THE EARLY SHOW, PT. 37

 

Two weeks of the bachelor life while the wife was away in Vancouver and a retreat (from me?) offered lots of opportunities to catch up on Blu-Rays ordered but not yet seen and movies on YouTube I'd either never watched or heard of. Just the thing to distract from a New York heatwave.

THE TELLTALE HEART (1928): 

OK, you know the story, right? A whacked-out guy who's killed and buried an old man under the floorboards of the house? Manages to fool a couple of investigators only to give the game away by "hearing" the heartbeat of the dead man beneath his feet? And, like everything Poe wrote, is almost impossible to believe was published in the 1840s?

There have been over a dozen film adaptations of The Telltale Heart, ranging from eight minutes to feature-length. And while the 1941 short directed by Jules Dassin is still startling -- especially for an MGM picture -- this silent two-reeler was the earliest and most unusual for its time. Directors Charles Klein and Leon Shamroy must have viewed every available German Expressionist film before embarking on this project. Tilted walls and doors, oddly-shaped furniture, the word KILL projected in squiggly lines over the lead character, the investigators speaking moving their mouths identically and simultaneously, this Telltale Heart was likely meant for the art-houses and film clubs attended strictly by the aficionados de film who wouldn't have known a Laurel from a Hardy.

The acting from Otto Matieson (as the killer) and William Heford and Hans Feurberg is, to be expected, highly-stylized, further creating a sense of dread and madness. Other than being a really interesting production, The Telltale Heart is one of the rare examples of silent American movies that, instead of pandering to audiences, actually brought them to a different level. It wouldn't have hurt to run it at the local Bijou before the latest Tom Mix western. Might have even been a good thing for the popcorn-munching kiddies.

BONUS POINTS: Otto Matieson played Dr. Joel Cairo in the original 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon. Co-director Leon Shamroy would go on to be the cinematographer (and later, director of cinematography) for over 100 movies, including Cleopatra, The Agony and the Ecstasy, South Pacific, and Snow White and The Three Stooges.

THE BIG TRAIL (1930): For "The Most Important Picture Ever Produced", The Big
Trail doesn't offer much difference from other major Westerns of the day as far as story is concerned -- it's your typical go-west drama featuring deserts, snowstorms, and murder. What definitely separates it from any movie of its day was being shot in the new 70mm Grandeur film process with hundreds of actors, extras, horses, cows, covered wagons... and, oh yes, 23 year-old John Wayne in his first starring role.

Even for a movie nut like me, a two-hour movie from 1930 almost promises to be something of a slog -- it takes a very full half-hour for the wagons to get moving, as characters are introduced, re-introduced, and re-re-introduced. The dialog tends get barked more often than spoken, with pauses adding to the film's length. But boy, does it look beautiful; aside from the occasional thin vertical scratches, the restoration job done on The Big Trail is pretty much perfect, giving a great idea of how it looked in the two theaters able to run it in 70mm at the time. (Each scene was also shot in 35mm, as were -- get this -- the four foreign language versions with different lead actors, all over the course of only four months. The budget was $1.25-million, or roughly $21-million in 2024 -- and still cheap at that.)

Watching a genuine, nearly century-old widescreen production, filmed entirely on location in six states, is remarkable and damn near uncanny. What's also uncanny is how annoying Fox Film's resident Swedish dialect comedian El Brendle can be as "comedy relief". The Big Trail could have been 20 minutes shorter without his endless "yackass" and "yumpin' yimminy" routines. 

But what of the barely out of his teens John Wayne? If you like him already, you'll like him here. If you never liked him, you'll at least be stunned by his movie-star handsome looks, decades before trucks of Chesterfields and barrels of Old Crow ravaged him. His delivery is exactly what you expect, only younger. What you don't expect is how is character, trapper Breck Coleman, is a friend to "the Injuns", preferring their company to that of whites. No matter what you think of John Wayne or Westerns in general, The Big Trail is one of those groundbreaking movies that you should see once, if only because, well, there was a time when a movie looked kind of like what you see now, and John Wayne hung out with Injuns.

BONUS POINTS: The Big Trail's original exit music remains on Blu-Ray and its occasional TCM broadcast.

