Reeling Backward: "Kit Carson" (1940)

It's funny to think about how much liberty Hollywood took with history back in its heyday. Nowadays if they make a movie about something that really happened and change around too many facts, audiences and critics would jump all over it for inaccuracies. But back in the day, they'd unfurl a whole bunch of BS and not blink twice.

Kit Carson, a mountain man, scout and quasi-military man, was already a legend during his lifetime. He helped blaze the trail to California through Oregon, fought in the Mexican-American War and, briefly, the Civil War. Books were written about his adventures as far back as 1849, there were a couple of movies, including 1940's "Kit Carson," plus a 1950s TV show. Most everything about his life, from the books to the shows, was made up out of whole cloth or twisted around to a laughable degree.

Fir instance, Carson actually made several expeditions with U.S. Army Captain (later general) John C. Frémont during the 1840s. Rather than Frémont recruiting Carson as the most renowned scout in the West, the two men bumped into each other on a steamboat cruise and the frontiersman pitched his services to the soldier.

Both men fought in the Mexican-American War, though separately. And both were already married when they met each other -- in Carson's case, several times over to American Indian brides. The certainly never fought gallantly over the hand of a wealthy Californian's daughter, Dolores, played by Lynn Bari.

In one of the more interesting aspects of this movie, each man is actually pushing the woman they love toward the other fellow. Dana Andrews is upstanding and charming as Frémont, while Jon Hall plays the country bumpkin angle to the hilt as Carson. The well-bred Dolores, in typical fashion, finds the lanky scout to be an insufferable savage, until she recognizes his finer qualities.

Frémont offers to marry Dolores, even though he knows she loves Carson, because he's such a selfless guy and all that.

The two men butt heads several times in the early going, but without rancor, as Frémont insists on following his orders to find the most direct route to California to the letter -- even if it means riding right into a trap the Shoshonis have laid out for his troops. Carson, as the hired wagon master for the pioneers trailing in the soldiers' wake, urges caution and forbearance.

"It's better to lose 60 miles than 60 lives," he reckons.

Carson's two gleeful sidekicks are Ward Bond as Ape, a good-natured liar, and Harold Huber as Lopez, their south of the border amigo. They're always ready to ride off with Carson at a moment's notice, quick with a joke and a laugh. Ape gets a love interest of his own, a pinch-faced woman named Genevieve (Renie Riano). But, like Carson, he can't countenance the idea of giving up a life of roaming and beaver pelts for a bed and a home.

The heavy is General Castro, played by C. Henry Gordon. He's secretly supplying rifles to the Indians and goading them into attacking the American wagon trains.

Gordon is as white as me and Huber was a Russian Jew, and don't make for very convincing Mexicans. But that's about par for the course in this movie, in which the several shots of the Shoshonis clearly show most of them to be white guys in war paint and feathers.

"Kit Carson" is amiable, formulaic and dumb as a desert-baked brick.

Reeling Backward: "The Duke of West Point" (1938)

There's a long though not terribly busy cinematic tradition of stories about young men attending military academies. In my lifetime there has been "An Officer and a Gentleman," "Taps" and "The Lords of Discipline." Nearly all of them tie together the themes of boys coming of age and free spirits struggling under the yoke of military culture. (Perhaps notably, there haven't been any mainstream films since the 1980s that I can recall.)

It turns out they were making "cadet movies" even back in 1938. "The Duke of West Point" is about an American-born but British-raised fellow, Steven Earley, who struggles to fit in with his Yank brothers. Or rather, he spends the first half of the movie as an outsider and scamp with little regard for the traditions of the United States Military Academy. Then he faces his great crisis and spends the last act struggling to reconcile himself with his adopted community.

I thought it a rather good comedy/drama, and enjoyed discovering it as part of my extended, open-ended classic film education. I had never heard of Louis Hayward, who plays Earley, and found him to be a charming twinkly leading man in the Cary Grant tradition. His character always seems a little smoother and effortless than everyone around him.

Hayward had a lengthy career, first in films in a lot of adventure and swashbuckling roles -- including the first screen iteration of Simon Templar, aka "The Saint" -- before moving on to television work. He was successful enough in "Duke" to land a three-picture deal and cement his career.

I should point out he was almost 30 years old playing a character who is a freshman, and later a sophomore in military college. It seems Hollywood has always feared casting actual teenagers as themselves.

The story is fairly straightforward. Earley, the son of an American colonel-turned-diplomat, is a BMOC at Cambridge who returns to the Americas to attend West Point, something every son going back five generations has done. He's a facile fellow, good at most everything he tries, especially sports and the ladies. He smugly assumes his life of easy achievement will continue at West Point.

Quickly dubbed "Duke" for his British accent and suave, superior manner, Earley does seem to take it all in stride in the early going. He quickly draws the ire of his "yearling corporal," Cadet Strong (Alan Curtis), a second-year student who takes it upon himself to school the striplings in the ways of the Point.

Things build, seemingly unavoidably, to a mano-e-mano bout of fisticuffs between the two. In a rare break from Hollywood tropes, the hero actually seems to take the worst of it from the oafish antagonist.

He does get along well with his two roommates, Jack West (Richard Carlson), the straight-arrow son of a poor widow, and Sonny Drew (Tom Brown), a flamboyantly enthusiastic cadet who sometimes gets picked on for his eager-beaver ways. They both later get to play a key role in the education of Earley -- as the unwitting recipient of charity and a George Gipp stand-in, respectively.

