Caught (1949)

Film: Caught (1949)

Stars: James Mason, Barbara bel Geddes, Robert Ryan

Director: Max Ophuls

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

Max Ophuls is one of those really great directors who sometimes gets lost in conversations about great directors because his filmography is so eclectic.  Working in German films in the early 1930's, the Jewish director ended up fleeing Germany at just the right time (and there after, fleeing France at the right time), where he briefly worked in Hollywood.  During this time he made one of the great masterpieces of the post-war era (Letter from an Unknown Woman) and several film noir pictures before returning back to Europe in 1950 when the war was over, then making some truly classic pictures like Le Ronde and The Earrings of Madame de....  In a season we're completing filmographies, this is the last of Ophuls' studio film noirs, and yet another noir featuring Robert Ryan, a longtime actor in the genre...but it's also a famous clapback of a different, more notorious movie that Ophuls made, as you'll soon find out.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about a pretty young woman named Leonora Eames (Bel Geddes), who has put her way through charm school in an attempt to marry a wealthy man and live a life outside of the poverty she's spent her whole existence pushing through.  The problem for Leonora, though, is she finds that man: Smith Ohlrig (Ryan), a spoiled & cruel heir to a large fortune, who has turned that fortune into an even vaster & more impressive one through directing movies.  Smith is a celebrity of sorts, but on a whim decides to marry Leonora, who regrets it pretty much instantly.  Leonora thinks she's in love with Smith, but he is so distant and abusive he doesn't think she can love anything but his money.  She ends up leaving him (but not divorcing him), running to work for a pediatrician Dr. Quinada (Mason), with whom she starts to develop actual romantic feelings.  After a brief reconciliation with Smith, where she ends up becoming pregnant, she is blackmailed into staying with Smith, as he says he'll take their baby if she leaves him.  When Smith has an attack of angina, Leonora refuses to help him, and leaves him to presumably die.  He doesn't, but the months of torturing her and the stress of his abuse causes Leonora to give birth prematurely, and the baby dies in the process.  At this point, Leonora can finally leave Smith and marry Dr. Quinada.

The film is fine, let's get that out of the way right now.  I think Bel Geddes' performance grows on you.  I initially wasn't impressed with it, but sitting with it for a day, I realize that what she was doing was kind of shrewd, giving us a woman who honestly doesn't know what she wants, and keeps doing what people tell her she wants, which is an ingenious approach for a female lead in this era.  But the rest of the cast and the script don't work.  Despite being billed as such, this isn't really a film noir-it's a melodrama, and the thing with melodramas is that the heroes are usually quite dull, which is the case with James Mason's do-gooder doctor.  Robert Ryan should be able to save the film, but he seems held back a bit, and isn't in it enough for my taste.

Part of this might be that he's clearly playing Howard Hughes in this movie.  When Ophuls came to Hollywood, he was first hired to make a film for Hughes called Vendetta, which starred his then obsession Faith Domergue.  But that production was troubled, and Ophuls was eventually fired from the film (in total Vendetta would have six directors before it was done even though only one was actually credited on the picture).  This was his retaliation, making a movie where Hughes was basically the villain.  Hughes, to his credit, didn't try to shut down the picture, though he did watch dailies of it and make some suggestions (specifically that Ryan shouldn't wear tennis shoes because "then everyone will know it's me").

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Born to Kill, Brighton Rock, Brute Force, Call Northside 777, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Cry Wolf, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, The Naked City, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Secret Beyond the Door, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Stranger on the Third Floor, They Drive By Night, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach, A Woman's Secret

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, Julie, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Lightning Strikes Twice, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, Odds Against Tomorrow, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Late Show, The Long Goodbye, Lost Highway, Night Moves, Nightcrawler, Le Samourai

The Reckless Moment (1949)

Film: The Reckless Moment (1949)

Stars: James Mason, Joan Bennett, Geraldine Brooks, Henry O'Neil, Shepperd Strudwick

