Reeling Backward: "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" (1957)

"Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" is something of a forgotten relic, despite being nominated for two Academy Awards and the presence of some very high-wattage talent, including stars Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr and writer/director John Huston. It's a solid World War II adventure/romance flick that served as a precursor to "Cast Away" and other stories about characters surviving in isolation, though it hasn't aged particularly well.

Mitchum is generally regarded as one of Hollywood's greatest talents, if one who was somewhat under-acknowledged during his career -- including by himself, who often made dismissive comments about his abilities or the acting craft in general. Kerr, on the other hand, was widely regarded as one of the premier actresses of her day, as her six Oscar nominations (including one for this film) attest. Losing six times, she eventually was given an honorary Oscar.

I should note, however, that like many female performers before and after her, Kerr's career as a film star waned sharply starting around age 45 -- an almost magical number that serves to delineate the trajectory of everyone from Julia Roberts to Susan Sarandon. Some do successfully extend an ongoing career roll past this unfortunate sell-by date (e.g., Sandra Bullock), or come back from a lull stronger than ever (Meryl Streep).

Still, it's the rare film actress who enjoys a sustained career arc of undimmed popularity from their 30s to 60s, as untold male counterparts have -- Harrison Ford, Charleton Heston, Cary Grant, Paul Newman, to name just a few.

Based on the novel by Charles Shaw and adapted by Huston and John Lee Mahin, "Allison" is the tale of the title character, a meathead career Marine whose rubber raft washes up on a lonely island in the South Pacific after the submarine carrying his team was forced to submerge and strand them. (The movie was actually shot in Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, so as to take advantage of British film industry funding and tax revenue.)

There he finds a primitive village, completely deserted, but with a Western-built church atop the hill. There he stumbles across Sister Angela, a young nun in angelic white robes. She, too, has been stranded by her fellows. She and a priest came to the island to rescue another priest, but it turned out the Japanese had already attacked, capturing or killing everyone. Her companion died himself a few days later of old age and exertion.

The rest of the movie is the tale of their relationship as they struggle to survive and come to terms with their fate. Allison is natural-born survivor, the sort who could be plopped down most anywhere on the globe and find a way to get on. She's a bit more sheltered, but tougher than she seems.

Needless to say, they wind up developing romantic feelings for each other, and much of the tension is about whether she'll give in and forsake her vows, and if he'll ask -- or force -- her to.

They'd probably have stayed that way together, for months or years until the war ended, eating coconuts and breadfruit till they were rescued. But the Japanese take over the island, not once but twice, first as a tiny meteorological monitoring station, and later as a full-blown staging area holding thousands of enemy soldiers.

Allison and Sister Angela are forced to decamp to a well-hidden cave near the island summit, subsisting on whatever food they can pick, kill or steal from the Japanese. In one (over)long sequence, Allison sneaks into the enemy camp, armed only with his service knife, to pilfer some cans of food. He's cornered by a pair of Japanese in the supply depot, and must hide atop some bags of rice while they finish a long session of drinking sake and playing board games.

The Japanese leave as suddenly as they came, leaving behind a treasure trove of supplies -- not to mention some rather hefty-looking buildings that they apparently constructed in a day or two. Allison gets roaring drunk on the enemy booze and makes some vaguely threatening comments to Sister Angela about them being just like "Adam and Eve." Fearing a rape attempt, she runs off into the jungle, gets trapped in a downpour and falls deathly ill.

Allison nurses her back to health, but by now a major landing of Japanese have taken over the island again. (Fickle about their strategic deployments, they are.) Allison tries to steal supplies again but is forced to kill a soldier who discovers him, and it seems only a matter of time before they're captured or killed.

Narratively, there's not a whole lot going on in the movie. It's essentially just these two actors playing off each other. Kerr, not bothering to hide her natural-born Scottish brogue for this role, is a stalwart presence as a woman who has a strong sense of herself and her moral inner center. Even though she's attracted to Allison, we never really sense that she truly contemplates abandoning her faith for him. It's more a what-if temptation for her.

