Movie Review: The Bigamist (1953)

Genre: Romantic Drama  

Director: Ida Lupino  

Starring: Joan Fontaine, Edmond O'Brien, Ida Lupino, Edmund Gwenn  

Running Time: 80 minutes  

Synopsis: In San Francisco, traveling salesman Harry Graham (Edmond O'Brien) and his wife and business partner Eve (Joan Fontaine) are being vetted for an adoption by bureaucrat Mr. Jordan (Edmund Gwenn). Although Harry's reputation in the community is stellar, Jordan senses something is off and keeps digging. His sleuthing leads him to Los Angeles, and the discovery that Harry is also secretly married to Phyllis (Ida Lupino) and a father to a young baby. In flashbacks, a despondent Harry recalls how he ended up leading a double life.

What Works Well: This is a surprisingly sympathetic portrayal of two loves co-existing in one man's heart, and writer Collier Young (Lupino's ex-husband, Fontaine's current husband) studiously refuses to pass judgement. Occupying most of the running time, the details of Harry and Phyllis finding companionship then passion are tragically heartfelt. Harry's love for Eve remains true even as it melds with business partner appreciation, while Phyllis provides domesticity and an escape from loneliness on the road. Director Lupino maintains a sombre tone but also peppers the drama with inside Hollywood jokes, a few at the expense of Edmund Gwenn.

What Does Not Work As Well: With the shock premise surrendered in the title, the mostly mopey tone results in a running time that feels longer than 80 minutes. The annoying lack of courage to hold honest conversations is the catalyst for almost all of Harry's problems.

Conclusion: Relationship status: really complicated.



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Movie Review: The Last Voyage (1960)

Genre: Disaster Adventure

Director: Andrew L. Stone

Starring: Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, George Sanders, Edmond O'Brien, Woody Strode

Running Time: 91 minutes

Synopsis: The aging luxury ocean liner Claridon is crossing the Pacific with Captain Robert Adams (George Sanders) at the helm. The passengers include Cliff Henderson (Robert Stack), his wife Laurie (Dorothy Malone), and young daughter Jill. An engine room fire triggers a large explosion, separating Jill from her parents and trapping Laurie under debris. As Captain Adams dithers, Second Engineer Walsh (Edmund O'Brien) and his crew struggle to prevent water flooding into the damaged vessel, while Cliff tries to save his family with help from crewman Lawson (Woody Strode).

What Works Well: Andrew L. Stone directed, wrote, and co-produced (with his wife and editor Virginia) this effective disaster thriller, and focusses with cold and detached efficiency on three groups grappling with the unfolding crisis: the officers surrounding the slow-to-react Captain Adams, the crewmen led by the scrappy Walsh, and the Henderson family. The narrow focus results in crisp storytelling, enhanced by excellent special effects and imaginative cinematography. Themes of sacrifice, determination, and life prioritization are unafraid to wander towards dark emotional places.

What Does Not Work As Well: Other than the Hendersons, all the other passengers are irrelevant extras, and the cumbersome attempts to rescue Laurie from under the debris occupy excessive screen time.

Conclusion: As the crippled ship slowly sinks, the thrills soar.



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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: D.O.A. (1949)

A crime thriller, D.O.A. (for Dead On Arrival) is a noir whodunit filled with divided loyalties and edgy conspirators.

In Los Angeles, Frank Bigelow (Edmond O'Brien) stumbles into a police station and announces he has been murdered. In flashback, he recounts his story.

Bigelow is a tax lawyer in small town Banning, California. He sets off on a solo one-week vacation to San Francisco, leaving behind his deeply disappointed assistant and sweetheart Paula (Pamela Britton). In the big city Frank joins a group of traveling salesmen as they hit a nightclub, where he is tempted by Jeannie (Virginia Lee) and has his drink poisoned.

