Category: Stanley Kramer

Inherit the Wind (1960)

Spencer Tracy and Fredric March go toe-to-toe in Stanley Kramer’s liberalism-on-trial movie Inherit the Wind

Director: Stanley Kramer

Cast: Spencer Tracy (Henry Drummond), Fredric March (Matthew Harrison Brady), Gene Kelly (EK Hornbeck), Florence Eldridge (Sara Brady), Dick York (Bertram T Cates), Donna Anderson (Rachel Brown), Harry Morgan (Judge Merle Coffey), Claude Atkins (Reverend Jeremiah Brown), Elliott Reid (Prosecutor Tom Davenport), Paul Hartman (Deputy Horace Meeker)

In 1960, Inherit the Wind was a parable. The teaching of Darwinism being illegal in a small town that defined itself by its faith couldn’t really happen today could it? So, the film used the concept as an angle to criticise the restrictions placed on free speech during the McCarthy years. The wheel has come full circle now: it’s no longer unlikely at all to imagine something like this happening. Indeed, versions of it have already taken place in America this century. This change does actually help the film look increasingly more prescient as time goes by.

A fictionalised version of the famous Scopes monkey trial (with most of the names changed, but many of the court room events fundamentally the same) a local schoolteacher, Bertram Cates (Dick Young), in a small Southern town is placed on trial for teaching Darwinism in his school. Staunch Christian and former Presidential candidate Matthew Harrison Brady (Fredric March) volunteers to put the case for the prosecution. Cates’ defence will be handled by the renowned liberal lawyer Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy). Sparks fly in a courtroom and around the town, where many people are instinctively opposed to anything that can be seen to draw doubt on intelligent design.

Kramer’s films are often both praised and criticised for their rather heavy-handed liberalism. Inherit the Wind is no different. You’d be hard pressed to miss the message here about the dangers of intrusive laws designed to govern what we think and believe. Kramer’s film edges away from making criticism of fundamentalism too overt. Sure, the local preacher (a lip-smacking Claude Atkins) is a tongue-frothing “burn ‘em all!” maniac, only happy when stirring up an outraged mob. But on the other hand, Drummond is revealed to be a man of (liberal) faith – and, in an agonisingly heavy-handed final note, the film ends with him literally weighing The Bible and On the Origin of the Species in his hands then clasping them both together. You see – science and faith can work together!

While it’s easy to smile at Inherit the Wind’s striving for inoffensive liberalism, it means well and actually produces some effective court-room set-pieces. While its overlong – the sections outside of the court could do with trimming down and a rather shoe-horned plot with Cates dating the local preacher’s daughter (not helped by the blandness of both actors) promises much but delivers very little. What the film really works at is a chance for two seasoned performers to go at each other hammer and tongs in the court. Chances they both seize.

Spencer Tracy sets a template of sensible, liberal reasonableness mixed with a well-defined sense of right and wrong that would serve him well in a further three collaborations with Kramer. He brings Drummond a rumbled worldliness, a shrewd intelligence and a patient forbearance but never once lets us forget his righteous fury that this case is even happening in the first place. His courtroom performance hinge on a winning reasonableness that can turn on a sixpence into ingenious traps for witnesses. He’s a rock of decency in a shifting world and Tracy effectively underplays several scenes, making Drummond seem even more humane.

It also means that Tracy makes a lovely performing contrast with Fredric March’s firey passion as Brady. Sweating in the heat of the court, March’s Brady is overflowing with moral certainty and fury. March’s performance is big, but the character himself has a court-personae that depends on him appearing like an embodiment of God’s fury. It works because March gives Brady a quiet air of sadness. This is a man raging against the dying of the light – this case is his last hurrah. Brady is becoming yesterday’s news, but can’t seem to consciously accept this. In quieter moments, he is clearly a man of reflection and reasonableness – but (in a surprisingly modern touch) is all to aware that a raging public personae is what “sells”.

Kramer’s film is at its strongest when it lets these two actors go toe-to-toe. These moments aren’t just in the fireworks for court. Private scenes between the two show a great deal of mutual respect and even admiration. The two men are old friends. Drummond is very fond of Brady’s wife Sara (played excellently by Fredric March’s real life wife Florence Eldridge), who also regards him as a man of decency. They can sit on a bench at night and reflect on the good times. Brady may be a type of demagogue but he’s not a rabble rouser like the Reverend Brown (who he publicly denounces) even while he enjoys the attention of crowds. Drummond isn’t adverse to whipping up a bit of popular support – or enjoying the attention. It’s a fine contrast of two men who both similar and very different.

