The Hurricane (1937)

THE HURRICANE                B                     

USA  (110 mi)  1937                      uncredited co-director (listed as associate director):  Stuart Heisler

The South Sea islands, the last hiding place of beauty and adventure.         

—Girl on ship (Inez Courtney)

No jail can hold Terangi very long — if it has a window in it, he’ll fly away! If it has water around it, he’ll swim away!        — Marama (Dorothy Lamour)

I represent a civilization that cannot afford to show confusion or conflict to the people it governs.       — French Governor Eugene De Laage (Raymond Massey)

How can I be your judge? You’ve sinned, but others have sinned more against you. You weren’t meant for evil, you were made to do evil.             

—Father Paul (C. Aubrey Smith)

Other than the most recent Tabu (2012), another filmmaker influenced by F.W. Murnau’s TABU (1931) is none other than American movie icon John Ford who traveled to the South Pacific to make this film, specifically the village of Pago Pago on Tutuila Island in American Samoa, while also constructing an artificial native village on 2 ½ acres on the United Artist back lots where according to Life Magazine, special effects wizard James Basevi was given a budget of $400,000 to create his effects, spending $150,000 to build a native village with a lagoon 200 yards long, and another $250,000 destroying it.  Pre-dating the tornado sequence in THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) and the modern era Weather Channel on TV, no one had ever seen such a vivid recreation of a tropical storm, more correctly called a cyclone in the South Pacific (hurricanes are in the Atlantic), where the real thrill is an incredible 15-minute hurricane sequence that was actually directed by Stuart Heisler, perhaps best known for his film noir remake of The Glass Key (1942) starring Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd, but also the rarely seen early performance from Susan Hayward in Among the Living (1941).  Ford usually liked to personally supervise all of the filming on his movies, so Heisler’s ability to simulate a savagely fierce island hurricane is particularly noteworthy, as it’s one of the best uses of special effects in early cinema.  Adapted from the Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall novel, the same duo writing The Mutiny on the Bounty, an Academy Award winning film in 1935, the film is a highly picturesque South Seas island melodrama that borrows liberally from TABU, especially the contrasting views of “Paradise” and “Paradise Lost,” as seen through two marriages, young Polynesian newlyweds Terangi (Jon Hall, an American actor who was actually raised in nearby Tahiti) and Marama (Dorothy Lamour, a former Miss New Orleans who became associated with roles in sarongs) and the more “civilized” European couple of French Governor Eugene De Laage, the ever dour Raymond Massey wearing a white suit with matching pith helmet, and his wife Germaine, Mary Astor.

Set during the colonial era in the South Pacific on the French Polynesian island of Manakoora, with the sweeping musical theme of “Moon of Manakoora”

Alfred Newman - The Moon Of Manakoora - YouTube (3:08) playing throughout the movie, the lushly visualized island village has a sandy shoreline with swaying palm trees where the glimmering seas never looking so romantic, a picture of innocence and hope.  Yet according to Turner Classic Movie’s Robert Osborne, the story resembles Les Misérables “with a relentlessly sadistic villain in constant pursuit of an unfairly hounded victim.”  The same could be said about an earlier Ford movie shot the previous year, THE PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND (1936), which features another unjustly accused man attempting to escape from prison, where interestingly John Carradine plays the sadistic warden in each film.  Told entirely in flashback, the film is given a near mythical characterization, where the islanders are seen from an outsiders point of view as childishly naïve and overly happy, mostly without a care in the world, yet a cultural divide seems to have been bridged in several examples of perfect harmony, where Terangi is seen as an indispensable first mate on a European vessel traveling back and forth to Tahiti, and in a gorgeously exotic marriage ceremony between Terangi and Marama, where literally hundreds wore gardenia leis around their necks and every woman had flowers in her hair, as they are given the blessing of both the Catholic Church and the tribal chief.  However, viewers may cringe when they hear Terangi proudly announce to his new bride, “In Tahiti, when I sit down in a café with this cap on, I’m just the same as a white man.”  Overall, the natives are seen as docile and obedient to authority, where they submit to the rule of an intractable and extremely narrow minded Governor who sees the law in absolute terms.  It’s unclear why such a small island would even have a French Governor and why people would so easily submit to his authority, especially without any police or militia at his disposal.  Early on we see the tribal chief cooperating with the jailing of a native for theft, when the evidence suggests he was using a canoe to romance his girlfriend under the moonlight.  One wonders how this is considered a crime, especially since all the canoes are owned by native islanders and none were pressing charges.  Most likely the idea of property ownership is strictly a European principle, so a distinction is clearly made between the tyrannical colonizers who make the rules and the submissive natives who must adhere to them, especially when the law is unjustly applied.   

