Man Hunt (1941)

Man Hunt
Director: Fritz Lang
USA 1941
105 min
Starring: Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett, George Sanders, John Carradine, Roddy McDowall and Heather Thatcher, among others.

One of Fritz Lang's first American productions after having fled Nazi Germany, and one of several films at the time with the purpose of encouraging America to enter World War II (among for example To Be or Not to Be, 1942).

Kagemusha (1980)

Kagemusha aka The Shadow Warrior
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Japan 1980
180 min
Starring: Tatsuya Nakadai, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Kenichi Hagiwara, Jinpachi Nezu, Hideji Ôtaki, Daisuke Ryû, Masayuki Yui and Takashi Shimura, among others.

Time to take on some of Kurosawa's famous samurai movies, and Kagemusha will be the first to enter this blog.

The King of Comedy (1982)

The King of Comedy

Director: Martin Scorsese

USA 1982

109 min

Starring: Jerry Lewis, Robert De Niro and Sandra Bernhard, among others.

See it on YouTube here.

This must be one of the most painfully embarrassing and depressing films I've ever seen, but also one of the best satires on the twisted media world in the history of moving pictures. It was a flop when it was released for some reason, but has later been praised as one of Martin Scorsese's works and Robert De Niro's best performance. Some films just need to grow on the public, obviously.

After the earlier Scorsese-De Niro cooperations Taxi Driver (1976) and Raging Bull (1980), this turn of character study might have been surprising to the public when it came. And even though Robert De Niro in The King of Comedy is a pathetic loser with a disturbed obsession of making it big as a comedian, quite different from his other macho roles, there are a lot of similarities between for instance Taxi Driver and this film. It is dark, cynical and bizarre. It's hilarious, but you have trouble laughing because of it's feeling of realism. Reality is intertwined with fantasy, but the fantasies are those telling more about the truth than the reality. Are you following? ("Well, stop following me, or I'll have you arrested!", Groucho would probably have said.)

Anyway, my guess to it's bad reception at the initial release is that it probably wasn't 1980 enough for the 1980's. There are no dark rainy back streets and neon signs, but instead the photography is bright and colorful - I would have guessed the film was made in the 1970's. The cinematography is unscrupulous, and the sets feel very post modern. That's why I have included so many screenshots in this post - some movies just can't be described without the use of pictures. And we all know how much more pictures say vs. words, right?

Now, over to the film itself!

Even before the title of the film is shown on the screen, we have been introduced to our three main characters:

A New York nobody named Rupert Pupkin (De Niro) is standing outside the studio where the popular comedian and TV show host Jerry Langford (Lewis) airs his show. When Langford opens the back door after the show, a fanatic crowd cause a stampede trying to get to their idol. Langford reaches his car with some effort and gets inside, not having the time for a sigh of relief before a crazy groupie who has sneaked in to the car throws herself at him. (She is hereafter referred to as Masha, played by Bernhard.) Langford quickly gets out of the car, while Pupkin sensibly helps him holding the masses back and get safely into his car while Masha is being dragged out of it by bodyguards.

Pupkin jumps into the backseat of the car in the last second and manages to get a few minutes of conversation with his guru. He explains himself to be a struggling 35 year old comedian, feeling ready to take the big step towards television. In order to get rid of Pupkin, Langford gives him some uninspired pep talk and advices him to call his secretary. Pupkin of course thinks that he now is in the game.

It doesn't take long before we realize that Pupkin isn't just an ambitious wanna-be-comedian - he is totally deranged. As the plot moves forward we witness several fantasy sequences with Pupkin being a friendly co-worker with Langford. They laugh, Langford admires and envies him, Pupkin humbly explains why he is such a brilliant comedian - and then the dream is interrupted by Pupkin's mother yelling at him in his basement, asking him who he is talking to. (That voice, by the way, is Scorsese's own mother.)

These fantasies are mixed up by by painful "real" scenes with Pupkin waiting around Langford's office for a meeting with him, or "Jer" as he calls him. Langfords secretaries gets familiar with his face (although calling him everything from "Pipkin" to "Pumpkin"), and start off as supporting and encourage his energy - but ends up by having to call security to get him out of the building.

