The Story of Cinema: An Illustrated History, Vol. 2: From Citizen Kane to the Present Day [2, 1 ed.] 0340282592, 9780340282595

Citation preview

The second and concluding volume of David Shipman's magisterial history of world cine­ ma opens with Orson Welles's Citizen Kane, first released in 1947, and ends with such blockbusting movies as Gandhi and ET. In starting this second volume with Citizen Kane Shipman notes that the Holly­ wood factory system of film-making was beginning to give way to the individual film-maker; in Hollywood, for the first time since the Silent days, Capra excepted, directors like Wells, Sturges, Wilder and Hitchcock were making films recognisably theirs. After examining the British and American films made to entertain audiences during the Second World War Shipman returns to this theme, and studies the rise to prominence of directors like Kazan, Man­ kiewicz, Zinnemann and Minnelli, as well as old masters such as Wyler, Ford and Cukor. He takes us to the present day, from Kubrick, Lumet, Ritt and Penn to today's so-called 'movie brats', while not forgetting the important studio films made by less distinguished directors; and covers the breakdown of the accepted standards of morality and the screen's new permissive­ ness. Apart from the British contribution to the war effort, the book looks at the British film industry's surge of creative activity as the War ended, followed by the slump of the Fifties and the Woodfall revival at the beginning of the Sixties, together with Hollywood's annexation of such talents as David Lean, Carol Reed and John Schlesin­ ger. The French and Italian cinemas are examined with reference to their great periods, the nouvelle vague in France and new-realism in Italy; there are separate chapters on such major figures as Ray, Bunuel and Bergman, and films from Eastern Europe, together with recognition of the renaissance of the German cinema and Australia's fine new industry. The book is not intended to be compre­ hensive for, like Volume One, it deals only with those films which have received wide distribution - though, as Shipman says, there are some neglected films which any historian must take into account. As in his first volume, he makes a number of major discoveries, and the two books together provide a history of the cinema that should prove indispensable for years to come.

£ 17. 95 net in UK

VOLUME TWO From Citizen Kane to the Present Day

A

ILLUSTRATED HISTORY VOLUME TWO From Citizen ne to the Present Day

I

I

HODDER AND STOUGHTON

LONDON

SYDNEY

AUCKLAND

TORONTO

By the same author THE GREAT MOVIE STARS: Volume r - The Golden Years Volume 2 - The International Years THE STORY OF CINEMA Volume r - From the Beginnings to Gone with the Wind

Acknowledgments

535

Introduction

536

2I.

Kane and Other Citizens

539

22.

The British at War

558

23.

Hollywood's War Effort

578

24.

Italy: The Tradition of Realism

621

25.

French Cinema during Occupation and Readjustment

641

26.

The M-G-M Musical

660

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

27.

Shipman, David The story of the cinema. Vol. 2 r. Moving-pictures-History I. Title

Postwar Hollywood: The Directors in Their Brave New World

681

28.

Postwar Hollywood: The Studios

719

29.

Production In Austerity Britain

772

30.

Luis Bunuel and his Followers

808

3I.

A Picture oflndia: The Films of Satyajit Ray

826

32.

Hollywood in the Age of Television: The Directors

845

33.

Hollywood in the Age of Television: The Decline of the Studios

898

791.43'09'4

PNI993. 5.AI

ISBN O 340 28259 2

Copyright© 1984 by David Shipman. First printed 1984. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Photoset by Rowland Phototypesetting Limited, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. Printed in Great Britain for Hodder and Stoughton Limited, Mill Road, Dunton Green, Sevenoaks, Kent by The Theiford Press Limited, Theiford, Noifolk. Hodder and Stoughton Editorial Office: 47 Beriford Square, London WCJB3DP.

534

34.

Ingmar Bergman: The Quest for Understanding

35-

The Japanese Masters

36.

France: Before and After the Nouvelle Vague

37.

Occasional Bulletins from the Eastern Bloc

38.

1043

Italy: Traditions Maintained and Betrayed

1066

39.

British Cinema: A Matter of Collusion

II00

40.

Movies Around the World

II39

4r.

In Hollywood the Director is King

42.

1167

The Movie Brats

1209

Envoi

1231

Select Bibliography

1235

Index

1239

942 960 994

WRITING a book on the cinema is to an extent a solitary experience: one watches films without talking, one sits alone at the typewriter. When it comes to investigating or checking facts I do my own research. The job became more social watching movies on television or on the Steenbeck machine, and it became positively congenial when the following were commenting on the text and suggesting changes: Christine Medcalf, Barbara Noble, Philippa Toomey, Bruce Goldstein, Susan Lermon and Felix Brenner. My thanks to the last-named and to Frank Thomas for assistance on the index. Grati­ tude, too, to the late Keith Roberts, who initiated the project in the first place, and to my agent, Frances Kelly, the jewel of her profes­ sion. To my editor, Richard Cohen, and to my designer, Margaret Fraser, special thanks for our tripartite conferences, which will remain among the happiest experiences of my writing career. It has been observed that there is nothing a movie buff enjoys more than the company of other movie buffs: though Richard would come into that category Margaret would not, but I recall with great pleasure her enthusiasm as memories were evoked while we examined thousands of stills for the illustrations. For their co-operation in supplying us with stills and/or permis­ sion to reproduce I am grateful to the following: A.J. Y.M., Avala, R. D. _Bansal, Manuel Barbachano, Barrandov Studio, Ingmar Berg­ man, Ceskoslovensky, Ceylon Studios, Champion, The Cinema Bookshop, Cinetel, Columbia Pictures, Contemporary, Daiei, Dear Film, del Duca, Walt Disney, E.M.I., Film Polski, Filmel, Films de la Boetie, Films du Carosse, Films de la Pleiade, Les Films 13, Filmsonor, Finos, Franco London, Goldcrest, Greenwich Film, Gujarat Cooperative, Hungaro Film, Iena, Imperia, Igor Film, I.T. C., Lira, Deana Lorn, Lux, Mafilm, Merchant Ivory, M-G-M/ UA, Mosfilm, John B. Murray, New South Wales Film Corpora­ tion, Nikkatsu, Nouvelles Editions de Films, Paramount, Paris Film, Pathe, Ponce, Ponti de Laurentiis, Elias Querejita, R.A.I., Rank, Satyajit Ray, Reggane, Rizzoli, R.K. 0. Radio, Rome Paris Films, Safir-Film, Sandrews, Shintoho, Shochiku, Silver Film, Bernhard Sinkel, Sono, South Australia Film Corporation, Sovexport, Speva Film, Svensk Filmindustri, Tango Film, Titanus, Transcontinental, Toei, Toho, 20th Century-Fox, Uninci, Union Gfoerale, Universal, Vides, Warner Bros., W.D.R. and, above all, the National Film Archive of Great Britain.

535

Introduction

THE PURPOSE of this book has been to attempt an exploration of the cinema's riches. I was encouraged to undertake so daunting a task because I believed that predecessors in this field had had priorities which were no longer relevant. They loved the cinema and, in the very early days, wanted it to gain respecta�ility; accordingly they tended to overestimate many of those films which they hoped would help it to take its place alongside the other arts. Conversely they tended to overlook the real quality of many of the entertaining films made in the factories of Hollywood. It seemed to me that there was a balancing job to be done. During the Silent era and just afterwards there were published two or three histories of film as an industry, but since then most writing on the subject has been concerned with aesthetics. There was also a growing need to discover what the movies had told us about the twentieth century. I have thus attempted to juggle three subjects simultaneously - the cinema as art, as industry, and as a reflection of our times. The first two of these factors might have been handled by research among printed sources and only minimal view­ ings of films, but it was precisely bec�use some commentators seemed so entrenched in their views that I felt the films them­ selves had to be seen or reseen if there was anything new to be said. Fortunately, as I pointed out in my introduction to Volume One, the world's film archives are being opened as never before. Old, forgotten films are being received by young audi­ ences with enthusiasm while some sup­ posed 'classics' are regarded with indiffer­ ence or even apathy. So, if it is important to know what had been written when these

