Odd Man Out (1947) - Directed by Carol Reed

Carol Reed’s 1947 masterpiece, Odd Man Out, could probably be qualified as an EPIC film noir. The term epic and film noir don’t often sync together, but I think an argument could be made that this film reaches a kind of rarefied air. Normally film noirs contain an economy of storyline and often films are in the 90 minute range. This one clocks in closer to 2 hours, and has a winding storyline that slowly takes in multiple points of view and multiple characters along it’s way. If anyone ever had the inclination to presuppose that Reed didn’t have as much influence on the classic noir The Third Man (in reference to Welles’ supposed take-over of that film), one need look no further than Odd Man Out to determine that theory is bunk. The dark lighting and  on-location shooting, the conflicted moral ambiguity, the fateful sense of doom, the loyalty of friends and lovers…..all of these things are held in common with The Third Man and indicate that Reed was clearly at the top of his filmmaking abilities in this era.

James Mason plays Johnny McQueen, a recently escaped Irish Nationalist leader based in Northern Ireland. He’s got a small group of loyal members at his beck and call….and also a devoted woman who loves him named Kathleen, played with touching emotion by Kathleen Ryan. He plans a bank heist to help pay for funds for his cause, but the heist goes awry, and Johnny ends up killing a man outside the bank. In the fight, he is shot in the shoulder and finds his way to an air-raid shelter in a poor part of town. He hides out there while his friends try to find him and get him to safety. The film then goes on to follow Johnny on an odyssey or quest of sorts, as he encounters everyone from kindly nurse ladies, to a horse-cab driver, to a bum, to a bar tender, to a drunken artist, and everyone has a different approach to his predicament. Some of them want to help him but are afraid of what it might look like to help someone like him, while others see him as a way to make money, as there is a reward out on him.

Overall, the film’s refined and romantically fatalistic tone is less in line with American film noirs like The Killers or The Big Heat, which tend to rely on more sexual undercurrents and violence. As such, it stands apart, along with The Third Man at least among film noirs that I’ve seen. There’s nothing hard-boiled about this film. Mason was always a refined kind of actor and his presence at the center of this film gives it a far different feel, with his whispy gentility and professorial delivery making the film far more polished than most film noirs would appear. Mason, although the central character in the film, doesn’t really have a significant amount of screen time, as the time is split among myriads of actors as his journey through the night to find safety continues. Reed’s way of introducing new characters throughout the film makes the film continually feel alive and vital.

Although the political angle of the film seems to draw a sympathy for the Irish Nationalist cause, it is not to a degree that is agenda driven. I didn’t feel like I was being manipulated into feeling a certain way. This story becomes about this man on this night and how he is treated by those he encounters. There’s also a fantastic surrealistic angle going on. Mason’s hallucinations in the bunker, at the bar table staring into the bubbles on the table in the spilled beer, and the one while he sits in the chair being painted by the drunken artist all add a sense of the absurd and allow for some interesting visual flourishes. The film score by William Alwyn is spectacular, as is the cinematography by Robert Krasker (who also would go on to photograph The Third Man). My only complaint is that this film is a bit difficult to track down and doesn’t exist in a proper print in the U.S. from what I've found. The only copy I could find was an old Image DVD from 1999. It does appear that the film is available in its entirety on YouTube, but I think this gorgeous masterpiece deserves a restoration and a wider release. It’s a must-see.

A Star is Born (1954) - Directed by George Cukor

Note that this essay of A Star is Born appears in the Wonders in the Dark Top 70 Musicals Countdown, coming in at #19.



