Fritz Lang’s first entry of his Hollywood years, Fury, had a tough act to follow: his own German work. His trio of Metropolis (1927), M (1931), and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) could be the greatest trio produced by one director over a six-year span that I’ve seen, and here, after leaving Germany under disputed circumstances, he was forced to suddenly direct entirely in English and for American audiences. It’s all the more impressive, then, that Fury, if not quite at the jaw-dropping level of the aforementioned masterpieces, is an excellent film in its own right. It’s the story of Joe Wilson (Spencer Tracy), a gentle giant of a man who opens a gas station in order to make as much money as quickly as possible. The goal—to comfortably provide for his fiancée Katherine (Sylvia Sidney), who’s taken a job in another city. When the day finally arrives, one year after we first see the two lovebirds, Wilson cheerfully departs on his way to meet Katherine…and finds himself tossed in jail for a kidnapping he’s fully innocent of. The townspeople, though, are in no mood to wait for actual evidence: they overpower the jail and torch & firebomb the prison walls, seemingly killing Joe. Little do the townspeople know, however, that the TNT blew the prison doors off but spared Joe, who manages to escape down a water pipe. Fury‘s second half consists of a hellbent-on-revenge Joe, along with his brothers Charlie (Frank Alberston) and Tom (George Walcott), manipulating the legal system that failed to protect him into sending the 22 men and women responsible for his “death” to the gallows. Meanwhile, Katherine twists in the wind, suspecting that Joe may still be alive, but unwilling to pass on testifying (she made it to the scene of the lynching in time to see Joe’s face pressed to the window bars in horror) in case he is dead, in which case her testimony is clearly the right thing to do.

The setup may sound reminiscent of M, and it that’s definitely the Lang film Fury resembles most: people taking the law into their own hands when they feel the justice system has failed them, playing God, and a major indictment on the system in question’s flaws—for instance, Joe’s primary logic, which certainly has merit, for not coming forward is that it “really doesn’t matter if he’s alive: it was murder all the same. They don’t know they didn’t murder me.” Lang does an outstanding job of establishing Joe’s character early, making his transformation later more drastic and horrifying (in fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he served as an inspiration for the Two-Face character in the “Batman” series, where a noble man sees the law, which he’s always lived by, completely fail to protect him and his family, and turns into a schizophrenic monster). Prior to his arrest and subsequent near-death experience, Joe emits nothing but kindness & warmth. He repeatedly whispers sweet nothings to Katherine on their way to the train station, and tries to prevent her from wasting time sewing a rip in his jacket in the terminal. When he returns to his apartment after Katherine’s departed, he sees a lost, scruffy little dog wagging its tail in the rain, and gently plays with it, takes it home, names it “Rainbow” and keeps it. He wants nothing more than to live a normal, blissful life with his soon-to-be wife. But he becomes a different person after the prison attack and Rainbow, who is sadly killed in the bombing, serves as a metaphor for what Joe’s all about. Before Rainbow’s death, it’s family and love. After, it’s vengeance, and what Joe perceives as justice.

Katherine, who’s tortured by what she saw that night, serves as a counterbalance to Joe: despite her loathing for the townspeople who committed the heinous acts, she wants her old Joe back, rather than seeing them get what they deserve. The final 45 minutes, which play out mostly in a courtroom, raise many interesting questions about the judicial system, what’s really “right” or “fair,” and what constitutes crossing a line. Lang’s seamless transition to pure noir isn’t exactly a stretch, given that much of M and Mabuse were filmed in the shadows, but it’s still highly impressive that Fury is such a success. The pacing also deserves mention, as Fury doesn’t drag for a second, and the acting is excellent across the board, particularly Tracy and Walter Abel as the truth-seeking District Attorney Adams. Fury may not possess the sheer punch of Lang’s German masterpieces, but it’s gripping, exciting, & strongly constructed, and warrants mention when discussing superb genre entries. Note: for fans of Fury, I suggest seeking out You Only Live Once (1937) and The Big Heat (1953), both excellent Lang Hollywood efforts.