Joan Fontaine has an early memorable role as Ann Porter, the daughter of "Doc" Porter (Charles D. Brown), the medical trainer for most of the sports team. Doc washed out as a cadet years before, and gets to have a stirring speech about places like this getting into the blood of young men -- not unlike Charles S. Dutton role in "Rudy" many decades later.

Ann is ostensibly the girlfriend of Strong, though she seems to regard him more as disposable arm candy than the other way around. Earley makes a full-court press for her attentions, including sneaking out of barracks after hours -- a court-martial offense. Much of the fun-and-games tone of the early part of the movie derives from the cat-and-mouse games he plays with Strong and others to flout the rules on her behalf.

The big transition is when Earley sneaks out again and is caught, though this time for non-selfish purposes. Wishing to protect the reputation of others, he lies about his activities that night. As a result, he is allowed to remain at West Point but is "silenced" -- aka, no other cadet will speak to him or even acknowledge his presence (with the exception of his two buddies).

After so much laughter and romance, it's a startling change in tone, and not a transition that director Alfred E. Green and George Bruce manage completely. We keep expecting Earley to have a big laugh at the whole thing, but after a time we begin to realize how much his treatment weighs upon him.

He resolves to earn back their trust by becoming the best cadet that ever was -- top of the class academically, the unquestioned star of the football and hockey teams, and so on. It does little avail him of their affections.

A lark that segues into a study of a man's mettle, "The Duke of West Point" is a little-remembered but worthy soldier in the military school genre.

Reeling Backward: "Kansas City Confidential" (1952)

"Kansas City Confidential" isn't as well-known as some other film noirs, but it's something of a lodestone for the genre.

Quentin Tarantino used it as inspiration for his first film "Reservoir Dogs," borrowing the notion of a gang of criminals brought together for a heist without knowing each others' identities. Instead of hiding behind names assigned by colors, they wear extraordinarily creepy masks, with only the boss knowing who everyone is.

Of course, the kingpin turns out to be a disgraced police captain who's planning to turn them all in to restore his name -- not to mention get a 25 percent cut of the $1.2 million take being offered by the insurance company.

"Confidential," directed by Phil Karlson from a screenplay by George Bruce and Harry Essex, is notable for the several ways in which it diverges from Hollywood movies of its time.

For starters, the main character isn't really established until about 15-20 minutes into the movie. Joe Rolfe -- played by John Payne, a song-and-dance man who segued into tough guy roles -- shows up briefly, working as a deliveryman for a flower shop. But it's not until after the heist has been planned and executed that the audience realizes he's "the guy" -- when the police arrest him.

Because the robbers used a duplicate of the flower truck as their cover, the cops think Joe is in on the job. Which brings us to another notable aspect of this film -- its decidedly negative portrayal of law enforcement officers.

Beyond the depiction of Tim Foster (an effective Preston Foster) as the former captain turned bank robber, the way the police treat Joe after his arrest is quite shocking. He's shown being roughed up and denied attorney representation, and it's quite clearly implied that he is repeatedly beaten during his interrogations with an especially rough detective. Lacking evidence, they finally let him go, and Joe lets it be known what he thinks of police who abuse innocent men instead of solving crimes.

There is a brief disclaimer during the opening text crawl that the depictions in the movie are unrepresentative of law enforcement professionals in general. But that's a pretty timid tide wall to brace against the powerful expectations of the era, which dictated that criminals always had to get what had coming to them, and police were the means for making that happen.

Another interesting thing is the portrayal of the three hoods. Jack Elam grabs most of our attention during the first half of the film as Pete Harris, a nervous type with a googly eye. (Of course, all of Elam's characters had that.) A compulsive gambler, Pete is a walking potpourri of tics and trouble -- until he's gunned down by the police in Tijuana.

Lee Van Cleef, in one of his first big roles, plays Tony Romano, a cool-as-ice lady killer. Van Cleef's snake-like face and reptilian eyes led to a lifetime of villainous roles, which he seemed to relish. Neville Brand is blunt and brutal as Boyd Kane, a gum-chewing thug.

They all wind up together at a resort in Mexico, where Foster has arranged to split the money, planning to double-cross them and turn them over to the authorities. Of course, if the idea is to keep their identities secret from each other, it makes little sense to direct them all to a tiny little Mexican hotel where hard-bitten guys hiding revolvers in their coats stand out like a sore thumb.

Joe, having tracked down Pete and seen him slain, plans to take over his spot and collect his share of the dough. A war hero who ran afoul of the law over gambling debts, Joe loses his flower shop job and finds his prospects dim with his face splashed all over the newspapers.Of course, Foster immediately recognizes him as an imposter.

Then Joe runs into Helen Foster (Coleen Gray), a smart young gal studying to take the bar exam and become an attorney. She's sassy and self-confident, and finds herself drawn to the star-crossed Joe. She's also the daughter of the police captain, which is bound to lead to complications.

The plot gets sucked into a bit of a vortex once all the principles have arrived at the resort. There's a half-hour or so of one-upsmanship between Joe and the two robbers, where they go back-and-forth sticking muzzles into each others' ribs and slapping people around. I lost count of how many times one guy got the drop on another, only to find himself disarmed by a sudden move, with the upper hand changing quickly and often.

It's very sweaty work -- literally, as blobs of perspiration roll off the mens' faces and necks. Though never from Helen's ... during that time in Hollywood, leading ladies didn't sweat, they glistened.

"Kansas City Confidential" is a first-rate film noir that dared to break the mold of what a crime story could be.

3.5 stars out of four