Category: 1950s

George Cukor | 3hr 2min

There is something universally compelling in the archetypal narrative of A Star is Born which begs to be updated every few decades, rewritten and recast with celebrities who typify the dominant culture of the era. With such a clean balance of light romance and dark tragedy moving in conflicting directions, it may be the closest thing Hollywood has to a modern fairy tale, firmly rooted in classical storytelling conventions yet inseparable from America’s modern entertainment industry. That George Cukor’s 1954 adaptation may be the most triumphantly successful version does not just speak to his own talents as a director, boldly building the fable out into a drama epic pushing nearly three hours and capturing it all on vibrant, widescreen CinemaScope. The immense emotional weight contained in Judy Garland’s performance is also largely responsible for guiding this story along its inverse trajectories, sending the career of Esther Blodgett to soaring highs while her personal life and relationship with Norman Maine plunges to soul-shattering lows.

The pattern of Norman’s drunken behaviour impeding on Esther’s public life is there right from the start, as he clumsily tramples over her performance at the Hollywood function where they meet. With some quick thinking and slick improvisation, she effectively turns his interruption into a charming publicity stunt, leading him by the hand into a dance. At this point in time, the troubles that this embarrassing sort of conduct will cause down the road are not entirely clear yet. For now, both are intrigued by the other, feeding an affectionate curiosity which eventually develops into full, besotted love. While Norman surreptitiously pulls strings with producers behind the scenes to draw attention to this great talent he has discovered, Esther wrestles with the beauty standards and rigid systems of an industry that makes over her appearance and forces a new, more attractive name upon her – Vicki Lester.

Fifteen years removed from her iconic performance in The Wizard of Oz, Garland approaches Vicki with more mature sensitivities, seeking to understand the tender discomfort of an actress whose job is to cover up that pain with acts of dazzling spectacle. This is never demonstrated so sharply as it is in her upbeat tap number ‘Lose That Long Face’, taking place on a monochrome movie set which highlights her at the centre bearing strong resemblance to her daughter, Liza Minnelli, with short black hair and an eye-catching red coat. Between takes of this song that preaches unwavering optimism, Vicki breaks down beneath the weight of all her personal troubles, uninhibited by rolling cameras or domineering directors, and yet the moment she is back on set again a mere few minutes later, the shift in her disposition is jarring. Quite ironically, Garland loses that long face in an instant, and replaces it with the smile that audiences pay money to see.

This formal contrast between the two sides of Vicki’s life is one that Cukor delicately extends all through A Star is Born, as it is only in the adoration he holds for Vicki at her most playful and passionate that her pain lands with real impact. Following her run-in with Norman onstage, the two meet again by chance in an after-hours club where she soulfully sings ‘The Man That Got Away’, soulfully pining for a lost love. Her dark blue dress cuts out a bold imprint against the bar’s soothing red background, but just as stylistically affecting is the way Cukor illuminates her face with an attractive, soft light and lets his camera follow her around this space in an unbroken take, totally under the spell of her magnetic presence.

Cukor’s production design and cinematography takes yet another leap up right before intermission as we watch Vicki’s breakout movie, where she dresses in a tuxedo and stands on a stage of lush red curtains and flowers, recounting her childhood and entry into the industry. As ‘Born in a Trunk’ and ‘Swanee’ burst to life in a Vincente Minnelli-style interlude, we disappear into expressive, imaginary realms, and not one to pass up an opportunity to indulge in his magnificent cinematic panache, Cukor defines them with striking, geometric sets, totally separating this artificial dream from reality.

Even outside the big musical numbers, Cukor brings a polished slickness to his mise-en-scène, absorbing Vicki into a world of ravishing opulence while Norman finds himself on the way out. At the exact moment she decides she is going to stay behind in Los Angeles and accept his offer of a screen test, a gorgeous sunrise manifests behind her in clear reference to the film title, illuminating her in a woozy, lovesick light. Later as we transition to the fateful Oscars ceremony, Cukor’s long dissolve-heavy montage dazzles us with the red carpet’s glitz and glamour, setting a stylish stage for her greatest victory and Norman’s most shameful humiliation, thereby cementing their ultimate fates.

“Those big, fat lush days when a star could get drunk and disappear and hold up production for two weeks are over.”

In the couple’s attractive Malibu beach house, the reflection of the ocean in its giant glass walls wash over Norman as he wallows in disgrace and embarrassment, realising the sacrifices Vicki is prepared to make to her own career for his rehabilitation. Once again, the sun marks a milestone in their trajectories, though where it previously rose in the early morning with Vicki’s hopeful prospects, it now sets over the horizon, shedding a warm orange glow over Norman’s silhouette as he walks into the ocean.