Aside from this, Kramer sometimes trips too often into rather obvious and heavy-handed social commentary. Gene Kelly is on good form in an over-written part as a cynical journalist – he sort of cares about justice, but only if its a good story and has only scorn for anyone else who believes anything. The film closes with a rather heavy-handed denunciation of his lack in belief in anything, compared to Brady’s faith. The script is at times a little too weak – Tracy and March sell the hell out of a vital confrontation near the end, playing “gotcha” moments that the script largely fails to deliver – but there is still lots of meat in there. Some of the staging and performances – including the extended pro-religion protests that pad out the run time – are a little too obvious.

But at heart, there is a very true and increasingly more-and-more relevant message in this film – and when its acted as well as this, it’s hard not to enjoy it.

Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

Maximilian Schell on a misguided attempt to salvage his country’s dignity in Judgment at Nuremberg

Director: Stanley Kramer

Cast: Spencer Tracy (Judge Dan Haywood), Burt Lancaster (Dr Ernst Janning), Richard Widmark (Colonel Ted Lawson), Maximilian Schell (Hans Rolfe), Marlene Dietrich (Frau Bertholt), Montgomery Clift (Rudolph Peterson), Judy Garland (Irene Hoffmann), William Shatner (Captain Harrison Byers), Howard Caine (Hugo Wallner), Werner Klemperer (Emil Hahn), Joh Wengraf (Dr Karl Wieck), Karl Swenson (Dr Heinrich Geuter), Ben Wright (Herr Halbestadt), Virginia Christine (Mrs Halbestadt), Edward Binns (Senator Burkette)

“I was just following orders”. It’s a statement you instantly associate with people who know they are doing the wrong thing, but cling to the idea it’s not their responsibility because they’ve been told to do it. The Nuremberg trials – which started with the major surviving war criminals, but then investigated every level of German society from the army to industry to doctors to the judiciary – exploded this as an excuse. But the trials also raised wider questions, ones that Judgment at Nuremberg explores: how do you make judgments for individuals when, arguably, nearly everyone in the country holds some sort of moral responsibility? What happens when justice collides with political reality? What price is put on getting justice for the few against the need to move on?

These, among others, are fascinating questions explored in Stanley Kramer’s engrossing – if at times a little dry and on-the-nose – film. In 1948 Judge Dan Hayward (Spencer Tracy) arrives in war-torn Nuremberg to judge the trial of four senior German judges. The most prominent of the accused is internationally renowned Dr Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster). Janning’s passionate advocate Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell) believes the trial is about the Allies punishing the Germans and wants to show “we were not all like them”. Prosecuting laywer Colonel Ted Lawson (Richard Widmark) wants the trials to continue until all the guilty have been punished. But with Cold War tensions rising – and Berlin already under blockade by the Soviets – the politicians back home want the trials to wind down, particularly as the Germans could be key allies against the USSR. How will Hayward balance these pressures as the trial progresses?

Kramer’s film is a brilliant reconstruction of the detail of the trials. He had wanted to film the entire thing on location – but, when the trial room was unavailable, Kramer had the trial room rebuilt in exact detail in the studio (the production design is absolutely spot-on by Rudolph Sternard). The film stages all the issues of simultaneous translation, headphones and trial procedure in loving detail. His technical direction is well managed – even if the camera perhaps once too often pans around those involved in the trial while they speak. The trial drama is structured around three key witnesses (rather than documents), and brings out impressive performances from the entire cast.

Abby Mann’s screenplay wisely focuses in, not on the primary Nuremberg trials, but one of the many sub-trials. Little known, this works so well dramatically, because they both delve deeper into how every facet of German life was corrupted by Nazism – that in this case, leading judges condemned those they knew were innocent to death – and also allow an exploration around the purpose of the Nuremberg trials themselves. Were these trials crucially about justice at all costs and should continue indefinitely – as some characters clearly believe? Or were they meant as representative affairs, demonstrating the guilt of a selected few, at which point their purpose was done?

