Paramount Summer Classic Film Series Double Feature-Orson Wells

 

Another double feature at the Paramount Theater on a Saturday afternoon. Two films featuring Orson Wells, one of them was also directed by him. Both films have classical elements to them which might put them on anybody's Best Lists.

The Third Man

Carol Reed directs a post war thriller created by Graham Greene specifically for film. This was a David Selznick Production so everything was first class but it is certainly an unusual setting for a Selznick film. The actual producer was Alex Korda so it is more accurately a British Film and it thoroughly feels like that. The film is considered a noir, although some traditional elements of a noir seem to be minor. The thing that most justifies that classification is the style in which the film is shot.

The use of black and white is highly expressionistic and the shadows, silhouettes and sudden reveal of Orson Wells character are famous for the atmosphere they create. One characteristic that does not feel noir like at all is the soundtrack, infused with zither instrumentation, it is terrific for the film but rarely ominous or sinister. Still, a non-traditional noir is still a noir when it features a mysterious murder, duplicitous characters, unfaithful women, and a villain who is charming, even if he has no scruples.  

Joseph Cotten  is Holly Martins, a writer of pulp westerns, who has travel to Vienna to join his friend Harry Lime, only to discover that Lime is dead, and Vienna has no use for him. There are a number of bumbling American tropes thrown in to make him feel even more out of place, but his loyalty to his friend may be the one that is most subtle and important. It takes a lot for Holly to recognize that his friend would not be recognizable to him, if Holly knew his real business. The famous shot of Harry Lime being revealed is the start of Holly's doubts. Before he could dismiss evidence and opinion, but his own eyes tell him that Harry can't be trusted. 

In addition to the mystery, and ultimately a chase through the sewers of Vienna, there is an unrequited love story. Anna Schmidt loves Harry, Holly falls in love with Anna, Harry never really loved Anna, and apparently loved Holly's friendship under false pretenses. It is all very complex, and it gets more so as Harry's confederates murder witnesses and even help frame Holly for the crimes. The British, who were fooled at first but Lime's deception, don't fall for any of the subsequent traps, so Holly is never really at risk, but it does make for an interesting twist two thirds of the way into the film.

Two quick James Bond connections; future Bond director  John Glen was working in the editing department at Shepperton Studios when the film started production. He had a similar build to Joseph Cotten and was enlisted to supply the sound of his footsteps in post-production sound dubbing. Bernard Lee, who plays the sympathetic British Sargent and fan of Western Novels, would go on to play "M", 007s boss in eleven Bond films.

 

I don't think anyone left after the first feature, it looked like the house stayed the same size for the second film.

Touch of Evil

I  have seen this film several times, but I have to admit, they have all been after it was restored in 1998. The stories of how the film was butchered after it was delivered by Welles seem to echo the experience he had with "The Magnificent Ambersons". Still the film had a solid reputation even before the repairs were made to it in 98. I should probably admit to an affinity for the movie because it also came out in the year of my birth, so whenever one of those calendar references comes up, it is sitting right there.

The drug gangs of today are certainly more brutal than the mob that is in this film. Here the criminals seek to tarnish the legacy of their main adversary through a complicated plot. Today's cartels would simply torture him, cut off his head and display the body in public to discourage follow up. I don't think we are getting more civilized as we move forward. I suppose it is justifiable to say that in modern times, Charlton Heston would never be cast to play a Mexican using brown face make up, but that social constraint is mild compared to the truth of border town life these days.  

The movie opens with the famous continuous tracking shot, culminating in an explosion. Director Orson Wells is showing off here, but it seems that the studio largely left him alone while the film was being made, so he had a lot more fun playing around with these moments then he'd had on other studio films. Wells was a husky but handsome figure in "The Third Man", but ten years later in this film, he is clearly overweight and looks unhealthy. Much of that was the make-up and prosthetics but not all of it, and it shows at times. 

Wells did have control over the story, since he is the one who switched the nationalities of the two leads and made Charlton Heston a Mexican. Much of the film is shot at night so we get many sequences that make the film feel noirish. Wells seems to have wanted to confound the audience with the plot, and used characters in several over the top moments (notably Dennis Weaver) to distract the audience from paying too close attention to what was going on. The score is jazz infused and dark, which fits the mood of the picture well. It is no surprise that the Mexican Government was not keen on letting the film be shot in the planned Tijuana, this is not exactly a tourism ad. Venice California substitutes for TJ, and my understanding is that this is an even more accurate switch today, because of thew homeless problem. 

