A Christmas Carol & The Ox-Bow Incident

A Christmas Carol

This Christmas Eve, the Ellermann family sat down for the animated Disney version of A Christmas Carol, starring Jim Carrey and Gary Oldman. The film uses the same uncanny valley – courting mocap animation technology as The Polar Express, though a few more years of sophistication have made this outing easier to swallow.

The film itself is a faithful adaptation of the novel, and it doesn't stint on the book's horrific elements. A Christmas Carol isn't a saccharine story, but the tale of a man who's shown the incredible damage he's wreaked upon those around him, as well as the consequences of that damage. By turns sad and scary, it earns its resolution. When Scrooge finally sees the light, we revel with him because the film has shown us just how dark his soul had become.

This version of A Christmas Carol is a winner.

The Ox-Bow Incident

Because I have poor judgment, I fired up The Ox-Bow Incident to kick off my Christmas vacation. Och, what a depressing film.

Here's the setup: Henry Fonda and Harry Morgan are just in from the range, drinking whiskey in a dusty saloon and looking for fun in a Western village with precious little of it on offer. When an angry cowhand rides up with a tale of murder and rustlin', the people of the village whip themselves up into a lynching frenzy which they call a posse. Afraid suspicion might shift to themselves, Fonda and Morgan join up against their own misgivings. All well and good, until the group finds some likely suspects. Then we're in a morality play.

And some play it is. The film, screened in 1943, feels like an angry postwar drama, full of cynicism and hard judgments of hard people. Fonda and Morgan make for fascinating protagonists, men we wouldn't consider entirely good, yet just good enough to sense how things are going and to feel repulsed by it.

This is not light stuff, and The Ox-Bow Incident treats it seriously. I appreciated its mature approach to the subject matter, its challenging position, and its resolution. I just wouldn't choose it as a film to usher in Holiday cheer.

Fort Apache

John Ford’s Fort Apache is a great movie about a bad commanding officer.

Henry Fonda is a lieutenant colonel in the cavalry, assigned to command Fort Apache.  It’sa dusty outpost in Utah’s Monument Valley (which is actually Navajo country, but that’s not important right now).  He feels he’s been sidelined to a posting beneath his dignity, mentions his “years serving in Europe,” and refers to Civil War generals as old friends.  This leads us to believe that he missed the War Between the States, perhaps serving as an attache somewhere in the Old World while the new one tore itself apart.  He’s steeped in military history, has a powerful sense of decorum and tradition, and must have thrived in the courts of Europe.  The Army dropped the ball in sending him to the Frontier.

In one of his first official conversations, he learns that his senior enlisted leader (Ward Bond) has been on-station for some time, had been advanced to Temporary Major in the war, won the Medal of Honor, and saw his son graduate from West Point.  In other words, he learns that his senior enlisted leader is a personal and professional success, as well as an expert on the local conditions.  He dismisses the man like a servant.  Naturally, the SEL’s son is a lieutenant in the command and a fine young officer.  Fonda forbids his daughter (Shirley Temple, growing up nicely), from seeing him because he’s “of a different class.”  How European.

Shortly thereafter, he meets one of his captains, a young John Wayne.  The captain has the respect of his men, a diplomatic relationship with the local Indians, and an expert knowledge of the terrain.  When Wayne questions some of his orders, Fonda interprets it as a threat to his status. 

I am here to tell you that when you have a top-performing SEL and hard-charging junior officers, you are in the catbird seat as a commanding officer.  These people are assets to cultivate, not burdens to force into line.

Fort Apache isn’t The Caine Mutiny with horses, however.  While it uses the same basic premise of a bad CO to create tension, Fonda’s lieutenant colonel is a bad CO not because he’s a coward or an incompetent, but because the Army did him a disservice in plunking him in the middle of the Indian Wars with no training and no time to get up to speed on life on the frontier.  The men of his command do their best to back him, to advise him, and to carry out his orders, but what he really needed was a couple of years as somebody’s second-in-command.

This is great stuff.  I thought Fort Apache was going to be a seige movie, with Fonda and Wayne fending off hordes of attackers in an increasingly desperate attempt to hold their fort.  Nope.  This is a movie about Fort Apache and its denizens as they adjust to their new CO and the constant challenges and perils of life in Indian country.  When a fight does come, it comes for reasons we understand, reasons grounded in personalities and conflicts that flow from character.  We care about Fonda because he isn’t a jerk, he’s just a guy who’s way out of his element.  We care about Wayne because he’s John Wayne and there’s a reason why he’s one of history’s greatest movie stars: the guy radiates trustworthiness and competence.  In the context of this film, he’s a man you’d be proud to command and happy to follow.  We care about all these people because this is an observational film, one that puts us at home in Fort Apache’s insular society and gives us a stake in the well-being of its people.

