Tag: Gene Tierney

Heaven Can Wait (1943)

Lubitsch brings his touch to death and infidelity all flown under the wire of the Hays Code

Director: Ernst Lubitsch

Cast: Gene Tierney (Martha), Don Ameche (Henry Van Cleve), Charles Coburn (Hugo Van Cleve), Marjorie Main (Mrs Strable), Laird Cregar (His Excellency), Spring Byrington (Bertha Van Cleve), Allyn Joslyn (Albert Van Cleve), Eugene Pallette (EF Strable), Signe Hasso (Mademoiselle), Louis Calhern (Randolph Van Cleve), Helen Reynolds (Peggy Nash), Clarence Muse (Jasper), Tod Andrews (Jack Van Cleve)

If you are going to start a film in Hell, it helps if you have the Lubitsch touch. Heaven Can Wait tells the life story of the late Henry Van Cleve (Don Ameche), a charming old roué being interviewed by ‘His Excellency’ (Laird Cregar) at the entrance of a place ‘where innumerable people had so often told him to go’. Van Cleve’s life is one of general well-meaning romance, from his boyhood discovery that kissing a girl doesn’t mean you have to marry her, through to his elopement with Martha (Gene Tierney), the intended of his stuffy cousin, his winning her back after his (implied) good-natured faithlessness, and their happy decades of marriage and his roguishly flirtatious final years.

Perhaps only Lubitsch had the wit – and cheek – to sneak the story of a shameless Casanova under the Hays Code wire as a sort of heart-warmingly decent fable. Because, in many ways, Henry Van Cleve is exactly the sort of person the Code had doubts about – and of course Lubitsch loved: a debonair, classy man of means, who appreciates fine art and beautiful woman, would die of shock at the idea of a hard day’s work and never repents his choices for a second. Played with a bashful smile and wide-eyed honesty (even innocence) by Ameche, this is the sort of seducer the Hays Code could get behind (especially as Lubitsch subtly blurs the reality of his many conquests).

But than you also can’t imagine any other director presenting Satan like this. He’s embodied by Laird Cregar as a sort of genial bank manager – in a Hell that looks like a hotel lobby – whose hilarious dropping (Bond-villain like) of a loud-mouthed society Grande Dame down a trap door mid-conversation only makes us like him more. Our framing device runs us through a series of Henry’s crucial birthdays (the original play was even titled ‘Birthday’ – Heaven Can Wait is a much better title), many of them making a hilarious mini-film themselves, with sharp-edged dialogue perfectly captured by Lubitsch’s smooth and witty camera, that knows just how long to hold a shot.

Heaven Can Wait is full of just-under-the-wire sexual energy, disguised but very apparent today. What else are we to make of new Van Cleve maid ‘Mademoiselle’ (a very funny Signo Hasso) announcing her two years working for a duke were what he called “the happiest of his life”? Not to mention the life advice – kissing don’t mean marriage – she gives the Van Cleve (who learned, as a boy, when wooing an impressed girl with his insect pets that it pays to have ‘lots of beetles’). Or the clear implication Henry and Mademoiselle spend a wild night sharing far more than just a bottle of champagne.

Lubitsch hints at this with mutual hiccups. Throughout Heaven Can Wait coughs, sneezes and hiccups serve as a code for very different bodily outbursts (that of course couldn’t be shown). Wooing Martha in his tedious cousin’s (a very funny role of pedantic tedium for Allyn Joslyn) library during a terrible private concert, Martha’s sneezing fit is a clear substitute for her real feelings. Perhaps only Lubitsch could have disguised this mutual wild sexual elopement as something reassuringly pure. There is something very sweet about Ameche passing himself off as a book-store clerk to spark conversation with Tierney as she searches for How to please your husband (a title ripe for inevitable innuendo).

As with Ameche, Lubitsch gets a light, underplayed performance by Tierney that makes these two feel like a perfect pair. Heaven Can Wait’s fourth movement sees Martha flying the marriage home after suspecting Henry of an affair. Henry reassures her it is a misunderstanding – but with such ease, and such heavy breathing fluster on Martha’s part – it feels pretty clear Lubitsch is inviting us to understand perhaps Martha thinks fidelity is an optional extra with someone she has such hots for. It’s all conveyed with such lightness – and Ameche plays Henry with such innocent earnestness, never once tipping the wink – it’s extremely funny.