Director: Max Opuls

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

One of my favorite actresses to talk about on this blog when it comes to film noir is Joan Bennett, who has been a regular feature in this series since its inception.  Bennett, one of the famed acting Bennett sisters, is a strange actress because her career is sorted into three chapters.  The first, when she was a blonde & in the shadow of her older sister Constance.  In the third, she took on matronly roles in movies like Father of the Bride (and in her most famous role, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard in the TV soap opera Dark Shadows).  But it's the second phase that's the most interesting.  Bennett, more than almost any actress save for Lizabeth Scott, was known exclusively during the height of her fame for the film noir genre specifically.  Throughout the 1940's and into the 1950's, she made eight film noirs, most of them classics of the genre, including the prototypical The Woman in the Window (links for a review of that, as well as a number of other Bennett films, at the bottom of the article).  Today we're going to to with a movie of Bennett's that was initially dismissed by audiences, but since has been rescued by critics.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on Lucia Harper (Bennett) a conventional suburban housewife disturbed that her 17-year-old daughter is seeing a man named Darby (Strudwick) who is 13 years her senior.  Lucia initially plans on bribing Darby to stop seeing her daughter, but when he's clearly willing to take the bribe, she assumes this will be a way to get her daughter to stop seeing him.  However, when her daughter Bea (Brooks) goes to confront Darby, she attacks him, and while she doesn't realize this, eventually we see that, in a daze from her striking him on the head, he falls off of a balcony and dies, essentially causing Bea to be guilty of manslaughter.  Lucia wants to keep her daughter safe, but there's a catch-two men have the love letters that Bea sent to Darby, one of them being Martin Donnelly (Mason), who is blackmailing her to keep Bea's name out of the paper (and out of the police's clutches).  This sets off a desperate dance between Lucia and the blackmailers, with one of them (Martin) slowly falling in love with her in the process.

If some of this sounds familiar, it's because this is not the only big-screen adaptation of this story, called "The Blank Wall" by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding.  This was made in 2001 with Tilda Swinton & Josh Lucas in a movie called The Deep End, and in that movie it's Swinton's son who is being seduced by Lucas's Darby (and in a memorable scene, it's clear that they are doing more than just necking).  It's fascinating because this movie honestly plays Darby a little bit queer-coded too, so the Lucas interpretation might make more sense than the original by Ophuls.

In terms of this being a rediscovered classic, it's definitely good, but I don't know that it's great.  Bennett is a bit too matronly for my taste (I like it when she's got more fatale in her film noir leading ladies), and Mason is weirdly out-of-step with the character (not just the accent work, but also it's not totally clear why he has fallen in love with Lucia other than her beauty).  The direction is the best part.  Max Ophuls had just made the film masterpiece Letter from an Unknown Woman a year before, and is very good at having multiple actions onscreen at once with his direction, making sure there's little exposition, which is hard in a plot-heavy film.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Long Goodbye, Night Moves, Nightcrawler

Forever, Darling (1956)

Film: Forever, Darling (1956)

Stars: Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, James Mason, Louis Calhern, Natalie Schafer

Director: Alexander Hall

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Lucille Ball click here to learn more about Ms. Ball (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We last left Lucille Ball in 1942, when her contract with RKO was expiring and she was signing with MGM.  It is entirely possible that Lucille Ball's career might've ended roughly at that time, a lot of promise but only a few brief years of stardom.  Ball's time at MGM wasn't particularly successful-she led a few movies, but she stayed in her genre of forgettable B-Movies, and by the end of the decade she was floating from studio-to-studio.  It was about that time, though, that fate intervened and Ball was hired on the radio show My Favorite Husband, which became a hit.  This led CBS to hire Lucille Ball for a TV show.  Ball had one major demand when she agreed to sign, though-that her husband Desi Arnaz would be her fictional husband on the show.  CBS, desperate to get a name as big as Ball's, agreed, and Ball (largely doing this to save her struggling marriage), signed on to make I Love Lucy.

It's hard to grasp exactly how big I Love Lucy was in its day, particularly in an era where TV hits are less about universality and more about streaming revenues.  But when I say pretty much every person in America watched I Love Lucy, I mean everyone watched it.  44 million people watched Lucille Ball give birth, roughly 14.4 million homes watching it.  To put that into perspective, nearly 74% of all American homes with TV sets watched Lucy Ricardo give birth (for comparison's sake, the Super Bowl, the quintessential American television get-together got barely half that last year).  Ball & Arnaz, through talent, smarts, & a bit of luck, had gone from being a B-Grade movie star and a night club act (respectively) to being two of the most famous people in the country.  And so it obviously made sense that when they asked MGM to sign a two-picture deal, the studio jumped at the opportunity.

