Ranking Roberts

Here is a list of my favorite actors named Robert from favorite to least favorite:

1. Robert Montgomery
2. Robert Downey Jr. 
3. Robert DuVall (almost solely based on being Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, just thinking about that scene is enough to make me cry)
4. Robert Cummings
5. Robert Young
6. All other Roberts including Roberts Loggia, Lowe, Ryan, Ulrich,  Mitchum, Redford, Taylor, and De Niro.   

Ripe for a remake: Crossfire

In honor of Robert Ryan's birthday, TCM aired Crossfire, which was his first major role (he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor Oscar).  The movie is based on the Richard Brooks novel The Brick Foxhole, which details a hate crime perpetrated by a soldier and later instigated by a police captain (played by Robert Young) working with a Army sergeant (played Robert Mitchum).  In the screen adaptation, the victim is changed to a Jewish former GI.  However, in the source material, the victim was a homosexual but due to the Hayes Code, this was changed. The convergence of ending the ban on gays in the military and the change the attitude towards homosexuals and gay marriage, to me means a remake of this movie that is a closer adaptation to the novel would be perfectly timed.

Beware, My Lovely: A Treatise on Masculinity and Inadequacy

Rewatching movies is such a fun and interesting thing to do.  I feel like once you know the basics of the plot, you can pay attention more to the performances, the art direction, the costumes/hair, or the direction.  This was especially true when I recently re-watched Beware, My Lovely.  I first saw this movie at the Noir DC film fest and I really enjoyed it.  So this time around since I knew plot,  I was able to pay attention to the staging and the motivation of the characters.  The basic plot is Ida Lupino hires Robert Ryan to do odd jobs around the house.  Ryan turns out to have some psychological issues (probably schizophrenia) and after locking Lupino in her own house, begins to menace her. The most is set just after World War (1918) and Lupino has been widowed by the war (he husband was in the Army).  The source of Ryan's psychological issues seem to arise from feelings of inadequacy.  He wasn't able to join the Army for some unmentioned health reason (um, probably because he is mentally ill) and therefore he feels the need to continuously prove himself.  Additionally, he talks about being a handyman and no one keeps around more that a day (which may be because he kills the people who hire him, at least one that we see at the beginning of the movie).  Fueling this feeling of inadequacy seems to be comments from other characters that he is not masculine enough.  Early in the movie, Ryan is frightened by a dog and is angry when Lupino's boarder laughs at him.  Later when he is waxing the floor, Lupino's niece says comments like "waxing the floor is women's work" and "what kind of man waxes floors for money".  Later in the movie, Ryan tries to show Lupino that he is just as good as her dead husband.  I feel like if this movie was made slightly later (it was made in 1952) and slight changes were made to the script (removing the fact that he locks her in the house), this movie could have been a exploration of treating a psychological condition with understanding and talk therapy (there are not a ton of depiction of treating psychological conditions with prescription drugs).  Thinking about these issues made watching Beware, My Lovely again much more interesting.

Robert Ryan: When Personality and Type-Casting Clash

It was Robert Ryan's birthday on the 11th (and he was a Marine) so TCM aired a many Robert Ryan movies that day and so I've been watching quite a few of his movies in the last few days.  And Robert Ryan, like another Robert: Robert Mitchum, terrifies me because he often played the villain in film noir movies, or at least someone reprehensible.  Robert Ryan mostly worked in 3 genres: westerns, war movies, and film noir/crime movies.  I can only think of one movie, On Dangerous Ground, in which he was a traditional leading man (which features a reunion with Ida Lupino, who gets terrorized by Robert Ryan in Beware, My Lovely).  Ryan being in war movies make sense, he was a Marine (though he later adapted the pacifist views of his Quaker wife).  And during the 40s/50s, pretty much everyone and their brother were in a film noir movie of some kind.  But Ryan being a villain on the surface doesn't make sense.  He is not as handsome as someone like Cary Grant but he didn't look like Peter Lorre, an actor who the required malice in most of his roles is supplied by just looking at his face.  Reading about his life, Ryan was a very liberal Democrat who worked for civil rights for a majority of his life.  Which makes his role in Crossfire, playing a racist and anti-Semitic soldier, clearly against his personal beliefs.  I think the skill that Ryan really had that drove his performances was his ability to play characters with rage just simmering under the surface.  In a lot of his roles, Ryan is able to turn on a dime from a calm and collected person to someone with a explosion of rage but you can still have some sympathy towards; this is especially true in Act of Violence and Beware, My Lovely.  With Ryan, I have the hardest time being able to separate his professional life and his personal life because he so often played terrible people.  It is usually the reverse, that an actor/director's personal life/beliefs can hinder my enjoyment of his or her movies (I'm looking at you Roman Polanski).  By watching a great variety of his movies and reading more about him, I am hoping to bring together his professional work and his personal beliefs to enjoy his work better.

