Reeling Backward: "The Story of G.I. Joe" (1945)

I admit I was confused about the premise of "The Story of G.I. Joe," which I had thought to be a biopic of renowned war correspondent Ernie Pyle. It's probably the signature role of Burgess Meredith's career -- aside from playing the Penguin on the Batman TV show -- and the film also marked the breakout of Robert Mitchum.

In fact, Pyle is barely a character in the movie, which focuses on a motley Army outfit fighting its way up the Italian peninsula. Pyle tags along from time to time, telling their tale as his favored group of "my guys," though their story continues even when Pyle isn't around. In the movie it's C Company, 18th Infantry, which wasn't actually deployed in Italy.

Pyle was involved in the production of the movie, which debuted around the time the theater in Europe was wrapping up. Pyle, who wrote in one of his last pieces that he hated the title but was too lazy to come up with a better one, was killed two months earlier. He personally approved Meredith for the role, with Walter Brennan and James Gleason also in the running.

Meredith was actually serving as a captain in the Army at the time, a fairly unknown character actor whose most prominent film role till then had been as George in the 1939 adaptation of "Of Mice and Men." The Army initially refused to let him go, and the matter was kicked all the way up to the White House. Meredith received an honorable discharge, ending his military service.

Directed by the great William Wellman, the film received wide acclaim and four Oscar nominations, including a supporting actor nod for Mitchum -- amazingly, the only recognition he ever got from the Academy Awards.

"Joe" is a terrific-looking film, with stark contrasting black-and-white photography from Russell Metty. He really makes the grime of the battlefield stand out. Many of the settings reminded me of Bill Mauldin's "Willie and Joe" comic strips.

Overall, though, I don't think the picture has aged all that well, and plays now as a fairly standard "buncha swell guys" ensemble war picture. Certainly it pales in comparison to Wellman's "Battleground" from 1949, which I call a masterpiece.

This is the sort of movie where we see a lot of faces moving in and out of the frame, and just a handful are meant to stick. They include Mitchum as Captain Walker, the noble everyman leader of the outfit who grows grimmer as time goes on and the losses mount, confessing that he often feels like a murderer.

Boxing champ-turned-actor Freddie Steele plays Warnicki, the no-nonsense, high-voiced sergeant who gets things done. He carries around with him a record his wife sent of his baby boy speaking his first words, which for some reason always plays backwards. Toward the end he finally gets it to work, and hearing junior say "Hi Daddy" sends him over the edge.

Wally Cassell is Dondaro, the Romeo of the outfit who seems to have a girl at every stop. Even when they're holed up for weeks in caves surrounding an ancient monastery at Cassino the Krauts are using as an observation post, he somehow sneaks out for his hookups.

Slightly less notable figures are John R. Reilly as "Wingless" Murphy, who washed out of the Air Force because he was too tall, and Pvt. Mew (William Murphy), who starts out as a faceless nobody and pretty much ends up the same way.

One of the film's watershed moments -- screenplay by Leopold Atlas, Guy Endore and Philip Stevenson -- is when Wingless marries his fiancé, who's also serving in Italy as an Army nurse. (She was played by Wellman's real-life wife, Dorothy.) The boys rig up a honeymoon sweet for them in the back of a bombed-out truck. He falls asleep on his wedding night, and we pretty much know what his fate is.

Mew is an orphan with no family, so his main role is keeping track of others through his $10,000 insurance policy courtesy of the Army. He makes a list of beneficiaries, which are crossed out and adjusted as people are killed.

Early on the company adopts a little pooch, which they name Arab -- pronounced so it rhymes with "HAY-rag" -- who's always being snuggled on somebody's lap or inside their coat. The captain initially forbids the men from bringing him along, arguing that the dog will get killed. Of course, he ends up outliving all the KIAs, including Walker himself.

The movie is more cyclical rather than having a traditional three-act plot, and seems aimed at relating what the life of a real dogface was like to the people back home rather than spinning a story. The soul of the movie is not the battle sequences, which are fairly brief and sporadic, but in the waterlogged caves where the rain never stops but time seems to.

The screenplay sprinkles in narration by Pyle taken from his actual writings, which I wanted more of.

