And The Loser Is... #12- Mildred Fierce

One of the great things I've found already, in the short time I've been working on this project, is that even a seemingly run-of-the-mill, or unimportant film, is likely to have an interesting story behind it. So many of the films that I'll be watching as part of this project have been all but forgotten by time, so this is a great opportunity to not only rediscover these films, but also to learn about the circumstances which brought them to the screen.

This became evident when last night I picked out a film to watch, pretty much at random, and discovered that it plays an important role in Oscar history, as well as changing the career of one of its stars. The film in question is Of Human Bondage, directed in 1934 by John Cromwell, and starring Leslie Howard and Bette Davis.

This film might not have even ended up as part of this project, which brings me to the story of its importance in Academy Award history. At the time, Bette Davis was contracted to Warner Brothers, with a career that was going nowhere. She saw this film as a way to catapult her to stardom, and, as it was an RKO production, she begged Warner head Jack Warner to let her out of her contract. Warner released her, confident that she would fail, but, when her performance started gaining Oscar buzz, he began a campaign urging Academy members not to vote for her.

He succeeded, as Davis was left off the list of nominees, but the story doesn't end there. Davis' supporters petitioned the Academy to add her as a write-in vote, she was, and eventually lost out Claudette Colbert for It Happened One Night. It was the film's only Oscar nomination.

Although Davis didn't win the award, as she had expected to, she clearly had the last laugh on Warner Brothers, going on to have a legendary career. Because of the controversy surrounding the situation, the Academy disallowed future write-in votes from being added to the list of nominations. They also changed the way they handled the voting process, leaving the official counting of votes to an outside accounting company, Pricewaterhouse, who still handle the job to this day.

Watching this film now, it's hard to see what all the fuss is about. Davis' performance is a good one, and one can see why she would covet the role, but I don't think it would have been an injustice for her to go un-nominated. The importance of the role is that it gave her an opportunity to play a strong, dominant female character, the kind of role that she would make her reputation on.

The star of the film is Leslie Howard, who plays Philip Carey, a sensitive man with a club foot, who we first join as he pursues a career as an artist in Paris. He is told that he doesn't have the talent to make a living as an artist, so he moves to London to study medicine. It is there that he meets Mildred (Davis), a cold and uncaring Cockney waitress, with whom he falls in love. His requests for dates are met by Mildred with an unfeeling "I don't mind", but she eventually rejects his marriage proposal and runs off with another man. Philip knows that Mildred treated him poorly, and tries to move on with his life, but eventually she returns, pregnant and penniless, and he finds himself falling for her again.

It was unusual for me to see this kind of wish-fulfillment narrative, but with the gender roles reversed. The more conventional plot would see the female character being mistreated, with the eventual pay-off being her finally finding the confidence in herself to realise that she deserves better (which would also coincide with her finally finding a good man to treat her with respect). I don't know how prevalent it was to tell this kind of story with the roles reversed, , but, in Howard, this film has the perfect lead, a man who can tweak his persona of aristocratic intellectualism, to create a character who is believably self-conscious, sensitive and cuckolded.

The film does a good job of establishing these traits in Philip; after the scene where he is rejected as an artist, we see him being made an object of ridicule by an overbearing doctor at the hospital where he works. Philip feels less of a man because of his disability, so, when it is brought to the attention of the rest of the medical students, it is a big blow ot his manhood. To accentuate the importance of this disability to Philip's psyche, Cromwell shoots a lot of transitional shots at ground level, contrasting Philip's awkward limp with the confident strides of those around him. Later, when Philip leaves the restaurant after first meeting Mildred, her expression changes from one of curiosity to one of disgust upon seeing his club

Bette Davis: The eyes have it.

Davis, of course, is a great expressive actress, her face dominated by those saucer-like eyes. She is also an actress of convincing power and dominance, making Mildred a good fit for her talents. She can barely hold in her boredom and disgut with Philip throughout the course of their courtship, and constantly rubs her superiority into his face, turning the tables on their very different social standing in a similar fashion to Marlene Dietrich with Emil Jannings in The Blue Angel (1930). Whenever Philip shows the slightest hint of resistance to her, she accuses him of showing a lack of class, or of being ungentlemanly. When she tells him that she is going to marry another man, she is insistent that he not 'go on about it', a sentiment she echoes when, after she has returned to Philip, she gets back up to her old tricks by blatantly flirting with one of Philip's friends in his presence. Philip, as is so often the case with somebody with low self-esteem, has turned his back on a woman who was treating him right, in order to have another chance with the one who never will.

After another parting, brought about by Mildred running off with the friend, Philip finally starts to realise that things need to change. He becomes friends with one of his patients (a delightful Reginald Owen, sharing wisdoms such as his idea that women shouldn't be allowed to sit down to eat with men because it ruins conversation and puts ideas in their heads!), and begins to fall for his kind, young daughter. However, Mildred returns once more, and it is then that the film swells to its emotional climax.

