The Breaking Point (1950)

Film: The Breaking Point (1950)

Stars: John Garfield, Patricia Neal, Phyllis Thaxter, Juano Hernandez

Director: Michael Curtiz

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

One of the biggest debates in movies today is if there are too many remakes.  I'm in the camp of "yes, there are," and I think it'd take a lot to convince me otherwise, but it's worth noting that remakes were a new thing in the Golden Age too.  The transition from silent to sound meant a lot of silent films, especially literary adaptations, got remade on the big screen with dialogue, and even "talking" pictures started to get remade in the 1950's.  That was the case with The Breaking Point, a noir from 1950 (and John Garfield's penultimate picture), which was made into a much more famous film in 1944 by the novel's original title To Have and Have Not.

(Spoilers Ahead) If you're familiar with the Bogie & Bacall classic, you'll notice that while there are similarities, there are also a lot of key differences between the two (I've never read the Hemingway novel, so I honestly don't know which is more accurate to the book).  The film follows Harry Morgan (Garfield), who is a sport fisherman whose career is down-on-his-luck, with his wife Lucy (Thaxter) struggling to find a silver lining in their financial situation.  Harry starts to illegally smuggle men from Mexico into California to make ends meet, during which time he meets Leona (Neal), who clearly has the hots for him and is willing to throw a wrench in his marriage, even though Harry remains loyal.  As the film progresses, Harry's marriage gets on the rocks not because of him, but because of Lucy's jealousy over Leona's beauty, and Harry becomes over his head with crime, with his morally upright partner Wesley (Hernandez) dying during one of the getaways.  During the same getaway, it's strongly implied that Harry also dies, but the movie ends with his fate left hanging, with Wesley's young son standing on the dock, not realizing his father has died, all of the adults leaving him confused.

This was toward the tail end of Garfield's career, when he was being blacklisted in Hollywood due to the HUAC investigations into the actor (when he was basically killing himself through stress & overwork from the blacklist), but he loses none of the panache that made him a star.  Garfield, for those unfamiliar today (he didn't really star in a well-remembered classic, so his cache with film fans varies depending on how much you watch TCM) was basically a prototype for Marlon Brando & James Dean, and sadly would've hit a new vogue in the 1950's had he lived.  Combined with Neal, saucily portraying a femme fatale, and Thaxter, playing an increasingly manic housewife convinced her loyal husband will leave her for another woman (not realizing until it's too late that the bigger danger to her marriage is toxic masculinity in the form of pride, not lust), there's a lot of good stuff in The Breaking Point.

But it doesn't work the way it should.  This isn't a bad movie-there's too much good to knock it.  But it takes the best part of it (a truly fascinating love triangle where it's the "woman who wins" that is causing much of the issue with her insecurities) and backgrounds it for the back-half of the movie when we get into a series of boat chases that are kind of dull by comparison.  The crooks are interchangeable, and they totally underuse the talented Hernandez (just a year out from his landmark turn in Intruder in the Dust) as the moral backbone of the 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, 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 Long Goodbye, Night Moves, Nightcrawler

Force of Evil (1948)

Film: Force of Evil (1948)

Stars: John Garfield, Beatrice Pearson, Thomas Gomez, Howland Chamberlain, Roy Roberts

Director: Abraham Polonsky

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 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 the things that has always fascinated me about noir in the late-1940's was how many of the writers & directors of the films were eventually blacklisted.  This makes sense in some fashion, because it's a genre that deals with a lot of metaphors, frequently including allusions to forms of government, and being very anti-nazi or anti-organized crime (i.e. very political), but it is a genre that tends to come up when you discuss almost any major director or writer that was blacklisted in this era.  One of the biggest and most prominent names to be blacklisted was Abraham Polonsky.  Polonsky, coming into 1948, was enjoying something of a career high.  He'd been nominated for an Academy Award for writing the box office success Body and Soul, and was given his first directing job at MGM, today's film Force of Evil.  The film was not a financial success, but it was Polonsky's refusal to name names in committee that meant the end of his career (he was described by Republican Rep. Harold Velde as a "dangerous man" for not cooperating with HUAC).  Polonsky didn't direct another movie until 1969's Tell Them Willie Boy is Here with Robert Redford & Katharine Ross, depriving us of two decades of his movies, given that Force of Evil lives up to its reputation as a classic of the film noir genre.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie feels almost intentionally confusing, but here's the basic plot.  We have two brothers: Joe Morse (Garfield), a lawyer who works for a mob boss named Tucker (Roberts), and Leo (Gomez), his older brother who took care of him after their parents died, but who also has ties to organized crime.  Joe wants to help his boss consolidate the numbers racket (think a very early version of the Powerball), but in doing so he'll have to absorb his brother into the crime syndicate, as Leo owns one of the numbers games.  The two men therefore come at odds, as the siblings have very different attitudes about their role in a corrupt system, and it's clear that (even by protecting each other) both of them won't get out of this alive.