As you’d expect with Lubitsch, the film is full of marvellous comic touches. Charles Coburn is excellent as Henry’s worldly-wise grandfather, who might love his family but only really likes Henry. Coburn’s wry amusement at Henry’s antics is consistently hilarious, Lubitsch gifting him two perfectly timed wonderful sight gags (one with a glass of water, the other seeing him emerge suddenly from a crowd). Even better though is the wonderful set-piece of Martha’s feuding parents (played with perfect passive aggressive bluster by Eugene Pallette and Marjorie Main), sitting at opposite ends of a long table, communicating only through long-suffering servant Jasper (a very refreshing role for Clarence Muse, where the Black man is smartest in the room). Lubitsch films this in a single take, gliding from table end to end which only magnifies the humour.

The first 70 minutes of Heaven Can Wait are so good – sharp, cheeky, funny – that when the Van Cleves effectively elope again, it perhaps would be better the film ends. Sadly, the final half hour dials up the sentiment (as Henry tries to steer his son away from a life of debauchery, an older Martha nobly resigns herself to cancer and Henry meets his end) and the energy drains out. Even Satan gets a moralistic, happy-ever-after closing speech! This closing act is duller, considerably less snappy and very easy to drift off in. You feel Lubitsch exhausted his interest and filmed the final act by contractual obligation.

But until then, this is a sharp, witty, delightful comedy, crammed with great performances. It balances naughty charm with surprisingly dark undertones (with each movement forward, more and more characters die off, a dark reminder this film opened in the afterlife) and has more than enough laughs in its first 70 minutes for you to sit through the closing 25. Perhaps second-tier Lubitsch, but his second tier his others first.

The Razor’s Edge (1946)

A bubbling soap full of incidents, disguising itself as a meditation on philosophy

Director: Edmund Goulding

Cast: Tyrone Power (Larry Darrell), Gene Tierney (Isabel Bradley), John Payne (Gray Maturin), Anne Baxter (Sophie MacDonald), Clifton Webb (Elliott Templeton), Herbert Marshall (W Somerset Maughm), Lucile Watson (Louisa Bradley), Frank Latimore (Bob MacDonald), Elsa Lanchester (Miss Keith), Cecil Humphreys (Holy Man), Fritz Korner (Kosti)

“What’s it all about?”: a question asked long before Alfie and it’s the one asked by Larry Darrell (Tyrone Power) as he returns from World War One to Chicago. Suddenly those garden parties and country clubs all look rather empty and shallow. Larry is engaged to Isabel (Gene Tierney), but he’s not interested in office work and domesticity. He wants to live a little bit, to find out what life is about. Doesn’t he owe that to the man who died in the war to save his life? With just $3k a year (over $50k today, which must help), he heads for the artistic life in Paris. After a year apart, Isabel decides it’s for her (£3k a year? What kind of life is that!) and marries a banker so dull he’s literally named Gray (John Payne). Flash forward to 1929 and the Crash has upturned the lives of the Chicago bourgeoisie – perhaps Larry’s inner contentment will mean more after all?

Adapted from W Somerset Maugham’s novel – with Maugham as a character, played by the unflappably debonair Herbert Marshall – The Razor’s Edge is a luscious period piece with pretentions at intellectualism but, rather like Maugham, is really a sort of a soapy plot-boiler with a veneer of cod-philosophy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that – after all the suds in Razor’s Edge are frequently rather pleasant to relax in – but don’t kid yourself that we are watching a thoughtful piece of cinema. It’s closer in tone to Goulding’s Oscar-winning Grand Hotel than it might care to admit.

Our hero, Larry Darrell, should be a sort of warrior-poet, but to be honest he’s a bit of a self-important bore. Played with try-hard energy by a Tyrone Power desperate to be seen as a proper actor rather than action star, Larry has a blissful “water off a duck’s back” air that sees him meet calamity with a wistful smile and the knowledge that providence evens everything out. Be it the break-up of an engagement or the death of close friend, little fazes Larry who has a mantra or piece of spiritualist advice for every occasion. Bluntly, our hero is a bit of a prig whose middle-class spirituality has all the mystical wisdom of a collection of fortune cookies.

