The 1950s List: Discussion and Suggestions (Decade Project Vol. 4)

[domino harvey]

Jubal (Daves 1956). There isn’t much of the traditional western narrative here (ranchers vs. homesteaders, Indians, outlaws, etc.) – it’s all romantic and group psychology drama (a reworking of Othello as it’s been observed), but in western dress (horses, guns, open spaces).

It's been a while since I've seen it so I may be confusing it with another Glenn Ford western (I've seen a lot of them!), but isn't the initial conflict with Steiger a result of Ford being a sheep herder, which was an occupation long at odds with rustlers in terms of land use (and carried with it baggage of [e]masculinity)? That's definitely a traditional narrative western aspect, I'd say

[Rayon Vert]

Yeah that's true, but it's really just an excuse. It quickly becomes obvious that Steiger/Pinky feels threatened by anybody else coming in and potentially overranking him in terms of the group dynamics, admiration from the boss, attention from the boss's wife (the latter the most significant motivation).

[Rayon Vert]

RV, are you planning on watching the other Wajda war films? All three are pretty great

I'm just doing revisits so I've seen them all but I'll be rewatching Ashes and Diamonds, the first one is too low in my preexisting rankings to have a chance of making my list.

[therewillbeblus]

Agreed with that. You usually put “rewatch” before a title so I incorrectly assumed this viewing of Kanal was your first.

[Rayon Vert]

In this thread I indicated since starting up again that I'd only be doing rewatches, due to diminished time (blame domino for the horror thread) and covid-19 (financial uncertainty -> severe restrictions on new purchases). I will try to keep time at the end for My Sister Eileen, No Down Payment, etc., previously unwatched 50s films that I already own.

[therewillbeblus]

Don’t forget you also have two unopened copies of Peyton Place

[Rayon Vert]

Definitely.

Actually I put my order through SAE, and I was lucky enough to write to them on that Sunday to cancel the second one, and that Monday morning they did. But yeah I'll make time for that and The Long Hot Summer and maybe a few others. I have several Naruse films as well, but because of the time constraints I won't be able to aim for as deep in plunge as in the previous two decades. I (and you all) will have to live with the fact that there will be large, conspicuous holes in my viewings (50s Mankiewicz, pretty much musicals in general, etc. etc.).

[therewillbeblus]

You’re seeing one of the best musicals that is most in need of boosted support, comparatively, so I appreciate your service

[domino harvey]

Caught up with Clouzot's Les espions (1957), which inexplicably doesn't have an English friendly release despite some big international stars in Curd Jurgens, Peter Ustinov, and Sam Jaffe. Jaffe and Ustinov were both fluent in French and thus able to play this thing to the hilt in their usual way, which is where this ahead of its time spy tale must land. I was stunned at how thoroughly this movie anticipated the post-JFK/Watergate series of conspiracy thrillers in its confused paranoia. Here a dumb local doctor with barely any patients is chosen for a simple spy task: hide a man as a patient for a few days. What follows is a riptide of colorful thugs and untrustworthy strangers entering into the man's life as he does the absolute stupidest things possible in any given scenario-- which, as we discover, isn't a screenplay flaw and is rather why he was chosen! Everything and everyone in the doctor's life becomes instantly duplicitous, and there's no turn one can make when you're placed in the hamster wheel of a conspiracy. Jaffe and Ustinov walk off with the film whenever they're on the screen, especially during their first scene, which is delivered like some kind of proto-David O Russell centerpiece of bluster and noise and forward momentum. I was a little disappointed near the end of the film when things actually started making sense, as I don't think the "What" here really matters at all. But the journey is great fun, even if it would have worked a little better if the protagonist made a few less idiot plot decisions. Recommended, especially for Kafka/Pynchon/Pakula fans.

[therewillbeblus]

The Searchers

The thing about this film is, no matter how many times I see it, there is always something new to pick up on and it never gets old. Looking back on my comments comparing this to Wagon Master, I feel like I was unfair in my analysis of this film in one respect. Ford and Wayne don’t seem as unilaterally focused on Ethan’s transformation to humanism, perhaps not even as much as the audience’s peripheries expanding toward the philosophy. This is an epic, perhaps the definitive epic, because Ford takes us on our own journey from the clouds of magical moviemaking to the brutal truths of the modern world.

