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: "Red River" (1948)

Plantin' and readin'. Plantin' and readin'. Fill a man full of lead, stick him in the ground, and then read words at him. Why, when you kill a man, why try to read the Lord in as a partner on the job?

                                                           --Simms Reeves

I love it when screenwriters give some of the best dialogue to minor characters. That's a hallmark of 1948's "Red River," directed by Howard Hawks and starring John Wayne, Montgomery Clift and Walter Brennan. It's a big picture with an intimate feel, not to mention one of the darkest-themed Westerns of the Golden Age of Hollywood.

Frequent Wayne collaborator John Ford is said to have remarked after seeing the film, "I didn’t know the big son of a bitch could act!"

Personally, I think "The Searchers" was the apotheosis of the grimmer side of Wayne's star persona, but "Red River" certainly deserves a spot among his better performances.

The quote above comes from the frequent Western player Hank Worden, known for his stick frame, bald head and high moan of a voice. It's a reference to Wayne's character, pioneer cattleman Thomas Dunson, who has a habit of shooting dead anybody who opposes him, including his own cowboys, but always insisting upon a proper burial and Bible reading the morning after.

All his killings seem to conveniently take place in the evening so as not to interrupt the massive cattle drive he's currently undertaking from Texas to Missouri. The story is a fictionalized version of the first major drive in 1865 on the Chisholm Trail, which actually goes to Kansas. (More on that in a minute.)

Dunson has spent the better part of the last 15 years building up the largest beef herd in all of Texas, only to find himself destitute with no market for his cattle. So he resolves to drive 10,000 head 1,000 miles to Missouri. He doesn't even have enough cash to pay his men, only the promise of triple pay if and when they should reach the market.

"Red River" is chockablock with interesting side characters and throwaway lines of dialogue. Screenwriters Borden Chase and Charles Schnee received an Oscar nomination for their story, based on Chase's story in the Saturday Evening Post. It contains the usual Western tropes of six-shooter duels, marauding Indians and womenfolk tempting cowboys to leave the trail in favor of more civilized town life.

The other Academy Award nod was for Christian Nyby's editing, which may literally have saved the film from extinction. Originally shot in 1946, "Red River" wasn't released until two years later as Hawks sought to tighten the narrative, and also was sued by Howard Hughes, who thought the finale too similar to his from "The Outlaw." Brennan recorded a narration which was used to replace written journal entries that pop up from time to time, but that cut of the film was lost for decades until it was reassembled from the Criterion Collection release a few years ago.

The version I saw is not that one, and still includes the journal pop-ups, which as Hawks feared are fleeting and difficult to read.

Brennan plays Groot (!), another in a long line of cantankerous oldsters in his repertoire. He's more sensible than some of his other soft-headed characters, showing fierce loyalty to Dunson but only up to a point. The story opens with just the two of them breaking off from a wagon train to stake their own claim across the Red River in Texas.

Dunson leaves behind a bountiful lass (Coleen Gray) who pretty well throws herself at him, insisting he take her along, but the lonesome prairie is no place for a woman and all that. He gives her his mother's bracelet as a promise to send for her, but hours later the pioneers are massacred by Indians, one of who wears the trinket as a prize.

Consigned to lifelong bachelorhood (read: cantankerous chastity), Dunson takes a young boy who escaped the attack, Matt Garth, as his ward and heir apparent. He admires that the lad, shell-shocked by the killing of his family, still has the wherewithal to pull a pint-sized gun on Dunson when he slaps the boy to his senses.

"He'll do," Dunson mutters to Groot in admiration.

Years later Matt has just returned from the Civil War a seasoned leader and gunfighter. Dunson appoints him trail master of 30 or so cowpunchers, with Groot driving the chuck wagon. As the trail goes on and the troubles pile up, Dunson becomes increasingly dictatorial and hard-handed, shooting several deserters or would-be mutineers.

Matt, now played by Montgomery Clift, obediently knuckles under and keeps the men (mostly) in line. But when one lunkheaded idjit (Ivan Parry) causes a stampede by clanking some pots while stealing some sugar, resulting in the death of one man and 300 lost head, Dunson insists on whipping the transgressor. When the man refuses to accept this debasement, Matt shoots him in the shoulder to prevent the boss from giving him one between the eyes.

Soon Dunson is barely sleeping and drinking all the time, a paranoid petty tyrant of the plains.

Things finally come to a head when Dunson wants to hang some deserters, and Matt opposes him, essentially leading an ad-hoc mutiny. The older man vows to catch up to Matt and kill him, and for the rest of the movie the audience is looking over his shoulder right along with him.

They finally make it to Abilene, turning west to avoid the bandits attacking every cattle drive, and because they heard there's a new railroad stop there. There Matt again meets up with Tess Millay (Joanne Dru), a plucky gal and member of another wagon train the boys saved from Indians along the way, and they fall hard for each other.

(Including the usual heavily-implied but in-no-way-depicted sex.)

The final showdown between Dunson and Matt is energetic, if a little soft-headed. Dunson has recruited a dozen or so hard gunmen to accompany him, but then insists on a mano-e-mano face-off with Matt. Matt refuses to draw his gun, even when Dunson shoots his hat off and grazes his cheek. I loved Clift's surly, sneering defiance in this scene.

