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Archive for the ‘Walter Brennan: ACTING GOD’ Category

Nobody Lives Forever

31 Oct

Nobody Lives Forever – directed by Jean Negulesco. Grifter Drama. 100 minutes Black And White 1946.

★★★★★

The Story: A G.I. comes home to his former crimes scene and heads for a multi-million dollar scam.

~

John Garfield, perfectly cast as both a G.I. and a criminal. It’s his way, which is always the same way: the sensitive tough-guy, Bronx marshmallow. Very lovable. Very understandable. These are qualities which come with some actors and don’t come with others, and they determine work. Work in two ways: casting, and the way he executes scenes. For out of these qualities spring choices in handling scenes. The acting craft holds outlets for these people. They are not ordinary, these people. They have vitality, presence, and looks. They have in them that which wants to be seen. So in discussing acting in relation to them, it is almost impossible to view them dispassionately. It is almost impossible to define the skill with which the tiger dismembers the faun. What is first, mainly, only possible, is to experience being impressed. That much is sure.

Like them or not, there they are up on the silver screen where they belong. With him and always opposite him are all the other members of the cast, all as vital. George Coulouris as the sleazy crumb horning in on Garfield’s grift. George Tobias, as always comical as the almost useless sidekick. Two comical thug fools, in James Flavin and Ralph Peters. His two-timing, slapable canary played by Faye Emerson at the peak of her beauteousness. And the astonishing Walter Brennan as the pickpocket guru. All these are contrasted in their comical or threatening positions to him and to the only one who is not threatening, but is lovely, Geraldine Fitzgerald playing the widow they mean to cheat. Fitzgerald’s performance makes the film work. She is smart but justifiably ignorant; she falls in love with Garfield and you believe it; she registers everything quietly and truly. Don’t miss her. She lets you perform the part with her. Garbo did the same.

The film’s finale is handled somewhat clumsily. But otherwise the film is beautifully directed, which is a question of values attended to in a way noir does not often offer. W.R. Burnett (author of Little Caesar, High Sierra, This Gun For Hire, The Whole Town’s Talking, Scarface, The Asphalt Jungle) wrote it.

Give it a viewing. Let me know how you liked it.

 
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Posted in 1940s, ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, CAPER FLICK, CRIME DRAMA, Directed by Jean Negulesco, George Coulouris, George Tobias, Geraldine Fitzgerald, GRIFTER SHOW, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, John Garfield, Walter Brennan: ACTING GOD, WRITTEN BY: W.R. Burnett

 

Red River

08 Jan

Red River — directed by Howard Hawks. Western. On a 1,000 miles cattle drive a domineering boss conflicts with his rebellious son. 133 minutes Black and White 1948.

* * *

A journey story, and like all journey stories (picaresque stories, road movies), the overriding suspense is how the journey will end, the parenthesis of the beginning and that end filled only with episodes. Actual drama between characters never has the force of this interest. So this movie is like Hawks’ Air Force, which has only one small drama, that of John Garfield’s change of heart– a change which leaves no more conviction to the character than that of Montgomery Clift finally taking on John Wayne. When he does so, Hawks’ camera closes up again and again on Clift’s facial beauty, which is considerable at this stage of his life, but scarcely has to do with anything. Hawks even has Joanne Dru even make love to that face. The film is made overlong not just by her presence in it but the presence of her character in it, which is called upon to say and do preposterous things and to crash the ending. She recites her lines monotonously, in imitation, I suppose, of Dorothy Mcguire, and she is all Hollywooded up in hair, makeup and costume. But she was a last minute replacement, poor woman, and the entire section of which she was a part should never have been shot. The film should have ended with the meeting of the antagonist Wayne and the protagonist Clift in a finale in which Walter Brennan deals Wayne the coup de grace. But Hawks rewrote the story every day as he shot it, and he got to dislike John Ireland pretty quickly. Ireland plays a defiant gunslinger named Cherry, but Ireland did not take his work as an actor seriously and also took up with Joanne Dru whom Hawks fancied. So Hawks more and more diminished Ireland’s role, and more and more built up Brennan’s role as comic relief, thus diluting its power, which is the power of telling the truth. He is the one who should teach Wayne his lesson at the end. The fistfight between Wayne and Clift is ridiculous. Clift is flaccid as a fighter and only five ten next to Wayne’s six four and beefy. No one goes up against John Wayne; it’s not just a question of roles or treatment or story; it’s a fact of nature. But the movie has fallen on evil days long before this. All the campsites of the cattle drive are shot on sound stages at The Goldwyn Studios, so they lack conviction, as do the frequent process shots. Once Hawks finished a film he walked away from it, even to its editing. He’d hired Dimitri Tiomkin for the score but Tiomkin offers vulgar triumphals intermixed with pone, which is quite disconsonnant with the down and dirty cowboy life shown us. The films’ interest lies in Hawks’ simple camera, one step above still photography, and his abilities with actors to make scenes happen and to train them up to their tasks, with the result that Clift is completely convincing on a horse. Once Red River was done, Clift went back to his New York actor friends and, knowing it was the last time he could dine anonymously, said, “Tomorrow I’m going to be a star. Let’s celebrate before it’s too late.” And he was right. What’s good about the movie is the location work with the huge herd of cattle on the drive, all of which did take place in Texas, and which gives the show its fascinating unpredictability. The cowboys are costumed and hatted distinctively (Hawks gave Clift Gary Cooper’s hat). Wayne, at 38, is given grey hair to play a man of 55, and when John Ford sees Red River he says, “My God, the son of a gun can act,” and Wayne is no longer teeter-tottering in B Westerns but solidly becomes the great star his presence and craft and well-justified popularity deserved.