Kramer’s film is an educative piece, which explores this. Crucially several German characters are introduced, each of them unsure as to how much the national guilt should apply to them. Should Hayward’s household staff consider themselves guilty? As Hayward points out, Dachau was only about 20 miles away: not to know of its existence at all, was surely be wilful ignorance. Marlene Dietrich (excellent as an austere widow), is bitter that she has lost everything after her husband (a German general) was executed (an execution that many of the characters feel was harsh). He never liked Hitler, and he wasn’t a Nazi: how bad could he have been? He only did his duty right?

Meanwhile, firebrand lawyer Hans Rolfe believes that he must salvage some sense of German identity from the trial: he needs to show that “we were not all like that”. And rescuing the reputation of Dr Janning as “the Good German” is crucial to that. An Oscar-winning Schell (the part is perfect for his grandiose style) superbly captures the agonised guilt that has transformed into anger in this man: the desperation to protect his country that leads him to undertake the same brutal interrogations of witnesses during the trial that his clients are accused of doing. Repeating the same actions of the past that he hates, with a misguided goal of restoring pride to his country.

And why does Dr Janning become the focus of this desire to show not everyone was bad? One of the interesting things the film raises is questions of class. Rolfe sees him as the model Good German and Hayward struggles to see why he was involved in miscarriages of justice, because he is very much “one of us”. Ramrod straight, he’s no fanatic (like one of his fellow accused), he’s a noble, world-renowned lawyer. Lancaster’s Janning, with his rigid physicality, clearly thinks himself a world above his fellow accused. He has touched pitch, but feels he’s not really been defiled at heart: that there were clear reasons why he did the things he did. He has no sympathy for the crudity of Nazism, but still feel ashamed that he allowed himself to get tied up with it. He starts the trial trying to be above the entire process, as if not engaging will somehow stop him from feeling corrupted, even while his haunted face drips with shame.

It’s a nobility that many on the US side find appealing. It appeals to the same minds that deems Richard Widmark’s combatative Colonel Lawson as not quite gentlemanly, but vindictive. Never mind that Widmark’s lawyer wants justice done, regardless of the cost. It’s the same sympathy many now feel for Dietrich’s dignified widow, who feels so classy and noble that she can’t really be implicated in any nastiness. Janning unnerves Hayward and others, because if he can fall so can they. It also makes him a perfect candidate for rehabilitation. And, with the Soviets closing in on Berlin, many among the Americans want such a fate as much as Rolfe does, so that Germany can be rebuilt as a bulwark against Communism. But are we kidding ourselves? Janning may be the face of decency, but how decent can he be when he decided justice was an optional extra in his courtroom?

The film carefully explores these questions of politics being the art of compromise: of the need perhaps to end one era in order to start another. They’re attitudes I think the film acknowledges as legitimate, but also questions: “What was the war for?” Widmark’s character asks. When you have horrors such as those in the camps – and the film plays one of the key films to powerful effect during the trial – surely politics as normal can’t be allowed to continue? (Interestingly the film allows Dietrich and Schell’s characters to both, legitimately, question the inclusion of this evidence as too emotive and not relevant to the actual crimes of the accused.) Hayward himself comes under pressure to deliver light sentences which will be better for the country. Will he do so?

How can he when the evidence of suffering is so clear to him. The two key witnesses bought into the film are a man with learning difficulties and a woman who had been accused (falsely) of being seduced by a Jewish neighbour. The roles are played by Montgomery Clift and Judy Garland – and a lot of the emotion of these scenes partly comes from the tortured vulnerability of these two actors. These are people whose lives have been shattered – unjustly – and have paid terrible personal prices. Yes it might be expedient for us to look past these stories, but is it right?

Yes, you can argue Judgment at Nuremberg is a little preachy, but I think there are many more interesting ideas thrown up here than Kramer (usually denounced as a simple right-and-wrong director) gets credit for. The performances are superb: Schell is of course marvellous, but Spencer Tracy perfectly channels his ability to project morality as the unsettled judge who finds his easy assumptions challenged. And the film finally boils down perhaps to the simple question of right and wrong.