They trade guns for fists, until the scuffle is broken up by Tess when she holds them both at gunpoint and essentially forces them to hug it out. Dunson's fevered spell is immediately broken, and he's back to smiles and treating Matt as his adopted son.

This doesn't really play for me. If Dunson never intended to kill Matt, then why round up a crew and come after him? In the original published story, Dunson is slain by Cherry Valance (John Ireland), a deadly gun they took on at the start of the drive. But a movie can't end with John Wayne gunned down -- at least not unless it's his last film, "The Shootist," which coincidentally this film uses footage from in the flashback scenes.

Cherry is the darkling yang to Matt's yin, both skilled gunfighters with a lot of bravado and grit. In an early scene, they trade pistols and impress each other with some sharpshooting.

It seems destined that the two will eventually come to blows and/or bullets -- several other characters make this observation explicitly -- but interestingly, they never do, forming a grudging friendship. I would have loved to seen a sequel where the pair light out for some adventures of their own.

A few other notables from the cast:

• Harry Carey Sr. plays the friendly businessman in town eager to scoop up the beef, and his son Jr. is the unfortunate cowboy who got squished in the stampede. His dream was to buy his wife a pair of red shoes, which is a pretty meager dream.

• Shelley Winters has one of her earliest screen roles (uncredited) as a dance hall girl. Ditto for Richard Farnsworth, playing a background cowboy.

• Chief Yowlachie plays Quo, an Indian scout who wins a poker hand against Groot in which he has staked a 50 percent interest in his set of false teeth. I loved his line, "From now on, I will be known as Two Jaw Quo." He lets the cook have his teeth back for eating, but otherwise carries them around in a little pouch like a totem.

"Red River" is a mighty fine-looking picture, with a lot of lush scenes of the American prairie. Although I would've loved to see a version of this movie shot a few years later with Technicolor and CinemaScope. Hawks skillfully maneuvers his camera to make a herd of cattle number maybe a few hundred to resemble 10,000, though I admit it gets a little old watching a parade of hooves go by. In one memorable shot, he pans his camera 360 degrees around the ranch.

Originally just seen as another workaday Western, the reputation of "Red River" has grown with the years, and was even named the fifth-best ever of its genre by the American Film Institute. That's a bit over the top, methinks, but it's definitely a surprisingly hard-bitten tale that rides high in the saddle.

Reeling Backward: "Sergeant York" (1941)

Of all his many roles, "Sergeant York" may well be the one that is most quintessential to the iconography of Gary Cooper.

It was never truer of anyone the old saw that actors play roles, but movie stars play themselves. Cooper made a career out of portraying simple, straightforward men of unimpeachable integrity, humility and all-American values. His protagonists were usually dim, or at least poorly educated, though they possessed a homespun sort of caginess -- especially with regard to the manly arts of shooting, building and fixing.

But not romancing. When it came to women, Cooper's coterie of characters were usually adorably inept, more often the catcher of woo rather than the pitcher.

"Sergeant York" was the top-grossing film of 1941, an unabashedly patriotic picture that was helped by playing at the same time as Pearl Harbor. It won Cooper his first Academy Award (the other being for "High Noon"), launching the richest period of his career.

I was surprised how little of the movie actually depicts the wartime exploits of Alvin York, the most decorated American soldier of World War I. The film doesn't even get us to the European front until the last half-hour, and York's solitary charge upon a series of German machine gun nests takes but a few minutes.

Astonishingly -- but historically accurate -- Alvin single-handedly killed more than 20 enemies and captured 132 more. This from a deeply religious man who applied for, and was denied, exemption from the military draft as a conscientious objector.

Most of the story, by a quintet of screenwriters that included John Huston, concerns itself with York's pastoral existence in Pall Mall, Tenn., right near the Kentucky border, and his transformation from hard-drinking ne'er-do-well to resolute man of the Bible. Director Howard Hawks focuses his camera lovingly on the hardscrabble landscapes and wood-plank shanties that make up York's community, where everyone is either a farmer or a vendor to them.

I enjoyed this section, especially the presence of ol' reliable character actor Walter Brennan, who plays the local preacher as well as owner of the local supply store. With wire-rim glasses and improbable black eyebrows, Pastor Pile gently tries to steer Alvin toward a church-going life, rather than hanging out with his drinking buddies, occasionally riding into town and shooting his initials into the tree in front of the meeting house.

Margaret Wycherly plays York's mother, a prototypical long-suffering woman of unshakeable values, who always believes in Alvin's inherent goodness even when it's hard for others to see. Widow York and her three children live on the rocky "topland," struggling to grow a decent crop every year. Both she and Brennan received their own Oscar nominations.

Everyone speaks in a very provincial manner, which grows a little tiresome, adding "a's" before verbs: "I'm a-goin' to enter this here beef 'n' turkey shoot," etc.

Things don't really change for Alvin until he runs into Gracie (Joan Leslie), a spunky local girl, and quickly resolves to marry her. Leslie was just 15 years old when they shot the movie, nearly a quarter-century younger than Coop, who reportedly gave her a gift of a doll on the set. 

Alvin resolves to purchase some prime "bottomland" to entice Gracie, who of course loves him for who he is rather than material worth. Much of the middle section of the movie is taken up with Alvin working day and night to raise the money for a piece of land. He trades virtually everything of value he owns (except his rifle) to Mr. Tomkins (Erville Alderson) for a $50 down payment on the land, with 60 days to come up with the other $70.

