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| Director Max Ophüls |
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| Joan Bennett (center) with her father and 3 daughters, 1918 |
THE RECKLESS MOMENT A France (82 mi) 1949 d: Max Ophüls
The highest reaches of the actor’s art begin, I believe, at the point where words cease to play a part. —Max Ophüls
Among the more forgotten films in cinema history is this hidden gem, the last Hollywood film made by esteemed director Max Ophüls, perhaps his most underrated, which is not only his best American film, but also his shortest and most concise, consolidating the creativity of multiple artistic talents. An actor, stage director, and producer in Germany and Austria from 1921 to 1930, he worked in more than 200 plays by the time he started his film career, yet spent his life dealing with adversity, including forced eviction from both countries as a Jew working in Nazi Germany, fleeing to Paris only to see the French government fall to the Nazi’s as well, taking his family to seek refuge in Switzerland where he was also expelled in a visa dispute with the Swiss government, eventually exiled to Hollywood in 1941, where the spelling of his last name is altered, as evidenced by this film. Like other European auteurs at the time, such as Jean Renoir and Fritz Lang, he was treated poorly by the American film industry, unable to find work in America for six years until a recommendation from director Preston Sturges, who also undercut him on his initial working opportunities, taking his place when studio heads were perplexed by the Old World elegance of his sophisticated working style, with its scarcity of star close-ups, eventually leading him to RKO studio head Howard Hughes, making a series of four American films before returning to France, ending his career with a string of some of his most highly regarded films. Known for his mastery of fluid camera movement, his visual style features distinctive camera movements, complex crane and dolly sweeps, and elegant tracking shots, having a pronounced effect on later directors like Stanley Kubrick and Paul Thomas Anderson. In an early 1957 interview with Cahiers du Cinéma, Kubrick was quoted “Highest of all I would rate Max Ophüls, who for me possessed every possible quality. He has an exceptional flair for sniffing out good subjects, and he got the most out of them. He was also a marvelous director of actors… I particularly admired his fluid camera techniques.” While his trademark motifs include the use of a complex and detailed dramatic scheme, lavish settings with an ornate décor of chandeliers, staircases, and mirrors, long takes that emphasize the subject, accomplished framing and lighting, and a strong female protagonist, he was one of the first truly international film directors, sensitive to national differences and the human qualities in all his characters, yet he was largely dismissed during his lifetime as a technically flashy auteur, where his thematic concerns were often regarded as trivial in the male-dominated cinematic universe. However the artistic reputation of Ophüls underwent serious critical reevaluation in the early 1970’s with the advent of feminism, where his baroque style, attention to details, and intense focus on female characters were viewed as not only prophetic but thoroughly contemporary. Like fellow German émigré Douglas Sirk, the sophisticated camera work and lush décor that were once derided as empty exercises in excess have since been regarded as painstakingly intertwined with the state of mind of the central characters, offering a unique reflection of the postwar landscape. When examined from a historical lens, the spector of European trauma inhabits Ophüls’ American films, emphasizing the darker side of human nature, where it’s important to acknowledge that a transformation in postwar American culture was largely achieved by the arrival of European émigrés who brought with them haunting personal experiences and Freudian psychoanalytic methods while also introducing Brechtian modernism into America cinema, which can be seen in the melodramas of Sirk and Ophüls.
