WILD RIVER

WILD RIVER (1960). Director: Elia Kazan.

Chuck Glover (Montgomery Clift), a representative of the Tennessee Valley Authority, tries to persuade an elderly woman, Ella Garth (Jo Van Fleet), that she must leave her home before the whole area is flooded to make a damn for electric power, as well as to tame a river that has taken many lives. (A very affecting prologue presents what appears to be actual newsreel footage of a heart-broken man telling how most of his family was swept away by flood waters.) But Ella is very eloquent about what the land means to her, and why she is adamant about dying in her home. In the meantime Glover begins a romance with the old lady's grand-daughter, Carol (Lee Remick), and has to deal with racists who object to his hiring black workers and paying them a decent wage. This is another interesting social drama by Elia Kazan, imperfect and not always riveting, but bolstered by fine acting and photography. The secondary love story between Chuck and Carol isn't that compelling, even though Remick gives a lovely performance and Clift, as ever, is solid. Van Fleet, who was actually only 46 when the film came out, is simply superb as Ella Garth, and as others have noted, it's a shame that she wasn't even nominated for an Oscar.

Verdict: Worth viewing for an outstanding Van Fleet. ***.

SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER (1959)

"And this you won't believe:" Albert Dekker and Liz Taylor 

SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER (1959). Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Screenplay by Gore Vidal from the play by Tennessee Williams. NOTE: This review includes important plot details. 

Violet Venable (Katharine Hepburn) is utterly appalled at the tale being told about her son Sebastian's demise by her niece Catherine (Elizabeth Taylor) and "wants that hideous story cut out of her brain." To that end she has called in a neurosurgeon, Dr. Cukrowicz (Montgomery Clift of Lonelyhearts), and promises financial aid to a possible clinic named after her son if the doctor performs a lobotomy on Catherine. Dr. Cukrowicz meets with the distraught woman -- the two are attracted to each other -- and he can clearly see that she is not the kind of hopeless case who would need a lobotomy. Instead he brings Catherine to her aunt's house -- accompanied by her mother (Mercedes McCambridge of All the King's Men) and brother (Gary Raymond of Jason and the Argonauts), who hunger for Sebastian's money -- and administers a truth serum. Catherine then tells the horrifying truth about what happened to Sebastian in the village of Cabeza del Lobo in Spain.

Katharine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift

The problem with Suddenly Last Summer is the same as it is with all plays and films written and produced before Stonewall. The viciously negative stereotypes about homosexuals abound, and it makes no difference that Williams and Gore Vidal were contributors to the picture. Although we never meet or see Sebastian, he hits all the stereotype buttons: vein, superficial, pretentiously "artistic," a bitchy momma's boy, and worst of all, a sexual predator. (One senses that when Taylor refers to boys in relation to her cousin she doesn't mean boys as in "boys and girls," but underage boys.) The production code had a lot of problems with Suddenly Last Summer but ultimately the film was released because, after all, homosexual Sebastian does die, which just proves the "negativity" of the gay lifestyle. (Of course gay men have always had a problem with being cannibalized, LOL!) While a modern interpretation might suggest that Sebastian is gay-bashed, it is much worse than that.  

a tormented Liz Taylor

The laughable notion of the play and movie is that Sebastian, who is supposedly shy, uses good-looking women like his mother (until her stroke) and then cousin to attract men and then presumably pounces on them be these men gay or straight (or offers them money -- or food). Most gay men really don't need this subterfuge to meet other men, even back in the thirties when this takes place -- and the idea of gay men using women to attract hopefully gay men is ludicrous -- although it's also stated that his mother has social connections so I guess Sebastian can meet the "best," well, meat. Of course, there have been self-hating homos who insist only on having sex with "straight" men -- you can see the problem there -- or who buy hustlers who may or may not be gay but are probably at least bi. 

McCambridge, Taylor and Raymond

In any case, playwright Williams was not necessarily being literal when Catherine tells of her snobbish cousin being chased by starving homeless boys who use their musical instruments, made mostly of tin cans, to cut away and eat pieces of their victim after they chase and surround him. The movie however, intimates that this is what actually happened. Could Williams, who had become quite a success by this time, have been thinking about the handsome young actors who wanted to use him so they could get cast in one of his plays? Were they figuratively "devouring" him? Or did he have some guilt over his own behavior? Williams at this time was not exactly what today we would call "out and proud." This was also true of Montgomery Clift, so one can only imagine what the hell he thought of the picture! 