 

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Directed by Howard Hawks, Harry Carey, John Wayne, Montgomery Clift: SCREEN GOD, Shelley Winters, Walter Brennan: ACTING GOD, WESTERN

 

Come And Get It

06 Jan

Come And Get It — directed by Howard Hawks and William Wyler. Romantic Drama. A proto-lumber-tycoon deserts a girl and twenty years later falls for her daughter. 96 minutes Black and White 1936.

* * *

When Sam Goldwyn recuperated from his operation and saw the footage Hawks had shot of Edna Ferber’s novel he hit the bedpan, which flew into the fan, and Hawks walked out. So Wyler filmed the last quarter of it, and you can’t really tell, because the great Gregg Toland was filming it, and he controlled the art of the thing. What Goldwyn didn’t like was that the first of the dual female roles had been turned from a mousy barkeep to an impudent chanteuse with a mind of her own, a Hawks type, and Goldwyn had given Ferber promises. The girl is played beautifully in her first major role by Frances Farmer. She’s a cross between Maria Schell and Jessica Lang (who later played her in the movie Frances), and she is very good indeed. She’s a glorious milkmaid, as both the mother and the daughter. As the mother she ends up with Walter Brennan, an actor of great imagination, in the first of his three Oscar winning roles. As the daughter she ends up with Joel McCrea, who, as always, is excellent in the comic scenes. The one she does not end up with is Edward Arnold who has the lead, in what would have been Hawks’ King Lear. But Arnold does not have the latitude for a role this size, and his performance illustrates the weakness of perpetual determination as an acting method. He has his guns and he sticks to them; the problem is that they are guns. He plays out the role, but we never sympathize with his folly, as we should if we are asked to witness it. (Hawks originally wanted Spencer Tracy, who might have been marvelous.) Remarkable and famous scenes in this picture make it worth seeing and studying. Robert Rosson who was Hawks’ frequent second unit director went to Canada, Wisconsin, and Idaho and took the amazing logging sequences with which the picture begins. And there is a spectacular branagan in a saloon with round steel table trays being skimmed into mirrors and clientele. And, of course, Toland’s camera work is a study in itself.

 

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, COSTUME DRAMA, COSTUME ROMANCE, Directed by Howard Hawks, DIRECTED BY WILLIAM WYLER, Edward Arnold, FILMED BY Gregg Toland MASTER CINEMAPHOTOGRAPHER, Frances Farmer, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, Joel McCrea, ROMANTIC DRAMA, Turn of the 19th Century, Walter Brennan: ACTING GOD

 

To Have and Have Not

20 Dec

To Have And Have Not — Directed by Howard Hawks. Drama. A man shifts loyalties from none to two. 100 minutes Black and White 1944.