Mitchum is something of a conundrum, which Mitchum often was. Even in his most straightforward heroic roles, Mitchum always had an element of danger about his characterizations. Allison seems like a man playing a role as the tried-and-true Marine, though we later learn he had a scrappy, crime-filled upbringing as an orphan. Here is a man who has done bad things in his life and set them aside, but appears capable of going back to them if needs be.

Huston and Mahin received their own Academy Award nomination for their screenplay, which is essentially a character study set against a war-romance backdrop.

Mitchum was just shy of 40 when this movie came out, his famous 48-inch chest starting to fall southward, sucking in his gut mightily in his own imitable way during a few shirtless scenes. With his barrel chest and broad shoulders, wide cheekbones and pointed chin, Mitchum resembled one inverted triangle perched atop another.

I also chuckled to myself at how this man who seemingly never gets to bathe or visit a barber always has perfectly coiffed hair.

Kerr is almost completely covered head to toe in her habit, though during her illness sequence we discover that she did indeed shear her famous red locks close to her head in the traditional nun style. That's a pretty brave move for a single scene -- possibly it's a wig, but it looks authentic.

I enjoyed "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison," which is a great-looking film featuring a pair of immensely charismatic stars. It's not remembered as a great film, which it isn't, but it certainly deserves more of a reputation than it has.

Reeling Backward: "The Night of the Iguana" (1964)

James Garner was offered the lead role in "The Night of the Iguana" but said it was "too Tennessee Williams for me." I understand what he was talking about.

Stage-to-screen translations are often handicapped from the get-go. There's the feeling of being severely bookended -- both with locations and the number of characters. It's OK for a play to stay stuck in one place with a handful of people for a couple of hours, but movies tend to get claustrophobic if they aren't on the move.

Then there's Williams himself, whose plays tended to focus on lost, pitiable souls who struggle to articulate their own despair. Sometimes the film versions, some of them scripted by Williams himself, soared on the strength of the cast and direction -- "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," "Streetcar Named Desire." But with "Iguana" it often feels like the story is caught in an eddy, swirling about itself without ever going anyway.

The main character, the Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon (Richard Burton), is a youngish man of the cloth whose ability to withstand temptations of the flesh is, shall we say, lacking. In the two decades since he was ordained he was without a parish to call his own for all but a single year, and his one stint as a pastor comes to a crashing end when he diddles with an underage girl of his flock. In the opening scene he suffers a near-breakdown from the pulpit, denouncing the worshipers for judging him, and literally chases them out of the church.

Flash to two years later, and Shannon is now working in Mexico as a guide for Blake Tours, a bargain-basement outfit catering to religious types. His current gig isn't going so well. As they pull into the coastal town of Puerto Vallarta -- a name made famous by this film; a statue of director John Huston still resides in the village square -- Shannon is being henpecked by Miss Fellowes, the domineering head of a group of Baptist women teachers.

Fellowes doesn't like Shannon because she senses the lecherous personality beneath Shannon's gentle facade. Her suspicions aren't unfounded -- her winsome teenage niece is played by Sue Lyon, who had the title role in "Lolita," and plays a similar part here as a teenage temptress. Shannon tries to hold off the girl's advances, but not very hard.

Fellowes is played by Grayson Hall, who earned an Oscar nomination for the role, though I find this style of screechy, google-eyed overacting hard to swallow. Late in the going it's suggested Miss Fellowes is a "butch" who secretly desires the girl for herself, though the harridan is too self-deluded to admit this to herself.

This is notable in of itself, to have a fairly overt reference to homosexuality in a mainstream 1964 film. There's also an explicit reference to smoking marijuana, though it's not depicted.

Anyway, Shannon's dalliance is discovered and Fellowes declares her intention to have him fired. So he hijacks the bus and takes them to the Costa Verde Hotel, a rundown little place up the beach run by an old friend of his, Fred. He confiscates the bus' distributor cap and dumps the old biddies there, since he thinks there is no phone and thus now way to contact his employer.

Alas, Fred has died, and one of his last acts was getting telephone lines run up the steep hill to the hotel. Shannon responds by getting good and drunk and waiting for the axe to fall.