Angry Liz 

Playing in "dragon lady" mode, Katharine Hepburn gives a strong, if imperfect, but very showy performance. Mankiewicz clearly worked with Taylor to help her give as strong a performance as she does. The role is basically beyond the actress' limited range, but she gives excellent line readings, and really delivers during her horrifying climactic speech, giving her readings a frightening urgency and intensity. Clift is basically fine in a not-terribly-interesting part, and McCambridge and Raymond are just about perfect. Albert Dekker, okay as an associate of the doctor's. plays a role that was not in the play. The romantic sub-plot, if that's what you can call it, is expanded, and there are added scenes showing Catherine in a nun's retreat and the state asylum. (A continuity flaw shows a crazy old lady in a rocker in both the nunnery and the asylum.) The film has zero period atmosphere and just comes off as if it takes place in the fifties when it was made. 

Verdict: Yes, this has fascinating aspects but it's terribly dated, quite homophobic, and emerges more as a sick and dirty joke than anything else. **1/2. 

LONELYHEARTS

LONELYHEARTS (1958). Director: Vincent J. Donehue.

Adam White (Montgomery Clift) importunes publisher William Shrike (Robert Ryan) to give him a job on the paper, but all he winds up with is doing the "Miss Lonelyhearts" column. Shrike verbally abuses his wife Florence (Myrna Loy) because of an indiscretion in her past, despite the fact that Shrike has had numerous infidelities of his own. Adam is engaged to Justy (Delores Hart) -- short for Justine, one supposes -- but he has an indiscretion of his own when unhappy wife Fay (Maureen Stapleton) discovers that he's "Miss Lonelyhearts" and asks if she can come see him at his apartment to talk about her troubles ... The best thing about Lonelyhearts is the acting, with Clift giving a superb performance, and Loy, Stapleton, Ryan and Hart providing excellent support. Ryan's character is in some ways incomprehensible, and while his performance may lack the spontaneity of Clift's, it is still quite effective. One can't quite understand why Florence stays with Shrike, however. The whole business with Stapleton seems contrived, and the story, despite some minor incidents, never seems to go anywhere. This is a shame because the characters are compelling and the acting memorable. There are interesting parallels in the picture, however: Adam's father (a very effective Onslow Stevens) is in jail because he murdered his adulterous wife and her lover; Florence cheated on her husband and Fay wants to do the same. Stapleton had done mostly television and stage work before being "introduced" in this film. Despite its flaws, this is better than The Day of the Locust, another movie taken from a Nathaniel West novel.

Verdict: A mesmerizing Clift easily outshines his material. **1/2.

JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG

Note that "Judgment" is misspelled!

JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG (1961). Producer/director: Stanley Kramer.

"There can never be any justification for these [acts] -- not in generations, not in centuries."

"It's not the killing that's the problem -- it's the disposal of the bodies."

"We beat the greatest war machine since Alexander the Great -- and now the boy scouts take over."

In 1948, after the "big guns" in the National Socialist Party have already been put on trail, some "smaller fry" -- judges who helped enact the illegal and immoral laws of Nazi Germany -- are also put on trial in Nuremberg. The presiding judge is Dan Heywood (Spencer Tracy), with Colonel Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark) as prosecutor and Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell) as the defense attorney. The most famous defendant is a well-respected jurist named Dr. Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster). Rolfe claims that the U.S. can hardly act morally superior when they dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while Heywood discovers that virtually no one in Nuremberg will admit they knew what was going on in the concentration camps. Meanwhile Lawson is told that the U.S. will need Germany as an ally in the cold war and convicting some of its leading citizens may not be such a good idea. But Lawson was one of the men who liberated the camps, he has horrifying memories, and shows films (actual documentary footage) of Nazi atrocities -- the ovens, children sentenced to death, piles of rotting corpses, starved and frightened human beings, drawings made on human skin, severed heads (all of which is quite hard to watch but highly necessary for the movie's ultimate impact) -- and isn't about to let these guys walk if he can help it. Only two years after the end of the war, he fears that the world is already losing interest. Schell won an Oscar, and deserved it. Widmark gives one of his best performances, and Tracy is superb. Marlene Dietrich also turns in an excellent performance as the widow of a Nazi who has already been executed, and Judy Garland has a fine turn as a woman who was put in jail at sixteen for alleged perjury when a Jewish father figure was accused of intimate relations with her, an Aryan. Montgomery Clift is also superb as a Jewish witness who was forcibly sterilized years before and argues that one could not expect him to be entirely rational after such an experience. Lancaster is a comparative lightweight in this cast, and isn't well-cast as a German, but he does his best and has a few good moments. Some of the best scenes are between Tracy and Dietrich as they try to understand each other's viewpoints, particularly a scene in a lively beer hall after Heywood has seen the disturbing movies taken in the camps and Dietrich protests that few Germans really knew what was going on -- but he just can't quite buy it. There are many other good supporting performances in the film, especially Virginia Christine as a German housekeeper who argues that Hitler did some good things along with the bad. Judgment at Nuremberg covers all viewpoints and all the bases in highly dramatic fashion, and while over three hours long, is never boring. It ends in a most satisfying fashion, and Tracy's final lines -- written by screenwriter Abby Mann -- pretty much sum it up.