Ford builds a strong case for resistance to imperialist tyranny, as the moral divide only grows larger and more untenable when Terangi is arrested in Tahiti for slugging a drunken white man making racial slurs, where the offended party is politically connected in France, leading to a 6-month prison sentence for what might be considered justifiable assault.  Assigned to back-breaking labor and treated with all manor of abuse by Carradine, Terangi makes multiple escape attempts, seen diving off cliffs into the ocean, only to have more time added to his sentence each time, eventually totalling 16 years.  Ford insisted the violent whippings actor Jon Hall endure be real, wanting no fake acting, but unfortunately the realism was so severe the censors forced the scenes be cut due to their brutality.  Despite the disparity of an excessive sentence for the original crime, the Governor refuses to intervene, making no exceptions, going strictly by the book, despite the pleas of his wife and a sympathetic island doctor, Dr. Kersaint, Thomas Mitchell, seen as a philosophizing lush, a world-weary man who’s been away from civilization for too long, something of a preliminary run-through of his Academy Award winning performance for pretty much the exact same character in Ford’s STAGECOACH (1939).  When Terangi does manage to cleverly escape, making a heroic journey in only a canoe, he is sheltered by the village priest and the natives, who are seen celebrating his escape, which only enrages the Governor, even more maniacally insistent on tracking him down and bringing him to justice.  Nature’s response to man’s feeble attempts at implementing justice is harshly judgmental, showing a force of Biblical proportions, where the entire island comes under siege.  The ferocious devastation is brilliantly realized with a massive hurricane sequence that must have been indescribably intense when initially seen in the theaters, as no one had ever seen anything like it.  To the sound of crashing waves and gushing winds, Ford used the most powerful propeller-driven wind machines ever designed generating winds up to 150 miles per hour and 150,000 gallons of water to lambaste his actors, where no stunt doubles were used.  The force of the wind is astonishing, probably Ford’s best special effects sequence throughout his entire career, where cinema’s promise to create awe and spectacle is actually delivered.  The sequence literally overwhelms the rest of the picture, making everything else seem like an afterthought, but the contrast between the idyllic peaceful tranquility on the island and the monstrous roar of the waves remains utterly spectacular.   

The Glass Key (1942)

THE GLASS KEY       C                    

USA  (85 mi)  1942  d:  Stuart Heisler

You’re built well, got a pretty face, nice manners, but I wouldn’t trust you outside of this room.      —Ed Beaumont (Alan Ladd)

Not to be confused with the earlier version of this film The Glass Key (1935) starring George Raft and Edward Arnold, adapted from a Dashiell Hammett novel, considered one of his best, this remake stars Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd, the second of four films together, adding a love interest that was not in the earlier version.  Made immediately after THIS GUN FOR HIRE (1942), but prior to the release, where Paramount saw how well the diminutive pair worked together, as Ladd was all of 5 feet and 5 inches tall, while Lake was just under 5 feet, making them perfect screen partners.  The secret to their screen chemistry, however, is the dialogue, as it’s smart and sassy, giving Lake a chance to exert a fierce independent streak, making her an ideal femme fatale, quite demure and emotionally distant in her calculatingly cold and indifferent way.  Directed by Stuart Heisler, who also directed the politically subversive Among the Living (1941), this remake is often thought to be the superior of the two versions, where the crisp dialogue might be sharper and quick-witted, and the extension of Lake’s role in the story doesn’t hurt, but George Raft is better as the slick and street smart Ed Beaumont, a man of dubious character, whose conversion from gambler to political handler is more believable.  Ladd appears kind of wooden for much of the film, especially when he’s working the right side of the law, as he’s more animated playing a tough, wise guy who knows how to talk to and handle small time hoods.  He’s at home in their seedy element, where some of the best scenes in the film are shared with William Bendix as Jeff, a near psychotic hit man who loves to smash people’s faces for a living, used as a bodyguard for gambling operator Nick Varna (Joseph Calleia).  No one can beat the largesse of Edward Arnold’s earlier performance either as Paul Madvig, a corrupt political boss trying to go straight.  He and Raft were excellent partners who seemed to be speaking the same language, as if they came out of the gutter together.  Ladd as Beaumont and Brian Donlevy as Madvig, who actually had top billing in the picture, act like they barely know each other, as Madvig exerts much less influence, so one wonders why Beaumont would be so loyal.