Force of Evil is unique in the way that it not only approaches its subject (it's a deeply anti-capitalist film, one that talks about capitalism through the lens of the mob, and you can definitely see why this movie would've put Polonsky on the radar of HUAC), but also its dialogue.  There are a number of biblical allusions in the film, and the dialogue feels like we're watching a staged play in some parts, the actors (particularly Garfield & Gomez, both of whom had extensive backgrounds in theater before moving to Hollywood) able to get out great soliloquies as they start to meet their fate.  It also smartly has them both in shades of grey-neither of these men are all bad, but neither are all good either.  Gomez, for example, plays a character who downplays his connections to the organized crime of the city...but still clearly profits from it.

The film was a flop but was saved in the decades that followed by critics, and with good reason-it's very well-done.  The camerawork is incredible, giving us great medium shots (like the scene where Thomas Gomez is kidnapped) that have key action throughout the screen rather than just telling the story in a spoon-fed approach.  Garfield is good, but Gomez is better, owning every inch of this complicated character, and again, giving us the best kind of hubris when he's finally caught late in the film.  The film in many ways feels like predecessor to On the Waterfront (Martin Scorsese of all people made this allusion in an interview with Criterion many years ago), and that's probably the best enticement I can give you to see the film-it's basically a noir predecessor to On the Waterfront.

1940's: 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, 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, 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

OVP: Four Daughters (1938)

Film: Four Daughters (1938)

Stars: Priscilla Lane, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane, Gale Page, Claude Rains, John Garfield, Jeffrey Lynn, May Robson

Director: Michael Curtiz

Oscar History: 5 nominations (Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor-John Garfield, Adapted Screenplay, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

We will likely in July restart the Sunday Leftovers series (I had one too many things on my plate over the past few weeks as I began to resume normal activities outside the house, and I needed to lift one of them-this ended up being the culprit), which will be nice because we're now in the 1950's for Hitchcock, so it'll be difficult for you to guess which movies we're still hitting in the coming weeks, and therefore each starlet is going to be a surprise.  But I'm going to spoil one today, and let you know one of Hitchcock's leading ladies who won't be part of our series this year: Priscilla Lane.  The star of 1942's Saboteur, best known today for her work as Cary Grant's hapless fiancee in Arsenic and Old Lace, was briefly a headliner for Warner Brothers in the late 1930's & early 1940's.  That fame was largely a byproduct of Four Daughters, a movie that Priscilla made with her sisters Rosemary & Lola, and which resulted in an unusual franchise (both Four Wives and Four Mothers would follow in the coming years).  While we'll get to Saboteur later this year in our 2021 devoted to Hitchcock, today we're going to take a look at how Priscilla Lane's stardom commenced.

(Spoilers Ahead) Four Daughters is a story about the Lemp sisters: Ann (Priscilla), Kay (Rosemary), Thea (Lola), and Emma (Gale Page, the only one of the sisters who wasn't an actual blood relative in real life), all very musical and doted upon by their conductor father Adam (Rains).  At the beginning of the film, Thea is courted by a wealthy young bachelor, whom she eventually marries, and this kind of sets the stage for the remainder of the film, as the movie keeps us guessing over which of the suitors that are parading around the Lemp house are going to eventually end up with the beautiful daughters.  The primary love square exists between Emma & Ann, both of whom are initially in love with Felix (Lynn), a promising young composer who is clearly smitten with Ann, but Ann, not wanting to destroy her sister's heart, runs off with Felix's friend Mickey (Garfield), a vagabond composer who always "gets the short end of life."  As the film progresses, Emma realizes that the boy-next-door was her great love, not Felix, and when Ann returns, she's heartbroken that she gave up Felix for nothing, and is in a relationship that while loving, isn't what she wanted.  Mickey realizes that Felix is better for Ann, and commits suicide in an automobile accident.  The movie ends with Felix & Ann together again, Mickey dead, and three sisters happily in relationships (poor Kay ends up being the Mary Bennett of the group, continually singing by the piano).

