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Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Back for Christmas (1956)
Perfect Hitchcock Episode
When I first saw this episode and the wonderful performance by John Williams, I decided to track down John Collier's original story. Collier also wrote "Wet Saturday" which was also directed by Hitchcock himself and also featured John Williams. Both stories appeared in THE NEW YORKER, and both were faithfully adapted for the screen, but I would like to comment on some of the changes which were made to this story for the small screen--presumably at Hitchcock's insistence. The prime change lies in the means of killing and disposing of the wife. In the short story, the husband is an MD--an anatomist. He lures his wife to the bathroom, bludgeons her, and dismembers and fillets her in the bath tub, disposing of the body parts in a considerably smaller hole in his cellar. Considering that Hitchcock added Dr Crippen elements to REAR WINDOW which made it harder to believe, I find it interesting that he decided against the explicit reference to Crippen found in the source material. Perhaps he felt that he wanted the husband to be particularly likeable and relatable to his audience.
Man Made Monster (1941)
Daring thriller with a political subtext
When this film was released, the Production Code of 1934 forbade any direct criticism of any nonbelligerent nation. Nonetheless, the philosophy expressed by Dr Riga's regarding the worth of human life together with his views on racial superiority would have struck contemporary viewers as totally in line with Nuremberg. What I have always found interesting is that once the USA was at war with Nazi Germany, there was was no attempt to combine Horror with propaganda. Indeed, the only attempt by Universal seems to have been INVISIBLE AGENT.
The Glass Wall (1953)
Daring Noir Well Worth Seeing TO-DAY
If you think that shrill anti-immigrant rhetoric is a recent part of American politics, this is the film to change your mind. Gassman plays a Hungarian displaced person attempting to enter the United States without documentation. Despite being a Shoa survivor and bearing the marks of "Enhanced Interrogation" for his Resistance activities, the Eisenhower administration not only refuses him a review of his case, but summarily decides to send him back to the Iron Curtain on the next boat. He has one chance--a G.I. he hid from the Nazis at great peril. His name is Tom and he plays the clarinet somewhere near Times Square. So he jumps ship to do the government's work for himself. Now he's a fugitive in a nightmarish journey through Manhattan in which the skills he learned in dealing with the Totalitarian regimes will be applied to Eisenhower's goons. This all leads to a fantastic climax atop the United Nations building, which is the meaning of the film's title.
Thriller: Guillotine (1961)
Plausibility & Peine de Mort
After the Reign of Terror and the general bloodletting of the Napoleonic wars, French juries reserved the death penalty for particularly heinous offenses. From the context of a killing resulting from a crime of passion it is unlikely that this would be an appropriate punishment. French bureaucracy, however, makes the central argument likely. The Sanson family were chief executioners from before the time of Armand du Plessis (for whom they executed Cinq-Mars) through the Terror and the Napoleonic era. It is likely that the blade would be akin to the sword and would be considered a tool of the trade belonging only to that "craftsman". As such it could not be used by another. Also, the death of the executioner would suggest a divine intervention--a trial by ordeal.
The Man Who Laughs (1928)
Vindication of Veidt; Vindication of Pure Cinema
Whenever I'm asked to recommend a picture to people, especially those whose taste I don't know exactly, I always choose this picture. It simply has something for everyone: political intrigue, a costume drama worthy of Fairbanks, Chaplinesque romance,a wonderful Rin Tin Tin-like loyal animal companion, a thrilling chase to the rescue (with a moment or two of Harold Lloyd-like "high and dizzy" thrills), and a satisfying conclusion,if not Hugo's original concept. Conrad Veidt, the great star of Weimar Germany, provides a truly sympathetic performance, made even more difficult that by the nature of his makeup which limited him to showing emotion only through his eyes and hands. It is the great tragedy of the age that this film should be produced in 1928, just as a new technology is about to bastardize the film industry. This is a film of "what might have beens", and to audiences who know Veidt principally from his penultimate role as Major Strasser in CASABLANCA it is tragic. With the coming of sound, Veidt, like Garbo, was forced out of such roles as Scots noblemen or French royalty as in the BELOVED ROGUE and into a series of Nazis who lack any real development. My only real criticism is that the restored Vitaphone track on the Kino edition seems intrusive. But it is of such historic value that I would have included it as an optional track on the DVD with a newly recorded symphonic score as another option.
The Cat's-Paw (1934)
Should Politics Motivate Comedy?
If one were to return to the dawn of the talking picture, one would prophesy a bright future for Harold Lloyd. Unlike his competitors, he was a comedic actor trained on the legitimate stage not a performer raised in the purgatory of the music hall or vaudeville circuit. He had a good voice which matched his image. Moreover, from 1924 on, his "silent" films had incorporated sequences based on sound gags lost on the audience (e.g., the bell sequence at the Fall Frolic from THE FRESHMAN and the monkey sequence in THE KID BROTHER). Yet Lloyd's sound features consistently failed at the box office once the novelty of WELCOME DANGER had ebbed. Lloyd blamed his fall on many external sources, but never realized that the Glass character's enemy was not sound but the Great Depression. Pre-Depression audiences, giddy with optimism, may have rooted for this ambitious go-getter in whom they saw their surrogate; Depression audiences despised him as the person likely to foreclose on their mortgage and throw them in the gutter. Compounding this problem of character choice is Lloyd's perception as an insincere glad hander. Sincerity, of course, is a subjective appraisal, but it is undeniable that Lloyd, despite his own tragic upbringing, could never play a convincing down-and-outer. Perhaps this is because he feared returning to that state permanently. THE CAT'S-PAW fails for these reasons, but it alone suffers from the revelation of Lloyd's pro-fascist agenda. Many film scholars believe that Lloyd was prompted to make this film because he saw the presidency of FDR as a dictatorship bent on soaking the rich and soft on crime. We should remember that he was not alone in this feeling. DeMille had directed THIS DAY AND AGE, a pro-police state drama, the previous year. We should also remember that America was founded by hotheaded tax protesters and continues to be motivated by those who want something without paying for it. TCP suffered because it treated fascism lightly in a "comedy" and because its release was particularly ill-timed given the events in Germany in that year. The Production Code of 1934 would ultimately curtail the glorification of vigilante justice and reaffirm the rule of constitutional law, cumbersome as it might be. The ideal of the benevolent despot, the good-intentioned all-powerful leader who brings about a utopia once freed of the checks and balances on this omnipotence, dates to classical antiquity. For this reason, totalitarian regimes fear laughter even though it acts as a safety valve. Ironically, the mere existence of TCP, a film which demonizes the democratic experience of the country of its origin, shows that FDR's America was secure enough to accept criticism. One sees no parallel criticism in Hitler's Germany, Stalin's USSR, or Mussolini's Italy. But can one laugh at the gallows humor of pending fascism? Lloyd's unnuanced film is skewed to the right and might have been written by Dr Goebbels himself if he'd had a sense of humor, of course. It posits an alternative history in which a chosen one restores order and lost honor BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY, and does so with good nature and fun. Impending fascism approached by the left is, of course, Chaplin's THE GREAT DICTATOR. This latter film has the benefit of being set in another country and based on a thinly veiled actual persona and events. THE GREAT DICTATOR produces few laughs today because it under-estimated the extent of human evil, but it succeeds despite its artless and inappropriate speechifying, because it has the distinct advantage of being vindicated by history. Lloyd, however, should be credited for two things: first, he neither made any further pro-fascist films nor produced any subsequently hypocritically pro-allied films during the War: second, he never sold TCP to television. The post-1945 world had seen the face of fascism and it wasn't amusing.