artefacts were first seen it is equally vital to know how they appear to a generation born long after that. A film, by its very nature, is practically immutable, and few of those with strong narratives lose their appeal; but one not blessed with that advantage may have attracted the admiration of contemporaries for advocating social change and today seem simple-minded propaganda; another might offer a horrendous mixture of mayhem and melodrama but also an accu­ rate record of the dialogue and decor of the time. In most cinema histories in English, Dovzhenko holds an honoured place but Gerhard Lamprecht goes unmentioned (almost certainly because his films have hardly been seen abroad); in writing Vol­ ume One it did not occur to me to com­ pare the two since their work is different and was made for different purposes, but I can see in retrospect that apart from being contemporaries both made films about the poor and underprivileged: and thatLam­ p�t's realism is infinitely more valuable than Dovzhenko's poetic approach. In coming to my opinions of their films I was, subconsciously at least, using all my know­ ledge of similar films, as well as looking for films which provided information on the Soviet Union and Germany in the Twenties. Working on Volume 9ne the joy of discovery was frequent - not only Lam­ precht, but Sjostrom, early Ozu, pre­ Hollywood Lubitsch and individual works of many other film-makers whose gifts I thought I knew. It was one thing for re­ search to reveal (with difficulty, for the facts had been hidden or ignored by some writers) that D. W. Griffith was not the innovator that he claimed to be; it was another to find (without difficulty) that

most viewers today find his films quaint at best and at worst unwatchable. The essen­ tial element in my own appreciation of them - leaving aside the magnitude or ambition of the best known of them was a comparison with other �Im� made at that time which I was considermg long after the event. Volume Two had to be approached dif�ere�tly, for these are the movies of my lifetime; the early c�3:pters deal with films that I first saw uncnt1eally as a child and as an adolescent. As I have implied, I looked again at as many of these films as possible._ Fo_r over ten years I watched movies for this h!story, sometimes two or three a day, occas10nally wearily but never, initially, without en­ thusiasm. There was no other way to go about the task: if the opinions were secondhand - or from memory - they be­ came superfluous. It w�s necessary _to _ see films in both commercial and spec1ahsed cinemas. I saw The Towering Inferno in a provincial English city wit� an . audience which let out a huge collective sigh when the interval announced itself; I saw one left-wing film with a specialist audien_ce which almost came to blows over its merits· I saw another - if Missing may so be ter�ed - with an enthusiastic audience in what is traditionally 'redneck' country in the United States. I experienced the roar of applause at the end of Singin' in the Rain (far from the ears of M-G-M, Gene Kelly or anyone connected with the film) and the intensity of an art-house audience watch­ ing Battleship Potemkin. On the oth_er_ hand, there are the walk-outs: my opm10n of Dovzhenko is not uninfluenced by seeing his films deplete audiences. I have seen Godard's A Bout de Souffie three times, in Zurich Paris and London, with spell­ bound ;udiences· I have never seen his later films without s'ome spectators walking out. So although I accept ful� resp�:msibility for the opinions expressed m this book 1t was not written in a vacuum. It reflects the views offered to me by many people opposed to the published consensus . o? some film-makers. I do not want to anuo­ pate the text too much but here are some of the opinions which first came to me through friends and associates: that most of Hitchcock's films entertain but are not of any profundity; that those ofJ�hn Ford declined drastically at the end of h1s career; that those of Lindsay Anderson and

Michael Powell have been greatly over­ rated; that after Truffaut's superb b�gin­ ning few of his films have been either substantial or deeply felt. In the matter of favourites, I concluded Volume One with some lists of popular and admired movies made chiefly at the point where that text ended, so �e may start now with two more, reflectmg the taste of the present, courtesy of the British Film Institute. In 1982 Sight and Sound, the Institute's journal, published its ten-yearly poll of the world's movie critics and in 1983 the members of the National Film Theatre were asked for their choice of preferred movies. The Sight and Sound List: 1. Citizen Kane 2. La Regle duJeu {Seven Samurai 3 · Singin' in the Rain 5. 8½ 6. Battleship Potemkin L'Avventura 7. ( The Magnificent Ambersons Vertigo General The { 8 · The Searchers 2001: A Space Odyssey 10 { · Andrei Rublev Greed 12. (Jules etJim The Third Man The National Film Theatre List: 1. Casablanca 2. Les Enfants du Paradis 3. Citizen Kane 4. Singin' in the Rain 5. 2001: a Space Odyssey 6. Some Like It Hot 7. Seven Samurai 8. Gone with the Wind 9. The Third Man ro. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 11. Celine etJulie vont en Bateau 12. The Graduate 13. Death in Venice 14. La Grande Illusion 1 5. BriefEncounter 16. Manhattan 17. Top Hat 18. Kind Hearts and Coronets 19. Apocalypse Now 20. The Searchers 21. Orphee 22. Cabaret 537

Introduction 23. Psycho 24. Henry V

25.Jules etJim 26. La Regle duJeu 27. Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes 28. Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot 29. The Grapes of Wrath 30. Double Indemnity The two lists reflect those films that these critics and buffs have seen. Seven Samurai, which is in both lists, is the best known of the score of Japanese movies which have achieved popularity in the West; very few of those to be discussed later have achieved more th�n minimal viewings. The only film which I feel should not be in this company is one responsible for multiple walk-outs, Celine etJulie vont en Bateau; but the critics' list, although shorter, is never­ theless a disturbing reflection on those asked: no Bergman, De Sica, Bufiuel, Ray, Clair, Visconti, Capra, Zinnemann, Ma�kiewicz, Kazan, Wilder, Cukor, Wajda, Kobayashi, Ichikawa, Mizoguchi, Ozu - to restrict myself to directors of the Sound era. It is warming to find L'Avven­ tura there, but 8½? I once observed that I didn't like the late films ofFellini because I wasn't interested in his fantasies, to which a friend replied that I liked Bergman before quickly adding that he supposed Bergman's fantasies were universal. Of the other films, the inclusion of Vertigo aston­ ishes, with its artificial plot, miscast play­ ·ers and clumsy art direction; I saw it with an art-house audience which laughed at it. The deification of Hitchcock continues �pace, :Vhi�h I find profoundly discourag­ mg. Still, it was good to have available again the five late-period Hitchcock movies, recently reissued. It was even better to have the reconstituted print of

Cukor's A Star Is Born, and it is a richer film for the restorations, both as a love story and a portrait of life in Hollywood. The cuts were particularly damaging to what was intended: they could have been �ade, . as �ukor himself observed, by tnmmmg mstead of ripping out whole sequences. Since I completed Volume q�e, ?ne of the score of missing films of Sjostrom has been rediscovered and though the three-reel Sea Vultures 'is not one of his masterpieces it gives hope for the recovery of others. Films are now issued, not unlike books on videocassette, so there should be n� further losses - although as yet most of those produced are those unwanted either by cinemas or television, so there would be no great deprivation if they were. It would be dis�ngenuous of me not to pretend that the video revolution provides the ideal p_oint at which to conclude. In 1983 the last cmema closed on the island of Bermuda where the population of 40,ooo prefers t� watch its movies at home, bought or rented from the shop around the corner. Where Bermuda leads, will not Hud­ dersfield and Minneapolis follow? Apart from the growing volume of videocasset­ tes the proliferation of television channels and cables means that more films become accessible all the time. Even so, the back­ log of material grows: there were seventy years of film-making to look back upon when I started; now there are over eighty. Interest has also continued to grow in lost, forgotten and overlooked movies, and it is to those - once the classics have been issued on video - that cinemas will have to lo?k for their programming. Since, as I said, I have attempted to search out the cinema's riches, I am well content.