Since Ernie Pyle preferred to tell others' stories rather than his own, maybe it's appropriate that "The Story of G.I. Joe" isn't really about him. From what I've learned he had a fairly conventional writer's life, combining long absences from home with bouts of alcoholism and marital discord.

He was the apotheosis of today's high-profile journalists, always making it about themselves. Maybe it's time we got back to celebrating the little guy -- but with a more coherent story.

Reeling Backward: "Advise & Consent" (1962)

"Advise and Consent" is a film of firsts and lasts.

It was the final film for the great Charles Laughton, already declining from cancer. Wrapped in a colorless, shapeless suit like a shroud, his once-expansive frame had shriveled down to merely bulky. He plays Seabright "Seab" Cooley, a wily old curmudgeon representing South Carolina in the U.S. Senate, who positions himself as the chief antagonist to Robert A. Leffingwell, the president's nominee for Secretary of State.

Laughton cackles and minces, cajoles and bullies, as the situation warrants. His voice had lost some of its power, and you can hear at a couple of points that his lines have been dubbed over. Contrastingly, it was the first film role for Betty White, playing a young female senator who gets accused of using "her sex" to her advantage.

It was one of the earliest mainstream movies to tackle McCarthyism head-on, or at least just off to the side. During the confirmation process, Leffingwell is discovered to have participated in some Communist meetings back when he was at university, though he never joined the party.

Still, the trial-like subcommittee hearings have all the fire and brimstone of the real anti-Communist witch hunts. Merely the accusation of Communist affiliations is enough to scuttle one's political career, and even eliminate the possibility of a job in academia.

It was also one of the first movies to tackle homosexuality head-on, with an upright young senator (Don Murray) from Utah -- named Brigham, too, in case the suggestion that he's a Mormon wasn't already underlined enough -- being blackmailed for a romance with another soldier during the Korean War.

That was a bold topic for director Otto Preminger to take on in 1962, though the portrayal of gay men isn't exactly progressive. The senator's trip to New York to find his old lover turns into a descent into Dante's inferno, with a parade of effeminate man-boys and a nightclub full of tilted wrists and gay Lotharios. (One of the oldest cruelties inflicted against homosexual men is the mythology that they're attracted to essentially every straight guy they meet.)

Still, the film is clear in pointing out that it's not the senator's affair that constitutes a great sin, but the way it's used against him by a political rival to torture his wife and family life, eventually spurring him to take his own life in his senate office.

"Advise & Consent," written by Wendell Mayes based on the novel by Allen Drury, was not considered a particularly successful film at the time. It got middling reviews, so-so box office, and failed to receive any Academy Award nominations -- though Laughton got a BAFTA nomination and Burgess Meredith won the award for supporting actor from the National Board of review for his portrayal of a dim, easily-manipulated former associate of Leffingwell.

It's too bad, because I thought it a terrific political thriller chocked full of top-notch performances. In writing the Reeling Backward column for almost five years now (!), I've often encountered supposedly great movies that I found to be undeserving of their reputations -- and enjoyed taking them down a peg or five. Even more rewarding, however, is discovering an amazing picture that has, for one reason or another, largely been forgotten.

Leffingwell is played by Henry Fonda in typical upright straight-man mode, who lies about his leftist associations during the confirmation hearings, and then immediately confesses to the president (Franchot Tone) and requests that his name be withdrawn. But the POTUS is dying, and wants to make sure his foreign policy gains are cemented under Leffingwell's able hand, since he -- and most everybody -- has a low opinion of his amiable vice president and successor, "Happy" Harley Hudson (Lew Ayres).

Ayres is wonderful in his small but pivotal role, giving Hudson a kind of self-effacing nobility. Being the vice president, he says only half-jokingly, "is a sort of disgrace, like living in a mansion with no furniture."

Ostensibly the star of the picture, Fonda is actually pretty peripheral to the story, other than the extended sequence where he testifies before the subcommittee, and later interrogates and discredits the Meredith character. He's less a fully fleshed character than an ideal, a New Age man who believes in laying aside the "outworn" policies of treating the Soviets as implacable enemies to be destroyed.