In the best scene of the film, Philip finally stands up to Mildred, only to have her let loose on him with a tirade about how she disgusts him, and how it made her sick to let him kiss her ("after ya kissed me, I always used to wipe my mouth. WIPE MY MOUTH!") She then proceeds to destroy his flat, burning the securities that have been sent to him to pay for his tuition, and, crucially, putting a knife through his paintings, the only link he has left to the dreams of his youth. Davis is excellent in this sequence, giving a sample of the ferociousness for which she would become so legendary.

Philip is left with nothing, but, as is the nature of these films, it is only when all hope is lost that true happiness can be found, and the wish-fulfillment narrative dictates that Philip be 'swept off his feet' by a love pure and true. It isn't a mark against the film that it is entirely predictable in this manner, as the whole genre relies on playing to, not against, expectations. The joy of these films is really in how one gets to the happy ending. There is some joy to be found here in the performances of the two leads, as well as in some creative direction (nice camera movements, the use of special effects, such as a model skeleton transforming into Mildred as Philip daydreams). The script, too, has some nice moments. But, finally, these are all just moments, and the film seems to be lacking that spark that turns a good movie into a great one. If this is remembered only as the film that gave Davis her big break, I don't think there would be any injustice in that. 3 stars.

Next time out, I'll be doing part two of my look at Woody Allen's Oscar career, which will include my favourite Allen film. Until then, here's looking at you.

And The Loser Is... #7- New Frontiers

In ATLI... #6, I looked at Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, the great silent film by German director F.W Murnau. To follow up on that, I decided this time to look at a couple more films made in America by European directors.
There is a long history of Europeans coming to Hollywood to make films, and, in fact, many of the men we consider great American filmmakers were actually immigrants from Europe (for example, Michael Curtiz, who directed one of themost famous American films, Casablanca, was really Austro-Hungarian, Mano Kertesz Kaminer, while Billy Wilder is really Samuel Wilder from what is now Poland). But today I want to focus on the film's of men who made their reputation in Europe, before being courted by Hollywood.

I'll start with a film by the controversial Polish director, Roman Polanski- 1968's Rosemary's Baby. This was Polanski's first American film, after gaining attention with his Polish thriller, Knife In The Water, and then making a trio of British films. It is based on a novel by Ira Levin, and tells the story of a pregnant women who comes to believe that her baby was conceived by Satan.

Mia Farrow and John Cassevetes star as Rosemary and Guy, a young couple who move into a New York City apartment building. They are welcomed to the building by their elderly neighbours (played by Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon, who won the film's only Oscar- for Best Supporting Actress), but soon Rosemary begins to notice something strange about them. Her fears increase when she becomes mysteriously pregnant, and Guy begins to spend more and more time with the elderly couple.

Urban alienation in Rosemary's Baby.

A theme that runs constant throughout Polanski's work is that of the 'outsider', or someone who feels trapped or uncomfortable in new or strange surroundings. Polanski, himself, was an outsider, working in a foreign land, and he is able to translate those feelings and experiences to the screen. This is a horror film which is as much about Rosemary's experiences of being alienated within a strange place, as it is about devil worship. Mia Farrow was a great choice for the leading role, as she really conveys well Rosemary's increasing sense of hysteria, and Polanski's skill in finding horror and suspense in urban settings really comes to the fore. The film is able to walk the line between straight horror, and psychological thriller, suggesting that the things Rosemary feels and sees are just figments of her imagination, and it plays wonderfully with the idea of the enclosed living spaces of big city life. I give it 4 stars, and suggest as a companion piece, Polanski's '76 film, The Tenant, which deals with many of the same themes.

The trend of directors coming from overseas to try their hand at American cinema is still going strong today, of course. One of the more recent success stories is Michel Gondry, who actually came to prominence in Europe as a director of music videos (working with Bjork and Daft Punk amongst others). The transition from music videos to film is famously tricky to make work, but Gondry is a rare example of someone who was able to mix his keen visual style, with a strong understanding of what makes cinema work. It also helps to have one of modern American cinema's most inventive and acclaimed screenwriters working with you, as Gondry did when he collaborated with Charlie Kaufman on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).

Oh my darling, Clementine.

Kate Winslet was Oscar-nominated for what I still think is her best performance (there'll be plenty of opportunity to talk more about Winslet's career in later blogs), as Clementine Kruczynski, the as magnetic as she is hard to handle object of Joel Barish's (an also very good Jim Carrey) affections. Winslet created one of the most interesting characters of the decade in Clementine, and is tremendous at capturing the contradictory nature of Clementine.

The film's premise is as creative as one would expect from Kaufman; Joel and Clementine have reached the end of their relationship, so Joel, unable to face a life without her, elects to undergo a procedure which will remove all traces of her from his memory. The film uses a fractured narrative to tell its story, and the technique works well to convey the scattered nature of Joel’s memories. Each scene, each remembrance, paints a beautiful picture of the highs and lows of love, and Gondry's sharp visuals combine well with the script to make a film which comes closer than most to capturing the ecstasy and heartbreak of relationships. I voted this as the 51st best film of the decade just ended, and give it 4 stars.