76/100

It’s always refreshing when a genre piece steps beyond the clichés of the era and gives its viewers something extra to chew on, and George Cukor’s Holiday does just that. Its storyline is fairly simple: the  exceedingly wealthy Edward Seton (Henry Kolker) has two daughters of very different ilk—the more conservative Julia (Doris Nolan), who’s intrigued by a bit of adventure but not enough to divert from her lavish lifestyle, and the firecracker Linda (Katharine Hepburn), who has little use for social circles and reputations. When Julia falls in love with the smart-but-free-spirited Johnny Case (Cary Grant), her father initially consents to their union after his friend Mr. Hobson gives Johnny favorable references, but things quickly turn sour as it becomes apparent that Johnny, despite his extreme intelligence and connections, isn’t driven by the big bucks like Mr. Seton is accustomed to. Rather, he’d like little more than to travel while young and “find himself,” and work when he grows old. As Holiday evolves, Johnny and Julia are forced to make a decision: will either of them give up their life visions to please the other? And will the fiery Linda, who loves her sister but clearly seems to be a better spiritual match for Johnny, factor into the romantic picture by the end?

What’s most interesting about Holiday is that there’s very little black-and-white present in its characters. Mr. Seton could easily have been depicted as a heartless scrooge, ready to shoot down any suitors without deep pockets, or be suspicious that any man without access to a large sum of money must be interested in Julia for the family fortune: think Dr.Sloper in William Wyler’s The Heiress. But there’s no such concern here: Mr. Seton simply wants to be sure his daughter isn’t marrying a complete jerk, or someone wholly irresponsible. Sure, he’s traditional in what constitutes success in his book: financial security, sophistication, and a lucrative, steady job—he mistakenly, and repeatedly, calls Johnny “Mr. Chase” rather than “Mr. Case” early on, a reference to the bank and a hint into how he sees the world. And yet, he grants his approval early on without putting Johnny through any absurd vetting process, and right to the end, gives him the benefit of the doubt until it becomes apparent that 1) their priorities in life are extraordinarily different, and 2) that Julia is more closely aligned to her father’s way of thinking anyway. Similarly, Johnny, while boasting a carefree outlook, isn’t some lazy schnook. He carefully plans out ideas for the traveling, making sure he has enough money put aside to live comfortably, if not extravagantly. And even as he realizes that Julia may be too risk-averse for him, he still offers to take a desk job for two years on trial basis if it ensures giving their potential marriage a fair shot. As for Linda, she’s forceful about what she doesn’t want—a stuffy, socialite existence—but she always puts family first, even as her feelings for Johnny grow stronger. She’s able to confide in their brother Ned (Lew Ayres), a lonely alcoholic who, despite being somber most of the time, also genuinely adores his siblings, particularly Linda, and is the one person who really understands where her unhappiness, despite the abundance of riches and the indescribable mansion, stems from.

Cukor’s direction here can best be described as savvy: Holiday develops in a witty, funny way, and its themes unfold as the movie progresses. For instance: one of Holiday‘s best comic moments features Johnny entering the grand Seton home through the kitchen door, unaware of the family’s vast worth and assuming that Julia must “work” there. Even this sequence, though, is rife with meaning: it’s our first clue that Johnny, with his uncombed (if not sloppy) hair and bow tie, is stepping into a totally foreign world. Similarly, Linda’s favorite place in the house is an old room on the fourth floor, full of old toys and memories. Some of Holiday‘s most charming scenes happen here, including Johnny’s free-wheeling friends Nick (Edward Horton, who can also be seen as the absent-minded Horace in Top Hat) and Laura (Binnie Barnes) Potter putting on a puppet show, but it’s also where we get our first glimpse into both Linda’s loyalties (early) and her admiration for Johnny’s way of living (later). Holiday is full of sequences that mix substance with amusement, and Cukor merges the two beautifully. The acting is strong across the board, led by Grant (in one of my favorite performances of his), and Hepburn, though I admit I do find her occasionally too shrill for my liking. Only occasionally, though! Mostly, she plays Linda beautifully. With no real heroes or villains—just people, deciding how they want to live their lives—Holiday deserves special mention in a crowded 30′s group of classics that can too often blend together in the mind. I wouldn’t be surprised if I find it remains atop Cukor’s filmography on my lists as I go through his work over the year.

78/100

The newly released, sparkling Criterion blu-ray of Bigger Than Life is a welcome sight for Nicholas Ray fans, as it’s long been considered one of his best films and nearly impossible to find. Thankfully, that’s no longer the case, and we have the movie at our fingertips: a searing portrait of a suburban family hammered by the man’s addiction to prescription drugs during the nuclear era. With the arms race and Cold War in full bloom, one can imagine how uncomfortable 1956 viewers must have felt seeing a seemingly docile, devoted husband & father turn into an unhinged madman. And no director does boiling points like Ray, whether it’s Humphrey Bogart’s ticking time bomb Dix Steele in In a Lonely Place or Robert Ryan’s hot-tempered cop Jim Wilson in On Dangerous Ground. Here, he constructs a multi-layered protagonist in Ed Avery (James Mason), one who inspires a mixture of pity and repulsion right up to the film’s ending, a mixed bag of optimism, doubt, and fear. And, par for Ray’s course, Bigger Than Life‘s primary female character never approaches caricature, but instead is a complex woman torn between understandable fear for herself & her child, and a deep sympathy for her husband’s evident suffering.