Not that his tragic suicide really solves any problems for his wife at all. This is not the start of a new career for her, but rather the end of any chance at the happiness she dreamed of, trapping her in an unresolved sort of misery known only to those who aren’t given the time or space to properly grieve. Even at Norman’s funeral, she is cruelly mobbed by a crowd of zealous reporters and fans, pulling the black veil from her head to expose her vulnerability to the world. Just as fading celebrities are cruelly discarded in show business, neither is there any dignity for those successful stars like Vicki who are ripped from their old identities and consumed by new ones, pushing them to keep up the act of perfect contentment. This is an industry of happy lies, not painful realities, but it is in its pointed balance of both that Cukor’s take on A Star is Born stirringly paints out the life cycle of those talented individuals we happily turn into beautiful, disposable commodities.

A Star is Born is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes and Amazon Video.

Yasujirō Ozu | 2hr 16min

On one side of Noriko’s circle of friends in Early Summer, Fumiko and Takako proclaim that “Single people don’t know what true happiness is,” asserting contentment in their marriages even while complaining about their husbands. On the other side, Noriko herself and Aya lightly tease their friends for being tied down to traditional institutions that keep them from living their lives freely. It is a relatively light-hearted dynamic, and one that acutely represents the cross-sectional divide of social attitudes spread across Yasujirō Ozu’s depiction of post-war Japan, though it is back home in domestic settings where the film truly takes hold of these cultural stakes. As the rift in Noriko’s group widens, so too does the conflict between multiple generations of Japanese men and women under the same roof intensify, each of them struggling to reconcile the happiness of one individual against the security of the family unit.

There are few filmmakers in history so stylistically suited to these delicate tales of domestic dramas as Ozu, whose sensitive examinations of familial love and disenchantment offer a stage to those voices typically silenced in public arenas. While his camera will intermittently turn to broader visions of Tokyo rendered through its impressive structures and greyscale landscapes, it is evident that his characters’ homes are where he truly thrives, infusing interiors with the rich lives and personalities of the families who inhabit them. Door casings and hallways are often layered deeply into his shots, creating a funnelling effect that keeps narrowing each successive frame into the background, each one wrapping characters up in cosy compositions.

Incidentally, this also means that it is difficult for the characters of Early Summer to hold private conversations away from prying ears, as right after Noriko finishes gossiping with Fumiko, the door in the background slides open to reveal a whole other room where her brother, Kōichi, has been eavesdropping. Similarly, another discussion between Kōichi and his mother, Shige, can barely progress without the constant interruption of the family’s young boys popping in and out of the shot to bug their elders, injecting a small dose of humour into the drama. The claustrophobia of this space is especially felt in the narrowing of frames through doorways so much that they become vertical. Even as family members are squeezed into tight spaces though, the décor that surrounds them never suggests anything but a personalised environment they have crafted for themselves. Ozu arranges each teapot, sake bottle, and basket with great precision, crafting a tidy sort of clutter in settings where parallel and perpendicular lines otherwise dominate his mise-en-scène.

Every now and again, these stray items will become gorgeous frames of their own, as we observe in one composition that encloses everything between a chair and a desk sitting in the foreground. Though it is subtle, the formal consistency of this visual choice has a tangible effect in binding characters to their environments. Ozu will frequently begin scenes right before characters enter and only cut away a few seconds after they leave, and in those short moments of silence, we can feel the presence of its inhabitants. Every now and again he works in his trademark shot of hanging laundry as well, imprinting cut-outs of human shapes onto his scenery, and in this he effectively reminds us of the family who are still carrying out mundane lives in this comfortable home, even when they are not physically onscreen.

Most powerful of all though may be the recurring series of shots drawing attention to the birdcages tended to by Noriko’s father, Shūkichi, hanging outside the family home. Ozu’s opening of the film with this motif and intermittent return to it is especially important in underscoring the nature of Noriko’s predicament. Like her father’s pets, she is fed and cared for by her parents, and marriage would similarly ensure a stable future, but the pressure to enter this patriarchal institution poses the same limitations upon her as those bars separating the birds from the open sky. It is not surprising that it is the men of the family who have the most outspoken views about this, with her brother, Kōichi, tersely bringing them up at mealtimes.

“It’s deplorable, what’s happened since the war. Women have become so forward, taking advantage of ‘etiquette’.”

“That’s not true. We’ve just taken our natural place. Men were too forward up to now.”

“That’s why you can’t get married.”

On virtually every level of her characterisation, Ozu defines Noriko as a modern woman. It is clear in the mention of her Audrey Hepburn idolisation that the seeping of Western culture into 1950s Japan is not merely limited to the relationship values that Early Summer most prominently explores, and quite surprisingly, the question of her queerness even arises with relatively little judgement. Though she works in an office and intelligently asserts her own independence, none of this takes away from the warmth of Setsuko Hara’s radiant performance. She is a bright beam of sunlight in this cast, sincerely offering support to her family with a smile that, for at least the first couple of acts, seems impossible to wipe away.