Finally today, and changing tack slightly, I want to talk about the latest film I watched for the project.

49th Parallel (Dir: Michael Powell, 1941)
The title, for those unaware (as I was), refers to the border between Canada and America, which, as the film explains, is the last undefended frontier in the world. The film was nominated for the best picture award at the 1943 Academy Awards (it lost out to Mrs Miniver), and has a fascinating production history. It was, you see, commissioned as a propaganda film, with its screenwriter, Emeric Pressburger, being charged with writing a film that would persuade the Americans to join World War 2. Pressburger boasted that he would show Goebbels a thing or two about propaganda, and, to his credit, he makes a fine case with this emotional anti-fascism film. On top of that, the film's major stars, Laurence Olivier, Leslie Howard and Raymond Massey all agreed to work for half their normal fees, such was their belief in the message of the film.

Propaganda done right.

Director, Powell, and screenwriter, Pressburger had worked together before, and would go on to form one fo Britain's most successful writer-director duos. Their films, such as The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus were known for their lush visuals and themes of restrained sexuality, but seem a world away from the Canadian setting of this film.

Beginning with a Nazi U-boat surfacing off the coast of Canada, the film tells the story of the 6 Nazi soldiers who make it to the shore, and must attempt to navigate their way to American soil, where by law they must be turned over to the German consulate. What stands out immiediately about the film, is that the 'heroes' of the film are these German soldiers; heroes in the sense that it is their journey we follow and their fates the film is interested in. There was criticism from the British press that the film was too sympathetic to the Germans, but Powell and Pressburger were unwilling to change things, stating that there must be reasonable Germans, as well as bad ones. In fact, the Nazis, for the most part, are portrayed as despicable people, killing without a second thought, and espousing the doctrines of the Third Reich.

They make their way across Canada, with their number gradually depleting, for various reasons, encountering along the way a series of different personalities and problems. The performances of the actors playing the soldiers are solid (with Eric Portman and Niall MacGinnis standing out), but the film really springs to life with the introductions of the various stars, all featuring for just a short time, but making a big impression. First up in Olivier, here playing French-Candian trapper, Johnny. While the French accent is a bit on the dodgy side, Olivier gives great presence and charisma to his scenes, and uses body language to captivating effect (as a side-note, in more controversy, Johnny's pro-Canada stance angered the Quebec authorities, who saw it as an attack on French-Canada).

Making the case for democracy: Anton Walbrook.

Next up is Anton Walbrook, who appears in the film's most emotional sequence. The remaining Nazis find themselves at a Christian commune, made up mostly of immigrant Germans, of which Walbrook's character, Peter, is the leader. They are taken in by the community (who are unaware that the men are Nazis), and it is there that one of the soldiers begins to reveal a different side to himself. He talks about his time back home before the war, and how he was happy living his simple life as a baker. This is certainly the character that the British press were speaking of when they talked about the Nazis appearing too sympathetic, and it is a character that offers the film a slightly different perspective. Eventually, he decides to stay at the commune, which leads to him being executed for desertion.

My favourite star 'cameo' is that of Leslie Howard, the plummy British actor known for playing the Scarlet Pimpernel in the film of the same name. Here he appears as Philip Armstrong Scott, a novelist who is living amongst an Indian tribe to research a book. He takes in the soldiers (again, unaware they are Nazis), and talks to them of his apathy about the war. To him, the war is something that is going on in remote lands, and is not something that affects him up in the Canadian wilderness. This attitude draws the disdain of the Nazis, who accuse him of being a coward, and hold him up as an example of why democracy will be destroyed. However, when faced with danger, Scott proves himself to be anything but a coward. It is perhaps ironic that, given Powell's reputation as an intellectual and artistic filmmaker, this character would defy the stereotype, and prove to be as brave and loyal to the Allied cause as anyone in the film (although, humourously, it takes the Nazis burning his Matisse and Picasso paintings to really push him over the edge). Howard is great value, as is Massey in the film's final sequence, as a Canadian soldier who has a final showdown with the Nazi commander.

This really is a film that itself defies stereotype, and in the hands of less talented men, you might get a more straight-forward propaganda film. Under Powell's direction, though, this is part exciting war yarn, part celebration of democracy, elevated even further by some well-placed scenes of emotional weight. Pressburger's script is strong, featuring some great speeches (Walbrook, for example, gets to deliver a great reposte to a Nazi rallying-cry at the German commune), and Powell manages to fit in some really nice visuals. It's not without its faults; how, for example, are these Germans able to roam so freely amongst Canadians without their accents being detected? I'm more inclined to dismiss things like that though, when the material is otherwise so strong. 5 stars.

In ATLI... #8, I should have another new review. Until then, here's looking at you.