Judy Garland. There were always two sides of her. On the one side, there was the immense talent and capability to entertain an audience. Her visceral vibrato could grab you and shake you to your core, and the way she conveyed her joy of singing was always so heartfelt, connecting straight to the audience's emotions. As a teenager, we saw her in perhaps the most iconic role in the history of cinema - Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz (1939), something most of us recall in a primordial sort of fashion, identifying with her sense of wonderment. On the other side was the immense tragedy. She may have been perhaps the most tragic figure ever created and tossed-aside by Hollywood. It's all the stuff of legend now though: the pills and drugs, the weight losses, the weight gains, the failed marriages, and the suicidal behavior. What's amazing is that for most of her career, MGM was able to somehow separate the two Judys and glossed over her immense personal struggles, despite her wildly erratic work behavior, to only present us the talent; the good Judy. One film, though, captures all of Judy. All of her intense personal pain and unbelievable talent in one film. George Cukor's A Star is Born is the film that dared to take Judy as she was, which was both one of the most talented entertainers to ever live and the most tragic of stars.

Cukor's film had a tumultous history, not the least of which was the path that Judy took to get into the film.  She had a nervous breakdown and slashed her wrists with broken glass during The Pirate (1948) of which she missed 99 out of 135 days of shooting. She successfully teamed up with Fred Astaire in MGM's Easter Parade (1948) and somehow completed In the Good Old Summertime (1949) but because of her addictions, she was fired from The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), barely made it through Summer Stock (1950), and was fired from Annie Get Your Gun (1950). The last straw was after she could not show up to work regularly for Royal Wedding (1951), she was fired by MGM. As noted in Gerald Clarke's Get Happy, he quotes Judy regarding the moment when she cut her throat with broken glass following her firing: "I wanted to black out the future as well as the past. I didn't want to live any more. I wanted to hurt myself and others." She also had continued issues with her husband and during this period, divorced Vincente Minnelli. To get herself back on track she hired Sidney Luft as her manager, who realizing that Judy still had great promise, booked her for concerts in London that went smashingly well. She went on to New York where she played at The Palace for an amazing 19 weeks, including 184 performances. Critics and fans were on her side, she married Sid Luft, and amazingly she won herself a new contract and a new film role. This was going to be her comeback film with a new studio- Warner Brothers.

Sid Luft was going to produce A Star is Born, and he assembled a crew that he felt would work well for Judy. But of course, not all went as planned. Judy tried as she might, but her drug and health problems resurfaced as the shooting went on, leading to delays and budget problems. In Get Happy, Clarke recalls a letter from George Cukor to his friend Katherine Hepburn regarding Judy: "About 3 weeks ago, strange sinister and sad things began happening to Judy." Cukor describes how Judy would call in sick and then be seen that night at a club. Cukor wrote, "This is the behavior of someone unhinged." Finally after 9 months, the film was completed, including a partial reshoot from standard aspect ratio to CinemaScope lenses, and amounted to a massive 196 minutes. Cukor and editor Folmar Blangsted cut the film down to 181 minutes prior to the premiere. However, after the premier, Warner studios cut the film down to 154 minutes without consulting Cukor (who was in India scouting locations for Bhowani Junction (1956)), resulting in the loss of two musical numbers and other key scenes. All this footage was considered lost for decades, but film preservationist Ronald Haver, after extensive searches, found both missing song sequences, "Here's What I'm Here For" and the brilliant "Lose that Long Face" and several other scenes, as well as missing soundtrack elements. A near-complete restoration that followed was completed in 1983, bringing the running time to 176 minutes. A Star is Born is now always shown in this restored version, that also incorporates some still photos to account for missing film images, while the complete audio soundtrack is played.