It’s no real surprise that the film’s weakest parts are whenever Larry engages with the vaguely defined collection of homilies and mumbo-jumbo he picks up about spirituality. All this culminates in an almost embarrassingly bad sequence in the Himalayas, where Larry stays under the clichéd tutelage of a shoe-polish-covered Cecil Humphrey as a Holy Man whose every utterance is a vague collection of Diet Yoda aphorisms. Larry, with all the self-importance of the financially secure middle class, returns to the West sublimely certain of his own higher contentment and rather patronisingly looking down on the rest of the characters as shallow, grasping bourgeoisie.

The Razor’s Edge’s insight into human spirituality essentially boils down to “step out of the rat race and you’ll be a better man” – again made much easier, since Larry “forsakes” worldly wealth but can still dapperly turn out to a fancy function in a perfect tux. To be honest it becomes a bit wearing to see the other characters treat him like a sage and more than a bit mystifying why Isabel remains stubbornly obsessed with him for her whole life.

But if she wasn’t, we’d lose a large chunk of the appeal of the movie. The Razor’s Edge’s philosophy may be paper thin, but as a soap it’s spot on. And the scheming, manipulative, vindictive, snobby and entitled Isabel is a gift of a part, seized with relish by Gene Tierney. Isabel wants Larry, not so much because of who he is but because he belongs to her, and she can’t believe he was willing to let her jilt him without a fight. The epitome of the self-obsession of the modern age that Larry has rejected, Isabel consistently puts herself first, clings to the luxuries of high living and can barely hide her bored disinterest in the tedious Gray (a perfect role for the solid but uninspiring John Payne). Isabel schemes and attempts seduction of the saintly Larry, and her hissable antics provides The Razor’s Edge with much of its enjoyable thrust.

Because as a soap is where this film is most happy. It’s actually very well staged and shot by Goulding, full of carefully considered camera moves (including a late “wham” line which we don’t see a character react to, leaving their response open to our interpretation) and skilfully using depth of plain to showcase a series of luscious sets and impressively recreated Parisian streets on sound stages. The Razor’s Edge has a lot of very professional Hollywood craft behind it.

Its event-filled sub plots also give a host of excellent scenes and fun dialogue to its supporting cast. Anne Baxter won an Oscar as the tragic Sophie, a bubbly socialite (and old flame of Larry’s) from Chicago, whose husband and baby are killed in a car accident, tipping her into years of alcoholism and (it’s implied) life as a “good-time-girl” in a seedy Parisian bar. Baxter seizes this role for what it’s worth, from initial charming naivety to tear-streaked discovery of her bereavement to fidgety attempts at sobriety after Larry decides to marry her to keep her on the straight-and-narrow (needless to stay, temptation is put in the way of the pacing, smoking, fist-forming Sophie by the blithely shameless Isabel). It’s a very effective and sympathetic performance.

Clifton Webb, at the time Hollywood’s leading waspish figure of camp, has an Oscar-nominated whale of a time as Elliot Templeton, preening but generous socialite, delighting the finer things in life (from fine wines to perfectly stitched dressing gowns) who provides a catty sounding board to Isabel and whose final hours are spent bemoaning being snubbed by a countess. Herbert Marshall delivers a perfect slice of British reserve and gently arch commentary as Maugham (the real Maugham prepared a script which was junked by the studio, ending his Hollywood career there and then), purring his dialogue with his rich, velvet tones.

It serves to remind you that The Razor’s Edge works best as an event-packed piece of social drama, which it swiftly becomes as deaths, tragedy, alcoholism, scheming and feuds pile on top of each other in the second half with the blissful Larry casting a quietly judgemental but kind eye over everything around him. For all its attempts to look into the human condition, this is where The Razor’s Edge is at its best: engaging supporting characters and a hissable villain, all leading to a series of juicy plot developments. For all its literary pretentions, it’s at best a shallow From Here to Eternity.

