So drag yourself back to The Last Drive In for!
Coming up… BRIDES OF HORROR 1960s!!!
Flicker Alley and Universal Pictures Present Paul Leni’s The Man Who Laughs (1928) The Tortured Smile “Hear how they laugh at me. Nothing but a clown!”
Words that come to mind when I think of The Man Who Laughs: beautiful, disturbing, hauntingly poetic, disquieting, dreamlike, tragic, memorable.
Flicker Alley & Universal Pictures have released all these visual thoughtscapes into one gorgeous pristine Blu-ray/DVD combo! It’s Paul Leni‘s visually arresting masterpiece restored to all its glorious original flavor and so much more! Thank you, Aurora, for giving me an opportunity to review it!
I have always been drawn to the tragic beauty of Victor Hugo’s classical romantic horror story The Man Who Laughs. Now a new generation of film lovers can experience the powerful visual poetry of director Paul Leni’s film starring one of the most enigmatic screen presences. Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine brings to life the kidnapped heir to an earldom who was hideously deformed into a perpetually smiling clown, baring a sad eternal grimace. It leaves us with the eternal question — what is the quality of beauty or ugliness? There is an aspect of Beauty and the Beast to the story. Mary Philbin portrays the innocent waif Dea with her long blonde mane of curls and to me, Conrad Veidt is the ONLY Gwynplaine who could have brought the pathos to that infamously hideous visage (though I do not see his eternal smile as hideous).
This remastering of The Man Who Laughs is part of Universal Pictures’ ongoing silent restoration initiative. The source of the restoration is a 35mm composite fine grain film reel from the Universal Pictures vault, created in 1954 from the original nitrate camera negatives. The restoration team stabilized and deflickered the film, repairing scratches, warps, and dirt. The final gorgeous 4k digital restoration was completed by NBCUniversal StudioPost and is accompanied by the extraordinarily evocative score, newly recorded by the Berklee College of Music Silent Film Orchestra.Â
Conrad Veidt’s character, Gwynplaine, is The Man Who Laughs. Veidt’s face is well known to most cinephiles, particularly for inspiring Bob Kane’s legendary flamboyant Batman villain, the Joker. Orphaned as a child, Gwynplaine is kidnapped by gypsies, and King James II orders that his face be carved into a hideous grin as punishment for the sins of his father, the Scottish Nobleman Clancharlie. Alone after his disfigurement, he rescues a blind girl named Dea. They are taken in by Ursus and star in a traveling theatre troop. Dea and Gwynplaine fall in love. She can’t see her lover’s tormented smile. They enjoy years of prosperity until Gwynplaine is recognized by the surgeon who disfigured him and the malevolent court jester, Barkilphedro, who served under the patronage of King James II.
Much like Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932), I would imagine The Man Who Laughs (1928) would have been a very difficult picture to sit down and get comfortable with given the subject matter. As Kevin Brownlow writes the film is “far too unpleasant” for some.
As I’ve always been into Gothic classical horror and fantasy stories, while the narrative is no less disturbing to me, I’m incredibly drawn to Gwynplaine as a romantically tragic hero. He is not a monster or a freak. He is a victim of monsters and cold-blooded opportunists who forced him into a mold in which he had to rely on fate to be kinder to him later on in life than it was when he was a little lad. As a French romanticism writer, Victor Hugo wrote poetry and was struck with an acute social consciousness in tune with social misery and injustice. Gwynplaine is one of his tragic figures.
Because of the success of his Cat and the Canary a year earlier, Leni was entrusted to direct The Man Who Laughs. There were the elements of horror that were expected from Paul Leni, the concept of disfigurements, of children sold into slavery, and the torture chambers with its Iron Maiden. This is considered Paul Leni’s best American film.
Leni was a German director and set designer most known in the U.S. for his Waxworks 1924, The Cat and the Canary 1927, The Chinese Parrot 1927, and The Last Warning 1928.
The Man Who Laughs influenced director James Whale who acknowledged Leni’s innovative technique as a major inspiration for his The Old Dark House 1932, Frankenstein 1931, and Bride of Frankenstein 1935. It has been said that Leni had an ‘Intoxicating flair for the grotesque’. This was a moment in filmmaking when movie studios had a flair for extravagant stylized horror!
Camerawork & Cinematographer by Gilbert Warrenton. (The Cat and the Canary 1927, A Man’s Past 1927, Lonesome 1928, The Mississippi Gambler 1929, High School Hellcats 1958, Panic in the Year Zero 1962) "smothered in décor and chiaroscuro and turned into an impressive recreation of the splendor and horror of 17th century London"-Carlos Clarens
“The highly sophisticated qualities of mise-en-scene, decoration, lighting and playing of German Expressionist cinema are effectively combined with the marvelous expertise, pace and attack of the best American films of the period: and The Man Who Laughs proved to be one of the most vivid and dynamic films to survive from the silent cinema.” –From the booklet, Kevin Brownlow
Warrenton uses expressive camera angles, along with moody and beautifully executed low-key lighting, and atmospheric backlit frames. Each shot is framed like an exquisite 17th-century Hogarthian painting, utilizing Leni’s background in German Expressionism, culminating in scenes of pageantry, the elegance of its set pieces and stylized grandeur, and at times uneasy gruesomeness.
For example, the opening shot of Barkilphedro coming into King James II’s bedroom from behind the wall of imposing religious statues is quite remarkable in its ability to draw you into the story swiftly as a dark fairy-tale once Barkilphedro creeps along the wall like a goblin in a nightmarish fever dream.
And there’s a moment Clancharlie (Conrad Veidt playing a second role) is being sent to the Iron Lady floats into the frame and the darkness closes in around him. The shot is set up with black empty space to devour him, it’s brilliantly executed. The Duchess Josiana’s room is cluttered like a den of sensual pleasures, and even her little monkey adds a touch of the bizarre.
Another incredible cinematic moment is little Gwynplaine wandering the cold countryside of Cornwall among the swinging corpses hanging from the gibbets. The whole scene is hallucinatory in the fashion of expressionist art. The Southwark Fair and the show with the theatre troop with Ursus’ storytelling’ theatrics is shot with flair. Warrenton knew how to utilize space to tell a visual story.
Art Direction Charles D Hall worked with the Universal art directors from Hunchback for the standing sets.
“The whole design was very strongly under the influence of Paul Leni. Charles D. Hall who later became very big with Frankenstein, Dracula and All Quiet on the Western Front was one of the art directors. The research was done so well that it had an ancient European ‘imprint’ You felt that it was barely 1600. Every costume was specially designed and carefully executed.”
Hall went on to design the sets for Dracula and Frankenstein at Universal. Joseph Wright, and Thomas F. O’Neill. The set design is resplendent, especially in King James II’s bed chambers with the wall of Religious Saints and secret passageways.
The 56 sets took eight months to design and build. The teeming Southwark Fair scene"”the recreation of a famous London carnival of the 16th and 17th centuries, juxtaposes a mélange of freak shows, musicians, exotic animals, bear baiting, boxers and tumblers, included 1500 actors in period costume and 18 cameras.
