Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger | A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven) / 1946

to be or not to be

by Douglas Messerli

 

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (screenwriters and directors) A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven) / 1946

 

Beginning with in 1941 in the early years and World War II and immediately following it, filmmakers devoted several films to interchanges between earth and heaven, as dead men’s lives were disputed by the living and vise versa, the heavenly messengers having been too eager or failed in bring men into the realms of death. In Alexander Hall’s Here Comes Mr. Jordon (1941) boxer Joe Pendleton is swept away to heaven by an accompanying angel (Edward Everett Horton) 50 years ahead of time, causing a major problem when the heavenly representatives attempt to find him another earthly body, particularly since love is involved and Joe is worried about his sweetheart’s ability to recognize him. In Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life of 1946, an angel (Henry Travers) is sent to earth to dissuade the local Building and Loan manager, George Bailey, from taking his life by revealing to him how his town and its denizens will be affected by his death. And in the following year in Henry Koster’s The Bishop’s Wife an angel (Carey Grant) arrives on Christmas Eve to help Henry Brougham (David Niven) make a decision about building a grand new cathedral or neglecting his poorer congregations, his wife, and family.

 

    Also in 1946 Niven, playing Squadron Leader Peter David Carter, was visited by yet another heavenly guide to take him off to heaven after he has amazingly survived jumping from a high-flying airplane into the ocean without a parachute. In this case the angelic Conductor 71 (Marius Goring) has missed acquiring his “victim” because of a heavy British fog that has spread over the half the country.

     The Powell and Pressburger movie, A Matter of Life and Death (aka Stairway to Heaven) begins, in fact, with Peter’s call to headquarters to explain his situation: on his lap sits the head of his dead friend, Flying Office Bob Trubshaw and below him the lower half of his plane is engulfed in flames. Having no parachute, he reports in, mostly just to hear the voice of a human being before he jumps to his certain death.

    The voice, in this case, comes from an American serving on a British base, June (Kim Hunter), whose gentle attempts to help and worries for his safety is just what Peter was seeking, he declares, before he must end his life to join his friend Bob.

      But we soon see Bob in heaven waiting for Peter who has failed to show up. Such an incident has not happened in over 1000 years, and Conductor 71 is due for a thorough grilling. The head registrar Angel (Kathleen Byron) sends him back immediately to reclaim the man by convincing him to come along nicely to heaven with him.

     Peter, however, is not only surprised by his incredible salvation but by this time has already met with and fallen in love with girl behind his midnight earth-angel’s voice, who he’s found bicycling along the beach. And before either of them even know what they’re doing, they’ve kissed and retreated to a hidden glen to make love, drink scotch, and plan for their future.

      It doesn’t help that Conductor 71 is an effete and quite effeminate Frenchman who “lost his head” in the French Revolution, and is more of a romantic that even this cupid-ridden Anglo-American couple. With lips painted in bright red lipstick, 71—the number which is described in numerology as “the angel number,” since according to the numerology site I visited “the number 7 represents spiritual awakening, inner guidance, intuition, and the development of psychic powers.” The number 1 “stands for new beginnings, creation, independence, and leadership.” In short, you should “trust the journey.”

      But why should Peter trust his newly gained life to a queer Frenchman, who in order to talk to him without interruption, steals his scotch and puts his new found sweetheart into a blissful doze? When Peter asks the intruder what he wants now, the ridiculous French queer answers: “You my friend.” And soon after, knowing that Peter is a chess expert, he attempts to allure him to the futurist paradise by telling him that they could play chess* together for eternity—presumably his heavenly equivalent of eternal sexual bliss. Fortunately, he turns him down, demanding an appeal in the heavenly court of law.

     The incident also provides him with a terrible headache that, when June is awakened, easily explains to her why her new lover is speaking so absurdly about the voices he has heard. Good level-headed American soldier that she is, she immediately pops into for a visit with the local doctor, Frank Reeves (Roger Livesey), who also just happens to be a noted specialist in neurology—a big difference from the numerology obsessed heavenly messenger which he immediately realizes is a product of Peter’s damaged brain, determining through a quick bit of research and connecting it up with Peter’s olfactory sensations when he had the visions, that he will have to have surgery quickly in order to be saved.

