Movie Review: The North Star (1943)

A pro-Soviet propaganda film intended to whip up sympathy for the war effort against Germany, The North Star (also known as Armored Attack) is a cringe-inducing dud.

It's 1941, and the Nazis are about to invade the idyllic farming village of North Star in western Ukraine, part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Before the shooting starts, five youth from the village embark on a trip to the capital Kiev, including Marina (Anne Baxter), her would-be lover Kolya (Farley Granger), Clavdia (Jane Withers) and Kolya's older brother and conscripted soldier Damian (Dana Andrews).

The travellers don't make it very far: the Nazi's attack with bombing raids, tanks and troops. The village is occupied before it can be burned down. In the face of Nazi atrocities including forcing local children to donate blood, the villagers have to scatter to join the nascent resistance movement.

Produced by Samuel Goldwyn, directed by Lewis Milestone and written by Lillian Hellman, The North Star is unabashed agitprop. Despite the high budget and respected cast, Milestone delivers a painfully bad cinematic experience devoid of any artistic merit.

The first half is preoccupied with portraying Ukrainian villagers living under the Soviet boot as happy simple folks, and it's punctuated by ghastly singing and dancing interludes straight out of amateur high school plays. The fingers-on-the-chalkboard level of irritation is enhanced by inane nationalistic dialogue, ham-fisted delivery and enough over-sugared sentiment to kill a horse.

Once the Nazis make an appearance, the music mercifully stops and the fighting starts. The second half improves, but it's a really low bar to step over. As a story of guerilla warfare and peasants taking up arms, The North Star lacks anything resembling thoughtfulness, nuance or genuine emotion. This is an in-your-face sophomoric effort intended to rally the home front, and Milestone can't even get the basics right: the battle scenes, tactics and consequences are asinine.

Everyone from the children to the old geezers lustily and blindly buys into the die-for-your-country hokum. Given the general level of near unwatchable incompetence, the film boasts a remarkable cast collectively performing at their worst, consumed by Hellman's fatuous prose. Anne Baxter leads the way with one of the many overwrought eyes-dreamily-to-the-stars performances on display. Walter Huston is a local doctor tangling with Erich von Stroheim's Nazi surgeon, while Walter Brennan is a stereotypical crusty farmer-on-a-wagon.

The North Star is not bad because it's propaganda; it's bad because it's a wretchedly awful film.

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Movie Review: Strangers On A Train (1951)

A suspense drama exploring the damage that one psychopath can unleash on the lives of many, Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers On A Train builds nicely into a little storm of turmoil. But the plot of evil most crazed eventually runs out of steam, and settles for meandering down the path of relative ordinariness.

While on a train ride, famous tennis player Guy Haines (Farley Granger) meets Bruno Anthony (Robert Walker), a talkative stranger who insists on sidling up to Guy and eventually invites him to dinner. As they chat, Bruno reveals that he hates his strict father, and also demonstrates his knowledge of Guy's personal life, as chronicled in the society pages: Guy is divorcing his abrasive wife Miriam (Laura Elliott) in order to marry Anne (Ruth Roman), the daughter of a wealthy senator.

Bruno progresses from annoying to creepy when he suggests that the two can commit the perfect murders: Bruno would be willing to kill Guy's wife to speed up Guy's marriage plans if in return Guy would kill Bruno's father. With neither man having a motive or knowledge of the victim, Bruno reasons that they would both get away with murder. Guy dismisses Bruno's plan as rubbish talk, but Bruno goes ahead and actually kills Miriam by strangling her at an amusement park. Guy is horrified, and has no intention of killing Bruno's father, but Bruno insists that Guy hold up his part of the supposed deal, and starts to stalk Guy and Anne, turning their lives into a nightmare.

Strangers On A Train enjoys an excellent first half. The pivotal encounter on the train opens the movie and is gratifyingly uncomfortable. Hitchcock increases the level of peril facing Guy in small but steady increments, as the train interaction is followed by an ugly confrontation with Miriam, pregnant with the child of another man and changing her mind about the divorce for pure financial gain. Bruno unleashing his murderous madness on Miriam is handled with sharp accuracy, the monster within finally revealing his worst tendencies.

The second half levels off in terms of the suspense, with Bruno publicly and loudly intruding into Guy's life and therefore compromising the entire premise of the two being strangers. The side-bar of two police officers visibly tailing Guy's every move to try and solve Miriam's murder never gains traction and does not meaningfully contribute to the plot.