This is a great movie, one that looks fantastic (John Ford shooting in Monument Valley: I mean, c’mon), tells a great story, and even serves as an object lesson for military officers like me.  I’m only sorry it took me this long to see it.

The Lady Eve

The Lady Eve has the wrong title. The title should be Barbara Stanwyck Kicks Ass and Take Name for an Hour and a Half. Well, perhaps that's a bit much. How about Barbara Stanwyck is Better Than You, or Hey Moron, Why Aren't You in Love with Barbara Stanwyck Yet?

Whatever you call it, Preston Sturges's screwball comedy about a naive millionaire and the fraudsters out to fleece him is utterly, delightfully, hilariously brilliant. This is a movie that works spoken, physical, and character-based comedy into every scene, creating laugh-out-loud moments from sophisticated banter, pratfalls, and even simple moments like the unguarded shuffling of a deck of cards or the presentation of a lei.

Henry Fonda is the millionaire, a child of privilege on the return voyage from a long expedition up the Amazon. He's young, he's clumsy, he's idealistic, and he's so ridiculously, adorably, unstoppably in love that if you, dear reader, don't root for him, then you have an iron heart. Barbara Stanwyck is one of the fraudsters, the pretty girl who specializes in lovestruck rich morons. I've been crushing on Stanwyck since I saw Ball of Fire in 1982, and I've gotta tell you that her performance in this film eclipses even that classic. Stanwyck dominates every moment of The Lady Eve. She steals every scene she's in, and she steals every scene she's not in because even when none of the other characters are talking about her, they're talking about her. Her energy, her charisma, her combination of looks, brains, and balls (There's really no other way to put it: this dame's got big brass Bill the Goat balls.) sells Fonda's slackjawed lovesickness and sells her character's wit and audacity.

Toss in spot-on supporting comic performances from hall of famers Charles Coburn, Eugene Pallette, William Demarest, and Eric Blore, perfect direction, editing, and scoring, and you have as good a screwball comedy as anyone has ever run through a projector. And, again, Stanwyck. What a performer. What a performance.

What a movie.

Once Upon a Time in the West

If you happened to be riding the Red Line this morning, you may have noticed a guy in a suit gazing into his laptop with a big, goofy grin spread across his face. The guy was me, and the goofy grin was in response to the final showdown in Sergio Leone's fabulously entertaining ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST. This is a western that loves westerns, and that love is no more evident than in this faceoff. The adversaries are perfect: the villain tall, thin, dressed in black, and evil as can be; the hero short, burly, dressed in tattered and sun-bleached clothes, utterly implacable. They're both at the top of their game, and their grudging respect for one another shows in their complete and total focus. Ennio Morricone's music swells, the camera moves, and if you aren't completely carried away in the joy of film, well then, you just plain don't like movies.

The movie starts slowly, letting tension build as a gang of toughs, led by the formidable Jack Elam, takes over a remote rail outpost and awaits a coming train. Who or what is on that train, and what will it mean? When you see, and when you see what happens next, you're going to know whether or not you're in for the rest of ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, because if it doesn't hook you, nothing will.

This may be the most lavish of the spaghetti westerns, as Leone had Paramount's backing for the production. He used some of his money to hire first-class actors such as Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale, Gabriele Ferzetti, and Jason Robards. Fonda plays one of the most evil men I've ever seen on screen, and he is uttely delightful. Bronson thoroughly redeems his work in this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV3gA7hNItY&eurl=), and he gives Clint Eastwood a serious run for his money in the Man With No Name sweepstakes. Claudia Cardinale is beautiful, strong, vulnerable, and makes us believe in her journey from "tough but lost" to "budding grande dame." Ferzetti, a familiar face to fans of Italian media, mixes craft, cunning, and weakness into a dangerous combination; and watching him think, struggle, and think some more is a joy. Finally, there's Robards like I've never seen him before: dangerous, charismatic, noble, and fun - and he gets the best theme music.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST's most attractive feature, isn't its stars, however. It's its own swooning, ecstatic love for film in general and westerns in particular. This movie embraces every noble archetype, every heaving bosom, every bleak panorama, every plywood town, and every deadly bullet with a delirious joy that can't help but capture our imaginations. I loved, loved, loved this movie. It may well be the best picture I've seen so far this year.