      A great deal happens, however, before that. The heavenly conductor returns to tell him that an appeal has been granted, but that he only has a few days to prepare his case and find a proper counsel. But with all the dead greats from Hammurabi and Plato to Lincoln, and numerous others a fitting representative shouldn’t be hard to find. On the other hand, Heaven will be represented by a US citizen, Abraham Farlan (Raymond Massey) who was killed by a British gun in the early days of the Revolutionary War and, accordingly, has a hatred for all things British and is clearly more prejudiced against Peter Carter since he is Britisher in love with an American woman.

      How Heaven has allowed in a bigot of his kind is not explained. But in Michael Powell’s and Emeric Pressburger’s imagination there doesn’t seem to be a Hell. Everyone goes to the world of the afterlife. Even so, I might choose to remain in the grave than be escalated up into world portrayed in this celestial spot, where everyone shows up in the clothing they were wearing at the moment and are gathered together with others with similar attire, so that all the Puritans sit together, as do the American soldiers, the British officers, the Red Cross workers, etc.—suggesting that this afterworld is even more tribal than the one we know, which arguably has been the major justification of wars throughout the centuries. All those millions and millions of people packed into a single celestial space! I’m sure I wouldn’t at all be happy, even if I could feel, “In his will is our peace.”

 

     But then, since it logically is simply a product of Peter’s damaged brain, we don’t have to buy into this vision of the afterlife. Since Peter believes its so, however, argues Dr. Reeves, he may in fact be destroyed if he doesn’t win his appeal—at least his mind might, with a possibility of insanity. An operation is needed, he determines, that very night.

       In fact, given the vision of the afterlife that Peter has already conjured up, particularly if it’s all just his imagination, he may be showing signs of what used to be thought of as insanity already. I mean, why should the man who has so easily fallen for June have even summoned up a gay queen like Conductor 71 to take him away from his earthly love if he wasn’t already slightly queer. Or perhaps it’s just his psyche presenting him with an emotional alternative, permitting him a gay old time in heaven playing chess or a busy heterosexual life of kids and husbandly duties back on earth.

       Did I mention that Peter Carter is a poet? And we all know poets need time alone without all the noise of family life. Poets, I might add, are generally presented in cinema as another incarnation of the dreaded “pansy.”

       If nothing else, Powell and Pressburger seem to be weighing the dice. Will he die an unmarried man with certain fussy “tendencies” (he’s already quoted Sir Walter Raleigh to June as his plane is going down, claiming “I’d rather written that than have flown through Hitler’s legs.” My, what an image! And a moment later he quotes Andrew Marvell. As June reports back, “We cannot read you, please report your location.” Peter seems to be already to be headed into outer space.

      As expected it’s now a stormy, rainy night and the ambulance hasn’t yet arrived, even though not having been able to chose a defender Peter lies in a sweaty coma. The good doctor has no choice but to get on his trusty motorcycle and ride off to the hospital to see what happened. Inevitably, he runs, quite literally, into the ambulance on his way, killing him and sending him up the stairway into afterlife. The earthbound Peter, so it appears, as chosen Reeves to represent him in the appeals court. And meanwhile, back on earth, Peter’s delicate operation has begun, with June dropping a tear or two as she waits in worry. Reeves takes the tear back to heaven in the folds of a rose as evidence.

      The question thus becomes will the poet fly off to heaven as some version of a fairy or come back to down to earth to marry June and live the life of an ordinary heterosexual male.

 

    In 1946 there was no other possible choice: Reeves wins his case. The operation is a success, the attending doctor having followed the specialist’s careful notes. But not before the heavenly jury determines that they need come down to earth to prove that Peter and June truly love each other. Peter’s very determination to stay on earth proves his love. To prove her love June is asked if she would give up her life for him, which she readily agrees to, jumping as asked onto the escalator-like Stairway to Heaven for a short while before it rumbles to a stop, proving that love is stronger than everything, even death. Peter is given a new, much longer death date, and presumably the happy couple lives happily if not forever, certainly for a long life—without the intrusion of perfumed players of chess.  