The unity in her family interactions is thoughtfully painted out in Ozu’s staging, drawing comparisons to his creative contemporary, Akira Kurosawa, in the way arrangements of bodies become landscapes in their staggered blocking, rising up like hills across the scenery. Admittedly though, this is where the similarities end. Ozu is happier to dwell on static shots for longer than his Japanese counterpart, quite literally sitting in shots that hover only barely above ground level, equally absorbing the comfort of family gatherings and the sorrow of Noriko’s imminent departure. On top of this, his editing veers sharply away from Kurosawa’s fast-paced action, and instead manifests in languidly paced pillow shots, delivering formal cutaways between scenes that elaborate on the social context of this modern world of brick office buildings and sleek automobiles.

It is within this tension between Japan’s past and future that Ozu’s narrative precariously lingers, as we watch Shige almost get hit by a car while nervously crossing a street, and Shūkichi being forced to pause mid-walk at a level crossing while a train passes, inspiring an impromptu meditation on this new, unfamiliar society. Within their home though, it is a strain which tugs at Noriko’s mind, with her arranged marriage to an older, wealthy man feeling more like a reduction of her value to a mere pawn in some social game she has no interest in. It is not this discontentment though which drives her impulsive acceptance of an informal marriage proposal to her widowed childhood friend, Kenkichi Yabe, who has recently accepted a new work placement in the countryside and must now move away from the city with his daughter. Above all else, she is swayed by the sudden realisation that this is simply the right choice for her. Though she claims that the feeling she can “trust him with all my heart and be happy” is not love, Aya begs to differ – from an outsider’s perspective, that is exactly what love is.

Naturally, Noriko’s family is not so keen on this unexpected prospect given its significant deviation from Japanese tradition. To them, it is a purely thoughtless act, and even in Ozu’s blocking there is a sudden turn towards a quiet disconnection that we haven’t seen on this level before, lingering painfully in grating silences. The only time we have previously seen Noriko’s bright smile waver was while facing the growing separation in her friendship group, and so her devastation over her family’s disappointment feels all the more heartbreaking for the immense shift we witness in Hara’s disposition. In the time spent mulling over this internal conflict, Ozu instils her character with real depth, letting her cry over the pain she has inflicted on her loved ones, even while she recognises it as the best thing to do.

Noriko is a self-proclaimed optimist after all, unafraid of poverty and refusing to be scared off by the prospect of becoming a stepmother. As she wanders handsomely bare landscapes of beaches and streets with Fumiko, Ozu gradually sets in motion a gradual reparation between the modernists and traditionalists of the family, and though there is not a single point where everything is suddenly set right, there is the realisation that understanding is not needed for cooperation. Perhaps the beautifully harmonious family photo he stages right before her departure marks the closest these generations will ever get to complete unity again. At the same time though, there is also a promise of new beginnings in the film that lifts its bittersweet conclusion into something a little purer in its hopefulness. “Our family has been scattered. But we’ve done better than average,” her mother ponders, and therein lies the sobering acceptance of time’s forward march that underlies Early Summer, and which Ozu introspectively embraces with both wistful reminiscence and eager inspiration.

Early Summer is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

Vincente Minnelli | 1hr 52min

A couple of decades before Vincente Minnelli took to The Band Wagon with his excitable camera and lavish colour palettes, it was a musical revue on Broadway, playing through comedic sketches and musical numbers with no great connective thread other than a consistent dedication to entertaining its audience. Fred Astaire headlined the show, though this would be one of the last theatrical productions he would perform in before becoming a major movie star at RKO Radio Pictures. When he returned to it again in 1953, it took a very different form – not as a revue, but rather a full-fledged movie-musical, with a story that plays out a fictionalised account of its creation and triumphant acclaim. Much like Singin’ in the Rain, The Band Wagon’s boisterous examination of the thin line that divides failure and success in the entertainment industry rolls along with grace and zeal, marking it as one of the finest musicals of Golden Age Hollywood.

Even before Astaire appears onscreen, his presence is already announced from the very first shot of the iconic top hat and cane held through the opening credits. Then without so much as a cut, we pan to the left and discover the significance of such items within the film – nothing more than relics of a washed-up actor who can barely make a dime off his old props and costumes. The ever-churning Hollywood dream machine has effectively written Tom Hunter out of its story in favour of younger actors, though one last shot at reviving his career arrives in the form of his good friends Lester and Lily, whose musical comedy script could set the stage for his comeback. The only obstacle is the vision of one Jeffrey Cordova, the chosen director whose background in traditional theatre barely masks his camp, tasteless sensibilities, leading him to interpret their creation as a retelling of Faust.