Even at the end Janning, while admitting the justice of his sentence, and the wrongness of his actions, is still desperate for everyone to know he wasn’t really one of them. That he never knew it would come to those horrors. As Hayward says “It came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death who you knew to be innocent”. Perhaps that the message of the film: justice is complex but needs to be done – and it doesn’t matter about your motives or thoughts, only the things you do.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)

Hepburn, Tracy, Poitier and one awkward meal: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

Director: Stanley Kramer

Cast: Spencer Tracy (Matt Drayton), Sidney Poitier (John Prentice), Katharine Heburn (Christina Drayton), Katharine Houghton (Joey Drayton), Cecil Kellaway (Monsignor Mike Ryan), Beah Richards (Mrs Prentice), Roy E Glenn (Mr Prentice), Isabel Sanford (Tillie)

Stanley Kramer’s films today are quite easy to knock. In fact, to be honest, they were pretty easy to bash back then. Kramer was a man with immense social conscience, and his films carry the same liberal agenda. They were about “Big Themes” and they had a “Message” that they very much wanted the viewer to take home with them. You can see why so many of them were littered with Oscar nominations. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is perhaps the most famous of his liberal films, and while we’d love to think the theme it covers today – interracial marriage – isn’t still an issue, I  think many people would say it still was.

Joey Drayton (Katharine Houghton) returns to the home of her liberal parents – Matt (Spencer Tracy) a newspaper editor and Christina (Katharine Hepburn) an art gallery owner – with Dr John Prentice (Sidney Poitier) whom she announces as her new fiancé, after a whirlwind romance in Hawaii over the past two weeks. Her parents, Matt in particular, are hit for six – and their doubts are shared by John’s parents (Beah Richards and Roy E Glenn). Can the older generation overcome their concerns to celebrate the happiness of the younger? 

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is a sensitive, very carefully handled film, whose liberal earnestness practically drips off the film. It’s so hand-wringingly liberal in its outlook it’s almost impossible not to mock it a little bit. Not least because John is so ridiculously overqualified – a professor of medicine, one of the world’s leading experts on tropical diseases, a nominee for the Nobel Prize – that you can’t help but wonder what he sees in her not vice versa.

This over-qualification was, by the way, an intentional move by Kramer, who was keen that the onlypossible objections to John could be the haste of the engagement and the colour of his skin. It’s the latter point that becomes the main discussion point, with some hand-wringing concerns around the attitudes of the wider world, and Matt Drayton in particular being moved to question whether he can practise the liberal agenda he preaches. It’s no real surprise to say that eventually all the characters sit down to the eponymous dinner in blissful harmony, but the film is delivering a positive message here.

You could say that it would have been more daring to make John, at the very least, a middle ranking accountant or something at least. But, let’s be honest, at the time this film was made interracial marriages were literally illegal in 17 US states (as the film name checks). Saying that though, the possibility that a BAME male may feel uncomfortably out of place in liberal White America has hardly gone away. It’s one of the reasons why I think the film still works and carries a message today – because if we want to think that these problems have gone away completely today, we are kidding ourselves.

Therefore, however right-on the film may be, it’s still relevant today and it’s still got something to teach us. The world we live in now may well have pushed some of the views and issues expressed in this film underground – we certainly don’t (I hope!) bandy around the word “Negro” as often this film does – but they are still there. So Kramer’s hopeful message of reconciliation and overcoming knee-jerk prejudice is still one that packs a punch. It’s that message that brought such an amazing cast on board, not least Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn as the Drayton parents. Tracy was extremely ill at the time of the film’s production – he died 17 days after filming completed. Tracy was so fragile – as can be clearly seen at several points – that he could only film for three hours in the morning, and only on intermittent days. The film was only made with him because Kramer, Hepburn and Tracy agreed to take no up-front fee, as Tracy could not be insured to finish the film. Hepburn in particular – Tracy’s partner for over 20 years – nursed him through the film, helping with his lines and carefully watching to make sure he was not overcommitted. Not a single shot of Tracy was taken on location due to his ill-health, and a number of scenes were cleverly shot to avoid Tracy having to be on set as often as possible.

Despite all this, Tracy is magnificent. His underlying warmth and humanity work so well for the part that you constantly warm to him, even while you are as frustrated as many of the other characters  with his lukewarm reaction (bordering on hostility) to the wedding. You totally feel empathy for his situation, while at the same time wanting to give him a slap in the face. And man Tracy knows how to react – he is marvellous in a scene with Richards, where all he does is stand, half turned away from the camera and listen. But in this scene you see Drayton think and reassess everything he has considered in the last 24 hours.