* * * * *

Like a gold panther she moves slowly and deliberately through every scene, as though to move quickly would tip her hand. The humor that lies behind her calculation keeps her from being witchy, and Hawks presents her with the Walk-Around-Me scene which makes her sure she will not be possessive. But she will be loyal, and her becoming that is her arc here. Hawks or his wife Slim or the studio brought Bacall from modeling in New York and made of this girl with the unusually suggestive  good looks a star. When Hawks met her he told her to go off into a room for two weeks and practice lowering her voice, which she did. She came back a contralto. She was completely come-hither throughout and always keyed up. She  has a knowing eye and moves slowly at all times toward or away from her prey, much the same thing either way. She was something new in sexual effrontery. She was a teenager. It’s difficult to judge her skills as an actress here because she is so effective in everything she is confined to do. Like a very dangerous cat she is handled carefully. In just the same way it is difficult to judge Bogart, because here he is in a part well within his intense but narrow range, sardonic but truly humorous, taciturn, slow to anger, but terrifying when he does, and eyes gleaming with fear. When in danger he evinces perfect groundedness, a quick draw with a wisecrack,  and a superhuman aplomb. He’s perfect for the part. He performed many parts in film for which he was not particularly suited, especially after The War, but this is not one of them. The picture is a redaction of a Hemingway novel, via one of Hawks’ favorite screenwriters, William Faulkner. Bogart plays the owner of a for-rent fishing boat in Martinique, which is Vichy French during The War, and his character is established long before Bacall appears on the screen, in his relations with his drunken crewmember played by Walter Brennan, whom Hawks had used years before in Barbary Coast and would use often again. Brennan is brilliant in the execution of an imaginative parcel of tics and gimps, and is so screwy that we see that Bogart’s snideness does not exclude loyalty and courage in defense of Brennan and in defense of … loyalty and courage. It is not hard to follow the small story that ensues, although at times it is quite swallowed up by fascinating side-scenes between B & B. It is not about nostalgia as Casablanca is, but it resembles Casablanca in that it all takes place in a café; it involves the rescue of important anti-Nazi patriots, boasts, in Hoagy Carmichael, a seductive singer pianist, and even has the fine expatriate French actor Marcel Dalio, plus Bogey. A masterpiece of editing, beautifully lit and filmed by Sydney Hickox, for some reason it is impossible to not watch it. For, after all, what is this thing? Does one really care about any of these people and their ambitions? No. So why is it so engrossing? It is unanswerable. Its hold is a mystery. But what that means is that it hasn’t dated. Enjoy it once again.

 

 
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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Directed by Howard Hawks, ESCAPE DRAMA, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Marcel Dalio, MATING, Sheldon Leonard, Walter Brennan: ACTING GOD

 

Rio Bravo

31 Oct

Rio Bravo — Directed and Produced by Howard Hawks. Western. A sheriff, a teen-aged gunslinger, a drunken deputy, and a crippled coot hold out for justice while keeping the land baron’s brother captive. 241 minutes Color 1959.

* * * *

People often confuse an actor with the role he plays, and this was never more plainly illustrated than in the case of John Wayne. Because everyone could play cowboys and Indians when they were kids, they assumed John Wayne didn’t have to be a very good actor to do it too. Besides, they learned it from him. He pretty much all the time played a cowboy and never got killed and was the hero. And so everyone who liked him got caught up with those constant features of his roles. He shed the light of the role he played. He mesmerized males. Which means he was beyond examination. Which means he was beyond criticism. He was larger than life which means he was a God. But if you look at Wayne in this, or probably any picture after Red River, you can see what a good actor he was. How he listens to the other characters, how he restrains himself, how he gives over scenes to other actors. In this one he has some particularly effective scenes with Angie Dickinson, who is no relation to Emily Dickinson, and who plays an itinerant gambling lady of indeterminate virtue. Watch how he responds to her, how baffled he is, yet how well timed with his lines. Watch to see how well the scene plays, not because of her skill, although she is the aggressor, but because of his.  She herself was not well established in her craft as yet. And so she tends to perfume her part, although it is written as though it were written for Lauren Bacall, that is, for the sort of slim deep-voiced actress Hawks liked who could play sexual insolence without turning a hair. Another actor we take for granted is Walter Brennan. Hawks made many films with him. “With or without?’ he asked Hawks when he first turned up for work. “With or without what?” said Hawks. “My teeth,” said Brennan. This performance is without and it is a shack, one of  many he  erected in his long and beautiful career. Brennan is the only actor to win three supporting role Oscars, and those roles are well worth examination. What he brings here is Life! Ricky Nelson cannot do likewise because he is seventeen; he has not gelled as a male yet; he is not yet a thing. And Dean Martin cannot do it either, because he is inherently not an actor at all. He is a darling man, of course, but he only comes alive half asleep on a bunk singing a little song, comes alive because he is most natural when singing. The difference between a comic and a humorist was never so well illustrated as in Martin and Lewis. Lewis is a comic; Martin a humorist, but this shows only once in a moment when he laughs with delight at the foolishness of Brennan. But he is likable enough, and so is the picture, though it is tolerably long. For 2 1/2 hours it dawdles from episode to episode, each one taking place indoors, and each one either at the saloon, the hotel, or the jail. Wayne must carry it all. But look at him. Sex feet four, long of torso, pigeon toed, and toting a presence that no actor of the present day can even come close to.

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Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Angie Dickinson, Dean Martin, Directed by Howard Hawks, John Wayne, Ricky Nelson, Walter Brennan: ACTING GOD, Ward Bond, WESTERN

 
 
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