The sets were by the brilliant Charles D. Hall, the designer of Frankenstein's laboratory, the spooky staircase in Dracula, the creaking mansion in The Old Dark House, the Bauhaus nightmares of The Black Cat, and for Chaplin, the madly teetering cabin in The Gold Rush and the out of control factory machinery in Modern Times. His sketch for the scene where Gwynplaine is abandoned on a frigid rock is reproduced in the film almost exactly. There are many memorable aspects to The Man Who Laughs, but the production design is indispensable to the atmosphere of horror. -William K. Everson
There are hints of German expressionism. “One Needs to grasp the full implications of this style The low ceilings and vaults oblige the characters to stoop, and force them into those jerky movements and broken gestures which produce the extravagant curves and diagonals required by Expressionist precept. A few years later Leni was to use the same attitude in The Man Who Laughs, made in America when his King of England creeps down a corridor accompanied by his sadistic jester.” –From The Haunted Screen by Lotte EisnerÂ
Film Editor Edward L. Cahn (Yes!, my favorite schlocky B director famously known for films like Creature with The Atom Brain 1955, The She-Creature 1956, Zombies of Mora Tau 1957, Invasion of the Saucer Men 1957, It!, The Terror from Beyond Space 1958, Curse of the Faceless Man 1958, Invisible Invaders 1959, The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake 1959)
THE COLORFUL CASTING
Interestingly, Conrad Veidt was Carl Laemmle’s first choice to portray Dracula in the film adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, after Bela Lugosi emoted his bloody heart out on Broadway for 33 weeks.
Universal Studio made a big splash with The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) with Lon Chaney. According to Kevin Brownlow, director Rupert Julian said “Lon Chaney-or it can’t be done” before casting Phantom of the Opera. And there was the same sentiment about The Man Who Laughs as well. They had their minds set on casting Lon Chaney as Gwynplaine. The problem was that Universal had let Chaney out of his contract already, and while he was now under contract at MGM and could loan him out, he for some reason withdrew at the last minute.
Conrad Veidt in Lady Hamilton (1921).
And so Conrad Veidt wound up playing Gwynplaine, the role intended for Lon Chaney. Veidt had already established himself as one of the world’s top “tragedians” when Laemmle contacted him and got him interested in taking the role. “I rarely have had such a satisfying experience.” in a letter written to a German journalist during production.
Veidt had returned to Berlin after playing a role with John Barrymore in The Beloved Rogue (1927). He worked with Leni on Waxworks (1924). Veidt was most known for his role in Robert Weine’s as Cesare the chilling somnambulist in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and with this performance, he helped pioneer the horror film industry.
"No matter what roles I play, I can't get Caligari out of my system"-Conrad Veidt
Noah Beery and Conrad Veidt in King of the Damned (1935)
He was active in German Expressionist theatre and starred in The Hands of Orlac (1924) Waxworks (1924), The Passing of the Third Floor Back (1935), Dark Journey (1937) Blackout (1940), A Woman’s Face (1941), as Major Strasser in Casablanca (1942). He was targeted for death by the Nazis for his anti-Nazi sentiment he fled to England and fought with the Brits. He also donated his earnings to help with the Allied cause. Veidt was one of the stars who appeared in Casablanca (1942). Veidt would ironically play Nazis in several film roles.
He had the perfect demeanor to play the murderous sleepwalker, Cesare, in the Expressionist masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and soon would be called the "Man with the Wicked Eyes."
When I think about how expressive Veidt is in The Man Who Laughs, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligary, or The Hands of Orlac, I turn to Eisner to describe it perfectly–
“A dynamic synthesis of their being, by concentrating their movements which are almost linear and which-despite a few curves that slip in-remain brusque, like the broken angles of the set; and their movements from point to point never go beyond the limits of a given geometrical plane.” — From Lotte Eisner The Haunted Screen
In this way, she is describing a type of ballet or modern dance that takes discipline and mindfulness. I thought by watching Veidt’s external reality in The Man Who Laughs that he truly expressed the journey of a tortured soul merely through his eyes, and his hands. This he learned from working in the German expressionist theatre and his time with Max Reinhardt’s theatre troupe.
Conrad Veidt Mary Philbin Erich von Stroheim and Paul at the premiere of The Man Who Laughs 1928
“It is precisely as if I am possessed by some other spirit when I enter on a new task of acting, as though something within me presses a switch and my own consciousness merges into some other, greater, more vital being.”-Conrad Veidt
“To play Gwynplaine was the dream of my boyhood. I have been fascinated by this character ever since I read Victor Hugo’s novel in high school. One has to feel pity for Gwynplaine, as he is mutilated, but the result of that mutilation -the laughing, grotesque face-looks funny. For a film actor, that presents an artistic challenge that could hardly be more complicated. So what did I have left as my main mean of communications? The eyes!” – Conrad Veidt
Film Review from 1928 — “…The picture is undeniably better than The Hunchback of Notre Dame…Â Conrad Veidt’s impersonation of the laughing man is at least as good as anything Lon Chaney ever did with the aid of makeup. Baclanova’s portrayal of the loose duchess is without parallel and burns holes in the screen….” Motion Picture World 13 October 1928
Conrad Veidt not only plays Gwynplaine but also portrays his father the wild-eyed Scottish nobleman Lord Clancharlie who is sent to the Iron Lady by King James II and sentenced to death for political defection. His young son to suffer the sins of the father.
Universal Studios had their heyday with monsters at their studio with Frankenstein and Dracula beginning in the 1930s. But during the silent era, the big feature was The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923). Here The Man Who Laughs lent primarily to the talents of an actor who could express himself through the art of pantomime as only Lon Chaney could have. The character of Gwynplaine cannot speak ordinarily or alter his intensely forged smile framed and accentuated by the use of lipstick around a wide mountain of grinning teeth. This would pose a challenging limitation to any actor. Conrad Veidt had already proven he had the essential force within him to limit facial expressions to convey his mood.
Veidt’s incredible command of just his eyes as the source of his power — the place where his identity springs from are extraordinary. He utilizes scarves and handkerchiefs, sleeves, and Dea’s hair to block anyone’s sight of his mouth. It’s a very thoughtful and purposeful mechanism but is not done in a way that is artifice. He uses his eyes to create the semblance that he is a complete man. This conflict is saddening to us as we gaze upon him and understand his inner pain. The only way he can become whole especially when he is closest to Dea is when he covers his mouth. Veidt is masterful at telegraphing his conflict to us over his outer reality and his inner desires.
Originally Charles Dullin was to play The Laughing Man and Edith Jehanne was to play the beautiful blind girl Dea in the French version of the film, they were not known actors in the U.S.
The American version of the film also considered featuring Ernest Torrence as Gwynplaine and Mary Philbin who had wonderful success as Christine Daae in Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera in 1925, she was perfect to play the lovely Dea.
The original choice for the seductive Duchess Josiana was French actress Arlette Marchal who had been suggested by Gloria Swanson after they worked together on Madame Sans-Gene 1925– but Olga Baclanova was chosen for the sensual Duchess Josiana sister to the wicked Queen Anne. American audiences never seemed to warm up to the glamorous Baclanova. Historian Kevin Brownlow tells a very interesting story about interviewing her in New York in the 1960s as part of his essay in the wonderful booklet. About she got started here in the States, her work on Freaks, and a few other funny tidbits.