With things coming down to the wire, Alvin enters a "beef and turkey shoot" contest, improbably pulling out six bullseyes in a row -- one bird, five targets -- to win the rest of the money. Only then he finds out Tomkins has broken his word and sold the land to Zeb Andrews (Robert Porterfield), the local equivalent of a "snooty rich kid," and also a competitor for Gracie's affections (or so Alvin thinks).

His dreams of having his own marital homestead dashed, Alvin seems destined to go down a dark road that will lead to murder. But during a thunderstorm on the way to revenge, lightning strikes his rifle, turning it into melted taffy. Alvin and his mule are struck senseless but unharmed, which he takes as a sign from God. A montage or two later, and he's teaching the Bible to Sunday school classes, just in time for war to break out.

Alvin's military commanders are initially suspicious of his country bumpkin routine and aversion to taking another life. He and the captain actually get into a bit of a Bible quote-off, each reciting verses that buttress their argument about the Lord's attitude on killing. After the C.O. grants Alvin furlough to go home, perch in the hills and ruminate upon the matter like an Old Testament figure, they essentially agree to disagree, taking the chance Alvin will perform his duty when the time comes.

And we know how that turned out.

"Sergeant York" is a cracklin' corn piece of enthusiastic patriotism, though not a mindlessly jingoistic one. It takes the time to get inside the head of a hero who was reluctant to fight, even though it would seem to be something he was put on this Earth to do.

Reeling Backward: "How the West Was Won" (1962)

By 1962 Hollywood knew the jig was up.

Audiences, with expanding options of quality programming on television, would no longer automatically show up to the cinemas for whatever fare they had thrown together. Actors and directors were tired of being workhorses for the studios, told to go here and do that, and wanted the power to pick their own projects. Certain quintessentially American genres, notably the musical and the Western, were increasingly seen as creaky and worn out.

The Golden Age, for good and naught, was waning -- and everyone knew it.

The reaction from Tinseltown, at least for awhile, was to deliver things TV couldn't: color pictures, big action spectacles, widescreen formats, stereo sound, 3-D imagery and so on. One of the big ideas was Cinerama, which stretched an extremely wide image across a huge curved screen, so the audience literally felt like the movie was wrapping around their field of vision.

To get some perspective, the aspect ratio of most films today is 1.85 to 1, width to height. Modern flatscreen TVs are 1.78, so when movies are played on them you only get a little bit of black bar at the top and bottom. (Rarer) widescreen movies are usually 2.35, so the bars are much bigger. Cinerama was 2.59, so when I watched the film on my set the film only occupied the middle third or so of the screen.

Only two major feature films were made using this process, which involved shooting with three separate 35mm cameras and then using a trio of projectors in the theater.  "How the West Was Won" was a big success, the second highest-grossing film of that year, but it was too expensive to outfit more than a handful of theaters with the setup.

When shown as a single image on a flat screen, the three pieces tended to not match up well, with noticeable lines during bright scenes. Since most theaters didn't undertake the upgrade, this is how most audiences saw it. Despite its early success, Cinerama died a quick death.

MGM undertook a restoration of the movie in 2000, and new Blu-ray editions include a version that simulates the curved Cinerama look. I've included two stills of the same scene above so you can see the marked difference in presentation.

Filmmakers didn't like the logistics of shooting in Cinerama, either, since it required them to position the actors and backgrounds in such a way that the performers might not even be looking at the person they were talking to in the scene. John Ford, who directed one of the film's five sequences, complained that you couldn't shoot closer than the waist up, which limited the ability to give audiences an emotional connection with the characters.

Much like the green screen technology of today, the final result could be fabulous, but required a talented and attentive cast and director to preserve the performance aspect.

The visual look of the restored "How the West Was Won" is often breathtaking, with glorious vistas of the American fields, rivers and mountains. Narratively the story spreads over 50 years, from 1839 to 1889, covering the settlement of Ohio, the gold rush, the Civil War, the building of a transcontinental railroad line and the height of the outlaw era. It's all told through the eyes of a single family, as subsequent generations grow up and move on further West.

The final movie was a languid 164 minutes, but includes lengthy musical overtures (by Alfred Newman) at the beginning, middle and end that probably consume at least 20 minutes on their own. Everything about the film telegraphs that it wants to be seen as an old-school epic, but really it's several small, barely interrelated stories strung together.

In a gimmicky move, different directors were hired for the five sections, though Henry Hathaway helmed most: the first, second and fifth. Ford directed the third and shortest section on the Civil War, which is really more of a vignette than a true standalone story. George Marshall oversaw the fourth and probably best sequence on the often merciless drive to connect the railroads from east to west.

It was nominated for a bunch of Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won three for Sound, Editing and James R. Webb's screenplay -- thought it did not get a nod, notably, for directing.

The film also has the prerequisite "All Star Cast," though most of them have very fleeting parts. John Wayne is in it for about two minutes, along with Henry Morgan, playing great Union generals Sherman and Grant during the Civil War section. Jimmy Stewart has a bigger part as a frontier trapper who falls for one of the daughters (Carroll Baker) of cantankerous pioneer Zebulon Prescott (Karl Malden) in the first sequence. Stewart gets stabbed by some river pirates (led by the great Walter Brennan) but survives to win the girl.