Given the theatre sets that form the basis of many scenes through The Band Wagon, it is no surprised that those stage performances make for some gorgeously expressionistic set pieces. Minnelli indulges in a deep red lighting setup early on when we first meet Jeffrey in a production of Oedipus Rex, complete with ancient Greek robes and Doric columns to fill out the mise-en-scène, and later Cyd Charisse’s young starlet Gab Gerard bursts forth from the frame as she sings ‘New Sun in the Sky’, matching the bright yellow set with a sparkling dress. The camera glides and swirls around these performances, rushing up to meet the actors in elaborate entrances and quietly following them around as they tap dance across the screen.

This is a level of cinematic energy that Minnelli maintains all throughout the film, not just in those musical numbers that the characters self-consciously perform for audiences on stages. The film starts off steady with Astaire’s solo number ‘Be Myself’ and a set of long tracking shots that capture his jazzy, prancing dance around an arcade in ‘Shine on Your Shoes’. ‘That’s Entertainment’ might as well be this film’s version of ‘Make ‘em Laugh’ in its vaudevillian comedy that continues to show off the talents of the broader cast, but it is when The Band Wagon finally reaches the instrumental piece ‘Dancing in the Dark’ that the bravado of Minnelli’s full spectacular vision is unleashed.

As Tony and Gaby stroll through a city park at night, the camera sweeps in a majestic crane shot over a garden of couples dancing in close embraces, accompanied by a small chamber ensemble off to the side. As the only pair still holding their inhibitions between them, they independently make their way through the crowd, until they reach a hidden courtyard shrouded by trees imprinted against a matte backdrop of tiny city lights off in the distance. Their dance movements start slow with matching footsteps and a twirl, before they both strike a pose. From there, the entire story of their relationship unfolds in their unified movements. It also calls to mind ‘A Lovely Night’ from La La Land which was almost certainly influenced by Minnelli’s narrative setup and elegant visual execution here, but ‘Dancing in the Dark’ even more significantly evokes Astaire’s traditional 1930s movie-musicals with those long, sweeping camera movements that seem to dance with him in synchronisation.

Even outside his musical numbers, Minnelli’s attention to detail in his exquisite production design continues to astound, surrounding characters with deeply sensual and highly curated colour palettes. It is a fortunate thing too that he possesses such a keen eye for spectacle given that the revue The Band Wagon as it exists within the story opens as a major flop. Unlike its theatrical source material, there is narrative tension driving this piece forward, and much of it comes down to the chaotic direction of the production itself. One could imagine a young Mel Brooks watching this and conceptualising The Producers in all its zany ambition, with flamboyant characters taking charge of a disastrous show destined for failure, and Minnelli too fully manifests a catastrophe of grand proportions. On the night before opening, he simply sets his camera back in long shots to watch the chaos comically unfold, with wired actors flying across the stage, the cast breaking down in confusion, set pieces moving up where they should move down, and down where they should move up.

After audiences leave in disturbed confusion from whatever they just watched, the cast and crew party, revelling in what they describe as a “good old-fashioned wake” as if celebrating the death of something they couldn’t get out of their lives sooner. Upon being offered some ham and devilled egg, Tony responds with a sardonic “I think I’ve had enough of both for one night,” trying to keep the tone light, though it doesn’t take long for sobering artistic integrity to kick in. To give up on this show would be to compromise their commitment to entertainment. All it might need is a makeover and back-to-basics revision, without any pretensions of heavy thematic material.

It is with the thirty remaining minutes of The Band Wagon that Minnelli delivers what is essentially the closest thing to a direct depiction of the original revue that the film gets. A medley of musical numbers cascade across the screen, taking the cast from city to city on a wave of success. Astaire finally gets the tap performance with a top hat and cane that is so characteristic of his style, but he also becomes a pulpy detective hero in ‘Girl Hunt Ballet’, a twelve-minute episode that could very well mark the high point of Minnelli’s career. Fight choreography blends seamlessly with dance as the set expands beyond the stage and becomes its own boundless world much like the ballet sequence from The Red Shoes, offering him the opportunity to vivaciously spin and twirl his camera in conversation with this heightened mini-story.

Needless to say, both versions of The Band Wagon end up a resounding success, though it is far easier to speak to the artistic accomplishment of the film over the revue. The process of creation organically melds into its very narrative construction, and with a director like Minnelli taking charge of the difficult task to render it in cinematic form, it flourishes in becoming far more than just a string of disconnected songs and dances. The Band Wagon lands as one of Hollywood’s most exceptional movie-musicals, fully realising the potential of movements behind the camera to bring exhilarating, propulsive dimensions to that which unfolds onstage.

The Band Wagon is currently streaming on Binge, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon Prime Video.