This positions him in opposition to the prideful Cooley, in addition to a vague dust-up between the two years earlier. Seab is a master manipulator, offended that Leffingwell's nomination is poised to upset the genteel comity of the Senate, turning it into  "a cockpit of angry emotion" -- nevermind that he's the one who will be doing most of the antagonizing. Even the way Seab pronounces the name seems distasteful to him, as if he's being mocked -- "laughing well."

Even if he's a self-aggrandizing egomaniac, Seab is at least demonstrated to have some redeeming qualities in the end. That can't be said for Fred Van Ackerman, a junior senator who charges himself with being Leffingwell's main defender. Played by George Grizzard, Van Ackerman is a small, effeminate man/boy who always keeps a cadre of silent gray-suited men around him, dubbing them his "brain trust."

They also carry out his dirty work, like threatening the Mormon senator, Brigham Anderson, charged with shuttling Leffingwell's nomination through the process. When Anderson learns of Leffingwell's perjury, he refuses to pass him through. He ends up trapped between his conscious and the threats to his family, and he wilts under the pressure. This is actually the weakest part of the film, as it's given too much screen time and sucks much of the momentum out of the political intrigue, which is where the real juice is.

I also enjoyed Walter Pidgeon as Bob Munson, the patrician Senate Majority Leader, who tries to be accomodating as possible to the various whims and outsized personalities of his coalition. Gene Tierney has a small role as his political patron and secret girlfriend, and Peter Lawford turns up as a womanizing senator with a trick or two up his sleeve.

All of these figures are the same political party as the president, though which is never explicitly stated. The film came out in 1962 but seems very much a product of 1950s mentality. It's interesting, though, that this is the rare political film where the opposition party never really comes into play. Most such films make the primary villain a member of the opposite party, such as the similarly themed "The Contender" from 2000.

The film is also notable for portraying the White House Correspondents Dinner, quite possibly the first mainstream movie to do so. Then as is now, it's depicted as a chummy affair where politicians and press agree to treat everything off-the-record, yet somehow a lot of news always ends up getting made. The president uses the occasion to castigate his foes and affirm his support for Leffingwell.

The final sequence, building up to and featuring the roll call vote for Leffingwell's nomination, is a master class in cinematic tension. The prospects for Leffingwell rise and recede, even as the names are called one after another. Munson would seem to have marshaled his forces and have it in the bag, but then some last-minute events throw everything into doubt.

I'm not quite sure why "Advise & Consent" was not greeted more enthusiastically at the time. To me it's a first-rate political drama with a bunch of terrific actors letting it fly. It wasn't the first or last of its kind, but it is one of the best I've seen.

Reeling Backward: "Magic" (1978)

"Magic" is one of those good movies that, for whatever reason, saw its reputation fade as the years went by. It got good reviews and box office when it came out in 1978, and arrived right around the beginning of the horror film boom of the late '70s and 1980s. But it didn't have the lasting cultural impact of, say, "Halloween," which came out the same year.

It's probably a mistake to toss "Magic" into the horror bin, since it's more a psychological portrait of a deranged mind than a movie whose primary vocation is to scare you. Certainly, director Richard Attenborough and screenwriter William Goldman (who adapted his own novel) are not names associated with cheap slasher flicks.

Still, it features a lot of the same tropes of horror films, and what fame it does have is usually framed in terms of Anthony Hopkins' performance as a creepy precursor to that in "Silence of the Lambs." And, of course, the kicker ending is in the classic horror mold -- giving the audience a final thrill while setting up the possibility of a sequel (wisely left unmade).

For the movie Hopkins had to learn a number of difficult skills: magic tricks with cards, coins, and of course ventriloquism. His work with the puppet Fats -- a leering, oversexed, R-rated version of his character's own crushingly repressed id -- is so good, in fact, that we wonder if there wasn't a little help from the sound looping department.

Hopkins' lips and teeth barely seem to move at all, and if it weren't for a slight tremor under the jawline, I'd chalk it up to Hollywood trickery.