A Star is Born was filmed once before, in 1937 (a non-musical) and once after in 1976 (with Streisand). Cukor's 1954 film is the definitive story though, filled with the kind of searing melodrama that Douglas Sirk was doing at the time. Judy Garland stars as Esther Blodgett, a talented singer, but someone who has never gotten the big break. She has a run-in with fading, alcoholic Hollywood star Norman Maine (James Mason) during a Hollywood engagement. They hit-it-off, and after he sees her sing, realizes she has immense talent and decides to get her a screen test at the studio. She of course gets the job, marries Norman and we follow Esther (who gets renamed Vicki Lester) and her rise to stardom while we also get the parallel story of Norman and his Hollywood decline through alcoholism. So many elements in the script of course are so closely biographical to Judy's life. Not only the references to Judy's young years on the stage around the country doing Vaudeville (that's told in the "Born in a Trunk" sequence), her rise to stardom and the troubled marriage, but also in the story of addiction that plays out through the Norman Maine character. Clearly, the story of Norman Maine is the sad story of Judy Garland in her latter years, only it's James Mason playing the character and not her. There's a deeply felt and utterly sad moment where Vicki is recounting to the studio head the troubles she is having dealing with a husband who is an addict. This must have been a devastating scene for Judy to complete with the scenario hitting so close to home.

A Star is Born contains some great music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by Ira Gershwin. Among all the musical numbers in the film, there are two clear stand-outs. One is the stupendous 15-minute "Born in a Trunk" medley. We are introduced to the scene in a film-within-a-film, as we watch Vicki's premier at the theatre. It's a colorful and brilliantly composed sequence of scenes where the sets are switched in and out and Judy is given a great collection of songs to sing, including "Swanee", that highlight her range as a singer. Of course, the other scene to highlight can rightly be claimed as one of the best musical numbers that ever appeared in any musical. It is "The Man That Got Away". In the scene, Esther (prior to being renamed Vicki) is with her traveling band, late at night in a club, when they improvise a moment for themselves and they tell her to sing it. It's hard to describe the power with which Garland sings the song. She seems to summon some kind of tidal-wave of emotion that rides on her powerful vibrato, and I mean powerful. She doesn't just want you to hear the song. She wants you to feel it. If you don't get chills while listening to her sing this song, you might need to check your pulse. It's a perfect song and a perfect scene, done in one take.

This film's greatest achievement is that it captures and preserves the essence of Judy Garland, including all her worn-in, unfiltered emotions, and the sweat and guts of someone who had been living through addiction and personal strife for nearly her entire life. I've always thought Garland was an underrated actress. When you consider her work in Oz (1939), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), The Clock (1945) and A Star is Born, it's hard not to be in awe of her ability to project emotional honesty and transparency. If you watch her passionate performance in the non-musical, The Clock by Minnelli, you can see her talent as an actress laid bare. You watch her for a few minutes and you immediately are pulled in by her openness. In this way, A Star is Born allows her the chance to be dramatic and emotionally naked for much of the film, but, it also lets her belt out a tune, something she was gifted with beyond all measure. Her performance in A Star is Born is one of the greatest performances by an actress that I've ever seen. Time once maintained that her performance was "just about the greatest one-woman show in modern movie history." However it should also be noted that James Mason's work here as an alcoholic is nearly as good and should be praised for giving a performance that supports, but does not upstage the film with showiness. It feels like his performance is a precursor to his masterful work in Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life (1956). But, this is still Judy's film. Sadly to say, this really wasn't her comeback. Following her devastating loss on Oscar night to Grace Kelly, she wouldn't appear again in a film until 6 years later. No studio wanted to take any more chances on her and couldn't afford to spend days idle, waiting for her to show up on the set in some kind of decent shape. A Star is Born thus acts as the final great testament to one of the greatest entertainers and actresses of the Hollywood era and one of the greatest singers who ever lived. Judy Garland will always be remembered as Dorothy, but to see the real Judy, see this one.

