Alfred Hitchcock | The Lady Vanishes / 1938

the singing spy

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder (screenplay), Alma Reville (story continuity), Alfred Hitchcock (director) The Lady Vanishes / 1938

 

As critics have long commented, music plays a large role in Hitchcock’s films. Not only are his major works highly dependent on their musical scores (it is hard to imagine Vertigo or even North by Northwest without Bernard Herrmann’s scores), and some of his films, most notably the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much incorporates music quite thoroughly into its plot. Interestingly enough, Hitchcock’s entertaining film of 1938, The Lady Vanishes, has close story- connections with both North by Northwest and The Man Who Knew Too Much.

     Just to remind readers, I’ll briefly recount the plot, which begins in a small hotel in the implausible country of Bandrika, “one of Europe’s few undiscovered corners,” where an avalanche has just closed off all the major roads, forcing several international tourists to seek refuge in the small, overcrowded Gasthof Petrus Inn. Among these are a beautiful English woman, Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood), who, obviously quite wealthy, has experienced everything:

 

                         I’ve no regrets. I’ve been everywhere and done everything. I’ve

                         eaten caviar at Cannes, sausage rolls at the dogs. I’ve played

                         baccarat at Biarritz and darts with the rural dean. What is there

                         left for me but marriage?

 

     She is on her way back to England to marry a man she describes as “a blue-blooded check chaser,” whom she does not love.

 

    Also attempting to get a room are two wonderfully comic quintessential English cricket-lovers, Charters and Caldicott (Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne) who seem to travel about the world to watch the game, now desperate to return to see the last days of a test match in Manchester. With droll results, the two are forced to share a bed in the maid’s room. Upon their protests, the manager mutters:

 

                         Well don’t get excited. I’ll remove the maid out.

 

     So popular was this single-mindedly sports-loving duo that they appeared in three later films, including one, Night Train to Munich, directed by Carol Reed. But here they are quite obviously a gay couple who are so caught up in mutual thoughts of their own game-playing (and those of others) that they simply cannot recognize what else is happening around them.

     A sleazy lawyer, Mr. Todhunter (Cecil Parker), and his mistress, “Mrs. Todhunter,” are equally proffered unpreferable quarters. A traveling musicologist, Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), plays clarinet to dancing peasants in his room, awakening Iris and preventing another guest, Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty) from listening to the beautiful ballad sung by a singer beneath her window. Iris, complaining “someone upstairs is playing musical chairs with an elephant,” bribes the hotel manager to get Gilbert removed from his room; Gilbert reciprocates by entering Iris’s room. And Mrs. Froy hums the tune she has finally heard, while the singer inexplicably is murdered.     

    Hitchcock and his writers have set up a series of seemingly comical events that suddenly turn sinister, particularly when the next morning Iris is struck on the head by a falling planter clearly meant for the elderly “governess” Froy.

      Most of the rest of the film takes place aboard a train wherein these same figures speed their way, presumably, toward Britain, Miss Froy ministering to the young Iris, who once aboard, has passed out, suggests a remedy of tea. Froy and Iris head to the dining car, encountering the Todhunter couple along the way, and sitting near the two ardent gay cricket devotees. As the two women attempt to further introduce themselves to one another the train whistle screeches, and, unable to be heard, Froy traces her name across the window pane.

  

    They return to their car, where Iris drifts back into sleep as Miss Froy works her acrostic in the Neddlewoman. When Iris awakens, the elderly lady is gone, and her fellow compartment travelers claim no knowledge of such a personage. Meeting up again with Gilbert, Iris explains her quandary, and the two together begin a long search for the now-vanished woman, what Hitchcock might describe as the McGuffin of the work.

     For various reasons—fear of their illicit affair being discovered, determination to rush forward to their cricket game, and more nefarious and mysterious purposes—no one but Iris seems to have seen the woman dressed in “oatmeal tweed.” Another woman, dressed similar to Froy shows up and a renowned doctor, Hartz (Paul Lukas) traveling on the train, suggests Iris, having had a brief concussion, has imagined the whole thing.

     Despite his witty and sometimes dismissive repartees, however, Gilbert stays with her until the two rediscover the name “Froy” upon the dining car window, realizing suddenly that something far darker is afoot. 