Laura (1944)

Dana Andrews investigates in the shadow of Gene Tierney in film noir Laura

Director: Otto Preminger

Cast: Gene Tierney (Laura Hunt), Dana Andrews (Mark McPherson), Clifton Webb (Waldo Lydecker), Vincent Price (Shelby Carpenter), Judith Anderson (Ann Treadwell), Dorothy Adams (Bessie Clary)

Laura is the sort of film noir that on the surface gives you what you would expect, but actually shakes its formula up pretty successfully. The femme fatale starts the film dead (although anyone who has seen a mystery will be expecting a twist when we hear a shotgun has destroyed her face beyond recognition). The detective does very little detecting, and engages in hardly any police business. One of the lead suspects is allowed to tag along to every interrogation to spray witty barbs around. There are only four potential suspects and barely any other characters. The solving of the mystery often takes a back seat to flashbacks and character beats. When the reveal comes, it feels like it’s been hiding in plain sight the whole time. But yet it really works.

Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney) is a leading female advertising executive found murdered in her apartment. Detective McPherson (Dana Andrews) is called in to investigate, with the suspects being: Walso Lydecker (Clifton Webb), a waspish newspaper columnist who was her mentor; Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), a parasitic southerner, sponging off Laura’s success; and Ann Treadwell (Judith Anderson), a matriarch who may or may not be conducting an affair with Shelby. But is all as it seems? Well of course it isn’t, and as McPherson gets more obsessed with Laura, so does the mystery of her murder deepen.

Otto Preminger took over the direction of Laura mid-way through the production, after the rushes of the original director (Rouben Mamoulian) underwhelmed. Preminger repackaged the film as a sort of part-thriller, part-shrewd black comedy, and gave huge scope to Clifton Webb’s hugely enjoyable performance as the waspish Waldo, a turn that totally dominates the film. Clifton Webb’s arch performance is a complete delight, and the film plays subtly with Waldo’s sexuality. Introduced in a bath with a typewriter, like some gossipy Marat, Waldo is heavily implied to be at least ambiguous in his sexuality, a dandy about town with more knowledge about clothing and high society than the initial ingénue Laura.

To be honest, watching it today, Waldo is so clearly a possessive creep – a preening, domineering personality who takes an obsessive pleasure from “owning” Laura – that you’re far less likely to be surprised to find he has a considerable dark side than many of the viewers of the original film. For all the witty barbs he throws about – “Haven’t you heard about science’s latest invention, the doorbell?” he snaps at an welcome intrusion from MacPherson – Waldo remains part comic delight, part intensely black-hearted weirdo. It’s a line Webb’s performance walks extremely well.

It does mean that there is very little room in the film for Andrews and Tierney as the film’s two leads. Laura is the presence that hangs over the film – quite literally at times, with many scenes taking place in her flat, beneath an enormous portrait of her. But despite this, she becomes less and less interesting as the film progresses. Essentially, Gene Tierney is so striking looking as the lead – and the build-up she gets from Waldo in particular is so extreme – that her acting can’t quite live up to the presence. The character is possibly the least well written of the film, an enigma that we never quite get into – or feel inclined to try.

McPherson is a far more interesting part. The film suggests (indeed Waldo says it outright) that McPherson is falling hard for the victim. There is a wonderful sequence where McPherson stays overnight in Laura’s apartment, moving through the flat, rearranging things in her rooms, drinking her whisky then settling into a chair and starring up at her painting before going to sleep. It’s like a date with only one person there. McPherson gets a very personal investment in the case – so it’s a shame that he’s played so flatly and boringly by Dana Andrews, a serviceable sort of B-list film noir lead who brings no spark to the part at all.

The two leads can’t compete with Webb, or the playful performances in the supporting roles from Price and Anderson. Preminger gets the tone just right with these big performers, playing both characters just on the edge of satire. Price is languidly dry, delighting in his gauche lack of interest in other people and his selfishness. Anderson is a strangely needy matriarch, a woman hiding her need for the interest of a younger man, archly proud but slightly tragic. Throw these colourful performers at the edge of the picture and it’s not hard to lose interest in the two leads – especially as they are playing characters so different from what you expect from these films.

The mystery itself is not too much of a puzzle. There are two or three twists in there, two of which I was able to predict and the third one I didn’t pick up on some early signposting (including in the opening lines). But the enjoyment here isn’t from the puzzle but from the colour that it’s put together with. Preminger stages the whole thing like a jet black comedy and mixes it with plenty of gorgeous film noir lighting. The story is slight but staged with real energy and dynamism – you can’t believe how swiftly it flies by. The film probably has more sympathy for the eventual murder than a modern audience will feel – but that’s no big deal. Well written, spicily played by the supporting cast and well directed, you can see why this is one of the classic film noirs.