Douglas Sirk | 2hr 5min

It is an unusual family portrait which Douglas Sirk paints in Imitation of Life, at least in the context of 1950s America. Half of its members are white, the other half Black, and there are no men to be found within it at all. Love interests skirt around the edges, but otherwise the film’s feminine sensitivities flourish across boundaries of age, class, and race, emerging in delicate cinematic paintings of privilege and social adversity.

On one side of the family we have Lora, an aspiring white actress and single mother, raising her daughter, Susie. A chance encounter at the beach one day leads to her meeting Annie, a Black single mother, and her fair-skinned daughter, Sarah Jane, who Susie takes to right away. These four women become inseparable, and Lora soon offers Annie and Sarah Jane a place in their home while she gets her acting career off the ground.

Along Lora and Susie’s narrative thread, we find a mother growing more distant from her daughter due to her fame and demanding schedule. The cosy green drapes and patterned wallpaper of Susie’s childhood home wrap around the small family in a soothing embrace, its décor of ceiling fans and light fixtures hanging in the foreground of gorgeously composed frames. As Lora finds greater success though, Sirk’s production design takes a turn to opulence. The open spaces of the mansion they move into are adorned with bright flowers and candles rising up in the foreground, while decorative mirrors in backgrounds make rooms feel even larger than they physically are. Such exquisite furnishing allows for beautifully elegant imagery, though it is certainly at least colder than before, setting the scene for a burgeoning gap between Susie and Lora as both develop feelings for the same man.

It is by nature of their unequal social standings that Susie’s problems seem a little insignificant when played out next to Sarah Jane’s, who chooses to shun her Black heritage so that she may pass as white. She has seen the ugliness of America’s intolerance in its pre-civil rights era, and yet the bitterness that has been bred from that is not directed at its perpetrators, but rather her own mother. Annie, meanwhile, recognises that anguish in her young daughter, and can’t quite figure out how to reconcile her innocence with the future she faces.

“How do you explain to your child she was born to be hurt?”

Sarah Jane’s disdain for her mother is crushing, in one scene even driving her to go so far as to put on a mocking show of servitude to a guest, as if that were all there is to her ethnicity. Above all else she wants to be looked at with desire, so when she finally comes of age, she runs away to join a club where she can blend in with a troupe of white chorus girls. Though she claims she doesn’t believe there is anything inherently wrong with being Black, she clearly does not possess the empathy to see how similar her actions are to the strains of racism she is familiar with.

Perhaps we wouldn’t feel the same compassion for Sarah Jane if Sirk didn’t treat her suffering with such tenderness in his staging of this melodrama. When her white boyfriend confronts her about her true ethnicity, she is diminished off to the side of the frame as nothing but a reflection in a window, and the moment he grows incensed Sirk quickly pans his camera to the right to reveal him unnervingly towering over her. When she returns home after being beaten, he shoots all four women standing on separate levels of a staircase, their standing evident in where they are situated – Lora on top, Annie further down with her back to the camera, Susie concealed behind a plant, and Sarah Jane caught in the middle, all lines in the shot pointing to her. Even as characters deliberately pursue contemptuous lines of attack against each other, Sirk never loses sight of the raw pain which motivates them, all four women being destined to struggle in a patriarchal society to different degrees.

With such an interconnected relationship between Sirk’s vibrant mise-en-scène and his emotionally rich characters, it isn’t difficult to trace his influences back through the decades of cinematic expressionism. Stylish sentimentalism flows all through his dialogue and cinematography, outlining parallel paths of generational conflict as set out by two pairs of mothers and daughters. Unlike other Sirkian melodramas of this era though, there are few happy endings to be found in Imitation of Life. Instead, it is in the separation of children from their parents where we find hope that they might mature into adults, blooming like those floral icons of delicate growth scattered all through the film.

Imitation of Life is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and is available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, and Google Play.

Douglas Sirk | 1hr 39min

All the money and oil in Texas can’t save the Hadley family from its own self-sabotage. The daughter of business magnate Jasper Hadley, Marylee, is a spoiled socialite, and her playboy brother, Kyle, isn’t much better, splurging his inherited wealth on alcohol and women. The unofficial third child of the family, Mitch Wayne, comes from a much poorer background, though his childhood friendship with the Hadleys is one which remains strong right up until the arrival of Lucy into their lives. We can’t blame her for the turmoil that follows though. Lauren Bacall is a steady, grounded force playing Kyle’s new love interest, as is Rock Hudson in the role of Mitch. Both actors provide a stability that attract the volatile Hadley children like magnets, wrapping them all up in a messy love of jealousy, insecurity, and selfishness.

