Reeling Backward: "The Sundowners" (1960)

"The Sundowners" was a financial flop in the U.S. but made bank in other parts of the world, especially Australia, where it was set and shot. Despite its lack of domestic box office, the film received critical acclaim and an impressive slate of Oscar nominations: best picture, director, screenplay, actress and supporting actress, winning none.

Like a lot of quality of pictures of that era, its reputation has unfortunately waned with the passing of years, to the point it straddles into the "forgotten films" category.

Robert Mitchum was a last-minute replace for an ailing Gary Cooper, reteaming with his "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" co-star, Deborah Kerr, even offering her top billing. They play a husband-and-wife team of sheep drovers wandering the early 20th century outback. The title from the 1952 novel by Jon Clearly refers to people who willingly wander without a home: they pitch their tent wherever the sun goes down.

(I should mention this movie bears no relation to a 1950 one with the same title, a cattle-rustling Western starring Robert Preston.)

Both Kerr and Mitchum employ workable Aussie accents, though Mitchum's has a tinge of the Irish, befitting his portrayal of fiercely independent Paddy Carmody. It's a little unclear if Paddy actually emigrated from Ireland; based on the accent I'd guess he's a first-generation natural born son. He still has a fondness for drinking, fighting, gambling and singing, which apparently every Irish in the history of cinema does.

I've noted before that Mitchum's characters almost always have an aspect of danger about them, but Paddy's no threat to anyone. His tragic flaw is his wanderlust, which compels him to always stay on the plains, driving sheep from here to there, taking seasonal jobs as a shearer or what have you when the cash in the family jelly jar starts to run low again.

After nigh on 20 years of this, though, the life has taken its toll on his wife, Ida. As she often did, Kerr plays a strong-headed, smart redhead who knows just how to deal with rough, gruff men while letting them operate under the delusion they're in charge. Though Paddy is a little less blinkered, occasionally referring to Ida as "boss" in front of other men.

Ida desperately wants to buy a farm and settle down. She's a woman of simple tastes: she desires a big kitchen with a real stove, something solid over their heads and a bit of security for their future. Though there's one terrific wordless scene where Ida is standing next to their wagon, windblown and sunburnt, and gazes enviously upon a woman in fine clothes sitting in a train powdering her nose. Their eyes lock for just a second.

But she's mostly thinking of their son, Sean (Michael Anderson Jr.), who is 15 going on... maybe 13. He's a quiet, respectful lad but is clearly being held back by his pop, who won't even let him ride drover with him, despite having the size and skills. Ida wants him to go to school, learn a trade, meet some girls, and otherwise scoot on down the road toward manhood.

As the story opens Paddy has accepted a commission to drove a large herd of sheep to Cawndilla. Because they only have one old horse they need to pull the wagon, they have to take on another drover with a couple of mounts for himself and Paddy. Conveniently they run into Rupert Venneker, a refined British gentleman played by the great Peter Ustinov. He offers to come along, mostly to escape the clutches of the woman he works for, who clearly would like to convert him from employee to husband.

Rupert is a benevolent but intemperate soul with an air of mystery he enjoys cultivating. Rumor has it he was once a nobleman with lands and a title, disgraced and exiled after some mishap. He himself cops to having once been a cavalryman in Her Majesty's army and an officer of a merchant vessel in the Far East. He's not that old, but seems to have soaked up several lifetimes' worth of world-weariness during his treks. Like Paddy, he prefers to be on the move.

Paddy and Rupert exchange a few tongue-lashings that are understandable given their difference in breeding, but despite appearances the latter is a competent horseman and they make it to Cawndilla, escaping a fast-moving forest fire in the process. They're prepared to part ways, but Ida convinces the men for them all to take jobs working the sheep-shearing season at a big local farm operation.

Rupert later refers to himself as the Carmody's pet, a dyspeptic creature with "a hard shell and a soft underbelly." He even falls in with the local pub owner, a lively widow named Mrs. Firth (Glynis Johns). Rupert repeatedly talks about how he knows one day he's going to break her heart when it's inevitably time to leave again. Until then, they enjoy lively nights together, with Rupert creeping back to the farm around dawn.

But when that fated day does arrive, it's Firth talking c'est la vie while Rupert owns the hangdog pout.

Much of the second half of the movie has to do with money. Ida carefully counts their growing savings, quietly maneuvering to put a down payment on a lovely farm they passed at the beginning of their journey. Paddy mostly plays along, as long as he can go into town with the boys every now and then to drink, sing old Irish ditties and lose a little money at "two-up," a popular coin-flipping game. He doesn't know about the farm plan, but he's cagey enough to figure out she's up to something.

Paddy gets roped into a shearing contest against another farm crew, and finds himself put up against a doddering 80-something fellow. But the movie goes sideways from expectations, as the strapping Paddy is laid low by the tireless oldster. Still, no one blames him for the loss and life goes on. In some ways this sequence best encapsulates the film's theme, which is that luck changes but relationships endure.

At one point Paddy has a massive winning streak at two-up, and not only do they have enough cash for the farm he also wins a thoroughbred racing horse. Soon Sean is recruited as jockey and they're winning races and more dough. But something's got to give, and it does.

Gorgeously directed by Fred Zinnemann with wonderful cinematography by Jack Hildyard, "The Sundowners" is part travelogue exposing the Australian outback, part adventure story and part family dramaturgy. Isobel Lennart provided the screenplay adaptation, and it's probably her best-remembered work apart from "Funny Girl." (For which, oddly, she did not receive an Oscar nod.)