Voice has often seemed an important element to Hopkins' body of work, much more so than most actors. The flat, metallic sound he gave Hannibal Lecter reflected the timbre of a man who had barely spoken for more than a decade (mostly because he deemed his few visitors unworthy of his speech). Hopkins is also known to be a really good mimic -- including dubbing the lines of the late Laurence Olivier for the restored footage of "Spartacus."

Here he employs a high, reedy tone that tip-toes right up to the edge of being shrill. For the dummy, it jumps whole hog right into screechy. In this sense the way Fats sounds parallels his looks, which are meant as a crude caricature of his partner's own visage.

Hopkins plays Corky Withers, a failed apprentice magician whose first attempt to appear on stage is a horrible disaster. The story opens with him relating the tale of his bombing in flashback to his dying mentor. The old man advises him that since he lacks anything like charisma or showbiz flair, he needs a gimmick.

Flash to a year later, and Corky is on the verge of hitting it big, playing sold out performances and appearing several times on "the Carson show." He has now incorporated Fats into the act, using him to tell off-color jokes and operate as his own personal court jester, hurling insults and put-downs at the guy working his levers.

His own TV show is in the works, and eel-ish agent Ben Greene (Burgess Meredith) advises him that the only formality is a medical exam. This sends Corky running off into hiding, leaving New York City for his hometown in the Catskills. It appears he knows the doctors would conclude something is wrong with his head, so he doesn't give them a chance.

There he hooks up with his old high school love interest, Peggy Ann Snow (Ann-Margret), whom he never had the courage to approach when they were youngsters. Now trapped in an unhappy marriage to a brute (Ed Lauter), she at first resists Corky's overtures -- played mostly through Fats' persona, who can flirt and cajole while Corky can't get past a stammer.

Ann-Margret has verve and sass, and seems to exist as a thinking, independent character who isn't just there to be acted upon by the male protagonist. That wasn't always an assured thing in the 1970s (or now).

Attenborough and Goldman tease the audience with the possibility of something supernatural going on with Fats -- that he's actually a sentient being who only plays the part of a ventriloquist's dummy. On a couple of occasions we seem to catch his head moving on its own, but it's always in the corner of the screen and/or out of focus.

Of course, the most glaring evidence is when Fats stabs Peggy Ann's husband to death with a switchblade -- it's shot to suggest that the dummy is wielding the knife. But we can see it's a human hand holding the blade, and after the man falls dead, dragging Fats to the ground with him, the curtain behind where the dummy was sitting parts to reveal Corky.

The point is that while Fats isn't really alive, Corky thinks he is. Their ongoing conversations with each other are actually symptoms of a split personality, or at least a manifestation of Corky's darker instincts. (Of course, this doesn't explain the ending, where Peggy Ann starts talking in a voice similar to Fats', suggesting Corky's delusion has been passed on to her.)

One of the things I most liked about the movie was the distinction Corky makes between "magic" and "tricks." Tricks, to him, are a set-up -- something the magician has arranged in advance with special equipment or a volunteer who's in on the gag. Corky insists that he performs magic, which he defines as simply a skill that has been practiced and honed so that it appears to be extraordinary.

Fats, for his part, tells Peggy Ann that "Corky does magic. I just do tricks," emphasizing the opposition between their warring personalities. In essence Fats is Corky's trick, the prop he uses to get the audience to pay attention to his magic act, which otherwise wouldn't impress them.

I haven't read Goldman's book, but I wonder if it explores the process of how Corky evolved from nobody loser to huge ventriloquism success. My guess is no.

It's merely supposition, but if I were to fill in the blanks for Corky's missing year, I would say he forced himself to sell out his purist magic principles by adopting the cheapest, moldiest carny sideshow trick: the ventriloquist dummy. Self-hatred drove him to endow the object of his parallel success and degradation with seething hatred.

Here's one thing I know: I would've loved to have seen the Corker & Fats television show.

"Magic" is a very good and borderline terrific proto-horror film that showcases Anthony Hopkins at his nervy best. Hopefully the movie can conjure up a new generation of admirers.

Reeling Backward: "Of Mice and Men" (1939)

I've always felt that the characters of John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" were more allegories for different facets of humanity rather than believable, flesh-and-blood people.