1

ane and Other Citizens geared to the star system there was little real place for any other creative force except the actor - unless its name was Capra or Lubitsch. As for the writer-director that was a concept not un­ known in Hollywood but unacceptable to its executives, at least until the new decade, when the situation in Europe indicated both a lessening of foreign markets and growing local intolerance of trumpery melodramas.Foreign invasion was no lon­ ger outside the bounds of possibility, and indeed a vast number of citizens thought it had arrived one evening in 1938, as they listened to C. B. S. radio. The panic was caused by a documentary-like version of H. G. Wells's novel, 'The War of the Worlds', and Hollywood promptly sent for the man responsible. Orson Welles (b. 1915) came to movies after a sensational career in radio and theatre - and with a determination to live up to his reputation. Recommended to R.K. 0. Radio by one of its founders and chief stockholders, Nelson Rocke­ feller, he asked for and was given terms commensurate with that reputation: $100,000 for one film a year, to be pro­ duced, directed, written and performed by him, on a subject of his own choosing, with no artistic interference, and the right to refuse executives access to the film till completed. The industry gasped, but according to Welles's then-partner, John Houseman, in his memoir 'Run­ Through', 'R.K. 0. was a maverick opera­ tion . . . its present interim and insecure boss - a former sales manager named George Schaefer- had little to lose and a lot to gain by putting many of his eggs into the hands of the Wonder Boy of Broadway and radio, who might just come up with a IN AN INDUSTRY

winner for him.' After six months, during which announced plans came to nothing, R. K. 0. made it known that, till a final script emerged, salaries would be deferred to the Welles unit, which consisted mainly of personnel with whom Welles had work­ ed in New York. These included an ex:.. perienced screenwriter, Herman J. Man·­ kiewicz (1897-1963), who relieved Welles of a difficult situation when he came up with an idea called American. The screen­ play of Citizen Kane (1940), as it was eventually called, is credited jointly to them, but according to Houseman and Mankiewicz's biographer, Richard Mery­ man, it was written by Mankiewicz, assisted by Houseman. Welles's reluctance to give Mankiewicz credit was due to the fact that Mankie­ wicz's reputation was at a low ebb in Hol­ lywood- he had only recently been sacked by M-G-M. He was also a production-line writer and therefore his participation might tarnish a glittering occasion. Ever short of money, Mankiewicz had been writing some scripts for Welles's radio show- though the credit went to Wellesand he agreed initially to work on the film uncredited. Mankiewicz poured into the script experience from his days as a jour­ nalist, including some autobiographical touches. Mankiewicz said of Welles, 'There but for the grace of God goes God,' which was capped by Dorothy Parker, a friend from the days of the Algonquin Round Table: 'It's like meeting God with­ out dying.' The exact authorship of Kane is worth establishing, since Welles's later work - after he left R.K. 0. - is so dis­ astrously inferior. He would never lose either imagination or flair; and if House­ man allows the glory of Kane to Welles, so 539

Kane and Other Citizens

RIGHT: Orson Welles as the young Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane, before he has acquired Xanadu, ABOVE, the vast mansion based on Hearst's San Simeon. In it Dorothy Comingore, as his mistress and eventual second wife, spends most of her footage being miserable.

Kane and Other Citizens

may we, but not without noting that· his cinematographer was another great pro­ fessional, Gregg Toland. The film is the study of a tycoon; but whereas its model, The Power and the Glory, is a conventional tale of a man's thirst for power, this is, as Welles in­ tended, sociology. In the earlier film the posthumous enquiry into the nature of the . tycoon is done as a series of recollections, but here it is quite hterally an enquiry, as pursued by a reporter. If the build-up in this case ( the newsreel obituary on Kane's d�ath; t�e attitudes assumed by Kane's fnends) 1s extraordinary, it is Welles's own performance which gives the film momen­ tum - gilded youth personified, insolent and self-assured, and still powerful when acting less interestingly as the older Kane. The character was known to be based on WilliamRandolphHearst, whose relation­ ship with Marion Davies is paralleled here by Kane's relationship with his mistress, 540

whom he promotes, despite critical ridi­ cule, as an opera singer - and it is at that point, in the second part of the film, that it begins to weaken. Not only is Dorothy Comingore poor in the role but, like the discarded wife (Ruth Warrick), she ap­ pears only to illustrate some facet of Kane's megalomania. There is nothing to suggest that he has either affection or sexual feeling for her, or that she might tolerate the world he has created. Why is she sitting gloomily doing jigsaws if there are hun­ dreds of guests in the west wing? Why is their home, Xanadu, so hideous and thun­ der-racked? Is this what Welles wished on Hearst, or is it supposed to be the fate of tycoons? It is, in its gothic manner, effec­ tive. We learn about Kane only in dazzling fragments - the dancing with the show­ girls, the shrugging-off of responsibility­ and the portrait has eventually no more depth than that in The Power and the Glory: in both films the underlings are baffled and bemused as they begin to loathe the boss, but coping with the whims of powerful paranoics is not as simple as that. The film is stuffed with irrelevant detail, much of it showing-offon the part of its director. The final effect is one of youthful enthusiasm accompanied by intensity and vitality qualities not usually then seen in the so­ called 'serious' film. Although in the furore that followed the preview Welles denied that the character of Kane was based on Hearst that gentle­ man's past had certainly been researched by Mankiewicz: not only do Kane's pol­ itical ambitions follow the general outline ofHearst's but his speeches and the news­ paper headlines that we see are subtle par­ odies ofHearst's endeavours. BothHearst and Kane were expelled from Harvard; and if the Comingore character were not based on Davies the source would be Sybil Sanderson, an early mistress of Hearst, whose operatic debut was saluted extrava­ gantly in his San Francisco Examiner. The first person outside the studio to identify Kane with Hearst was Hedda Hopper, the gossip columnist who was the rival of Louella Parsons, Hearst's own Hollywood correspondent. Hopper forced her way into a preview, and her subsequent behaviour was undoubtedly an attempt to persuadeHearst that she would be better in Parsons's job than she was. Both ladies, the one vindictive (Hopper)

and the other stupid, were enormously influential: they believed, not without truth, that they could make or break careers and they now set out to break a film. Parsons told Nelson Rockefeller, a major creditor ofR.K.O., at that point in receivership, that she would print an un­ pleasant story about one of his relatives. Louis ]3. Mayer intervened, and his boss, Nicholas Schenck of Loew's, offered to refund Schaefer the negative cost, plus all expenses incurred to that time, $842,000. Schaefer declined to suppress the film, but its booking at the company's flagship, Radio City Music Hall, was cancelled. Hearst himself threatened a series of ex­ poses of Hollywood morals in his papers and banned allR.K.O. advertising. When Hearst failed to take legal action, on the grounds that he could not go into court and admit that he recognised himself in the role of the unpleasant Kane, R.K.0. threatened anti-trust suits against the cir­ cuits which refused to book the film. Those mainly independent cinemas which did show it took care of the demand to see it which, despite the publicity and warm reviews, was not excessive. The film was nominated for several Academy Awards, but the industry's nervousness about Hearst and renewed resentment against Welles - now that he had lived up to his reputation - ensured that it won in only one category, that of Best Screenplay. This pattern was to an extent repeated with The Magnificent Ambersons ( 1942), though this time Welles himself was partially to blame.He did not seem to care whether or not his work appealed to a mass cinema audience, which he respected as little as he did the Hollywood system. Houseman has pictured him as a man of whim and great indecisiveness, a genius in a hurry, with quickly waning enthusiasms; and he apparently lost interest in Ambersons as filming proceeded and his next project began to occupy his thoughts. He was attracted to Booth Tarkington's novel be­ cause it allowed him to re-explore the terrain of Kane - the surging, evolving America of the previous half century. Again, there was precedent, in Vitagraph's 192 5 version of the novel, Pampered Youth, and the similar presentation of a number of sequences suggests that Welles had seen it. The material is a not particularly distin­ guished family saga, but the film nicely 541

Kane and Other Citizens sets the tone: 'In those days, they had time for everything. Time for sleigh-rides, and balls, and assemblies, and cotillions.' The ball is sumptuous, like everything about the Amberson mansion, and the set was constructed to allow the camera to keep moving from room to room. The decor (by Mark-Lee Kirk) - or at least the use that Welles puts it to - alternates between the ornate and the very plain; similarly the camera of Stanley Cortez sweeps and pounces, and then remains stationary, as in the famous kitchen scene between Aunt Fanny (Agnes Moorehead) and George (Tim Holt). If the work has even more bravura than Kane, the finished product is more consistent - except for the three scenes at the end not directed by Welles, easy to spot because they entirely lack his combustive energy. The direction is at its most striking in the interplay between Morgan Q oseph Cot­ ten) and his daughter (Anne Baxter) and that within the Amberson family - which may be because Moorehead and Cotten had been members of Welles's Mercury company in New York. She, with her pinched, unhappy face and that dry, quer­ ulous voice has more dimension than most movie spinsters. 'Really, George, I don't think being an aunt is the great career you think it is,' she says, part-fretful and part­ malicious. Cotten is the faithful suitor, authoritative in some matters but amiable enough to let a whippersnapper like George put him in his place. Holt's weak looks are right for the role, and he suggests an incipient Fascism: a more dynamic actor might have been better in the part, but this is very much a 'TI.ovie which does not need a centre or a focus of attention. In this case, the trouble started with the previews. Schaefer had been dismissed, and the new management demanded the running-time be reduced from 148 min­ utes so that the film could be programmed on double-bills. Welles, on location in Brazil for his next film, telephoned a num­ ber of suggestions; other hands were called in to make deletions and insertions, and to clarify the plot, since (it was said) Welles had left a number of points unexplained. Perhaps most regrettable is the loss of two reels of panoramic documentary; at 88 minutes the film satisfied R.K.O., who finally released it to support Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost, one of a series with 542