Now, Langford is an interesting character. Jerry Lewis caused quite a shock when showing this torn out, arrogant and tired version of his famous comic self. He more or less plays himself, and some sequences in the movies when Langford meets fans in the street is taken from real incidents Lewis encountered.

I a painfully embarrassing side plot Rupert Pupkin tries to reunite with a high school crush, Rita (Diahnne Abbott). Pupkin has gone up in his fantasies to the degree that he convinces Rita that they are invited to Jerry Langford's summer house to spend the weekend. Excited over meeting Pupkin's celebrity friend she dresses up in fine clothes and follows him there.

They find the house currently empty on Langford presence, so they enter the living room, pour up a drink and start playing records while waiting for him to come back. The worried servant (played by Kim Chan) phones Langford on the golf course and tells him about the visitors. He is not too happy finding Pupkin, whom he hasn't seen since the night in the car, vandalizing his home and threatens by calling the cops.

Pupkin: Well, I'm sorry. I made a mistake.

Langford: So did Hitler!

A lot is happening in this scene. Not only Rita, but we also, realize the extent of Pupkin's insanity. Even if we knew that his fantasy sequences had little to do with reality, we did not know if they were entirely made up or not. After this scene the Pupkin character feels threatening - he is so out of touch with reality that he can do almost anything to reach his goal. And there is the main likeness between The King of Comedy and for instance Taxi Driver.

Funny trivia about the scene: De Niro consequently insulted Lewis with anti-semitic remarks to make him look convincingly angry in the scene. Lewis, not being familiar with De Niro's method acting, was furious. And it sure shows.

After a while Pupkin realizes that Langford isn't going to invite him to be on his TV show willingly, so he teams up Masha to kidnap him. With a gun pointed to his head makes some arrangements over the phone to get Pupkin on the show. This is another one of those ambivalent scenes: it's embarrassing, funny, scary and uncomfortable at the same time. It must be difficult to manage such a combination of feelings to work in a film, but Scorsese handles it beautifully. Ingenious.

Both De Niro and Lewis make possibly their greatest performances in this film, but the one stealing the show is Sandra Bernhard as Masha. She is a dangerously insane and lonesome character, obsessed with the idea she has created about Jerry Langford. We get a horrific (and humorous, of course) insight in her character in the scene where she takes care of Langford while Pupkin is away to tape his performance.

The room is lit up with hundreds of candles. Masha talks about the crystal wine glasses she bought specifically for him. She goes on about how she thinks about him all the time. "Sometimes when I have a bath, I can say to myself: Wonder if Jerry's taking a bath right now?" The bizarre humor in this being Jerry tied up with several inches thick layers of tape, looking very unamused. Masha goes on. "I feel very spontaneous tonight. It feels like anything could happen." Freaky, I say.

Cut scene with Jerry Lewis.

The film does not hide it's purpose. It is quite obvious right from the beginning that this is a spoof on celebrity hysteria, that anyone can get famous if they are ready to do anything, that everything is possible in America. And it's good. I don't like hidden messages. It does of course not have to go to the extent of having a narrator telling us to be good to people, it's naughty to steal money and kill people etc. (whatever those messages often are about), but a nice clear message feels refreshing.

The last thing I want to point out is the frozen picture (below) before the movie title and the actors' names are shown. Masha furiously bangs on the windows of the car after Jerry has jumped out again, one of Pupkin's eyes is visible between her fingers.

Why did they choose this picture for us to study while the credits roll? What does it say? I'm not into over analyzing things, but this obviously means something. And I will take a shot at it. (Feel free to add your own theories in the comment section.) I think it symbolizes the unreachable dreams of people like Pupkin and Masha. Masha's hand reaching for the light behind the glass. We know that it's complete chaos outside that glass window, but doesn't this still look peaceful? It's all about trying to reach a dream, that you think is reality.

One can also look on it this way: Masha is reaching out to Jerry. She want's to be with Jerry. Pupkin is looking in to Jerry's car. He wants to be Jerry.

