Reeling Backward: "Bad Day at Black Rock" (1955)

There are no close-ups in "Bad Day at Black Rock," a film that deliberately keeps the characters at arm's length. Close-ups are sustenance to most film actors, who feel like mannequins put through their paces unless they get a chance to scowl and sob and seethe and otherwise use their marvelous faces to their full effect.

I imagine that acting in this film was like being on a forced diet.

"Bad Day" could be best described as a film noir Western. Director John Sturges started as an editor, then directed a lot of B-pictures until he broke into the A-list with this movie. He would go on to make "The Magnificent Seven," "The Great Escape" and "The Old Man and the Sea," among others.

The film has a very painterly quality, wide vistas filling in the backdrop as characters saunter and interact in the foreground. It's filled with bright desert colors, deep blues and browns, except for the main character who is a slab of black, like a null space in the middle of the frame.

Even if you haven't seen "Bad Day" you're probably aware of the premise. A one-armed stranger gets off a train in the middle of nowhere, a collection of a few shanties collectively known as Black Rock. It is the first time the train has stopped here in four years. His presence provokes strong resentment and suspicion among the townsfolk, especially after the newcomer starts poking around asking questions.

He doesn't say very much about himself, only giving his name -- John J. Macreedy -- and inquiring about the whereabouts of a local Japanese-American farmer named Komoko with whom he apparently has some business. The cowboys insist Komoko was interned at the start of World War II, and no one's heard from him since.

As the story takes place it is late 1945, a few months after the war has ended. We eventually learn that Macreedy has just mustered out of the Army, losing the use of his arm in Italy. And that, despite the loss of his limb, he's more than a match for any headstrong cowpunchers. They foolishly take his retiring ways as cowardice.

"I believe a man is as big as what'll make him mad. Nobody around here seems big enough to get you mad," observes Smith (Robert Ryan), a rancher who seems to have everyone quietly under his grip.

Macreedy is played by Spencer Tracy, who didn't particularly want to be in the movie and for people who didn't especially want him in it, either.

Millard Kaufman, who wrote the screenplay from an adaptation by Don McGuire based on a short story by Howard Breslin, thought Tracy was far too old to play an Army platoon commander. Tracy, then in his mid-50s and struggling badly with alcoholism that made him appear much older, had to be cajoled and threatened and finally fooled -- by the assurance that Alan Ladd was ready to step into the role -- before finally committing to play in it.

It's quite obvious that Tracy still has his left arm and is just tucking it into his suit pocket. Interestingly, nobody in the movie actually refers to Macreedy as missing his arm, though every description ever written about the movie contains that description. In one exchange two men opine about the stranger's "stiff arm" and if he's hiding something in his pocket, like booze or TNT.

Coley Trimble, the most antagonistic of the locals played by Ernest Borgnine, does accuse Macreedy of endangering the roads with his "one-armed driving," though that's a quibble as you can drive with one arm despite having two. This after intentionally running Macreedy off the road in the Jeep he had rented from the local gas station, run by the town's only female, Liz Worth (Anne Francis).

When he returns to town, Macreedy is accosted by Coley for his poor driving, and even offers to pay for the damages to the other man's car. It seems that nothing will rile up this odd duck of a stranger.

Except, of course, something eventually does. It appears Macreedy is finally ready to give up on his mysterious mission, gaining the help of the local veterinarian/mortician, Doc Velie (the inimitable Walter Brennan), who offers the stranger the use of his old hearse. In the meantime, Smith has leaned on Liz, so no more Jeep rentals are available.

Hector (Lee Marvin), the most mean-spirited of the cowboys, rips out the distributor cap and spark plug wires, stranding Macreedy. It seems he has asked one question too many and they're planning to off him when night comes.

Little do they know, the unarmed one-armed man in black has them right where he wants them. And now he's find a purpose in life that had been missing.

It would be interesting to see what this movie would look like if it was made today. No doubt it would quickly dissolve into a bloody shoot-em-up or broken bones melee. But other than Macreedy taking out the beefy Coley with some karate chops and flips, there really isn't much violence.

