Diminishing Damnation

Years ago, a friend told me the only good scene in 1976's The Omen is near the beginning, when Damien's nanny kills herself. Now that I've finally seen the movie, I'm inclined to agree.

There are a number of good performances in the film. Gregory Peck, David Warner, and particularly Patrick Troughton as a priest in a constant state of panic and dread, are all fantastic. But the whole film is hampered by one central problem--we never get an impression of Robert's (Peck) relationship with Damien (Harvey Spencer Stephens).

Part of the reason the nanny suicide scene works is that it's natural at that point in the film that we don't know much about the main characters. The film establishes a normal five year old's birthday party. It's quite jarring when a woman just established as a caring and apparently normal nanny is suddenly standing on a balcony and proclaiming her love for the boy before hanging herself.

But after this, as Robert slowly investigates warnings and clues, the lack of any established relationship between himself and his adopted son diminishes the internal dilemma he's supposed to be wrestling with. I can understand if maybe they wanted to minimise the use of a child actor in horrific scenes, but scenes of the two bonding normally would have helped tremendously. Some scenes of Robert trying to understand Damien's behaviour by relating it to his own childhood or getting impressions from a psychologist would have been nice. Damien really needed to be more of a character in this film.

The Omen is available on HBOMax.

Twitter Sonnet #1636

A dizzy road exists beyond the ground.
A sea of tar consumes the endless man.
The oiled line would scream beneath a sound.
A louder noise than all the guns of Pan.
A pair of quiet ties have sought a neck.
But only one can turn the chest to straw.
The veins convey a drowsy type of wreck.
The sleeping dog can dream its razor paw.
Admit the heavy socks were moral feet.
A truth was facing time for stealing toes.
Defined in loss we kept a pace to beat.
Without a foot the bunny chose to pose.
The awkward dog was nothing bad to fear.
The menace dies in weakly watered beer.

Beautiful Rome

For a perfect pairing of leads and location it's hard to find examples to rival 1953's Roman Holiday. The centrepiece is Audrey Hepburn as the wayward princess on the town, her always entrancing, genuine reactions could breathe life into a cardboard set. But the environs of Rome reflect another glory back, the personality in the fountains and extras lounging in the outdoor cafes establish a powerful chemistry with the actress. Gregory Peck as her perfect gentleman, love interest stands as our point of view and, like him, mostly our participation amounts to watching in wonder.

Whether she's commandeering a Vespa for a mad ride through cafe tables or smashing a guitar over a sinister black suit, it's always nice to see Miss Hepburn. It's never clear exactly what country she's a princess of but there's no mistaking what country she's in. Where else can the divine and the every day combine so effortlessly? It's easy to imagine a man like Peck's character, stumbling upon an innocent girl, in a drug induced slumber on a public bench, and having no desire but to assist her--and maybe get her off his hands.

How very little actually happens in this film. You have the trope of the inexperienced ruler, masquerading as a commoner with the help of an attractive rogue, not unlike Aladdin or The Thief of Bagdad. But there's no pressure for the plot to make the princess learn a lesson about respecting the lower class, there's no pressure for Peck and Hepburn to end up together. As much as we might like that, the realism of them not ending up together makes the subtle bittersweetness all the more effective.

All we need, really, is to spend a little time with Audrey Hepburn in Rome.

Water and Gold Nowhere

You think you're hot now, try crossing Death Valley without any water. That's what a gang of bank robbers do in 1948's Yellow Sky, a magnificently shot Western loosely based on The Tempest.

Gregory Peck is the leader of the gang, called "Stretch", that also includes Richard Widmark as "Dude" and Harry Morgan as "Half Pint". They're all wearing the remains of Union uniforms in this film set a few years after the Civil War, though whether they were ever actually soldiers or acquired the clothes some other way is never made clear. They wander into town and ask about which side the sheriff fought on, though, as they gaze at this peculiar pin-up in the saloon.

Is she falling off the horse or tied to the side? What's going on in this picture? The only question a gang member named Lengthy (John Russell) has is, "What's she going to do after she's done ridin' that horse?" This isn't the last time "riding" will be invoked regarding a woman.

After a heist, they cross Death Valley--actually shot on location in Death Valley--and find themselves at an abandoned prospecting town named Yellow Sky. There they run into the local gun totting Miranda, called Mike, played by Anne Baxter in my favourite of her roles.

I guess she could be a combination of Miranda and Ariel. The Prospero here, played by James Barton, is her grandfather instead of her father and he's established a useful friendship with the local Apaches, who may collectively be taken as the film's Caliban.

The displays of lust in this film certainly push the Hays envelope. Director William A. Wellman made several films, like Safe in Hell, a lot more explicit than this before the Hays Code was enforced but the group of proven scoundrels just eyeing Mike as she takes water from the spring is loaded enough. They all want her but of course Gregory Peck is the front runner. He encounters her alone one evening and when he finally talks her into lowering her gun he tackles her.

Lads, just because she's not pointing a gun at you doesn't mean she's up for wrestling. But as Stretch tells her, he and his men are used to taking what they want without permission. Gregory Peck is primarily known nowadays for his saintly roles but he's quite good as someone a little more volatile. Though of course he ends up being more of a gentleman than he might seem at first.

The movie's filled with tension as we're compelled to watch these guys along with Mike and her Grandfather and try to figure out if they're any good or just a threat. They're stuck with each other, in any case, so it's an opportunity to explore a nice, precarious situation of human relations.

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.