The first scene of Written on the Wind opens at its climax, when a drunk, angry Kyle drives to a large suburban home, swings the door open, and marches in, accompanied by a powerful gust blowing in leaves across the luxurious entrance hall. The titular metaphor is set up early in this prologue, announcing itself as a delicate but powerful force tainting the neat interiors of the Hadley manor. A gun shot is heard, but before we learn who was on the receiving end of the bullet Sirk whisks us back in time, letting the wind blow the pages of a calendar to Monday 24^th October, 1955, a full year earlier when Kyle first met Lucy and set this unfortunate sequence of events in motion.

This is the sort of melodramatic material that Douglas Sirk thrives in crafting, drawing out each of Written on the Wind’s four main characters in the sort of expressive detail that can only be stylistically matched by décor and costuming as equally lavish. Kyle’s grand romantic gesture of buying a full wardrobe of clothing for Lucy and decorating her room with red and white bouquets is met with a mildly suspicious reception, as it is exceedingly evident in these extravagant visuals just how much he is compensating for his lack of substance. Likewise, Marylee is rarely seen without being swathed in pink, whether in her dresses, bedroom curtains, or expensive sportscar. In contrast, we find Sirk dressing Mitch and Lucy in soothing natural hues and lighting them up with a melancholy blue day-for-night wash, suggesting through the subtle language of colour that it is perhaps these two we should be getting behind as a romantic couple.

With each character clearly defined, Sirk follows up by staging their romantic entanglements in tightly blocked formations, especially letting Mitch linger in reflections and backgrounds between Kyle and Lucy like an ever-present third wheel. Sirk’s remarkable depth of field only highlights this further, articulately drawing together and separating these characters across layers and segments of his frame. It is simply Mitch’s being there in otherwise private shots which eats away at Kyle’s mind like a corrosive acid, feeding a self-doubt that clearly has roots far deeper in his psyche than anything Mitch is actually responsible for. On top of his father’s massive legacy that he is expected to carry on, there is also his diagnosis of impotence, meaning he will be unable to pass it onto any children and thus fail to fulfil his most important duty.

To remove ourselves from Kyle’s perspective though, it is evident that his failures already extended far beyond his infertility. If patriarch Jasper Hadley represents the Old South, then his children are twisted, modern representations of that, disconnected from its cultural values yet taking for granted the prosperity it provides. When Jasper passes away on the staircase of his manor, Sirk simultaneously intercuts the scene with Marylee’s boisterous, blissfully ignorant dance up in her bedroom, the loud music distracting from the tragedy that is unfolding just outside her door. Instead, it is Lucy and Mitch who rush to his body. Without so much as a line of dialogue, Sirk points directly to where the future of this culture lies.

Even when the Hadley family hits an all-time low, somehow Marylee still finds it in her to keep pulling strings and manipulating the system out of some sort of vindictive bitterness towards Mitch and Lucy. At this point though, there is no re-establishing the success and dignity that her family once held. Sirk’s penultimate shot of the film says it all – hanging on the wall, a touching portrait of Jasper shows him proudly holding a model oil tower, and sitting directly beneath, a distraught Marylee holds the same figurine. Perhaps she will manage to keep her wealth, but as the only surviving member of the Hadley dynasty, the name will soon perish along with its cultural presence. As Sirk so thoughtfully demonstrates in his eloquent storytelling and mise-en-scène, when a legacy like this is built on as weak foundations as Kyle and Marylee, then it might as well be written on the wind.

Written on the Wind is currently available to stream on The Criterion Channel and Foxtel Now.

Douglas Sirk | 1hr 48min

The melodrama of Magnificent Obsession is set in motion by a stroke of bad fortune. The moment that reckless playboy Bob Merrick loses control of his speedboat, badly injures himself, and uses up the nearest resuscitator, his neighbour Dr Phillips suffers a heart attack and, without access to the device, dies. The tragedy worsens when the doctor’s wife, Helen, is blinded in a car accident, indirectly caused by Merrick’s attempt to apologise. Though he feels guilty, it is evident that his priority is to merely clear his conscience rather than to make real restitution. Ironically, it is the philosophy of the late Dr Phillips which sparks a change of heart within him, inspiring him to spread generosity and good will without expectation of repayment. From there, Douglas Sirk leads Merrick down a path of moral rehabilitation and redemption, transforming him into the very man whose death he is at least partially responsible for.

Though Sirk was not yet at his full powers in 1954, still being a year away from his breakthrough, All That Heaven Allows, he nevertheless paves the way in Magnificent Obsession for the beautifully luscious displays of mise-en-scene and sensitive characterisations he would become known for. He isn’t afraid of sentimentality, but this is no barrier to his acute social critiques of class privilege. In fact, it is exactly because of Sirk’s great empathy that he can so skilfully identify Merrick’s weaknesses, understanding his ego not as a fatal flaw, but rather a fault upon which he can improve.