Henry Fonda and Richard Widmark turn up in the railroad section as, respectively, a fiercely independent scout and the hardcase overseer of the building operation, who's willing to break the treaty with the Arapaho Indians and start a war if it'll mean shaving a few days off his schedule.

Gregory Peck plays a gambler who courts, then deserts, then nabs again one of the Prescott daughters, played by Debbie Reynolds, who wants to marry a rich husband and move back East but ends up as a saloon showgirl instead. Robert Preston plays the wagon train master who pitches his own woo at her, telling her about the matching suitability of his huge ranch and her ample child-bearing hips, but she's looking for a little more romance. Thelma Ritter plays an over-the-hill female pioneer who desperately wants to get married; I kept thinking she would hook up with the Preston character.

Eli Wallach turns up in the last sequence as Charlie Gant, a particularly nasty outlaw who avoided jail years ago and is back to torment the lawman who killed his brother. They each put lead into the other they still carry, so there's no love lost. It seems like a clear precursor to Wallach's Spaghetti Western roles later on.

Really the biggest star in the picture in terms of screen time is George Peppard playing Zeb Rawlings, the son of the Jimmy Stewart and Carroll Baker characters. He's the main character in the last three sequences. In the Civil War he's a scrappy young recruit who becomes disillusioned by the senseless killing. In the railroad section he's a U.S. Cavalry officer charged with keeping the peace, who continually butts heads with the Widmark villain. Finally he's the marshal, now with a wife and kids of his own, who faces off with Charlie Gant, as Debbie Reynolds returns as an aged doyenne of San Francisco who wants to spend her last years on a ranch.

Spencer Tracy narrates the tale with openings to each sequence, plus a flowery speech at the end about how the suffering and triumphs of those Western pioneers allowed us to have all the great stuff we have today. It's a little disconcerting as the airborne camera swoops over the vistas, which gradually become more and more occupied with the mark of humanity, including highways and smoke-belching factories. I suppose in 1962 those things were seen as hallmarks of progress rather than urban sprawl.

I guess I like the idea of "How the West Was Won" more than the totality of the movie itself. It's generally quite entertaining, and even grand at times. But it feels more like a lot of haphazard pieces washing down the current of history than a coherent film.

Reeling Backward: "Hangmen Also Die!" (1943)

I was fairly disappointed with "Hangmen Also Die!", a noir war drama from 1943. Its pedigree is impressive: directed by the great Fritz Lang, it starred favorite character actor Brian Donlevy and featured a script by revered playwright Bertolt Brecht, his only official screenwriting credit (though he was known to do plenty of script-doctoring in his day).

The film recently received a loving restoration and Blu-ray edition, which looks and sounds fantastic. So I held out high hopes that here was a forgotten World War II picture that I might adore, much in the vein of Battleground!

Alas and alack. Donlevy is actually quite flat and apathetic, in a role so small it's ridiculous that he's billed as the star. Lang is always good for a few haunting frames and clever use of shadow, but compared to "Metropolis" or any other of his seminal work it's not terribly imaginative.

And Brecht's story is just a complete jumbled mess. Its emotional high points arrive at odd points, so there's less of a feeling of a building crescendo than just some stirring speeches that randomly arrive and disappear. The most interesting character is a Gestapo inspector, and the last act is a nigh-incomprehensible patchwork in which a local Nazi collaborator is framed for the murder of a high German official.

The movie is loosely based on the real 1942 assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, who was the Reich Protector of German-occupied Prague. The film is essentially a paean to the Czech people and their brave resistance to the Nazis.

Donlevy plays Dr. Svoboda, a local surgeon who carries out the shooting of Heydrich, who lingers for a few days while the Nazis seek the assassin(s). While being chased by soldiers, he's helped by a young woman on the street who points the Germans in the opposite direction, but then the Gestapo tracks her down and starts raking her and her family over the coals.

She is Mascha Novotny, played by Anna Lee, and really she is the main character. Everything else revolves around her. She and Svoboda strike up a faux romance to throw the Germans off the hunt, which doesn't do much for the affections of her real fiance, Jan (Dennis O'Keefe), an upstanding type.

The Nazis are mostly fooled except for Gestapo inspector Gruber, deliciously played by Alexander Granach. Short, burly with a Cheetos mustache and odd shaved-sides haircut that resembles a proto-mohawk, Gruber supplies much of the middle section's energy. Granach was actually a German Jew who fled his homeland shortly after Hitler's rise to power, and made himself a healthy film career playing both Nazis and heroes.

Gruber is suspicious of everyone and everything, and unlike his more heavy-handed counterparts who are quick to resort to mental and physical torture, he mostly gets things done by out-thinking those around him. He's also capable of being quite the party boy when the mood strikes, and he gets to canoodle with an appropriately matronly German floozy.

Shoehorned in is a mostly parallel story about Anna' father, Professor Novotny, played by the great character actor Walter Brennan. The professor is a noted academic figure who has eschewed politics for the past 15 years, but then he and a bunch of other intellectuals are snatched up and held hostage in retaliation for the assassination attempt. Soon the Nazis are executing them a bunch at a time until the real shooter gives himself up.

Brennan gets to do that whole "quiet nobility" thing, and he's quite good at it, but these scenes don't fit with the rest of the story. It almost becomes a POW film, with the professor and his fellows bonding and writing revolutionary poems while waiting for the axe to fall.

The most interesting thing about "Hangmen" is its depiction of how people deal with an occupying force -- both in their regards to the enemy and how they relate with those of their number who cooperate.