      The couple is attacked and, when they finally really realize that Miss Froy lies beneath the heavily bandaged patient of Dr. Hartz, attended by a nun—who the couple observes, is wearing high heels—the seekers are threatened by poison, while Hartz admits his plot. But the nurse refuses to kill them, and the two are spared only to observe, soon after, the train’s coming to stop near the country’s border. Realizing that Froy will soon be taken away, they free the bound patient while bandaging up the nun, who is taken off in Froy’s place, the train continuing on its way. Yet again the train slows, a soldier demanding they all accompany him to the British ambassadors’, Iris and Gilbert realize now perceiving that all their lives are in danger. They attempt to warn the others, who, much like some Britons on the eve of World War II, refuse to believe in the dangers—until the shooting begins, when, at least, the cricket enthusiasts are drawn into the battle.

     Froy, meanwhile, takes Iris and Gilbert momentarily away from the fray to reveal that she is actually a British agent who has been given a secret message to pass on to government superiors. The message, in the form of the song she has heard in the inn, is sung to the musicologist whom she demands he remember it, before rushing out the other side of the train to escape.

     The travelers eventually win out, and escape over the border. Back in England Iris and Gilbert, ducking the man waiting to marry Iris, rush to government headquarters, where they hear Miss Froy, at the piano, singing the coded message. She has survived! The couple discusses their honeymoon. 

    A great hit in both England and the USA, The Lady Vanishes convinced producer David O. Selznick that Hitchcock could make it in Hollywood, forever changing the life of the director and American cinema. One can certainly see close links between this early film and the early work I previously mentioned, The Man Who Knew Too Much (a film the director made in 1934 and remade in Hollywood in 1956), which depends on a musical passage for a planned murder, and involves its characters, Jo and Ben McKenna, in an international abduction of their son and a political assassination for their having accidental knowledge of events. In the original story on which The Lady Vanishes was based, a novel The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White, the Miss Froy character is similarly an innocent who has acquired information without realizing its significance.

    The structures and themes of this film reappear again and again in Hitchcock’s later Hollywood works as well. No one can see The Lady Vanishes without thinking of Roger Thornhill of North by Northwest—a figure who has been mistaken for a government agent—engaged as well in a long secretive and romantic train ride. As in so many of Hitchcock’s later films—one thinks immediately of The Wrong Man and Vertigo—no one in this early film can be found who speaks the truth, while others deliberately obfuscate.

    In short, one might describe this 1938 hit as representing elemental themes which the director would explore throughout his career: presumption of guilt, the involvement of innocents in plots of international intrigue, and the burial and removal of truth, which, when bravely and resolutely faced by those who must battle these forces, often results in regeneration and renewal through love.

 

Los Angeles, March 6, 2013

Reprinted from International Cinema Review (March 2013).

 

Martin Scorsese | Hugo / 2011

fixing things

by Douglas Messerli

 

John Logan (screenplay, based on The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick), Martin Scorsese (director) Hugo / 2011

 

Scorsese's 3-D Hugo begins in Paris' Gare Montparnasse with the camera, slightly above the actor's heads, speeding through the crowds. It is a slightly dizzying and cinematically impressive start that also made me fear that the movie was going to be closer to animation than human drama. But, in the end, after the very satisfying human drama that Hugo is, one realizes that that first scene was simply presented as a kind tour de force, as Scorsese’s way of showing off: "Look what I can do now that I'm filming in 3-D." Indeed, Avatar director James Cameron has been quoted as telling Scorsese that Hugo represented the best use of 3-D he had ever seen.

  

   One might argue that that first rush of filmmaking is part and parcel of what the movie celebrates. Like Michael Hazanavicius' The Artist, Hugo concerns itself with the history of silent film, but while The Artist can be said to truly celebrate the form, Hugo, even in its devotion to the films of Georges Méliès, uses that history as a celebration of cinema in general and, by extension, a hurrah for directors like Martin Scorsese. As Scorsese has admitted, the father-son relationship in Hugo reminded him of his own childhood experiences with his father sharing films.