       

*Niven, so the biographers report, was terribly fond of the intellectual game, and played it almost professionally.

 

Los Angeles, April 29, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (April 2024

Elia Kazan | Gentleman's Agreement / 1947

the wrong girl

by Douglas Messerli

 

Moss Hart (screenplay, based on a novel by Laura Z. Hobson), Elia Kazan (director) Gentleman's Agreement / 1947

 

I have watched the film Gentleman's Agreement more than a dozen times in my life, and have come to feel that it is one of my favorites. It brings out all my missionary zeal, and, following my parents' feelings, I have an intense hatred of anti-Semitism.

    Watching it more carefully this past week, however, I realized, despite its overall excellence, that the film had a great many flaws, some of them perhaps fatal in their overall effects. The most obvious, of course, is the positioning of Philip Schuyler Green (Gregory Peck)—one cannot imagine a more waspish middle name—as its "hero." Green, assigned to write on anti-Semitism by magazine publisher John Minify (Albert Dekker), decides, after a great skepticism about the piece, to "become" Jewish by ridding himself of his middle name and simply declaring that he is a Jewish man named Phil Green.

Phil Green: Ma, listen, I've even got the title, "I Was Jewish for Six Months."

Mrs. Green: It's right, Phil.

Phil Green: Ma. it's like this click just happened inside me. It won't be the same, sure, but it'll be close. I can just tell them I'm Jewish and see what happens.  ....Dark hair, dark eyes. Just like Dave [his long-time Jewish friend]. Just like a lot of guys who aren't Jewish. No accent, no mannerisms. Neither has Dave.

 

     Like journalist John Howard Griffin, who in the 1960s chemically darkened his skin to pass as a black man writing of his experiences riding the buses throughout the racially tense US South in Black Like Me, so Green "becomes" Jewish, as it were only a matter of declaration. And before he can even tell his girl-friend, Minify's divorced niece, Kathy Lacy (Dorothy McGuire), he begins to experience racial and social tensions. Before long he is suffering feelings, as he describes it to Dave Goldman (John Garfield), he has apparently never encountered before: "I've been saying I'm Jewish. ...It works too well. I've been having my nose rubbed in it, and I don't like the smell."

     At one time in my early years, seeking for something I didn't have in my own family life, I wanted to convert to Judaism, but after about a day of thinking, I realized what I was most searching for, family traditions, a sense of community perhaps, had already passed me by, and what I would be left with was only the religion, the faith—which I find hard to maintain in any religious context.

     Yet here, it is as if Phil Green can comprehend everything with very little experience. Except for a racial attack by other boys on his son, Tommy (Dean Stockwell), it is, in fact, the little things that most attract his attention. While Dave cannot even find a home for his family in New York, Phil goes about the city fighting mostly with his fiancée for having qualms about his decision, and raging against his secretary—whom he discovers is herself Jewish—for her disparagement of "the wrong Jews." The most serious thing that occurs to him personally is that he is turned away, when he enquires whether the hotel takes only Gentiles, from the famed Flume Inn where he was to have spent his honeymoon with Kathy. While these offences, along with whispers and slurs, are certainly offensive and destructive, it is clearly Dave who has the real perspective.

 

Dave Goldman: You're not insulated yet, Phil. The impact must be quite a business on you.

Phil Green: You mean you get indifferent to it in time?

Dave Goldman: No, but you're concentrating a lifetime into a few weeks. You're not changing the facts, you're just making them hurt more.

 

    Perhaps it is his utter humorlessness that betrays Phil most about his not being Jewish. At a party given by fellow journalist Anne Dettrey (Celeste Holm), Professor Fred Lieberman (Sam Jaffe in a stand-in role of Einstein), answers the question about anti-Semitism in a manner that Phil could never comprehend:

 

Professor Fred Lieberman: Millions of people nowadays are religious only in the vaguest sense. I've often wondered why the Jews among them still go on calling themselves Jews. Do you know, Mr. Green?

Phil Green: No, but I'd like to.

Professor Fred Lieberman: Because the world still makes it an advantage not to be one. Thus it becomes a matter of pride to go on calling ourselves Jews.