Anna soon learns that Svoboda is the assassin, and insists that he give himself up to save the life of her father and the other hostages. Svoboda -- under pressure from other members of the resistance -- demurs, pointing out that his act is essential to their movement to overthrow the Germans. At one point she actually gets in a carriage to Gestapo headquarters to spill the beans, and is nearly assaulted when a mob finds out her plan.

Eventually she comes around to the right side of things, and assists Svoboda and the other resistance leaders in concocting an elaborate frame job to convince the Nazis that one of their Czech collaborators, a rich beer baron named Czaka (Gene Lockhart), was actually the assassin. This involves getting dozens of witnesses to lie about Czaka's whereabouts, and seems highly implausible.

"Hangmen Also Die!" exists now mostly as an artifact of its time, a pot-boiling bit of propaganda designed to whip up the masses. As a piece of filmmaking, though, it leaves much to be desired.

Reeling Backward: "The Westerner" (1940)

Tonally, "The Westerner" is one of the weirdest films I've ever encountered.

Ostensibly it's about Judge Roy Bean, the famous/infamous Texas Justice of the Peace who essentially operated a combination saloon/courtroom as his own personal fiefdom. He generally dispensed the same punishment to every offender: hanging, and a fine that always equaled whatever currency the man had in his pockets at the time. Bean kept the money for himself as court fees, with enough parceled out to the silent undertaker character who seems to populate every Western.

(I should note the real Bean only ever sentenced two men to hanging, and one of them escaped.)

But Gary Cooper was the star of the movie, so the story was shifted so that Bean was the supporting character and Cooper's character, Cole Harden, became the intrepid cowboy who runs afoul of Bean's frontier justice, but later becomes his friend. Walter Brennan, the great character actor, won his third Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for the role, the only person to have done so three times.

As a result, the part that normally would've been the straight-up villain role ends up being a cantankerous, wrong-headed but amiable goof who's more pitiable than hateful. Unlike Brennan's straight-up villain in "My Darling Clementine," there's no suggestion of darkness in his heart -- simply an unbending view that "sodbusters" are the sworn enemy of the cattlemen who settled the town of Vinegaroon.

Bean is a bundle of eccentricities. Other than being a hanging judge, his entire life seems to be wrapped up in the image of English actress Lily Langtry. Her picture is plastered all over the saloon, and when a citified customer discloses that he was once in England but declined to attend one of Langtry's performances, he is summarily thrown out.

Harden is smart enough to leverage the judge's ardor to get him off the hook for alleged horse thieving. He claims to have met Langtry, and even have a lock of her hair back with his things in El Paso. Bean essentially agrees to suspend his sentence if Harden will give over the hair. When the real horse thief turns up, Bean is pleased with how Harden acquits himself, and they form a tenuous friendship based on their mutual ornery-yet-cagey dispositions.

So, even though this is the story of a quasi-jurist who essentially used his authority to murder people who disagreed with him, most of the movie actually has a light, fun-and-games tone to it. The comedic aspect is pumped up by Cooper's performance, which is another iteration of his aw-shucks star persona. His sidewise reactions and double-takes cue us in to how loony Judge Bean is.

The last half-hour or so, though, takes a nose-dive into tragedy. Harden has also befriended some of the homesteaders, including old patriarch Caliphet Matthews (Fred Stone) and his hard-headed daughter, Jane Ellen (Doris Davenport), who is the only one of the farmers brave enough to stand up to Bean.

Harden tries to play the role of the peacemaker, convincing Bean to let the homesteaders farm in peace, while also warning him of a group of farmers who come to town to give Bean a taste of his own medicine and lynch him.

It's not the first time somebody's had that idea -- a running joke is that Bean survived an attempted hanging himself, which left him with a stiff neck that Harden continually has to pop back into place with his hands or, on one occasion, a punch to the face. Almost everything the movie depicts about Bean is Hollywood flimflam, though this bit is actually true.

Anyway, Bean breaks the peace by having his men burn down the Matthews' farm, killing Caliphet in the process. Harden goes to the county sheriff to get a warrant sworn out, and is deputized to bring Bean in. That's impossible while he's surrounded by his henchmen in his own town, which he renames Langtry after finally securing the purported lock of hair (Harden actually snips it from Jane Ellen).

But when Bean hears Lily Langtry is coming to the territory to perform, he has one of his men buy out the entire theater, and burns all of the tickets but one, so he can watch her without distraction. Harden's waiting onstage when the curtain comes up, though.

In a rarity for Westerns of this era, they don't have a quick-draw duel, but simply shoot it out while hiding behind chairs and columns. Fatally wounded, Bean is helped by Harden to Langtry's dressing room to finally meet his idol before falling over dead.

Bean's death doesn't carry any emotional impact, since he's indisputably the heavy of the piece, even if a charismatic one.

According to Cooper biographer Jeffrey Meyers, the screen icon was worried about being upstaged by Brennan, and only made the film  under protest after Samuel Goldwyn enforced his contract. The pairing was so productive, however, that they went on to make four more films together, including "Meet John Doe," "Sergeant York" and "The Pride of the Yankees."

I was struck how physically formidable Brennan appeared next to the 6-foot-3 Cooper. Brennan often played characters much older than himself, and often seemed small and scraggly, and sometimes even wizened. Here he's lean but rangy.