Wayne’s Ethan should be the poster-character for screenwriting, as the entire narrative works to transform this ambiguous, faux-clearcut character into one completely humanized, without requiring our full endorsement or recruitment. The spontaneous arrival after a three-year mysterious gap in time (the contents of which must be left to the viewer’s imagination, though we’d rather not) disrupts the communal systems of false progression. His intense, direct presence is one that violently pierces this sugar-coated facade of liberal flexibility, the kind of cushy folk that want to ignore the harsh realities of the outside world, who preach harmony but haven’t lived outside the safety of that bubbly attitude. Ethan is a realist, a worldly individual who shatters naive idealism, and one who earns our attention and vague respect through a complex portrait of experience that we can never understand, revealing our own position of unwarranted judgment.

Ethan is a walking contradiction, but not a hypocrite. He is both reserved and modest, as well as overbearing and dignified. Take an early scene where he meets Martin again as an adult, brushing off his heroic role in saving him as a child. Is he diffusing responsibility because he is ashamed of saving a body with Indian blood, or because he actually lives a humble existence - the key word being ‘live,’ to experience and not attach higher vanity to it. Can it be both?

Ethan holds onto tradition, presents as superior and condescending, and appears too proud to surrender when he references no-showing to the end of the Confederacy. However, this air of superiority can be just as easily read as low tolerance of an isolationist, and his refusal to surrender as the defense of a survivalist. Ethan is smart, not ignorant. He knows that the Confederacy lost the war, that Martin is a human being, but he wants nothing to do with them and cheekily suppresses their existence when he can. This is stubborn agency at its most active. We never get the sense that Ethan is an idealist, but this ability to compartmentalize his attention has served him well. He chooses a rigid position because the world is too complicated not to, and because his own traumatic life has forced a worldview that needs defenses to continue.

When we encounter broken women reduced to psychosis and nervous tremors halfway through the film, we get an idea of why Ethan has adopted his mindset. He copes by dubbing them inhuman, which allows him to stay sane, strong, and persevere. Is there a strong difference between this black-and-white attitude and the idyllic one of townsfolk who cope by blinding themselves to this side of things? Does Ethan's own trauma history make his position of any less value, or.. possibly more? It's a hard question to ask and an impossible one to answer.

This all leads to the contradiction of Ethan’s traditionalism. For a white nationalist, he is ironically more ‘culturally competent’ (as liberal America would say today) than any of the more ‘progressive’ characters in the film, yet this is not ironic to a realist's angle, just that of inexperienced observers. Ethan speaks the Comanche language, knows their customs, and even respects them in his own way, casually accepting of practices while Martin is physically disgusted at times, a wanderer outside his comfort zone and unable to regulate himself. No one can take that away from Ethan, and Ford and Wayne bravely argue that this position should be recognized; while it paradoxically cannot be celebrated when it comes at another’s expense.

The bitter truth is that Ethan has developed his worldview by a lifetime of hardship and exposure that audiences watching this film, today more than ever, have been spared from. We can character-assassinate and preach our solipsistic views of justice and yet we haven’t had to stare our own compromised dissonance in the face and live with it. Ethan is not perfect, he is not a man to be hailed, and he is a man who must be pushed to change to preserve his humanity and flex his ideological lens with the times to continue to act in accordance with his beliefs. Martin is a critical character, one who Ethan ignores because that stance has served him in the past, but who symbolizes the changing climate, generational shifts in time and space, that will continue to knock on our door until we answer.