The Costa Verde is now run by Maxine (Ava Gardner), Fred's widow, who is a real piece of work. She espouses a carefree attitude but has a short temper and plenty of vim left in her. An aging beauty, Maxine felt abandoned by her much-older husband the last few years, and took to openly consorting with her two cabana boys -- a pair of shirtless, perpetually smiling young studs who constantly hang around, rarely speaking, occasionally helping out the guests or the proprietress with luggage, or any other needs.

Maxine never wears any shoes or seems bothered by anything, but it soon becomes clear she's carried a torch for Shannon for a long time. She finds him pathetic but adorable, a man-boy who has regular crack-ups about twice a year, and clearly needs someone to look after him. And this is a woman who desperately needs some fun in her life.

Some unexpected competition for Shannon's attention arrives in the form of Hannah Jelkes (Deborah Kerr), an English portrait artist who travels the globe with her 97-year-old grandfather, whom she calls Nonno (Cyril Delevanti) and introduces as the world's oldest practicing poet.

Of course, it's been 20 years since Nonno last composed a poem, and the two are essentially well-bred vagabonds who fritter around, peddling their artistic services -- her portraits and his recitations -- in exchange for food and lodging.

If Maxine is a piece of work, then Miss Jelkes is an even odder bird. Her prim manners and reserved disposition resemble those of a missionary, and in some ways that is her role in the film -- to show up and minister to the troubled heathens. Jelkes has a very firm grip on who she is and what her shortcomings are, and seems not at all troubled by her current hardships.

"Nothing human disgusts me, Mr. Shannon, unless it’s unkind or violent," she says.

Things go on from there. Miss Fellowes and her flock of biddies, having successfully detached Shannon from Blake Tours, depart for more sightseeing, and we're left with Shannon, Maxine and Jelkes to figure out the dynamic between them. Jelkes offers counsel to the suicidal Shannon -- though, as Maxine correctly surmises, it's halfway playacting; the man has an inveterate theatricality about him.

There's some splendid acting in "The Night of the Iguana," particularly Kerr and Gardner. I found Burton to be a twitchy, sweaty mess, a whole lot of behavior substituting for a character.

Hanging around with this crew is like being trapped at an annoying party you can't leave. You might wander into a semi-interesting conversation or two, but in the end it feels like time wasted.

Reeling Backward: "The Misfits" (1961)

"The Misfits" is a film about endings -- both thematically and in the real lives of the cast and crew.

It was the final film for both Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, and many observers have deemed their respective performances the finest of their careers. I'd have to agree about Monroe, certainly with regards to her non-comedic work, though I haven't seen a large enough portion of Gable's movies to make such a dispositive statement.

He would suffer a heart attack just two days after production wrapped -- some contend because the 59-year-old insisted on doing the strenuous stunts contained in the movie himself, including wrestling a bucking mustang stallion and being dragged on the ground up to 30 miles per hour. Gable died a few days later, an icon for three decades during his life and many more after.

Monroe lingered on for another 19 months, descending further into her spiral of drugs and self-torment. Co-star Montgomery Clift, his own career derailed by substance abuse and a car wreck that required reconstructive facial surgery, would make only three more films before perishing at age 45, the denouement of what's been called "the longest suicide" in showbiz.

And the marriage between Monroe and Arthur Miller dissolved during the course of filming, as he continually rewrote the screenplay while he and director John Huston wrestled over their conceptions for the movie. One of Hollywood's oddest marital pairings ended in divorce shortly before "The Misfits" premiered. Monroe was often late to the set or a complete no-show, and at one point production ground to a halt during her two-week hospital stay.

And yet the old Hollywood proverb -- that pleasant productions result in disappointing final results, while tumultous shoots produce some of the medium's best works -- holds true with "The Misfits." It is a glorious, brave, imperfect portrait of flawed people yearning for freedom and respect, but pulled by the primal urges of love, lust and pride to trap themselves in cages of their own crafting.

The movie's story, and its method of storytelling, also stand on the doorstep of changeover from the dependable "old way" to a risky, grittier new. The tale centers on modern day (for 1961) Nevada, emblematic of a frontier life that is not disappearing, but disappeared. Aging, antediluvian cowboys stubbornly try to eke out an existence based on a fierce sense of individuality they know only from adolescent wanderings and John Wayne movies.