 

     Accordingly, Gentleman's Agreement, in some senses, is doomed by its own righteousness. I suppose the nation would learn nothing if the information Phil Green shares in his magazine article might come from the pen of a Jewish person himself, but that is, after all, the whole problem. No one is willing to listen from the other side. Like Griffin's acts and publication, there is something inevitably paternalistic about an outsider revealing to the world what "insiders," the sufferers, have so long complained about.

     Is it any wonder that both in the film and in reality, film producers such as Samuel Goldwyn and others attempted to discourage Darryl Zanuck from making the movie? Would it change anything? Certainly they, as Jews, had not previously been heard. It might actually cause harm.

     The most serious flaw in this film, however, is not the crusading outsider hero, but the fact that that hero cannot evidently see that a man like himself, who supposedly has grown up under the guidance of his wise and saintly mother (the wonderful Anne Revere), is doomed by his infatuation with Kathy—an intelligent, but also rich, snobbish, and self-deceiving woman of great beauty. There is something always "pinched" about McGuire's acting, as if it hurts her to open up herself to others. That was certainly true in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, where she played a hard-working mother inured to life's difficulties but unable to enjoy the humor and zest of her musician husband. Later roles such as those in Three Coins in a Fountain and Friendly Persuasion continue to cast her as half-spinster and half-shrew, or at least "a scold." In Gentleman's Agreement she is perhaps softer, and she smiles quite sweetly from time to time. But inside we still sense something unutterably cold. Her prejudice by silence is at the center of Phil's discoveries

    Is it any wonder that both in the film and in reality, film producers such as Samuel Goldwyn and others attempted to discourage Darryl Zanuck from making the movie? Would it change anything? Certainly they, as Jews, had not previously been heard. It might actually cause harm.

     The most serious flaw in this film, however, is not the crusading outsider hero, but the fact that that hero cannot evidently see that a man like himself, who supposedly has grown up under the guidance of his wise and saintly mother (the wonderful Anne Revere), is doomed by his infatuation with Kathy—an intelligent, but also rich, snobbish, and self-deceiving woman of great beauty. There is something always "pinched" about McGuire's acting, as if it hurts her to open up herself to others. That was certainly true in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, where she played a hard-working mother inured to life's difficulties but unable to enjoy the humor and zest of her musician husband. Later roles such as those in Three Coins in a Fountain and Friendly Persuasion continue to cast her as half-spinster and half-shrew, or at least "a scold." In Gentleman's Agreement she is perhaps softer, and she smiles quite sweetly from time to time. But inside we still sense something unutterably cold. Her prejudice by silence is at the center of Phil's discoveries:

 

Kathy Lacey: You think I'm an anti-Semite.

Phil Green: No, I don't. But I've come to see lots of nice people who hate it and deplore it and protest their own innocence, then help it along and wonder why it grows. People who would never beat up a Jew. People who think anti-Semitism is far away in some dark place with low-class morons. That's the biggest discovery I've made. The good people. The nice people.

 

     As opposed to Kathy's cold and meek "niceness," Moss Hart focuses on Phil's colleague, fashion editor, Anne Dettrey, who, through Celeste Holm's striking performance, comes alive as a vibrant, witty, fun, and intelligent figure.

 

Anne Dettrey: Mirror, mirror, on the wall. who's the most brilliant of them all?

Phil Green: And what does the mirror say?

Anne Dettrey: Well, that mirror ain't no gentleman.

 

     The viewer instinctively feels that she, who recognizes what a gentleman is or isn't, is the equal of Phil Green, someone who would fight for the right causes with him. Dettrey portrays this time and again, and even reveals her spunk by, as she puts, "laying her cards on the table," in an almost "catty" moment attacking Kathy and all she and her family stands for. I was convinced, and will continue to be by her arguments. Moreover, the very idea that Phil Green, his mother, and son would be comfortable in Kathy's impeccably designed Darrien cottage, is inconceivable. There is absolutely no way that "Atlas," as Phil has been nicknamed early in the film—carrying the world on his shoulders, rushing this way and that, and stepping on everyone's toes—could for one moment sit comfortably in that fragile house!