Olga Baclanova is well known as the treacherous Cleopatra in Freaks (1932). Here she is with Harry Earles as Hans. Ironically starting out in the film a beautiful flying peacock until she dared call Han’s beloved family “dirty, filthy freaks” and that she’d never be one of them. Well, that peacock became a non-coherent chicken lady and in fact did become one of them, poetic justice! While Baclanova adored The Man Who Laughs she despised her work on Tod Browning’s film referring to it as her béte noir.
One of the minor ‘ooh ahh’ shocks that draws to the film was the opportunity to catch a glimpse of Baclanova’s naked arse as she rises out of her bath. Her naked tuckus is shown through the keyhole in the European version of the film but her bare arse is obscured in the American version by the towel. Nudity was shown in pre-Code films up until the early 1930s.
The rest of the players
Cesare Gravina as Ursus the Philosopher…
Brandon Hurst (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 1920, The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1923, Love (1927), House of Frankenstein 1944)is absolutely wonderful as the sinister Barkilphedro the goblin Jester who is perhaps one of the most photogenic and the most complex if not the most diabolical and sinister of all the characters in this dark fairy tale. He is like the boogeyman.
Josephine Crowell as Queen Anne, Sam De Grasse as King James II, Stuart Holmes as the buffoon Lord Dirry-Moir, George Siegmann as Dr. Hardquanonne the head Comprachico surgeon, Nick De Ruiz as Wapentake, Edgar Norton as Lord High Chancellor, Torben Meyer as The Spy, Julius Molnar Jr. as Gwynplaine as a child, Charles Puffy as Innkeeper, Frank Puglia as Clown, Jack Goodrich as Clown, and the star of the film–Zimbo as Homo the Wolf.
MAKE-UP
The great Jack Pierce was responsible for Gwynplaine’s make-up. Pierce was chosen with the tremendous undertaking of replacing the remarkable artistry of Lon Chaney. The idea was to create the look on Veidt’s face of a “death’s head rictus grin.” It predated the grueling makeup hours that Boris Karloff would have to undergo for Universals Frankenstein’s monster! But Jack Pierce was the man to create the sympathetic anti-heroes!
“We had to have a mouthpiece made” said Andrew Marton, assistant director, “that kept Veidt’s cheeks in this horrible position . He was so ill from this. Day after day his muscles and his skin was stretched-he became sore in his mouth, and he was suffering. He was a marvellous actor, but no actor, no matter how good he is, can surmount a grimace that is imposed on him from the word go.”
Gwynplaine’s grotesque grin was achieved with a prosthesis. Veidt wore a set of dentures with metal hooks that pulled back the corners of his mouth. One can imagine how much pain he was in! He couldn’t speak with the prosthesis in his mouth. There’s only one scene in which he did not wear the prosthesis and that’s when he is ravished by the Duchess Josiana.
“Wearing dentures to give him a blinding set of piano-key set of choppers (framed by a lipstick mouth)added to his prominent nose, heavy eyebrows and nest of hair, Veidt is an unforgettable sight. (Metal hooks on the dentures pulled the actors lips into a laughing rictus)” – From John Dileo 40 Remarkable Movies Awaiting Rediscovery
Veidt’s acting is mostly with his lyrical hand movements and his eyes, which transpires empathy and is one of the most heartbreaking visceral performances in cinematic history. Jack Pierce’s makeup helps to heighten the dramatized sense of fable with Gwynlaine’s deep-set piercing eyes, which are captivating and entrancing. Veidt had already been considered one of the great ‘tragedian’ actors Pierce using dark eye shadow helps to deepen the well of his sadness from where the tears spring. Through only the use of his eyes and his facial expressions we manage to understand the layers of emotions he is experiencing on his journey through his ordeal. Great gentility pitted against self-hatred then spirited courage, self-sacrifice, and soul searching. As John Dileo says,
“this is stylized acting simultaneously marked by bold operatic strokes and subtle graduations of feeling resulting in a Chaney worthy turn of significant pathos. It is especially chilling to see him to watch him cry ;the upper half of his face in torment and tears while the lower half frozen in maniacal glee.”
Oddly enough this was the third story in a cycle of Gothic historical, romantic tragedies eloquently macabre with themes of love and disfigurement adapted at major motion picture studios. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), and The Man Who Laughs (1928)
IMDb not-so-fun facts:
Gwynplaine’s fixed grin and disturbing clown-like appearance was a key inspiration for comic book talents writer Bill Finger and artists Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson in creating Batman’s greatest enemy, The Joker.
The process of carving a victim’s face to look like it is smiling broadly has come to be known as a Glasgow Smile or a Chelsea Smile after organized-crime rings in those two British cities used such mutilation as a terror tactic.
The Comprachicos, a Spanish term meaning child buyers, was coined by Victor Hugo for his novel this film is based upon. According to Hugo they could change one’s physical appearance through various methods such as physical restraints, muzzling their faces to deform them, slitting their eyes, dislocating their joints, and the malformation of their bones.
One wonders if director William Castle’s Mr. Sardonicus in 1961 was a much more exaggerated version, a more grotesque visage, and not the sympathetic character of Gwynplaine. This might have been something Castle thought about being a classic horror fan who loved his gimmicks.
Guy Rolfe stars as Mr.Sardonicus (1961) in William Castle’s film based on writer Ray Russell’s novel. The film co-stars Audrey Dalton and Ronald Lewis.Â
In recent years, in the contemporary horror genre assailed by rampant body violation and disfigurement (torture porn), there’s a host of horror films that include faces slashed from ear to ear but don’t give reference nor credit to Hugo’s character. The slashed face is common in 21st-century films, yet Gwynplaine is the earliest archetypal Gothic figure as a tragic hero. The true-life Black Dahlia murder in the 1940s is the next time a face is literally slashed from ear to ear. And we see this sardonic grin outside of horror films, in V for Vendetta (2005).
Ironically, Frankenstein’s monster and Gwynplaine have been the two classical figures in Gothic horror literature, and film adaptations are not unlikely due to the contributions of Boris Karloff and Conrad Veidt’s striking and soulful performances of their characters. It consistently breaks my heart every time I re-watch their presence on screen. Gwynplaine’s face is unusually arresting and his expressive eyes are absolutely heart-wrenching. It’s evocative without a word spoken. Perhaps the only comparison to this is Lon Chaney Sr.’s Quasimodo. Each is similarly tied to the other as tragic, misunderstood, as either an error of nature or a trespass of man on nature. They are prisoners in their bodies, hated by outsiders, in love with women they wish they could have, and all gentle souls within, and we ache for them to be released. As Shelley’s Frankenstein’s monster, asks, “Why did you create me?” And just as Gwynplaine cannot change his immortal grimace we cannot look away from him but embrace him as a whole man.
The striking coincidence that the great Jack Pierce did the time-consuming painstaking makeup for Karloff’s Frankenstein’s monster, years after creating the eternal smile on Conrad Veidt’s face is not lost on me. I find it a quite natural succession of events.
THE COSTUMES
The magnificent costuming with historical accuracy for the time period designed by Vera West and David Cox adds to the atmosphere and pageantry of the extravagant beauty of the picture.
