"G" MEN (William Keighley, 1935).
James Cagney plays a lawyer named Brick Davis, who refuses to work for
the mob, and then decides to join the FBI when his best friend, an agent,
is gunned down by a gangster. This was the first time Cagney played
a cop, but his persona--tough, jaunty wise guy--was the same as ever.
In his best scenes he plays the rebel upstart to his FBI boss (Robert
Armstrong), showing him up at every opportunity. Keighley keeps things
moving in a brisk, no-nonsense manner--this is a typical 30s Warners
crime picture, sans frills or pretensions.
One can't help noticing, however, the limitations of Cagney just playing
himself in these programmers. When the girl he's been after (Margaret
Lindsay, as the Armstrong character's sister) shows concern for his
safety, he hugs her while giving a knowing smirk to the
audience. It's all too pat--his perfectly fearless screen image is nothing
but surface, and I think it took a special director like Walsh, Wellman
or Hawks to bring out something more substantial from him.
Ann Dvorak is on hand as another love interest for Cagney, from the
wrong side of the law. The "bad" girls in these movies are
always more interesting than the "good" ones. The idealized
image of the FBI seems awfully quaint today. J. Edgar Hoover is thankfully
nowhere in sight.
COLLEGE (James W. Horne, 1927).
This is a Buster Keaton film--something to keep in mind whenever you
see another name credited as director. Here he plays a nerd who makes
a valedictorian high school speech condemning sports. Unfortunately,
the girl he loves (Anne Cornwall) is attracted to athletic types, so
Buster enrolls in her college and makes a concerted attempt to excell
in school sports.
Most Keaton fans, if asked to list their favorites in order, would
probably name at least four or five of his movies before this one. And
in terms of style, inventiveness, and production values, they'd be right.
But I must confess that I have an inordinate fondness for College,
and have watched it more times than any other Keaton film except The
General. This is mainly due to a long sequence in the middle of
the picture, in which Buster tries his hand at all the various forms
of track and field. I have always been terrible at sports myself, so
I suppose I identify. In any case, the nerd fails at everything he tries,
and in such a wonderful fashion, that I become helpless, aching with
laughter. It takes a superb athlete to be able to play a bad one the
way Keaton does here. He doesn't just flub everything the way a normal
geek would--the disasters are in themselves a kind of acrobatic display.
The sequence also has a classic structure in which each gag builds on
the last one and eventually tops it. This is brilliant, inspired physical
comedy.
The rest of the movie isn't so bad either, from the beginning with
Buster's suit shrinking on him after a rainstorm, through a scene where
he tries to be a soda jerk, to a wonderful bit as the coxswain in the
school regatta. There is one regrettable scene with Buster
trying to work as a black waiter. Nothing overtly racist, but it's disconcerting
how often black people show up as gags in Keaton's films. College
is a lot of fun, though, and the ending (especially the last two shots)
is almost surreal in its perfection.
SUNDAY DAUGHTERS (János Rózsa,
1980).
A portrait of delinquent teenage girls in Hungary, and the spiritual
emptiness of the juvenile detention system in which they're trapped.
Juli (Julianna Nyakó) is captured after one of her many escapes,
and when she comes back to the reformatory she is greeted with a heroine's
welcome by the girls. But soon it becomes evident that this response
is more due to the stifling boredom of their lives than to any sense
of love or solidarity, and Juli settles in to an existence in which
she alternately bullies or is bullied by the others.
There are moments of tenderness amidst the brutality. For instance,
one of the girls manages to get married in order to escape, and this
episode has a strange, bittersweet quality. But sometimes Rózsa
strains too hard for effect--a sequence in which the girls have a secret
dance party, igniting hysteria and suicide, is overwrought. The picture
gets better after Juli makes another escape and tries to seek refuge
with different family members, all with their own problems. She ends
up staying with one of a group of well-meaning women who had come to
the reformatory to help the girls, and here Rosza illuminates the divide
between good intentions and troubling realities.
The picture is generally very observant and even-handed. The director
was fortunate in his choice of Nyakó for the lead, who shows
remarkable range and sensitivity in a role that could easily been spoiled
by an obvious "troubled young person" approach.