The film wound up turning a healthy profit and earning three Oscar nominations: for Sturges, Tracy and Kaufman.

Even at a quick 81-minute run time, "Bad Day" has an almost languid pace to it as the tension gradually builds and builds. The screenplay drops hints and forebodings, and we're able to figure things out long before the characters speak the words: Komoko was killed and his farm burned to the ground, and the entire town has been keeping this dark secret ever since.

In a way, it's as if all life stopped at Black Rock that day four years earlier, and everyone's just been waiting around for someone like Macreedy to show up. The secret has become their purpose for existence.

Other notable players include Dean Jagger as Tim Horn, the drunken sheriff who has lost all his grit; John Ericson as Pete Wirth, Liz' weakling, pompadoured brother who runs the local hotel; Russell Collins as Hastings, the timid telegraph and train station man; and Walter Sande as Sam, owner of the local diner who delivers one of the film's most remembered exchanges of dialogue in a strangled honk of a voice:

Sam: "What'll you have?"
Macreedy: "What've you got?"

"Chili and beans."
"Anything else?"
"Chili without beans."

"Bad Day at Black Rock" is short on story but long on mood and themes half-buried in the desert dust. It has the feeling of something both ancient and modern, as the last vestiges of the Old West resist an intruder it feels has no business there.

The town is a piece of history, trapped in amber and looking very much the same as it ever did, even though its heart died a long time ago. The ending has a hopeful note, that evil will be punished and Black Rock can start to heal. But my guess is Macreedy's was the last train stop before the tumbleweeds took over.

Reeling Backward: "The Professionals" (1966)

Regular readers of this column will know that I am endless fascinated by the life cycle of movies -- how some films see their reputations wax with the passage of time, while other worthier pictures end up largely forgotten. Ensconced firmly in the latter category is 1966's "The Professionals."

The movie, written and directed by Richard Brooks, was a big commercial hit at the time, revived Burt Lancaster's career and helped propel Lee Marvin into mainstream stardom. It was also a critical success, and earned three Oscar nominations, including two nods for Brooks' screenplay and direction.

And yet, it's not a film that your average movie-lover would know by name. Thematically, it's very similar to the iconic Western "The Magnificent Seven," about a bunch of disparate group of experts rounded up for a near-impossible mission -- a trick Marvin would repeat next year, this time in a World War II setting in "The Dirty Dozen." So it's possible it got lost in a crowd of similar flicks.

There's that title, which is rather generic and unmemorable. And Brooks is one of those filmmakers who doesn't get the respect he deserves, leaving behind an oeuvre -- "Blackboard Jungle," "In Cold Blood," "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," "Elmer Gantry" -- as impressive as any other mid-century writer/director.

Still, why has this Western "oater" fallen so low that even I had never heard of it until recently?

It's certainly a strong picture, with a mildly to moderately revisionist take on the genre. Four over-the-hill mercenaries take a cold-blooded job, going after one of their old compadres, no less. They include an African-American among their number, which causes no discernible ruckus. And they see the job through to the end, only to double-cross the employer who had misled them about the true nature of the mission.

It's not quite "The Wild Bunch" in terms of turning the Western on its head, but Brooks certainly took a little-known novel by Frank O'Rourke and made it into something grim and ironic.

There's also an unsettling subtext of sexual barter at play. Sometime in the 19-teens, the boys are hired by a rich oilman named Gates (Ralph Bellamy) to rescue his young Mexican wife, who was kidnapped by a revolutionary/bandid named Jesus Raza (Jack Palance, equipped with makeup and accent to make for a sufficient representation of a Latino). One of his henchmen (-women?) is Chiquita (Maria Gomez), who reputedly never turns down an offer for sex, and is seen topless from a three-quarter vantage point.

The crew used to fight with Raza in the Mexican Revolution, and are dismayed that he would have turned to kidnapping (and, presumably, raping) innocent women as a means of earning a living. As Dolworth (Lancaster), the explosives expert and most amoral of the adventurers puts it, I'll happily steal, lie and kill for money, but not that.