Over time as Merrick cares for Helen, his pity for her disability gradually evolves into an authentic love, though one hindered by his decision to conceal his identity from her, still holding onto a bit of shame. It is a love which motivates him to study medicine, carrying the hope that he might one day cure her blindness. Even when all seems lost in their relationship though, we can see the legitimacy in his new lease on life. He continues striving to become a doctor not to win her heart, but out of a genuine desire to help others.

It is in Sirk’s delicate staging of these character interactions within elegant domestic settings where this drama lands with great emotional power, using mirrors to layer actors across the frame and obstructing compositions with plants hanging in the foreground. When both Helen and Merrick both reach their lowest points, their faces are almost entirely concealed behind lace curtains, and Sirk makes the rare move to dim his usually-soft lighting to starkly illuminate only half of their faces, or else only the edge of their profiles. In representing the affluent status of these characters on this visual level, he also lets it impose upon their presences, complicating their search for emotional truth by crowding it out with so much material wealth.

For this Sirkian melodrama though it is all about tonal balance, as immediately following this dark scene, Helen and Merrick open up about their romantic feelings for each other and go out on a date. As they sit and absorb their surroundings, he describes to her in detail the things he can see which she cannot – the blazing bonfire, the bursting fireworks, the communal folk dancing. Given the way he caters for her disability, it is evident that the relationship which emerges between them is not a direct copy of what she had with her late husband, and yet the parallels between the two are nonetheless apparent. Merrick’s moral reformation is made even more potent by the fact that Dr Phillip is only spoken of and never seen in person, turning him into an intangible ideal for the young playboy to aspire to, or perhaps an empty space for him to fill. Privilege may be a corrupting force in Magnificent Obsession, but any instance where pure goodness wins out over ego and insensitivity is infinitely precious to a soft-hearted empath like Sirk.

Magnificent Obsession is currently available to stream on The Criterion Channel.

Nicholas Ray | 1hr 50min

It is a rare sight to see a woman take the lead in a classical Western, and perhaps entirely unique to Johnny Guitar to see her set against another woman as the equally compelling villain. Don’t be misled by the title – the string-strumming outsider and his distaste for guns is only secondary to this bitter conflict between saloonkeeper Vienna and cattle baron Emma, simmering with a vile tension that is ready to boil over into violence at any moment.

The reason for such loathing on Emma’s behalf though is masked behind layers of excuses. There is Vienna’s support of the railroad that will soon run through her land, bringing sheepman to town. There is her unpopular decision to permit a group of rambunctious confederates to frequent her saloon. There is the false suspicion that she is behind the stagecoach robbery that recently killed Emma’s brother. Emma cares little for any of these quarrels, but they certainly at least prove to be useful in riling up the local cattlemen. Instead, it is her unrequited love for the Dancing Kid, Vienna’s old flame, which underlies her hateful rage.

Similarly, the job that Hayden Sterling’s titular guitarist has been summoned to town for is also one layered with separate intentions. On the surface, Vienna has hired Johnny to play music for her saloon. Prodding a little deeper, he reveals himself to be a quick draw with a gun that she realises will be handy when trouble inevitably arises with the locals. On a base, psychological level though, her reasoning is simple – there is still some unresolved feelings lingering between the two from a past relationship. Nicholas Ray’s development of such multifaceted characters gives way to profoundly gripping drama in Johnny Guitar, delivering pulsating dialogue as rhythmic and loaded with subtext as anything one would find in a film noir.

“How many men have you forgotten?”

“As many women as you’ve remembered.”

It isn’t that Ray’s narrative moves slowly, but the time he takes to flesh out these character interactions in both his screenplay and staging certainly takes up larger portions of the film than most other Westerns of this ilk. Johnny arrives at the saloon in the first few minutes of the film, and it isn’t until almost forty minutes that we leave this location for another, but this magnificent, rustic set proves to be all Ray needs to set up his drama. One wall takes the appearance of a rocky cliff face, as if the saloon has been built into the side of a mountain, and with a balcony setting a stage for interactions across uneven levels, romances and rivalries are blocked with stunning visual flair. From low angles, Vienna stands tall upon the balcony like a queen in her domain, while high angles from this vantage point shrink Emma below, whose lack of physical power is offset by the large mass of ranchers standing right behind her.

Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge are opposites in these roles, yet both deliver an equally remarkable pair of performances as enemies. McCambridge’s eyes are as small and mean as Crawford’s are large and expressive, and where the former predominantly dresses in drab, black dresses to put on a show of mourning, the latter is instantly recognisable for her array of bright, colourful costumes. Ray’s striking Technicolor serves these outfits well, setting Vienna apart as a woman fully embracing the full range of sartorial expression, as opposed to more traditional gunslingers like Johnny whose muted greys and browns blend into his earthy surroundings.