      Well, why shouldn't Scorsese celebrate himself? Although he has never been my favorite director, for years he has produced some of the most watchable movies of male vulnerability, from Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, After Hours, to Good Fellas, Cape Fear and Shutter Island. In Hugo he has marvelously worked against that type of film to produce a lovely fable that both children and adults can admire.

     Young Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield)—a kind of 20th century Oliver Twist—due to the death of  his mother and beloved father (Jude Law), as well as, as we soon discover, the drowning of his constantly drunken uncle (Ray Winstone), works as an unknown employee in the train station. His father, a museum worker who died in a fire, was a tinkerer who restored toys, clocks, and other machines, and, just before his death, attempted to bring to life a marvelous metal automaton which he had rescued from the museum's vaults of unwanted art. With his father's death, Hugo is literally whisked away to the clock tower of Gare Montparnasse by his uncle, where the uncle works as the official clock setter, winding up the huge clock and others each day at certain set hours. As we enter Hugo's world, the uncle has disappeared, and the boy has secretly taken over his position, stealing pastries and milk from the shops of the station in order to survive, living in the now-forgotten rooms originally provided for station employees.

     The problem is that he has also been stealing bits and pieces, small mechanisms and springs, from a station toy shop owner in order to repair the automaton, and the shop owner (Ben Kingsley) is out to entrap him.

    Yet the major villain of Hugo's world is far more vengeful: the dreaded Stationmaster (Sacha Baron Cohen) whose central activity seems to be running down homeless urchins who frequent the station, so that he can deliver them up to the orphanage, where he suffered much of his own childhood. The Stationmaster has his eye on Hugo as well, and some of the most remarkable scenes of the film concern their amazing chases.

     One day, however, Hugo is caught by the toy shop owner, and made to empty his pockets, which contain not only the pieces of metal he has stolen over time, but a fascinating book, which we soon discover must have come with the automaton. Papa Georges, as the toy shop owner is known, seems more upset by the discovery of the notebook—which the child insists he return to him—than he does with the loss of metal parts. Georges announces to Hugo his intent to take the book home with him and burn it.

     Why, we can only ask, is he being so vengeful to the boy? And what possible satisfaction might he attain by the destruction of this fascinating notebook? Like a forlorn puppy Hugo follows him home, continuing to demand the book's return, Georges attempting to rid himself of the nuisance. Once inside the house, Georges discusses the young annoyance with his wife. Hugo and the audience also discover in the house, a young girl, Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz), whom Hugo lures outside into the cold, pleading with her to help him regain his treasure. Isabelle agrees, at least, to keep the old man from burning it.

     But the next day, the toy shop owner hands Hugo a small folded towel in which are only some ashes, evidence, presumably, of the book's obliteration. The child is in tears, and in some recompense, is offered part-time work in the shop. Georges is impressed as Hugo quickly fixes the mechanism to a small wind-up rat.

     Reencountering Isabelle, Hugo discovers that the old man has not truly burned the book, and a tenuous friendship evolves between the two children. She is the more educated and forceful of them, he remaining, out of need, more secretive and fearful; yet they both gradually share their private worlds, Isabelle taking Hugo to a bookstore, he illegally entering a movie house with her through the back door. She has never been to a movie before, refused permission to attend films by Georges and his wife, her godparents, who have taken her in after the death of her parents. It is a day of great adventure for both; as they slip inside the movie house, Isabelle whispers: "We could get into trouble." Hugo declares, "That's how you know it's an adventure."

      When she demands to see where he lives, he backs away, forced to be protective of his hideaway and self-imposed job. That is, until he sees a necklace she is wearing: a piece of metal, shaped like a heart—the very "key" he has been unable to replicate in order to start up the automaton! Hugo is convinced that whatever the automaton might write will have a link to his dead father, revealing his course of life.

     The boy can no long resist in showing Isabelle his clockwork's abode, as he brings her to his small room and to the automaton, the two of them putting the key into place as the machine rattles into motion. At first the metal man writes only a few unrelated scrawls in various positions on the page, a code that is impossible to crack. The child's disappointment is palpably displayed; after all, the hope of its message has been the only link he has left to his father.

     Soon, however, the machine starts up once more, quickly composing a series of lines and images that reveal that the automaton does not write words but draws a picture: the very image which his father mentioned seeing as a child, a black and white version of the famed scene of a rocket crashing into the moon of Georges Méliès' 1902 film, Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon).