They eventually realize Maria Grant (Claudia Cardinale) is not a hostage, but an active participant in blackmailing her husband to support the revolutionary zeal of Raza, whom she has loved since childhood. Nevertheless, Fardan (Marvin), the taciturn leader and weapons master, insists they honor the contract and bring her back across the border. The busty, haphazardly clothed Maria even offers herself to Dolworth in exchange for her freedom, though both are too cagey to consummate the exchange.

The other, lesser members of the gang are Woody Strode as Sharp, the tracker/scout, and Robert Ryan as horse wrangler Ehrengard, who in a modern setting would be the wheel man.

I don't think Strode utters more than a few sentences throughout the entire picture, and is mostly around as a reliable presence, buttressed by Strode's famous physique. He was a decathlon competitor in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, player in the nascent NFL and still cut an imposing figure in 1966 when he was in his early 50s. Sheriff Woody from the "Toy Story" movies was named after him.

Ryan is the resident team member laden with distemper, who always seems to be at odds with the others, especially over the treatment of the horses. When they kill a group of Raza's scouts and bury the bodies, Dolworth advocates shooting the horses since, let free, they might run back home and give warning. Ehrengard convinces the group against that course of action, and in the end the horses do lead them right into trouble. After he is shot in the ensuing standoff, Ehrengard is more or less sidelined the rest of the movie.

Although, I should point out, the seriousness of wounds in "The Professionals" is somewhat tenuous, depending on the necessities of the plot. Ehrengard is shot through the shoulder, at one point appears to be dying, and Fardan talks of him slowing them up from Raza's pursuit. By the next day, though, he's lifting Maria into her saddle with little ill effect.

In perhaps the film's most memorable sequence, Dolworth lags behind to hold off Raza's group in a mountain pass to give the others time to make good their escape. Single-handedly, he out-guns Raza and six others, getting shot himself in the process -- "in the ass," he brassily informs an also-shot-up Raza, as the men exchange pleasantries from behind cover. Dolworth also survives a shoot-out with Chicquita, with whom he has exchanged amorous attentions in the past, granting her a dying kiss. Hours later, though, Dolworth and his punctured hindquarters will jump on and off horses with no problems.

I quite enjoyed "The Professionals," though I don't think it's quite the masterpiece it's made out to be. It's an action-heavy picture, with the planning and assault of Raza's fortress taking up most of the first hour, and actually being rather on the dull side.

Still, it's superior to "The Dirty Dozen" and probably "The Magnificent Seven," too, which enjoy far richer reputations. Cinematic posterity, earned or otherwise, is a twitchy little sumbitch.

Reeling Backward: "Battle of the Bulge" (1965)

All movies are on some level flimflam, even the ones that purport to be based on "true events." This is doubly so for war pictures, which must take the chaotic and bloody gruel of combat and some turn it into a digestible cinematic meal. If an obvious narrative doesn't present itself in the historical record, Hollywood will bend over backward to impose one -- never mind how much the made-up characters and plot diverge from reality.

You know you've got a problem with historical accuracy, though, when Dwight D. Eisenhower emerges from his post-presidency blanket of privacy to hold a press conference denouncing your movie. Such was the fate of 1965's "Battle of the Bulge."

This borderline awful war drama is like a Tinseltown Cliff's Notes version of one of World War II's most decisive battles. The real Battle of the Bulge lasted nearly a month, stretched over a huge chunk of Western Europe and involved hundreds of thousands of soldiers and pieces of equipment. The movie version, however, focuses on the plight of a handful of American soldiers at various levels of command, ranging from sergeant up to general.

Not only is the role of the British downplayed in the Hollywood version, I'm not sure if an English soldier even shows up once during the movie's 170 minutes. That's ironic, considering director Ken Annakin is an Englander who directed the British scenes in the far superior "The Longest Day."