Directed by William Wyler, "The Westerner" has some terrific production values, including the burning of the homesteaders' fields and houses, which even includes the imposition of some special effects flames onto the screen. I also liked that both Cooper and Brennan rode their own horses, including during a galloping chase through the desert.

In addition to Brennan's Academy Award win, the film was also nominated for black-and-white art direction and original story, back when they still had that category. It's odd, since the two credited screenwriters, Jo Swerling and Niven Busch, did not receive Oscar nods but Stuart N. Lake, who came up with the story idea, was.

Judge Roy Bean is an iconic figure made more so by film and television adaptations of his life, including a TV series in the 1950s. There was also a 1972 feature film starring Paul Newman, and this time they cast the movie star in the Bean role, instead of finding some bullpucky cowboy part for  him to play off of.

Reeling Backward: "Rio Bravo" (1959)

One of the few things I disliked about studying cinema at New York University was the constant politicization of movies. As a student I was frequently bombarded with articles and professor lectures that shoehorned a political interpretation onto a movie that I didn't feel belonged there.

It wasn't just that these analyses nearly always came from a leftist perspective -- and by "nearly always," I mean 100% of the time -- while I swing to the right. It was the fact that films that were avowedly unpolitical still got this treatment. So you'd read something about action movies of the '80s and how they reflected a fascist, Reaganite mindset.

I thought it largely bull, and simply set most of it aside in my thinking about film.

It's hard not to place a political slant on 1959's "Rio Bravo," however, since John Wayne, director Howard Hawks and others involved in the production have explicitly described it as a conservative response to "High Noon," which they considered a bunch of pinko Hollywood claptrap.

Both films have a fairly similar plot, about a lone sheriff standing against a gang of outlaws coming to town. While Gary Cooper's lawman spent most of "High Noon" unsuccessfully trying to recruit local citizens to help him in the coming gunbattle, Wayne's John T. Chance conspicuously avoid asking for assistance. In fact, he gruffly turns down the offer of a blazingly fast gunslinger because the youngster had previously opted not to stick his nose in other people's business -- a move Chance himself had deemed most wise.

I don't think either film is overtly political, but you can read some things from an allegorical standpoint, particularly the individual's relationship to the larger community around him. Both men are respected for upholding the law, but when they become a target of the very forces they're meant to rein in, the townsfolk react in very different ways.

Cooper goes begging for help, and is ostracized. Chance makes it clear that he's willing to handle things more or less on his own, and is flooded with offers of assistance. Some, like Ricky Nelson as the confident whippersnapper Colorado Ryan, offer to help with their guns. Others, like Carlos the saloon owner (Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez) or rambling gambler Feathers (Angie Dickinson), come through with moral and logistical support.

For Feathers, that includes the proffering of herself as a sexual plaything for Chance to take or leave as he pleases. It's a strong, sensual turn by Dickinson as a woman who's empowered by her sexuality rather than burdened by it. She may use herself as a sex object, but it's her choice.

Dean Martin has one of his meatier film roles as Dude, Chance's former deputy who turned into a timid drunk after having his heart broken. He wandered back into town a couple of years ago, begging drinks wherever he can get them, even if it is a silver dollar thrown contemptuously into a spittoon by Joe Burdette, the local tough.

In the film's surprisingly dialogue-free opening sequence, Chance kicks the spittoon to keep Dude from debasing himself, and is rewarded by being knocked out cold with a chunk of wood swung from behind. This sets off a fight with Burdette, a bystander is shot and killed, and the rest of the movie is spent waiting for the U.S. marshall to come fetch Joe Burdette for trial, while his rich brother Nathan (John Russell) surrounds the jail with killers hired for a $50 gold coin apiece.

Much of the interaction between Chance and Dude involves the former tutoring the latter in the ways of manliness. At one later point, after Dude has sobered and taken up the badge again, another gunman repeats the dollar-in-the-spittoon joke. Dude, having successfully killed the man on the balcony who had the drop on him, is content to leave it at that, with his reputation restored. But Chance reminds him about the fellow throwing the coin, and Dude makes the man grovel for his impertinence.

Back at the jail is Stumpy, the cantankerous old deputy with a screechy voice and a hitch in his giddyup, played by the veteran character actor Walter Brennan. He's the sort of crusty-yet-sentimental creature who often populates the background of Westerns.

Longtime Wayne co-conspirator Ward Bond is around for a few minutes in the early going, as an old friend of Chance who is a little too vocal about the people needing to lend the sheriff a hand. For his trouble he's gunned down in the street by a Burdette assassin.

At nearly 2½ hours, "Rio Bravo" is notable for its languid pace without ever feeling like it's treading water. Screenwriters Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman delivered a comfortable, naturalistic script based on a short story by B.H. McCampbell.

There's a lot of scenes that basically consist of just a bunch of guys hanging around the jail, talking, drinking and even singing -- Martin and Nelson team up for a particularly pleasing rendition of "My Rifle, Pony and Me."

As much as I try, it's hard for me to dismiss -- or embrace -- "Rio Bravo" as a "conservative" Western. You could make the argument that the genre naturally lends itself to an emphasis on individualism, which is the historic domain of right-wing thinkers.

But even if John Wayne & Co. set out to make a conservative repudiation of "High Noon," it's difficult to see it as anything more than a well-made, engaging Western that stands sturdy on its own two boots -- politics be damned.