Kane and Other Citizens Lupe Velez, designed ordinarily to play the lower spot. Welles, who did not appear in Amber­ sons, was meanwhile acting in but not directing the third film of his contract, Journey into Fear (1942). American en­ try in the War and the box-office failure of Kane had made his position in Hollywood uncertain, so he needed to complete another film quickly. The sets used were those constructed for the abandoned The Heart of Darkness, from Conrad's novel, which had been announced as his first film venture; as director he chose Norman Fos­ ter, because he both admired the Oriental atmosphere of Foster's B-movies and was employing him already on pre-production work for the South American venture. Welles had chosen to make a thriller, tak­ ing as his source one by Eric Ambler. The plot involves a man in a vast political trap from which he cannot escape: but at that point in Ambler, when the nightmare builds in complexity, the movie simply disintegrates. It is a heavily atmospheric film but gives the impression of having been made in a hurry - for Foster was not given to the endless retakes undertaken by Welles. The film exists in two versions, since Welles on his return from Brazil was appalled by the 69-minute one first re­ leased. He re-cut it, and shot a new final sequence, adding thirteen minutes. The faults this time are more clearly his: the screenplay, credited to him and Cotten, picks up ideas and drops them, characters are not developed and the story leads no­ where. Neither does either of them emerge with credit as performers: the Turkish police chief of Welles is sketchy, and Cot­ ten, supposed to be frantic, looks merely frustrated. The South American adventure ended in debacle. Rockefeller believed that the world situation required America to em­ phasise its closeness to its Southern neigh­ bours, and he encouraged Welles, in a picture additional to his contract, to jour­ ney south with that in mind. Welles envis­ aged a three-part film, to be called It's All True, but had to stop shooting when the new management abandoned the project. Welles's three films had proved him 'un­ commercial', but it was due to his extrava­ gant working methods that he was viewed with bitterness. Like Von Stroheim before him, he could only work in Hollywood as

an actor - at least for a while. The later claims, 'They forget that if you don't have films (q.v.) he directed have flair, but only graft you'd have a low type of person in intermittently do they suggest that Holly­ politics. Men with no ambition.' McGinty wood let go a great film-maker. Yet Kane (Brian Donlevy) marries for the sake of his and Ambersons are indelible achievements. image, and it is a marriage quite as spuri­ It is a sad comment on the Hollywood ous as that of Citizen Kane; however, he system that it could not accommodate a eventually falls in love with his wife, but maverick, however self-indulgent and un­ giving up the Good Life for a Good disciplined. These were precisely the qual­ Woman is not a satisfactory Sturges ities which the studios' editors should have denouement. been capable of curbing, or using to their The films of Capra had created a climate advantage - since overshooting would in which Sturges was permitted to express give the team in the cutting-room much his fierce anti-capitalism. Christmas in more with which to work: which may be July (1940) concerns a slogan competition why Kane and even the mutilated Amber­ for a coffee manufacturer, Maxford sons are so very good. House, with a clerk (Dick Powell) conned There was already one eminent writer­ into believing that he has won. Says his director in Hollywood as Welles began boss (Ernest Truex): 'I think your ideas are Kane, and he was to have an equally diffi­ good because they seem good to me. I cult time. In the Silent era a number of kriow they're good because you won the scenario-writers had �urned director, in­ contest over millions of other people.' variably relegating the scripting to others. Sturges's general view of human greed and One writer, Preston Sturges (1898-1959), frailty becomes more particular in The did not care for the treatment that other Lady Eve (1941), as two card-sharpers directors had meted out to his scripts, and working the North Atlantic, father he decided to do something about it. Like (Charles Coburn) and daughter (Barbara Welles, he came from a background both Stanwyck), prey on a Harold Lloydish wealthy and intellectual, and had been young man (Henry Fonda), heir to the educated, if somewhat bizarrely, in Pike's Ale fortune. All is discovered, and France, Germany and Switzerland. His in the course of time she turns up at the satiric attitudes may just be discerned in Pike mansion, posing as a British society one of the first films he wrote, The Big girl - and her revenge is one that the Pond, but are largely absent in the others to changing moral standard has now rend­ which he contributed over the next ten ered very tame. However, the freshness years. The most interesting of them is The and ingenuity for which the film was Power and the Glory, and although Sturges praised still delight, and it is perhaps the disliked what Mitchell Leisen had done last good example of a dying breed, the with his screenplays for Easy Living and screwball comedy. Remember the Night, they are still recognis­ Sullivan's Travels (1941) is dedicated ably Sturges's work, certain that the world to 'those who made us laugh . . . the is divided into the haves and have-nots. motley crew, the clowns, the buffoons'. He persuaded Paramount to let him Sullivan Q oel McCrea) is an idealistic direct The Great McGinty (1940), partly movie director, weary of turning out trivia by selling them the script for only $10, like 'Ants in the Pants of 1939' and there­ partly by agreeing to the severely re­ fore researching a social treatise called 'Oh stricted budget of $350,000 - necessitated Brother Where Art Thou?'. In the course in any case by its commercially risky sub­ of his· travels he has the experience· of ject, political corruption. A foreword in­ watching Mickey Mouse with an audi­ forms us that two men have met, one who ence, and changes his mind. 'There's did one dishonest action in an honest life, something about making people laugh. It and one who did just one honest action in a isn't much, but it's all some people have.' dishonest life: it doesn't matter in the end He also learns that poverty does not en­ who did which, since both end up down­ noble, as he had thought, and the film and-outs in a South-of-the-Border bar. becomes oddly poignant when this intelli­ 'Everyone lives by cheating everyone gent man has for his audience only one else,' says the Boss (Akim Tamiroff), pathetic and aged half-wit. Sturges's over­ while the Politician (William Demarest) all view is not as serious as the one Sullivan 543

Kane and Other Citizens

Kane and Other Citizens The world of Preston Sturges: Joel McCrea and Claudette Colbert, RIGHT, feuding husband and wife in

Palm Beach Story,

and FAR RIGHT, Eddie Bracken, centre, the little man caught up in situations too big for him, in Hail the

Conquering Hero.

Both McCrea and Bracken were actors whom Sturges admired and used more than once, but the two with Bracken appeared in virtually every Sturges film and were essential to his world- left, the effeminate busybody Franklin Pangborn, and the marvellously gruff William Demarest.

intended, sincethefilmisoftenhilarious: but then throughout the film he seems to be cry­ ing out for the best of all possible worlds. Palm Beach Story (1942) has no such preoccupations, being content to chart the amorous adventures of a millionaire (Rudy Vallee, made up to look like John D. Rockefeller m) and his sister (Mary Astor) with a divorcing husband (McCrea) and wife (Claudette Colbert). Among marital comedies there is none better, with dia­ logue not so much notable for its wit as for its bite and discrimination. Sturges cata­ pults ideas one after the other, as in the superb scene when Vallee is explaining his penny-pinching ways to an artlessly en­ quiring Colbert. And the slapstick - not­ ably when Colbert is adopted by the Ale and Quail Club - is merely incidental to the comedy, unlike, say, Bringing Up Baby, where it is essential to it. In the same tradition, neither McCrea nor Colbert plays for sympathy, and in fact their roles are hardly admirable, have-nots no better than the haves. Yet the lack of ;my moral centre is one of the film's most invigorat­ ing features. James Agee, remarking upon the evasions and cynicism of The Miracle ofMorgan's Creek (1944), suspected that 'Sturges feels that conscience and comedy are incompatible,' adding that 'it would be hard for a man of talent to make a more self-destructive mistake.' That talent was in fact evolving: Sturges's first films (i.e. as director) look 544

