OVP: The Seventh Cross (1944)

Film: The Seventh Cross (1944)
Stars: Spencer Tracy, Signe Hasso, Hume Cronyn, Jessica Tandy, Agnes Moorehead
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Supporting Actor-Hume Cronyn)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Spencer Tracy is one of the sturdiest of the Golden Age actors, and oddly doesn't have a filmography that screams "legend" in the way that Clark Gable or Humphrey Bogart do.  Sure, the Tracy/Hepburn films are well-known, but Adam's Rib or Woman of the Year aren't part of the lexicon the way that Gone with the Wind or Casablanca are.  And yet, Tracy is a legend, well-regarded, and an Academy superstar.  He received a stunning nine nominations in his career, and I will admit right now that I have yet to see a one of them, so we will be visiting all nine in the upcoming months/years/decades (don't really have a time table yet on this project, but with 2,228 films to go, it'll be a while).

So I was very glad that last month on Turner Classic Movies it appeared that they were doing Spencer Tracy month, and while most of my recordings got eaten by a very hungry TiVo while I was on vacation, I did manage to save this small film from 1944 by Fred Zinnemann.  Zinnemann, a director who got his films Oscar-nominated almost every time he went out, was a methodical director-a man who  could get at the hearts of his characters and their minute actions-look at The Search or From Here to Eternity or Julia-these are films that are about the obstacles people need to undertake to make their lives better, and The Seventh Cross, one of the lesser known movies in his filmography, does just that.

The film is about George Heisler (Spencer Tracy), one of seven men who have escaped from a concentration camp.  Slowly but steadily, Heisler is the only man left standing amongst the seven, as all of them are brought back to the concentration camp, and killed on one of the seven crosses in the yard (hence the title).  The film follows Heisler as he slowly works his way through a small German city, trying to figure out a way to connect with his friends and get a passport out of the city.  After being rejected by the woman he loved before his arrest, who is now married and threatens to turn him over to the Gestapo, we are given a cavalcade of odd characters (including Moorehead, in a strangely small role considering she was an Oscar nominee two years earlier and would be again in 1944), before Heisler finally calls on an old couple that he knew (Cronyn and Tandy), who risk everything to get him to safety, which he eventually does reach, but not before Cronyn realizes that he needs to become political and involved, and of course Heisler gets a brief amount of romance (though nowhere near the amount indicated in the film's posters and promotions) with the lovely Signe Hasso.

The movie is noteworthy for a couple of reasons, not least of which is the date it was made.  Like Casablanca, the war was still going on when this film was made, and it's one of the few films to feature the concentration camps to be made during the era.  It's shocking the amount of detail that they are able to get into for a film that had minimal first hand accounts (though it is based on a book, so that is likely the main source, but still).  It's also fascinating to see the great chemistry that Tracy, playing an introverted character, can still muster with his costars.  I loved the way that he slowly realizes the amount of risk people are willing to go to save him, and the realization at the end that he will be living his life to help them, save them if necessary, comes across less as melodramatic and more as a legitimate reaction a person would have to such a turn of events.

Cronyn was the film's sole Oscar nomination (oddly Tracy didn't land it, despite his Meryl Streep-like track record with the Academy), and this was the only Oscar nomination he received in his entire, decades-long career.  It seems appropriate that he received the nomination opposite his beloved wife of over 50-years Jessica Tandy, as he always had his best chemistry onscreen when the original Blanche Dubois is by his side.  Cronyn's work is strong-it reminded me a little of the work of Harold Russell two years later in The Best Years of Our Lives, in that they are both very earnest, and slowly realize their own limitations and what they would be best at in the world.  Cronyn's work isn't quite of the same level as Russell's (admittedly, Russell gets meatier material to work with), but it's definitely the sort of strong character work that the supporting nominees in the 1940's usually enjoyed.

It's a fairly straight-forward film, so that's where I'll leave it, but some questions to ponder before you go-what did you think of The Seventh Cross (if you've seen it)?  What's your favorite Tracy performance, and why do you think he doesn't enjoy the stature of a Gable or a Bogart?  And what's your favorite pairing of Cronyn/Tandy?