Huston and Miller embraced a mode of filmmaking that was less about laying down a spotlighted runway carpet of plot than creating indelible characters, throwing them into a pot together and seeing what comes out of their simmering emulsions. It's no surprise "The Misfits" is the sort of movie Method actors were drawn to, where the performances drive the story rather than the other way round. Clift, Monroe and co-star Eli Wallach all studied with the Strasbergs.

Monroe was often dismissed as a sex object, but in "The Misfits" she literally is one. Roslyn Tabor, recently divorced and emotionally fragile, is like a butterfly in a meadow full of predators. All the men she meets desire her physically, and all three of the male main characters fall in love with her. She is aware of her sexual power, has used it in the past to her benefit, but now it's become a burden she'd rather cast off.

It reminds me of what Hannibel Lecter said about another killer in the book and movie "The Silence of the Lambs." What is his first principle, i.e. what is the essence of his being? He covets. Roslyn is the flip side of that equation: her existence is defined by being coveted.

"Celebrating" her divorce with her older, jaded companion Isabelle (Thelma Ritter), Roslyn bumps into Gay Langland (Gable) and Guido, a pair of itinerant cowboys who believe God's country is their bequest, and freedom their daily manna. On a whim, she hooks up with them and moves to Guido's cabin in the plains, where Gay becomes her lover, almost by default.

Guido is 40-ish, a WWII bomber pilot who was studying to be a doctor until his wife died on him. She was loyal and "uncomplaining as a tree," he says, and he clearly thinks Roslyn should be the second iteration of her. Guido is the smartest and most sensitive of the bunch, but something in him is like biting on tinfoil. "You could blow up the whole world and end up feeling sorry for yourself," Roslyn observes, hitting the mark square on.

Gay is much older, probably about Gable's actual age, but he's still virile and hard as creased leather. (Gable reportedly lost nearly 40 pounds for the role, which could have contributed to his health issues.) Freedom is his lifeblood and his mantra. To him, women are deceitful creatures always trying to trip him up and tie him down. The most dire insult a man can commit is to offer him a paying job.

"It's better than wages," Gay and his companions are often heard to say, with the clear implication that nothing much is worse.

And yet, Gay is willing to sacrifice his freedom, or at least a piece of it, in order to make Roslyn remain with him. He helps her plant a garden and fixes up Guido's half-finished house. What's more, he stays in once place for weeks and months, shrugging off the wanderlust that is his sword and shield.

The last addition to the group, almost like a lost puppy taken in from the storm, is Perce Howland (Clift), a young rodeo tough. His father died not long ago and his mother remarried a man he can't stand, so Perce (rhymes with "purse") is essentially a grown-up runaway. The family ranch was meant to be his, and when his stepfather offered him wages (!) to work on his own land, it was more than he could bear.

Perce is a living variation of the parable of the prodigal son, but instead of squandering his inheritance he worries about being cheated out of it. The life of a rancher is all Perce has ever aspired to, and he'd rather bust himself to pieces riding broncs and bulls than accept anything less than his full birthright.

Perce is touched when he is injured in a rodeo and Roslyn weeps for him. Empathy is a novel concept in his travels. Straightforward and simple-minded -- and possibly addled from so many blows to the head -- Perce is in many ways as much a symbol of purity as Roslyn. In truth she would be better living and loving him than either Gay or Guido, but Perce is too decent to even think of horning in on another man's gal. And she, despite her new-found independence, still wants a man to chase her.

Gay convinces the others to "go mustanging" -- chase down and corral a passel of the few remaining wild horses in Nevada and sell them off to a dealer. They used to roam the range by the thousands, but all they can gather up is one stallion, four mares and a colt -- barely enough to pay for their gas and a few dollars apiece. It takes more than crumbs to make a meal out of the glory days.

Further soiling the spirit of the Old West they embrace, Gay & Co. don't do their herding from horseback, but scatter the mustangs using Guido's dilapidated biplane and roping them from the back of a flat-bed truck, using old tires as anchors to wear them out.

For Roslyn, the final blow comes upon learning the mustangs will not be sold as riding animals -- Gay repeatedly praises the speed and  hardiness of the small horses -- but as meat for dog food. At this she flips out, cursing her "three sweet damned men" and swearing to have nothing to do with them ever again. "You're only happy when you can see something die!" she shrieks.