(Spoilers Ahead) Forever, Darling features Arnaz & Ball in familiar roles, playing husband-and-wife.  Lorenzo Vega (Arnaz) is a chemical engineer working on creating a new type of insect repellent who marries a socialite named Susan (Ball).  The two have an idyllic marriage at first, but as time goes on they grow to like each other less-and-less, with Susan wanting a grander life with her high society friends, while Vega dislikes this and wants a simpler life with his wife, focusing on his research.  Things come to a head when Susan's Guardian Angel (Mason), shows up, telling her that she needs to look after her marriage & try harder to become interested in her husband before the union eventually falls apart.  Hijinks ensue, with Susan initially having moments where the Guardian Angel (invisible to all but her) causes many around her to think she's gone mad, but eventually she takes his advice, and goes with Lorenzo on a work trip.  While they have some calamities (it wouldn't be Lucy & Desi without some physical comedy bits, including a particularly funny one with a sinking boat), they end up making up & going back to their true romance.

Forever, Darling is not a great movie, and it wasn't a hit in 1956.  Part of the problem for audiences at the time was that everyone wanted Lucille Ball to just be Lucy Ricardo; this was, in fact a problem that she'd endure her whole life, though we'll get to that a bit more next week.  Forever, Darling is not the happy-go-lucky Ricardos though...if anything, it was more what Arnaz & Ball's marriage was like in real life, as Arnaz's alcoholism, gambling, & infidelity (not to mention both of their tempers) regularly put their successful professional partnership at risk.  No one wanted to see Lucy & Ricky unhappy, and the two-picture deal with MGM dissolved.

I don't have as much problem with seeing Ball, a talented actress, do something other than Lucy Ricardo (as we've seen throughout this month, she was a pretty versatile performer).  But Forever, Darling is too long & too boring to be of much interest beyond being a curiosity.  Ball & Arnaz, probably aware that the public didn't want to see them too unhappy onscreen (I Love Lucy was still on the air and they would continue working together until their divorce in 1960), can't fully commit to the rougher patches of the movie, and so a modern viewer feels like they are getting whiplash.  This would end up being the third and final theatrically-released movie to feature Arnaz & Ball.  Next week, as we close out our month with Ball, we will take a peak beyond I Love Lucy, and the decades that Ball would continue to work in, with many hits (and two notorious bombs).

OVP: The Seventh Veil (1945)

Film: The Seventh Veil (1945)

Stars: James Mason, Ann Todd, Herbert Lom, Hugh McDermott, Albert Lieven

Director: Compton Bennett

Oscar History: 1 nomination/1 win (Best Original Screenplay*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Sexual politics have, as you can imagine, changed since 1945, pretty much exclusively for the better.  This means that when you watch an old film, particularly one that is about the dynamics of a woman succeeding in a man's world, you have to adjust your expectations.  I will be honest, though, that when I started The Seventh Veil, I didn't think I'd have to adjust as much as I did.  British melodramas of this era are often reductive to women, but they still will find a way to make a woman's power feel like something desirable to the audience, even if it's in a titillating way.  Both of our stars today (James Mason & Ann Todd) have starred in some of the better examples of this like The Wicked Lady or Madeleine.  Unfortunately, The Seventh Veil does not stand next to the campy, seedy pleasures of those two pictures.

(Spoilers Ahead) Francesca Cunningham (Todd) is a celebrated concert pianist who is under the delusion that she has lost the ability to use her hands, despite no such actual malady.  Dr. Larsen (Lom) is trying to help her through hypnosis to regain the use of her hands, and as a result we are treated to flashbacks into Francesca's life, including her upbringing from a vicious second cousin, Nicholas (Mason), who berates her but this does pay off with her learning to play the piano.  We also get a look into her love life during this time, first to conductor Peter (McDermott), and then to Nicholas's artist friend Max (Lieven), both of whom fall for her.  In the end, all three men pursue Francesca, who through hypnosis has overcome her apprehension about the piano, but now has also lost all inhibitions, and can only go to the man she will be happy with.  This results in her picking not her more respectable beaus, but instead Nicholas, whose passion is the only one that she responds toward.

The movie itself is, well, dull.  I actually quite like the British melodramas of the 1940's, and both Mason & Todd have been actors I've admired in this motif.  Their intense, overly-expressive acting styles suit the genre, and they can be quite salacious, and unlike American film of that era, brimming with a bit of sex (we leave relatively confident that not only is Francesca not a virgin, she seems to have had sex with a couple of men before the curtain falls).  But the film itself is repetitive, too much of Pygmalion, not enough originality, certainly not for a writing trophy, and without better dialogue, I don't entirely get what the Academy was thinking.