Reeling Backward: "My Darling Clementine" (1946)

"My Darling Clementine" is almost an art-house version of a Western, long before anyone thought to divide films into mainstream ones and "serious" ones.

Director John Ford lets his camera linger over the expanses of arid ground and the yawning openness of the Arizona sky. It's like a banner of freedom, possibility -- and threat. The Tombstone of 1882 was little more than a stopover for miners, lacking even a church or a school. Ford really makes the audience feel the lawlessness, and the possibility for to introduce some structure with the arrival of Wyatt Earp.

Earp, played by Henry Fonda, was one of the first cinematic good guys to wear black. Tall, lean and stern, he and his three brothers are just driving their cattle through the countryside when their herd is rustled and the 18-year-old brother murdered. Earp, who had just been offered the job of marshal for corralling an drunk Indian and turned it down, returns to take up the badge.

It's clear from the beginning that the Earps are not in it for the long haul. Wyatt already knows the Clantons are responsible for the crime; he just wants to hang around long enough to get his revenge. If it can have a patina of legitimacy through law enforcement, so much the better.

Wyatt spends most of the movie tangling not with the Clantons but with Doc Holliday (Victor Mature), a self-loathing gambler and proprietor of the town's biggest saloon. There's something terrible in his past, which is never revealed, and he seems to delight in gunning down any man who dares challenge him.

The Clementine of the title (Cathy Downs) doesn't show up until nearly halfway through the movie, and is really a tertiary character. I'm not sure if she has more than a couple paragraphs of lines. She used to be Doc's girl before he ran off, and has spent years tracking him down. He abruptly orders her to leave town, though Wyatt intervenes to prevent this, taking a shine to Clementine himself.

Eventually, the conflict that led to the shootout at the O.K. Corral heats up again. This famous piece of history had been depicted on film many times before, and would be again several times after. Ford shoots it not as a cliched quick-draw standoff, but a nasty little business of hit-and-run tactics.

As was usually the case with Ford's Westerns, the supporting cast adds a lot of color and texture to the tale. The great character actor Walter Brennan, who usually played world-weary cynics with a heart of gold, is chilling as Old Man Clanton.

In one amazing scene, Clanton sits mournfully in a chair next to the bed containing the body of his youngest son, who has been gunned down by the Earps (after fatally shooting Chiuauha, Doc's Mexican saloon girl). Morgan Earp (Tim Holt), who chased the fugitive back to his home, tells Old Man Clanton he's sorry it turned out this way, and turns to leave. Without even getting up from his chair, the old man triggers the shotgun in his lap, shooting Morgan in the back. It's a moment of startling violence and contempt for human, and must have been shocking to audiences in 1946.

Ford mainstay Ward Bond plays Morgan Earp, Wyatt's well-fed brother who eats more for breakfast than most people do in a weekend.

History, of course, was very different from the movie. The instigating cause of the gunfight was all about some cowboys who refused to give up their weapons, and the shootout led to a series of reprisals and assassination attempts. The Earps were eventually run out of town, never to return to Tombstone.

But as they said in another great John Ford Western, "When legend becomes fact, print the legend."

4 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "To Have and Have Not" (1944)

Lauren Bacall was 19 years old and a total acting novice when she appeared in a doorway to ask Bogie for a match. She reportedly was so nervous to be starring next to the screen legend that she tucked her chin into her chest to keep from shaking, tilting her eyes up at Bogart in an alluring way that soon earned a nickname, "The Look."

Later on in the film, standing in that same doorway, Bacall would deliver the lines that would cement her debut as one of the most memorable in cinematic history: "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow."

Talk about togetherness: Bacall and Bogart would initiate a romance during the shooting of 1944's "To Have and Have Not" that eventually led to their marriage (and the demise of Bogie's).

Directed by Howard Hawks from a script by William Faulkner and Jules Furthman, "To Have and Have Not" was based on a novel by Ernest Hemingway that bears little resemblance to the movie, other than the Caribbean setting and being about a fishing boat captain. Hawks supposedly called it Hemingway's worst novel, and the author dared him to produce a decent movie out of it.

The result is a film whose plot is a mishmash that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but is so strong on mood and romantic tension that we don't give a fig.

Bogart plays Harry "Steve" Morgan, an itinerant boat skipper in Martinique. Much like the city of Casablanca, Martinique is an exotic locale ostensibly under the control of the French, but with the influence of the Nazis clearly visible. The Vichy thugs are running the show, while the Free French are trying to drum up a rebellion.

As the story opens, Steve has been taking a rich American out for big-game fishing every day for two weeks, without much success. On the last day the client loses the rod and reel, and slaps Steve's friend and first mate Eddie across the face. Played by the great character actor Walter Brennan, Eddie is an old drunk who has to beg for his booze. But he's still Steve's friend, and he can't stand to see Eddie treated that way, even if he is a worthless rummy.

His client tries to skip out on Steve without paying his bill, but dies first in a gunfight between the Vichy and patriotic French. The fat, diabolical police Captain Renard -- played by Dan Seymour, in something like a combination of the Claude Rains and Sydney Greenstreet roles from "Casablanca" -- confiscates Steve's passport and money.

Penniless, he's forced to take a job from the resistance to pick up one of their leaders on a remote island, but the important passenger is shot during an encounter with a patrol boat. Steve spends the rest of the movie nursing the injured man, insisting to the Free French that he's not taking sides, and dodging questions from Renard.

