machine to travel, tentatively, into the future. He stops in 1917 and things have changed a bit—he monitors changes in fashion from a mannequin in a shop window across the street. Taking a tentative look outside, he runs into a person he thinks is Filby—but it's actually his son. Filby is dead and buried, and his son has just returned from The Great War. That doesn't auger well for Wells' dream of a better world, so he presses on.

A second trial takes him past WWII, where his time machine feels the effects of the blitz and he sees his rural town become surrounded by skyscrapers. Stopping in 1966, he's just "in time" to witness a nuclear bombardment that he only manages to escape with his machine. Volcanic activity leaves him sealed in a cave and he punches forward through time until erosion has taken its time and he can see daylight again. He stops at  October 12, 802701. And the world has changed considerably.

Oh, there's oxygen, conveniently—the nuclear winter and volcanic activity seems to have subsided and formed a livable atmosphere after 802,000 years. The Earth that he encounters is verdant, lush, and judging from the life-forms  appears to be in Malibu by way of Logan's Run.** Everybody is in their early 20's, are model-proportioned, and have sun-bleached blond hair (they're also extremely passive preferring to hang out by the river, and if someone falls in and is in danger of drowning, nobody helps—perhaps they're federal employees!)

But, these aren't the only bipeds roaming about in the 803rd century, merely the ones who see the light of day. Life has bifurcated to include another life-form that lives underground in a subterranean power-plant of tunnels and caves. These are the Morlocks, who prey—and feast—upon the youngsters (who should be called "Veal," but are, instead, called the "Eloi," who are beckoned to the underground chambers by a summons from a pyramid-like structure resembling a temple.

George is aghast at this, and by the Eloi's compliance; when a herd of Eloi is beckoned (including a comely Eloi he has become besotted with (played by Yvette Mimieux), he invades the Morlock Masonic and goes all "Spartacus" on them, inspiring a revolt against the Morlocks and saving the Eloi to return to a life of..."whatever" (that's exactly what they seem to be returning to...a life of "what-everrr") Despite his feelings for "Weena"—as he calls her—he decides to power up his time-machine and return to his present time...for a time, anyway.

It's a good little adaptation of the Wells book, full of fine antiquated period detail and adolescent thrills—if you're not thinking about it too much—which is a mark of the films of George Pal, ever-concerned with the whiz-bang image (effects are usually done in brisk stop-motion sequences) and, if there's a message, best to leave it immersed in sub-text or the basic DNA of the source. And Rod Taylor fit the bill for the type of just-charismatic-enough-for-the-budget star. Taylor hailed from Australia—adept enough that you'd never know it from the expert lack of accent (you could swear he was Canadian!), filtered down by years of stage, film and television work (this was his first starring role)—and makes a fine adventurer to identify with.

The film was remade in 2002 with Guy Pearce, and Nicholas Meyer made an excellent "cousin" film, Time After Time, in 1979. We'll be looking at the latter...some time.

Now, a final note about time-travel: don't dress lightly. 

The trouble with the depictions that we've seen is that they're a bit myopic—at least according to professional physics buzz-kill Dr. Neil Degrass Tyson. All time machines we've seen have been neatly rooted to the ground (at least, The Time Machine acknowledged that the very surroundings that it existed on would change over time). But, even as we're moving through time, so is the Earth. So is the Universe. 

But let's simplify it. In the same way that a plane has to aim for the spot its destination will be at the time of arrival, you also have to do on a more cosmic scale. The Earth travels in its orbit around the sun at 29.78 km/s. So, that means if we wanted to travel, let's say, a day in the future, we should take a rocket to the point where the Earth would be in 24 hours, which would be 1,598,784 miles down the ecliptic. Say we did travel 24 hours in time; without compensating for the constant movement of the Universe, we would end our time-journey with the Earth "'way over there", and we'd be gasping for air before our lungs would explode...because we'd be in space.

Always wear a space-suit when time travelling, kids (and take PLENTY of oxygen) because you may know WHEN you'll show up, but you might not know WHERE.

"Missed it by that much..."

* Michael Crichton's "Timeline" proposed a simpler, more catastrophic solution to time-travel; it can't exist. "Time" doesn't flow as is the conception of pre-quantum time-travel stories—"Time doesn't pass; we pass" says a tech in it—and that what has been more romantically termed "time travel" is actually space-travel to another dimension in the multi-verse that has branched off. One could "travel" to those alternative branches by atomizing the human body and, upon reaching that dimension, reconstructing the physical form from its genetic map. Sounds really, really complicated, but, again, it worked "so well" on "Star Trek." 

Transporter accident as imagined by the late, great Mort Drucker

* I didn't know this until I was doing some research on Pal, but he was trying to get a "Logan's Run" adaptation as early as 1968.

Fate is the Hunter

Fate is the Hunter (Ralph Nelson, 1964) Continental Flight 22 out of L.A. is bound for Seattle, but it will not make it.

That is not known to Sam McBane (Glenn Ford), who is a Continental air exec in charge of Flight Operations and has a lot of things on his mind. Right now, he's trying to make things go as efficiently as possible; there's a change in regime coming up and a vice-presidency position that McBane is probably going to fill. The thing is Ben Sawyer (Nehemiah Persoff), Director of Engineering and Maintenance, is up for the same job. The last thing he wants to do is banter with his old Korean War buddy Jack Savage (Rod Taylor), who's about to pilot Flight 22, but is thinking about the fishing trip to Walla Walla he's going to make afterwards. Savage has always been a devil-may-care pilot and a bit of a rake, while McBane is a by-the-book man. The two josh a bit, but Savage has a plane to catch. 

