The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw

Jayne Mansfield and Kenneth More

Raoul Walsh's The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, from 1958, is a foredoomed project, a comic Western starring Jayne Mansfield and Kenneth More. The script by Howard Dimsdale, based on a short story by Jacob Hay, is a fish out of water comedy reminiscent of Ruggles of Red Gap and Paleface. More plays Jonathan Tibbs, the heir to an English armaments concern. To prove his mettle to his family, he ventures to the American West in hopes of opening up this burgeoning market for his family's wares. Through a series of ridiculous misunderstandings, the pacifistic Tibbs earns a fearsome reputation as a gunslinger and assumes the titular position. Mansfield plays Kate, the owner and featured attraction at the local saloon. After initial resistance, she falls for the high-falutin interloper. Tibbs gains the respect of a local tribe of American natives whose support helps him insure the peace. Wedded bliss ensues.

The main problem with the film is the lack of chemistry between the two leads. More is at ease within the confines of Walsh's relaxed japes. He certainly excels doing spit takes. However, Mansfield, saddled with a needless southern accent, never seems comfortable. She was pregnant at the time of the shooting, but I think the main factor was that she was an extremely limited performer, perhaps only at home within the cartoonish mise-en-scene of a Frank Tashlin. I even think Mamie van Doren was more talented. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the dance hall numbers, usually something to look forward to in a Raoul Walsh film. Dubbed by the late Connie Francis, Mansfield is stiff and lifeless. My eyes drifted to the backup dancers even when Mansfield was wearing an outfit in which fake fur covers and accentuates her pudenda. A birthday suit would have been less obscene.

In addition, the score by Canadian Robert Farnon is poor, mickey mousing the action with such chestnuts as Rule Britannia, How Dry I Am, and Chopin's funeral march. One favorable factor is Otto Heller's (Richard the 3rd, Peeping Tom) sparkling cinematography. I was marveling at its beauty and wondering why I hadn't seen this section of the American Southwest utilized before, when I discovered that the film's exteriors had been shot in Andalusia in Southern Spain. The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw was technically an English production, hence the presence of Mr. Heller a Czech native who had lived in Great Britain since the 1930s. Britain had passed protectionist legislation requiring that foreign film companies spend profits made in Old Blighty on productions based in England. Thus, most of the interiors of this film and the prologue featuring Robert Morley were shot in England. Unfortunately, the process shots utilizing rear projection match poorly with the footage shot in Spain. 

I couldn't help feel that Walsh had very little personal investment in this project. This was a film that feels more like a production deal, comparable to The Prince and the Showgirl, than a personal project. It was originally tabbed for Clifton Webb and Marilyn Monroe. More, relatively forgotten today, was riding high with comic hits such as Genevieve and The Admirable Crichton. The lack of international success for The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, though it was a hit in England, meant that More never broke out as a name player outside his home country. 20th Century Fox brought in more than a few ringers from the states to make the film seem more American. Old compadres of Walsh like Bruce Cabot, William Campbell, and Clancy Cooper are welcome sights. Best in show is Henry Hull whose film credits date to 1917 and who appeared in three other Walsh films. The gaseous bloviations that Hull's mayoral character  emits suits the actor's theatrical air to a tee.

Better Man

Robbie Williams in Better Man

Michael Gracey's Better Man displays that, after helming The Greatest Showman and Pink: All I Know So Far, he is the premier director of modern musicals. The "Rock DJ" number alone would make Better Man a must see for any lover of the musical genre. Unfortunately, it is contained within a musical biopic of Robbie Williams who plays himself with the aid of a motion capture monkey mask. Now maybe it is because I am a Yank, but I have had little regard for Mr. Williams' music and the soundtrack did nothing to change my mind. When an artist has to trot out "Land of 1000 Dances" as a showstopper, a sense of desperation and lack of a artistic vision are simultaneously evident. What do I know, though, the film soundtrack went to number 1 in both Ireland and the UK. 

