Movie Review: The Rack (1956)

A military courtroom drama, The Rack has good intentions to explore mental torture, but is snagged by an unimaginative narrative.

Decorated Captain Ed Hall Jr. (Paul Newman) was held prisoner by the enemy for many months during the Korean War, while his brother Pete was killed in combat. Now Ed returns to the United States and spends time recovering at a military hospital, but has difficulty reconnecting with his father Ed Sr. (Walter Pidgeon) and sister-in-law (Pete's widow) Aggie (Anne Francis). At the hospital, Captain John Miller (Lee Marvin), another recuperating soldier who was also held captive by the enemy, hangs a "traitor" sign around Ed's neck.

Once Ed makes it home, he is charged with collaborating with the enemy. Major Sam Moulton (Wendell Corey) is the reluctant lead court-martial prosecutor, and Lieutenant Colonel Frank Wasnick (Edmond O'Brien) is assigned as the defence lawyer. What happened to Ed in the prison camp will be revealed at the trial.

Written by Stewart Stern and based on a Rod Serling story, The Rack's origins are as an hour-long television drama, and it shows. Director Arnold Laven is unable to evolve the narrative much past small screen confines, and requires a contrived structure of unnecessarily holding back information to extend the running length to 100 minutes.

The objectives of exposing new forms of psychological warfare and the impact on soldiers subjected to non-physical torture are admirable, and the better parts of The Rack work as a lightweight precursor to 1962's The Manchurian Candidate. Paul Vogel's black and white cinematography is suitably stark for the institutional hospital and courtroom settings, and an intense but still sympathetic Paul Newman, in his third role, adequately conveys the damage caused by guilt and intense mistreatment.

But after a prolonged build-up towards explaining exactly what happened in the Korean prison camp, The Rack falls well short. Laven is all about tell, don't show, and the revelations from the witness chair related to Ed Hall's mental state, his relationship with his father, broader societal and military responsibilities and whether or not Ed reached an emotional breaking point all land with a confused thud. A father-son moment of attempted reconciliation is more awkward than rewarding.

The supporting cast is strong, Walter Pidgeon, Wendell Corey, Edmond O'Brien and Lee Marvin lending robust if static support. Anne Francis is also stoic, but Aggie's role and function between Ed Sr. and Ed Jr. never quite latches.

The Rack attempts to interrogate with passion, but is often overruled.



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Movie Review: Blackboard Jungle (1955)

A classroom social drama, Blackboard Jungle takes a grim view of adolescence in sounding a loud warning about the latest inter-generational gap.

War veteran Richard Dadier (Glenn Ford) is offered his first job as an English language teacher at an inner city trade school in a tough multi-ethnic school. The students have a reputation for not caring about education, and the other teachers are generally just concerned about survival and cashing the next cheque. Richard is married to Anne (Anne Francis), who is pregnant and worried after having lost a previous child.

On the first day of classes Richard rescues fellow rookie teacher Lois Hammond (Margaret Hayes) from a rape by a student. He finds it difficult to connect with his students, but spots talent and leadership potential in Miller (Sidney Poitier) while gang leader Artie West (Vic Morrow) proves to be a handful in and out of the classroom. Richard stubbornly digs in to try and educate, but the strain of teaching starts to spill over into his personal life.

An adaptation of the Evan Hunter book directed by Richard Brooks, Blackboard Jungle is notorious for several reasons not quite related to its narrative content. The film opens with Bill Haley and His Comets' Rock Around The Clock, the first use of a rock song on a film soundtrack, at a time when rock music was still regarded with deep suspicion. The film's music and subject matter were considered near-scandalous and indeed despite plenty of censorship attempts teenage audience enthusiasm overflowed into violence and riots throughout the United Kingdom.

And in one of his earlier roles Sidney Poitier is arguably the second most important and prominent character in the film after Glenn Ford's Dadier. Yet Poitier's name is about tenth on both the opening and closing credit lists, a sad of example of Hollywood's opinion of black performers at the time, even in a film all about social upheaval.

As to the actual content of what is on the screen, Blackboard Jungle is an unrelenting and exaggerated portrayal of every parent's nightmare from the era. The schism between the Greatest Generation and their oldest children who missed out on war service but grew up with parents pre-occupied by the war is portrayed as a hostile battlefield. The bad behaviour starts as openly belligerent and quickly descends into regular and harrowing bouts of violence against teachers, including rape, back alley beatings, destruction of property, broad daylight heists and open threats of physical harm with weapons.

The episodes are multiplicative and Brooks' script becomes difficult to stomach as it paints itself into a corner. After spending the best part of 90 minutes exhibiting contemptible behaviour, the sharp turn towards partial redemption in the final 10 minutes rings hollow.

Poitier's performance is the only one that carries depth and subtlety, as he allows Miller to reveal hints of the person he could become given half a chance. Ford bulldozes his way through the role, his hard head a good match for the film's pounding message.

An undoubtedly forceful drama, Blackboard Jungle is also excessively stark and alarmist.

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Movie Review: Forbidden Planet (1956)

A psychological interplanetary science fiction adventure, Forbidden Planet is an impressive romp through the galaxies, briskly paced but without fully avoiding all the space debris.

In the distant future, humanity has conquered travel at multiples of light speed and colonized deep space. Commander John J. Adams (Leslie Nielsen) captains United Planets Cruiser C57-D towards Altair IV, a distant desert-like planet with a life-sustaining atmosphere. Adams' mission is to discover the fate of the Bellerophon expedition that landed on Altair twenty years prior, but subsequently lost contact with Earth. Approaching the planet, Adams makes contact with Dr. Edward Morbius (Walter Pidgeon), a language expert and apparently the only survivor from the Bellerophon. Morbius warns Adams to stay away from Altair, but the commander insists on landing anyway.