As Johnny Guitar progresses, Vienna’s regalia grows even more vibrant with the intensifying conflict. The navy blue she starts off with is perhaps the subtlest we will see her dress in the entire film, and yet it still projects a mannered demeanour while she is most in control. When her mind later turns to vengeance, she changes into a burning red shirt, and then as she goes to confront her adversary one last time, her iconic canary yellow top finally makes an appearance, setting herself up as a vibrant source of hope – though not without keeping the angry touch of scarlet in her scarf.

Sheila O’Brien’s costume design makes for a particularly striking composition when Emma and her lynch mob arrive at the saloon to confront Vienna a second time, only to find her peacefully playing piano in a flowing, white gown against the rocky brown wall. There is a calm acceptance here which, while confident, also makes her terribly vulnerable. Ray is sure to keep emphasising the massive oil-lamp chandelier that Vienna lit at the start of this scene here, especially capturing it from low angles, hanging over Emma’s head in a daunting piece of foreshadowing. Sure enough, she sends it crashing down to the floor only minutes later, burning down the saloon in a devastating set piece. In her mad smile and dour black outfit, one might call to mind the image of the Wicked Witch of the West, and with the orchestra playing up and down a delirious scale reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz’s tornado sequence the comparison is even plainer.

The climactic showdown that ends Johnny Guitar does not try to top this in scale, but it does pay off on its character drama to an even greater extent, subverting our expectations that Johnny will be the one to save the day by letting Vienna land the killing blow on her foe. It is not his physical strength or skill with a gun which sways the course of events, but rather his moral fortitude, winning her over to his pacifist, musical lifestyle. Though the two lovers happily unite in these closing minutes, there is still something tragic about the way this male-dominated environment drives a wedge between two headstrong women, setting them up in bitter competition against each other as if there were only room for one. The most obvious feminist reading of Johnny Guitar is right there on the surface for anyone to grasp, but it is just as much in the sympathy that is offered to the mean-spirited Emma that the film reveals its deepest compassions, projecting a feminine sensitivity upon the Western genre through its marvellously complex characters and vibrant visual expressions.

Johnny Guitar is currently available to rent or buy on iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, and Amazon Prime Video.

Samuel Fuller | 1hr 20min

The early Cold War paranoia of 1950s America pervades Pickup on South Street, where a pickpocket, former prostitute, and street-smart tie-seller unassumingly collide with a Communist plot to secure confidential government information. Much like North by Northwest which would come six years later, the MacGuffin here is microfilm, upon which this data is stored. Beyond this, the stakes of national intelligence barely matter. It is Samuel Fuller’s storytelling around these three ordinary people who come from the pits of society which crackles with chemistry and tension, letting each one use the skills they have honed in their individual professions to navigate tricky negotiations, duplicitous dealings, and sensual seductions.

Perhaps it is chance which first brings Skip and Candy together on a New York subway train, but his theft of her wallet is all it takes to send them both tumbling down a rabbit hole of spies and secrets. It is a silent opening of superb visual setups that Fuller commands here, drawing the thief out of a dense crowd before moving into close-ups, cutting between their shared glances and the main target of his desire – her white, ornate purse.

One wouldn’t suspect from this skilfully staged opening that Pickup on South Street would be a film especially notable for its bubbling, effervescent screenplay, and yet that is exactly what Fuller delivers, especially once Thelma Ritter enters as police informant, Moe. Though she has always shone in supporting roles, her impact here is sizeable enough to stand next to Richard Widmark and Jean Arthur as our romantic leads, lifting what could have almost been a throwaway character to a career-best performance. She is confident, chatty, and fully understands the savvy power that Moe holds over everyone else, and it is through this marvellous characterisation that her death packs an even greater punch than it might have otherwise, setting up tremendous stakes for our surviving couple.

It is upon those unlikely lovers, Skip and Candy, that Fuller absolutely delights in hanging his camera, recognising the power of both these actors when left alone together. All throughout the film Fuller’s camera moves like its own character, tracking in and out of close-ups and weaving through scenes with intrigue, though in Skip and Candy’s first official meeting after the subway incident he lets it linger on their nuzzling faces for two straight minutes. Skip’s intimate seduction only thinly masks his sly interrogation, though with soft murmuring and sensual kissing like that, we can’t blame Candy for falling right into his trap. Meanwhile, Leigh Harline’s smooth, jazzy score lays the eroticism on thick, lending an extra salacious edge to these stakes of life-and-death.

Though there are other characters floating around this story who make their own mark, it is predominantly through Skip, Candy, and Moe that Fuller drives his powerful narrative, even bringing it full circle back to the opening subway train where Skip’s pickpocketing skills once again prove useful in lifting a handgun from a Communist spy. Pickup on South Street is a triumph of writing, character, and stylistic camerawork for Fuller, and it is in the marriage of all three that he crafts a compelling thriller soaked in the fizzing tension of Cold War stealth and espionage.

Pickup on South Street is not currently available to stream in Australia.