Perhaps more faithful to the book, it’s a complex story of political corruption and murder, where Madvig and Beaumont come from a crooked past supporting prostitution and gambling interests.  So when party boss Madvig comes out in support of a reform candidate for Governor, society millionaire Ralph Henry (Moroni Olsen), believing he’ll be rewarded with a key to the Governor’s mansion, his fashion-minded daughter Janet (Lake) is the real object of his desire, making her his fiancé, so he starts shutting down gangster run gambling houses, like Nick Varna’s, which turns heads, and infuriorates Varna who vows revenge.  When Henry’s troubled son is murdered, Madvig is quickly implicated, fueled by rumors fed to the newspaper by Varna.  But when Madvig doesn’t seem very concerned, Beaumont is initially puzzled, as he doesn’t trust Henry and thinks Janet is playing his boss for a chump, thinking both will be dumped after the election.  Pretending to get in a fight with Madvig and leave town, Beaumont has another reason to stick around, as Veronica Lake captures his interest as well The Glass Key Film Noir Veronica Lake 1942 YouTube (2:33).  When he starts sticking his nose in Varna’s affairs, Beaumont runs into Jeff, who’s just waiting to get his mitts on him, giving him one of the more brutal beatings that’s still painful to watch more than a half century later, especially when one learns afterwards that Bendix accidentally knocked Ladd out, catching him with a haymaker to the jaw, which is the take used in the film.  Bendix was so remorseful afterwards that he and Ladd became excellent friends, working together again in The Blue Dahlia (1946), another tour-de-force performance from Bendix.  Wally Westmore’s makeup department deserves special recognition, as Ladd really looked like he was on the wrong end of a crudely savage beating, yet he cleverly manages to escape.

After a hospital recovery, Beaumont engineers what is perhaps the most morally despicable scene in the film, but it starts out like one of those Inspector Hercule Poirot scenes in an Agatha Christie novel, where he gathers all the usual suspects in a room and figures it all out.  Beaumont reveals that Varda owns the mortgage to the newspaper, so the publisher, Arthur Loft as Clyde Matthews, is forced to print all the rumor and gossip as actual news, which the publisher’s wife Eloise (Margaret Hayes) finds a detestable development, especially the realization that they’re broke.  When she and Beaumont cozy up to one another in plain view of the husband, brazenly kissing on the sofa, Beaumont literally shames the publisher into taking his own life.  Beaumont’s actions here are pretty disgusting, where his heartless and amoral reaction may be suitable for film noir, but hardly befitting anyone’s idea of a hero, which is how he’s projected in the film.  Again, George Raft projects having lived among sewer rats so much better than Ladd who always looks like he’s afraid to get his shoes scuffed, as he just doesn’t exhibit the needed range of believability.  There’s a fascinating appearance by Lillian Randolph, Annie the housekeeper in IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946, whose daughter Barbara sang with the Platters and was initially considered as a replacement member of the Supremes), seen here as a Bessie Smith style nightclub blues singer where the publisher’s widow is seen drowning her sorrows.  Bendix, though, steals the movie when Ladd comes to get revenge, shown here with his mouth flapping and his hair flying, continually calling Beaumont a heel, He's A Heel - The Glass Key (1942) YouTube (3:34).  Ladd doesn’t stop there, urging the spineless District Attorney to bring charges against Janet Henry, a woman he supposedly loves, to root out the real killer.  The film barely touches on the corrupt political angle, using it instead as background information for the budding romance between the two leads, where each projects an unscrupulous nature that all but defines them as untrustworthy.  By the end, do we really believe that they’re going to go straight?  She’s accustomed to the finer things in life, having been spoiled and raised with servants in an immense mansion.  Beaumont’s going to need plenty of bucks to keep her happy, where life on the shady side of the street is often more financially rewarding.   

Among the Living

(Hollywood10.jpg‎  photo taken November 1947). Front row (from left):  Herbert Biberman, attorneys Martin Popper and Robert W. Kenny, Albert Maltz, and Lester Cole. Middle row: Dalton Trumbo, John Howard Lawson, Alvah Bessie, and Samuel Ornitz. Back row:  Ring Lardner Jr., Edward Dmytryk, and Adrian Scott

AMONG THE LIVING           B                     

USA  (67 mi)  1941  d:  Stuart Heisler

This is a rarely screened, oddball hybrid of a movie that is a mixture of film noir and horror, that seems to have seeds of political subversiveness as well, where what’s especially memorable is the portrayal of mob hysteria, no doubt the influence of screenwriter Lester Cole, a writer who unashamedly joined the American Communist Party in 1934, later blacklisted, writing both the story and the script.  Cole wrote more than 40 screenplays that turned into movies, but after he refused to testify in 1947 about his political affiliations before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, one of the Hollywood Ten, he was sentenced to a year (serving 10 months) in federal prison for contempt of Congress.  After the blacklisting, only 3 screenplays were made into movies, the most successful of which was BORN FREE (1966), written under the pseudonym Gerald L.C. Copley, an adaptation of Joy Adamson's 1960 non-fictional book about raising orphaned lion cubs in Kenya.  This movie also features a scintillating early performance by actress Susan Hayward, something of a vivacious young vixen, eventually known as the Queen of Melodrama in the 1950’s, winning an Academy Award as Best Actress playing a tough, wise-cracking prostitute charged with murder and condemned to the gas chamber in the tearjerker I WANT TO LIVE (1958).  Seeing her so early in her career is a special delight, as she’s a joy to watch, stealing nearly every scene she is in.     

