OVP: East of Eden (1955)

Film: East of Eden (1955)

Stars: Julie Harris, James Dean, Raymond Massey, Richard Davalos, Bul Ives, Jo van Fleet, Lois Smith

Director: Elia Kazan

Oscar History: 4 nominations/1 win (Best Director, Actor-James Dean, Supporting Actress-Jo van Fleet*, Adapted Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

It is Oscar week, and so I am making a point this week of highlighting five recent films each afternoon that I have seen that were nominated for Academy Awards (we do this most weeks, but I'm making a point of it only being Oscar-nominated films for the next five days).  We're going to start off such a prestigious moment with East of Eden, one of the more important American films that I've ever seen, and the only one of the "James Dean trio" of classics that I've never seen prior to this past weekend (Dean received onscreen credit for only three of his movies).  Going in, I had mixed expectations.  Dean is brilliant as an onscreen performer, sensual & such a rich onscreen presence it's difficult to grasp he only made three movies, and Elia Kazan generally makes stupendous movies.  But I also don't care for John Steinbeck, and after last week's weird date with Tortilla Flat, I don't really know what to think of him onscreen.  As a result, I went into this with mixed expectations, and coming out of it...that's kind of how I felt as well.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is in some parts inspired by the story of Cain-and-Abel, with father Adam Trask (Massey) filling in for God, and his son's Aron (Davalos) and Cal (Dean) playing the parts of Abel & Cain, respectively.  Cal is a sensitive boy, one who hangs around with "bad girls" (puritanical views of sex are rampant in East of Eden), and in the process he discovers that his "dead" mother is not dead at all.  She is instead a prostitute in a neighboring town named Cathy (van Fleet), who refused to marry Adam & lives a "life of sin," something that Aron doesn't know about as he's canonized his mother without one present.  As the film wears on, Aron decides not to enlist in World War I (more on that in a second), and Cal profits off of the war by buying beans early and then selling them for a profit.  Aron on the night of his father's birthday upstages Cal using the bean money to pay back a debt to his father (who took one of Cal's ideas early in the film that failed) by announcing his engagement to Abra (Harris), who at this point is clearly in love with Cal, not Aron.  The film ends with Cal cruelly telling Aron about his mother, and Aron thus running off maniacally into the night, his worldview shattered & his relationship with Abra "taken" from him by Cal.  This causes Adam to have a stroke, and while he's about to die, he forgives his son Cal & shows that he loves him, ending the comparison to Cain-and-Abel.

The movie is gargantuan, a big epic, one of those movies of the mid-1950's that was trying to show the grandeur of movies as a way to compete against the convenience of television (if you wonder why epics became so en vogue during the 1950's compared to the westerns, melodramas & film noir of the 1940's, this was a big part of it-getting people out-of-the-house).  The film, though, doesn't really have enough to say about its plot, and part of that is that it has no confidence in the Aron character.  Unlike Dean, Davalos did not become an icon or even a headliner (this is certainly his best-known role today, and after 1955 it'd be five years before he'd make another picture), and he has no concept of how complicated & vital this character is.  Aron is an unusual Abel, as he's essentially a conscientious objector in World War I (in most films, he'd be labeled a coward & not celebrated at all by his fellow townsmen), but this is only hinted at, and his breakdown after learning of his mother's occupation is left unresolved.  It's hard to look at this part and not wonder what Paul Newman, who was at one point considered for this role, would have done as Aron.  Newman oftentimes played conflicted young men (he'd do so brilliantly two years later in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), and while he might've been too old for the role, he would have gotten through some of the tougher turns of a complicated character that Davalos was incapable of achieving.

With Aron on the back-burner, it's really all about Dean & van Fleet for me.  James Dean is such a mesmerizing screen presence, and while he doesn't have the raw sensuality that he brought to Rebel, he exudes a draw that makes you understand why the women onscreen feel the need to shelter him, even the characters like Jo Van Fleet's Cathy who shouldn't.  Van Fleet won an Oscar for her work, and it's really solid performing.  She has to play everything below-the-surface, her madame being someone who resents the fact that Cal even exists, but also she morbidly wants to know him more-their scene together where he asks for money, and the later sequence where he brings Aron to her (where she understands the contempt that not only Aron but also Cal hold her in, realizing that she's viewed as a punishment rather than someone to be forgiven) is heartbreaking, gut-wrenching stuff, and she nails the arc.  