Ah, this makes me tired. Trying to put my winding thoughts into understandable sentences. I'll have a cigarette and forget about this. Last words: The King of Comedy is a masterpiece in my opinion, meaning much when it comes from someone who hates the 1980's (except the fact that she was born during the decade). Ta-taa!

The Three Faces of Eve (1957)

Spanish film poster.

The Three Faces of Eve

Director: Nunnally Johnson

USA 1957

91 min

Starring: Joanne Woodward, Lee J. Cobb, David Wayne and Edwin Jerome, among others.

The Three Faces of Eve is the true story of a woman in the 1950's who suffered from a split personality. The film is very true to the real case of the patient, except that her name is changed from Christine Costner Sizemore to Eve White, and the number of personalities is reduced to three from the real number of 20+ (!) different personas.

Scene: I took the liberty to cut out the introduction scene from the film. If you haven't seen it, watch. You will without a doubt feel the urge to get a hold of the film right away! (Something screwed up when going from Cinemascope to 4:3, sorry about that.)

After the introduction, that all-in-all tells us that the up-coming film is based on a real case, we see Eve White (Woodward) enter Dr. Luther's (Cobb) office with her husband Ralph (Wayne). The timid housewife Eve is suffering from terrible headaches, followed by what she calls "spells". She can't recall anything that happens during those spells, a complete loss of memory.

It takes some time before Dr. Luther starts to suspect what is wrong with Eve. Her spells are at first quite harmless - she buys party dresses and fancy shoes for enormous sums of money, then thinks that it's a gift from her husband. But soon the situation gets more serious, especially when Eve during one of her spells tries to kill her own daughter, four year old Bonnie.

It's first when Dr. Luther gets to meet Eve's other persona that he suspects what might be her problem. During the next meeting with the doctor, Eve confesses that she has started to hear voices, telling her to leave her husband. She gets very sad and confused during the meeting, and starts to cry. When she looks up, she suddenly is happy. She is no longer shy and desperate, but self-confident and flirtatious, and she also speaks with disgust about her husband. Eve White now calls herself Eve Black.

It is revealed that Eve Black knows and remembers everything about Eve White, but not the other way around. It is Eve Black who bought the glittery party dresses and goes to night clubs where she dances, sings, drinks and smokes.

It is decided that Eve should be taken into a hospital. Their daughter moves to her grandparents, and Dr. Luther's mission to find what triggered Eve's personality split begins. It's not an easy problem to solve, since Eve's different personas remember different episodes of her childhood, and soon yet another personality makes an entrance - Jane.

I was really amazed by this film. It was the first film I ever saw with Joanne Woodward, who obviously wasn't a very well-known actress by the time of this film, but impressed in her characterization of Eve White/Eve Black/Jane to the extent that she won an Oscar for her performance. I really need to see more of her. Just the fact that Paul Newman was married to her for 50 years is a reason to adore her.

The rest of the cast is really impressive too. Lee J. Cobb (whom I only have seen once before, in 12 Angry Men where he simply is awesome) gets a great opportunity to shine as the intrigued Dr. Luther, and Edwin Jerome as his older colleague is really sweet.

But aside from Woodward and Cobb it is undoubtedly David Wayne as Eve's husband that makes an impression. God, I hated his character. First I thought that he was kind of cute - simply not intelligent enough to understand what a split personality means. I couldn't understand why Eve White was so shy and insecure.

But then... oh, then. That pig starts with the "just cut it out"-mentality towards his wife. (Oh, do a girl recognize that? "Stop crying! Tears won't change anything!" I guess a father doesn't mean anything bad by it, it's more a desperate way to try to deal with a puberty struck daughter. The warm sympathy lies in the mother role, after all. Now back to Ralph!)

He has no sympathy or understanding for her mental condition at all. He seems very pleased when his wife takes the part of the seductive Eve Black, and at one time he almost rapes her. And then what? He gets fed up with her, slaps her and leaves her for good. Yeah, get better on your own, bitch.

I reckon it demands quite an actor to get a role like that right. My blood is still boiling.

I found a really cool publicity photo from The Three Faces of Eve that someone had scanned. I fixed the fold marks and other irregularities in Photoshop, and voilá!

