Lightning Strikes Twice (1951)

Film: Lightning Strikes Twice (1951)
Stars: Ruth Roman, Richard Todd, Mercedes McCambridge, Zachary Scott
Director: King Vidor
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Ruth Roman-click here to learn more about Ms. Roman (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We're going to cheat a little bit here in our profile of Ruth Roman's career by going back a few months before the release of last week's Strangers on a Train, but in a lot of ways this feels like a step in a different direction in Roman's career.  At this point, we've profiled three films where Roman had top billing, but she's never actually "been the lead" in any of the movies we've taken a gander at in these pictures.  Frequently Roman's career was marked by forays into westerns or noir, genres that usually have a main female role, but rarely center upon it.  This week, though, Roman actually gets to be the proper main character in our film (even getting to GASP act opposite other women!), and like Strangers, it's helmed by a man who would be cited for Best Director five times in his career.  This week, we come across the little-known Roman picture Lightning Strikes Twice.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on Shelley Carnes (Roman), a stage actress who is essentially trying to flee from her life.  After a grueling tour of Othello leaves her at death's door, she decides to go out to a dude ranch run by Liza McStringer (McCambridge) & her brother String (Darryl Hickman, in one of his few adult roles, and I believe one of the last roles before he joined a monastery), only to find that it's largely abandoned, as they no longer take on guests.  This is all happening in the shadow of a famed trial where Liza exonerated Richard Trevelyan (Todd), who was accused of murdering his wife (and most people assume he did, in fact, kill her).  The problem is that Trevelyan is living on a nearby ranch, hiding from his surrogate parents (whom he thinks killed his wife), and of course as he's the male lead, Shelley is going to fall for him.

The movie's second half is some batshit crazy melodrama, enough to make this worth checking out if you're a lover of the Douglas Sirk-style of filmmaking.  It turns out, of course, that Richard wasn't the killer (how else will he end up with Shelley in the end of the picture?), and it's not Scott's Harvey, who is a louse (which Zachary Scott characters aren't louses...see also our recent Roman picture Colt 45?), though there is a truly bizarre scene after Shelley turns down his marriage proposal where we're very much supposed to believe he's about to rape Shelley, even though all he's doing is reuniting her with Richard...if I missed something here, I'd love for you to tell me as I didn't understand what the hell was going on during that scene.  Either way, though, it turns out that mousy Liza was the one who killed Richard's wife when she found out she was having an affair with pretty much every other male character save her brother (and not for a lack of trying on his part), and has every intention of killing Shelley too, but doesn't, because she (and her brother) both go down in flames in a car chase just while Shelley & Richard, now exonerated, skate away to a happy life together.

The film's best element is its camp value.  McCambridge, one of the best supporting players of the era, brings it up to the rafters as Liza during those final scenes, chewing scenery as much as possible (I haven't seen it, but I've heard this is one of the more appealing aspects of putting her opposite another scene-stealer, Joan Crawford, in Johnny Guitar).  However, Roman doesn't really get much of the camp.  She's fun in this part-there's an amiability to her onscreen presence that's likable, but she doesn't really know how to land the movie against actors who understood the material better like McCambridge and Richard Todd (just two years after his Oscar-nominated work in The Hasty Heart, his career was already on the bit of the skids, and would need to go to Disney to play Robin Hood to continue keeping his name in lights).  Roman, as a result, shows that even with a central role in an interesting if not particularly strong picture, that she doesn't know how to elevate when she's made captain of the ship, instead being better as a supporting player.  Next week we'll conclude our look at Roman's career with a film from much later in her time as a leading woman, but in the meantime, share your thoughts on Roman so far in the comments, and if there's a crucial part of hers I've been missing in this series that might ignite more love for the actress.

The Other Side of the Wind (2018)

Film: The Other Side of the Wind (2018)
Stars: John Huston, Oja Kodar, Peter Bogdanovich, Susan Strasberg, Norman Foster, Bob Random, Lilli Palmer, Edmond O'Brien, Mercedes McCambridge, Tonio Stewart
Director: Orson Welles
Oscar History: The film was declared ineligible for Best Score, but the film was still eligible in other categories; that it wasn't nominated is a damn shame.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