Things look normal, and there is the usual banter between the pilots and the stewardesses, one of whom is new and the other, Martha Webster (Suzanne Pleshette), has to warn her about Savage's reputation as a "ladies' man". It's going to be a nominal flight. The control tower gives them the go-ahead and they power up.

But, not too long after take-off, the right engine is struck by birds and flames out. Flight 33 is running on one engine. They radio for emergency landing instructions but there's an issue—three inbound flights are approaching LAX, all off-schedule. That's the last thing Savage and the flight crew here; their radio goes out and right after that, the left engine goes out, too. They're flying without power and have to ditch. Savage goes in for a belly landing on the beach and everything looks clear. Then, at the last moment, they see a pier coming up fast and it's too late. The plane crashes, and takes 53 souls with it. There's only one survivor—Martha Webster.

The crash-site is a melee of fire-fighters, reporters, on-lookers, and Continental execs. It's a disaster and everybody is looking for answers. The pier was supposed to be removed the week before, but the contractor had been off on a hunting trip and hunting was good. Then, the question comes up about sabotage—one of the passengers was a twitchy type who'd bought a lot of insurance before the flight. The Civil Aeronautics Board takes over control of the investigation and they make plans to take the plane pieces back to Continental to put the pieces back together and see what they can find out.

The sabotage angle doesn't pan out. And the right engine turns out to be perfectly alright. Listening to the radio-tapes, everybody sounds concerned but there's no panic. But, then a local reporter starts digging and it turns out that Savage was seen in a bar two hours before the flight and he and his companion seemed pretty lit. McBane protests; he knew Savage, had a log history with him, and sure, he could be a loose cannon but he'd never violate the 24 hour rule. And that's the usual story, isn't it? If you can't find another solution, it has to be pilot error. Blame the pilot. And the rumors seem to back it up.

But, McBane won't hear of it. There has to be another reason. The hell with the promotion. Savage was a good pilot. There had to be something. Something else. McBane starts investigating. First, he goes to the bar where Savage was supposed to be drinking, and the bartender verifies Savage and another guy were there two hours before the flight. One thing tears it: the one guy tipped the piano player to play "Blue Moon." 

It was Savage's favorite tune.

McBane interviews Webster, but she's too much in shock, too grief-stricken to be much help. Savage's landlady thinks he was a jerk. And his ex-fiancee Lisa Bond (an uncredited Dorothy Malone) calls him "the most unreliable, irresponsible and unregenerate man I ever met." There are two clues—the guy named "Mickey" that Savage was in the bar with, and "a Chinese girl" that he'd been seeing recently. 

McBane goes to interview a "Nancy Fraser" whom Savage named as beneficiary on his insurance. He finds a marine biologist (Nancy Kwan) who had been seeing Savage. The two had met while Savage was getting ready to break up with Lisa Bond, and the two were drawn to each other—the insurance, it was for her research. Nancy introduces the concept that it was Fate that caused the accident—given her familiarity with Savage and his very nature that he could not have caused the crash, by design or accident, and that the circumstances combined that the fatal results of the flight were inevitable...and if they were inevitable, there could be no fault.

Her ideas seem to fall in place with what Savage and McBane's old radio-man, Fred Bundy (Wally Cox), reveals about a particular mission from which most of the crew—including McBane—had bailed out. Bundy was too afraid to bail, and, instead of forcing the man to jump, Savage instead began to look for solutions to the dilemma that ultimately saved both men and the plane. Bundy also reveals Savage stayed in touch with him, even after the war and with most of his crew, maintaining friendships and never abandoning them.

The "Fate" theory does not sit well with the CAB, and McBane, out of options and looking for hard answers, decides to take another plane, under the same conditions to find out what happened that forced the plane into its precarious position that even a pilot like Savage could not compensate for. It's only then that he can satisfy himself that there might not be a fault, whether of plane or of man, but that, given the circumstances, it was inevitable.

Fate is the Hunter is by no stretch of the imagination a great movie. The effects are awful, the plane design for the fateful aircraft is something of an aerodynamic nightmare, some of the acting—especially by a hesitant Glenn Ford—is unimpressive*, and there's some amateurishness in the writing throughout—Max Showalter's pain-in-the-ass reporter is as subtle as a club and the final solution (and it is a solution) is, on first blush, a bit of an eye-roller.** But, the movie is, ultimately, a bit marvelous in going against the blame-game of finger-pointing and being simultaneously woo-woo and practical at the same time. Ultimately, it seems to be saying, shit happens and let's make sure it doesn't happen again...or else 53 people died for nothing. That sort of thing just doesn't fly in a litigious society.

The film has nothing—absolutely nothing—to do with Ernest K. Gann's 1961 book (and he was so embarrassed by it that he asked for his name to be removed on television airings, although it appears on the currently available DVD's and on the YouTube version). The film picks up the general philosophy that as pragmatic as one can be, you can't fix everything and every condition and that if one is out of options...well, one is out of options. It's a bit like the test pilots' job description of "eternities of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror." Hey, if you weren't going to take chances, you could have taken a bus. Aviation is, still in all, something of a miracle, and we've only been doing it for slightly more than 100 years. It's amazing that it the industry works as well as it does.

They could make the seats a bit less confining, though.

Rod Taylor ponders that while Susanne Pleshette hands him a fateful cup of coffee.

* Taylor is great in a role that could have made you wince, Pleshette is entirely believable and sympathetic in some of the toughest scenes and the troika of Savage apologists—Kwan, Cox, and Stevens—are endearing.

** Well, except that something similar happened to an Airbus flying from Frankfurt to Cancun in February 2019, causing the flight to be diverted to Ireland.