Eventually the horses are released -- after a showdown between the men where Gay nearly kills himself to prove that no one can make up his mind for him. He's been living in a cloud of self-delusion, wearing his mantle as a the carefree cowboy like armor. Gay resolves to give up the wild life and settle down with Roslyn.

With the passing of Gay and his ilk, the film suggests, America is forced to pull the shroud over the ideal of a land of limitless opportunity, where men and women can forge their own idea of what it means to be happy and free.

And in the end, that's what "The Misfits" is about: The death of the cowboy.

4 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "High Sierra" (1941)

I've seen probably three dozen Humphrey Bogart movies in my lifetime, and no matter what his part in it is, the experience always affects me the same way.

I spend the next couple of days unconsciously talking through my teeth in a fast, low patter. I imagine walking around with a .45 automatic tucked into my belt, and pistol-whipping any wiseguys who ticked me off.

That's the thing about the great iconic stars -- we instinctively want to like them, and be like them.

So what intrigued me while watching 1941's "High Sierra" is why we end up liking Roy "Mad Dog" Earle so much. He is, after all, a hardened killer who slaps people around and guns down innocent people who get in his way. Just released from an Indiana prison on a pardon that was bought and paid for, Roy's a gray and grizzled veteran con man.

Rather than looking to go straight, Roy's only intention is to nail one last big score so he can retire. Big Mac, a dying mob boss, arranged for Roy's release so he can head up a big job to steal half a million in jewels from a California resort. Roy's been given a couple of pinhead small-timers as his wing men (Arthur Kennedy and Alan Curtis) and he's none too happy about it. He also isn't thrilled with having to hole up in a camp up in the mountains, waiting to get the word the job is a go.

So why do we root for Roy, so much so that when the cops are on his tail and he's got a box full of hot jewels, we want him to get away with it?

Perhaps it's Roy's misplaced love for Velma (a 16-year-old Joan Leslie), a poor girl with a club foot he meets along the road to Los Angeles. Velma's grandfather -- played by Henry Travers, forever Clarence the angel from "It's a Wonderful Life" -- takes an instant liking to what he senses is a kindred soul, for Roy used to be just another Midwestern farm boy before he became a notorious gangster.

Roy arranges for Velma to have an operation to fix her foot, which he pays for, with a mind to marry the girl half his age. I think Roy convinces himself he's in love with her, rather than because of any real connection they share. She's goodness incarnate, and he knows he's bad, and maybe he thinks being around her will rub off on him. Velma represents an ideal Roy strives for but can never attain.

The flip side of the female coin is Marie (Ida Lupino -- who actually got top billing over Bogie), a two-bit moll who falls hard for Roy, without getting much of anything in return. She was brought along by one of the two small-time crooks, who fight like dogs over her, until Roy sets them straight and takes the girl under his protective wing.

The other notable player is Pard, a scraggly little mutt who starts following Roy around at the mountain camp. Algernon, the black handyman at the camp, relates that everyone Pard has taken a shine to has died -- which obviously doesn't bode well for Roy. (Willie Best plays Algernon in a shiftless, google-eyed depiction of servitude that is outrageous even by 1941 standards.)

Incidentally, a lot of people have mistakenly thought that Pard was played by the same dog that played Toto in "The Wizard of Oz," but in fact it was Bogart's own pet, Zero. Hopefully the star negotiated a decent contract for his mutt.

The last act of "High Sierra" is the least interesting, as all the little pieces of the Production Code-era morality lesson fall into place.

The two small-timers buy it in a car crash, and the inside man from the resort squeals like a stuck pig, resulting in Roy's mugshot on the cover of every newspaper. Velma, fixed of the problem that saw her labeled a cripple, becomes a party girl who loves to dance and drink. Roy decides to get hitched with Marie as some sort of consolation prize for Velma, and she immediately starts behaving like a whiny rhymes-with-witch.

Their downfall is, of course, the mutt Pard, who gets recognized by a motel manager, putting the cops onto Roy's trail. Roy helps them by stupidly giving Marie all his money so she can take a bus to Las Vegas, forcing him to hold up a drugstore for gas money, which begins a high-speed pursuit that ends with Roy trapped in the high mountains.