The movie suffers pretty quickly from tonal issues, and they bog down the whole film.  The first 15 minutes or so are a delight, with all of the sisters showing a strong chemistry with one another (Rosemary being my favorite of the bunch), but as the movie progresses it becomes clear that it can't sustain a focus on four female characters without them having a bunch of men to fight over, and it becomes a more standard-issue romantic drama.  This is a problem because while Rosemary Lane is funny in a side role, the two primary women, played by Priscilla and Page, are kind of boring.  Page is beautiful but sort of a porcelain doll, never emoting past what her eyes are telling us, and Priscilla Lane's Ann is, and I mean this in the nicest possible way (I love Arsenic and Old Lace), kind of annoying.  There's a scene a third of the way through the film where she chastises John Garfield's Mickey, whom she's just met, for not laughing the second she wants him to.  Garfield refuses, and she instantly judges him even though she's kind of ridiculous for treating a stranger such a way (even in 1938).  Lane, who was 23 when this movie was released, plays Ann like she's 14, and never really matures her as the film goes on, and it gets weird considering by the end of the film she's literally a widow.

This is just one of several tonal problems with the movie.  The film's direction is all-over-the-place.  The sequence where Garfield kills himself suddenly shifts into the style of a 1940's noir, and then we're back in Frank Capra land in about three minutes after he dies, and it's clear that Curtiz doesn't really know how to manage the four different sisters, differentiating them enough for the audience to care about them as separate entities (by the end, it's mostly just "Ann" and "the other ones").  It's funny, except when it's deadly serious, and the jokes are repeated often (think of how Felix & Mickey flirt with Aunt Etta, played by May Robson, with virtually the same lines).  The script doesn't work, and the sound nomination is maybe plausible to a degree (there's lots of singing, I suppose), but the only thing that stood out to me was the grating, nauseating noise of the hinge on the front gate, which is repeatedly used as a comic device but literally had me covering my ears as the movie progresses.

The thing here, is, though, that there's a part of Four Daughters that really worked for me...except it doesn't work at all for the movie itself, and that's John Garfield.  Garfield, for those who aren't as familiar with him since he didn't have a lot of classic films under-his-belt before his untimely death at the age of 39, was a forerunner of the likes of Marlon Brando & James Dean, a young naturalistic performer that wasn't conventionally handsome, but still exuded a heat onscreen that was undeniable.  During Garfield's first scene onscreen, he is playing the piano like a virtuoso, in a clean-cut house, smoking a cigarette to its ashy end, and casually flirting with Aunt Etta, and it's...sexy.  John Garfield in this movie is smoldering, like, there's no denying it.  His character arch, as a man that doesn't quite know how to handle good news, and is clearly not the "right choice" for Ann even though he obviously loves her, is heartbreaking, but in most movies of this era, he'd be made to be a louse or a cad, deserving the eventual death that's coming his way.  Garfield doesn't play him that way, though-he's so engrained into this performer, that he is making him feel rich & complex onscreen, so that you leave feeling something you'd normally have to wait until at least 1940's noir, if not 1950's melodrama to get to-he's a three-dimensional human being.

The problem is that this is not the right approach for a movie like Four Daughters, where Garfield's acting is on such another level it feels like an anachronism.  It's not just better than anyone else onscreen, it's also a totally out-of-place.  Him next to Priscilla Lane's perky sweet Ann isn't just opposites attracting, it feels like they're in a different movie, and honestly it reads as kind of weird.  This is totally a great performance, and obviously this was the kind of film that a studio executive would watch & realize they had a talent on their hands...but within the confines of Four Daughters, it doesn't fit.