Once on the ground, Adams and his crew meet the resourceful Robby the Robot, who escorts them to Morbius' compound. The scientist explains that an unknown force killed all the other members of the expedition but spared Morbius and his wife, and she subsequently died of natural causes. Morbius now lives with his daughter Alta (Anne Francis), and her innocent sexuality and skimpy outfits cause havoc among Adams' companionship-starved crewmen. Morbius is studying the scripts and inventions left behind by the Krell, a technologically advanced but now extinct race that used to inhabit Altair. With Alta falling in love with Adams, a rampaging, indestructible and invisible monster attacks C57-D and its crew, forcing Adams to untangle the secrets of Morbius and the Krell.

An entertaining gallop to the inner recesses of space and the human mind, Forbidden Planet boasts good special effects for the era, and a combination of wonder, science and mental sparring. Walter Pidgeon dominates his surroundings with a towering, almost theatrical performance as a scientist engrossed in studying superior works, and now with a mental capacity far ahead of his race. The eternally cute Robby the Robot, created by Morbius thanks to his learnings from the Krell, earns his cinematic legend as an essential member of the cast.

Despite the many highlights, the film is not without weaknesses, and director Fred M. Wilcox, working from Cyril Hume's script, sometimes struggles to find the right balance amongst all the puzzle pieces. Once C57-D lands on Altair, too much time is invested in sex-deprived men lusting after Alta. The scenes featuring Adams and his Lieutenant "Doc" Ostrow (Warren Stevens) clumsily wooing Alta or castigating her for wearing what she likes are creaky in the extreme and have not aged well. The cast is mostly stuck in 1950s earnest stiffness, Leslie Nielsen failing to add any sort of nuance to Commander Adams and his crewmates playing their role straight out of a World War Two naval deployment.

The film hits its peak with the introduction of the Krell technology, Morbius unveiling the massive machinery, inexhaustible power supply, and intelligence-enhancing inventions left behind by the ancient race. The battle with the monster as it attacks the spaceship is another highlight, the special effects team creating a virtual rampaging presence, able to withstand everything that Adams' defensive batteries can throw at it.

The final explanation linking the monster, the Krell and Morbius is rushed, perhaps to avoid any unnecessary scrutiny as unconstrained scientific achievements collide with the in-built frailties of both the Krell and human minds. The climax is satisfying nonetheless, Forbidden Planet ending with a literal and figurative bang. Traveling in space is dangerous, but the dark secrets of the brain could be as treacherous as any intergalactic expedition.

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Movie Review: Bad Day At Black Rock (1955)

A tense thriller set after World War Two but otherwise containing all the elements of a Western, Bad Day At Black Rock is a small movie with a long reach. An excellent cast extends to the minor roles, and the ethos of a mysterious stranger arriving unannounced in a small town harbouring a dark secret would continue to resonate for decades in the hands of the likes of Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood.

John Macreedy (Spencer Tracy) arrives by train to the small town of Black Rock in the middle of the desert. A one-armed World War Two veteran dressed in a black suit and black hat, Macreedy immediately makes himself unpopular with the suspicious locals by asking for directions to the home of a local man named Komoko. Hotel clerk Pete (John Ericson) is unwelcoming, while roughnecks Coley (Ernest Borgnine) and Hector (Lee Marvin) try to intimidate Macreedy and run him out of town.

Undeterred, Macreedy seeks out the local Sheriff Tim Horn (Dean Jagger), but finds him to be useless. Meanwhile the town veterinarian Doc Velie (Walter Brennan) and Pete's sister Liz (Anne Francis) are slightly friendlier but still less than forthcoming. The unofficial town leader Reno Smith (Robert Ryan) pretends to befriend Macreedy while still urging him to leave, but gradually Macreedy uncovers Smith's central role in the dirty secret involving the missing Komoko.

Black Rock is a clutch of ramshackle buildings that time has forgot, and where the train stops reluctantly and only upon request. Director John Sturges therefore has a well-defined closed system to operate in, with Macreedy the single outside factor agitating the fragile alliance built by the locals to protect their secret. It's a simple but effective structure deployed in later examples by Leone in A Fistful Of Dollars (1964) and Eastwood in High Plains Drifter (1973).

CinemaScope may seem like an odd choice for a small film about a dirty town secret, but Sturges uses it to his advantage. The wide camera angles emphasize just how small and isolated Black Rock is, a town where horrible things can happen to good people and the rest of the world will be none the wiser.

Sturges maintains a taut compactness throughout Bad Day At Black Rock, with no wasted scenes to prolong the 81 minutes of running length. Characters are introduced quickly through the eyes of Macreedy, with quick interactions sharply defining each local's position in the town's hierarchy, from the spineless (the Sheriff) to the smoothly intimidating (Smith).

Spencer Tracy creates an unforgettable character in John Macreedy. Unflappable in black under the scorching sun and not allowing his handicap to slow down his martial arts skills, Macreedy personifies coolness and always appears to be several steps ahead of the locals conspiring against him. Robert Ryan makes for a smooth villain, his smile concealing a cold master of puppets working hard to keep the town in line. Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin enjoy the roles of tough guys given the freedom to unleash brutality on the new guy.

Although easy to guess, the secret at the centre of Bad Day At Black Rock pokes away at the scar tissue surrounding the mistreatment of Americans of Japanese descent during the War, giving the movie a modern social message to go along with its Western stylistic elements. Tracy, in his mid-fifties, may be difficult to imagine as a just-returned active war duty veteran, but a town struggling with a dark past needs a mythical warrior for justice more than an ordinary man, and John Macreedy readily delivers the bitter but required medicine.

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