THE SCORE
The Berklee College of Music Silent Film Orchestra’s collaborative efforts brought Hugo’s story, Leni’s direction, and the actors’ performances to a whole other level of feeling. Lyrical, playful, dynamic, ominous, or poignantly beautiful. The music uses strings, woodwinds, piano, flutes, tympani, harps, and bowed upright bass to represent certain characters in the film, brilliantly accentuating the scenarios and each scene’s moods. Dea and Gwynplaine’s lover’s theme is particularly poignant.
As a musician, I recognized the musical themes of the motifs used. The theme for the lovers — Gwynplaine’s and Deas, symbolizes their immortal love. As Sonia Coronado explains in her informative essay (another extra included in the lovely booklet that comes with the Flicker Alley Blu-ray/DVD) the scoring was divided into seven reels, 15 minutes each as the film is almost 2 hours. They had a list of themes representing each main character. It’s extraordinary how an entire class of music students took their own sections of music and came together at the end to piece the fabric of the full story like a tapestry. That confluence works so beautifully. One complete score was written by seven composers.
THE STUDIO:
In the 1920s Universal Studios was trying to compete with the more successful studios of the time period. Paramount and MGM had higher budgets. Universal needed something impressive to rescue their studio. Something on a grand scale, like the success they had with The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) with Lon Chaney. Chaney started his career in 1912 at Universal as a stagehand and an occasional extra, ultimately becoming The Man of a Thousand Faces, doing over 150 roles with his extraordinary makeup treatments. The President of Universal, Carl Laemmle, along with Duc’d’Ayen representing La Sociéte Générale des Films decided to collaborate on a Franco-American co-production of The Man Who Laughs based on Victor Hugo’s harrowing and horrifying novel about a young boy whose claim to nobility is stolen and his face mutilated in an eternal grimace as revenge for the sins of the father. This production was done in the ‘Super Jewel’ unit of Universal, devoted to higher budget films they wanted to make spectacles.
The studio had a strong response to their 1926 release of the French-produced Les Miserable (1923), Victor Hugo’s best-loved work. To the executives at Universal, the character of Gwynplaine had much in common with that of the other Hugo character, Quasimodo, played by Chaney in Universal’s success of 1923.
Let me just quickly say that there are two absolutely powerful moments in The Man Who Laughs. My two favorite scenes are:
1st — When Gwynplaine goes to Duchess Josiana’s bedchambers to be seduced. Perhaps what made this scene so believable is something I read in Kevin Brownlow’s booklet where he talks about interviewing Ogla Baclanova, and how she particularly liked Veidt “He was so adorable. We had a love scene on the bed-excuse me! I was crazy about him.” Apparently, she wasn’t acting…
2nd — One of the most poignant and well-orchestrated sequences is when the Theatre troupe of clowns try to pretend that there’s an audience waiting to see The Laughing Man, the show must go on, trying to prevent Dea from learning that Gwynplaine has been taken to the torture chamber until Barkilphedro shows up and announces that he’s dead. For the actors, it is what is not said, and how the scene manages to come together that is superbly coordinated.
Ladies in Retirement (1941) Though this be madness
I am so thrilled to be joining CMBA’s Hidden Classics Blogathon! There are many great contributions this year–Â so many unsung gems for the offering! Thank you CMBA for allowing me to share this little obscure suspense yarn with all of you!
The Great Broadway Melodrama Comes to Flaming Life on the Screen!
Ladies in Retirement, with its play-bound vibe and all its macabre thought processes, is directed by Charles Vidor who did not shy away from films that manifested a gutsy imagination. Vidor is known for films that bordered on the edge of their genres, such as the 1930s horror classic The Mask of Fu Manchu 1932, the sinister obscurity Double Door 1934, and the symbol of unforgettable film noirs like the tension-filled Blind Alley 1939 and the seductively arousing Gilda 1946.
While it’s been referred to as film noir, I believe it meets the criteria of the 1940s suspense genre with a trace of — I don’t know — ‘Gothic melodrama noir’ for its use of light and shadow and familiar noir tropes like the focus on class, scandal (Fiske was a courtesan, Albert -thief and blackmailer, Ellen -murderess, Emily-dangerously unstable), and of course by the end fate steps in. In addition, there’s the use of noir iconography, with its visual interest in staircases.
It’s also an old-fashioned horror story– not vampires or ghouls– but the haunting feeling you’d get from fog-filled marshes off the Thames River, the tinny sound of a not quite tuned piano, a body behind the wall, or the disorder of insanity vs a murder of desperation and opportunity. Whereas with all of Val Lewton’s startling contributions, the “unspoken and the unseen were the true sources of dread.” (Judith Crist)
The lighting particularly accents the player’s expressions as they emerge from the dark edges around their form, with merely an aureole on their face or eyes– like a lit mask. This is truly effective in bringing out the intense concentration of Ida Lupino’s beautiful eyes and Ellen’s inner turmoil. The angles in the set up of the interior are odd and sharp, once again the source of light, Lupino’s face lit from underneath used to provoke the contrast between black and a deathly pale white.
Columbia Pictures studio purchased the rights to Denham and Percy’s story with Rosalind Russell in mind for the starring role of Ellen Creed. Russell was featured as the lead Olivia Grayne in another psychological thriller Night Must Fall in 1937. But, Ida Lupino, as always, was worthy of the role and had a remarkably innate grasp of a woman torn by her strong sense of preservation. She was also married to Louis Hayward at the time of filming.
Lux Radio Theater broadcast a 60-minute radio adaptation of the movie on September 27, 1943 with Ida Lupino reprising her film role. According to contemporary articles in The Hollywood Reporter, Lillian GIsh Judith Anderson, Pauline Lord, Laurette Taylor and Helen Chandler were all considered for roles as one of the demented Creed sisters.Â
Though the film is stage-bound, it preserves the feel of the original play and has a visual moodiness thanks to distinguished and skillful cinematographer George Barnes (Footlight Parade 1933, Marked Woman 1937, Rebecca 1940, Meet John Doe, Jane Eyre 1943, Spellbound 1945, Force of Evil 1948, The File on Thelma Jordan 1949, The War of the Worlds 1953). Barnes started as a still photographer which explains the aesthetic of framing scenes like an arrangement of still lifes. He was nominated 7 times, one for his work on Ladies in Retirement, with over 200 films to his credit, he was a hard-working cinematographer from 1935- 1949.Â
Responsible for the art direction and interior design that won him an Academy Award is Lionel Banks (The Awful Truth 1937, Holiday 1938, Golden Boy 1939, His Gal Friday 1940, The Boogie Man Will Get You 1942, The Soul of a Monster 1944, Cry of the Werewolf 1944. He designed the South American set for Only Angels Have Wings 1939, and conjured up the turn of the century for the fantasy Here Comes Mr. Jordan 1941 and again for Charles Vidor’s lavish A Song to Remember 1945. Banks added to the stage play atmosphere of the film with its collection of sparse surreal, gnarled trees that look fake, fog-shrouded heaths, and a heaviness to the interior as a suffocatingly enclosed space. The entire exterior scenes have a look of unreality, the outside appears like a murky dreamscape with painted clouds floating in a painted sky, where there is no departure.