Bigger Than Life (1956) - Directed by Nicholas Ray

Nicholas Ray's towering masterpiece Bigger Than Life is a story about a man pushed to the brink and is an affront to the image of the perfect 1950's family unit that most films and television shows portrayed during that time period. Ray was always telling unique stories about unique individuals. In a Lonely Place (1950) was a film noir that looked at hidden secrets and a doomed affair between a hack writer and his sexy neighbor in an apartment complex. Rebel Without a Cause (1955) highlighted youth culture and rebellion, making James Dean into an icon. Even his brilliant Western, Johnny Guitar (1954) is atypical of the Westerns of the day, featuring campy innuendo and lurid performances. In Bigger Than Life, James Mason stars as Ed Avery, school teacher and family man. His family includes his wife Lou (Barbara Rush), who is cheerful and caring, always looking her best, and his son Richie (Christopher Olsen). After a dinner party that goes badly, Ed is taken to the hospital after a fainting spell, where he is diagnosed with a life threatening disease. He is told though, that Cortisone can be his cure, and so he begins regular doses. We quickly realize that Ed begins to have behavioral problems. He's unable to relate to his family the way he used to and begins to display erratic behavior. He also begins to take the pills more often and buys them in larger doses. The rest of the film is a wild ride following his addiction and family decline. This is a story that did not play well with audiences in 1956 and was considered a flop. Only after the Cahiers du Cinema writers (Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette etc.) began to hail Ray's and the film's praises did it start to gain acclaim.

I can think of no other film that exposes the facade of perfect 1950's suburban life as well as this one. One aspect that gives the film a creepy sterility and artful paranoia is the space created by the screen. CinemaScope, the lens created by 20th Century Fox in the early 1950's, created a massive widescreen. Scope ratios for these new widescreen formats at the time went up to 2.66:1. Bigger Than Life was a huge 2.55:1. As a comparison, widescreen ratios used today are usually no bigger than 2.35:1. With this expansive wide framing, Ray gives us deep shots within the Avery home, creating distance from husband to wife to son, emphasizing the chasm and disconnect that Ed creates for himself. We also sense the bigness of the home, with all the furniture laid out perfectly, every aspect of the home attended to. Their home feels devoid of genuine warmth and instead feels like they are people trapped within a geometric nightmare disguised as a home. This house becomes an ominous, manicured madhouse, filled with dysfunction as Ed's addiction escalates. It's a beautiful film and one filled with gorgeous images even though most of the film takes place indoors. Color is emphasized with mostly gray used to parallel the state of the family dynamic, occasionally punctuated by bright colors which highlight the clashes between the father, mother and son.

James Mason probably gives the performance of his career as Ed. This film was a labor of love for him as he co-wrote (un-billed) the script and produced the film as well. He is convincing as a straight-laced family man of the 1950's, but also an addict swinging out of control while trying to maintain a facade that appears normal. At times, I think the film stretches his character pretty far, but the extreme emotional swings make sense and are used effectively to highlight the hypocrisy of a suburbia where everything must be maintained in order to appear normal. Barbara Rush as his wife Lou also comes out well in this film, convincing as a wife trying to do the right thing and sweeping the issues under the rug as best she can. In fact she's the strongest figure in the film and is an interesting contrast to Mason's portrayal of father/husband who is basically lost. Rebel Without a Cause also features a pathetic father figure where Jim Backus is the helpless, doting father to James Dean's character Jim. Backus' portrayal along with Mason's both suggest a disconnect between the needs of the family and what the fathers can provide. Barbara Rush is almost more of the "father figure" in Bigger Than Life, as she's the strong one who carries the family through, holding it up under impossible circumstances. My favorite scene in the film comes during a confrontation that Ed and Lou have at the dinner table right in front of their son, starting out arguing about milk and ending with hateful proclamations as Ed's addiction and psychosis take it's toll. It's one of those staggering moments where you realize the film is going deeper than you expected.

Nicholas Ray was one of the most challenging directors working in Hollywood during the 1950's, making a string of films that have a unique voice, vision and a striking sense of truth in the moment. During the last 15 minutes of the film, there is a massive roller-coaster ride of emotion and action, capped at the end by a tagged-on ending that actually doesn't feel right. One gets the sense though that the studio had a hand in the conclusion. Bigger Than Life might be Ray's best film, where performances, direction and script all come together to make it unforgettable, shocking, and surprisingly relevant today, as it presages what would become the normal revisionist outlook on family life in the 1950's and which would continue into future decades of film where dysfunctional families became the norm.