But these are not big enough parts of East of Eden to make it deserve its "classic" status.  Julie Harris is miscast (it's so weird to realize she gets top billing instead of Dean) as Abra, both because she's too old for the role and because she doesn't have a natural chemistry with Dean.  Harris' sort of dazed-and-confused presence onscreen (think a dramatic Zoey Deschanel with a 1960's bohemian vibe) is an acquired taste, and one I don't really care for; she's more celebrated as a theater actress than a film star, and that makes sense as her affected speech patterns are a better fit for the stage.  Lois Smith (yes, the Lois Smith) gets one scene with Dean, and her nervous energy as a girl struck by this beautiful young man is a much better fit and I honestly spent most of the movie wishing she'd return.  As a result, we get a sturdy, but frequently misguided, picture from Elia Kazan, made immortal because it's one of only three James Dean ever made.

OVP: Blues in the Night (1941)

Film: Blues in the Night (1941)

Stars: Richard Whorf, Priscilla Lane, Lloyd Nolan, Betty Field, Jack Carson, Elia Kazan

Director: Anatole Litvak

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"Blues in the Night")

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

We hit Day #4 of our look at Oscar-nominated music today with our biggest pull back in time, to the early 1940's and the Best Original Song nominee Blues in the Night.  After decades of watching hundreds of different films, it's a little weird for me to find something like Blues in the Night, which is perhaps in a genre by itself.  The movie has a number of different songs, so it definitely comes by our conversation honestly, but it's dark, oftentimes morose, in its treatment of its cast, and it has the complete trappings of a different genre; Blues in the Night might be the only Golden Age "film noir musical" I have ever seen, and was such a weird experience I don't entirely know what I think of it.  I'll try to sort through it this morning with you.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about a jazz ensemble, created somewhat on the fly between pianist Jigger Pine (Whorf), clarinetist Nickie Haroyen (Kazan, and yes, it's that Elia Kazan in his pre-director days), and the husband-and-wife team of trumpeter Leo Powell (Carson) & his good-hearted wife Character (Lane).  The group start to have success, but are brought to the next level when they meet gangster Del Davis (Nolan), who has them singing at his club, which he runs like a murderous tyrant.  Del has an on-again-off-again flame named Kay (Field), who is trying to get back at Del, and does so through romantic entanglements first with married Leo, and then (after Character announces she's pregnant) she goes after Jigger, who is obsessed with her.  She brings Jigger down, though, as he quits the band amid an alcohol-fueled binge with Kay, and the band suffers more heartache when Character's newborn baby dies.  They eventually find themselves when Jigger catches wise to Kay (who is then brutally killed by another paramour who wants to end both of their lives in a vehicular murder-suicide), and they go back to playing a happier, truer form of jazz.

The film is tonally bizarre.  Lane's Character is sugar-sweet, so much so that you'd be able to confuse her with Ginger Rogers in Swing Time, and completely at odds with Field's bitter, broken-down femme fatale, to the point where it's clear they're in different movies.  This almost works because it's so weird.  I spend a great deal of my time watching old movies, and I don't know that I've ever seem a film that feels so "experimental," of this era, particularly not from a studio as tried-and-true as Warner Brothers.  I don't mind experimental, and I liked the twists on the formatting, but it doesn't quite jive properly.  Maybe if Lane was recast it might work (or if Field's character wasn't so lost in the film's final moments), but as they are the whole reason to watch this movie (the men add little), the fact that they aren't matching the inconsistent tone of the film makes this a failed-but-fascinating experiment.

That being said, the nominated song is good.  The song would become a pop standard in the years that followed, covered by everyone from Dinah Shore to Artie Shaw to Shirley Bassey, but in the actual confines of the film it's in arguably the strangest scene of an odd movie.  Essentially the whole band is in jail, and several black men in a neighboring cell start singing this rich, melancholy ballad, and the band decides that this is the kind of music they should be making.  I'm docking a few points because the  music doesn't really match what they end up creating, and also because the scene feels so juxtaposed to the rest of the movie (I should also knock them down a peg or too for cultural appropriation, but it's 1941 & I have to grade on a curve here), but it's a good song, and well-performed in the movie.