Movies I Want Everyone to See: Soylent Green

In the world of Science Fiction, most readers of novels, viewers of television and movies will always remember a strong ending to a story. The "Twilight Zone" was famous for the twist sucker punch finale of most of the episodes. In the popular culture, when an image or a quote becomes a meme understood by all, it is clear that the work has tapped into something important to the times, politics or people. Charlton Heston is the star of many a movie meme. Moses standing at the Red Sea parting the waves, Ben Hur, either chained to the oars of the Roman Battle cruiser or with rein in hand on a Chariot. His most famous image however is as a dismayed misanthrope pounding sand on a beach in front of the ruins of one of the most recognizable symbols in the world at the end of "Planet of the Apes".  Heston has at least one other great moment of Science Fiction history in his vita, the denouncement at the end of the movie "Soylent Green". It is another moment parodied and understood by masses of people, most of whom have never seen the movie. I don't want his refrain to be the only thing people know about the film so this week "Soylent Green" is the movie I want everyone to see.

"Soylent Green" is one of those great 1970s Science Fiction movies that is more about ideas than about special effects. Before the juggernaut that is "Star Wars" came along, most Science Fiction lived in the imagination more than the vision of a story. There were occasional exceptions like "Forbidden Planet" and "2001", but for each of those visually rich movies, there were a dozen other films that made do with small budgets, limited effects and big ideas. Films like "Seconds", "A Boy and His Dog", "Damnation Alley" or "The Omega Man" drew in audience mostly with interesting concepts. Sometimes like with "Planet of the Apes" there was spectacular art direction and set design, but even in that film the visual factor relies on our willingness to accept the story in order to then accept the vision. Most of these films are cautionary tales that try to speak to the worries of the times in which they were made, and "Soylent Green" was one of the finest examples of playing on those contemporary fears.
Stanford Biologist Paul Ehrlich published a book called "The Population Bomb" that predicted a coming world of Malthusian Nightmares. It spawned a whole industry of doomsayers and environmental prophets who suggested that the Earth was over populated and over polluted. The theme of "Soylent Green" is derived from this stream of fearful environmentalism of the early 1970s. This dystopian world is not threatened by nuclear annihilation but starvation and overcrowding. Of course there has also been a substantial amount of global warming to screw up the planet's food supplies as well. Most of this is brilliantly summarized by the title sequence which uses a combination of photos, pacing and music to show us what has happened and is coming.



It was simple and to the point. It was also forty years ago, so perhaps it is a little premature to send us all to a living hell but once the premise is set up the story follows it quite well. William Simonson, a director of the Soylent Corporation is murdered and although there are hundreds of murders a day in the overcrowded world, one detective is unwilling to accept that it is a random burglary.  Simonson lives in a luxurious apartment that comes equipped with special security, a bodyguard and living furniture that he can enjoy to his hearts content. It just seems too convenient that  the bodyguard was out shopping for groceries with the furniture at the moment this important man was killed in his building. A building where the security system is on the fritz when the apartment is broken into.
Heston plays the determined cop who engages in the kind of casual corruption that seems to be as prevalent in the future as it was in the 1970s with Al Pacino's "Serpico". Detective Thorn is not a bad guy, but he appears to be a vulture at the scene of the crime, scooping up whatever luxury item is likely to go unmissed. Everybody gets a little taste, from his boss to the grunts that remove the body. Thorn takes some vegetables and meat which are incredibly rare commodities in the future. Most people have to survive on manufactured nutrition wafers of different composition, including the recently introduced "Soylent Green". He also acquires a couple of rare technical books that he will not be able to make sense out of but which ought to please his partner Sol Roth, an elderly man who serves as the equivalent of Wikipedia for the future police force.

Most of you know an old timer or two who provides a link to the past. They share stories of the good old days and relate how the world was a better place in their youth (much like your current narrator). For the most part we can dismiss those stories as the nostalgia of an older generation (you know, they walked five miles up hill to school in the snow and then five miles uphill home at the end of the day). This movie posits that the memories of the older generation are not rambling condemnations of change but accurate histories of things that have in fact been lost. The collective of older "books" is known as the Exchange and Sol takes the information from the two Oceanographic Reports that Thorn brought him to the Exchange for evaluation.