back to the social comedies of the Thirties, while both The Lady Eve and Palm Beach Story are in the tradition which stretches back to Wilde, or even Restoration com­ edy. But both Miracle and Hail the Con­ quering Hero (1944) are contemporary tales, built around the reaction of small­ town America to the War, as represented by the military in its midst. Miracle en­ capsulates that period when G.I.s were on the loose for loose girls, and girls were glad to be that way. Possibly the Hays Office insisted that this particular girl (Betty Hut­ ton) marry her G.I., but the wedding is the only event of one wild night that she re­ �em�ers . . The audacity of the resulting s1tuat10ns 1s encouraging but, apart from the breakneck pace, all that I find to admire is Sturges's view of a world where all wel_l-mea�t schemes go wrong and oppor­ tumsts wait on every corner. If Conquering Hero looks back to Christmas in July, with its protagonist caught up in plots not of his own making, its comment on American gullibility is freely borrowed from Nothing Sacred. Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith (Eddie Bracken) is recognised by a marine sergeant (William Demarest) as 'Hinky Dinky's boy', i.e. the son of an old comrade-in:..arms, so he and his bud­ dies phone Woodrow's mother to tell her that he is a hero, which, as someone says, is the least you can do for a mother. The town goes ecstatic, but the squirming Woodrow refuses to wear uniform till

someone points out that his grandfather his bosses that he wants to make serious wore his Civil War uniform as long as he films, one of them observes, 'Something lived, so that we could never forget that like Capra, I suppose?' to which Sullivan brother fought brother- which is the most flashes back, 'What's the matter with extreme example of Sturges's cynicism. Capra?' The film answers the question: His second half is predictable, as if Sturges, nothing, but Sturges lacked Capra's belief having poked fun at both the cults for that there would always be someone to military heroics and Monism, was afraid speak up for the 'little man'. As Capra to go any further. However, the film pro­ went to war, Sturges rose, to blaze like a vides Demarest's biggest role in films, and comet, and not till Billy Wilder made The for that it is notable; Raymond Walburn Apartment (q.v.) would any American and Franklin Pangborn are also at their director equal the balance of comedy and best, the other constants of the Sturges seriousness of Sullivan's Travels. With stock company - the realist and the two Sturges's decline, Wilder, the other great cynic of the American cinema, had dreamers. Despite its faults, the film confirms emerged as a bright new talent. Like John Sturges as far ahead of his peers in light Huston (q.v.) he was encouraged by comedy, and The Great Moment (1944) Sturges's success to turn director. proves him level with them in more seri­ Sturges's decline was quick. He had be­ ous matters- though a number of comic se­ come very expensive: whole towns had to quences indicate that, long before films like be constructed and hundreds of extras em­ M*A*S*H (q.v.), he found humour in ployed. He wrote at night, slept mornings, pain. Here the hero is W. T. G. Morton, which meant that shooting did not start till the nineteenth-century dentist who the afternoon; and though he shot with claimed the discovery of the anaesthetic few retakes, the longer schedule increased effects of ether, and he is played by Joel the budget. He had also become auto­ McCrea, Sturges's favourite leading man. cratic, demanding a place in the com­ Biographies of such figures were generally missary for his stock company on a par accorded the greatest respect in Holly­ with deMille's. Nevertheless, when he left wood but Sturges's own interest in Mor­ Paramount at the end of l 943, and while ton, began because he had been a man who that comrany pondered on the box-office had benefited society but had been so little appeal o three unreleased films, he was thanked, remembered or admired. In fact asked to come back. He refused, also re­ Morton's claim was much disputed, and jecting an offer from M-G-M, and with an the disappointments of his life would have old friend, Howard Hughes, formed Cali­ made a much more ironic - and indeed a fornia Pictures. Hughes's interest in the more Sturges-like- ending than the happy company was the promotion of his latest one the film provides. That is Sturges's protegee, Faith Domergue. He believed that she could become a own ending, as referred to in the title, but the original structure of the film, as sug­ bigger star than Jane Russell (for whom he gested by The Power and the Glory, did not hadfashioned TheOutlaw), butthecostume attempt a strict chronology. Paramount film he planned for her, Vendetta, with disliked much of the film, which included Sturges as producer and Max Ophuls in the first frame a shot of Morton's grave, directing, had to be postponed (it was followed by one of a modern operation; eventually released in 1950, with the direc­ Sturges, tired of his disputes with the com­ tion credited to Mel Ferrer). Hughes's pany, left the recutting to his usual editor, inter£erence and vacillation drove both Stuart Gilmore - after which the film sat men 'to distraction', according to on the shelf for two years, finally being Hughes's biographer, Noah Dietrich, but released in 1944 to almost complete with Hughes's money and independ­ indifference. There is no doubt that it is ence Sturges 'went wild'. His contract with less than we might expect from one who Hughes called for two more films as pro­ has been called a genius by some, and ducer-director-writer and he conceived though still weighty in comparison with the idea of making a film with Harold the films on Pasteur, Ehrlich, etc. the writ­ Lloyd, whom he admired because he had achieved a long career with complete inde­ ing is similarly conventional. In Sullivan's Travels, when Sullivan tells pendence. He inveigled him out of retire545

Kane and Other Citizens ment (Lloyd had found the fun had gone out of filming while making Professor Beware), and The Sin of Harold Diddle­ bock (1947) begins with the last reel of The Freshman, for its purpose is to examine the college hero later in life. We find little has changed: he was an accountant and has remained one. However, he is suddenly sacked, and with his savings has his first alcoholic drink, which sends him on . a binge, during which he buys an eccentric check suit and wins and loses a fortune losing it mainly by acquiring a circus. It is a very poor film indeed, and the charge against Sturges is not that he misuses Lloyd, though he does, but that he does not begin to understand him. It is grievous to see the irrepressible young Harold be­ come a failure - the man who surmounted so many plights and dangers now facing the same yet virtually turning away. He is saved by chance and not by his own skill. Lloyd, Sturges and Hughes were the strangest of bedfellows, and Lloyd, who had been persuaded that the film would be an attack on smugness; loathed it. So did everyone else. After previews it was re­ titled Mad Wednesday, as which it limped around the U.S. for a while, not surfacing in New York till 195 I. Its artistic and commercial failure shattered Sturges, as well as the deal with Hughes. Sturges never recovered, and his drinking did not help his later work. As we saw, Sturges, like Capra before him, paid tribute to the one true indepen­ dent, Walt Disney (1901-66). His is one of the industry's great success stories, perhaps because he was the antithesis of Welles and Sturges - of artisan stock, low­ brow, very much concerned with pleasing his audiences. Like them, however, he put his 'art' before financial consideration, which is not contradictory, for his taste was far closer to audiences than his advis­ ers understood. He made the animated cartoon into an art for the masse·s, which is why David Low, the British newspaper cartoonist, called him 'the most signifi_cant figure in graphic arts since Leonardo'. He was born in Chicago; a talent for drawing took him into commercial art, and in Kansas City, with Ub Iwerks (1901-71) he began making animated shorts for cinemas. In Hollywood he found buyers for a series of short cartoons called Alice in Cartoonland, and with Iwerks

Kane and Other Citizens started a series of shorts for Universal called Oswald the Rabbit. He, or they, cre­ ated Mickey Mouse in 1928, beyond which it is difficult to determine to what extent Iwerks was the creative force at the Disney studios. He received credit for the early cartoons, which remain by far the . most inventive ever to emanate from Dis­ ney, though Disney disliked giving credit - till persuaded to do so for the feature­ length cartoons, which were issued with s�ch extensive lists of names that the pub­ he only rememoered his. He may have been a kindly employer, as has been claimed,.but the publicity department cre­ ated a mystique about him, as though he created the films single-handed. Iwerks left in 193 l and did not return for many years, his work for other companies repu­ tedly suffering from his lack of narrative sense and also, as an independent, the financial acumen of Disney's chief adviser, his brother Roy Disney. It is more than likely that Iwerks had left a durable mark on the Disney team: the quality of the shorts had begun to decline before the end of the decade (and production had by then started on the early feature cartoons, even those released as late as 1943). The first Mickey Mouse short was Plane Crazy (1928) and the second Steamboat Willie (1928), to which was added, after completion, a synchronised score. Their immediate success led to Col­ umbia reaching an agreement with Disney to release his films, starting with the syn­ chronised Plane Crazy. To anyone who knows only the later, epicene Mickey, these early works are astonishing: he could put his anatomy to amazing use, and he could be ferocious and randy. :rhe screen is ablaze with action, everything is animated, including inanimate objects - usually in­ volved, like the casts of animals, in questionable play. In Karnival Kid (1929) the hot dogs are obviously phallic, and one has pants like a foreskin for Mickey to peel back to tan his behind. The anal and the phallic humour were quickly banished perhaps when the implications were pointed out to Disney; a harsher cinema climate dictated the end of such common­ places as yowling alley cats and flying chamber pots. The pre-Code Disney films could be called Rabelaisian, but the term does not apply to those made later. In 1929 the first 'Silly Symphony'