Verdict: A masterpiece about a shameful event in history that must never be forgotten. ****.

RAINTREE COUNTY

RAINTREE COUNTY (1957). Director: Edward Dmytryk.

John Shawnessy (Montgomery Clift) lives in a Northern county which has the legend of a mysterious, magical raintree in the swamps, which he tries to find but fails. He is loved by Nell (Eva Marie Saint) but winds up married to a neurotic Southern gal named Susanna (Elizabeth Taylor), who fears that her true mother was a Cuban black woman with whom her father supposedly had an affair. What's worse -- for essentially racist Susanna -- John is an abolitionist ... and then the Civil War breaks out. If this all sounds interesting be warned that it's stretched out to a tedious 2 hours and 48 minutes and the movie never really jells. Part of the problem is a meandering script without any major focus, but director Dmytryk isn't much help, either. Clift gives a good performance, but it was clearly affected by the shattering car accident he was in that occurred during filming. Elizabeth Taylor deserves an A for effort but she's not really up to playing a character that has so many different facets and psychological problems. Rod Taylor is good as a swaggering rival of John's, and Lee Marvin certainly scores as the charismatic Flash, with whom John has a race and who winds up in the Army with him. But the best performance is from Eva Marie Saint, who stands by John through thick and thin, and who is better than the picture deserves. DeForest Kelley shows up briefly as a rebel soldier. Fine cinematography by Robert Surtees and a good score by Johnny Green, but this is mostly a bore.

Verdict: Three hours of your life you can never get back. **.

THE HEIRESS

THE HEIRESS (1949). Director: William Wyler.

"Yes, I can be very cruel. I have been taught by masters."

In Washington Square in turn of the century New York, Catherine Sloper (Olivia de Havilland) falls for a fortune hunter, Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift) over the objections of her wealthy doctor father, Austin (Ralph Richardson). On that framework rests one of the finest films to come out of Hollywood, based loosely on Henry James' Washington Square. It's theme can be summed up in the words of the French song incorporated into the score by Aaron Copland, and which are sung at one point by Clift, to the effect that the joys of love are short but that love's pain lasts a lifetime. Along with pathos, the film has a degree of humor, evidenced by the character of Catherine's Aunt Lavinia (an outstanding Miriam Hopkins) who says "What I say isn't always of the greatest importance but that doesn't stop me from talking." [Much later an ill Austin says of his sister "I don't want [her] in my room at all -- unless I lapse into a coma."] Richardson's performance is simply superb. Clift is wise enough to play with an admirable sincerity that might make first-time viewers wonder if he really does have feelings for Catherine. A lesser actor would have figuratively winked at the audience, letting them in on the game. Although she won an Oscar and is, indeed, very good, de Havilland is, perhaps, a cut below the other three. Her performance is the one that seems most "manufactured" or calculated, a feat of acting -- and very good acting -- as opposed to living the part. In the scene when Catherine finally confronts her father, we can believe her anger and that she would say the things she does, but anger doesn't automatically instill poise in a person, and Catherine, as enacted by de Havilland, suddenly becomes much too confident and formidable. The words should rush out even as Catherine can't quite believe that she is actually saying them to her father. Still, de Havilland has lovely moments, such as when she sits at her tapestry as Morris and Lavinia talk at the door, a dozen different emotions about this man she both loves and hates playing across her face. Wyler's directorial hand is assured, and Copland's score, despite its dissonances and 1940's-style modernity, is simply drenched in a wonderful romanticism.

Verdict: A masterpiece with one of the all-time great endings. ****