Shot in a Southern gothic setting, the film opens with a memorable shot peeking through an iron gate at the small funeral service for the industrialist owner of the town’s mill, while kept outside the gates are hoardes of striking or unemployed workers who can be seen taunting the deceased.  As a storm approaches, we soon learn the secret identity of a twin brother long thought dead, Paul Raden, the deranged identical twin of the more respectable John Raden (Albert Dekker in both roles), who lost his mind as a child when his father, the recently deceased, threw him against a wall when he tried to stop his father from beating his mother, where the last sounds he heard before going insane was his mother screaming, sounds that he has never gotten out of his head, constantly holding his hands to his ears whenever trouble sets in.  In our initial view of him he’s wearing a straightjacket, living in a secret room locked up in the basement of the old family plantation quarters, where Ernest Whitman as Pompey, a black family servant, has been looking after him for 25 years, assisted by Dr. Saunders (Harry Carey), who fabricated a death certificate for a fake funeral service that kept everyone from asking questions.  Following the camera down the stairs into the bowels of this dilapidated home resembles how we discover FRANKENSTEIN (1931), one of the original monster movies that co-screenwriter Garrett Fort helped script.  In each case, the monster breaks free from their imprisonment before wreaking havoc on the town.

The interesting twist is how Paul arrives in a rooming house in town with a wad of cash and is treated as a “respectable gentleman.”  The landlady’s daughter is Hayward, who is herself imprisoned by her mother, never allowed to escape from the claustrophobic confines of the rooming house.  So she’s a free spirited woman just waiting for someone to sweep her out of this dead end town, where she, and all the rest of the local folk, see no prospects for the future now that the mill has closed.  Hayward’s flashy and flirtatious behavior is the best thing in the film, an exaggerated expression of sexuality in contrast to the rather sexless behavior of the twin brothers, and the completely dull and lifeless appearance of Frances Farmer as John’s wife.  Hayward takes the unsuspecting Paul on a shopping spree, allowing him to buy her a giant bottle of perfume and a slinky new dress before he wanders into a happenin’ dance club where he engages in weird, completely inappropriate conversation with one of the hostesses, discovering an electrifying, foot-stomping jump joint where the swing dancer’s jitterbug energy is so frenetically wild that the world starts spinning out of control, beautifully photographed by Theodor Sparkuhl in what could easily have been a dry run for the sensational teen dances in John Waters’ HAIRSPRAY (1988).

Paul unexpectedly turns into Jack the Ripper, the town’s serial killer, who can only silence the sound of women screaming by strangling them.  In typical noir fashion, the family’s shameful past has been uprooted, like opening Pandora’s Box, producing a secret so vile that it can only be viewed as a monster on the loose who can’t help himself.  The town is in an uproar, where their public frenzy is unleashed with the radio announcement of a $5000 reward for finding the killer, where the hysteria of a mob scene is so overwhelmingly over the top, it’s like the unleashing of panic in every direction, as if the world was invaded by aliens.  The lynch mob mentality is quite a spectacle, shown with a great deal of flair, where they want to string the guy up right then and there, dragging a judge out of his home to perform the public trial.  But the man they have caught is John, mistaken for his evil twin Paul, instantly condemned by the mob, despite John’s desperate pleas which fall on deaf ears.  Hayward herself leads the public condemnation of the man, where all are turned against him.  Fritz Lang’s M (1931) reveals a similar public trial, where the outlaws judge the criminal actions of a sexual pervert who preys on little girls, while FURY (1936) creates the same lynch mob hysteria, not to mention the psychological dread that accumulates throughout Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man (1956).  At just over an hour, the film is brief but surprisingly complicated and far reaching for 1941, touching on the Nazi madness that was marching unchallenged throughout Europe while America sat on its hands in a position of neutrality until Pearl Harbor happened a year later.  This is a film seething with social discontent, public outrage, hysteria, as well as madness, all equally intense, bizarre, delightful, and terrifying at the same time, something rare and quite unique, easily one of the darkest depictions of American society on record.