Paula's phone calls keep Frank grounded, but he wakes up with a horrible stomach ache. Medical exams prove he has been fatally poisoned and has just days to live. Determined to uncover the killer, Frank's first clue is a phone call from businessman Eugene Phillips, which leads to Los Angeles and Phillips' wife, brother Stanley, business associate Halliday and office assistant Miss Foster. They are all connected with criminal Majak, glamour model Marla, a group of henchmen, and a mysterious deal to purchase Iridium.

With a remarkable opening scene tracking Bigelow from behind as he makes his way down long and mostly empty hallways to the homicide office, director Rudolph Maté introduces a sparkling film noir. The screenplay by Russell Rouse and Clarence Greene gathers all the essential elements: a treacherous murder, one epic flashback, several dangerous women, one pure and dedicated love, and a flawed protagonist meandering in the wrong moral direction.

Bigelow is mulling the status of his relationship with the admittedly clingy Paula, and his flirtation with Jeannie at the bar is the telling weakness creating the opportunity for the poison to invade his body. For the small town lawyer who abandoned a loving woman, the mixture of sexual temptation and alcohol proves fatal.

Frank's subsequent one-man investigation is epic in its door-storming determination. And in his quest to uncover the killer he does not meet a single honest living soul. The phone call from Mr. Phillips leads to a Los Angeles hopelessly overrun by creeps ranging from liars to criminals all the way through to the psychopath Chester. But Frank's one weapon is his impending death. He can no longer be fearful or threatened, and so bulldozes his way through layers of deception.

With a short running length of 84 minutes, the film's final third is a rushed blur of competing names, places, lies, and events, many occurring off-screen. Maté's control of the material starts to slip and the conspiracy narrative knocks on the doors marked incomprehensible and over-convoluted.

But the commitment to style and pacing persists, aided by an uncompromising Edmond O'Brien performance and stellar on-location cinematography by Ernest Laszlo. D.O.A. doggedly adheres to a passion for emotional triumph despite physical futility, the certainty of death unleashing clarity of thought and a rage for truth.

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Movie Review: Seven Days In May (1964)

A Cold War political thriller, Seven Days In May uses a tense military takeover scenario in the United States as an avenue to explore themes of democracy, loyalty and nationalism in the shadow of a global conflict.

It's the early 1970s, and U.S. President Jordan Lyman (Fredric March) is facing severe criticism and protests for pushing ahead with a nuclear disarmament deal with the Soviet Union. He believes the agreement to be the only pathway to peace, but the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force General James Mattoon Scott (Burt Lancaster) believes the President is severely undermining national security.

Scott's right-hand man Colonel "Jiggs" Casey (Kirk Douglas) picks up cryptic clues suggesting Scott is planning a coup d'etat within a few days, using a covert military unit funded without appropriate authority and assembled and trained at a secret base near El Paso, Texas.

Jiggs takes his evidence to Lyman, who believes enough to investigate. He dispatches his chief aid Paul Girard (Martin Balsam) to interrogate a Navy commander stationed in the Mediterranean, trusted Senator Ray Clark (Edmond O'Brien) heads to El Paso, and Jiggs approaches Scott's former mistress Eleanor Holbrook (Ava Gardner) to dig up potentially useful dirt. But with the clock ticking, finding hard evidence against the plotters will prove a challenge.

With the Cold War at its peak after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, Seven Days In May joined Dr. Strangelove and Fail Safe in a trio of 1964 films exploring various what-ifs of the conflict. Based on a novel by Charles W. Bailey II and Fletcher Knebel with a script by none other than Rod Serling, Seven Days In May delves into the perils of harbouring trust in a peace process, and at least as a starting point comes closest to predicting the actual course of negotiations eventually pursued by the United States and the Soviet Union.

The film uses the Cold War as background stage set. The focus is on the erosion of trust in a President's actions at the highest levels, and the potential for a cabal of generals and politicians to hide in plain sight while plotting a governmental takeover. Serling places intrigue and evidence gathering at the forefront of the story, Seven Days In May not featuring a single act of serious violence despite the threat of massive military and political upheaval. Director John Frankenheimer luxuriates in choreographing deep focus black and white scenes, turning the nation's most secretive boardrooms and offices into cerebral battlegrounds.