OVP: Tortilla Flat (1942)

Film: Tortilla Flat (1942)

Stars: Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, John Garfield, Frank Morgan, Akim Tamiroff

Director: Victor Fleming

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Supporting Actor-Frank Morgan)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

The concept of an "art film" has changed dramatically throughout film history.  Film historians differ about the definition of what an art film is, and it's a loose term, but by-and-large what we think of an art film as today is some variation on both its funding (usually they are independent movies), and frequently are told in a nonlinear or atypical fashion.  Prominent modern filmmakers that come to mind with the term include Terrence Malick, Bong Joon-Ho, Lars von Trier, Jonathan Glazer, Kelly Reichardt, & Darren Aronofsky.  Classical Hollywood wasn't really focused on avant-garde or art films, and as a a result when sound was introduced into movies, most of what we might classify modern art films as didn't really exist, especially in the 1940's in studio system.  In Italy & France at the time they were experimenting with these ideas (think Children of Paradise, Open City, or Bicycle Thieves), and certainly Powell & Pressburger were achieving something similar to what would eventually be an art house film with Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes.  But even films like Brief Encounter which altered our expectations of what movie stars will look like or what we'd expect on a screen (by having actors that look like "ordinary people") still followed relatively conventional habits throughout the 1940's.  That being said, occasionally Hollywood will introduce some aspects (perhaps on purpose, perhaps considering the very conventional if talented director of this movie, by chance), and Tortilla Flat is a movie that reads as more "art house" to someone like me (who has seen a lot of major studio cinema of the 1940's) than I'm used to getting from a place like MGM.

(Spoilers Ahead) Tortilla Flat is based on a novel by John Steinbeck and it's about a group of men, one of whom is named Danny (Garfield) inherits two houses in a poor California town.  This is a huge step up for he and his friends, principally Pilon (Tracy), who were basically homeless, and in Danny's case, in jail, prior to the movie starting.  They enjoy the trappings of this more comfortable lifestyle, with Pilon being a bit of a scoundrel (I don't know that I've ever seen Spencer Tracy, sturdy & solid American movie star, play a character who for large swaths of the film is a total jackass before Tortilla Flat).  Danny falls in love with a local girl named Dolores (Lamarr), who wants a steadier man than he is, but after an accident that nearly kills Danny (and in the novel by Steinbeck, does), they realize they were made for each other, in part due to Pilon praying to the statue of St. Francis.  The movie ends with both of Danny's houses having burned down, the first by accident, the second on purpose, and all of Danny's crew now back to where they started, but Danny, the best of them, having escaped & started a new life with his bride.

Okay, so that's what the movie is about on paper, but it's not remotely as conventional as that.  For starters, there's virtually no consistent conflict.  While there are arguments between Dolores & Danny especially, it doesn't seem to really be about anything, and though Garfield was a pretty big name at the time (and Danny is the most important character in the film's structure), he disappears for extended periods of the film.  It's hard to exactly describe, but Tortilla Flat defies convention by not really being about what it's showing at its center (the relationship between Danny & Dolores), but instead about a journey of faith from Pilon, and without saying it, him changing his morality (even though it's rarely remarked upon by characters other than a priest played by Henry O'Neil who is barely in the movie).

Perhaps the best illustration of how this is strange is Frank Morgan's character.  He plays a man named Pirate (not, in fact, a pirate no capitalization), who is a sweet old man who spends most of his time caring for a group of devoted dogs (one of which worked with Fleming in a different, more famous film, where she was called Toto).  Pilon expects that Pirate is hiding money in the woods, and tries to trick him out of the money, but in a twist for the film, Pilon is right-Pirate is sitting on a gold mine in the woods, but he intends on using all of his money to buy a candlestick for St. Francis because he prayed to him once to save a favorite dog (who then lived).  After this happens, Pirate has an epiphany & shows the dogs what appears to be a religious vision of St. Francis in the woods, as a thank you for the new candlestick.  It's as weird as it sounds...this is such an odd plot in a film from a studio not known for risks, and with very conventional leading stars.  I struggle to know how to rate Tortilla Flat in part because I don't know what it's about, because it's basically about nothing (and it's not good at that), but it's a film I'd recommend if you are into curiosities like this, and Morgan is good in this role-this is a strange Oscar nomination, but not an unworthy one.