Astonishingly, despite being one of the most famous winter military deployments since Valley Forge, there's barely a hint of snow in the film, which looks like it was shot during the full bloom of summer.

My biggest complaint is that all the American soldiers are not individuals but character "types" -- usually ones that synch up nicely with the star persona of the actor playing him. So Henry Fonda is Kiley, a careful and reasonable man whose warnings about a German offensive go unheeded. And Charles Bronson is Wolenski, a tough no-nonsense major who leads a group of hardcase dogfaces.

James MacArthur plays Weaver, an untested young lieutenant who quickly gets wised up by the German Panzer incursion and the tutelage of his wiser sergeant. Robert Ryan is the determined, methodical good general and Telly Savalas is Guffy, a tank sergeant who runs a black market racket on the side and operates as the movie's Bronx-accented comic relief.

None of these actors makes much of an impression, with the exception of Fonda, who could play a telephone switch operator and make it snap.

The real star of the show is Robert Shaw as Hessler, the ambitious, take-no-prisoners German tank commander given a prime spot in the counteroffensive of the Third Reich. Hessler is loosely based on the real-life Panzer commander known for his aggressive tactics that resulted in high casualties among his own forces, while also crushing the enemy.

Outfitted with the platinum blond hairdo he wore in "From Russia with Love" and a few other films, Shaw is the model of the icy Aryan Nazi, who would rather the war go in forever in stalemate than lose his status as a military hero. Hans Christian Blech plays Conrad, his right-hand man and conscious, who whispers in his ear not to be so cruel. In the end, they break ways and Conrad is assigned to tote fuel drums. The final shot of the film is Conrad tossing away his rifle and ammunition belt as the defeated Germans march away home.

Hessler is also implied to order the execution of captured American POWs at Malmedy, an actual war crime that is depicted briefly in the film without a lot of emotional power. Mostly it's used as the turning point of the Weaver character when he stops being callow and learns to accept the consequences of command decisions.

Weaver survives the massacre to, in the movie's depiction, nearly single-handedly stop the German tank advance by rolling some cans of fuel at Hessler's column, blowing them up. Neat trick, that.

Shaw is a real treat as a hiss-able screen villain, but in terms of nuance "Battle of the Bulge" is severely lacking. It's a dumbed-down cut-up of a movie about a great, tragic event. I don't think Ike was the only one who thought it was a serious disservice to the men who fought and died.

Reeling Backward: "Billy Budd" (1962)

 "You in your goodness are as inhuman as Claggart was in his evil."

So says the master of the ship in "Billy Budd," the 1962 adaptation of the Herman Melville novel directed, produced, co-written and starring Peter Ustinov as the conflicted captain who utters that line. This gripping and overlooked drama presents two men as paragons of innocence and depravity, and uses them as a lens to peer at the reactions they inspire in the muddled masses of the rest of the crew. It's a morality tale writ in stark shades of gray.

"Billy Budd" was the first major film role for 24-year-old Terence Stamp. Despite playing the title role and the protagonist, Stamp was only nominated for a Best Supporting Actor award at the Oscars. It's obviously a leading role, but older established actors like Robert Ryan and Ustinov received first and second billing, respectively.

It's a full-blooded performance that's built on vacancy. In the commentary track accompanying the DVD, Stamp confesses that he was barely able to speak a word to Ustinov at their initial meeting, so impressed was he by the older man's "powerful aura." It turns out this was the exact quality Ustinov had been seeking, interviewing dozens of young British actors to find someone capable of profound passivity.

He wanted Billy to be a reactive figure who absorbed the worst in other men and returned it with a smile. Indeed, after condemning Billy to death by hanging, Captain Vere (Ustinov) literally begs Billy to despise him for choosing duty over morality. Billy, who gives his age as "17, or 19 ... or 18," responds with his usual quizzical puzzlement. "I did my duty, and you're just doing yours," he says. Vere is more tortured by Billy's absolution than any hatred he hoped to inspire.

