After the World and the War

A good bunch of guys come back from World War II and have trouble adjusting to civilian life in 1946's Till the End of Time. This drama from Edward Dmytryk is pretty straight forward, seeking to address common psychological and social issues faced by veterans. It succeeds decently enough at that but there's also an intriguing, understated spookiness about the relationship between leads Dorothy McGuire and Guy Madison.

The film starts with a lot of veterans disembarking at San Diego, getting health checks before having interviews about insurance and pension and whatnot. The film cuts to different soldiers as they discuss future plans, most of them tellingly not having any clear idea of what they'll be doing now. Most have vague ideas of taking good positions in high paying jobs.

The standout is Robert Mitchum as a vet with a silver plate in his head which, he jokes, he figures he could pawn for an easy dime one day. But the movie doesn't follow him, instead choosing the handsome but blander Guy Madison.

Before the war, he evidently had the nicest, most normal life a 1940s American guy could have. Loving parents, a good high school experience behind him, and a load of friends. When he gets home the house is surprisingly empty, presenting an intriguing little puzzle as he wanders about. It's a little way Dmytryk establishes the feeling of being slightly out of step--the parents simply happen to be out. So Cliff (Madison) heads off to the local jukebox joint to catch up with the old gang. There he finds the sweet and brooding Dorothy McGuire as Pat.

As their relationship progresses over the film, Pat's sorrow over the death of her husband, who was a fighter pilot, dovetails with Cliff's post-war inertia.

The movie follows a pretty predictable pattern as Cliff and Pat yell at each other now and then and then apologise a scene or two later. McGuire's a lot better than Madison but Madison's simplicity comes across as an honest lack of smarts. It seems unfair for him to have to rethink his whole life.

Robert Mitchum does come back, first having stricken it rich, then having lost everything, of course. There's an amusing scene where he shocks Cliff's mother with some light banter about gambling and girls. There's also a nice brawl at the end.

Till the End of the World is available on The Criterion Channel.

Twitter Sonnet #1495

The where the running script reverts we ran.
To save a tree, we made another plant.
Entire beans could fill a single can.
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The copied picture cut the centre point.
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The greener grass was grey in olden times.
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The talking dog was but a heavy rain.

A Vague Sketch of Anti-Semitism

One of the most important steps in combating bigotry is to shine a light on it, and that's just what investigative reporter Phil Green attempts to do in 1947's Gentleman's Agreement. An Elia Kazan film that's not half as good as his great films from the 50s, its portrait of anti-Semitism in the U.S. is lacking in too many specifics and its more generalised take comes off as preachy. The first half has some decent rumination on writing and has some good character building scenes but the second half, despite its laudable intentions, devolves into actors dully enacting exposition.

Gregory Peck as Phil is a big part of what's good about the film, his natural warmth and earnestness almost succeeding in grounding some of the later stuff. Also very good is John Garfield as Phil's Jewish friend, Dave.

Jewish in real life, Garfield was keen to play a role in this film, though he doesn't show up until about halfway through. The film begins with Phil settling into his new home and job in New York after moving from the west coast. His wife has recently died and he lives with his young son (A very young Dean Stockwell) and his mother (Anne Revere). His mother is a refreshingly crisp and sly lady for the period and from the way she and Phil banter about his work it's easy to imagine her as the journalist.

Phil's first assignment is an article on anti-Semitism and, after several scenes where he agonises about finding an angle, he settles on the idea of posing as Jewish himself. He explains in an exuberant rush to his mother how all his other best stories came after trying to go through the same experiences, as much as possible, as his subject. The importance of writing based on the author's own experiences was an idea brought into vogue by the early twentieth century Modernist writers like Joyce and Hemingway.

Phil does learn several things that may have been good to illustrate to an audience in 1947. He has the experience of having reservations revoked when a hotel proprietor believes he's Jewish and when the kids at the schoolyard start bullying Phil's son. But when his son ask him what Judaism actually is, the most Phil can tell him is that it's another religion like Catholicism or Protestantism, and this is the most the movie goes into actually exploring specifics.

It's ironic for Elia Kazan to have made an anti-bigotry film considering he's infamous for naming names for the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Though maybe it makes sense of the fact that one of the few specific aspects of anti-Semitism alluded to in the film is the stereotype of Jews as greedy. It's this aspect of ant-Semitism that makes it a fit for some extreme Leftists.

Another strange thing about Gentleman's Agreement, considering when it was made and both Phil and Dave are portrayed as having recently served in the military, there's not one mention of Nazi Germany. You'd think if you're talking about anti-Semitism in the late 40s that's one topic that would come up. It's very indirectly alluded to in a scene where Sam Jaffe plays an obvious Albert Einstein analogue, a famed physicist named Lieberman. He makes an interesting comment about how, despite being an atheist (a surprising thing for a character to acknowledge in a movie from the period), he feels compelled still to call himself a Jew because of the bigotry that continues to exist against Jews.

John Garfield gives a passionate performance in the second half of the film but too much time is spent schooling Phil's fiancée, Kathy (Dorothy McGuire), on what would to-day be called "micro-Aggressions", as when she tries to console Phil's son after he's been bullied by reminding him he's not really Jewish or when she refuses to denounce a guy at a party for telling anti-Semitic jokes. It's never very effective, though, for each instance being either over the top or silly. Are we supposed to think she's an anti-Semite because she doesn't start a fight with someone she hears telling bigoted jokes? There could be other reasons a woman might want to avoid trouble.

It's a film with good intentions and good actors but the whole is unfortunately never equal to the parts.

This Wine is Yours

Claude Rains reigns over a kingdom of grapes in 1959's This Earth is Mine, a sweeping, soap operatic melodrama set in California's Napa Valley during Prohibition. Big doses of Tennessee Williams and Douglas Sirk influenced the flavour of this Henry King film in which Rock Hudson and Jean Simmons are tormented by sexuality, venerable family politics, taboo, and the state of the wine business when selling wine was illegal. Never quite as good as some other such films from 50s Hollywood, it is at times a decadent pleasure.

Our avatar into the world of Napa's Rambeau family is Simmons' character, Elizabeth, who's just arrived from England. Her grandfather, Philippe (Rains), presides over acres of his personal vineyards and many more vineyards that pay tribute to him like fiefs. It's so feudal that Philippe and his second in command, his daughter Martha (Dorothy McGuire), have secretly brought Elizabeth over for an arranged marriage in order to ensure part of the property stays in the family.

They want her to marry her cousin, Andre (Francis Bethencourt), a dull, but agreeable enough fellow for the depressed and unambitious Elizabeth. But there's an X factor here named John Rambeau (Rock Hudson)--not to be confused with John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone). Tall, dark, handsome, and eager to sell grapes to bootlegging gangsters.

He gives Elizabeth a cordial and surprisingly informative tour of the facilities. He tells her and us about the appropriate uses of redwood and oak casks and limestone caves before making his second uninvited move on Elizabeth.

He makes her furious much as he makes Philippe furious for bringing in the tenant vintners on his scheme to sell grapes to bootleggers. The dastardly John is all about doing things his way--and barely gets away with it because he makes a whole lot of money with his scheme and it turns out Elizabeth is in love with him. He presents an attractive contrast to the family who looks down on her for her own past of sexual impropriety.

You'd never guess this movie was set in the 20s from the costumes.

The climax of the film presents disaster and chaos, the wrath of a particularly creative God as an impressive assortment of misunderstandings, gunshots, brushfires, and revelations of illegitimate children collide. I had to sit back and just marvel at the pile. But I did grow to like the characters, in no small part for their performances. Rains at this point was still a very effective performer and his charm quickly won me over.