The Phenix City Story

One things that I have noticed during my endless watching of film noir, there are a lot of film noir movies that are based on long-form stories from magazine or newspapers, like Call Northside 777 (starring Jimmy Stewart as a upstanding journalist), Boomerang! (starring Dana Andrews as a upstanding DA, and the movie I just finished: The Phenix City Story.  The movie opens with about 15 minutes of interview footage about what drove the change in Phenix City.  Which makes it a interesting blend of documentary and fictionalized account of what happened.  In this case, corruption runs deep in the city (via gambling and prostitution), and a lawyer, Albert, and his son John, (just returned from Germany) decide to clean up the city by the Albert running for Attorney General of Alabama.  After his election, but before he is sworn in, Albert is killed and John and the people of Phenix City appeal to the state to send help to clean up the town (by declaring martial law).  I have to say, it is always jarring to hear to what is now offensive language flowing freely (since this is Alabama in the 50s, the n-word got used at least once).  And this movie glosses over that fact that the John Patterson was a segregationist and ran on that platform when he later ran for Governor (he had the support of the KKK in running in a primary against George "segregation forever" Wallace, so again Alabama in the 50s).  However, there are parts of this movie that are obviously heavily influenced by the recent (at the time) outcomes of World War II.  Several times, characters reference to having fought for freedom, that the opression in the city is in America not a dictatorship across the sea, and evil is allowed in the world because good men do nothing.  And this movie is basically a nearly 2 hour-long PSA about the importance of voting and the power of the ballot over the power of the mob.  That the ends don't justify the means and the good must act with honor to remain good (again glossing over real life, John is reminded of this by an African American man). Which in itself raises an interesting question, does one have to sink to same level as his or her enemy to prevail?  

Noir City DC: Repeat Performance

This was the best film of the whole film festival.  It had all the trappings of an A film (meaning a top-billed movie) including great sets, a good script, fantastic costume, and great performances from everyone. If slightly more famous people were in some of the roles (like swapping Tom Conway for his brother George Sanders) this movie would be much more when known.  Joan Leslie stars a film actress Sheila Page who shoots her lecherous playwright husband Barney (Louis Hayward) on New Year's Eve just as it become 1947.  Through some kind of weird magic, Shelia gets to relieve 1946 in an attempt to change everything and prevent her shooting her husband.  This movie presents in interesting treatise on fate and if you can change a person enough to avoid certain mistakes catching up to that person.  And it shows what happens when you let gratitude to another person cloud your judgement. While I enjoyed the ending, halfway through the re-living of 1946, I wanted Sheila to move to Reno and then divorce her horrible husband so he would be out of her life my Christmas.  The version that I saw was a restored version so the film looked fantastic.  This movie is definitely an unknown but great gem.

Noir City DC: The Chase

Lessons from the movie The Chase

• Robert Cummings looked weirdly uncomfortable in a every suit in this movie (or the suits didn't fit, I'm not sure).
• Blackout sequences are just as bad a dream sequences (ah, dream sequences, I should right a post about them, there is really only one dream sequence that I've liked and that was in Spellbound because I think that one really captures the really surrealism of dreams (and Dali didn't hurt)).  
• The arrival of Peter Lorre usually means trouble, don't get involved with anyone that had Peter Lorre as a henchman.  

Noir City DC: High Tide

Dear producers of High Tide,

You should have fired the film editor.  Cutting to a major plot driving scene right in the middle is confusing and really takes away from the movie.  If you are trying to hire a less expensive version of Clark Gable, look for more beyond them having the same mustache.

Sincerely,
Anyone who has even seen High Tide

Noir City DC: Strange Impersonation

This movie was cuckoo banana pants, but I still totally loved it.  It doesn't hurt that is stars a female chemist with a fellow chemist as a fiance.  Which leads to a great scene of them kissing and her breaking the kiss saying "No, Stephen.  The science!".   There is also some interesting gender politics with the female chemist, Nora, want to wait to marry her fiance until she finishes her experiment on her new anesthetic.  I don't want to give to much of the plot away but the whole thing kind of collapses in on its crazy-self when it gets to the final act.   But until then, it is kind of a crazy but fun ride.

Noir City DC: Street Of Chance

This was not my favorite, so it gets a bulleted list:

• If you want to see Burgess Meredith in a pre-Rocky and pre-Penguin role, this is the movie for you
• Apparently, one hit on the head gives you amnesia and then you are cured with a second hit in the head.  
• There is no necessity to fill in the back story, just start when the character gets the second head trauma.  
• And, I'm out (seriously, I fell asleep for about 20 minutes of the movie, so that tells you how much I was engaged in the movie/plot).  

Noir City, DC: Sorry, Wrong Number

I love Barbra Stanwyck.  I think that she is a fantastic actress and she shares a few traits with Bette Davis and Meryl Streep: being able to see her emotions flash across her face (however briefly) and extremely expressive eyes.   And she was never afraid to try a genre and be great in it.  In the cannon of her best work (think Double Indemnity, Remember The Night, and Stella Dallas), I think that Sorry, Wrong Number belongs as well for the simple reason of she isn't afraid to play an unlikable character.  And trust me she is really unlikable in this movie.  But she never pulls back from playing her character that way.  I feel like the other distinction of this movie, it that is doesn't pull back from the very black soul and nastiness of the movie that had been set in motion throughout.  And in that way, it is kind of awesome.