A Face in the Crowd (1957)

Film: A Face in the Crowd (1957)
Stars: Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Anthony Franciosa, Walter Matthau, Lee Remick
Director: Elia Kazan
Oscar History: Despite being hailed as a masterpiece in recent years, at the time it received mixed reviews, and scored no nominations despite a DGA citation.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Last month I did something I have wanted to do since it started in the Twin Cities, but never quite pulled the trigger.  Each month, my favorite theater does a "Secret Movie" night where you can buy tickets to a movie having no idea what is playing.  It's not a current film (it'll be a classic, though potentially a new classic like Dreamgirls or Memento), and it has the regular trailers followed by the film just starting.  I didn't go to the fancier version (with a Q&A and a cocktail hour), so I had, for the first time in my life, the thrill of sitting in a movie theater as if it was Christmas morning, opening a present that I didn't know the contents  It took me a few seconds as the opening whistles erupted before I saw the opening placards and realized that we were watching A Face in the Crowd, the 1957 classic that has become more culturally significant in the past few years as the film has drawn comparisons to the rise of Donald Trump (likely why the picture ended up being chosen in the first place, though I have since gone to a different secret film that had no obvious modern connection so that may have just been a coincidence).

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with Marcia Jeffries (Neal), a local radio host who goes around trying to discover talent in Arkansas, interviewing a drunken drifter named Larry Rhodes (Griffith), who sings a song for her and charms the audiences with folksy humor and stories.  Rhodes becomes a hit for Jeffries, and he lands a television show under the guise "Lonesome" Rhodes, which gains a national following.  The movie progresses with Rhodes becoming an important entertainment figure with a national show, all-the-while letting the fame get to his head.  He takes advantage of his relationship with Jeffries, the only person who sees him as a good man and not an opportunist or something you can make money or gain power from, and and eventually marries a young majorette (Remick) who quickly starts an affair with Rhodes' manager, who thanks to an iron-clad contract, Rhodes can't fire.  Eventually Rhodes starts to play into politics, campaigning for someone whose politics seem very alien to the core supporters of Rhodes, but because they like Rhodes' charm and "relatability," they support this senator's bid for the presidency, knowing that if he's elected Rhodes will be put in his cabinet and could even assume greater, concrete power in America.  In the end, Jeffries trips Rhodes up while he's making disparaging remarks about his fans, making his microphone go live, and thus ending his career.  The film's final moments are Rhodes screaming into the night as Marcia hurries away, knowing that the folksy drifter she met was not the real person behind the mask, but instead it was the violent, power-hungry guy whom she revealed to the entire world.

If this sounds like a very clear portrait of Donald Trump, well, those were my thoughts too.  There's a terrific monologue that Walter Matthau gives toward the end of the picture where he says that Rhodes will eventually become famous again, but never as much as before, and it will never feel like enough.    He'll always be famous, there will be an appetite for someone who used to be famous, but it will always be smaller each time he emerges.  This feels so appropriate in this era of celebrity commodification (with endless reality shows and "celebrity" competitions), and of course it's probably true of Donald Trump.  Trump will eventually fall, and like Rhodes will never be as famous or as important again, but his specter will never entirely disappear.  But Kazan's tale has a universality that means every era could find its Lonesome Rhodes, whether it's Trump or Jimmy Swaggart or Glenn Beck or whatever peddler of lies hallmarks an era.

Even without the shocking political foresight, though, A Face in the Crowd is a marvelous film, due in many ways to the pitch-perfect performance by Andy Griffith.  Griffith, known to so many of us for his work as Andy Taylor or Ben Matlock on television, is staggering to watch as he descends into a ruthless madness.  The work here is a complete live-wire act that I didn't know he had in him, in many ways feeling like Michael Keaton in Birdman or Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon, and even though it wasn't particularly well-regarded in 1957, it still stuns me that such work wasn't nominated for an Academy Award, as it more-than-deserved it.  Neal and Matthau are giving strong work as well, but it's Griffith and screenwriter Budd Schulberg who are doing the heavy-lifting here, making this feel vibrant, terrifying, and all-too-real some sixty years later.  It's hard to imagine all secret movie nights could be this good, as few movies can feel this pressing and classic in a first viewing.

The Living Stars of the Great Directors

Barbara Harris with Alfred Hitchcock on the set of Family Plot

In a month with a lot of obituaries on this blog (here and here), it's worth noting an actor I didn't have time to acknowledge yet, Ms. Barbara Harris.  Harris, a longtime fixture of the New York theater scene, had a brief but glorious tenure as a film star in the 1970's, starring in the original Freaky Friday, getting an Oscar nomination for Who is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying Such Terrible Things About Me?, and earning an Oscar nomination even if she didn't receive one for her performance as Albuquerque in Nashville.  Her passing also means that we have one less actor who has been the lead in an Alfred Hitchcock picture still alive.  Harris starred in the Master of Suspense's final film, Family Plot, and was one of ten living figures who have headlined a Hitchcock film; we profiled all 10 of these people in one of my favorite articles of last year.

