Dante's Inferno

             

Henry Lachman's Dante's Inferno is a structurally saggy vehicle for Spencer Tracy, his last film for Fox, that has some mitigating moments. This 1935 flick benefits from casting Tracy as a heel, a carnival barker who becomes an entertainment titan.Tracy was much more interesting as a rounder and a bounder, as in Up the River, than as the models of masculine virtue he was cast as at MGM. We first meet Tracy's character, Jim Carter, working as a coal stover on a cruise ship. Fired for malingering, Carter takes a debasing job, in blackface, at a carnival. That doesn't last long, but the kindly Henry B. Walthall, playing Pops the owner of the titular attraction, takes a shine to Carter and hires him as a barker. Carter excels at the job and soon has the suckers streaming to the sideshow. The fact that Pops has a comely daughter named Betty, played by Claire Trevor, helps induce Carter to stay on in the job.

Betty and Jim soon marry and, a dissolve later, have spawned a nauseatingly cute male moppet. The domestic scenes are the biggest drag in the picture, static episodes extolling domesticity and morality while Carter pursues wealth through amoral means at work. Ms. Trevor is wasted in a vanilla role and if you are a fan of her work, you know she is much better with a little sulphur. The surreal carnival scenes work much better. The sets are gaudily magnificent and Lachman employs tilted angels for surreal notes. The uses of grotesque backdrops recalls 1934's The Scarlet Empress. Cinematographer Rudolph Maté (Vampyr) employs filters, gauze, and vaseline to delirious effect.

The scope of this production is breathtaking. Not only do we get to witness the destruction of the carnival set, but there is a fire aboard an ocean liner that takes the character of Carter full circle. Before the conflagration, there is even a sizzling dance number featuring a young Rita Hayworth, then billed as Rita Cansino. However, the most memorable sequence of this over stuffed turkey is a fifteen minute wordless sequence which is meant to illustrate Walthall's sonorous reading of Dante's text. Owing much to Gustave Doré's engravings of Dante, the sequence is a supreme example of Hollywood bad taste, but at least has a sense of bold vitality. This sequence, like best parts of Dante's Inferno, harkens back to the vivacity of the late silent era in contrast to the placidity of Production Code Hollywood. 

Henry B. Walthall and Spencer Tracy

Suzhou River

Jia Hongsheng

Lou Ye's Suzhou River, from 2000, is a disjunctive noir set in Shanghai. The film is purposefully hard to follow for a number of reasons. Foremost is that Mr. Lou shifts the film's point of view, from the first person POV of a videographer (Zhang Ming Fan) to a third person POV of a motorcycle messenger (Jia Hongsheng), about a quarter of the way through this 83 minute picture. The lives of these two characters intersect. Furthermore, Lou employs a hand held camera in a way that further obfuscates who is who and what is what. There is a time leap in the plot and, to cap things off, the two lead female characters are played by the same actress: the sublime Zhou Xun. 

However, the plot, which I will not reveal, is consistent with the often labyrinthian nature of mysteries and noir. The hand-held technique jibes with the gritty portrait of Shanghai's decayed industrial riverside. The performances are exemplary, particularly the doomed Mr. Jia who succumbed to inner demons in 2010. Suzhou River is a film that fully explores the fatalism inherent in the noir genre. A masterpiece that repays repeated viewings.  

One Man's Way

Don Murray

Denis Sanders' One Man's Way, from 1963, was not quite as terrible as I thought it would be. That said, it is still pretty terrible. The film is a biopic of Norman Vincent Peale, a (then) famous Protestant minister and author of the best selling The Power of Positive Thinking. As a hagiography, the film is slightly better entertainment than the equally ass kissing JFK flick of that year, PT 109. What value the film has comes not from the anodyne script or Sanders' pedestrian direction, but from some interesting performances. Don Murray stars as Peale and his committed performance is the main reason to see this flick. Murray provides a engaged portrayal of spiritual struggle and is very strong at delivering Peale's sermons. The film also contains memorable bits from Diana Hyland (in her film debut), William Windom, Virginia Christine, Carol Ohmart, Veronica Cartwright, Butch Patrick, Tom Skerritt, and Bing Russell.

Of course, this portrayal of Peale's life is pure bunkum. What I objected to the most was the portrayal of Peale as force for ecumenical unity and toleration. We see him playing nice with a Jewish gentleman, urging him to visit his rabbi. In fact, Peale was a narrow minded right-winger who courted controversy with his political views. He came out against the presidential candidacy of Adlai Stevenson in 1952 because of Stevenson's divorce. Stevenson responded "I find Saint Paul appealing and Saint Peale appalling." During the 1960 election, Peale spearheaded a movement to oppose the election of John Kennedy because his allegiance to the Pope allegedly outweighed his allegiance to his nation. Peale was widely criticized for his stand and never really regained his public standing. Even reactionary Papist William F. Buckley Jr. repudiated him. Though a national figure in the 1950s, Peale is largely forgotten today. One Man's Way did little to burnish his reputation. It opened a month after JFK's assassination and was a box office bomb.