It's pretty obvious, for example, that the gigantic man-child Lennie Small represents the undeveloped id -- pure, innocent, harmless in thought but capable of an instinctual lashing out at those who hurt him. Lon Chaney Jr., not yet typecast as the monster in endless creature features, made Lennie an iconic character whose rolling speech patterns and fumbling charm would influence generations of portrayals on stage and screen.

His partner, George Milton, is the common man who yearns for a better life away from back-breaking ranch work bucking bales for some uncaring boss. He and Lennie share a dream of owning their own stake, a little place where they can "live off the fat of the land." As played by Burgess Meredith, George is resolute but not stubborn, clever but not calculating, doesn't look for a fight but doesn't back away from one, either.

Curley, the pugnacious son of the boss, is fiercely protective of his beautiful new wife, and has a chip on his shoulder the size of the moon -- particularly against big men like Lennie. Short-statured but a former semi-pro boxer, Curley (Bob Steele) is in some ways Lennie's shadowy reflection -- impulsive, instinctual, vindictive. He never seems to think more than one step ahead of his actions. He can only hold a few thoughts in his head at time, mostly blind rage and jealousy, in much the same way Lennie is fixated on small soft creatures and objects he can stroke.

Both men are singular in purpose -- Lennie to adore, and Curley to despise.

Curley's wife -- played by Betty Field and credited as Mae, though she's only known in the book as "Curley's wife" -- is deathly bored by life on the ranch. Without anything to do or anyone to talk to, she takes to flirting with and teasing the ranch hands, knowing full well it will send Curley into another rage and have him giving "the old one-two" to some unlucky employee.  We suspect that even though Curley's wife expresses disgust for all the fights she causes, she secretly harbors joy for holding the center of attention.

From the 1939 film, I'm most intrigued by Slim (Charles Bickford), the mule skinner and "prince of the ranch." Slim is looked up to by all the other ranch hands, and is the one man Curley dares not provoke. He takes an instant liking to George and Lennie, though he's careful not to show favoritism. Slim is the only character who understands that George kills Lennie out of love and pity, after he oafishly breaks Curley's wife's neck when she foolishly invited him to stroke her hair.

For me, Slim's critical moment comes in the showdown between Carlson (Granville Bates), a crusty older worker, and Candy (Roman Bohnen), the one-handed old man. Carlson can't stand the stink of Candy's ancient, decrepit dog, calling it a travesty to keep the animal alive when it's no use to itself. Candy is deeply attached to the animal, perhaps his only true friend in the world, and looks to Slim to defend him.

But Slim admits it's probably for the best that the dog be put down, and Candy allows Carlson to take it outside and shoot it in the back of the head -- the same way George will later kill Lennie, and for much the same reasons.

Slim, I think, represents the best of mankind, the rational and upstanding side, that nevertheless often stands aside and lets evil come to pass. The natural state of humanity is to be kind to each other, Steinbeck says -- holding George and Lennie up as an imperfect example -- until the twisted selfishness and moral rot represented by, respectively, Curley and his wife warps the way things were intended.

Slim, unafraid to stare down Curley and defend his own reputation, is reluctant to interfere when others become a target. It's an old-school notion of virility, in which a man must stand up for himself, or he's worthless. Slim allows the brewing trouble between Curley and Lennie to boil over not because he's afraid, but because he believes it's not his business to get involved.

It's interesting how the reputation of this film has waned and peaked over time. Directed and produced by Lewis Milestone from a screen adaptation by Eugene Solow, it received four Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. It was the first major film adaptation of a Steinbeck property, rushed into theaters before 1940's "The Grapes of Wrath," which went on to enjoy a much more hallowed reputation.

The 1939 version saw something of a revival in the 1970s and '80s, including a stage adaptation at the Steppenwolf Theatre starring Gary Sinise and John Malkovich, which they would go on to reprise in a 1992 film directed by Sinise. Still, other than Lon Chaney's portrayal of Lennie, his film has faded in memory, and unfairly so.

Aaron Copland's evocative musical score -- his first for a feature film -- was also nominated for the Academy Awards.

3.5 stars out of four