     The automaton even signs the piece with the name of the film's director, Isabelle's godfather. What, they can only wonder, is the meaning of it all? How has Hugo's automaton known anything about Isabelle and her life?*

      That first half of Scorcese's film, filled with mystery, wonderment, and adventures, is, frankly, the best part of the movie, and the heart of its charm. The second half, filled with sometimes flat-footed explanations and historical recounting is less convincing, as we gradually discover that the bitter old man in the toy store is actually the great early filmmaker, painfully hiding out from his own past life after having been rejected by the post World War I generation, his over 400 films having all been destroyed, some of them melted down for their cellulose.

     Scorsese’s attempt to educate both the audience and the children about Méliès and his films is exemplary, and the images from the films themselves are, as always, a wonder to behold. But this section is overlong, with the morose tone of the disillusioned filmmaker dominating the work. Only the continued energy of its young actors and the frantic chases of the Stationmaster after Hugo keep the movie going.

      Having met up with a Méliès' historian, who has, perhaps, the only copy remaining of the great filmmakers' A Trip to the Moon, Hugo is determined to play the film again in Méliès' own home, hoping to reveal to Papa Georges that he is not forgotten and his work is still beloved, at least by a few. But his dreams of the night before are horrific, as he, discovering the automaton's key on the railroad tracks, jumps down to retrieve it while a locomotive comes barreling forward, and, unable to stop, plows through the station, mowing down numerous travelers, diners, and workers in its path—a reference to the horrendous Gare Montparnasse train derailment of 1895, which, in actuality, killed only one person, but injured hundreds of the train's passengers.

     At first, the intrusion into the Méliès' home is unsuccessful, as Mama Jeanne (Helen McCrory) attempts to protect her husband from further piquing his long heartache and disappointment. But finally, the film historian convinces her to view, once more, the copy of the film, which so delights her (and the children who also recognize Jeanne as one of its actresses), that the room is transformed into joy, Méliès himself coming forth after having apparently having watched from the hall, to answer some of their questions. Hugo, who sees himself as a fixer, has mastered a kind of transformation, as the old man recalls his wonderful life of the past. As Jeanne summarizes it:

 

                   Georges, you've tried to forget the past for so long, but it has caused

                   nothing but unhappiness. Maybe it's time you tried to remember.

 

    Kingsley himself has described that transformation as being something like a young boy dragging an old and embittered man back to life.

        

      But Hugo has yet one more great gift to bestow upon the old director. He returns to the station to bring back the marvelous automaton. This time, however, the Stationmaster discovers Hugo before he can return to his secret rooms, following him, as the young child is forced to hide outside the window, hanging from the face of the giant clock, much as had Harold Lloyd in the movie he and Isabelle attended. Unable to find Hugo, The Stationmaster turns back, while the boy grabs up his treasure and runs; but this time, through the Stationmaster's maneuvers, the metal man is thrown into the air, crashing down onto the tracks. Hugo's attempt to retrieve him echoes his dream, as a train bears down upon the trapped boy, pulled to safety at the last moment by the Stationmaster. He hustles the boy away, determined to finally send him off to an institution, just as the Méliès', Isabelle in tow, enter the station, claiming him as their own!

     The story's ending is truly a kind celebration of all that has come before, as Méliès is inducted into the French Film Society which, after having tracked down and reclaimed 180 of his films, presents a retrospective, the family and Hugo in attendance.

     So has the film successfully embedded a real story—almost everything about Méliès is true—within a fable. But I must admit, although I love Méliès' magical art, in this case I prefer the magic of the fable!

 

*Although Méliès did experiment with automata, the one used in this film, I have read, is a kind of hybrid of two famous automata by the Swiss-born clockmaker, Pierre Jacquet-Droz.

 

Los Angeles, December 22, 2011

Reprinted from Nth Position [England] (February 2012).

Ohm Phanphiroj | The First Conversation Between Frank and I / 2018

engaging the “other”

by Douglas Messerli

 

Ohm Phanphiroj (director) The First Conversation Between Frank and I / 2018 [13 minutes]

 

Thailand director Ohm Phanphiroj is perhaps primarily known for his photography collections, most notably, his series Underage of young male prostitutes in Thailand, which features eerily street-lit photos of the boys along with biographical facts (including their ages), their reasons for working on the streets, the average number of customers they have per week, and their aspirations. It is a troubling and revelatory work.

