Mister Roberts - 1955 - DVD

Sunday, February 11, 2007



Mister Roberts is set on a WWII supply ship, headed by a brass Captain Morton (James Cagney) who hasn't let his crew off ship for nearly a year. His booming voice (though we don't yet know it is his) thunders above the ship deck instructing the crew; it's a eerie, monotonous sound that feels disconnected from the ship, God-like, as if it encompasses the sea and surrounding sky. It's a weird opening scene with the ship separated from anything else on the horizon. As far as we know from the first few minutes it very well could be abandoned; the voice an imagined sound from the grave. A glimps of the shore appears a few moments later and it's clear the ship is set just off the mainland, and from here the absurdity of the ship's positioning begins.

Naturally charming, and alternately quiet and witty, William Powell plays Lt. "Doc," who is Lt. Roberts' (Henry Fonda) confidant and friend on their lonely, droning time in the service. Most of the time there is literally nothing for the soldiers to do but wait until the warring soldiers at sea need supplies. They sit idle, desperate for a diversion, even a fight. Things are so laid back that Lt. Roberts is addressed as "Mister Roberts," the crew's father figure. He keeps them sane; they peep through their binoculars at the nurses' station on land, and he lets them to peel their shirts off in the hot sun--all against Navy protocol, and of course much to the dismay and anger of Captain Morton. Harry Carey, Jr. plays Stefanowski, one of the many seemingly pubescent soldiers on ship--you can't miss him with his glistening white waves of hair.

Ward Bond is "Chief Petty Officer Dowdy," as usual a gruff but tenderhearted authority figure who seems more dimensional against the foil of Cagney, Powell, and Fonda. Jack Lemmon plays funny-man and slacker Ensign Pulver, who talks a lot of smack but rarely has the gaul to live up to his words. Once Lemmon enters the mood naturally lightens—particularly in the scene where he, Doc, and Roberts concoct their own brand of whiskey, made of none other than water and a few liquids from the medicine cabinet.

John Wayne's second son Patrick also has a part as a soldier, though it is small so pay attention whenever the larger group of soldiers is on screen. Working with Ford really is like being a part of a family; he's screened generations of his best actors, Harry Carey and Harry Carey, Jr; the Duke and his son Patrick, not to mention his own brother Frank in earlier films (who also used John when he was a director himself in the silent days). Beside these players are his unofficial family, the recurring actors like Fonda, Cagney, and Ward Bond, all smack into the Closterphobic space of this ship stuck at sea. They even bicker like family.

Mister Roberts has the same apathetic and frustrated tone as some recent war movies, like Jarhead (2005), for example, where Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal) is bored to numbness in Iraq. It's full of pent-up anxiety that longs to be unleashed against an enemy that for them doesn't exist.

Also, if you were an AMC junkie in the past, you might be familiar with the movie Ensign Pulver (1964)--they played this movie almost as regularly as Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid (1969). Ensign is a remake of Mister Roberts with Walter Matthau as "Doc," and a slender Jack Nicholson as a shipmate.

Mister Roberts was co-directed with Mervyn Leroy, and uncredited as director is Joshua Logan, the film's screenwriter and later director of its remake, Ensign Pulver.

What Price Glory - 1952 - DVD

Thursday, January 4, 2007

I guess it is not a coincidence that in another John Ford movie I have found one of the best performances from an actor on screen. James Cagney, hailed by all, and for good reason with his multifaceted ability to sing, dance, and behave in accordance with a script and with his own jerky gestures and inflection intact, completely blows my mind in one defining scene as a soldier dies in his arms. How do you relate the tremors of death, the last instance of life before it flitters away into the intangible ether? How do you show what this physical tragedy does to a person emotionally and intellectually without sledging them over the head with sentimental rhetoric? I guess if you're John Ford you don't say much at all, and hold the scene in long shot as you watch James Cagney's character clench his teeth so hard, and in complete silence that the moment almost becomes separated from space. This is how Ford works, with a hyper-masculine minimalism that strips the scene from emotional elements like weeping and tears and replaces it with a physical thing so heavy you can't look away.

What Price Glory is gory and violent, at least by the standards of 1952 that never come close to the limb-loss, decapitations, and rivers of blood and wormy intestine spills that define war movies of late. Even better, the film subtly hints at the grotesque as Ford chooses to show us the faces of his characters, their reactions to the gore, instead. This is how the violence in The Searchers works as well, with Ethan (John Wayne) playing the canvas on which the macabre is expressed across his face; Ethan's subsequent bitter eruptions among his fellow cowboys (and remaining family members) is also the abstract expression of the human slaughter he witnesses. As previously mentioned in notes on 3 Godfathers, Wayne has the same platform to relate a complex matter, uncut and organic, with time provided by a long-take to show us how his character works through his thought; the expression changes on his face multiple times and the camera holds steady and shows each of Wayne's facial twitches and blinks.

Recently I viewed Peter Bogdanovich's Directed By John Ford (1976/2006), a testament from all of Ford's regular actors, including Wayne, James Stewart, and Henry Fonda, that the director kept up a high pressure atmosphere accented by an acerbic attitude that seemed to denote that if you couldn't perform to Ford's expectations you were a personal failure. Apparently, Ford had this mental power over his players, and for better or worse, with performances like Cagney's (and the uncountable moments with Wayne), it worked.



What Price Glory takes place in 1918 France during the first world war, and gives Ford the additional credit of an author who is aware of the enemy's face as much as those of his protagonists. There are numerous shots (some I believe in close-up) that show German soldiers behind barbed-wire trenches, and later the actual capture of a German Colonel. The enemies in this film are given character, which makes the muddy rubble of mortar rust and blood all the more devastating, and certainly more real. There are sound tools Ford uses, as well, that shape the gloomy mood of the soldiers' lives: from the start of the film faint rumblings of explosions linger through the ambiance; as the story progresses the explosions become louder, until finally the characters are in the depth of battle. Finally, and what is perhaps the singularly best shot of the film, is Ford's overhead camera that holds on a yard of American soldiers exercising to the cadence of their uniform chant, which then in one smooth motion pans across the fence to a separate yard of French school girls as they sing and stretch together. With all of its violence, What Price Glory is a war movie where people coexist peacefully.