[Update] I found an interesting BBC interview with the real Eve (Christine Costner Sizemore) in three parts on YouTube. Priceless. If you click here you will get to the playlist with the three parts.

To finish this post, let's take a look at another split personality. I must warn sensitive readers, this is can be uncomfortable and scary.

Cheaper by the Dozen (1950)

Cheaper by the Dozen

Director: Walter Lang

USA 1950

85 min

Starring: Myrna Loy, Clifton Webb and Jeanne Crain, among others.

Once again I had a different idea of the genre of the film before watching it, and therefore was quite shocked at how dramatic the movie actually turned out. I mean, look at the poster! Doesn't it all look jolly good, fine and dandy? Now, the shock wasn't as dramatic for me this time as when I watched Mrs. Miniver (1942) and expected a crazy screwball comedy about an eccentric British housewife (oh yeah, laugh at my silliness...) - Cheaper by the Dozen is a comedy, just a very sensible and realistic one, complete with the natural not-always-so-jolly-good ingredients of real life. And can there be a better way to adapt a novel based on a real life family with twelve children? (Well, Steve Martin certainly thought so in 2003... and again in 2005. The idea gives me horrible, horrible nightmares.)

So this is a real life story about a really big family in the 1920's. The father Frank Gilbreth (Webb) is an eccentric time and motion study and efficiency expert - something that comes in handy with scheduling the daily routines of such a large number of children.

Clifton Webb is of course a magnificent choice for such a part, and I regret that he didn't make a real entrance in the motion picture industry until his celebrated Oscar nomination performance as Waldo Lydecker in Laura (1944). Two reasons for his less than sporadic appearances in film before that seems to be A) he worked a lot on the stage, and B) he was a homosexual, something that studio bosses and directors often were very uncomfortable with, and therefore thought twice before hiring him. (He almost didn't get the part in Laura because of it.)

The loving mother is played by the irreplaceable Myrna Loy, who in real life never got a child of her own. The casting choices for the parents of a dozen children is therefore very ironic and amusing - a gay man and a childless woman! And still I can't see anyone else playing their parts. (And really not Steve Martin.)

I absolutely adore that red-headed flapper à la Clara Bow to Jeanne Crain's right!

The oldest daughter, and narrator of the film, is called Ann (also beautifully cast part, Jeanne Crain). I don't really see why Ann should be the narrator, though - the original book was written by daughter Ernestine (played in the film by Barbara Bates, who we can see the same year as Eve's obsessive fan "Phoebe" in the last scene of All About Eve!) and son Frank Jr (Norman Ollestad). Anyway, that's about the only thing I could come up with as a complaint about the film - and not really worth mentioning. Cheaper by the Dozen is an adorable film, and I can't wait to see the sequel, Belles on Their Toes (1952).

One last little comment. What has happened when it comes to aging gracefully in today's Hollywood? It was so lovely to see a 45-year old Myrna Loy play a part her own age, and not covering up the wrinkles in her face with huge amounts of make up or botox. It seems like classic Hollywood actresses either started playing older parts when they couldn't play the young, foolish virgin anymore, or either dropped out of making movies (like Norma Shearer).

Well well, just needed to air my annoyed thoughts about women fearing to grow old. (See some perfect examples here...) Have some dignity, for crying out loud.

The Snake Pit (1948)

Spanish poster (transl. Nest of Vipers).

The Snake Pit

Director: Anatole Litvak

USA 1948

108 min

Starring: Olivia de Havilland, Mark Stevens, Leo Genn, Beulah Bondi and Celeste Holm, among others.

See it on YouTube here.

The Snake Pit is a film adaption of the novel by Mary Jane Ward, who told the self-experienced story about her time in an insane asylum.

Virgina (de Havilland) finds herself in a psychiatric hospital, and can't remember how she got there. Already in the first scene, sitting on a park bench in the asylum's garden, we see her talking to herself, imagining a man asking her questions and suspecting a fellow inmate (Holm) of being the man in disguise.