     Ohm was educated mostly in the US at the Rochester Institute of Technology (where he received an MFA), Georgia State University (MA), and the University of Northern Iowa (MA). He received his BA degree from Thammasat University in Bangkok.

    He has also made several films. In the 2018 short The First Conversation Between Frank and I, he focuses his camera almost entirely upon the face of a young straight soldier, Frank Cashio, who after four months of online communication with Ohm went AWOL to visit the filmmaker in New York city, with aspirations of becoming a model and an actor.

     Caressing the face of the apparently nude soldier (his lower body hidden from the camera), Ohm asks questions about and challenges this soldier’s insistence upon his heterosexual identity, asking sometimes probing questions about why the young soldier might allow himself to spend the time with the gay artist, while nude and maintaining his heteronormative position. What does he like about women? What does he feel about Ohm’s intense petting of him? And why has he even bothered to visit the gay artist, spend a night with him, and be pestered with his intrusions if he is truly straight?

    Frank, throughout, although continuing to permit the homoerotic / sometimes even directly homosexual aggression of his interviewer, expresses his discomfort and as the film progresses increasingly maintains his insistence that he really likes women, their bodies, their smell, their vaginas, etc. Whether or not, given the irony of the situation, he is believable depends upon the viewer’s perception. 

        Yet there is an uncomfortable feeling about Ohm’s verbal and physical probing, making it difficult at times to separate the seemingly objective questioning and the sexual behavior of the interviewer, making it appear often as a metaphoric if not an actual rape in which the victim is not quite sure whether or not to proceed. Yet some sexual activity is being enacted, and the soldier never grows violent, but seems also to rather enjoy the “flirtations”—verbal and physical—of his interviewer. Indeed, I might have changed the word in the title from “conversation” to “flirtation.” And the issue in that context becomes whether or not Frank is willing to proceed in the situation in which he has seemingly given his permission or for which he has even expressed a desire or whether he will determine it’s time to end the “conversation/flirtation” and bolt.  

      Throughout we hear Ohm’s voice, without ever seeing his image. I think it’s important, particularly in this instance, to see the face of the hand that’s caressing this sexually confused soldier. I might add, since the title describes this as the “first” conversation between the two, there were presumably follow ups, whether or not they involved physical contact is unclear.

 

Los Angeles, February 6, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2024).   

Kathryn Bigelow | The Hurt Locker / 2008, limited USA release 2009

trying not to love

by Douglas Messerli

Mark Boal (screenwriter), Kathryn Bigelow (director) The Hurt Locker / 2008, limited USA release 2009

 

The Hurt Locker is really only a series of situations, dramatically portrayed, in which three men must diffuse bombs while warding off other possible dangers. One scene finds them situated as sitting targets in the middle of the desert, but the other events are centered in hostile urban streets, where at any corner or from any roof top the enemy might lurk. The simplicity of this work, accordingly, demands that the actors work together to create psychological portraits of their characters, for without that the audience would have little on which to focus. Fortunately for director Kathryn Bigelow, Jeremy Renner as SSG William James, Anthony Mackie as Sgt. JT Sanborn, and Brian Geraghty as Spc. Owen Eldridge interact brilliantly, creating a kind of depth in the film that does not exist in the script.

     Of particular interest is Renner's character, a war addict, who seems to know no fear. His recklessness at first frustrates the other two team members, but gradually, as he defuses a car bomb outside the UN mission and later, with Sanborn, shoots and kills their dessert assailants, the men give him grudging respect. 

     Yet there is something deeper and darker about SSG William James that even he does not comprehend. He is, as one officer calls him, "a wild man," a man careless with his life. Questioned by his Colonel, James admits to having disarmed eight hundred and seventy-three bombs. Yet, unlike JT Sanborn, James is not prepared to die, but determined to live. The opposite of the philosopher whose name he carries, William James does not have the ability to philosophize or psychologize, is unable to look inward and comprehend his own being.