The film opens with black-and-white interviews of the girl inmates talking
about their lives. This prelude rings true, and connects the film to
a documentary tradition that rose to prominence in Hungary as discontent
with the communist regime became more open. One false note: I thought
having the girls watch Truffaut's Les Quatre Cents Coups in
the institution was a heavy-handed attempt to draw a parallel. (Would
a juvenile prison really screen such a film?) All in all, though, this
is an interesting, little-known social problem film from eastern Europe.
THÉRÈSE (Alain Cavalier, 1986).
The story of Thérèse Martin, a 15-year-old girl who joined
her sisters as a nun in the Carmelite Order in Liseux, against the advice
of everyone, including her priest. Her devotion became legendary, and
she died of TB at the age of 24. The publication of her journals spread
her fame, and she was eventually canonized.
Religious subjects are perhaps the most difficult to do well on film.
Instead of presenting an untroubled picture of faith, as the naive popular
conception would have it, Cavalier wisely emphasizes the mysteries and
uncertainties of spiritual life. Another young nun falls in love with
Thérèse, and becomes a sort of mouthpiece for the inevitable
doubts that assail a God-seeker. Normal human passions and shortcomings
reveal themselves beneath the seeminly placid surface of convent life,
including suspicion and jealousy.
Thérèse is played by Catherine Mouchet, and she makes
her character seem genuinely enrapt in love for Christ, who in the Carmelite
rder is considered the nuns' bridegroom. Her extremely intense performance
allows room for questions as to what this kind of faith really consists
of, even as we marvel at her luminous, quietly ecstatic screen presence.
The most striking element of the film, and I think the one aspect that
really makes it work, is the unusual production design. Cavalier uses
a black background, with only the most minimal furniture and other props,
so that the action seems to take place in a stage-like, abstract space.
The intent is to evoke a subjective feeling of eternity, a place beyond
time, and it works beautifully. The method could have come off as too
theatrical, but Cavalier presents the story as a series of minimalist
tableaux, so that the lives of the characters seem to light up with
intermittent flashes, as if in vision. This is far from realism, but
it also avoids the distancing effect of a filmed play. The whole picture
has an otherworldly quality, gorgeous and emotionally unsettling.
TWO SECONDS (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932).
A convicted killer (Edward G. Robinson) is strapped into the electric
chair, and the switch is thrown. In the two seconds before he dies,
he relieves the events that led up to this point.
It's a fascinating idea for a film, but the results are mixed. Robinson's
character works in construction, spending his days high above the city
building skyscrapers with his co-worker and roommate (Preston Foster).
He's a naive and lonely man, easy prey for a dance-hall hostess (Vivienne
Osborne) who tricks him into marrying her after getting him drunk. Later,
when events cause the hero to quit his job, his wife goes back to the
lowlife (we're meant to think of prostitution, although that couldn't
be said outright), and his guilt and damaged pride start to drive him
mad.
It's hard to imagine a bleaker, more pessimistic film. Two Seconds
reflects a dark mental outlook that must have been common during the
Great Depression, something that most movies of the period tended to
avoid talking about. On a typically small Warners budget, LeRoy comes
up with some startling effects, including a courtroom scene done with
harsh lighting against deep shadow. But the script's weaknesses make
the film an unsatisfying experience. The best friend character is more
of an annoyance than a help, unless your idea of a friend is someone
who constantly badgers you with warnings about getting involved with
dames. There's no sense of real empathy here. And the wife is bad news
for the hero because, well, she's just bad.
If the main character showed some awareness of the influence of fate
or destiny, it might have sparked some interest, but he is a victim
both self-righteous and self-pitying, and Robinson gives one of his
rare bad performances, overacting and seeming out of his element. Towards
the end, the hero is arguing that living off his wife's earnings is
so humiliating that it justifies murder, and the script seems to expect
us to agree with this. This seems like a grotesque symptom of a widely
felt male insecurity during a time when more and more women were going
to work. In the end, it's hard to feel anything for the protagonist,
even pity. Two Seconds
aims at tragedy, but doesn't have the nerve to follow through.
©2006 Chris Dashiell
CineScene