This got me to thinking, however, how many actors of other Golden Age directors were still with us, and so I set out to challenge myself to look through some of the bigger Hollywood directors of the 1950's and 60's (many of whom would have been considered Hitchcock's peers) to see how many of them still have leading actors and actresses, and found that Hitch, all-things-considered, is doing rather well in terms of longevity even with just nine.  Perhaps because he had a famous penchant for hiring young women early in their careers (Shirley MacLaine and Tippi Hedren getting their first leading roles from the director), Hitch actually has more living leading players than any of the five directors I'm going to take a look at today.  For this article, I'm profiling the leading players of five noted Oscar-winning directors: John Ford, David Lean, Billy Wilder, Elia Kazan, and William Wyler.

(A Quick Note: I will state that when doing these write-ups, "leading" players was a loose term in some cases.  I tried to stick to strictly above-the-line players, but I'll accept quibbles in the comments if there are some actors who might have been the "leads" but weren't famous enough to get top billing at the time).

John Ford with Carroll Baker on the set of
How the West Was Won

John Ford (1894-1973)

Oscar History: Ford would become the most-honored director in the history of the Oscars, winning four Academy Awards for his work in The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, and The Quiet Man.  In fact, the only time he lost the category was for 1939's Stagecoach (no one was getting bested by Gone with the Wind that year).

Final Film: In addition to making narrative pictures, Ford frequently worked on documentaries, so technically his final movie as a director was Chesty: A Tribute to a Legend (about Marine Corps General Chesty Puller), but his final narrative feature was 7 Women in 1966.

Survivors of His Pictures: Ford frequently worked with the same actors in his pictures, and many of them were from his heyday of the 1940's and 50's (look at how long he worked with the likes of Maureen O'Hara or John Wayne).  As a result, he's tied for the least represented director on this list, but he still has four figures that are still with us.  Among them are Sue Lyon (aged 72, from Ford's 7 Women), Carroll Baker (87, from both Cheyenne Autumn and How the West Was Won), Shirley Jones (84, Two Rode Together) and Dianne Foster (89, Gideon's Day).  These four actresses were relatively well-known in their days, but aside from Jones (who gained most of her modern fame from her work in musicals such as Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The Music Man, as well as her tenure on The Partridge Family, though she was also an Oscar-winner for Elmer Gantry), none of them are what you'd consider household names today; Jones is also the only one of the four that is still acting.  However, I think that TCM or AMPAS or AFI should get these four women on a stage to discuss Ford for posterity before it's too late for us to ask questions about working with such a major director (not to be morbid, but I think this should be true for all of these groups, in my opinion).

Julie Christie with David Lean

David Lean (1908-1991)

Oscar History: David Lean won two Academy Awards in his long career, both for Best Director (The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia).  He was also cited for Best Director for Brief Encounter, Great Expectations, Summertime, Doctor Zhivago, and A Passage to India, losing in all of those contests, and was nominated for writing and editing at points in his career as well.

Final Film: Lean went out with a bang for his final film (the only director on this list to do so), picking 1984's critically-acclaimed A Passage to India as his swan song, coming back after a fourteen-year hiatus following the critically-panned Ryan's Daughter.

Survivors of His Pictures: Like Ford, David Lean worked frequently with the same players in his pictures (actors such as Alec Guinness and Ann Todd were in multiple Lean pictures), so there aren't as many figures to choose from when highlighting the living leads of Lean's filmography.  That being said, there are once again four figures still alive from Lean's pictures: from A Passage to India both Judy Davis (aged 63) and James Fox (79), Ryan's Daughter's Sarah Miles (76), and Doctor Zhivago's Julie Christie (78).  Sarah Miles is the only one of these figures that is officially retired, though Julie Christie is always threatening to do so.  Judy Davis is surely the most active of the bunch, however, having recently been nominated for an Emmy for her work as Hedda Hopper on Feud.

Billy Wilder with Kim Novak on Kiss Me, Stupid

Billy Wilder (1906-2002)

Oscar History: Billy Wilder's career with Oscar was far more celebrated as a writer than as a director.  While he won for helming a picture twice (The Lost Weekend and The Apartment), he was often-cited for writing, getting trophies for both of those two films as well as Sunset Boulevard.  All told he was nominated 21 times for the Oscars, including eight citations for directing (in addition to his two wins, he was also picked for Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, Sabrina, Witness for the Prosecution, and Some Like It Hot).