But the whole film is building towards the final 10 minutes, which is nearly a complete Tracy monologue – and this is extremely emotional, not least as we are watching a great actor, aware he is dying, knowing that this is his last acting moment, talking emotionally of his love for his fictional wife, while his real life partner of 26 years sits tearfully in shot. It’s that extra level that really creates the emotional force.

Very good as Hepburn in, it’s clear in many scenes that her mind is more on Tracy than her performance – but she still has many wonderful moments, with similar emotional force. She also has one of the film’s funniest moments, where she imperiously dismisses a gallery colleague for barely hiding her racist disgust. Hepburn won the Oscar but stated she had never watched the film, finding the memory of making it far too raw.

The rest of the cast are also good – you can tell their commitment to the film – with Poitier conveying both human decency and firmness of character. Kellaway is very good as the only person in the film who expresses open-minded joy at the union. Richards has a wonderful emotional speech about the value of love, while Glenn conveys all the awkward frustration of a father who cannot understand his son. 

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner is a very worthy film – and boy it knows it – but it’s got a sort of innocent idealistic purity about it. Its makers clearly believed that they were making a film that would contribute towards changing attitudes in society. And for all its heavy-handed liberalism, you can say it did to a certain extent – but not as much as it would like to. For that reason, there is a sort of additional poignancy to watching it, knowing that an issue the film makers clearly hoped would be gone for good in 30 years would in fact still be with us 50 years on. So for all its flaws, you can’t help but respect and even feel affection for it.

Ship of Fools (1965)

Simeone Signoret and Oskar Werner are just part of the kaleidoscope of humanity in Ship of Fools

Director: Stanley Kramer

Cast: Vivien Leigh (Mary Treadwell), Simeone Signoret (La Condesa), José Ferrer (Siegfried Rieber), Lee Marvin (Bill Tenny), Oskar Werner (Dr Wilhelm Schumann), Elizabeth Ashley (Jenny Brown), George Segal (David Scott), José Greco (Pepe), Michael Dunn (Carl Glocken), Charles Korvin (Captain Thiele), Heinz Rühmann (Julius Lowenthal), Lilia Skala (Frau Hutten), Barbara Luna (Amparo), Christiane Schmidtmer (Lizzi Spokenkieker), Alf Kjellin (Freytag), Werner Klemperer (Lt Huebner)

Stanley Kramer was the man who went his own way in Hollywood. Struggling to find work after returning from the Second World War, he set up his own production company which quickly specialised in critically acclaimed “message” films. It’s the sort of film making that hasn’t always aged well. Kramer’s style hasn’t often either – even at the time he was seen as achingly earnest and worthy. Ship of Fools was the sort of perfect project for him: a massive best-selling novel about a huge subject, humanity itself. It was about big themes and it felt really important. It was perfect Kramer material.

In 1933, a ship sails from Mexico back to a newly Nazified Germany. On board, the passengers and crew blithely continue their own personal dramas and obsessions – it really is literally a “ship of fools”, as we are informed in the film’s opening by wry observant German dwarf Carl Glocken (Michael Dunn) who serves as an occasional chorus. On board: a faded Southern Belle (Vivien Leigh) desperate to recapture her youth; a failed baseball player (Lee Marvin) bitter that his career never took off; a young artist (George Segal) intent on only drawing serious subjects to the frustration of his girlfriend (Elizabeth Ashley); a bigoted, bullying Nazi (JoséFerrer) trying to start an affair with an attractive younger blonde (Christiane Schmidtmer); a Jewish jeweller (Heinz Rühmann) who thinks the Nazi party can’t be that dangerous; and ship’s doctor Willi Schumann (Oskar Werner) who finds himself increasingly fascinated with La Condesa (Simeone Signoret), a drug addict and a social campaigner being transported to prison in Spain. Truly, the whole world is on board this boat! (Or so you can imagine the poster saying).

The success of the individual moments in Ship of Fools rise and fall depending on the level of engagement you feel in each of these stories. It’s a curious mixture of tales, some of them dancing around deeper meanings, some playing like dark farce, some plain self-important rubbish. What’s abundantly clear is Kramer feels this is all leading towards meaning something, though whether he gets anywhere near expressing what this something is really isn’t clear. In fact the only real categorical message I could take about this is that humanity has a tendency to fiddle whole Rome burns – and that of course the Nazis are bad. 