appeared, The Skeleton Dance, in which amazing things happen to rattling bones. The series went into colour in 1932, and the first in Technicolor, Flowers and Trees, so impressed the Academy of Motion Pic­ ture Arts and Sciences that it introduced a new category in its annual awards - Short Subject: Cartoon - which Disney then won annually till the end of the decade, despite his several imitators. This Oscar, however, went only to the Silly Symph­ onies, and then usually to the winsome rather than the raucous - The Three Little Pigs (1933), The Tortoise and the Hare (1934), Three Orphan Kittens (1935), Country Cousin (1936), The Old Mill (1937), Ferdinand the Bull (1938) and The Ugly Duckling (1939). The cartoons, however, were not particularly profitable: when in 1932 Disney moved to United Artists they were guaranteed an advance of $20,ooo each from that source, to be set against the manufacturing cost of around $27,500, which almost doubled with the making of prints and shipping. Despite their popularity, their average gross dur­ ing the first year in release was only $80,000; The Three Little Pigs, however, took $125,000 in that time, and twice as much again before being withdrawn. Its phenomenal success bewildered Disney, and since its theme tune, 'Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?', and the film itself, seemed to mean so much to Depression­ hit America, he is said to have screened it constantly to find out why - but there was no discernible message, only a tale of two improvident pigs and their wise brother, whose brick-built house keeps out the sali­ vating wolf (who was at some later point redrawn and re-recorded to remove the characteristics supposedly typical of Jew­ ish pedlars). At the end of the year The New York Times 'safely' ventured that it had been 'shown at more theaters simul­ taneously than any other film, short or feature length'. It temporarily reintro­ d�ced the industry's practice of bicycling pnnts. As box-office attractions the Disney shorts outdistanced any other item on the bill except the main feature, and audiences roared their approval when the first titles flashed upon the screen. The Mouse, already joined by Minnie, Pluto the Dog and Goofy, went into colour in 1934, the same year that the bad-tempered bird,

Donald Duck, made his debut - and he proved so popular that he later 'starred' alone. The public mania for the menagerie meant a flood of comic strips and subsidi­ ary rights of all kinds, from towels to toothbrushes; and highbrow and lowbrow alike had no reservations about Mickey. Disney's decision to make a feature­ length cartoon was born less from a desire to capitalise on this success than from am­ bition: it had not been done, therefore he would do it - which he did, against almost total opposition, and in addition to fore­ going the financial security which would have been his at the time. When the con­ tract with United Artists came to be re­ negotiated in 1936 the Disney brothers not only insisted on retaining television rights - a good indication of their farsightedness - but wanted to include the feature cartoon already in production. The directors of United Artists were not interested, and a deal was made instead with R.K. 0., which took the shorts at better terms advancing the total cost of production, with a promise of 50% of the gross receipts when that investment had been recouped -· but insisted on a separate agreement for the feature. Virtually Disney's only ally was the manager of Radio City Music Hall, who booked it sight unseen; by the time it premiered there, five years from its in­ ception, the cost had escalated from the original estimate of $250,000 to over $1,700,000, partly as a result of Disney's augmenting his staff to make it. Disney's survival did not depend on it, but many expected him to be crippled with debts for years: the film, however, was a triumph for him, both within and outside the industry. The film is, of course, Snow White and the Seye� Dwarfs_(1937), and the Disney Orgamsation has reissued it since at seven­ year intervals, to new generations of chil­ dren, though few can have experienced the same enchantment as those who saw it earlier. I do not believe that it has been bettered in the intervening years, but I have to say that to my own generation it was a completely new experience; many of us ha_d_ never s�en a film, and certainly not televis10n. It is a story with terror and hop�, deception and romance, with a special magic �n the sequen�e when the dwarfs entertam Snow White - simply because audience pleasure is balanced by the knowledge that the Queen is planning 547

Kane and Other Citizens

The artwork for Snow White and the Seven Dwaifs, ABOVE RIGHT, was the basis for the original advertising cam­ paign, and has been used in moderated form for most of the reissues - sometimes in inferior manner, which is curious for a company which specialises in design. RIGHT, Pinocchio and ABOVE, Mickey Mouse, of course.

further witchery. Sentimentality is kept at bay by Grumpy - murmuring 'Mush' while Snow White warbles 'Some Day My Prince Will Come' - and the comic stuff remains funny still because the dwarfs are so richly characterised, atoning for the saccharine heroine and the operatic postur­ ing of the Prince. If the animals of the forest are most kindly regarded as being in the taste of the time, the film survives marvellously on its visual qualities, both in its evocation of the Brothers Grimm and the colours of its palette: the luminosity of Snow White as she runs through the forest, the predominantly crimson, fawn, ochre and brown of the dwarfs' clothes and the velvety shimmer of the Queen's gowns and the witch's cloak. The concept of these two ladies - though they are in fact the same - is genuinely astonishing, with the magic mirror, the huntsman's shadow, the transformation scene and the vultures circ­ ling as the dwarfs pursue the witch up the rain-wet rocks. (Recent reissues have lost the witch kicking the prone skeleton as she proceeds to her Stygian boat.) These effects were reached by committee although David Hand is credited as super­ vising editor - but there must have been elements in the climate of the time for something so imaginative and terrifying to emerge. Disney's faith in feature-length cartoons was so strong that he had already begun work on Pinocchio ( r 940), which is also peculiarly sinister. From The Skeleton Dance onwards, through Pegleg Pete, Mickey's enemy, and such shorts as The Mad Doctor, a spoof of Frankenstein, the studio had been practised in the gruesome; and Carlo Collodi's fantasy was ideal material, concerning an innocent in a malevolent universe. On the side of the puppet-come-to-life-Pinocchio are his loving but ineffectual 'father', the insect appointed to be his conscience and the formidable Blue Fairy. Against him are a series of monsters and freaks progressively more terrifying: Honest John the fox and his simple but vicious assistant, Gideon; Stromboli, the puppeteer; the stupid Lampwick, who will lead Pinocchio into corruption and vice; the Coachman, who manages to make Stromboli's greed and malice seem almost virtuous; and Monstro the Whale. The film may be a bastardisa­ tion of the book, but it is a black master-

piece, with one sequence - that in which the boys are metamorphosed into donkeys - as terrifying as any ever put on film. Fantasia ( r 940) was begun in the wake of the acclaim for Snow White, and was a bold undertaking. The Silly Symphonies had demonstrated Disney's interest in the marriage of sound and image; The Sor­ ceror's Apprentice was planned as a short, but Stokowski expressed a wish to con­ duct the score and suggested a full-length cartoon on similar lines. Disney saw him­ self as a populariser, and bringing music to the masses became his dream, as it was Stokowski's avowed intention 'that [its] beauty and inspiration must not be re­ stricted to a privileged few.' Whether more than a few would be receptive was another matter, and as it turned out they decisively were not. The critics, however, were fascinated, if polarised between those who considered 'great' music demeaned and those who, like Bosley Crowther, of The New York Times, told readers that 'history was made last night.' More cautiously, Frank Hoellering in The Nation called it 'a promising monstrosity' and in Britain James Agate found it 'magnificent and trivial, inspiring and commonplace, exciting and tedious'. Today one might wish for the animators to have departed more frequently from the Disney style - at its worst in the interpretation of Beeth­ oven's Pastoral, with sexless centaurs and cute cherubs. The Dance of the Hours is a dullish satire on ballet, with hippopotami and other animals in tutus, and The Nut­ cracker Suite is variable, at its best in the Thistle cossack dance and that of the Chinese mushrooms. The introduction, abstract patterns to Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, soars; The Rite of Spring, curtailed and rearranged, aston­ ishes with its vomiting volcanoes and shuddering mountain-quakes, and The Sorcerer's Apprentice, with Mickey Mouse, is equally effective; while The Night on a Bare Mountain does have the quality of Bosch, and in sheer drawing technique is more advanced than the rest of the film - though it is followed by an interpretation of 'Ave Maria' more suit­ able to a nursery wall. The film cost $2,300,000 and was made under great financial pressure when the profits from Snow White were exhausted and the banks refused credit. If Disney had expected it to 549

Kane and Other Citizens

.�

---� Mickey Mouse's most popular rivals were Betty Boop, BELOW, drawn by Max Fleischer for Paramount, and Tom and Jerry, ABOVE, drawn by Hanna and Barbera for M-G-M.