The biggest problem for me, though, is the movie's treatment of Nicholas.  As I mentioned above, the film's sexual politics are problematic, and usually I can get beyond that.  After all, it's the mid-40's-feminism involved things like getting the vote (which in 1945 was only 17 years in the making in Great Britain), not necessarily focusing on female independence.  But that they have so much of the conversation in the film being about Francesca's choices, about her wanting to choose for herself (never mind that she's been hypnotized by a man to be the sort of person to make those choices), makes the ending kind of gross.  Nicholas has been abusive to her the whole film, treating her like garbage & literally smashing her fingers (and her dreams) down with the piano's fallboard.  He doesn't deserve her, and he doesn't truly apologize where you should even expect her to forgive him.  This is a step too-far for me, and left an already dull film egregiously sexist.

The Wicked Lady (1945)

Film: The Wicked Lady (1945)

Stars: Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, Patricia Roc, Griffith Jones, Michael Rennie

Director: Leslie Arliss

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Margaret Lockwood-click here to learn more about Ms. Lockwood (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week, Margaret Lockwood's career had entered a new chapter.  The success of her role in The Man in Gray made Lockwood a major name in British cinema (though she never translated in the same way in the United States), and she enjoyed a string of successes, though it was clear that Lockwood's talents (and where audiences wanted to see her) were in melodramas, similar to The Man in Gray.  This is what led to today's film, another that reunited her with her leading man from that film (James Mason) and director Leslie Arliss.  The Wicked Lady would be the highlight of Lockwood's career-her biggest financial success, a critical hit, & arguably the most important (non-Hitchcock) film that she's associated with.  It's also SO much fun.

(Spoilers Ahead) Okay, this movie has just a gigantic amount of plot, and I'm not going to be able to do it justice, but I will try my best.  The film centers initially around Caroline (Roc), a riotous woman who has invited her beautiful cousin Barbara (Lockwood) to her wedding, but when Barbara arrives she falls madly in love with Barbara's fiancé, Sir Ralph (Jones), who also happens to be loaded.  It turns out that Barbara isn't in love with Ralph, and she learns that on her wedding night when she meets the dashing Kit (Rennie), but it's too late.  As the film goes on, though, we kind of understand that what Barbara really loves is sadism, taking things that don't belong to her & punishing everyone who isn't Barbara.  She takes up a life of crime, stealing from horse carriages, eventually joining notorious bandit Jerry Jackson (Mason), but even that's not enough, and she begins to murder people who attempt to expose her life of crime.  The film ends with Jerry being killed by Barbara, and Barbara intent on offing her husband so she can be with Kit...but a masked Barbara instead is murdered by Kit, who doesn't know he's killing his love.  The final death scene has Barbara confessing everything to Kit, hopeful that she can gain some sort of absolution, but he leaves her none, and lets her die alone.

The movie is fascinating, almost as if it's a Roger Corman picture with its overacting & tasty melodrama.  Similar to The Man in Gray, it is indulgent and nowhere near subtlety, bawdy & sexual, but it totally works.  The film is sinister fun, like a Classic Hollywood version of Gone Girl, with everyone involved leaning heavily into the sharp, soap opera plot lines & ridiculous camp.  Occasionally it's slightly too long (trim maybe ten minutes off of the movie & it'd be the kind you'd constantly re-watch), but it's so scrumptious you won't really care.

Lockwood is marvelous.  This is the sort of heightened acting exercise that others might not enjoy, but I was enthralled by it, as she so fully commits to this woman who cannot understand why she does truly terrible things, an adrenaline junkie who cannot help but destroy everyone for her own pleasure.  It says something about Lockwood that she overshadows all her costars in the movie, even constant scene-stealer James Mason.  Bordering between Faye Dunaway in Network and Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest, she completely commits to this performance in a way that just wasn't done in Hollywood's Golden Age, and while she's not a truly great actress in the sense of a Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck, I'm kind of flummoxed how her work & acting hasn't been rediscovered by cinephiles.  Thankfully, we have one more film next week to enjoy our star.