The story folds out in time, and we learn that Virginia has suffered a nervous breakdown. She is married to Robert (Stevens, an actor I fell in love with after watching him in the film noir The Dark Corner, 1946), but she can't remember him and gets frightened when he visits her. With the help of shock therapy Virginia gets contact with the real world, and Dr. Kik (the charming British actor Genn) is able to start digging in her past to find out what caused her mental illness.

Ward's novel, published in 1946, caused a great controversy upon its release for its deption of the brutal treatment of mentally ill patients. Of course, it became a bestseller.

Dr. Kik (based on the real life person Dr. Gerard Chrzanowski, who told the patients to simply call him "Dr. Kik" due to his complicated last name) was something out of the ordinary in that time, almost solely treating his patients with psychotherapy.

There is one scene in particular, where his different point of view is made obvious. Dr. Kik is in a meeting with the other doctors, complaining about the overcrowded mental asylums in the country. They want to send Virginia home due to the hospital being overcrowded, while Dr. Kik doesn't think she is ready for it, and likely will become more ill if she is sent away. One Dr. Curtis starts reading statistics about how many patients they have, and how many the hospitals are intended for, and concludes:

"The trouble is that for you, each case is the one, and for us it's one of thousands."

Dr. Kik responds:

"Yes, Curtis, one of thousands - even millions. But only by trying making each case the one can we really help the patient."

And there we have the problem with the treatment of mental illness in a nutshell. Even though the situation is much better today, everyone who has at least a little bit of experience from that area can recognize the hardened nurses and ignorant doctors, and probably feel a bit sick when realizing how much of it is still there 60 years later.

(Now, don't think that I'm a total weirdo, but I've had my little share of the mental institutions and their staff, and that's quite enough for me.)

Scene: Virginia has been moved to the worst department in the asylum, where she makes the connection to being in a snake pit.

I can't help but connecting The Snake Pit with Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar from 1963. Quite frightening reading with almost brutal black humour.

Now to the title of the film. It's explained in the film itself, but if you haven't seen it the choice of the title is really interesting. It is derived from a way of treating mentally ill long ago, where they through the sick people into snake pits. The thought was that such a thing would drive a sane person insane, and that it also should work vice versa. Oh, the inventiveness of man.

I always liked Olivia de Havilland before, but now I think she is making it to the top five of my favorite actresses. Her performance in this film is inconveniently real, and I found myself not being able to sit still while watching her most tragic freakouts. My favourite part of her characterization is when she slowly becomes better. Even though it's obvious to all the people around, she is so worried that maybe feeling better is a sign of really becoming insane. (Been there, done that.)

I believe that those who will appreciate this film the most are people who have had mental illness in their life, whether it has affected yourself or someone close to you.

The Snake Pit only won an Academy Award for Best Sound, Recording, but it was nominated to a bunch of them. De Havilland was nominated for Best Actress (but was robbed by Jane Wyman for Johnny Belinda) and Anatole Litvak was nominated for Best Director (won by John Huston, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre). The other nominations were for Best Picture (won by Olivier's Hamlet), Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (The Red Shoes) and Best Writing, Screenplay (again, John Huston and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre).

But we can comfort ourselves with the fact that de Havilland won the Best Actress Oscar in 1947 for To Each His Own (1946), and again in 1950 for The Heiress (1949).

All in all - see this movie if you haven't! It's an order!

The beautiful and amazing Olivia de Havilland.

Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

Leave Her to Heaven

Director: John M. Stahl

USA 1945

110 min

Starring: Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain and Vincent Price, among others.

See it on YouTube here.

Writer Richard Harland (Wilde) approaches a bridge by boat, and is greeted by people who seem very uncomfortable. Harland looks around, a woman says "That poor man...". Harland steps into another boat and quietly rows on. A man speaks up, telling a fellow beside him that it was through him that Harland met that disastrous woman. The backstory unveils.

Harland meets his wife-to-be, Ellen Berent (Tierney), on a train. She notices a remarkable resemblance to her late father in Harland, something that at first seems pleasant. Everything is honky-dory at first (besides some dubious remarks about Ellen from her family, and the fact that she a little too early after meeting Harland broke her engagement to a previous fiancé, Russell Quinton, played by Vincent Price). Ellen meets Harland's beloved, crippled little brother Danny (Darryl Hickman), and encourages him in his illness.