Marie, rushing to the media hoopla over public enemy one being cornered, is given away by Pard, who runs barking up to Roy's hideout spot. Hearing the dog, and realizing Marie must be near, Roy comes out from cover long enough to be taken out by a sharpshooter with a scope rifle. Roy's careening fall down the mountain side is pretty graphic for its time.

"High Sierra" was directed by Raoul Walsh from a script by John Huston and W.R. Burnett, based on Burnett's novel. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to label it film noir, especially with all the sunny location shots, but it's an early and above-average example of the hard-boiled heist film.

And, of course, it's got Bogart, doing that unexplainable and inescapably magnetic Bogart thing he does.

3 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Across the Pacific"

Lord knows I have been called a persnickety purveyor of film. One of the reasons I didn't care for "Inglourious Basterds," beyond its astonishing unevenness, is the fact that the group of soldiers whose name the title bears appear onscreen for less than 20 minutes.

Call me old-fashioned, but I don't like it when movies double-cross their audience by purporting to be something that they aren't.

What, then, am I to make of a movie called "Across the Pacific" in which the Pacific Ocean is never glimpsed, let alone reached, forget about being crossed?

Actually, I quite liked it. It's a perfectly serviceable example of war propaganda film, made in 1942 and set in the days before Pearl Harbor. Humphrey Bogart plays a disgraced Army captain traveling aboard a Japanese ship who falls into also sorts of Nipponese intrigue.

It was directed by the great John Huston... well, partially. He had to leave during filming for his own military stint. Vincent Sherman finished things up. Mary Astor plays the mysterious woman whom Bogie bumps into on the ship and pitches woo.

I'm not really sure why they titled it "Across the Pacific," other than "Journey to Panama" probably was less likely to stir up American audiences to patriotically fork over their money for an admission ticket to see the evil Japanese get their comeuppance. But, in point of fact, Bogart boards a ship in the eastern seaboard, and only makes it as far as Colon -- the eastern side of the Panama Canal -- before the film reaches its conclusion.

Seen today, the movie is mostly interesting for its depiction of the Japanese during the war. Considering the movie was made only months after the sneak attack on Pearl, about a nation and people at which the country was actively engaged in warfare, it's fairly even-handed stuff.

Most of the Japanese crew and other characters are played by actual Japanese actors. Some of them speak in an offensive pigeon English accent, but others -- such as an amiable fellow passenger named Joe Totsuiko, speak it at least as well as Bogart. Although Joe wears coke-bottle-thick glasses, which was a common stereotype of the Japanese during that era.

There is one ship's concierge with a difficult-sounding name, whom Bogie immediately dubs Should Be.

Longtime Bogart nemesis Sydney Greenstreet plays Dr. Lorenz, a professor of sociology at a Philippine university and avowed admirer of Far East cultures. Turns out he's actually a spy for the Japanese, looking to find out about military defenses at the Canal, which his allies hope to take out at the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Bogart plays the patsy, Rick Leland, who has just been drummed out of the Army for embezzling. He was stationed at the Canal and knows the military set-up.

The audience is left to think Leland really is a rat for a while, but before long we're brought wise to the fact that he's a double-agent. His court martial was ginned up to ingratiate him with Lorenz.

Astor plays Alberta Marlow, a girl traveling the world for purposes that aren't made clear until the very end. I rather liked the Bogart-Astor pairing -- it's quite snippy in a charming way. They end up insulting each other most of the time, and she gives at least as good as she gets.

There's one really funny bit where Leland saves Lorenz from a would-be assassin, and the old doctor mentions that he carries a gun for protection, showing him a small automatic. Leland takes out his fat .45 (probably Army issue) and holds it next to Lorenz' weapon and says, "Hey, mine's bigger than yours."

Even in 1942, filmmakers loved a good dick joke.

3 stars

Reeling Backward: "Fat City"

There's a certain type of movie that had its heyday in the late 1960s and '70s, in which story and plot were subservient to character and mood. The film really isn't interested in going anywhere in the traditional sense; it just wants to explore a certain setting and group of people.