make money it was because he had con­ fidence in all his judgments, as he had every right to have - at least, from the commercial standpoint. But in this case the public was not ready for serious music, and though that situation would change within a few years the first reissues were tentative; not till a decade later did the film start to enjoy a wide popularity, and it is difficult, today, to reconcile it with its former reputation as 'highbrnw'. Meanwhile Dumbo (1941) did much to restore Disney's financial standing. Taken from a run-of-the-mill children's story, it was originally intended to be a Silly Sym­ phony and cost only $700,000. Disney resisted pressure to make it longer than 64 minutes and, despite comparativ:ely simple . animation, the film is packed with a num­ ber of splendid items: the flying elephant himself; the circus train, chugging away in· the manner of the Silly Symphonies; 'Pink Elephants on Parade', an arabesque for elephants; and the song of the crows, 'When I See an Elephant Fly', in which the view of Negroes as flash dandies is allevi­ ated by the joyousness of the number it­ self. Bambi (1942), three times as expen­ sive and much longer in preparation, is technically a much more accomplished work. The story of a baby deer and his growing up, from the novel by Felix Sal­ ten, its hold on sentiment, when neces­ sary, is equally sure; and the treatment of the forest glades in lightly Impressionist manner indicates an artistry seldom found 550

Kane and Other Citizens thereafter in the studio's work. Indeed, this enchanting film is Disney's last major work. The decline of the short cartoons had already begun, and it is possible that Dis­ ney's artistic judgment faltered under pressure. The popularity of Bambi hardly offset its cost, and his losses were such at the time the U.S. entered the War that he was only too happy to take commissions from the government, which realised the propaganda uses of the animated film. Most of the resulting shorts were for showing on service installations; a feature, Victory Through Air Power (1943), with Donald Duck, was released to cinemas. Also as part of the war effort Disney toured the southern continent on behalf of the U.S. State Department, and made, with Saludos Amigos (1942) and The Three Caballeros (1944), hotchpotch assemblies of animated Latin-American travelogues and unrelated short cartoons, linked by the presence of Donald Duck. The second of the two used both drawings and humans, of which supposed innova­ tion the publicity department made much, overlooking the fact that Disney had done that at the start of his career, in the Alice cartoons. The method here is a little more sophisticated: settings for humans who are made to look like cartoons, some back projection and some painting on the finished film. The final sequence, as a real girl sings inside an animated flower, has a few abstract designs which recall the best of Fantasia. Disney's fading pre-eminence in the short cartoon was indicated in 1940 when the appropriate Oscar went to M-G-M's Tom and Jerry, the malicious but hard­ done-by cat and his cheeky rodent adver­ sary; and though Disney took the award again in the two subsequent years it went to Tom and Jerry five times during the next six years (and on the other occasion to Warner Bros.). Until that time most of Disney's rivals had followed his lead, in­ cluding the team of Hugh Harmon and Ralph Ising at M-G-M with their 'Happy Harmonies', though they claimed to have used both Sound and serious music (a Strauss waltz) before Disney. Their reign in Fred Quimby's Shorts Department end­ ed as Tom and Jerry rose, giving way to Joseph Barbera (b. 1911) who had started the cat and mouse as a magazine strip, and

his partner William Hanna (b. 1920). The two hundred cartoons they turned out over the twenty-year period are seldom as inventive as the Iwerks Mouse, but good enough to supplant the Disney characters as popular favourites. Of the others, perhaps only Bugs Bunny and company at Warners were serious contenders - and probably the Terry-Toons at Fox were the least likely. Most of these rivals were cre­ ated by defectors from Disney, and Hanna and Barbera are unusual among animators of the time in that they never worked for him. However, Disney's most serious rival was flourishing when he joined the indus­ try. Max Fleischer (1889-1973) made 'Out of the Inkwell', a series combining live action and animation. With his brother, Dave, as his administrator, he had a suc­ cess in the early Thirties with Betty Boop, a sexy little flapper, and later a more pro­ nounced one with Popeye, the bellicose but soft-hearted sailor. Paramount distri­ buted, and after the success of Snow White agreed to a feature, Gulliver's Travels (1939), which uses the first section of Swift's novel for a pantomime about a helpful giant in a warlike kingdom. The film is technically often impressive, but like the Capraesque Mr Bug Goes to Town (1941) too slight to do more than mildly amuse. The second film was a com­ plete failure, since Fleischer had never been able to enter the world of children as Disney had, and that was something, apparently, that even adult audiences wanted from full-length cartoons. He did not attempt another, leaving that field free to Disney, who was to have no further rival during his lifetime. There were in Hollywood at this time four foreign directors who managed to preserve artistic control over the films they made - if only at the cost of moving from studio to studio. Easily the most successful was Alfred Hitchcock, under contract to Selznick, whose reduced activity allowed him to 'loan out' Hitchcock for projects that they both considered suitable. After Rebecca Hitchcock made the more charac­ teristic Foreign Correspondent (1940) for Walter Wanger, who was more willing to appreciate his particular talent than Selz­ nick. Wanger's interest in foreign politics had led him to buy the memoirs of Vincent Sheean, 'Personal History', to serve as a

basis for a tale of an American reporter in Europe; but the early scripts were aban­ doned as the European situation changed, and it was turned over to Hitchcock to make the film to his British formula - in his own words, 'the innocent bystander who becomes involved in an intrigue'. His starting point was the superb sequence of the assassination in the rain, followed by the windmill hideout. Equally memorable are the scenes where the hero Qoel McCrea) is at the top of Westminster Cathedral with a professional assassin (Edmund Gwenn), and that in which McCrea escapes his own would-be assas­ sins along the hotel parapet in robe but no pants - a suitable garb for a reporter to work in in the privacy of his own room but leading, once down from the parapet, to farcical complications. This is one of Hitchcock's funniest films, as it is one of the most ingenious, and plotted as cleverly as any of Graham Greene's political thril­ lers. The screenplay is credited to Hitch­ cock's old associates, Joan Harrison and Charles Bennett, with dialogue by James Hilton and Robert Benchley. Benchley is also in the cast, which is a splendid one: Albert Basserman as a statesman consid­ ered able to prevent war; Herbert Marshall as head of the Universal Peace Party; George Sanders as a reporter; and Laraine Day as the heroine. Unfortunately, the last sequences have dated: the shooting-down of the clipper over the Atlantic seems a last-minute idea to remind audiences of the seriousness of war, and McCrea broad­ casting to the U.S. - while bombs fall around him in London - now seems banal. Hitchcock directed Mr and Mrs Smith (1941) as a gesture to Carole Lombard, who co-stars with Robert Montgomery. They play quarrelling spouses who philan­ der ostentatiously after parting: Hitchcock claimed that he did not understand the characters, so filmed the Norman Krasna dialogue as writteh. The sole funny se­ quence - that in which Lombard struggles into an old dress - therefore may be his. Returning to crime, he was no happier with Suspicion (1941), accepting a foolishly simulated England of thatched manor houses. Presumably, however, he was responsible for the screenplay - by Miss Harrison, Alma Reville (his wife) and Samson Raphaelson - whic,:h does scant justice to the original novel, 'Before the 551

Kane and Other Citizens

Kane and Other Citizens The fifty-year film career of Alfred Hitchcock has a number of highs and lows: the late Thirties and the Fifties are certainly high points, and he also made some of his most enjoyable films in the first half of the Forties. RIGHT, the assassination in the Netherlands which sets off the events in Foreign Correspondent.