Along with star Kirk Douglas, Frankenheimer was instrumental in pulling the project together, and he assembled a dream cast, adding Lancaster, March, Gardner, O'Brien and Balsam, all in good form and tackling grim roles with requisite seriousness. And the film passes the baton around the lead roles at regular intervals, Douglas, Gardner and then March taking turns in the spotlight, with Lancaster a menacing presence throughout.

By the end March rolls back the years and emerges as a dominant presence, his scenes opposite Douglas (revealing the conspiracy threads) and Lancaster (a tense confrontational showdown) both mesmeric. Serling's script may be faulted for underplaying the President's hand and authority as the climax approaches, but also allows for the epic interpersonal clashes to play out.

As the race against time to unmask the conspiracy hurtles towards the designated hour of action, the film grabs opportunities to debate the merits of pursuing peace. General Scott cannot fathom how a powerful ideological foe can ever be trusted to disarm and has the public on his side, while Lyman, with sinking approval ratings, is convinced negotiating a treaty from a position of strength is the only path to a non-ruinous future. It's an eternal warmongers versus peacemakers polemic, and sometimes nothing less than the future of a powerful nation hangs in the balance.

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Movie Review: The Killers (1946)

A film noir with plenty of panache, The Killers is a gritty crime story told with often mesmerizing style.

In a small town, two killers track down and shoot dead the surprisingly docile ex-convict Swede Anderson (Burt Lancaster), living incognito as gas station attendant Peter Lund. Swede left behind a small amount of life insurance money to an obscure beneficiary, prompting insurance company investigator Jim Reardon (Edmond O'Brien) to delve into Swede's backstory by interviewing his associates. Reardon eventually connects with police Lieutenant Sam Lubinsky (Sam Levene), who explains that Anderson had to abandon a career as a promising boxer due to a hand injury.

Smitten by beautiful gangster's moll Kitty Collins (Ava Gardner), Anderson drops his girlfriend Lilly (Virginia Christine) and turns to a life of crime. He eventually falls in with the gang of crime lord "Big Jim" Colfax (Albert Dekker), including Kitty (now Big Jim's girl) and two-bit criminals "Dum Dum" Clarke and "Blinky" Franklin, and they plot an audacious big-money company payroll heist. But not everyone is playing it straight, and with bullets flying Reardon will need to piece together a complicated story of double cross to uncover the truth.

Directed by Robert Siodmak as an adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway short story, The Killers is a taut and highly enjoyable crime thriller but not quite as perfect as its reputation would suggest. Although the plot is gripping and the stylistic elements are textbook noir, the film suffers from a few but significant shortcomings.

The first is the gaping emotional hole in the middle of the story. Siodmak and a team of three scriptwriters (including John Huston) settle on good-guy insurance investigator Jim Reardon as the most central character, and he is simply not interesting enough to hold the film together. This is a problem brilliantly solved in the 1964 remake by moving the killers themselves much closer to the core of the story. Here in the 1946 version the killers are faceless and peripheral characters, while their victim Anderson is a patchy presence, reasonably effective when on screen but all too frequently reduced to a fleeting secondary character.

The second weakness is the relationship between Anderson and Kitty Collins. His infatuation with her charms is essential to his demise, but here she is marginalized to a sultry presence on the edge of relevance, almost devoid of dialogue. Anderson stands at a distance agog at her mere existence. There is simply not enough dangerous attraction or connivance between the two, and the lack of genuine sensuality undermines the drama.

But otherwise The Killers is a feast for the eyes and the mind. Siodmak constructs almost every frame to celebrate harsh light and dark shadows, often using background light to bathe the film in silhouettes and obscure characters and faces engaged in the shadowy world of crime. The story is rich, convoluted and satisfying, a classic tale of multiple betrayals and ingenious dishonour among thieves.

Lancaster makes the most of his screen time to jump from retired circus acrobat to movie stardom. His take on Swede Anderson brings out the pathos of a strong man who could have been a contender but is now reduced to pursuing a life of crime, ensnared by men and women way more sophisticated at the game of treachery. Ava Gardner is underused but still intermittently captivating, while the rest of the cast members are generally entrenched in relatively stock portrayals.