The story is adapted from The Blank Wall, a 1947 Ladies Home Journal story written by American novelist and short story writer Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, one of the many mystery writers who have undergone repeated cycles of neglect and rediscovery, turned into a what is generally considered her best novel, a subversive and original take on the figure of mother and housewife at odds with traditional views, reconfiguring a maternal protagonist in a patriarchal role, listed by The Guardian in 2011 as one of The 10 best Neglected literary classics - in pictures | Culture, while described by Jake Hinson as The Godmother of Noir: Elisabeth Sanxay Holding, exuding a profound disillusionment with the condition of women in a field dominated by the tough guys of Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain. A pioneer of domestic noir and favorite of crime writer Raymond Chandler, who claimed she was “the top suspense writer of them all,” she began her writing career as a romance novelist, but switched to mysteries during the Depression, where the emphasis was on the perpetrators and the victims rather than on the heroic investigators, accentuating the dark interior lives of her characters, with early strains of German Expressionism, exacerbated by moodiness, despair, guilt, and paranoia, writing 25 novels between 1920 and 1953, with 18 dealing with criminal wrongdoing in one form or another. As a woman in a distinctly masculine field, she’s less well known than her contemporaries and often overlooked by the reputation of best-selling murder mystery author Patricia Highsmith, a postwar Hitchcock favorite who frequented bars and entertained a mix of New York’s gay and literary worlds, while Holding was educated before WWI at distinguished finishing schools for young ladies and married a British diplomat, living for a while in Bermuda, so by the time the term film noir became widely recognized, she was already in her 60’s. Celebrated cinematographer Burnett Guffey got his start working as a camera assistant with John Ford in silent features before developing an expertise for his use of lighting when shooting dozens of dark crime movies, becoming associated with film noir pictures, making 20 of them, most notably Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place (1950), while winning Academy Awards for Fred Zinneman’s FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953) and Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967). The other major collaborator is actress Joan Bennett (produced by Bennett’s husband Walter Wanger), who appeared in many black and white 40’s melodramas about strong women, with a hardboiled, noirish presence of this film. Married in London at 16, a mother at 17, and divorced in Los Angeles at 18, she went to a women’s finishing school in Versailles and developed a European sensibility, collaborating with directors as eclectic as Fritz Lang, George Cukor, Jean Renoir, and Douglas Sirk, starting out as a sassy, baby-faced blonde in Raoul Walsh pictures before darkening her hair in the late 30’s and working with Lang in a string of four film noir classics, including THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW (1944) and SCARLET STREET (1945), known for playing working girls, femmes fatales, wives, and mothers, she brings a dry wit, subtle intelligence, and a hint of mystery to all her performances. In this picture she’s elegantly dressed by Jean Louis, who designed all of Rita Hayworth’s outfits, resembling a toned down and darkened version of Myrna Loy, the darling of THE THIN MAN (1934) and its five sequels, known for her wit and sophisticated charm, not to mention female guile, where it’s impossible not to notice Bennett’s chain-smoking, perfect lipstick, and wild, horn-rimmed glasses.
Even while working under tight studio-dictated time and budget constraints, this rare instance of Ophüls dealing with a contemporary setting is a blend of a women’s picture melodrama and film noir, set on Balboa Island just outside Los Angeles, a vacation spot with very few year-round residents, starring Joan Bennett as Lucia Harper, a suburban housewife whose husband Tom is away on business in Europe helping to rebuild Berlin in the aftermath of the war, living with his elderly father (Henry O’Neill) and two teenaged children, Bea (Geraldine Brooks) and David (David Bair), along with black housekeeper Sybil (Frances Elizabeth Williams, a black activist who spent two years in Moscow studying with famed theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold). In this film there’s an opening narration that quickly disappears, with suggestions of a literary work unfolding before our eyes. Slipping away from her kids one day she drives to a sleazy hotel in Los Angeles to see a man named Ted Darby (Shepperd Strudwick) about staying away from her underage daughter. Clearly driven by unsavory intentions, he’s a squalid character twice her age