It's an old-fashioned story with some modestly modernistic aspects, such as a fairly frank attitude toward sex for 1960. Kerr disrobes for a nighttime scene with her figure starkly outlined behind a backlit negligee, as Paddy talks admiringly of her curves. And it would be hard to suppose exactly what else Rupert would be up to during his nightly sojourns into Cawndilla.

The film ends on an ambiguous note, with the Carmodys losing their entire stake but cementing their love for each other, with Rupert as the add-on uncle/mate/sheepdog. Some things can't be counted, only embraced.

Reeling Backward: "No Highway in the Sky" (1951)

"No Highway in the Sky" was an early progenitor of the disaster flick genre, and quite possibly the first film ever made about a commercial airliner in peril. A quarter-century later, this sort of thing would become fodder for a movie-going public with a ferocious appetite for things that crash, burn, erupt or sink. Of course, then came the inevitable "Airplane" spoofs, followed by the whole thing coming full circle with modern plane disasters like "Red Eye," "Air Force One" and "Flightplan."

The latter picture most resembles "No Highway in the Sky," in that it's about a socially awkward scientist trying to convince everyone that the airplane is unsafe and must turn back, immediately. No captain every follows this advice, at least in the movies.

I imagine the film was quite bothersome to the nascent commercial airline companies when it came out in 1951, especially with that title explicitly contrasting the safety of the American highway to the dangerous, untested machines hurtling through the air. Within a few years flying would surpass driving as the preferred -- and safest -- mode of long-distance transportation. 

Jimmy Stewart plays Theodore Honey, a British scientist -- with a curiously absent English accent -- working for a large airline company, the Royal Aircraft Establishment. This is not exactly a plausible-sounding name for a real company, but then "No Highway in the Sky" is a pretty awful-sounding title, too. The film is based on the book by Nevil Shute, adapted for the screen by R.C. Sherriff, Oscar Millard and Alec Coppel, and helmed by journeyman director Henry Koster.

Honey is a widower who lives alone with his 12-year-old daughter Elspeth (Janette Scott), wears only one suit and can't remember the number of the apartment where he has lived for the past eight years. It's the classic cinematic genius archetype, his head so filled with physics and high-end mathematics that the mundane challenges of the workaday world leave him baffled.

Honey is running an experiment about the reliability of the tail section of the new "Reindeer" propeller airliner. He's convinced that metal fatigue will cause the tail to fall off after 1,440 hours of flight time, based on his calculations. One Reindeer already crashed under mysterious circumstances, and Honey is sure it was the tail section that caused it.

His experiment involves shaking a Reindeer tail in a laboratory to see if it'll snap off. Unfortunately, he's only allowed to run the vibrating machine for eight hours a day, due to noise complaints from the neighbors. It seems like Honey's only function is waiting around in that vast hangar, hoping the tail will split off.

He's recruited by a new forward-thinking company executive (Jack Hawkins) to fly out to the site of the Reindeer that crashed. Honey resists at first, saying that scientists must concern themselves with facts and not be swayed by the emotional factor of human lives and relationships. Indeed, Honey had not even told anyone about his theory that the tail sections will fall off until the exec questioned him about his work.

Honey has, in fact, never even flown on a plane before -- I enjoyed Stewart's gangly crab-walk up the boarding stairs, like a man suddenly plopped on the moon and told to traverse the foreign landscape. In fact, well into the flight he learns that the plane is in fact a Reindeer, and one of the oldest ones with more than 1,400 hours of flight time.

Honey appeals to the captain to turn back -- we already know how that ruena out -- and then turns his attentions to two women aboard the flight. Marjorie (Glynis Johns), a young and helpful stewardess (don't bark, that's what they called them then) tries to control the situation of a passenger causing a panic. The other is Monica Teasdale, played by the great Marlene Dietrich, a famous movie star. Because Honey's deceased wife adored Teasdale's pictures, he tries to warn her about their impending doom. The actress at first is put off by this strange man, but then puts faith in his analytical mind. When the plane lands without incident, though, she dismisses him.

Dietrich's character is really unessential to the story, but having her around jazzes things up. Dietrich -- 50 years old and without a line on her iconic face -- has a mesmerizing effect on any film, and her presence is used to good effect here.

Honey sabotages the plane by pulling up the landing gear while it's grounded, causing it to collapse and be destroyed. The last third or so of the movie is concerned with the aftershocks of this incident, in which Honey is accused of insanity and ineptitude. In an unlikely turn of events, Marjorie comes to live with Honey and his daughter, taking care of them during his travails.

The plot is pretty contrived hokum, even by the standards of a nascent airline industry that was uncharted territory for 1951 audiences. In the end, of course, Honey is proved right all along and vindicated.

The airline honchos, played by Hawkins and Ronald Squires, seem awfully accommodating to an oddball egghead whose ideas are threatening a major blow to their company's reputation and financial standing. As the inquiry commences and the pressure mounts, they're shown to be firmly in Honey's corner, if trying not to be too obvious about it. Perhaps my own encounters with the corporate world of late have left me cynical, but I doubt men in their position would be doing anything other than frantically covering their own tail sections.

I should note that the airplane is a model, both in its ground scenes and in the air, and not very convincing in either case. When Honey collapses the Reindeer, part of the engine tears open to reveal a hollow wooden frame. The passenger compartment and especially the cockpit are laughably cavernous -- the pilot and co-pilot are joined by no less than three other officers working their own stations along a corridor between the pilots' seats and the passenger cabin.

"No Highway in the Sky" is notable for its nascent depiction of both airline travel and disaster film dynamics. Unfortunately, it's not very skilled at executing either one.

2 stars out of four