But the ending is where Strangers On A Train simply runs out of ideas, Bruno unconvincingly taking forever to execute his unimaginative revenge on the non-compliant Guy, while Guy participates in an interminable tennis match. The climax on an out-of-control fairground carousel ride descends into a frantic punch-up and a rushed denouement.

Robert Walker delivers the best performance, his Bruno a study of a man far into abnormal territory, and equally far from recognizing it. His distinguished appearance and initially smooth social manners mean that he can easily conceal his condition, making him even more formidable. Walker allows Bruno's menace to shine through scheming eyes, a tight smile, and mannerisms that land just on the wrong side of excessively friendly. The troubled Walker died at age 32, just two months after Strangers On a Train was released.

Farley Granger is adequate as Guy, although he does not bring much that is special to the role. There are no opportunities in the script (co-written by Raymond Chandler) for Guy to demonstrate how he won the affections of Anne, or to delve into the character of a top-level tennis athlete.

If Rope (1948) was a study of arrogance attempting to perform the perfect murder, Strangers On A Train finds a mentally troubled mind equally trying to connive towards a brilliant crime. Rope is the intellect thinking itself into false invincibility; Strangers On A Train is the intellect twisted by derangement into depraved instability. Both are examples of Hitchcock's devious ability to create worryingly unavoidable encounters with men who are seemingly normal yet full of ill intent.

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Movie Review: Rope (1948)

A gutsy experiment in film-making and a conversational piece about nothing less controversial than the art of murder as an evolutionary tool, Alfred Hitchcock's Rope sparkles with wit and technique.

In a New York apartment, college graduates Brandon Shaw (John Dall) and Phillip Morgan (Farley Granger) use a rope to strangle David, a former classmate, to death. They stuff his body in a large chest and get ready for the dinner party that they are about to host. Invited are David's parents and his fiancee Janet (Joan Chandler). Also attending are Kenneth (Douglas Dick), who is both Brandon's friend and Janet's former boyfriend, and Rupert Cadell (James Stewart), the prep school headmaster and main influence in the life of Brandon and his friends.

Phillip is immediately wracked by guilt, but Brandon is very much enjoying himself, convinced that he has committed the perfect murder and emboldened by his twisted interpretation of the philosophical argument that murder can be justified when superior men choose inferior victims to kill. The dinner guests are clueless as to David's whereabouts, except for Rupert. His sharp observations of Brandon's words and actions lead him to believe that something is very wrong, and he starts to probe Brandon and Phillip to find out what happened to David, and why.

Based on a 1929 play of the same name which in turn was inspired by a real-life 1924 murder committed by University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, Rope takes place on one set, almost in real time, and in a series of long takes. Hitchcock succeeds in fully immersing the audience in the dinner party, with no distractions to take away from the drama.

Rope opens midway through the only act of violence, and the movie is thereafter a battle of wits and willpower between Brandon and everyone else. Brandon has to overcome Phillip's guilt, the mounting anxiety of David's family and friends, and Rupert's creeping suspicion that something untoward has taken place.

The majesty of Rope's story arc is Brandon's supreme pride in having committed the perfect murder to satisfy his arrogance, undermined by his narcissistic inability to control his desire to tell the world about it. Brandon drops hints early to Kenneth that he now has less competition for Janet's attention, and throughout the evening he flaunts his misdeed, starting with congregating the party around the chest with David's body in it, and going as far as using the murder rope to tie books together for David's dad.

And in a journey to the contradictory destination where ruinous confession mixes with aggrandized boastfulness seeking validation for murder, Rupert feels compelled to invite Rupert to the party, knowing full well that Rupert is the only one capable of seeing through Brandon and deciphering what happened to David.

Hitchcock boldly experimented with transporting the stage experience to the screen, assembling Rope in a grand total of 10 takes spanning the running length of 80 minutes, with the action unfolding effectively in real time. Several of the cuts between takes are seamless, further elongating the sense of true presence. The long uninterrupted sequences were achieved with exquisitely fluid camera work, the equipment gliding around the actors within the highly malleable apartment set.

James Stewart creates in Rupert a more assured character than his typical screen persona. Rupert is observant, inquisitive, confident, and aware of the dangers associated with the arrogance of youth. His foe is his mentee, Brandon seeking to confirm his self-perceived superiority by impressing the main father figure in his life. John Dall oozes a nauseating confidence as Brandon, a man so full of himself that he leaves no space for considering the emotions of anyone else.

An exploration of a psyche damaged by excessive hubris, Rope is a chillingly taut experience.

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