When impressed into service in the British navy in 1797, Billy finds the crew aboard the H.M.S. Avenger to be quaking in fear of the cruel master of arms, John Claggart (Ryan). A vicious man who delights in having men flogged for the most minute of infractions -- and even manufacturing ones when they can't be found -- Claggart sees the entire world as an endless chase of prey and hunted. The surface of the sea is calm, he tells Billy, but beneath it every creature is a killer. It's the same on land or on board the ship, he insists.

There's some suggestion that Claggart, who is educated and worldly, once held a high position in the British kingdom and has now fallen low due to outstanding debts or some other scrape with authority. This is a man who does not limit his a vengeful eye to a single person, but casts it upon the whole of society. "I am what I am and what the world has made me," he declares.

Billy, who is guileless to the point of the appearance of idiocy, looks upon Claggart and only sees a man who is lonely and afraid. Claggart nearly succumbs to Billy's offer of friendship, the bile in his soul finally rising to drown any hint of human kindness, which he views as weakness.

It's a chilling performance by Ryan, who often played well-meaning loners. The way he pounds his baton against his leg with every stroke of the floggger's whip, his lips quavering with hunger as he counts the strokes, is one of the most revolting depictions of sadism I've ever seen on film.

Billy, as written by Melville and faithfully translated by Ustinov and co-screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen, is like an angel of God put on Earth unawares of his celestial grace. As a babe he was left on the door of a house in a silk-lined basket, hinting that he was the bastard child of a noble parent. With his nimbus of wavy blond locks, placid blue eyes and slightly androgynous beauty, Stamp truly seems like something not of this world.

Much of this is due to that aforementioned silence. Billy spends an astonishing amount of screen time just staring at and reacting to other actors. When he does speak, he does so in mellifluous tones that impart an organic sort of wisdom, like a child objecting to the wretched constructs of the adult world. "It's wrong to flog a man. It's against his being a man," he says on his first day aboard the Avenger.

Billy also suffers from unintentional silences. When sorely vexed, he is overcome by a stammer that prevents him from any speech. This is pivotal in the final confrontation with Claggart, in which the master-at-arms manufactures accusations of mutiny against Billy, who finally pummels him with a single blow to the chest. After he falls and cracks his head open on a post, the final contemptuous smile Claggart casts at Billy is the devil's sneer of victory.

"Claggart killed you the moment you killed him," Captain Vere tells Billy with sadness.

The officers overseeing the court martial are determined to set Billy free, seeing it as the just triumph of good over evil. But Vere insists their duty is to the laws of the wartime military, not their own personal sense of justice, and browbeats his underlings into returning a death sentence. The idea of stringing up Billy for killing the hated Claggart sets off a mutiny amongst the crew, but Billy quells it with his final, smiling words: "God save Captain Vere!!"

The cast of "Billy Budd" is spectacular. Melvyn Douglas plays The Dansker, an old Danish (he says) sailmaker who seems to have a religious background and acts as the conscience of the ship. The chief officers are ably played by Paul Rogers, John Nevill and David McCallum. Ronald Lewis has a memorable turn as Jenkins, the outspoken chief of the rigging crew who ends up a martyr to Claggart's cruelty. Lee Montague plays Squeak, Claggart's right-hand toady. And John Meillon plays Kincaid, who has his back laid open for insulting Claggart.

"Billy Budd" is a tremendous film, and seen in retrospect its single Academy Award nomination feels like a terrible oversight.

3.5 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "The Set-Up" (1949)

"The Set-Up" is as lean and spare as star Robert Ryan's sinewy body.

Ryan, a character actor who occasionally was blessed with leading roles, did not have an ounce of fat on him. He actually seemed to grow thinner as he aged, and by age 60, his rawboned face had sunken in enough to play the regretful Deke Thornton, let out of prison to pursue his old gang of outlaws in "The Wild Bunch."

It was the perfect role for Ryan, who always seemed more comfortable playing characters with some measure of shadow looming across their souls, usually through circumstance rather than choosing. "A good man in a bad spot" is a pretty decent way to sum up his most memorable roles. "Noble loser" is another, and it certainly applies to this boxing picture.