This is a social film about an individualist, which is a splendid irony. That invasion of a fixed perspective by another winds up restoring Ethan’s balance back to the core values he holds dear, while also reminding him of his place in a new era. The final shot is one that embodies that contradiction in all its beauty: A smile of pride and compassion for his completed mission, and a humble dissipation of surrender in the utility of his identity. Ethan is the enigmatic existentialist hero of real life, the ones we criticize from afar, but who form their opinions from traumatic lives we cannot imagine. Ford and Wayne ask questions we don’t want to ask: Does a person’s history or complex set of actions matter, or just the public ones that harm? We live in an age where the latter seems to rule, and where citizens feel entitled to take on self-proclaimed roles of one-unit juries and contribute to mass executions. Ford and Wayne don’t want us to like Ethan, or beg us to understand him, because they know he cannot be wholly liked or understood without us literally being him. They do, however, seem to want us to take a breath and practice a bit of humility ourselves before we judge and execute, and refrain from dehumanization based on self-gratifying personal moralism.

They want us to know that the Ethans of the world are incongruous by definition, and need to be influenced to stay on track just as we do. We are one in the same, individualized moralists who must contest with other individualized moralists to escape from our own destructive capacity. There is a nightmarish skin to this setup, but a beautiful nucleus in the humility we can achieve from social challenge. Martin’s words that Debbie is kin to him plant a seed in Ethan’s mind despite his stoic demeanor, affecting him subconsciously over time. I believe that without Martin's prodding Ethan would not make the choice he does in the end. Martin's new-age opposition conversely provokes a return to principles, a divorcement from blinded anger that gets in Ethan's own way of maintaining his virtues. The umbrella of humanity defines both men, and little else, and this hostility reflects back that image of what Ethan really stands for, when all chips leave his shoulder- or just enough of them to see clearly.

People hate the Martin/Laurie subplot, and I don’t love it either, but it does juxtapose Ethan’s cold, firm stagnation with a silly, dynamic sensitive domain. This is the validation for progression, to offset the discomfort offered against its alt-left hypocrisy and hiveminded flaws, as a place of playful energy where people become alive and fight for love with the same exuberance that Ethan exhibits in his fight for ideology through hate and anger. Passion rules the world, and idealism has its place too alongside the people like Ethan who must exist as necessary evils.

I don't know what it's like to be an Ethan. What I do know though, is that men like Ethan need men like Martin to get themselves outside of themselves, disrupting their hardened realism with hopeful idealism; and men like Martin need Ethans to disrupt their utopian ideals with realism, doing the same. Each keeps the other more humble and conscious of their strengths and deficits, and this constructive conflict itself might be an actual utopia - the toleration of opposing worldviews and the respect of different experiences. That goes both ways, and in our current climate no one is really interested in doing this, on either side, but Ford - who had both a liberal humanist side, and a conservative realist one, understood that there are no easy answers. No era has really felt comfortable actually addressing these impenetrable, clashing scopes of our world, so why not let art do what people cannot.

As far as I'm concerned, Ethan's change in approach to Debbie is one of the best cinematic depictions of a spiritual experience. The complete surrender in his embrace of her is an embrace of tolerance and a celebration of mankind. The rush destroys him but saves another, and his self-conscious vulnerability as he fidgets with his elbow, leans on one foot, and half-smiles before wandering off, is a compact visualization of the meaning of life. Clinging to morals, flaunting strengths, becoming willing to evolve even at the expense of one's chronicle in the sights of a new horizon, and sacrificing strength for the vulnerability of love to preserve core beliefs. The cruel moods disbar in this sublime moment, and I actually teared up for the first time ever during it on this last rewatch, after seeing the film countless times. This is called one of the all-time greatest films for a reason, and while it still isn't one of mine, it's special and definitive of the Western's interest in exploring anthropological complexity, using expansive physical space and time to track the internal journeys of man's moral development.

[therewillbeblus]

Les espions (1957)
Recommended, especially for Kafka/Pynchon/Pakula fans.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

There is an English subbed version of Les Espions available. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Espions-DVD-Cu ... dvd&sr=1-1

[knives]

I was about to say I have a decent U.K. disc of the film. Since it will probably make my list I'll just add on that it's easily one of my favorite Clouzot's. Here's my little capsule from the previous project.

