My comments on Peary’s reviews in Guide for the Film Fanatic (Simon & Schuster, 1986).
“Wait a minute, wait a minute — you ain’t heard nothin’ yet!”
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Response to Peary’s Review: Note: Check out the following video clip for more details on how this early talkie played a part in movie sound history: Redeeming Qualities and Moments:
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“It just happens to be Pakistan now, as far as I can see — it happens to be that which we’re doing the benefit for. It’s a particularly bad situation there, but it does happen all the time — this is happening everywhere.”
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Response to Peary’s Review: Redeeming Qualities and Moments:
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“This is my home, and I don’t like dirt tracked into it.”
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Response to Peary’s Review: To that end, as Peary writes, Grahame “does the dirty work before Ford gets a chance”, and “her charitable act purges Ford of his consuming hatred and reestablishes his faith in people.” Peary goes into greater detail about Grahame’s performance in Alternate Oscars, where he names her Best Actress of the Year and refers to her as “a great, underrated actress who was at her peak”: she had recently made a moderate impression in both A Woman’s Secret (1949) and In a Lovely Place (1950), and won a Best Supporting Actress the year before for her work in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) in addition to co-starring in Macao (1952), Sudden Fear (1952), and The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). Peary writes that her character in The Big Heat “is one of her many sensuous, flirtatious women who are unhappy with their lives, and feel they are unworthy of the men they fall for” (i.e., James Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life). While “she’s too good to be stuck with the brutal Vince [Marvin]”, “until she meets Bannion [Ford] she believes that he is typical of all men”, not realizing until later that “she deserves better”. In GFTFF, Peary adds that The Big Heat is “much about territorial imperative. Notice how all the characters regard their homes or work establishments as their power bases; how the richer the home, the more corrupt its owner…; how when one person enters or merely telephones the home of an enemy, it is tantamount to an act of aggression…” He notes that “this is a vigilante film with a difference — the hero learns that going outside the law is not only wrong but the first step to becoming as bad as the enemy”. Indeed, Ford’s determined yet foolhearty actions during the film’s first half hour leave a decidedly bitter taste in one’s mouth, given the domestic tranquility we know he’s putting at risk; how can he be so dumb? It’s easier for me to contextualize this film (as noted in Peary’s Cult Movies 2 essay) within German-born Lang’s broader oeuvre of movies about characters who “have the misfortune to live in a preordained world” where “if they make the wrong decision, take the wrong fork in the road, or end up at the wrong place at the wrong time, they risk falling into a bottomless pit, a nightmare world where they have no control over their futures” — as is the case for Spencer Tracy in Fury (1936) and Henry Fonda in You Only Live Once (1937), both also starring a man “who seems to be constantly looking over his shoulder”. As Peary writes, “Dave Bannion [Ford] is a prime candidate for falling into fate’s trap”, given that “he also acts impulsively… rather than considering the possible consequences for himself and his family. It pays to be cautious in Lang’s world.” Note: Little to no mention is made by critics of the opening scene, when Lagana’s male employee emerges on screen in a white terry-cloth robe to hand the phone to his sleeping boss — this, combined with lack of physical evidence of a wife, and the presence of numerous hunky young bodyguards, implies Lagano’s sexual preferences without highlighting them.
Redeeming Qualities and Moments:
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“There is no conspiracy, there is no cover-up.”
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Response to Peary’s Review: Redeeming Qualities and Moments:
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“There’s a lot more good in Eddie Taylor than most people think.”
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and Sidney’s surprisingly noble boss (Barton Maclane), who loves Sidney but is willing to help her out time and again on account of his sincere empathy for Fonda’s challenging past.
Personally, I find the film’s storyline a tad too overly simplistic. Would motel-owners (Charles ‘Chic’ Sale and Margaret Hamilton) really be so eager to kick out the doe-eyed newlyweds without cause?
Why would Fonda’s post-release boss (Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams) agree to hire him in the first place if he was so eager to fire him?
I know the film is meant to represent archetypical injustice in black-and-white, but we desperately wish both of the main characters would make smarter — rather than fatalistic and/or pre-determined — decisions. It doesn’t help that the “ending is overly sentimental and is Hollywood-style religious”. However, the movie is gorgeously made, and Fonda and Sidney are a convincing pair of star-struck lovebirds.
Lang fans won’t want to miss this one. Redeeming Qualities and Moments:
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“I don’t make things happen — all I do is write about ’em!”
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I enjoy Jan Sterling’s sullen performance as the buried man’s no-good wife (that scene with the scarf!):
Redeeming Qualities and Moments:
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“So they call me ‘Concentration Camp Ehrhardt’?”