"The Set-Up" was one of director Robert Wise's early efforts, a tightly-wound film noir about an aging boxer desperate for one last score. Midway through his epic bout against a hot young prospect, Stoker Thompson learns that his manager and trainer have sold him out, accepting a mobster's bribe to take a dive without even bothering to cut him in on it.

Tiny (George Tobias), his cynical inkspot of a manager, figures Stoker is sure to lose, so why share part of the $50 bribe with him? "There's no percentage in smartening up a chump," is the gruff justification Tiny provides.

Even Stoker's wife Julie (Audrey Totter) fails to show up for his big fight, sick of the endless life on the road -- picking him up after each fight and patching him up in time for the next slaughter.

So Stoker has, quite literally, no one in his corner. After he takes a hard shot and appears to be down for the count, Tiny and his trainer Gus (Wallace Ford) put their coats on and head for the exits, only to return disappointed when Stoker struggles back to his feet.

But the old man -- he's 35, practically ancient by boxing standards in the 1940s -- still has a strong punch, and knows that all he needs to do is land one good one on Tiger Nelson (Hal Baylor) to turn things his way. What's more, he may be just this side of a stumblebum, but at least he's one who doesn't take a dive.

Things do go his way, and he scores an upset victory through sheer grit and determination. Unfortunately, the mob boss Little Boy (Alan Baxter) doesn't like being double-crossed, and makes Stoker pay for it by smashing his right hand with a brick.

In the last scene, Julie finds her husband staggering through the streets barely conscious. Looking at his mangled hand, their regret and anger turns to relief, as they both realize his boxing days are finished. Whatever their future holds -- good, bad or somewhere in between -- they've escaped the cruel chains of bloodsport.

"The Set-Up" is based on a poem by Joseph Moncure March, although screenwriter Art Cohn changed things around considerably. For starters, the protagonist is African-American in the poem, and is thrown under a subway rather than being merely crippled.

The film is a spare 72 minutes, and several years before "High Noon" was lauded for it, the story unspools in real time. We observe Stoker as he argues with his wife, gets ready for the fight, and interacts with other boxers before their fights. All shoved into one tiny locker room, they range from a total rookie, up-and-comer Luther Hawkins (James Edwards), to punchy wash-up Gunboat Johnson (David Clarke).

The compassionate way Stoker, who still commands some measure of respect from the younger fighters, protects Gunboat from their catcalls indicates his knowledge that a few more wrong ends of a knockout, and he'll be just like Gunboat. There's also a pathetic hulk of a man peddling boxing programs to the crowd who would seem to be a former fighter himself.

"Well, that's the way it is. You're a fighter, you gotta fight," Stoker reasons.

The cinematography by Milton R. Krasner is simply terrific, a slash of shadow and light that informs and comments upon the characters' various shades of morality. Little Boy, a chilling figure of pure malevolence, wears a startlingly white hat.

I do have to say that the boxing action is the weakest part of the film. Wise stages the bout with a lot of kinetic energy -- although, like most Hollywood depictions of the sport, more punches are landed in a half a round than an entire real match.

Beyond that, Ryan doesn't look or move like a boxer. He's continually dipping his head and lunging forward in an ungainly way. Balance is everything to a fighter, and it doesn't stand to reason that a seasoned pro like Stoker would make such rookie mistakes.

The other notable thing about "The Set-Up" is the extremely negative portrayal of the crowd. They're bloodthirsty, of course, and Wise keeps revisiting a dozen or so particular members of the audience, and always in a harsh light. There's the immensely fat man who's chowing down on a different kind of food every time we see him, smiling at the gladiators spilling blood while he engorges himself.

Most affecting is an older woman who was seen reluctantly entering the coliseum at the beginning of the film, making an audacious display of her ladylike revulsion of boxing. She then becomes the most savage witness, even shouting at Stoker to pull himself off the canvas -- not because she thinks he can win, but so his horrible, bloody beating can go on a little longer.

3 stars