Bigger Than Life opens with Avery, a school teacher, dashing away from the classroom to his second job at a taxi dispatch, something he ashamedly keeps from his wife Lou (Barbara Rush) out of concern she’ll think it beneath him. Ray has slyly set the tone, though: Avery cares deeply about both his family—he’d rather work two jobs and make some extra cash than suggest Lou contribute financially—and about projecting strength despite a mysterious illness that causes fatigue and pains. As those pains turn to sudden fainting spells, Avery is rushed to the hospital, where he’s diagnosed with a rare condition that normally proves fatal within a year. The only possible cure is cortisone, which at the time was an experimental drug without any promises. Desperate, Ed and Lou agree without any hesitation. Dr. Norton (Robert Simon) prescribes one tablet every six hours, and sends them off with instructions to be on high alert for any signs of depression or other troubling side effects. Until this point, Avery has mostly seemed the prototypical suburban family man. He lovingly joshes his son Richie (Christopher Olsen) over the repetitiveness of TV Westerns, and helps his wife prepare for a bridge party with his co-worker and close friend Wally (Walter Matthau). Upon closer examination, however, some warning signs reveal themselves, even before the cortisone enters his body. The Avery home is full of posters of foreign countries & cities: Florence, London, France, Bologna. It seems clear that despite the appearance of contentment, Ed feels trapped by his restrictive, traditional lifestyle, and longs for a richer, more exciting life. Similarly, after the bridge game wraps up, Ed trails after his wife as she tidies up around the house, shutting off the lights before she’s able to finish in each room. Nothing is said until Ed says, “leave them” in the kitchen, referring to the dishes, but a discomfort with the routine cuts through the darkness. And that feeling grows even tenser when Ed says, in passing, how dull he, his wife, and everyone they know seem to be.

Once Ed begins taking the cortisone, the addiction comes quickly and with a vengeance, and all his grievances begin to shoot to the surface. With the drug tracing through his system, he feels, literally, bigger than life (much like how cocaine is rumored to impact the body). Frustrations that he may himself may not have been fully aware of spill into the open as the cortisone begins to deeply impact his mind. The first episode comes right after he’s released from the hospital: he grabs Lou and Richie, and whisks them off to an expensive clothing store, where he indulges himself in decking Lou out in fancy, glamorous dresses. In Ed’s mind, the family has already graduated from boring status (as Lou is trying on one of the gowns and tries to protest that it’s too pricey, and she doesn’t need two of them, Ed replies: “well, we’ll be going out a lot from now on.”) That the Averys aren’t financially equipped to do so doesn’t enter Ed’s mind—the near-death experience, coupled with the drugs, have conspired to hijack his brain. The sequence has a real sense of foreboding: it starts with Ed telling the saleswoman that unless they’re helped immediately, he’ll throw a fit in public, and concludes with a befuddled Richie asking Lou if “something’s funny with dad”. From there, things begin to spiral rapidly out of control, leaving Lou and Richie in a daze. Ed goes into a power-trip tirade at a PTA meeting (telling parents that children are born stupid and need to be molded), demands perfection from Richie on the football field, and begins to suspect Wally and Lou of having an affair. He quits the dispatch, and begins devising hyper-intellectual plans for fame. But Bigger than Life‘s most powerful stretch of all is a genre-bending sequence in which Ed refuses to let Richie have dinner until he correctly solves a math problem. Towering over the boy, Ed’s monster-like shadow hovers over both of them, representing the beast that the drug has turned him into (it can also represent the drug itself). And after an exhausted Richie finally gets the answer and the three of them sit down to dinner, Ed, laser-focused, notices that a glass of milk has been poured from the pitcher, and turns on Lou for daring to give Richie anything before he ordered it (the motif of milk, both as maternal symbolism and as a representation of the all-American nature of the Averys’ small town, will show up again and again in Bigger Than Life). It’s all horrifying, and its eerie resemblance to the McCarthy-esque paranoia and fear that swept the nation makes Bigger Than Life extremely powerful. The final dramatic, biblical showdown backs all this up, but I won’t spoil it here.