    Equally unbelievable is Kathy's sudden self-discovery, after a conversation with Dave, that her refusal to leave or comment on a dinner-table guest telling a disgusting anti-Semitic joke, is at the heart of the problem. Clearly it has taken her the whole film to comprehend what Phil has explained to her again and again.

     At least, in allowing Dave and his family to live for a year in her Darrien house while she moves in her with her sister next door—in order to make sure the neighbors treat them correctly—the Goldmans will be near their friends the Greens, and Kathy will be out of his life for a short while. Yet the story seems to indicate that Phil and Kathy will ultimately marry and settle into Shangri-La. Of course that will mean Phil's demise. Atlas can at last shrug.

     For all that, the movie is still powerful and moving. Elia Kazan won an Academy Award for best director, and the film won for best movie. So powerful was its message that the nefarious House on Un-American Activities Committee called Zanuck, Kazan, Garfield, and Revere to testify. Revere refused, and both she and Garfield were placed on the Red Channels of the Hollywood Blacklist.  

 

Los Angeles, August 15, 2011

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August 2011).      

Metin Erksan | Susuz Yaz (Dry Summer) / 1964

hoarding nature

by Douglas Messerli

 

Metin Erksan, Kemal İnci, and İsmet Soydan (screenplay, based on a story by Necati Cumalı), Metin Erksan (director) Susuz Yaz (Dry Summer) / 1964

 

The Turkish film Dry Summer features an outright old-fashioned villain, Osman (Erol Taş) who suddenly one day maliciously decides to damn up a spring on his property, the source of water for his tobacco-farming neighbors as well.

     His more handsome and caring younger brother, Hasan (Ulvi Dogan) attempts to dissuade him in his decision, explaining that such an act will surely go well with the neighbors and the community at large. But Osman refuses to listen, and goes ahead with his plan. The younger brother, Hasan, and his local fiancée Bahar (Hülya Koçyiğit) have little choice but to go along with him.

      Besides the young couple, desperately in love, have wedding plans on their minds. In one of the earliest scenes, director Metin Erksan depicts their love-making in a patch of tall reeds, wherein Hasan must discover her before they can make love, that scene emphasizing the force of nature that has overtaken them and their rapport with it. Soon after, they are married, despite the wishes of Bahar’s mother.

      Rather than accept the natural world in which he lives, Osman has determined to steal what the villagers describe as “earth’s blood,” holding onto the natural resource for use only on his  own land. Obviously, in attempting to go against the dictates of the natural—the water naturally flows from the spring to the farms below—Hasan’s prediction comes true: things do go terribly wrong. At first, the locals take Osman to court where they win, the damn being removed by authorities.

      But when Osman countersues, and the verdict is reversed by a higher judge, the same authorities are forced restore the small, home-made damn. As their crops shrivel up in the title’s dry summer, the neighbors take things into their own hands, moving towards Osman’s spring en masse; amazingly he battles them off. But when later a couple of the men return to remove the damn, he demands that his brother join him in shooting expedition that ends with the death of one of the men.

      Erksan carefully shows Hasan refusing to fire, so that we know Osman has killed the villager. Yet Osman insists that Hasan take on the guilt, assuring his brother that because he is younger and married, he will get a lighter prison-term than the elder.

      In this fable-like story, the innocent is sent to prison, while the greedy brother remains at home to tend the farm and lust after Bahar. When she and Osman attempt to visit Hasan in prison, we discover that Hasan has been sent to another prison, further away. And soon after we discover that Osman has been ripping up his brother’s letters instead of passing them on to his wife.

      Like a hungry panther, Osman circles Bahar, watching her undress through a slat of wood, intensely staring at her—at one point, while milking a cow in her presence, sucking on the beast’s tits— and finally touching up against her, ready for the rape. When she finally hears that Hasan had died in prison, she gives in to Osman’s demands.

     Hasan, we discover soon after, has not died, and upon being given his freedom is warned by a lawyer to lay low.