HOUSE BY THE RIVER (1950): A-list director Fritz Lang decamped to low-brow Republic Studios for a drama that mixes the worst sides of writers and family. After turn-of-the-20th-century author Stephen Byrne accidentally(?) kills his maid, he guilt-trips his gimpy older brother John into dumping the body into a river. As news of the maid's "disappearance" makes the news, Stephen is delighted to see the sales of his latest book rise, inspiring him to write a new novel about the real crime. Even better, once the body turns up, the locals believe big brother John is the murderer, giving Stephen the idea of arranging the guy's "suicide" to "prove" his guilt. And as long as he's at it, Stephen might as well strangle his own wife to death, too, because it would make a terrific climax to his book. But not even the cleverest writer can always make that kind of thing work.

From House by the River's opening moments, you know Louis Hayward's characterization of Stephen Byrne is going to be a quietly nasty one, gradually growing during its 90 minutes until all you want is for him to disappear from this earth, the more painful the better. I'm not quite familiar with Hayward's oeuvre, but this one performance alone is impressive enough to keep in one's memory. Just how much of it is strictly his own talent or brought out by Fritz Lang is not for me to say. All I know is, well, this is a Fritz Lang movie to the core. And with not necessarily well-remembered co-stars Lee Bowman (John Byrne) and Jane Wyatt (Stephen's wife Marjorie) doing first-rate work -- hell, even Dorothy Gaunt as the short-lived maid Emily has real presence -- makes me believe Lang knew exactly how to get the best out of actors. 

Lang was also smart enough to cast plenty of interesting, often familiar character actors in supporting roles, including Peter Brocco as the one-eyed coroner; Jody Gilbert as John's love-starved, frog-faced housekeeper; and Katheen Freeman as a giddy family friend. House by the River is not the easiest place to visit but is nevertheless worth dropping by just to see how easily a sociopath can manipulate neighbors and so-called loved ones alike. The only distraction is how the South African-born Louis Hayward resembles Desi Arnaz at certain angles. Babaloo!

BONUS POINTS: Paul Brocco's eyeglasses have one dark lens, evoking Fritz Lang, who wore a patch over one eye and a monocle over the other. 

THE ENFORCER (1951): The boys in the Warner Bros. publicity department must have been
aware that their studio's number one star was aging fast. Although Humphrey Bogart had entered the bowtie stage of his career, the posters for The Enforcer didn't just picture him with his '40s neckwear, his face was airbrushed to within an inch of Casablanca. 

And while Bogie is his usual tough guy persona, as D.A. Martin Ferguson he's definitely on the side of the righteous as he tries to bring down a ring of hitmen-for-hire.  If you didn't see the original trailer, you wouldn't even know who the enforcer is supposed to be -- the D.A. or the killers' ringleader.

The hitmen surrounding Bogart in The Enforcer are some of the most striking-looking character actors of the day, including the least-expected hitman ever, Zero Mostel, looking well over a decade than his 36 years. If you're used to Mostel as a comedian-par-excellence, his performance as Big Babe Lazick is a real stunner. More of a wannabe murderer than the real thing, Lazick is just a petty criminal trying to earn an extra buck for his wife and son. Others in this real rat pack are guys you've seen somewhere even if you're not sure where, like Ted de Corsia and Michael Tolan, the only one who doesn't look like he would kill your baby for crying. 

But the real scene-stealer is the most low-key, the great Everett Sloane as the ringleader who dreamt up the brilliant idea of hiring killers who have absolutely no connection to the victims in order to throw the police off their trail. The Enforcer has so many memorable actors that at times Bogart seems to be a supporting player in his own movie. Yet his final decade of movies gave Bogart a different, often deeper side; too, if you watch them in order there's a genuine poignancy as he seems to be gradually dying before your eyes -- which, frankly, he is -- but always putting up a fight. Even if he doesn't exactly run the board in The Enforcer, Bogart is, as always, a real screen presence.

BONUS POINTS: The only movie where a potential victim is warned off the streets by Humphrey Bogart speaking over a record store loudspeaker. I don't care how serious it's supposed to be, it's mirth-provoking as heck.

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