Ray’s mise-en-scène is masterful throughout: the pictures, the shadows, the broken mirror (see photo, paragraph two) which represents the moment Ed’s life begins to truly shatter. Mason is excellent in the lead, and while he might have been an odd choice with his suave mannerisms, Ray brilliantly uses Mason’s European style to emphasize the longing for sophistication described earlier (when Mason puts on his robe and brings a cigarette to his mouth, you can easily imagine him at a café in Paris or Madrid). As Lou, Rush turns in an outstanding performance, and while one could conceivably quibble that Lou is too patient with her husband, I’d argue that her actions are all perfectly justifiable. She speaks to Wally about her concerns, and has a call in to the Doctor when things begin to really slip away from Ed, but most of all, this is a woman who loves her husband, who saw him suffer through pain before cortisone and knows how close he was to death, and knows what kind of husband he’s been in the past. Her fears are contrasted with sorrow and loyalty, and, until the finale, a lack of knowledge of just how deranged Ed has become. Bigger Than Life‘s ending is hopeful, but also full of uncertainty: the brief moments of optimism and happiness are tinged with a feeling of dread in the gut—we’ll never know just how safe Lou and Richie will be in the future. With the country still in post-war mode and with threats of nuclear attacks in everyone’s mind, that conclusion feels entirely appropriate.

81/100

Well, this one certainly feels fresh and relevant today, doesn’t it? Though Mr. Smith Goes to Washington doesn’t focus on partisanship—indeed, political parties aren’t even mentioned—corruption, lobbying, and manipulation are front-and-center. Jimmy Stewart—who’s rapidly outdistancing the field as my favorite classic era actor—is brilliant as the naive, idealistic Jefferson Smith, a county leader of the Boy Rangers who’s stunningly appointed to the Senate by the puppet Governor of his state, Hubert Hopper (Guy Kibbee), when Junior Senator Sam Foley unexpectedly dies. Of course, Hopper is merely a figurehead—local cutthroat business tycoon Jim Taylor (Edward Arnold) controls everything, including Senior Senator Joseph Payne (Claude Rains), a publicly beloved but crooked man. Taylor’s current goal: to force a dam-building scheme through the Senate, hidden in a Public Works bill. When the overmatched, stammering Smith proposes legislation for a national boy’s camp that conflicts with Taylor’s plans, the floodgates open and the political machine unloads on Smith, trying to get him to bow as he begins to figure out what’s going on. But to their surprise, Smith, aided by his witty chief-of-staff Clarissa Saunders (Jean Arthur), refuses to buckle, instead invoking the filibuster to prevent his expulsion from the Senate in light of a bloodbath of false allegations against him. Interestingly, their exact hometown is left unclear, though it appears to be somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, like Oregon or Washington State.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington‘s greatest strengths is the richness of characters. While it’s a bit of a stretch to imagine Smith really being appointed to the senate—wouldn’t the Taylor machine have demanded someone whose character was more known to them, to be sure of no resistance—his loyalty to his constituents, respect for his predecessors (he’s seen gaping at the Capitol and fawningly gazing at Lincoln’s statue, and was named after Thomas Jefferson), and longing for transparency fit almost anyone’s vision of their ideal congressman, and are sorely missed in today’s vitriol-filled political discourse. Saunders is the typical Washington underling: tired of the backroom deals and double-crossing for a pittance in pay, she’s ready to quit, until Payne, in a move he’ll later regret, convinces her to stay on to help Smith sponsor a bill to keep him out of their way. Initially bemused by Smith’s idealism, she slowly grows to love his convictions and refusal to fold to business as usual. Payne, who owes his 20-year career to Taylor, is clearly weary of being his lackey, but he’s in too deep to fight his way out. Payne was best friends with Smith’s father Clarence, and several sequences between the two senators illustrate the battle being waged inside Payne’s head throughout the maneuvering, setting up the ever-so-slightly-contrived-but-mostly-believable finale. As for Taylor, you get the impression this sort of power play runs much more deeply than any of us know these days as well. Focused solely on, essentially, being a behind-the-scenes monarch, he shows no mercy to anyone, and his complete control of his state—the radio stations, the newspapers—evokes modern day Italy under Berlusconi. The script is very good, and enhanced by outstanding performances across the board. Capra also does a nice job of illuminating Washington’s media world, where anything and everything can be taken out of context if it serves someone’s interests. And hell…I’d like to see the filibuster used only as it is here: for forcing unethical, self-serving politicians to out themselves. But, alas, we can’t have everything we want in life…

70/100