OVP: Body and Soul (1947)

Film: Body and Soul (1947)

Stars: John Garfield, Lilli Palmer, Hazel Brooks, Anne Revere, William Conrad, Canada Lee

Director: Robert Rossen

Oscar History: 3 nominations/1 win (Best Actor-John Garfield, Film Editing*, Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

John Garfield is not an actor many people discuss today, certainly in the same confines as we do most classic film stars of his ilk.  This happens-actors go out of fashion or don't land a classic in the way that others do, and as a result they are forgotten.  But Garfield's weird in that he starred in at least one proper classic film (The Postman Always Rings Twice), but more so he's an actor that sort of serves as a template to modern film acting.  Before Brando & James Dean, John Garfield kind of invented the schtick of a sensitive, brooding, & handsome soul that completely contradicted the era's other top stars & pillars of masculinity like Clark Gable & Spencer Tracy.  Garfield's life was tragic (he'd make a brilliant Star of the Month, and we'll probably get there at some point), but it's hard to understand why he hasn't caught on more in the way other classic film stars have gotten their renaissance.  If he did, surely we'd pay attention to this, his second of two Oscar nominations, and a film that would be a big hit...despite the fact that his career would virtually be over a few years later, when he'd die at the age of only 39.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie features Garfield as Charley Davis, a young man from the hood who, despite his mother's (Revere) protestations, becomes a boxing champion.  In the process of becoming a title holder, though, he becomes involved with the seedy underworld of boxing, and starts to take bets on himself, and participating in fixed matches.  We see much of the film in flashback on a night when Charley is deciding whether or not the huge payday he'll earn is worth giving up his title in a crooked fight after the death of his coach Ben (Lee).  Thanks to the love of his on-again-off-again girlfriend Peg (Palmer), he decides to stay in the match & win, thus retaining his dignity & respect even if he doesn't make his fortune.

Body and Soul is not original, but instead based on the play Golden Boy by Clifford Odets (which had already been a movie with Barbara Stanwyck & William Holden at this point).  It's therefore a film I don't feel too bad chiding a bit for its screenplay, which is rife with cliches, and while it was formative (the film is clearly the prototype for dozens of future boxing movies in virtually every way), it was still dealing with stories & tales we'd already seen before from arguably the cinema's most-overused sport.  That isn't to say it isn't good in parts.  The Oscar-winning editing is fantastic, and would become the Gold Standard for boxing movies for decades to come (both Rocky and Raging Bull owe the movie a debt of gratitude).  It gets points for being formative, but I'm not going to ignore the cliches.

It also doesn't help that the acting choices are unusual, and really ill-advised in some cases.  Garfield's good if never expanding into the tenderer & funnier moments we get in his early scenes (Charley the Charming is a better fit for Garfield than Charley the Cad), but his costars are all a miss.  Palmer has been great in other work (she deserved an Oscar nomination for her late-career performance in The Other Side of the Wind), but she has zilch chemistry with Garfield, and doesn't really have a read on Peg.  The same can be said for "other woman" Alice as played by Hazel Brooks.  The acting & writing are both misses for Body & Soul, and as a result I left mildly disappointed even if I get where it was coming from.

That said, the movie has a great reputation today in part due to its crazy backstory.  If you look through the call list of Body & Soul you'll notice that virtually everyone involved in this movie was eventually blacklisted (Garfield, Revere, Lee, director Rossen, screenwriter Abraham Polonsky), and that's not a coincidence.  Body & Soul is about as socialist of a movie as you could get past the censors in 1947.  The film is entirely about Charley abandoning capitalism (and portraying the money-hungry boxing managers as pure greed), in favor of the dignity of a working life, even if it foregoes comfort.  The film also is not shy about showing Garfield's Jewish heritage (something that Gentleman's Agreement, which the actor also starred in 1947, also showed), and at the time anti-Semitism wasn't far off from some of the "leftist" accusations of the HUAC committee.  It's fascinating to watch the movie knowing what would happen to so many people who made the film because the picture is not subtle.  Alas, it's too predictable for me to be all that intrigued outside of curiosity.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