Despite some stumbles, The Killers is a fascinating story of many flawed men and one scheming woman, enhanced by a visually stunning package.

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Movie Review: Fantastic Voyage (1966)

A unique science fiction adventure about a group of miniaturized scientists traveling through a human body, Fantastic Voyage is full of bright ideas brought to life with energetic execution and admirable special effects.

The US is embroiled in a secret race with the Soviet Union to master miniaturization technology for military purposes. Scientist Jan Benes defects to the US, but suffers a brain injury in the process and slips into a coma. Benes has key knowledge that could help in overcoming the 60 minute limit currently hampering miniaturization efforts. At the secret Combined Miniaturized Deterrent Forces facility, General Carter (Edmond O'Brien) recruits agent Grant (Stephen Boyd) to provide security on-board the experimental submarine Proteus, which is about to be miniaturized and injected into Benes' bloodstream to find and remove the damage affecting his brain. The rest of the submarine team consists of Captain Owens (William Redfield), human physiology expert Dr. Michaels (Donald Pleasence), laser surgeon Dr. Duval (Arthur Kennedy) and his assistant Cora (Raquel Welch).

Carter and Grant suspect that there is a traitor within the group, and once the journey starts inside Benes' body, little goes according to plan. Michaels suffers from claustrophobia, the submarine is buffeted by turbulence and knocked off course. The laser surgery tool is sabotaged, and the sub suffers an air supply leak. A re-route requires a dangerous trip through the heart, forcing Carter to order that Benes' heart be temporarily stopped. With time running out, the crew decide to take a hazardous short-cut through the inner ear to the brain, but again there are problems, as the mission is jeapordized by the unknown traitor and Benes' own body working to defend itself against the foreign objects floating within it.

Combining a 1950s sci-fi mentality with 1960s special effects, Fantastic Voyage is visionary kitsch. With the space race in full swing and the cold war at high heat, there is no denying the inventiveness of turning the exploration theme inwards, and transforming the concept of flying through endless space into navigating the smallest capillaries of the human body. The Harry Kleiner screenplay (with four others sharing story and adaptation credits) efficiently introduces the set-up, and cleverly integrates the not-yet-perfect miniaturization science into the cold war tension, with secret military labs and threats from saboteurs thrown in to create numerous opportunities for drama.

Director Richard Fleischer and cinematographer Ernest Laszlo then weave together the visuals, and create a creditable environment with a succession of stunning backdrops mostly inspired by ocean depths. For the most part, the special effects have held up remarkably well.

The adventures of Proteus within the human body are never dull, the incredible obstacles and dangers of traveling through the human body becoming a thrill ride heightened by the subversive attempts to sabotage the mission. Fleischer constructs the film in the form of an obstacle course with a surprise around every corner. The scientists are forced to rely on their ingenuity to problem solve on the fly, including frequent excursions out of the submarine to circumvent, fix, or innovate their way through the latest crisis.

Slightly less successful are the goings-on back in the secret lab as anxious military and medical types monitor the mission's progress. Some of the buffoonish attempts at tension and humour in the control room do not work, and fully deserve the parodies that they inspired in films like Airplane!.

The performances are generally bland, and this is a good thing, since there is enough stimulation in the premise, backdrops and special effects not to require flashy acting. Stephen Boyd, Donald Pleasence, Arthur Kennedy, Raquel Welch and William Redfield maintain an even keel. For the most part Welch remains subdued and is surprisingly convincing as a scientist's assistant. She stays under the wraps of her mundane submariner outfit, although late in the film she starts forgetting to fully zip up her top. Kennedy's Dr. Duval attempts some clunky philosophizing inspired by the journey through the human body, at regular intervals spouting weighty but meaningless musings about humanity, life and the order of things.

Innovative, audacious and sometimes campy, Fantastic Voyage lives up to its name.