The film is a police procedural about a conspiratorial secret which the powers that be are determined to keep a secret. Most of this was pretty standard stuff, but several aspects of the setting make the story so much more compelling. The way in which the citizens have to live, on rationed water, limited food supplies, sleeping on staircases shows how the environment has decayed. The world of the dead man stands in stark contrast to the rest of the population. A rich man with a sex partner who comes with the apartment and access to items that are incredibly out of reach to the rest of the population may seem an unsympathetic victim. We have seen however that there was a sense of guilt in his death, we are aware that there is a conspiracy and we watch Thorn as he picks at each link and follows his instincts to arrive at the truth. In the process the future world is revealed to us bit by bit.
The term "bromance" has cropped up in the last few years to describe stories that are about the friendship between two men. Buddy pictures have been around since the days of silent film, and up through the point this was released so was Edward G. Robinson. The partnership between Sol and Thorn is the real relationship in the movie. Heston's character does get involved with the "furniture" of the dead man, but all of the really emotional moments of the film involve him and the old man. From some of the earliest of sound films, Robinson played gangsters, doctors and bureaucrats. He was the definitive gangster for the first decade of sound movies as "Little Cesar". "Soylent Green" gave him the opportunity to go out on a high note. This was his last film and he played it for all that was on the page. The scene where Sol prepares the purloined food for a meal for Heston is a good example. Sol, enjoys it with relish and equally enjoys watching Thorn, who has never had anything like this enjoy as well. Robinson waves his plastic utensils as if they were a baton and he was conducting an orchestra. The crescendo of the piece is the belch Heston gives at the end of the most satisfying meal of his life. Apparently this scene was not in the script and was improvised by the two actors with the prompting of the director. It was a special touch to show their relationship and the world of the time.  At one point Heston's boss suggests he might need a new "book" but the detective demurs and continues to have faith in his room mate/partner/father figure.

The other great sequence featuring Robinson, and one that is sadly ironic, is Sol's decision to end his own story. When advocates of euthanasia speak of giving patients back their dignity and providing comfort at the end, they must surely envision a scene like the one that takes place at the end of the second act. Older people desiring to die, troop into a modernistic building, fill out a form and then have some final comforts attended to. Robinson was dying of cancer when the movie was made and he was almost completely deaf. We would all hope that his passing would be as beautiful as was depicted here in the processing center referred to as "home" by those seeking an end to their time on Earth. Thorn gets the final proof for the motive of the executive's murder by following his friend through his passage home. As you watch what is really a simple sequence of wonderful pastoral scenes and listen to the comforting and thrilling classical score, you realize how devastating the loss of the world as it was would be to those able to remember it.

The themes and characters have been shared with you a bit, now let's talk about the production. In today's world, this would be a movie crammed with futuristic CGI vistas and sets that were created in a computer. The costumes and equipment would be imagined in fantastic ways to make us feel as if we were in the future. The science fiction films of the seventies were often done on modest budgets and almost always had to make due with creative use of location and existing props. A luxury apartment of the future comes equipped with the latest video game (here it is an early version of Pong). Food riots need to be staged on a New York City back lot, but to make it more futuristic, garbage trucks are modified to remove people rather than trash. The euthanasia center is the googie architectural structure of the L.A. Sports arena and it's futuristic clean style lobby. The focus stays on the ideas rather than the "wow" factor of the look. Even the two books that Thorn confiscates, they are not digital readouts on an i-pad style device, they are simply over-sized volumes given slick covers to convey an advanced type of publishing, nothing fancy but slightly noticeable.

The horrible secret of "Soylent Green" has probably been used as a punchline by thousands of people who never even saw the movie. The fact that the last line has reached into and grabbed the public consciousness is evidence of the effectiveness of the idea behind the film. We are on an environmental brink that may change the relationship of human beings to one another in catastrophic ways. The immorality of a choice might be mitigated by the exigencies of the moment. The movie is an action based detective conspiracy story, but the thought it contains is provocative and the story highlights that issue rather than pushing it aside for action. Just five years after he stands in for the sucker punched audience in front of the Statue of Liberty, Heston finishes another iconic Science fiction thought with his dire warning and outstretched hand. Another entertaining science fiction movie is capped off with a thought that is frightening and thought provoking.

Special Note:
This is the first of my series on Fogs Movie Reviews [Now, Movies I Want Everyone to See] to cover a film I wrote about on my original Movie A Day Project from 2010. If you are interested in a comparison of the posts click here, I did not refer to this earlier post when writing this so you will see some differences in voice and view but probably not too many in attitude or style. Enjoy.

Richard Kirkham is a lifelong movie enthusiast from Southern California. While embracing all genres of film making, he is especially moved to write about and share his memories of movies from his formative years, the glorious 1970s. His personal blog, featuring current film reviews as well as his Summers of the 1970s movie project, can be found at Kirkham A Movie A Day.

The Ten Commandments TCM Fathom Event

It was just two years ago that I went to a screening of "The Ten Commandments" at this same theater. That showing was not a Fathom event but rather part of a series AMC Theaters did that year running a whole variety of older movies. It was not particularly well attended in part I'm sure because of a lack of promotion. Today, I returned to the Red Sea with Charlton Heston and because the screening was a Fathom Event in conjunction with TCM, the theater was quite full. It was not a sell out but it was impressive for a Sunday afternoon screening of a sixty year old film.