Film: The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
Stars: Lana Turner, John Garfield, Cecil Kellaway, Hume Cronyn
Director: Tay Garnett
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Lana Turner-click here to learn more about Ms. Turner (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By 1946, Lana Turner would have been forgiven for being tired of her career.  She had been a star at MGM for years at this point, and had gone a long way from where we saw her in Love Finds Andy Hardy last week.  Turner, who collected husbands with the frequency people usually only reserve for birthdays & filing their taxes, had been married three times during her early years at MGM, and given birth to her only child, Cheryl.  Her film work was less inspired, though.  She starred opposite major leading men of the era (Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, & James Stewart), to name a few, but with the exception of 1942's Johnny Eager, none of them are well-remembered today, and it's probable that Turner herself wouldn't be either were it not for today's film, which started an entirely new career for Turner as a more serious actress.  Today, we go to the film noir classic The Postman Always Rings Twice.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows drifter Frank Chambers (Garfield), a man who shows up one day at a gas station where he meets a gruff old drunk Nick (Kellaway), who is married to an alarmingly beautiful, much younger woman Cora (Turner).  Cora and Frank, away from Nick's drunken gaze, start a passionate love affair that results in them eventually wanting to kill Nick.  The two have a half-hearted attempt that goes awry when a cat knocks out the power, scaring Cora from murdering her husband and just injuring him.  Nick doesn't remember the attack, but this puts them in the crosshairs of the law.  Despite this, they go ahead and actually kill Nick, trying to make it look like a traffic accident but are discovered by a district attorney who arrests Cora for both Nick's death and for attempting to kill Frank (who is injured in the car accident).  Her sleazy lawyer (Cronyn) manages to trick her into signing a confession, but doesn't give it to the DA, and instead just proves to her that she's capable of turning on Frank (as he has already done with her).  She get off on a technicality, getting manslaughter (that turns into probation), and the two continue living together, eventually marrying to try and ebb simmering gossip about the two, but they despise one another.  The two both seem like they're on the brink of killing one another, and then Cora has a change of heart, giving Frank the opportunity to let her drown, but he doesn't, and they are about to start a new, cooler life together when a car accident (a real one this time) results in Cora dying, and Frank being charged with her murder.  Even though he's innocent this time, he accepts that he was guilty of murdering Nick, and this is a fitting punishment, especially without the woman he loved.

The film, as you can tell, is thickly-plotted (as is the wont of most noir, where body counts are high & the betrayal is omnipresent).  However, up until the last ten minutes or so, you won't give a damn because Postman is glorious.  It's seedy, ruthless, and sexy-as-hell.  Turner & Garfield have a smoldering chemistry that works miracles onscreen, and while Kellaway is miscast (you never really understand why Cora married such a louse in the first place or why she doesn't particularly like him since he seems like he's been like this forever), Cronyn is superb and nasty in the supporting role.  If this was the type of film that got Oscar nominations, he would have been on the Academy's shortlist for sure (I suspect he'll be on mine).

The ending I didn't love.  I have not read the classic novel by James M. Cain (I'll probably give it a couple of years before I do so that it feels at least a little new & fresh), so I don't know if the ending is that much different from the film's, but I don't entirely buy that Cora, as portrayed here, would have forgiven Frank, and it feels like a rushed ending after so much cruelty and plotting back-and-forth.  Shouldn't Cora, always ready with the upper-hand (or the world ready to give it to her) have lived through the finale, or at least have run off with Cronyn's lawyer, tricking Frank into taking the fall for a murder that didn't happen?  I guess I just kept hoping we'd found out she made it, as it's hard to imagine a car accident would have felled such a spirit.

That's because Turner is amazing in Postman.  I've seen a few of Lana Turner's movies, including her Oscar-nominated work in Peyton Place, and I have to say-she's never been better.  We don't need the saucy melodrama of Turner's real life to sell this movie-it's all just a great performance from an actress at the top of her field.  Turner has never looked more radiant, and never been more sexy.  The femme fatale trope has been a savior for other actresses, and the downfall of more still, but Turner not only gives us a great performance, it's a genre-topping one.  She quickly joins the ranks of Jane Greer in Out of the Past or Gloria Grahame in In a Lonely Place as one of the better femme fatales in the genre.  It's no wonder MGM saw this performance and thought, "maybe we're under-serving this actress."  Next week, we'll see what happens when Turner gets a more traditionally "awards bait" role as she encounters one of the giant epics of 1947.