Filmed mostly as a set piece in the parlor of a slowly waning old house on the marshes of the Thames Estuary some ten miles to the east of Gravesend, in 1885. The shots are set up with odd angles and the shadows create a sense of confined spaces with unseen rooms and staircases that go nowhere. Barnes and Banks even made a low stone wall of the cottage, which seems to constrain the borderline of the house.
The actors are positioned as the primary focus on the screen backdropped by the scenery that hints only at the suggestion of dank marshes, melancholy trees, and craggy rocks surrounding the house. Much of the set pieces remind me strongly of an episode of Boris Karloff’s anthology series THRILLER, titled ‘THE LAST OF THE SOMMERVILLES’ released in 1961. Elements that are similar are the exterior shots that seem unreal, depicting an obscuring fog with fake trees and pale grays, with the interiors also as closed-in spaces of an antiquated house owned by an equally flitty old dowager (Martita Hunt) like Leonora, who preens and is prone to theatrics. She is taken care of by her dutiful companion played by Phyllis Thaxter who plans to murder the old gal. This perfectly macabre installment of the series happened to be directed by Ida Lupino! Perhaps she drew her inspiration from Ladies in Retirement. The art direction for that episode is done by Howard E Johnson, set by Julia Heron and John McCarthy Jr.
Martita Hunt and Phyllis Thaxter in The Last of the Summervilles 1961.
Ladies in Retirement flourishes from its tense and stodgy narrative more than the dark humor that Denham could have chosen. Unlike the brisk screwball comedy of Arsenic and Old Lace 1943, by director Frank Capra and screenwriter Julius Epstein which was also based on a play by Joseph Kesserling. That play inspired Denham and Percy to write their own story about a pair of eccentric older women.
The stage play in 1939 went on to receive rave reviews with 151 performances at the Henry Miller’s Theatre. The story was written by Reginald Denham who spent the main part of his career directing Broadway theater, and Edward Percy. The play starred Flora Robson in the role of Ellen. Director Bernard Girard’s psycho-sexual and often grotesque The Mad Room 1969 is a modern re-working of Denham and Percy’s play. The film stars Shelley Winters, and Stella Stevens with Michael Burns and Barbara Sammeth replacing the mentally ill Creed sisters. Denham also wrote the screenplay for the 1969 movie. He penned 2 episodes of Lux Video Theatre, ‘Help Wanted’ episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents 1956, 4 episodes of Suspense 1949-1950-‘Help Wanted’, ‘The Suicide Club’, ‘Murder Through the Looking Glass’, and ‘Dead Ernest.’ Denham also directed films from 1934-1940.
Continue reading “Ladies in Retirement (1941) Though this be madness”
🚀 Keep Watching the Skies! Science Fiction Cinema of the 1950s: The Year is 1956 — Part One
BODY SNATCHERS, MAN BEASTS AND MOLE MEN
1984
Will Ecstasy Be a Crime… In the Terrifying World of the Future?
Directed by Michael Anderson, the film is based on the novel by George Orwell that tells of a totalitarian future society in which a man whose daily work is rewriting history, rebels by doing the unthinkable– he falls in love. 1984 stars Edmund O’Brien as clerk Winston Smith of The Ministry of Truth for the Outer Party who refuses to accept the totalitarian state of 1984, where all the citizens are under surveillance at all times. When Winston meets Julia they bask in their physical pleasures outside of the watchful eyes of Big Brother but are betrayed by a member of the Inner Party, O’Connor (Redgrave). Each state functionary must adhere to their designated positions and Redgrave gives a superb performance as a proud drone who possesses a drive as he demonstrates his responsibilities to the state.
The underrated Jan Sterling plays Julia of the Outer Party, and David Kossoff is cast as Charrington the junk shop owner. Co-starring in the film are Melvyn Johns as Jones, Donald Pleasence as R. Parsons, Carol Wolfridge as Selina Parsons, Ernest Clark as Outer Party Announcer, Patrick Allen as Inner Party Official, British character actor Michael Ripper as Outer Party Orator and Kenneth Griffith as the prisoner.
It was in 1954 that Nigel Kneale (writer-creator of the Quatermass trilogy, The Quatermass Xperiment 1955, First Men in the Moon 1964, The Witches 1966, Quatermass and the Pit 1967, The Woman in Black 1989 first adapted George Orwell’s dystopian Ordeal for BBC television starring Peter Cushing as Winston Smith.
Director Michael Anderson (who would later take on another futuristic cautionary tale, Logan’s Run 1976) unveils Orwell’s bleak vision and its passage of vigilance, yet it has been criticized for lacking the deeper essence of his novel and the gravity of its contributions – a premonition of things to come. The ferocious inclinations of man create- Big Brother. A destiny intent on tyranny, depersonalization, the all-watchful eye of the totalitarian state, and the loss of free will.
There were two endings made. The British release presents Winston Smith (O’Brien) defying Big Brother and dying for his principles. The American version has lovers O’Brien and Sterling brainwashed, reconditioned and ultimately abandoning their relationship.
“Thus, in place of Orwell’s savage satire on the rise of the authoritarian state ( and specifically Stalinism), producer Rathvon and Anderson mount a vapid romance in which beefy O’Brien and mousey Sterling are clearly intended to represent the undying spirit of rebellion. Even the drabness of life in Oceania that Orwell creates so convincingly, is lost in the film which, like so many literary adaptations, centers on the slim storyline of the novel.” -Phil Hardy
Secret Beyond the Door (1947) Freud, Lang, the Dream State, and Repressed Poison
SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR (1947)
"Most people are asleep."
"Wind was there and space and sun and storm"¦ everything's beyond the door."
Fritz Lang's psychological film noir, Secret Beyond the Door (1947) is suggestive of a dream state, from which the characters never quite emerge. The film draws blurry lines between what is latent and obvious desire. The doors are symbolic of the compartmental anxieties within the dark recesses of the mind. Secret Beyond the Door is steeped in metaphor, sunless and surreal, and an evocative score by Miklós Rózsa. Cinematography is by Stanley Cortez, who is responsible for another dream like milieu in Night of the Hunter (1955). It was Joan Bennett, who insisted on using Cortez as cinematographer.
The film co-stars marvelous character actor Anne Revere as Mark’s sister Caroline, Barbara O’Neil, Natalie Schafer, and Paul Cavanagh.
Bosley Crowther, ""¦ Lang is still a director who knows how to turn the obvious, such as locked doors and silent chambers and roving spotlights, into strangely tingling stuff"¦ For all its psycho-nonsense, this film is mildly creepy."
The screenplay by Sylvia Richardson is based on Rufus King’s novel Museum Piece No. Thirteen, and also appeared in the December 1945 issue of Red Book.
Long ago I read a book that told the meaning of dreams. It said that if a girl dreams of a boat or a ship she will reach a safe harbor, but if she dreams of daffodils she is in great danger. But this is no time for me to think of danger. This is my wedding day. "“Celia Lamphere
The film opens with a voice-over by Joan Bennett. Celia Lamphere, (Bennett) journeys through her surreal and sleepy addiction to her new husband, architect Mark Lamphere (Michael Redgrave). Celia's obsessed with the suspicion that Mark is hiding hideous secrets, she plans to succumb to his murderous compulsions. But Mark is not the only one with creeping psychosis. Celia herself is driven by a troubled, neurotic psyche that initially drew her to his enigmatic nature.