We complete our mini-tribute to the best 2018 films that Oscar didn't find room for, though considering the unusual nature of this film coming to exist, this might be the most understandable (if not necessarily forgivable) of the three "snubs."  After all, almost every person involved with this movie is dead, because The Other Side of the Wind is more of a film of 1970 than 2018.  The final flick directed by Orson Welles, long-gestating on a shelf, had become the stuff of cinematic legend since I began studying film, one of the greatest movies never made, until Netflix came along and saved the picture by working with Beatrice Welles (the director's daughter) and Oja Kodar (one of the film's stars and screenwriters) to ensure it would could be edited and seen.  The result was a dream for cinema-lover's everywhere-the actual release of a movie that had been talked about in hushed tones for decades.  I watched it with baited breath, and felt almost winded by the experience afterwards, it was that intense to finally be a part of the Master's final work, decades after he made it and even after his demise.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is made in a mockumentary-style, and isn't really a movie that is supposed to be summed up with a plot as is our wont on this site for the first paragraph of a review, but I'll try.  Essentially, we have Jake Hannaford (Huston), a once-brilliant Hollywood director whom we find out at the beginning of the picture has died on his 70th birthday in a car accident.  Hannaford's movies had become out-of-fashion, and he had been trying to reinvent himself in the New Hollywood-style with a violent, sexually charged, and ambiguous picture entitled The Other Side of the Wind.  We then hear flashbacks about the last night of Hannaford's life, when a party was happening at his home that was supposed to be a screening of the picture, but instead turned into a disjointed look at his own life, as well as key figures in his life such as protege Brooks Otterlake (Bogdanovich), film critic Juliette Riche (Strasberg), and Zarah Valeska (Palmer), an aging beauty & seemingly the only person who is willing to call out Hannaford for some of his more heinous actions & behaviors.  As the film progresses, it's clear that most people don't understand the movie, and aren't impressed by it, and instead they're more interested in the decay of a once great man, as well as getting soused on his booze while it's still flowing.  Questions about Hannaford's sexuality are thrown about (which arise as much from the reporters that seem to pop up everywhere in his house as from the way the we see from the movie-within-the-movie how he carefully frames the perfect posterior of his leading man, who has quit the production and seems to have doomed the film).  The movie ends in a drive-in theater, with everyone driving away, including Hannaford (likely to his death after his leading man refuses to ride in the car with him), with only one person, his unnamed leading woman (Kodar) standing and continuing to watch the movie, the only person whom it spoke toward.

The film isn't meant to be particularly linear.  This is a movie it would be impossible to watch from another room & is not one for your cell phone; Netflix deserves massive credit for finally letting this picture see the light of day, but it is most definitely intended to be viewed on a big-screen with your rapt attention.  The party scenes will not be for everyone-frequently Welles goes into almost Terrence Malick-style runs of visuals (except Malick would never allow so much dialogue), but I LOVED this movie.  I have always been a sucker for Welles as a director, as I think he finds fascinating things to do and say about his characters, and as Wind indicates, he never really lost his touch for making important, seismic movies in the vein of Citizen Kane or Touch of Evil.  The film's screenplay is rich with depth and shows up well in repeat viewings.

The film is littered with great performances, as was Welles's wont (I know I'm a fanboy, but honestly-name a stronger actor-turned-director who also managed to get strong performances out of his entire cast).  Pretty much everyone has someone in mind from Welles's real-life that they're impersonating here, but the creations are unique enough that they feel like fictional creations.  Huston is going after Ernest Hemingway, John Ford, Orson Welles, and himself seemingly all-at-once, and this is an indication of what his greatest performance would be just a few years later when he would tackle Noah Cross in Chinatown (for my money, among the best supporting actor performances ever).  Lilli Palmer wasn't Welles's first choice for the part of Zareh, as both Marlene Dietrich and Jeanne Moreau were considered before Palmer eventually got the part, but she can monologue just as well as Dietrich, and no one can monologue like Dietrich.  Strasberg's Pauline Kael impression is grating but also knowing (as if Strasberg was aware that Kael would occasionally have a point even if filmmakers didn't agree with it), and a host of actors who had littered Mercury productions for years make it feel almost like a series finale as much as a movie.

About the only complaint I have about the film is what its distribution model represents.  Welles admittedly didn't live very long into the home video era, but as he was far more attuned to bringing art directly to the masses, it's hard to imagine he'd approve a system where his films could be locked away forever.  The Other Side of the Wind is the kind of movie the Criterion Collection was made for, with its marquee director and artsy approach.  That Netflix will continue to have the ability to bogart Welles's film and not bring it to the masses is a damn shame.  I'm aware this film might not exist without Netflix (in a way that Roma, Buster Scruggs, and The Irishman wouldn't...all of those movies would have easily gotten theatrical releases based on the celebrity of their directors), but if Netflix wants to be someone who respects cinema, they need to release this film on Blu-Ray so it can be owned and preserved by cinephiles for years to come.

(Editor's Note: A previous version of this review stated that Other Side of the Wind was was not eligible for the Oscars, but it turns out I was wrong here-Other Side of the Wind was eligible for most categories save for Best Score, but they didn't get nominated in any category, which is a damned shame-thank you to Wellesnet on Twitter for clarifying this for me)