OVP: Hollywood Canteen (1944)

Film: Hollywood Canteen (1944)
Stars: Joan Leslie, Robert Hutton, Dane Clark, Janis Paige...and enough star cameos to fill the Dorothy Chandler
Director: Delmer Daves
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Original Song-"Sweet Dreams, Sweetheart," Scoring, Sound)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Weird coincidence time.  Yesterday we discussed Mr. Dodd Takes the Air, a largely forgotten musical picture that was nominated for Best Original Song and features Jane Wyman.  Today, we look at another largely forgotten musical picture...that was nominated for Best Original Song and features Jane Wyman.  Hollywood Canteen, though, isn't lacking for star power in the way Dodd does.  While Dodd's only recognizable face today is Wyman's, she'd be lucky to make the first page of the call sheet for Hollywood Canteen, a Hollywood propaganda (come on-I know that has pejorative connotations, but that's what this is) movie about the film community's contributions to the war effort, specifically Bette Davis & John Garfield's creation of the Hollywood Canteen.

(Spoilers Ahead) For those unfamiliar, during the war, Davis & Garfield helped lead a war effort that would include people from every single studio coming together and giving out dances, food, and entertainment to men that were about to ship out overseas to fight in World War II.  The canteen was ahead of its time in some ways (it was desegregated) and while it was totally publicity for the Hollywood stars who went there (and admittedly had a darker side, as seen in the unsolved homicide of Georgette Beaurdorf), it was genuinely something that stars actually worked at.  All of the actors in this film were people who in real life were helping to keep the lights on at the actual restaurant, so if a GI came to the Canteen, they'd be able to see proper movie stars right up close, potentially serving them dinner.

In this film, we have two GI's returned from the South Pacific, Slim Green (Hutton) and Sergeant Nolan (Clark) who are looking for a good time and, in Slim's case, the girl of his dreams, Joan Leslie.  Of course, when they get there, Slim meets Leslie (played by the actress herself) and he wins first a kiss with her, and then a weekend date with the actress (in real life this would have been strictly forbidden-there were rules about the girls going home with the soldiers).  They fall in love, while Nolan continually strikes out until he falls for a tour guide (played by Janis Paige in one of her very first roles), with Slim shipping out, but Joan promising they'll meet again after the war.

The movie is shameless in the way it tries to glamorize the dangerous aspects of the war.  There's literally a scene where Nolan claims that he could walk without a cane all thanks to meeting Janis Paige's character at the Hollywood Canteen.  The film's plot is flimsy, a little creepy (it sure feels like Joan Leslie is being forced, while not into prostitution, at least into uncomfortable situations with a man who borders on stalking her), and more-than-once feels like it's simply Hollywood trying to justify itself during a time of great moral duress & uncertainty.

Here's the thing though, you're not going to care, because the film in the first half is about as much fun as a classic film fan can have (the second half is where it makes the mistake of trying to have a plot).  You see more stars than I could count, some of the highlights being Davis, Garfield, Wyman, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Paul Henreid, Peter Lorre, Jack Benny, Sydney Greenstreet, Ida Lupino, Alexis Smith, and Roy Rogers all showing up in clever cameos, with Crawford arguably getting the best one (you can see her scene here), and it is divine.  This isn't like Around the World in 80 Days where you have to guess-the stars are very much introduced in ridiculously expository ways, but it's magical.  Never mind that some of these actors probably hated each other and weren't this nice & naturally charming in real life...it's bliss every time a new personality comes on to show us the star power going on at Warner Brothers during this era.

The film won three nominations, all of which are fine, if not groundbreaking.  The best of the three is Scoring, as a host of musicians and notable bands make cameos & bring us great numbers, including Rogers, the Andrews Sisters, Joan McCrackon, and the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra.  It's not all original, but it's a blast.  The nominated song (sung in the film first by Leslie, and later by Kitty Carlisle), is kind of maudlin, and a bit too schmaltzy for my tastes, but all of the film with that music and the frequent crowd scenes handle the sound well.  All-in-all, this isn't a great movie, but man is it one I'd highly recommend for anyone who loves old cinema, as it's the closest you'll probably ever get to walking onto a backlot.