Celia wanders through a corridor literally and metaphorically, first in a reverie and then a shadowy nightmare. She first meets Mark on a trip to Mexico when she is mesmerized by the power of passion which can drive two men to fight each other to the death for a woman (Donna Martell). "How proud that woman must be to cause death in the streets." She realizes that Mark is watching her excitement in this, his eyes like fingers. At that moment, Celia has a taste for danger. Like Mark, the thrill of death represents a strong aphrodisiac for her.
Celia: Suddenly I felt that someone was watching me. There was a tingling at the nape of my neck as though the air had turned cool. I felt eyes touching me like fingers. There was a current flowing between us… warm and sweet… and frightening, too, because he saw behind my make-up what no-one had ever seen. Something I didn’t know was there.
Throughout the film Celia strays from reality and finds herself adrift within a conscious flowing daydream. Her voice-over shows she is controlled by the intense beating of her heart. She relates the feeling to drowning "When you are drowning, your whole life flashes before your eyes."
British actor Michael Redgrave made his U.S. film debut as Mark. Initially Lang wanted James Mason in the lead role. Mark turns dark and brooding soon after he marries his new bride. He has been married before and his first wife has died under curious circumstances. Also part of the plot is his serious young son David — who blames him for his mother's death.
There is also, his strangely loyal secretary Miss Robey (Barbara O'Neil) who wears a scarf over one side of her face having been disfigured In a fire. One thinks of Rebecca later on. The film co-stars character actor Anne Revere as Mark's sister Caroline.
Celia:Â I heard his voice and then I didn’t hear it anymore, because the beating of my blood was louder. This was what I’d hunted those foolish years in New York. I knew before I knew his name or touched his hand and for an endless moment, I seemed to float like a feather blown to a place where time had stopped.
Mark:Â You were living that fight. You soaked it all in – love, hate, the passion. You’ve been starved for feelings – any real feelings. I thought: 20th Century Sleeping Beauty. Wealthy American girl who has lived her life wrapped in cotton wool but she wants to wake up. Maybe she can.Â
Celia:Â Is it as hard as all that?Â
Mark:Â Most people are asleep.Â
Mark shows all the telltales signs that he is delusional, having a preoccupation with several murder rooms and one locked door #7 in his estate. He's filled with macabre declarations, "I have a hobby collecting "˜felicitous’ rooms", (Celia mistaking the word for happy, not "˜apt' for murder) "the way a place is built determines what happens in it", "certain rooms cause violence even murders."
Mark Lamphere takes his guests on a tour of his murder rooms.
"As an architect Mark Lamphere gives particular credence to the influence of space and human lives. He repeatedly uses the word "felicitous" to describe his theory that elements of particular space make certain human actions possible. And therefor "˜apt' for that locale." "” The Dark Mirror Psychiatry and Film Noir by Marlisa Santos
Redgrave understands how to walk that fine line between innate intensity and male hysteria — one just needs to see his performance as Maxwell Frere in Dead of Night's (1945) segment The Ventriloquist's Dummy, where he wrestles with his "˜dummy partner' Hugo.
Mark is fascinated by the connection between the action of murder and the significance of his locked rooms as psychological theatre. The film utilizes production design by Max Parker (Chandu, the Magician 1932, Arsenic and Old Lace 1944) who creates a dreamworld of disruptive psychosis. It's within this fairytale steeped in misogyny that Redgrave wants to act out his fantasist murderous impulses. Secret Beyond the Door is a retelling of Bluebeard, the archetype of the serial killer who desires to annihilate women who dominate him. We see a hint of Mark's roiling demons when he takes a group of party guests on a tour of his rooms as curios — original replicas of historic murders. One of his guests, a psychology major, associates the murder of a wife or lover to "unconscious hatred for the mother."
Celia confronts Mark, "It was the way you immersed yourself in those stories you were almost happy about their deaths."
"Probably the most overt Freudian depiction of noir psychosis is found in Secret Beyond the Door, a film that features various re-castings of fairy tale patterns bound up with the psychoanalytic interpretations of childhood trauma and sexual relationships. From the start, the film makes no artistic attempt to submerge its psychoanalysis frame ["¦] all of Celia's fears and desires are open for scrutiny from the time that she first encounters Mark."Â "” The Dark Mirror Psychiatry and Film Noir by Marlisa Santos
She takes a subconscious journey both surreal and substantive as she navigates her new relationship with Mark and her awakened death wish.
During their honeymoon Celia unleashes Mark's sinister urges when she locks the door to their room. This catalyst brings his childhood trauma to the surface. As a young boy he perceived a painful transgression by his mother. His recollection of this seemingly insignificant incident turned into hatred of all women, that has carried throughout his life. These machinations bring him to homicidal delusion. His memories are locked away just as his morbid rooms are show pieces.
Celia embraces her husband's impulses, setting herself up within the replica frozen in time of the death room #7 meant for her. But she desires to unlock Mark's subconscious as well as his locked room.
Celia- "This is my room, waiting for me"
She waits with lilacs, waiting to trespass on the madness that has led him to this dark place. The link between love and death becomes interwoven as Celia prepares to sacrifice herself to Mark if she cannot save him from his tortured sickness. Kelly Oliver and Benigno Trigo cover Freud's fascination with Eros/Thanatos in in their analysis of Secret Beyond the Door, drawing this connection between love and death. Which "according to the film's logic, death is love's uncanny double."Â
"Inasmuch as closed space can be interpreted as "˜cave', "˜the grave', a house, woman"¦ entry into it is interpreted on various levels as "˜death', "˜conception' "˜return home' and so on: moreover all these acts are thought of as mutually identical".-Teresa de Lauretis
Mark's voice-overs wrestle with the urge to strangle Celia if left alone with her. He imagines what he will say when asked if the murder was premeditated. Redgrave is framed within the scene by the prominent energy of his twisting a scarf as if he is preparing to strangle Celia. Holding the scarf, the murder weapon from Don Ignacio's room, his voice-over gives us the sense of the film's prowling subconsciousness.The darker counterpart to Celia's dream-like twists and turns.
Mark:Â There’s something in your face that I saw once before in South Dakota. Wheat country. Cyclone weather. Just before the cyclone, the air has a stillness. A flat, gold, shimmering stillness. You have it in your face – the same hush before the storm and when you smile it’s like the first breath of wind bending down the wheat. I know that behind that smile is a turbulence that…Â
Mark's Freudian Oedipal struggle with hatred for his mother and all women with latent murderous desire is never quite explored as deeply as it could be in the film. In flashback we understand that he has been shut out of his mother's affection in one scene. Though here, murder seems to be an expression of male exasperation, one wonders if this was consequential in creating such a conflicted and disturbed monster?