Once again the film was spectacular, and although the special effects are six decades behind today's digital technology, it still feels more than impressive. TCM Host Ben Mankiewicz pointed out that much of the exterior work was shot in Egypt and that there were enormous sets to complement the camera trickery that makes the city of Goshen appear so impressive and of course the parting of the Red Sea so notable. The photographic effect of the final plague on Egypt looked like God's green fingers were coming from the sky and that the fog which clung to the ground was his breath, turning Ramses edict on itself and slaying the first born of Egypt while passing over the Israelites who marked their thresholds with lambs blood.

The style of the dialogue sometimes provoked a bit of laughter from the audience. Let's face it, half of the time anyone says the name of Moses, they repeat it a second time in the script. The things that are most believable in the filming are the impressive use of the extras, especially in the Exodus scene itself. The geese, and goats and camels and cattle all interact in a very realistic way with the impressive cast of thousands.  Still none of it would matter if Mr. Heston and Mr. Bryner were not convincing in their parts. While much more theatrical in nature than most of us are used to in acting today, both the leads are effective with their faces, body movements and voices. Both of them make large public pronouncements that would sound silly coming from today's leaders but are sincere in the context of this film.

So many character actors are in the film that it is a wonder that they could keep them for as long as it took to shoot the film. I've heard it said that Edward G. Robinson was miscast in the movie but his slight NY accent did not seem to be a distraction to me. Vincent Price was suitably slimy and  hearing John Carradine's sonorous voice backing up Heston was a delight. The only performer who seemed slightly awkward at times was Anne Baxter, but her scenes near the end of the movie were far more effective than the love scenes in the first hour.

It's Easter season so this film is a perennial and it made sense for TCM to schedule it during the Holy Week. If you are looking for some easy way to commemorate the Holiday, the nearly four hour investment in this movie is probably worth your time. It is also playing again this Wednesday, so play hooky and go, you will be glad you did.  

The Ten Commandments

Nothing celebrates Easter and Passover like "The Ten Commandments". Getting a chance to see it on the big screen is also a treat. I may have done this with my kids back in the late eighties or early nineties but I can't quite remember. I do know that if I did, it was not in the pristine digital form that the movie was delivered to us today in. Although it was a theatrical release for one day, I am pretty sure this was the home Blu-ray version, complete with Entrance and Exit Music, and an intermission. The problem was that they really did not take a break at the intermission, the music played briefly and then the entr'acte for the second half started. After the whole experience was over, as I was waiting for my family to exit the ladies room, I heard a young woman speaking to her father about how long the movie was that they had just seen. It sounded like they saw "Heaven is for Real". The dad was explaining why he thought it was just long enough and she said it could have been longer. Her phrase was something like "I've seen a movie that was two hours thirteen minutes, so this could have bee longer and it would not be a problem". Having just come out of a movie that runs three hours and forty minutes, I chuckled to myself and thought about how lucky I am that I can be enraptured for that long without starting to feel ADD.

A Screen Shot from the entry way to show that I really was in the theater watching this.

The spectacle of "The Ten Commandments" starts with a stirring speech by director Cecil B. DeMille. It extols the virtues of the story as the beginning of real freedom and he makes a very pointed comparison to some of the political issues of 1956. It turns out that he sees it as a very anti-communist film because it concerns totalitarianism by one man over the rule of law that governs all men. It was an apt message then and it is equally important today. Although the photographic effects are not as impressive as they once were because of the more sophisticated tools now available, they still pack a wallop and if you are caught up in the story, the imperfections hardly matter.  The characters are quite different but you can see the seeds of Ben Hur in Charlton Heston's Moses. It was an impressive performance in the first half, but once the make-up and hair took over in the second half, he was more a cardboard hero than he had been before.

I saw that my blogging friend Eric, learned all of his Jewish traditions from this film. I guess I'd have to say that this was pretty close to my education on the matter as well. DeMille assures us at the beginning that although there is a large period of time in which we do not know the history of Moses, that his film is based on historical works by ancient scholars and theologians. I'll take him, at his word, it seems unlikely that he committed any heresy that would get him in the same hot water with religious groups as Darren Aronofsky got into with the recent "Noah". The film has stood the test of time, so there is not a lot to add. If you don't care for biblical epics, this will be a burden to you, but if you are inspired by the events of the old or new testament, than this should be a treat that you can savor for a long time (3:40 to be exact).