Fact' by Francis Iles. That was about a woman who gradually realises that her husband plans to murder her, but who �s so much in love that she does not mmd, whereas the film is a dotty cat-and-mouse tale, leading to a chase sequence rendere_d ludicrous by a happy ending. Cary Grant 1s the cat and Joan Fontaine, who won an Oscar for the role, the mouse. Hitchcock explainfd the film's artistic failure b saying the producers would have refused>: to let Grant be a murderer. The producers of both films were at R.K. 0., but finding another independent producer - F�an� Ll_oyd at Universa� Hitchcock agam hit his best form, pr:ov1d­ ing the scenario from which Peter V1ertel, Miss Harrison and Dorothy Parker wrote the screenplay. Saboteur (1942) signific­ antly is to formula, about a man (Ro�ert Cummings) who flees because he thmks no one will believe his innocence. The crime committed is sabotage in a Califor­ nian factory, which leads to the unmasking of a spy ring in Ne'Y Yo�k, on the way to which are such d1vers10ns and/ or set552

pieces as a seemingly deserted shanty town near Boulder Dam, a chase through Radio City Music Hall and another on the crown of the Statue of Liberty. Shadow of a Doubt (1943) gained a. reputation �s Hitchcock's own favounte among his films, but if he gave that impression, he said later, that was because it caused the least dissatisfaction to those who com­ plained of implausibilities in his plots. The situation is that of a murderer O oseph Cot­ ten) living in a family, a�d w�at happens when his adored and adonng mece (Teresa Wright) finds out. What she does not do is go to the local poli�e (when �he cannot contact her detective boyfriend); but otherwise this is a clever screenplay as written by Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson and Alma Reville, from a story by Gordon McDonnell a novelist married to the head of the Selz�ick story department. Wilder had been invited to participate becaus� he had written 'Our Town', and this particu­ lar small town - Santa Rosa, California has such ordinariness that the presence there of an evil man is the more powerfully

felt. It was unusual at the time to go on location when simulation was possible on the back lot; and the film was further admired for the intimations of the murder­ er's psyche, though these, like the heavy ironies, now seem jejune. Hired out again, to 20th Century-Fox, Hitchcock made Lifeboat (1944), pro­ ceeding from a desire to produce a motion picture from limited material - in this case a party adrift at sea, a '_microcosm'_, a� he himself put it. John Stembeck was mv1ted to write the script, but his efforts proved inadequate and the screenplay was even­ tually credited to Jo Swerling. On the lifeboat are Kovac Qohn Hodiak) and other crew-members (William Bendix, Hume Cronyn and the black Canada Lee) of the torpedoed ship; a nurse (Mary Anderson), a millionaire (Henry Hull) and a lacquered and be-minked journalist (Tal­ lulah Bankhead), complete with type­ writer. In time they pick up another woman (Heather Angel) with a 'biby', as she calls it, and a German captain (Walter Slezak), whom they christen Willy. They let Willy guide them, and each time he glances surreptitiously at his compass the audience's tensions and suspicions mount. He is, of course, the representative totali­ tarian, controlled, efficient and calm-in­ an-emergency, while the others - a spec­ trum ranging from the Fascist millionai�e to the Communist-inclined Kovac - are m disarray, panicky, self-pitying and self­ absorbed. Hitchcock said later that he wanted to show that 'while the democra­ cies were completely disorganised, all the Germans were clearly headed in the same direction. So here was a statement telling the democracies to put their differences aside temporarily . . .' which is an im­ provement at least on the nly other po_l­ itical statement he made m a film - m Saboteur, to urge good Americans to look for Nazis in the woodpile. His other com­ ments on the film are as pompous as his direction is expert; he permits no sense of studio-tank or back-projection and although Miss Bankhead is incongruous, both she and Hitchcock know it. Jean Renoir, less classifiable, had a much harder struggle than Hitchcock. As the maker of La Grande Illusion and La Bete Humaine, he had no difficulty getting a contract - with 20th Century-Fox, which offered him the 'class' subjects, historical

or European, which Hollywood associ­ ated with esteemed directors. He was not interested, especially when he realised that the results would have to conform to the studio's standards - which meant aban­ doning those methods which had led to his reputation in the first place. Determined to tackle an American subject, he came upon the screenplay of Swamp Water (1941), written by Dudley Nichols from a novel by Vereen Bell for John Ford, who had turned it down. Renoir was allowed to go to the Okefenokee region of Georgia to ao location work. The film itself indicates that he thought it worthwhile to tell of plain folks against their genuine back­ ground, but the screenplay is unequal to the occasion, contrived and, until the cli­ max, blindingly obvious. Even Walter Huston fails to make his character come alive, and Dana Andrews and Anne Baxter are not the screen's most sympathetic lov­ ers. Renoir was at one time removed from the film, when shooting went over sched­ ule, and he was not permitted to do his own editing, which he regretted. He did not work for Zanuck again, and in his memoir sadly quoted Zanuck's opinion of him: 'Renoir has a lot of talent, but he's not one of us.' In that same memoir Renoir did not mention his experience at Universal, which gave the industry good reason to think again about employing him. The studio had decided that what Deanna Dur­ bin needed at this stage in her career was a European-type movie, and Renoir was given virtual carte blanche, the sole pro­ viso being that she be the central character. He began the film that eventually became The Amazing Mrs Holliday (q.v.), concern­ ing Durbin in charge of some Chinese refugee children, but after some weeks of filming he decided that he was dissatisfied with it. He would prefer, he said, to make a modern version of 'The Taming of the Shrew', set in and around a Texas gas station. Both the star and Universal liked the idea, if unsure whether she would be credible as a gas-station attendant; but Re­ noir himself quickly found that he disliked this idea too and reverted to the original project - which he could not finish since Dudley Nichols had arranged a joint ven­ ture at R.K.O. Universal, after six months' filming and no vehicle in sight for its most popular star, were glad to see him 553

Kane and Other Citizens

Kane and Other Citizens

Renoir's Diary ofa Chambermaid gives the chambermaid, Paulette Goddard, a number of piquant adventures - mainly amorous. Here she is between the two chief men in her life- left, Hurd Hatfield, her boss by virtue of his being his mother's son, and right, Francis Lederer, a corn. panion of hers from below stairs.

go. One of Miss Durbin's writers, Bruce Manning, was given the task of salvaging what he could of the first story. Renoir had, of course, behaved similarly in France over Partie de Campagne. The R.K. 0. film, written and pro­ duced by himself and Nichols, was This Land Is Mine (1943), 'intended to show that life for the citizen of a country oc­ cupied by an enemy power was not so simple as Hollywood seemed to think.' That country - unnamed in the film but clearly meant to be France - is at first affected only when teachers are required to tear p_ages from history books, but when supplies for Germany are blown up hos­ tages are taken. Interest centres on two teaching colleagues (Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Hara) and he, a coward, is forced into bravery. When the Gestapo finally comes for him he is declaiming the Declaration of the Rights of Man - a for­ givable ending for local audiences, but when French audiences saw it after the Liberation they laughed, and Renoir was ridiculed by former advocates of his work. Worse errors are the Hollywood-style close-ups of Miss O'Hara and the scenery­ chewing performances of Una O'Connor as Laughton's mother and Walter Slezak as the German governor. Laughton, basing his characterisation on Renoir himself, cannot save the film, since Renoir, dis-

554

trusting his audience, is constantly over­ stating in an already melodramatic tale..:.. in sum one much inferior to the not dissimi­ lar The Moon Is Down (q.v.). The sole indication of subtlety is, surprisingly, the performance of George Sanders as a patriot determined to make concess·ions to the invaders. After another long period of inactivity Renoir restored his reputation with The Southerner (1945), backed by Robert Hakim and David L. Loew at United Artists, which loathed the film and only took it because Loew had interests in other of their projects. Hakim had offered the screenplay to Renoir, who disliked it; but he admired the book of short stories on which it was based, 'Hold Autumn in Your Hand' by George Sessions Perry, and proceeded to write his own script. It is a wresting-a-living-from-the-soil story, reminiscent of John Ford's rural movies. The touches of melodrama are more in keeping with American taste of the time than with Renoir's French work, but the real failings are elsewhere. The story con­ cerns people who are grindingly poor, but Renoir feels no indignation at their plight. He offers instead affection, a lovely quality but not the one needed. He hardly shows us the anxiety of the young couple (Zachary Scott, Betty Field), but emphas­ ises instead their love and mutual respect for each other. It was not enough to use non-stars and deglamorise them further, though Miss Field is moving as a young woman who has reflected on her lot and come to accept it. The film won First Prize at the first post­ war Venice Festival, and its critical suc­ cess enabled Renoir to set up The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), envisaged as a vehicle for a friend, Paulette Goddard whose husband, Burgess Meredith, co­ wrote and co-produced with Renoir, as well as performing in the film. It occa­ sioned little interest then and, as with Re­ noir's other American films, was execrated in France. It has been rehabilitated since, and if flawed by the obvious studio ex­ teriors - even though designed, as with This Land Is Mine, by Eugene Lourie - is otherwise among his best work. Octave Mirbeau's novel had long been dear to Renoir, who had echoed it in La Regle du ]eu, in the scenes of the servants aping their masters. Celestine (Miss Goddard) is a

Paris-born maid whose situation with the family Lanlaire inv