The Man in Grey (1943)

Film: The Man in Grey (1943)

Stars: Margaret Lockwood, Phyllis Calvert, James Mason, Stewart Granger

Director: Leslie Arliss

Oscar History: No Nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Margaret Lockwood-click here to learn more about Ms. Lockwood (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

The Lady Vanishes was a hit, and certainly made Alfred Hitchcock's career, but Margaret Lockwood wasn't as lucky.  She traveled to the United States to make films, but they weren't particularly successful, and American directors didn't know what to do with her talents in the way that Hitchcock did.  She starred in lower-billed roles against Shirley Temple & Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., but she didn't connect with American audiences & so she went back to British cinema to continued fizzling failure, and it's possible her career might have ended there, with one big hit under-her-belt & the rest just not connecting.  That is, of course, unless The Man in Grey hadn't come along.  Made in 1943, the movie was a surprise smash, and even critics enjoyed it (though nowhere near as much as audiences).  The first of what are now known as the "Gainsborough melodramas," The Man in Grey graduated Lockwood to the biggest names in British cinema, and while she never really succeeded in American pictures, she would stay a major draw at the British box office for the remainder of the decade.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in flashback, and is about the friendship between two women: Hesther (Lockwood), a proud woman who was once wealthy but has now lost her family fortune, and Clarissa (Calvert), a sweet heiress who wants to befriend Hesther.  The two have a falling out when Hesther runs off in an ill-advised marriage, and during their absence Clarissa marries Lord Rohan (Mason), who doesn't love her but wants to find an acceptable mate to carry on his line.  Clarissa is in love with Rokeby (Granger), but Rohan won't let her leave, despite the fact that after Hesther returns, it turns out he's in love with her.  While no one is happy in this scenario, it is Hesther who finally has enough, and when Clarissa comes down with a fever, she puts the fire out & opens the windows, essentially forcing her to succumb to pneumonia.  Before Hesther can marry Rohan, though, he realizes what she's done, and while he won't turn her in to the police, he decides he should inflict his own punishment-and beats her to death.

I have a confession to make-normally I watch these films chronologically, but I happened to watch next week's film first, so I actually know next week's movie is similar to this week's but better.  Part of that is that this film doesn't put Margaret Lockwood, whom I've discovered is an acting treasure, front-and-center.  Her Hesther is a side character, underwritten & underrepresented on the screen for Clarissa & her random inanities getting center stage.  This makes the film's latter half, which is still enjoyable, less riveting.

But I can't deny that Lockwood, even with a smaller part, doesn't own the screen.  As a woman bitter about her position in life (she wanted money, she felt she deserved it, and if love happened to come with it, that was incidental), she plays her role perfectly, reducing everyone around her to mere hurdles as she struggles to get her own way.  I loved the penultimate scene of the movie, even if it's far crueler than even Hesther deserved (where she's essentially beaten to death by her lover for killing his wife), as it's so out-of-character for a film of this era (there's no way that this movie could have been made in the United States at the time).  As I said, next week you'll discover that this leniency from the British film board could create one of the most scandalous pictures I've seen from the 1940's, one that puts Lockwood & her newfound penchant for villainy center stage.

OVP: The Verdict (1982)

Film: The Verdict (1982)
Stars: Paul Newman, Charlotte Rampling, Jack Warden, James Mason, Milo O'Shea
Director: Sidney Lumet
Oscar History: 5 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Actor-Paul Newman, Supporting Actor-James Mason, Adapted Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

If you look hard enough, the guy in the tan suit & striped tie in the top right
next to the woman with the perm is a very famous future movie star-
do you know who it is?

Few film genres were destroyed more resoundingly by television than the courtroom drama.  In fact, I'm still kind of stunned when a movie like Just Mercy shows up in theaters as it feels like a western or musical randomly getting a retread.  Television almost completely took over the genre, with everything from Perry Mason to Law & Order to NCIS picking up the pieces of a legal drama.  Films of this genre almost always feel worn or tired at this point, as a result, and when I recently caught a classic in the genre, The Verdict, it was a struggle to get by this genre bias, even as it was apparent that this was a quality film.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on Frank Galvin (Newman), a largely disgraced attorney who was once accused of jury tampering, in the twilight of his career.  He's an alcoholic ambulance chaser, someone who barely makes rent, and is given a bone when he is sent a medical malpractice case by his friend Mickey (Warden) that seems certain to settle out of court (read: an easy payday).  Frank, though, wants to take the case to court, and refuses the out-of-court settlement (to the chagrin of the victims' relatives), and has to go toe-to-toe with the hospital's legal defense team, headed by Ed Concannon (Mason), a cutthroat lawyer.  The case then follows as Concannon's team goes to great lengths (scaring off witnesses and hiring a woman, Laura, played by Rampling, to seduce Frank & feed him information).  In the end, though, a nurse that had been on-duty confesses that the hospital had put the patient under anesthesia even though she had recently eaten, thus causing her current medical predicament.  Frank wins the case, and is left wondering whether or not his relationship with Laura is worth saving.