 

Sergeant JT Sanborn: But you realize every time you suit up, every time we go out, it's

     life or death. You roll the dice, and you deal with it. You recognize that don't you?

Staff Sergeant William James: Yea... Yea, I do. But I don't know why. [sighs]

Staff Sergeant William James: I don't know, JT. You know why I'm that way?

Sergeant JT Sanborn: No, I don't.

 

      Married and blessed with a son, James has virtually abandoned his family, describing his own situation as a marriage that broke up, although his wife still lives in his house. A call to his wife shows him hanging up before she answers. The reviewer of the London Times lamented that we never do find out why James cannot find satisfaction in his home life. However, I think we do get some insights into "why he is that way."

      Some scenes portray him as a kind of mad man: in one incident we see him lying in bed dressed in his body armor. Yet, of all the soldiers, he seems the only one willing to talk and joke with a young Iraqi boy, nicknamed Beckham, at one point even playing a quick game of soccer with him. Later, a macho barrack game, in which Sanborn and James give and take stomach blows, turns into rather homoerotic roughhousing as James straddles a furious Sanborn, riding him like a bucking bronco.

           On another mission soon after the men are called to a warehouse, where James discovers what he believes to be the body of Beckham, an undetonated bomb buried within his chest. This brutality so upsets him that he undergoes what one might describe as a breakdown: against military rules, James forces a man for who the boy worked outside the American encampment to take him to Beckham's home. There he encounters an Iraqi professor who, thinking him a CIA officer, invites him to sit. Confused, Williams turns to leave, encountering the wife who beats him about the head as he escapes. Reentry into the camp is difficult, as he is stopped and searched     

     Another illegal foray with his buddies, leads to an attempted kidnapping of Eldridge, which James foils by shooting the Iraqis—while crippling Eldridge as well.

      In a later scene Beckham seems to reappear, and cannot understand why James will not greet him. Is the child a stand-in or the real boy, whom James has confused with another? My theater companion insisted that if you looked closely, the second boy was not Beckham. But, in some ways, it does not matter. James has come to realize again that it is dangerous to love, and yes, it appears he has come to love the previous Beckham. His relationship with the boy was perhaps the deepest love he has ever allowed himself. 

     What we gradually begin to comprehend is that James not only keeps a "hurt locker"—a container holding the picture of his son and all the fuses he has disarmed—but is, himself, metaphorically speaking, a human hurt locker, a man trying desperately to keep from exploding. Inside, he is a being pulled in many directions, both spiritually and sexually. While he is clearly a potentially loving person, in his attempts to contain it, maybe even closet it, he is dangerous as well.     

     From the beginning, the film has counted down the days remaining before these men can return home, and after that day finally arrives, we see James at home with us wife and son. We might imagine a hopeful ending. But James in civilian life is truly a fish out of water, a man unable to choose even a box of cereal from the endless choices on the grocery shelves. His wife assigns him tasks that a mother might give to a child, such as cutting up the vegetables while she prepares their dinner. In the bedroom, Williams plays with his delighted baby, opening and closing a jack-in-the-box. More to himself than to the child, he describes his situation:

 

Staff Sergeant William James: [Speaking to his son] You love playing with that. You love playing with all your stuffed animals. You love your Mommy, your Daddy. You love your pajamas. You love everything, don't ya? Yea. But you know what, buddy? As you get older... some of the things you love might not seem so special anymore. Like your Jack-in-the-Box. Maybe you'll realize it's just a piece of tin and a stuffed animal. And then you forget the few things you really love. And by the time you get to my age, maybe it's only one or two things. With me, I think it's one.

 

     We might imagine that the "one" he still loves is his son, but in the next scene, as he arrives at a new base, beginning the countdown of 365 days all over again, we realize the only thing he loves is the danger of his life, the possibility of dying or living hour by hour. In the world which he inhabits—a world where no one can truly be safe—choosing anyone to love not only endangers the loved one, but, like Pandora's opening of the box, may further release the pain into the world surrounding. And in that sense, perhaps, we understand that Staff Sergeant William James cannot be killed, for he is already a walking ghost.

 

Los Angeles, March 5, 2010

Reprinted from Nth Position [England] (March 2010) and Reading Fictions: My International Cinema (Los Angeles: Green Integer, 2012).