[domino harvey]

Ha, that’s the same label that put out the Deville DVDs too— why can’t they be Arrow, they obv have good taste!

[knives]

Real talk: Rita Hayworth is the worst Hollywood starlet of the era, right? Admittedly I get her and Ava Gardner mixed up, but at least Gardner gave a couple of memorable performances. Watching the films up on the Criterion channel they're all pretty terrible and when she's not completely anonymous you get whatever is going on with Salomè.

[domino harvey]

I wouldn’t say worst, but she does nothing for me as either an actress or a sex symbol

[knives]

Yeah, I'm not using worst to necessarily mean terrible so much as unmemorable and a sign that I'm not going to like the movie.

[therewillbeblus]

I haven't seen any of her 50s films, but I think she was used well in The Strawberry Blonde and The Lady From Shanghai last decade. That doesn't translate to being good though, and her sex-charms are mostly lost on me too. I remember seeing Gilda in a college film class and shrugging as my prof gushed.

[knives]

Even those I can't muster any excitement for. That's probably my least favorite Welles, though I love Sloane's performance, and I don't even remember her in the Walsh!

[therewillbeblus]

Speaking of forgettable Hayworth, I never remember that she's in Only Angels Have Wings. Not that she has any substantial part but it is one of my all-time favorites, and the amount of times I've seen it only to look past her completely is a sign right there proving your point.

[mizo]

People hate the Martin/Laurie subplot, and I don’t love it either...

Well, I'd like you to meet me, the one person who loves it as much as or more than the main storyline. Laurie is one of my favorite women in any western, and I can think of few other westerns that so effectively impress on you the absolute dearth of options in life a young woman would surely face in the old West. Laurie's whole outer world is comprised of the homesteads of her family's few neighbors and even they live so far away their visits are always an event. Ford's widescreen vistas never fail to make vivid just how desolate this world is. The landscape also takes on an enormous psychological potency. When Martin, following Ethan, leaves Laurie to face a future without him, the bright red horizon that fills the frame behind her seems to burn with her despair. For just a moment, the film rockets to the heights of melodramatic intensity. For cynical viewers, it might come off as indulging in her adolescent solipsism, but I think it's to the film's strength that it does indulge (and that particular moment always puts a lump in my throat).

Later, when she is pondering the prospect of marrying the guitar-playing simpleton, I always feel like I respond to the unspoken tragedy of the situation more than she visibly registers it. She seems willing to accept the narrowly-circumscribed life the marriage promises her. While I can't say whether life with Martin would necessarily be better, it at least seems to offer the fulfillment of her plans since childhood - of her manifest destiny, you might say. Actually, I think that connection (between her future plans and American expansionary ambitions) is appropriate, since the film links the two in that wonderful speech from Laurie's mother, about the sacrifices made, particularly by women, to spread civilization. Laurie's entire relationship with Martin is based around the performance of maternal duties (think of the bathing scene, even with its faint hint of eroticism) and sacrifice. And ultimately, even if she gets what she wants from him, will it be worth all her trouble, or will it be just another wide, empty vista? A Pyrrhic victory, not too unlike Ethan's ultimately-abortive mission of destruction? So, as Stanley Cavell might observe, it's a film about settling and settling.

I've never been sure, though, how I feel about the way the film ultimately sells her out, giving her that awful, heartless line about how Debbie's mother would've wanted her dead.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't say, great appreciation as always, twbb!

[TMDaines]

Love both Gilda and her role in it.

[NABOB OF NOWHERE]

Love both Gilda and her role in it.

In the year I programmed the film club at Film school I put on Gilda which attracted a sizeable contingent of students from China on a cultural exchange. The showing however was constantly punctuated by them standing up and applauding enthusiastically every few minutes.

[therewillbeblus]

People hate the Martin/Laurie subplot, and I don’t love it either...