There is an attempt to suggest a world in microcosm – and some have argued that the smorgasbord of characters are basically like facets of one person’s personality – but really what many of these stories are deep down are soapy pot-boilers, brought to life by good writing and fine acting. Kramer marshals all these events with a professional smoothness: there is something quite admirable about the fact he clearly sees the director’s role as more like a producer’s, someone there to service the story and actors more than to cover the film with flash. It might not make for something compellingly visual, but it is refreshing.

What Kramer is less successful with is the heavy-handed importance the film gives its serious moments. Most infamous is a moment when Glocken and Jewish trader Julius Lowenthal are sitting on the veranda, listening to the band while chatting about current affairs in Germany. “There are nearly a million Jews in Germany. What are they going to do? Kill all of us?” Julius jovially states – the band music obviously ends the second he stops speaking, filling the screen with a chilling silence. It’s the sort of moment that is supposed to make us feel the chill of the oncoming storm – but instead feels manipulative and portentous. Every moment like that lands in the same way – the film is delighted with its exploration of these shallow people, very pleased with knowing the Nazi destruction is on the way. 

This self-important bombast dates the picture more than anything else in it. Nothing dates as badly as pretension. It’s a film that feels like it’s been made very consciously to make you think, and which wears its attempt to capture every level of society – from poor Spanish workers to rich Nazis – very heavily. It also makes obvious points: naturally the only true act of self-sacrifice comes from a poor Spanish worker, while the rich passengers can scarcely look past their own concerns. 

When it isn’t being self-important, the film too often finds itself mired in soapy rubbish. The plotline featuring George Segal as a failing artist and Elizabeth Ashley as a frustrated girlfriend is tedious beyond belief, a slog through the worst kind of coupley drama that adds very little to the film. A further plotline around the companion of a wheelchair-bound intellectual, obsessed with an exotic dancer on the ship, could sit just as easily in Coronation Street as it could in a highbrow drama like this.

Despite all this, I have to say much of the acting is very strong – even if many of the actors are cast very much to type. Vivien Leigh, in her last performance, struggled with immense psychological difficulties during shooting, but brings a heartfelt realism to divorced Southern belle Mary Treadwell (an even more heartfelt version of her Blanche DuBois than in Streetcar). Kramer also allows her one of the film’s few moments of imaginative spontaneity when she suddenly bursts into a Charleston before stumbling back to her hotel room. 

Carrying a lot of the film’s emotional weight are Oskar Werner and Simeone Signoret (both Oscar nominated) as an unlikely romantic coupling. Werner brings great depth and sadness to the world-weary doctor who finds himself irresistibly drawn to Simeone Signoret’s Countess. Signoret channels her distant, fragile imperiousness from Les Diabloques and Room at the Top to marvellous effect as a woman struggling with an indolent drug addiction but who feels a genuine responsibility to the world. The quiet scenes between these two are the closest the film gets to touching some distant meaning, even if it never quite gets there – and again the points deep down are fairly straight forward.

For the rest of the cast, there is hardly a weak link. Heinz Rühmann, in his only English-speaking role, campaigned heavily for the role of Jewish trader Julius and he is magnificent. José Ferrer swaggers convincingly as bullying Nazi Siegfried, even if he is saddled with the most obvious, poorly written, character. Michael Dunn (also Oscar nominated) makes a lot of his role as charming chorus and commentator. Lee Marvin is terrific as the frustrated and bitter baseball player. Charles Korvin gives a lot of depth to the thoughtful and compassionate captain.

Ship of Fools has plenty of moments of enjoyment. But as a whole it’s always a little self-consciously important, too determined to push you to be aware of the messages it wants you to take home. As the final shot sees a camera crane inexorably down onto a swastika you feel smacked around the face with the film wanting you to know that the darkness was just around the corner. The dread of Nazism should hang over the film like a shroud but instead it feels so repeatedly stressed to us that it loses all impact. The film wants us to know that we know more than the characters, and goes out of its way to remind us so that we can pat ourselves on the back when we spot the irony. Despite much of the quality of acting and dialogue, it gets wearing after a while.