"The symbolism of shutting Freud's psychological door is present yet after all the Freudian iconography, the basic motivation lies still in the darkness, with one door closed, leaving us outside the "˜Interior turmoil.'" (Marlisa Santos)
*From Women in Film Noir Edited by E. Ann Kaplan
"In the threatening family mansions of the gothic, or in The Haunting's evil old Hill House, a door, a staircase, a mirror, a portrait are never simply what they appear to be, as an image from Fritz Lang's paranoid woman's film' Secret Beyond the Door. The title sums up the enigma of many of these films in which the question about the husband's motives becomes an investigation of the house (and of the secret of a woman who previously inhabited it.)Â
Freud believed dreams were masks that disguised wish fulfillment. They are metaphorical inroads that point to our subconscious desires. And dreams"” like folklore and images in art"” are used as symbolism manifesting these unconscious emotional conflicts. Director Fritz Lang very often infused his films with an appetite for expressionist symbolism. With recurring iconography of doors and corridors, Secret Beyond the Door is perhaps one of his most pronounced visions of Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams cloaked in the cinematic vogue of film noir.
Some Men Destroy What They Love Most!
This is your EverLovin’ Joey saying, there are no secrets between us, here at The Last Drive In! See ya soon!
Lee Grant Interview now with Audio!
Come spend some time with me and Lee Grant, while we both enjoy an informal chat about her legendary career and life in general!
at the AXA equitable Center 2-5-11-Photo by John Barrett/Globe Photos
“Out Loud” Part 2– My Extraordinary Conversation with the Legendary Lee Grant…
YourEver Lovin’ Joey sayin’ I love ya Lee, you’re fearsome !
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The Film Score Freak Recognizes: Jacqueline Susann’s two tawdry tales-
Valley of the Dolls (1967) & Once is Not Enough (1975)
When you think of lurid melodrama you think of the gloriously gaudy, flashy & trashy Jacqueline Susann! I’ve been sort of in the mood to watch my guilty pleasure filled with flaming divas, drugs, tragic love, screaming in an alley and walking away with your head held high! Valley of the Dolls works as an exposé of three aspiring beauties who each in their own way are catapulted to stardom, but ultimately pay a price…
Considered a film to walk away from in shame, it was the Gay community who resurrected this showy gem and delivered it to cult status!
Valley of the Dolls (1967) directed by Mark Robson and stars the enigmatic raven beauty Barbara Parkins (who suggested Warwick to sing the tearjerker of a theme song), Patty Duke whose performance as Neely O’Hara is a tour de force, Sharon Tate whose tragic fate is eerily played out in her role as Jennifer North, Susan Hayward and the extraordinary Lee Grant. See my interview here:  LEE GRANT INTERVIEW
I can’t help getting that exquisite punch in the gut feeling when Dionne Warwick sings the 1967 theme song by André and Dory Previn, composed for the film version of the Jacqueline Susann best-selling novel.
All I see when I hear the theme song is Anne Welles (who could only have been portrayed by Barbara Parkins who falls down the rabbit hole of ‘dolls’ and crawls back out, empowered!) her face gazing out the window of the train, envisioning a new sense of self and freedom, we’re also transported by the power and poignancy of Dionne Warwick’s immortal voice. “Gotta get off, Gonna get. Have to get off from this ride.”
Next, another guilty pleasure of mine, is Susann’s more obscure little potboiler Once is Not Enough (1975) directed by Guy Green and screenplay by Julius J. Epstein (Casablanca 1942, Arsenic and Old Lace 1942, The Man Who Came to Dinner 1942). This sensationalist slice of cake stars Kirk Douglas, Alexis Smith, David Janssen (that’s all I need to know) George Hamilton, Greek siren Melina Mercouri, Brenda Vaccaro and Deborah Raffin as January. Filled with incestuous overtones, clandestine lesbian trysts, a May/December romance and the ambiguity of love and ownership, Once is Not Enough is like a cheap wine that still tastes pretty good.
The theme song with a melody that hauls my heart over a melancholy mountain of emotion is written by prolific composer Henry Mancini. Hearing it now, still gives me that shiver of nostalgia for everything wonderful about 70s overwrought romantic fiction.
January (Raffin) returns home to New York from Europe. She indulges herself in the subculture of the city and winds up falling in love with writer Tom Colt (Janssen) a jaded older man who replaces the love she feels for her father, Kirk Douglas.
Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the dolls sung by the leading light of pop & soul Dionne Warwick… scored by Andre Previn lyrics by Dory Previn
Jacqueline Susann’s Once is Not Enough score by Henry Mancini
This is your EverLovin’ Joey saying I’m Verklempt at The Last Drive In!
The Film Score Freak – “like a circle in a spiral”
THE WINDMILLS OF YOUR MIND
One of the composers who has always been able to trace my heart to that sentimental place and transport my soul to a romantic kind of ache is Oscar-Winner Michel Legrand.
Norman Jewison (The Cincinnacti Kid (1965), In the Heat of the Night (1967) a gritty racially-charged detective story set in the South starring Sidney Poitier beat out Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate at the Oscars! Another of Jewison’s visually moody films set as nihilistic cautionary tale is Rollerball (1975), And Justice for All (1979), Moonstruck 1987.) directs The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) which is Michel Legrand’s first American soundtrack and includes The Windmills of Your Mind with lyrics by Marilyn and Alan Bergman, performed by Noel Harrison (son of Rex Harrison). It’s an example of the moody romantic melodies you’ll discover in any of Legrand’s soundtracks.
I couldn’t help post this little flavor of music to sample, as I’ve been singing it all morning to my Siamese cat Daisy, while dreaming of the way the 60s decade in film flickered like a pale yellow haze, dreamy, sexy, languid, just for “Kicks” and romantic in it’s more subtle sensuality.
After watching a five hour rough cut of the film, composer Michel Legrand took a six week vacation during which he wrote 90 minutes of music. The film was then reedited to the music, instead of the other way around. If this experiment had failed, Legrand would have written a second score in the traditional way free of charge.
Windmills is an exquisitely evocative melody with lyrics like poetry that shares an intimate partnership with the story, dancing alongside the stunning Faye Dunaway featuring her gazillion fashion changes (Theodora Van Runkle who designed the costumes for Dunaway’s Bonnie and Clyde 1967) and Steve McQueen with his restrained spirit in an arousing stylized cat & mouse heist caper. McQueen plays an independently wealthy bank robber and Dunaway is the insurance investigator on his tail, literally.
Hopefully you’ll vibe on this a bit of Legrand’s genius, and I dare you to listen just once and be able to get it out of your head the rest of the day! Like a circle in a spiral…
Your EverLovin’ Joey sayin’ circle back to The Last Drive In again!
Quote of the Day! My Darling Clementine (1946)
MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946)
“Mac, you ever been in love?”– Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda)
“No, I’ve been a bartender all my life.”– Mac the Barman (J. Farrell MacDonald)
I’ve come late to the party, but I finally got my formal introduction to legendary director John Ford by good friend and notable blogger Aurora at Once Upon a Screen. While I’ve always felt that The Grapes of Wrath (1940) to be a cinematic triumph with memorable performances– one such is the ubiquitous John Carradine as Jim Casy who also appeared in Ford’s Stagecoach is one of my favorites– I didn’t really focus my attentions to the director himself. My first real exposure to John Ford was through his immensely beautiful film of pure visual poetry How Green Was My Valley (1941), the poignant story by way of voice-over reflected upon through the eyes of young Huw played by Roddy McDowall. The narration is told by a now grown-up Huw, recounted using the voice of actor/director Irving Pichel, who tells of the lives of a resilient and decent family in a Welsh mining town, who struggle to get by in the midst of often brutal hardships. It is truly one of the most aesthetically moving films I’ve ever seen.