Harland, Ellen and Danny move to a country place called Back of the Moon to live there together, but Ellen soon realizes that she hardly gets any time to spend alone with her husband. Harland writes a new book and Danny is always around. On top of that, her cousin and adopted sister Ruth (Craine). seems to have an affair with Harland. Or is it just in her imagination?

Soon weird things start to happen, making a cute countryside lovestory turn into a thriller.

To quote Raquelle at Out of the Past, Gene Tierney is THE SPAWN OF SATAN in Leave Her to Heaven. It was this film that made me realize that Tierney is not only beautiful, but also a darn good actress. (She was nominated to an Oscar for an Actress in a Leading Role, but lost to Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce.)

I never understand whether Ellen is really evil, just "loves too much" (wants all the candy for herself) or is in fact mentally ill. Is she lying about not remembering falling down the stairs, or did she actually have a black-out à la Laird Cregar in Hangover Square [post]?

After only having seen Tierney in Laura (1944) and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), I was quite shocked and amazed by her character in this film. My respect for her acting skills grew a noticable amount.

Gene Tierney - beautiful and competent.

There are a lot of discussions going on about which genre this movie belongs to. To me, the answer isn't very interesting (as I've said before, I don't like to categorize art), but the discussion is. IMDb tried to put the film in the three main categories Drama, Film-Noir and Thriller - quite a broad spectrum! But it's not entirely a drama, nor entirely a thriller.

I'm tempted to call it a Technicolor-Noir. We have an amazing Academy Award winning cinematography, playing with shadows, lighting and camera angles. (See the Vincent Price scene I picked out, below - a great example.) But the sparkling colors make the noir-feeling go down a bit. But we do also have a cool femme fatale that we can't be sure if we can trust, on the other hand.

But to me, the most unquestionable noir resemblance is the beginning - like Sunset Blvd. (1950) starts off by showing the male lead drowned in a pool, the first thing we meet here is the shattered remains of Richard Harland, destroyed by an evil woman.

Scene: Vincent Price makes his entrance. I love the dialogue in this scene. "What in the world brought you here?" "An airplane."

Notice the low angle and the lighting on Price's face when he enters the room, simply brilliant.

One last thing I'd like to discuss is, again, the title. I discussed this in my I Wake Up Screaming post [here] - I want to know why the movie title was chosen. As far as I can recall, "Leave her to heaven" wasn't a quote from the film itself.

Imdb's trivia section gave me a hint:

The title is taken from a line from William Shakespeare's "Hamlet".

Okay - but why? No direct Hamlet connection wasn't obvious to me at first glance.

Since I didn't want to be as predictable as to do a Google search, I find myself tossing around in my bed wondering about the title. Since I couldn't sleep anyway, I got up to search my bookshelf for a hude book called "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare".

In Act I, Scene V of The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1599-1601), I find Hamlet just having spoken to the ghost of his dead father. His father, King of Denmark, had told him that his death was no accident, but that it was his brother who poisoned him in his sleep to take over the throne of Denmark and wed the Queen, Hamlet's mother! Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Hamlet has to avenge his father's death.

As early as in Scene II, Hamlet spoke to himself about his mother, uttering my favourite words of Shakespeare; Frailty, thy name is woman! And the "leave her to heaven" quote is also about his mother, who after being a widow for only a month gets married to her dead husband's brother.

Spoken by the ghost of Hamlet's father, the dead king:

Let not the royal bed of Denmark be

A couch for luxury and damned incest.

But, howsoever thou pursuest this act,

Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive

Againt thy mother aught ; leave her to heaven,

And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge,

To prick and sting her.

And there we have it - the reference! Hamlet's mother is a treacherous woman, just as Ellen. As far as I, to whom Swedish is my first language, can understand 16th century English, I guess that both Hamlet's mother and Ellen will pay for ther crimes when their time comes. Leave her to heaven to be judged, is my interpretation. Anyone having another opinion?

(Note: I don't usually read Shakespeare when I can't sleep. I find keeping "who is who" in Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov much more effective.)

Laurence Olivier in the titlerole of the self-directed Hamlet (1948).