Sometimes the results are wonderful, such as "Five Easy Pieces" with Jack Nicholson, but just as often these character-driven flicks can be self-indulgent and exasperating. Scenes will just ramble on and on, and it feels like the movie was made for the satisfaction of the actors appearing in it than any audience paying to watch it.

"Fat City" falls toward the former end of the scale. This boxing tale drags at times, but it's still a worthwhile exploration of how men behave in the ring, compared to how they act outside -- most importantly, in their relationships to women.

Director John Huston had one of those careers that is still talked about: Director, writer, even a late turn into acting that made him as iconic onscreen as the work he did behind the camera. His first film was "The Maltese Falcon," and he was still making vibrant movies right up until his death.

The 1972 movie is based on a book by Leonard Gardner, which he adapted for the screen himself. It's essentially about two boxers, one just starting out and the other past his prime, whose lives intersect but whose stories run mostly parallel.

Stacy Keach is Billy Tully, who's been out of boxing for two years and is looking to get back in. Billy is only 29 years old, but the cuts and the blows have whittled him down. He drinks a lot, not quite enough to call him a drunk, but he's on his way.

One day sparring in the gym he runs across Ernie Munger, an 18-year-old whom Billy immediately recognizes as a natural. He sends the kid to his old manager Ruben, played by Nicholas Colasanto, who would go on to be best known as "Coach" on the TV show "Cheers."

Ernie is played by Jeff Bridges, who himself is quietly having one of the great film acting careers. He plays Ernie as an earnest kid who's physically tough as nails, but is "soft in the center," as Billy drunkenly labels him.

Ernie lets other people choose his path for him. If it weren't for Billy's encouragement, he probably would never have walked into a boxing ring. When his girlfriend gets pregnant (Candy Clark), there's a great scene in his car where she steers him into marrying her, without it ever seeming like it was her idea. She also forces him to quit boxing for awhile, although he gets back into it by the film's end.

While basically a decent guy, Ernie is very much like Billy describes him: Tough on the outside, but with no core convictions, goals or even an identity beyond what other people provide for him.

Billy, meanwhile, just wants something solid to hold onto in this world. His wife dumped him when his boxing career petered out, and he's left to taking menial day jobs picking farm crops to get by. At a bar he runs into a woman who continually mouths off to her boyfriend, a black man who abides her verbal abuse stoically. This is Oma, played by Susan Tyrrell, who would earn an Oscar nomination for her abrasive performance.

One of the notable things about "Fat City" is the way people of different races mingle without any seeming static about it. The town of Stockton, California, where the film takes places, is a cornucopia of whites, blacks, Latinos and Asians. But no one looks askance at Oma dating a black man.

When Oma's man is sent to jail, Billy gloms onto her, even though it's clear this is a person whose ambitions end at getting out of bed for a cream sherry. "You can count on me," he tells her repeatedly, and it's obvious that Billy is attracted to the idea of being important to someone, rather than any real connection between them.

Keach and Tyrrell's scenes do tend to ramble a bit. There's one bit where he's cooking her dinner, which she refuses to eat, and then when she does decide to eat he won't allow her to have any, etc. I'm sure this is the sort of scene that actors live for, with an organic texture and lots of big emotions to fling around. As a viewer, I kept waiting for the editor to assert himself.

There's only a few boxing scenes in "Fat City," since as I say I don't think that's where the movie's real heart lies. They're pretty convincing, in that they look real boxing matches where there are a flurry of punches, few of which land cleanly. Billy's big comeback bout is interesting, because it's against a Mexican puncher whom Ruben fears is too good for Billy's first match in two years.

The opponent, Lucero, quietly arrives in town with his hat and small suitcase, and seems to be nursing some kind of serious stomach ailment. Billy immediately senses this in the ring, but Ruben advises him to fight conservatively. After the match -- which Billy wins, barely -- Lucero quietly collects his money and leaves the arena as the lights go out. It's a sad, almost wordless portrait of the journeyman professional athlete, whose body is his currency, carefully rationed and leveraged.

"Fat City" may meander like a lazy river, and sometimes gets stuck in eddies of its own making. But for the most part I enjoyed swirling around with these characters for awhile.