Final Film: Wilder's final picture was 1981's Buddy Buddy, starring his longtime friends and co-collaborators Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, a film that was reviled by critics (Roger Ebert, in particular, found it an abomination).  Wilder notably disliked the picture, and despite living another two decades, never sat in the director's chair again.

Survivors of His Pictures: Despite working with similar collaborators in the vein of Lean and Ford, Wilder has a bit more luck when it comes to his leading actors, with six of them still with us today.  They include Fedora's Marthe Keller (aged 73), Avanti's Juliet Mills (76), Kiss Me, Stupid's Kim Novak (85), One Two Three's Pamela Tiffin (75), Ace in the Hole's Kirk Douglas (101), and 84-year-old Shirley MacLaine, who starred in Wilder's The Apartment and Irma la Douce, winning Oscar nominations for both of them.  Novak and Tiffin have been retired for a while, and while Kirk Douglas frequently makes appearances still, he hasn't acted professionally in ten years, so really it is Keller, Mills, and MacLaine who you can still see working from Wilder's era.

Elia Kazan with Kirk Douglas 

Elia Kazan (1909-2003)

Oscar History: Kazan won two Best Director trophies (for Gentleman's Agreement and On the Waterfront), while losing three of them (A Streetcar Named Desire, East of Eden, and America, America).  Kazan was also cited for producing and writing in his career, and won a controversial Honorary Oscar in 1998.

Final Film: Like Wilder, Kazan retired from making films decades before his death after a major flop.  Despite having major stars at the time, The Last Tycoon was a critical and (in particular) financial flop that caused Kazan not to make another picture for the final 27 years of his life.

Survivors of His Pictures: Here we have a more robust list of actors that almost approaches the list of survivors of Hitch's films at this point.  Among the final living stars of Kazan's films are Man on a Tightrope's Terry Moore (aged 89), On the Waterfront's Eva Marie Saint (94), Baby Doll's Carroll Baker (87), Splendor in the Grass's Warren Beatty (81), America, America's Stathis Giallelis (77), The Arrangement's Kirk Douglas (101) and Faye Dunaway (77), and The Last Tycoon's Robert de Niro (75).  It's worth noting that Baker and Saint both got Oscar nominations for their work with Kazan (Saint won the trophy), and that most of these people are still working (save Douglas and Baker).  De Niro presented Kazan with his Honorary Oscar in 1998, while Beatty was among the actors who stood and applauded (other actors such as Nick Nolte, Ed Harris, and Amy Madigan famously refused to stand or clap due to Kazan's involvement as a friendly witness during HUAC).

(From Left) Audrey Hepburn, William Wyler, and Shirley MacLaine
on the set of The Children's Hour

William Wyler (1902-1981)

Oscar History: Few directors come close to William Wyler's tenure with the Academy, as he is the only person in history to direct three Best Picture winners: Mrs. Miniver, The Best Years of Our Lives, and Ben-Hur.  In addition to these wins he'd gain another nine nominations for Best Director for a total of twelve (still a record): Dodsworth, Wuthering Heights, The Letter, The Little Foxes, The Heiress, Detective Story, Roman Holiday, Friendly Persuasion, and The Collector, as well as three citations for producing.  He'd take the Thalberg in 1965.

Final Film: I had always thought his final film was Funny Girl, but in the course of researching this article realized it was The Liberation of LB Jones, a drama from 1970 with an all-star cast.  Has anyone seen this-is it any good, cause I might check it out?

Survivors of His Pictures: Wyler, like Kazan, has eight living stars from his films, with two coming from his final picture: Lola Falana (aged 75) and Anthony Zerbe (82).  The other six are Funny Girl's Barbra Streisand (76), The Collector's Terence Stamp (80) & Samantha Eggar (79), The Children's Hour's Shirley MacLaine (at age 84, she's the only living person to have worked with William Wyler, Alfred Hitchcock, AND Billy Wilder), Detective Story's Kirk Douglas (101, as a result the only living person to work with Wyler, Kazan, and Wilder)) and The Heiress's Olivia de Havilland (102).  Wyler, famously an actor's director who was very good at getting Oscar nominations for his performers, directed both Streisand and de Havilland to trophies among these nominees, and Eggar was nominated for her work.  Streisand, Stamp, MacLaine, and Zerbe are all still working of this bunch (the rest have retired, and in Falana's case, has had an extremely interesting series of career turns since her work with Wyler).

There you have it-five famous directors and the actors who still remain from their work.  In the comments, let me know if there are other directors you'd like me to feature in a sequel to this column.