Donald Crisp, Roddy McDowall, and Sara Allgood in How Green Was My Valley (1941).
Ford on the set of My Darling Clementine (1946).
Recently we celebrated Ford’s work by watching an exciting western-themed double feature, Stagecoach (1939) and My Darling Clementine (1946). Both are striking in their composition as I’m learning how Ford frames everything we see with explicit detail and thoughtful determination. What strikes me as another essential style of Ford is how the peripheral characters –particularly notable in Stagecoach (1939)– fill out the visual narrative with their presence and their valuable expressions as akin to the material faces found in a classical painting. Character actor Jane Darwell who plays Ma Joad in Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940) makes an appearance in My Darling Clementine.
Jane Darwell plays dance hall owner Kate Nelson, which was her second appearance in a John Ford film. Before Clementine, she previously worked with the director who used her as a voice-over actor alongside Henry Fonda in the war documentary The Battle of Midway (1942). Darwell worked with Ford in 3 Godfathers (1948) as Miss Florie and was cast in several other of his films. Her last appearance as a Ford regular was in The Last Hurrah (1958).
My Darling Clementine deserves a more thoughtful eye and I can see why it is considered one of the greatest movies of all time. I read that this was his last collaboration with Darryl F. Zanuck at Fox, who unfortunately chopped off a half hour of the film. It is included in the AFI’s list of the 400 movies nominated for the Top 100 Greatest American Movies.
Ford paints each scene of his poetic, folkloric romanticism with vast open spaces and fantastical clouds for miles, that are in contrast and simultaneous to intervals of intimacy in shots that appear like still life. If we are not bathed in the bright sky, we witness carefully orchestrated motion or transfixed images through frames within frames lit by glowing sources of light, like fireflies it enhances figures silhouetted in the darker spaces.
each frame, a photograph…
Ford and MacDonald bring about a fairytale-like realism that is meticulously designed to draw your eyes to each frame, capturing a sense of thoughtful contemplation.
While both Stagecoach and My Darling Clementine are considered his masterpieces, the unhurried pacing of Henry Fonda’s Wyatt Earp leads My Darling Clementine through an astonishingly blithe journey, for such a dark story. Fonda’s quietly measured self-assurance and nonchalant humor work as a buoy to ensure that the film is never bogged down by a gloomy spirit.
Ford took liberties with the re-telling of the legend of Wyatt Earp -Doc Holliday partnership and the infamous feud between Marshal Wyatt Earp and the ornery Clanton clan (a young John Ireland as Billy Clanton, Grant Withers as Ike) led by monstrous and malicious patriarch Old Man Clanton (Walter Brennan) whose expressions and mean as spit sparse commentary are as potent as a snake bite.
The boundless, dusty panorama of My Darling Clementine is striking with its haunting skies, incomparable rocky buttes and the vast open isolation of the Old West filmed in Monument Valley, Utah. Cinematographer Joseph MacDonald (Panic in the Streets 1950, Pickup on South Street 1952, The Young Lions 1958, Walk on the Wild Side 1962, The Carpetbaggers 1964, The Sand Pebbles 1966) paints a melancholy landscape depicting the American wilderness of the late 1800s.
Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and his brothers Morgan (Ward Bond) and Virgil (Tim Holt) head into the unruly fatalism of Tombstone, leaving their younger brother James to watch over their herd of cattle. When they get back to the site, the cattle have been stolen and they find James murdered, shot in the back. Wyatt winds up accepting the job of Marshal, with his brothers as deputies. He is determined to hunt down the men who killed his brother. Shortly after taking over as Marshal he meets the bad-tempered Doc Holliday (Victor Mature) who drowns himself in booze, has an unrelenting cough, and spreads his brooding disposition around Tombstone. Regardless of Doc Holliday’s heavy-hearted yet sympathetic personality, the two become allies.
each frame, a picture…
From the beginning Wyatt strongly suspects the ruthless Clanton gang of killing his brother, especially after he finds James' medallion on Doc’s current lover, the sensuous saloon gal Chihuahua (Linda Darnell).
Clementine Carter (Cathy Downs) Doc's former fiancé comes all the way to see her beau but sadly discovers he has moved on. Wyatt falls in love with the sweet-mannered girl while he sets out to quietly avenge his youngest brother’s murder, culminating in the iconic shoot-out with the Clantons at the O.K. Corral.
IMDb Trivia
John Ford, who in his youth had known the real Wyatt Earp, claimed the way the OK Corral gunfight was staged in this film was the way it was explained to him by Earp himself, with a few exceptions. Ford met Earp through Harry Carey.
Walter Brennan disliked John Ford so much that he never worked with him again. One time when Brennan was having a little trouble getting into the saddle, Ford yelled, “Can’t you even mount a horse?” Brennan shot back, “No, but I got three Oscars for acting!”
John Ford wanted to shoot in Monument Valley, UT, which had proven to be the perfect site for Stagecoach (1939) and would quickly become his favorite location and the landscape most closely associated with his vision of the Old West. The real town of Tombstone, AZ, however, lies at the southern end of the state, closer to the Arizona-Mexico border. So he had a set for the complete town built at a cost of $250,000. Ford also chose Monument Valley because he wanted to bring some business to the economically depressed Navajo community there
Jeanne Crain was scheduled to play Clementine. Studio head Darryl F. Zanuck ruled against her, writing in a memo that the part was so small that Crain fans might be disappointed by not seeing her in more scenes. That’s how contract player Cathy Downs got the part instead.
Walter Brennan, John Ireland, and Grant Withers were required to do their own riding and shooting in the scene where the clan rides into town during a dust storm. John Ford used a powerful wind machine and told the actors to fire their guns close to the horses’ ears to make them ride wild.
Vincent Price was considered for the role of Doc Holliday.
The movie was featured in the TV series M*A*S*H episode M*A*S*H: Movie Tonight (1977). It was said to have been the favorite movie of Col. Sherman Potter.
Henry Fonda was John Ford’s first and only choice to play Wyatt Earp.
Tyrone Power was an early possibility for Doc Holliday, but for some unknown reason his name was dropped from consideration early in the pre-casting stage. John Ford was enthusiastic about Douglas Fairbanks Jr., telling Darryl F. Zanuck in a memo, “He might be terribly good in it. He would look about the same age as Henry and as it’s a flamboyant role it is quite possible he could kick hell out of it. Think it over well.” He was not happy with Zanuck’s choice, Victor Mature, and he began pressing for Vincent Price instead. However, after meeting with Mature, Ford told Zanuck he was not at all worried about the actor’s performance. He was never very happy, however, with Linda Darnell as Doc’s Mexican spitfire lover.
Sam Peckinpah considered this his favorite Western and paid homage to it in several of his Westerns, including Major Dundee (1965) and The Wild Bunch (1969).
Two actresses considered for the part of Clementine were Fox contract players Anne Baxter and Jeanne Crain. Instead, John Ford was given Cathy Downs, who was an unknown at the time.