The Verdict gains its reputation not necessarily from the uniqueness of its plot, but the quality in which it's executed.  This is, in fact, considerably better than you'd expect from even the best Law & Order episodes because it explores the soul of some of these characters.  Newman is fantastic in the lead role as Frank.  This was during the period where everyone was sort of wondering if Newman, a decades-long Hollywood favorite, would ever get to win his competitive Oscar (spoiler alert: he would, four years later, but this year he'd be bested by Ben Kingsley), and it's easy to see why such scuttle continued with a performance this solid.  Newman's work here is grounded in not making the alcoholism Frank's totality, but part of his life.  He's a high-functioning alcoholic-he's had a dwindling career, but he's still kept his career.  Newman makes that a side effect of his life, just sitting there on the outskirts, creeping in when he needs it not to the most.  It's great acting from a champion performer.

The film won three other nominations other than its Best Picture/Actor credentials, and all of them are well-earned.  Lumet's direction is succinct, rarely giving us a shot that isn't carefully-framed, while the script is brilliant, filled with strong speeches from Newman & Mason, as well as almost no scenes that are out-of-place (I'm shocked the editing wasn't nominated).  The relationship between Newman and Rampling doesn't quite gel properly, though to no fault of either actor (I don't know if I'd have nominated Rampling or not for this-I'd need to explore the year more-and she's one of my favorite performers, but there's something off in their chemistry, him too fire and her too ice).  James Mason was correctly cited for the film, and unlike Newman, would never win an Academy Award; he would die less than two years after the release of The Verdict.  This is a proper epitaph to the actor, though, with his distinctive voice ringing not just alongside a truly villainous character, but one who is a reminder of the audience's culpability in assuming authority is usually looking out for its best interests.  The Verdict succeeds because it finds a way to not just show an underdog tale, but why underdog tales are important in the first place.

OVP: The Desert Rats (1953)

Film: The Desert Rats (1953)
Stars: Richard Burton, James Mason, Robert Newton, Robert Douglas
Director: Robert Wise
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I used to think that it felt like the only major movies of Classical Hollywood were war films because when I was growing up, westerns and war films were the only ones that my grandfather watched, and were littered across his VHS shelves.  Commanding presences of people like Glenn Ford and Martin Balsam were always amongst his possessions, and displayed proudly on his 12-inch TV screen.  As I grew up, I did realize that for a time, this wasn't an illusion; while war films aren't nearly as omnipresent as they once were (though if you go solely by Academy Awards nominations they might as well be), there was a time when almost every major male actor in Hollywood was getting back into his army fatigues and marching off to heroic battle.

(Spoilers Ahead) This is the case with The Desert Rats, a tiny largely forgotten film about a tiny relatively forgotten chapter of World War II, which starred a young Richard Burton and a fast-emerging James Mason.  The film centers around the battle for Tobruk, a port city in Libya that was a central part of the war campaign in North Africa.  The film shows a British commanding officer Captain MacRoberts (Burton), who is very by-the-book, who must command a battalion of Australian soldiers as they attack Field Marshal Rommel (Mason) to hold the hill and make sure the Germans couldn't attack the Suez Canal.  The film unfolds as one expects, with MacRoberts slowly breaking against his military rigidness, and his men eventually gaining respect for him, and in the process earning victory.

The film itself is pretty slight, and the camerawork shoddy enough for a time it felt like they were filming it as it was a war reel documentary, but there's too much attention paid to MacRoberts' relationship with his former teacher Bartlett (Newton) for that to fly.  The film's best attributes are surely its elaborate and intense battle sequences, with enormous explosions and a number of impressive tank shots.  The film comes most alive during these sequences, if only because of its extraordinary grandness; this is before CGI, so all of this had to have taken place, making it all the more impressive.

The film, however, is not particularly good outside of these moments.  Both Burton and Mason are fine actors who would eventually create some of the screen's greatest creations, but here, early in their careers, they don't lend much to what they're doing onscreen, and you don't relate to any of the characters save for the contradictory Bartlett (Newton is best in show here, and pretty much the only real reason to watch).  The fact that the film won its only nomination for Screenplay is ludicrous, as even in 1953 every contrivance of this movie's plot was hackneyed and overdone.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Anyone out there already seen this movie (it's on TV quite regularly)?  If not, share your thoughts on the rather eclectic nominees for Original Screenplay in 1953 (it was very much a year for the adapted category), or your thoughts on Richard Burton & James Mason-any favorite performances?