Despite the monkey mask, Better Man is a fairly standard biopic chronicling the rise, fall, and recovery of a pop star who owes more to Sinatra than to Rock and Roll. Williams is portrayed as a young loser from Northern England who grabs the brass ring of fame when he is tabbed to be in the boy band Take That. However, fame goes to our boy's head and after various derelictions, he is ousted from the band. Improbably, his solo career takes off, but he mistreats his fiancee Nicole (a delightful Raechelle Banno) and descends into addiction before embracing recovery and making amends. All the while he is haunted by the traumas and insecurities of his past, particularly the desertion of his father when he was young. Unfortunately, this is symbolized by having various simian iterations of his past haunt that cheeky monkey Williams while he performs. One Williams is enough.

Williams knows he has ego issues, he even named one of his albums The Ego Has Landed, but a digital face cannot hide his self absorption. Better Man is two hours and fifteen minutes, at least twenty minutes too long. There are too many scenes of a sullen Williams twitching in the throes of a binge that bog down the film. I did enjoy the supporting cast, though, especially Steve Pemberton, Kate Mulvaney, Damon Herriman, and Alison Steadman. Despite the faux humility of his angry chimpanzee mask, Williams' self-regard is all too evident throughout. When the film ends with a tearful reunion, his pa tells him "you are one of the gods now." Only in the UK, mate.

   

Act of Violence

Van Heflin on the run near the long gone Los Angeles funicular

I'm usually bored stiff by the films of Fred Zinnemann, but Act of Violence, from 1949, is one of his better pictures. Zinnemann is at his best when he can devote his solid craftsmanship to the mechanics of a well articulated and dynamic plot, such as with The Day of the Jackal. When he directs adaptations of plays (as with A Man For All Seasons or A Hatful of Rain) or musicals (Oklahoma!), his lack of visual dynamism makes the film a slog. Act of Violence opens, without the usual credits, in slam bang fashion as we witness gimpy Robert Ryan rush into a tenement apartment and hurriedly pack a rod. Robert L. Richards screenplay, from a story by Collier Young, has Ryan's character bent on vengeance towards a former buddy he knows betrayed him during the war which left him with a bum leg and vengeance on his mind.

The trauma of wartime experience hangs heavily over Act of Violence. Ryan's former buddy is played by Van Heflin who is living happily in a Southern California town with his wife (Janet Leigh) and small child. Heflin's character was in a POW camp in Europe with Ryan during the war. Heflin finked on Ryan and some comrades to the camp commandant just before an escape attempt. Heflin says he had good intentions, he believed the attempt was foolhardy, but his actions were a betrayal of trust and had fatal results. As soon as Ryan shows up, Heflin knows he has murderous intent and goes on the run to Los Angeles in order to save his skin. Zinnemann and cinematographer Robert Surtees (Ben Hur, The Graduate) give us ominous shots of Heflin darting about the tawdrier sections of nighttime LA. Heflin falls in with a crowd of scofflaws whose assistance brings about tragic consequences.  

One of the main reasons this film works so well is that its main players are all adroitly cast. Even at this early stage of his career, Robert Ryan was playing as many steely eyed villains (as in Caught) as he was playing heroic leads. He is perfect for this angry Ahab of a character who is solely bent on revenge. Heflin tended to be cast as characters undermined by weakness or over sensitivity in contrast to traditionally stolid leading men. His roles in Tennessee Johnson and Shane and in this film are prime examples of this. Leigh's role as an anxious spouse is hardly taxing, but she makes it heartfelt and memorable. The film has an impressive gallery of rogues populating the underworld of Los Angeles: especially Berry Kroeger as a gunsel and Taylor Holmes as a crooked lawyer. Best of all is Mary Astor in an unlikely casting coup as a bedraggled and down at her heels hooker who befriends Heflin. I won't soon forget her bragging to all concerned and no one in particular, "I get my kicks."

Mary Astor and Van Heflin

For what its worth, Act of Violence has much the same climax and is a better film than the over praised High Noon. There is a final showdown and even a shot of a ticking clock in Act of Violence's finale. The tragic denouement attempts to wring some sense of poetic justice out of the material. I'm not sure it succeeds, but I prefer it to Carl Foreman's attempts at profundity in High Noon.