      Clearly, however, in his bitter silence, Hasan has been changed, and we can tell as this former gentle man storms across the fields that he plans for revenge. Bahar, attempting to undo the damn yet again, is shot by Osman. Hasan nonetheless proceeds to his brother, finally drowning him in the water he has attempted to claim for his own, Osman’s body slowly being dragged downstream, as the water is released for all to use.

     As I have suggested, there is a fable-like quality to this work; and it ends in that magical world: Bahar has not been killed, but only wounded, and is carried to safety by her husband.

     Erksan’s work was highly influenced by Italian neo-realism; yet, with its surrealist-like images and fabulist trappings, it is a great statement of Turkish cinema, winning the Golden Bear Prize at the Berlin International Film Festival.

     Never before had a Turkish product been so highly awarded, and one might have thought that this film would have led to a new level in Turkish film-making. But its very success caused a huge uproar among other film directors for the government to permit the showing of European and American works, resulting in a near abandonment of serious local filmmaking. Only in his last years of his life did the director—who was censored and finally left the film industry, producing primarily TV work—see his 1964 film restored and his countrymen giving new respect for his and other Turkish film pioneer’s works.

     At 83, Erksan died this year (2012) of complications from kidney disease.

 

Los Angeles, November 21, 2012

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (November 2012).

Alain Resnais | Vous n'avez encore rien vu (You Ain’t See Nothin’ Yet) / 2012

three lost souls

by Douglas Messerli

 

Alain Resnais and Laurent Herbiet (writers, based on plays by Jean Anouilh), Alain Resnais Vous n'avez encore rien vu (You Ain’t See Nothin’ Yet) / 2012

 

In many ways, Resnais’ late-career film Vous n'avez encore rien vu (with the terrible American title of You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet) is a quintessential expression of the themes of Resnais’ films.  He has always focused on the fleetingness of love and life, and of how the actions of the past continue to effect and even destroy the joys of the present and the future.

      Here, cleverly, Resnais has chosen two plays by the late French playwright, Jean Anouilh (Eurydice and Cher Antione ou l’Amour rate) which themselves deal with those very themes, asking Bruno Podalydès to direct an independent theatrical production of them, and then interweaving their performances with those of his fictional characters, gathered together as part of playwright-director Antoine d’Anthac’s supposed “will,” which calls together the major actors who have, over the years, performed these same roles.

      Some are now quite elderly, others in their middle-age, while the cast in the filmed production, using what appears to be a warehouse as their backdrop, are the forever young figures from La Compagnie de la Colombe.

 

     As the filmed drama gets underway, the now renowned stage actors (who include Anne Consigny, Michel Piccoli, Lambert Wilson, Pierre Arditi, and Sabine Azéma), unable to control themselves, begin to play along with the film, reciting their old scenes. The variations in their ages and acting styles creates a stunning example of just what both Anouilh—who Resnais admitted highly influenced him as a young man—and the director are trying to express.

     For the most elderly actors, we quite literally see the ravages of the past upon their faces and  they recite, with a strong sense of sorrowful nostalgia upon their tongues; the middle-age actors are somewhat more assertive, but they too, we perceive, are now questioning their own choices; while the young stage actors, beautiful to behold, almost declaim their loves and desires.

      By alternating these performances, sometimes even using a split screen, and once creating a kind of triangular presentation of texts, Resnais achieves a prism of emotional meaning, that brilliantly explores the very ideas expressed in Anouilh’s 1941, wartime drama.

      I am not so sure I am so fond of Anouilh’s meeting of the two lovers after her death, nor of  Resnais own ending, wherein d’Anthac (acted by Bruno Podalydès) enters the spellbound room, having, apparently not really died, but simply having been determined to bring all of his beloved actors together again. It seems too much like a gimmick, even if it’s a slightly comical insider joke, since the fictional character is actually the real director of the stage performance. But these are minor complaints about Resnais’ otherwise magical tale of artifice and reality, time lost and regained. If nothing else, Resnais still proves in this penultimate work that he is a master of the medium.

     And the acting is brilliant. How many times does an audience get to see three versions of a play in one telling? Maybe you truly “ain’t seen nothing’” quite like it. Certainly, the story of Orphée and Eurydice will never seem the same after seeing this and Cocteau’s earlier film.