who turns into a shakedown artist, where she’s clearly out of her element, yet the sweeping movements of the camera with its meticulous eye for detail make this a compelling sequence fraught with tension, Reckless Moment, The -- (Movie Clip) She's Only A Child YouTube (3:27). When she returns home, we discover Bea is a spoiled, rebellious type languishing away at art school, where her self-centered arrogance echoes the model set in the classic Michael Curtiz melodrama, Mildred Pierce (1945), the first film noir told from a female perspective. The film takes a dark turn when Darby’s dead body is found lying on the beach the next morning, with Lucia immediately suspecting her daughter is involved, so she disposes of the body by dumping it in a distant lagoon, where protecting her family from scandal is her primary concern. It’s a long, tense scene which is done in complete silence except the lapping of the waves, accentuating the breeze blowing her hair and scarf as she drives her motorboat with the body covered under a tarp, as she continually looks around, exploring her options, heightening the tension of her point of view with an impending sense of danger. Very much a character-driven story, where shadows are evident in the hallways of the household, and objects are constantly seen in the foreground, like a labyrinth she has to navigate, yet things only get worse with the arrival of a strange man named Martin Donnelly, played by a moody and overly restrained James Mason with an Irish accent, a symbol of moral decay who went on to star in George Cukor’s A Star Is Born (1954) and Stanley Kubrick’s LOLITA (1962), who turns out to be a low-life blackmailer, wanting cash for a package of love letters written by Bea to Darby, implicating her in the murder, as otherwise he’ll turn them over to the police. This really sets the gears in motion, elevating the intrigue in this brooding, psychological thriller, with Ophüls brilliantly staging this scene as a centerpiece showstopper, emphasizing the lack of privacy as the characters are under constant threat of being overheard, where constant interruptions challenge Lucia’s desire for middle class order and neatness, where nothing can appear out of place, making it seem like he’s a friend of the family, as he ingratiates himself into her life with strange and curious results, The Moves #3: The Reckless Moment (Max Ophüls, 1949) on ... YouTube (6:58). Desperately trying to hold her life together against a rising undercurrent of ever-increasing threats to stability, she goes into what filmmaker Todd Haynes describes as “maternal overdrive” to try to protect her domestic life, a place where everyone depends on her, continually bombarding her with requests, never having a moment of peace, as Lucia still must run her family, raise her children, and care for her elderly father-in-law without arousing suspicions, while at the same time negotiate with a shady blackmailer to avoid being implicated in a murder investigation. Ruthless in her determination to prevail, the film dramatizes the crushing weight on the shoulders of women, trapped by family life, discouraged from pursuing careers and denied independent lives, faced with limitations men never have to experience, yet obligated to provide for those around them while also being a nurturing presence, where there is literally no escape from this indefatigable maternal role, a reference to Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, becoming a radical critique of the pitfalls of domesticity and the patriarchal family, a daring move in the conservative era of 1950’s America.
Donnelly, it turns out, is not your typical extortionist, as he deeply sympathizes with the plight of Lucia, who can’t raise the money without the signature of her husband, who is completely inaccessible, yet the monetary demand is immediate nonetheless. Donnelly actually becomes infatuated as he hauls her groceries, offers grandfather tips on the horse races, and gives her son advice on how to fix an old engine, yet Lucia is casually dismissive, remaining guarded and emotionally impenetrable, stuck in this absurd no man’s land where nothing makes sense, literally torn from her world of suburban domesticity into a lurid criminal underworld where both feel morally bankrupt, while Donnelly finds himself in a similar position with his mobster crime boss Nagel (Roy Roberts) who impatiently demands the money now, with no further delays. Lucia is seen in ever-restricted spaces, on the ferry with Donnelly, never leaving the confined space of the car where she is a helpless passenger discussing the terms of blackmail, in a crowded bus station, or in a public phone booth, always feeling exposed, afraid of being seen, where the compressed space is emblematic of her diminishing freedom, undergoing a series of “reckless moments” where the consequences become the primary focus of the film. Exasperated at one point, with her family constantly watching her