Well, I'd like you to meet me, the one person who loves it as much as or more than the main storyline. Laurie is one of my favorite women in any western, and I can think of few other westerns that so effectively impress on you the absolute dearth of options in life a young woman would surely face in the old West. Laurie's whole outer world is comprised of the homesteads of her family's few neighbors and even they live so far away their visits are always an event. Ford's widescreen vistas never fail to make vivid just how desolate this world is. The landscape also takes on an enormous psychological potency. When Martin, following Ethan, leaves Laurie to face a future without him, the bright red horizon that fills the frame behind her seems to burn with her despair. For just a moment, the film rockets to the heights of melodramatic intensity. For cynical viewers, it might come off as indulging in her adolescent solipsism, but I think it's to the film's strength that it does indulge (and that particular moment always puts a lump in my throat).

Later, when she is pondering the prospect of marrying the guitar-playing simpleton, I always feel like I respond to the unspoken tragedy of the situation more than she visibly registers it. She seems willing to accept the narrowly-circumscribed life the marriage promises her. While I can't say whether life with Martin would necessarily be better, it at least seems to offer the fulfillment of her plans since childhood - of her manifest destiny, you might say. Actually, I think that connection (between her future plans and American expansionary ambitions) is appropriate, since the film links the two in that wonderful speech from Laurie's mother, about the sacrifices made, particularly by women, to spread civilization. Laurie's entire relationship with Martin is based around the performance of maternal duties (think of the bathing scene, even with its faint hint of eroticism) and sacrifice. And ultimately, even if she gets what she wants from him, will it be worth all her trouble, or will it be just another wide, empty vista? A Pyrrhic victory, not too unlike Ethan's ultimately-abortive mission of destruction? So, as Stanley Cavell might observe, it's a film about settling and settling.

I've never been sure, though, how I feel about the way the film ultimately sells her out, giving her that awful, heartless line about how Debbie's mother would've wanted her dead.

What an insightful post, mizo! I agree that this is a film that validates the pains of one’s solipsism on all sides as well as demonstrates the need to “settle.” Your reading makes me appreciate another key detail that always rubbed the the wrong way but now I kind of love: Laurie (almost maniacally) grinning and biting her fist with glee as the men fight over her. I mistakenly rolled my eyes at this apparent female celebration of male toughness, and following Ethan’s comment that “you started it” I had a bad taste in my mouth from a similarity to toxic men blaming the female victim in rape culture. But her passion in that scene (the camera has never been so close to her - maybe anyone? - in the entire film) is rooted in finally having her worth validated. Two men are fighting for her! After a lifetime of settling and being powerless to achieve any tangible measure of worth for her identity, or more importantly had her dreams realised (while all the men were out traversing the western landscapes following theirs), this is her moment and Ford’s camera gives her a close-up. It may be the most pleasurable moment she’s had in her life so far.

[therewillbeblus]

Les espions: Clouzot often dresses up his doofus protagonists as semi-competent, so what a lovely surprise when he goes full-steam ahead into abandonment of social pragmatics. This is like The Big Lebowski made four decades earlier, and loosely plays with the noir structure and paranoia mystery while keeping things light. The Pynchon comparison seems to fall more in line with his last two breezier novels - but any narrative that packs this much wild, unrestrained energy can certainly be compared to the PTA adaptation, which is the most similar cousin (unless we’re giving Pakula and Kafka laughing gas).

I’m not as keen on Clouzot as many here, but I do admire his skills and often feel his films cave in on themselves when he takes himself too seriously. This is probably the best I’ve seen, partly because he doesn’t, and partly because it’s simply the most fun and entertaining of the bunch. When a film contends with this much action across varying characters and fleeting exchanges it reminds me of North By Northwest and The Big Sleep, and when it hits bullseye ideas without breathing, it’s hard to have anything but open arms as a response. It doesn't hurt that the film essentially argues that morality is not relative but a defective, even abnormal trait! There is a beautiful irony in the lead being so aloof (actually resembling the attitude of Pynchon's first hero, the "human yo-to," in V.) that his previous coasting approach to life is argued to be the 'right' one all along, and now that he has stumbled into a dark world of compromise, taking a moral stand for the first time becomes the 'wrong' one in this new context. He just can't win!