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Response to Peary’s Review: In Cult Movies 2, Peary states that “Cult movies are often born in controversy”, and describes in greater detail the reception this film had in 1942, just “three years after Germany invaded Poland” and “three months after the United States entered World War II”. He notes that Bosley Crowther of the New York Times was especially offended by the film; Crowther wrote, “To say [the film] is callous and macabre is understating the case”. However, Peary points out that “it’s interesting to note that critics were lenient to those World War II comedies that made no attempt to impress upon viewers the grim realities of Nazi aggression and occupation in Europe, while they jumped on Lubitsch’s film for daring to be both a comedy and topical”; in truth, “the opposite should have been the case”. Adding greatly to challenges with the film’s reception was the fact that viewers were devastated by Lombard’s death in a plane crash on her way back home to Hollywood after selling war bonds; the film was “impossible to promote”. Speaking of Lombard, Peary names her Best Actress of the Year in his Alternate Oscars (sharing the award with Ginger Rogers in The Major and the Minor), noting that “Lombard considered her performance in To Be or Not to Be the best of her career”, and he agrees. He writes, “She has many moments in which she reveals why she was the thirties’ most celebrated comedienne”, and adds that he “particularly like[s] her affected mannerisms and voice when she tells Benny that it’s of no consequence that he finally asked the director to bill her above him in a play, and her look when he says that he knew she’d feel that way so the billing will stay the same”. He writes, “Also memorable is her sexual-innuendo-filled flirting with Stack’s young bomber pilot”: her “eyes reveal she is lost in fantasies when he tells her, ‘I can drop three tons of dynamite in two minutes’.” However, “Lombard’s Maria switches from being dazzlingly comical to deadly serious, and Lombard reveals how much she had grown as a dramatic actress in the last few years.” Lombard, Benny, and indeed the entire cast is in top form here; this movie is well worth a look by all film fanatics. Redeeming Qualities and Moments:
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“He’s a common, ignorant slob. He don’t even speak good English.”
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Response to Peary’s Review: I’m a huge fan of this surprisingly gripping nearly-one-room drama, which I re-watch periodically and am drawn into time and again. Fonda’s performance is outstanding, but so are those of all the other (mostly unknown) actors. Meanwhile, it’s clear how much thought and effort were put into every minute of the production, from acting to staging; as noted in TCM’s article:
While watching this film, we genuinely feel we’re being taken on a carefully calibrated ride across both the challenges and the benefits of our very-human justice system. As noted by James Kendrick in his review for Q Network, “The resistance of the other jurors to discussing the seemingly open-and-shut case is a compelling means of depicting how the system works only when those involved accept the moral weight of their roles.” DVD Savant adds that: “On one level the jury isn’t much better than a mob — most of these men are quite willing to go along with the perceived majority opinion without really thinking about the case. Only when challenged to actually apply themselves to their appointed task do the sensitive thinkers advance their personal opinions.” Note: The opening establishing shot reminds me both visually and aurally of Frederick Wiseman’s documentaries — though Wiseman would linger longer and add several more establishing shots before moving into “the action”. Redeeming Qualities and Moments:
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“I’ve done things that would have been unthinkable before the war.”
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Response to Peary’s Review: It’s actually hard to name just one element that contributes to this film’s success; as noted by Peter Bogdanovich:
Indeed, everything about this expertly crafted, finely acted film keeps one glued to the screen and the storyline — thanks in large part to consistently innovative cinematography, with action taking place on inherently atmospheric sets. The attention to period detail and overall ambience in this film is especially significant; this is not simply any old “murder mystery”, but rather one that’s inextricably entrenched within the unique milieu of a city split into fragments by various occupiers, its motley inhabitants dealing with the inevitability of post-war chaos, corruption, and mistrust. Lonely Martins stumbles into this unsettled setting, mourning the loss of a man he considers “the best friend he ever had” while falling hard for stunning beauty Valli (excellent in her most iconic role). Meanwhile, Howard’s cynical-realist policeman is perpetually on the sidelines, ready to remind Cotten what kind of man his friend Harry Lime really was. Countless memorable images stand out from The Third Man: “Holly being bitten by a parrot, Holly being chased by a little boy who’s telling everyone within earshot that Holly’s a murderer, Lime and Holly speaking while on a Ferris wheel, Lime being chased through the sewers, and in the finale, Holly waiting for Valli as she walks toward the camera”. Also notable are Holly’s disastrous (indeed, nightmarish and Hitchcockian) talk in front of an audience of “cultured” Brits ready to hear him expound on high-falutin’ literary topics; “Baron” Kurtz (Ernst Deutsch) playing violin at the Casanova Club while an overweight female sips soup right under his chin; the many scenes in which faces of random citizens are shown in crowded, close focus on the screen; Lee punching Holly and then, without missing a beat, politely helping him get back up. There’s no sentimentality here: as much as Holly may want to imbue his old friend with the glow of eternal loyalty, his idealized vision is broken down bit by bit, and there’s no happy ending in sight (though surely he has plenty of material to bring to his work as a novelist). Redeeming Qualities and Moments:
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“That’s all he really wanted out of life, was love.”
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Peary further points out that the “picture has great acting, music (by Bernard Herrmann), photography, editing (by Robert Wise), [and] countless classic moments”. Peary discusses Citizen Kane not only in his GFTFF but in his first Cult Movies book — where he offers an in-depth overview of the film’s notorious production and release — and Alternate Oscars, where he names it Best Picture of the Year, and refers to it as “stunningly directed, magnificently acted, and brilliantly written”. He argues that while not all would consider it “the greatest film ever made”, it’s “at [the] very least… the most influential film of the sound era, the picture that best illustrates the potential of film as a storytelling medium and as an outlet for personal and artistic expression”. All of Peary’s praise rings true: the film does indeed “astonish” those seeing it for the first time, and “repeated viewings only increase the impact”. Whether one merely admires Citizen Kane or actively enjoys it, there is never a visually dull moment; it’s well worth a look or two (or three, or more). Notable Performances, Qualities, and Moments:
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