every move, Lucia confesses to her blackmailer, “You don’t know how a family can surround you sometimes.” Viewing her as a victim, Donnelly aptly points out, “You have your family, I have my Nagel.” What’s uniquely compelling is the way Donnelly fills the void by becoming a willing shadow husband, in some ways developing a deeper personal connection than she has with her family, so when he accompanies her on a trip to a local drugstore he blends in just like part of the family. The postwar scenes of Lucia in downtown Los Angeles are particularly vivid, as she makes her rounds through the streets of Los Angeles visiting the bank, a loan office, and a pawnshop trying to raise the necessary funds with little success, where the traffic is terrifying, the sidewalks are cluttered, while strange men are lurking in the doorways, providing a disoriented feeling that matches her internal despair, resembling the documentary-style footage of postwar Tokyo in Kurosawa’s STRAY DOG (1949), another noir film made about the same time. Lucia Harper is not your typical femme fatale drawn into a fatalistic criminal underworld, yet she is drawn in nonetheless specifically because of the absence of her husband, forcing her to assume his patriarchal duties. With women having no access to economic power, they find themselves in a subservient position in society. What Lucia fails to realize is that Sybil should be a close friend and confidante, an ally in her unsettling adventure down a dark path and an omnipresent moral center, though conveniently out of focus, placed in the background, or left out of the frame altogether, yet Lucia rejects her repeated offers of help and sees her only as a black servant, unable to recognize her equally repressive predicament working for the Harper family, both reduced to servitude, though Sybil does assume the position behind the wheel of a car late in the film, which may be the first time a black woman drives a car in a Hollywood film, yet she remains uncredited. Their common plight foreshadows the emergence of both the Civil Rights Movement and feminism. Lucia’s strength lies in her responsibility as a mother, as a head of a household, and a respectable member of the community, which is a stark difference from other noir women in similar predicaments, like Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity (1944), Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), or Jane Greer in Out of the Past (1947), who generate their power and strength from the way they manipulate men through their sexual allure. There’s none of that here, yet we do get a very distinct cinematic image of her femininity in the way she neurotically chain-smokes cigarettes, or wears reading glasses to perform domestic activities, where she’s often seen behind a desk in a business-like manner writing letters or making a shopping list, where her restraint only makes the final scenes that much more rewarding, setting the stage for a dramatic emotional release. Built into the film are bookended long-distance phone calls, with the camera fixed on Lucia as she takes the call by the stairs with family members parading back and forth behind her eager to get their chance to talk, calmly implying everything is in order even when it’s not, sparing her husband the dramatic details, instead conveying a picture of the same world he left behind, a portrait of domestic tranquility, while the “happy ending” of the finale has a subversive context, conveying the ultimate irony, and while she speaks cheerfully, she also weeps uncontrollably, a lingering expression of grief from the traumatic ordeal she has undergone.
Note
Two years after the film was made, Bennett became the subject of her own scandal. Having been represented by her agent Jennings Lang for twelve years, she met with him one afternoon to discuss an upcoming TV show, which upset her irate husband, producer Walter Wanger, who noticed her car was missing in the backlot of the television studio, having driven off in Lang’s car. When they returned together, dropping her off to her car, Wanger, who was waiting, shot him twice where he stood, wounding him severely, but he survived. Jealously believing Lang was trying to break up his marriage, Wanger pleaded temporary insanity and served a 4-month prison sentence, however the couple remained married. Bennett’s career suffered afterwards, as the studios refused to work with her, having made 65 pictures in the 23 years beforehand, and only 5 in the decade that followed, with Bennett quoted as saying “I might as well have pulled the trigger myself.”
Maternal Overdrive Todd Haynes on Max Ophuls’ The Reckless Moment on Vimeo (21:59)
Eddie Muller introduces "The Reckless Moment"; Noir City 2016, SIFF Egyptian (7/27/2016) YouTube (7:19)
Moviedrome - The Reckless Moment (Mark Cousins) Mark Cousins intro to the film, YouTube (3:00)
The Reckless Moment (1949) - Crime, Drama, Film Noir entire film may be seen here on YouTube (1:22:02)