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Movie Review: White Heat (1949)

A hard-hitting and action-packed gangland thriller, White Heat boasts an absorbing story, enduring characters and James Cagney in top form.

Cody Jarrett  (Cagney) is a ruthless, psychotic gang leader. He leads his mob on a daring armed robbery of a mail train in the California mountains, killing several innocent men in the process. Cody is unhappily married to Verna (Virginia Mayo), but his real, intimate attachment is to his Ma (Margaret Wycherly). Despite the large cash haul secured from the train robbery, there are deep divisions within Cody's gang, amplified by the need to hide out in a cold mountain cabin. His second in command "Big Ed" Somers (Steve Cochran) has ambitions to usurp Cody's authority, and Big Ed also has his eyes on Verna.

By tracking Ma's car, US Treasury investigator Philip Evans (John Archer) closes in on the gang's hideout, forcing Cody into the open. To escape facing justice for multiple murders, Cody confesses to a lessor non-violent crime and is sentenced to a relatively short stint behind bars. Evans is not fooled, and inserts undercover agent Hank Fallon (Edmond O'Brien) as Cody's cellmate to keep tabs on Cody's plans and uncover the identity of his money-laundering associate. Hank gradually gains Cody's trust, and just in time. Despite Ma's best efforts, Big Ed and Verna forge an uneasy alliance and make their move to oust Cody. He breaks out, retaliates, and plans his next big job: a payroll robbery at a chemical plant.

Perhaps the finest example in Warner Bros. long catalogue of hardboiled crime thrillers, and a magnificent highlight in James Cagney's career, White Heat is a complex, gripping tale of rampant gangsters and the policemen charged with tracking them down. Director Raoul Walsh expertly constructs a compelling three-act drama over almost two hours, with no wasted moments and a level of tension than increases as Cody's options are gradually diminished.

With a finely polished script by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, the first act introduces Cody, the gang, wife Verna and Ma, and it is the uncomfortably close relationship with Ma that immediately jumps out as the biggest influence in Cody's life. As he suffers from severe migraines, it is Ma who comforts him, encourages him to get to the "top of the world", and advises him on how to manage his gang members. Meanwhile, Cody treats the luscious Verna with nothing but disdain.

The second act switches gears to life in prison, and Walsh patiently allows Hank to gain Cody's trust, no easy task when Cody's natural instinct is to suspect everyone. It's a careful, layered process, police work at its best within the jungle rules of incarceration. White Heat is notable for highlighting excellence in advanced police techniques, including the use of multiple unmarked squad cars to surreptitiously track Ma's vehicle, and then radio signal emitters to remotely triangulate the location of a moving truck.

And finally Walsh steers the film towards a sensational climax, Cody finding renewed resolve to reassert his authority, seek revenge on those who betrayed him and pull off a spectacular payroll heist, with Hank caught in the dangerous middle.

Cody Jarrett emerges as a rounded, genuine, highly-strung and enduring villain, struggling against mental illness, the emotional scars of what must have been a twisted childhood, and frequent physical pain. While never slipping into false sympathy, Cagney allows Cody to become a believable person never equipped to understand the destructive consequences of his actions or the feelings of his victims.

Wycherly's role is small but unforgettable, a manipulative mother never seen to be violent but nevertheless capable of motivating her son to extremes of cold-blooded cruelty. The undercurrents of complicated physical attraction remain just beneath the surface, but there is never any doubt that mother and son are too close, Ma is Cody's biggest cheerleader, and he lives his life to please her.

With gritty, bullet-drenched and often explosive action driven by a psychotic criminal striving for the top, White Heat sizzles.

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The Movies Of Edmond O'Brien

All movies starring Edmond O'Brien and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1939)

The Killers (1946)

White Heat (1949)

D.O.A. (1949)

Julius Caesar (1953)

The Bigamist (1953)

The Barefoot Contessa (1954)

The Rack (1956)

The Last Voyage (1960)

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)

Birdman Of Alcatraz (1962)

The Longest Day (1962)

Seven Days In May (1964)

Fantastic Voyage (1966)

The Wild Bunch (1969)

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