It's funny; as you watch the movie, you can't take your eyes off Bacall. But once it's over and you start thinking about it, her character is almost totally unnecessary to the story. See, I just gave you a pretty complete overview of the plot without ever mentioning Marie Browning -- aka "Slim."

Slim is a young pickpocket whose M.O. is to lure men into buying drinks for her, then making off with their wallets. That's how she and Steve first meet -- she's just duped Steve's fishing client, and when he demands she return the wallet, he finds a ticket for a plane that takes off right before they were supposed to meet at the bank for his payoff.

Slim and Steve spend most of the movie fighting and kissing, often both within the same scene. It's real screen magic, the two of them. Bogart's doing his usual world-weary cynic shtick, but in between we catch little moments where he seems totally amazed by Bacall.

Jazzman/composer Hoagy Carmichael has a small role as Cricket, the saloon piano player, and Bacall even sings a couple of his tunes. Well, perhaps not. Accounts vary about whether the voice is actually Bacall's. According to legend, as a boy Andy Williams was recruited to dub Bacall's singing. It certainly sounds like her famously low (though not yet husky) voice.

I love the film's ending, which is somewhat abrupt but still satisfying. Having shot one of Renard's men, Steve proceeds to beat the captain and his cohort until they agree to release Eddie, who they've taken hostage. Leaving the villainous police in the hands of the resistance, they gather their stuff to hop on the boat, hoping they have enough gas to get them to another island and a new start.

Slim, whispering her goodbye to Cricket, asks him to play a happy song, and Bacall does this gorgeous little jig on their way out of the nightclub. It was the start of a beautiful friendship -- between Slim and Steve, between Bogie and Bacall, and between her and audiences for decades to come.

3.5 stars

Reeling Backward: "Meet John Doe"

It's always disappointing when you seek out a film that's considered a treasured classic, and you just don't care for it.

It's happened to me before, most notably with "Gone With the Wind" -- a movie I consider in need of a two-hour haircut from its running time. Now I've discovered that my appreciation for "Meet John Doe" is rather skimpier than most people.

I'm not one of those Frank Capra haters. I have happily consumed my share of "Capra corn," the term for his distinctive movies with their All-American values and morality lessons. I still watch "It's a Wonderful Life" every Christmas, and "It Happened One Night" is one of my all-time favorite Golden Age flicks.

But let's face it, sometimes the Capra corn shtick is, well, just plain corny. That's my take on "Meet John Doe."

The film opens with a scene that was all too familiar to me: A newspaper newsroom on the day they're laying off a good chunk of the staff. The Bulletin has just been taken over by an oil magnate, and the caustic new editor is abruptly bringing in groups of reporters and editors and telling them they're history.

Interestingly, this figure Henry Connell (played by James Gleason) will later be revealed as a heroic figure who stands up to his boss. It's a textured portrayal of a hard-bitten newsman who treats other people harshly, but whose core values are admirable.

Among those given the axe is Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck), a hotshot female columnist. She begs Connell for her job, to no avail, so for her final column she dashes off a made-up letter from an anonymous man named John Doe who's so disgusted with the state of civilization, he's going to throw himself off the top of the city government building in New York on Christmas Eve.

It causes a sensation, which is a slight problem since it's fiction. Ann and her editor hatch a scheme to hire a bum to play the role of John Dole, and settle on "Long" John Willoughby, a Bush League pitcher with a banged-up arm. He's been hoboing around the country with an older bum he calls Colonel, played by character acting great Walter Brennan.

The Colonel is possibly the most interesting character in the film, a proudly cynical man who's happily checked out of polite society. He sees a job, home and family as methods of tying a man down. He rails against "Heelots" -- people who are me-first heels, and there's lots of 'em.

He's certainly more interesting than John Doe himself, which is Gary Cooper during his typical stuttering aw-shucks routine. Inevitably, of course, he and Ann fall in love with each other, and I have to say it's one of the more unconvincing cinematic romances I've seen in awhile. Ann is portrayed as a ruthless career gal -- a first-class heelot -- who'll do anything to get ahead. Her 10-to-midnight conversion to truth and goodness falls flat.

Another interesting figure is D.B. Norton (Edward Arnold), the oil magnate who cynically funds the John Doe movement in order to springboard himself into politics. He pays for fan clubs all over the nation, culminating in a huge convention at which John Doe himself is supposed to endorse Norton for the presidency. Long John gets wind of this from Connell, but his attempt to broadcast the truth is undermined when Norton exposes him as a paid stooge.

There's a very brief scene near the end where Norton is shown giving a large donation of money to some Christmas carolers in what looks like a Scrooge-esque turn of heart, but I wonder if he really feels that way. He dashes to the top of the city building to prevent Long John from carrying out his never-made promise to commit suicide, but one senses Norton is still intent on playing the angles rather than truly altruistic.

I think "Meet John Doe" was hampered by coming out when it did in 1941. The strictures of the day prevented Capra et al from taking the film to its logical conclusion: With John Doe killing himself. As it is, it ends with him being talked back from the ledge by some of his fan club members, with one of them making a populist crack about trying to lick "the people" to Norton and his moneymen.

Since the film has an overt parallel with the story of Christ, John Doe's journey only reaches a satisfying conclusion if he sacrifices himself.

2.5 stars