3 stars

Reeling Backward: "The Asphalt Jungle"

Was there ever a film noir as dour and cynical as "The Asphalt Jungle"? Was there ever an anti-hero as hard-boiled as Sterling Hayden's Dix Handley?

I think the answer to both questions is a resounding "no."

Director John Huston's 1950 masterpiece is a vision of grime and human depravity. The main character is a hooligan who kills quickly and without remorse, and seems indifferent to the girl who is clearly in love with him. And yet, he's the closest thing to a redeemable character in the picture.

What's most striking about the film is how criminals are portrayed as professionals with a job to do, not necessarily evil people who enjoy inflicting hurt. Made during a time when the Production Code decreed that criminals always had to be shown getting their comeuppance, Huston's depiction of cops and crooks caught in the same shadowy underworld ot temptation was practically an open rebellion.

No one in "Jungle" is shown as being purely evil. Sure, Dix is a Kentucky farmboy-turned street muscle, but his dream is to buy back the family horse farm they had to give up in the Depression. "Doc" Erwin Riedenschneider (Same Jaffe, in an Oscar-nominated performance) is the criminal mastermind who goes about his work with utter professionalism and respect for his peers. Doc is a jewel thief with the demeanor of a lab scientist.

His scheme for a big jewel heist is funded by a respectable lawyer, Lon Emmerich (Louis Calhern). Except for one problem -- Emmerich is broke himself, the price of leading a double life with a high-cost girlfriend who must be kept in gin and furs. She's played by Marilyn Monroe in one of her first substantial screen roles, already displaying the legendary sex appeal that would propel her to fame, and limit her career.

Marc Lawrence has an effective turn as Cobby, the small-time bookie who'd like to break into the big time, and acts as go-between for Emmerich. The attorney's plan is to use Cobby's dough to finance the heist, then make off with the goods himself, with the help of a lowlife private investigator played by Brad Dexter.

Rounding out the cast are James Whitmore as Gus, Dix's hunchback friend and an occasional wheel man, when he's not running the local greasy spoon diner. And Jean Hagen plays the dame, whose name is literally Doll. (At first, I thought that was just what Dix was calling her, but no, that's her actual name.) Doll's had some hard luck herself, and is crashing at Dix's place when he gets the call to join Doc's crew.

As Dix, Hayden is a pastiche of icy glares and jawboned dialogue that tumbles out of his mouth like he has contempt for every word. Hayden was an interesting Hollywood iconoclast: He began his life as a sailor, and fell into acting because he thought it was easy, and paid well. He made little attempt to conceal his contempt for the acting craft, which cost him jobs later on in his career. I read somewhere that Hayden was supposed to play the role of Captain Quint in "Jaws," but Robert Shaw took over because of Hayden's tax trouble.

The robbery goes well at first, but an increasing number of complications keep cropping up. After Emmerich's double-cross fails, Doc and Dix are on the run with a bag full of jewels and no fence to pay them.

Doc's capture by the police is one of the all-time great scenes in crime movies. Doc has a weakness for girls, and had planned to use the money to retire to Mexico in luxury. He makes it out of the city -- the film is set in an unnamed Midwest metropolis, possibly Cincinnati, where it was partially shot -- and seems to have gotten away. While resting in a roadside diner, he spies a teen girl who's upset that the two boys she's with have run out of nickels for the jukebox. He offers her a couple dollars worth so he can sit awhile and watch her provocative dancing. Meanwhile, some cops spy him through the window and arrest him when he comes out.

Doc's questioning of one of the police men about how long they had been waiting for him is poignant, since it's clear that if he hadn't delayed to satisfy his lust, he could have gotten away.

Every man has a weakness, the message of the film seems to be, and the jungle of the modern city acts as a pressure cooker to bring out their worst instincts. Dix says he can't wait to get back to Kentucky so he can wash the dirt of the city off of him.

Huston wrote the script with Ben Maddow, based on the book by W.R. Burnett. There's a great line of dialogue where Emmerich is talking about how people treat criminals as a lower form of humanity than "respectable" people like himself. "They're not so different. After all, crime is merely a left-handed form of human endeavor."

The irony that the lowly professional criminals hold up their end of the bargain, and the eminent lawyer is the one who louses things up with his dirty scheming, is tasty indeed.

4 stars