Tag: Sam Jaffe

Lost Horizon (1937)

Capra’s well-made Utopian dream lacks any of self-awareness of the flaws in its vision

Director: Frank Capra

Cast: Ronald Colman (Robert Conway), Jane Wyatt (Sondra), Edward Everett Horton (Alexander Lovett), John Howard (George Conway), Thomas Mitchell (Henry Barnard), Margo (Maria), Isabel Jewell (Gloria Stone), HB Warner (Chang), Sam Jaffe (High Lama)

Life can be such a never-ending rat race, the idea of chucking in that relentless pursuit of fortune and glory can be really tempting. Fortunately, it turns out there is a place you can do that: Shangri-La, a halcyon Utopian community buried deep in the Himalayas. There the mountains give it a gloriously perfect climate and preserves its residents youth for potentially hundreds of years. It’s a paradise for legendary diplomat Robert Conway (Ronald Colman), one of a group of Westerners whose plane crashes near-by, all of them invited to make their lives there.

It’s easy to see why this appealed to Frank Capra – even if his real idea of Shangri-La was Small Town America – and he poured years (and millions of dollars) into this dream project (it also took years to make back the investment). Conway is part of a group of mostly British Westerners escaping revolution in China. In Shangri-La, he’s deeply drawn to the peaceful ideology outlined by their host Chang (HB Warner) and Shangri-La’s spiritual leader, the Great Lama (Sam Jaffe). Not to mention the charms of resident Sondra (Jane Wyatt). Problem is, his brother George (John Howard) is desperate to return home. What will Robert choose?

Lost Horizon has a lot to admire about it, in among the incredibly earnest force of its telling, devoid of any drop of cynicism or irony. This is like a 101 of what to expect from Capra? It’s a celebration of the glories of living a simple, pure life without ruthless ambition and realpolitik. It’s filmed on a highly impressive scale by Capra – the gargantuan sets certainly show where the money went. Striking sequences, like a seemingly never-ending torch-lit parade of the people of Shangri-La marching towards Chang’s opulent estate, are breathtaking.

It hosts a fine parade of actors: Colman is perfect as the debonair, world-weary Conway, Horton and Mitchell make their supporting comic double-act genuinely funny (Horton, in particular, litters the film with wonderful bits of comic business using everything from mirrors to jewellery boxes), HB Warner makes a series of infodump ideological sermons more engaging than they deserve and Isabel Jewell creates a great deal of charm in the blousy Gloria. Interestingly, perhaps the most compelling sequence of Lost Horizon occurs before they even arrive, as these characters feud and panic on a hijacked plane taking them in totally the wrong direction.

But there is often something a little too pure about Lost Horizon. Even as the film-making beautifully unspools, it’s hard not to notice that for a huge chunk of this long film very little really happens beyond slightly sanctimonious speechifying comparing ‘our’ civilisation with the peaceful life of Shangri-La. In fact, it’s easy (particularly in our more cynical age) to start feeling a bit twitchy. So earnestly perfect is everything there, with a simplistic and unchallenging view of kindness and brotherly love, it starts to feel like being continually slapped by a SparkNotes copy of Thomas More. Capra uses John Howard’s blowhard George, to put a counter-view – but fills him with such ambition and desire that we are of course never in danger of taking him seriously.

Graham Greene wrote of the film “nothing reveals men’s characters more than their Utopias” before observing the design of Shangri-La resembled nothing more or less than a luxurious Beverly Hills Estate. Rarely has a truer word been spoken: this mountainous paradise, with its carefully designed gardens, well-stocked libraries, grand ballrooms and lush woodland perfect for riding feels like a slice of affluent middle-class Western civilisation in the middle Tibet. It makes for an interesting window into the film today.

Because it’s hard not to see Shangri-La as less of a land of beautiful contentment, and more as a sort of colonialist wet dream. Scratch the surface and it’s a very hierarchical community. Literally at the top of the hill, living in upper-class harmony surrounded by art, books, comfy armchairs and fine dining are the elite (all bar one of them Westerners). At the bottom, in their huts, live the Tibetan natives happily continuing their traditional way of life, happy to live and work (unlike the Chinese revolutionaries who Conway and co flee in the film’s opening) in the shadow of their betters. A smarter film than Lost Horizon might have pointed out the irony that Shangi-La is just a colony where the natives haven’t yet embraced political self-determination – but I’m not sure if such an idea occurred to Capra.

As soon as this crossed my mind, I couldn’t help picking holes in the calamitous internal logic of the film. Shangri-La’s only contact with the outside world is via a group of Tibetan sherpas who trek up and down the mountain once a month bringing supplies from the outside world – presumably its them who have trooped up thousands of books (including the complete works of Robert Conway!), hundreds of mediocre paintings and roomfuls of rococo furniture. The kindly inhabitants of Shangi-La’s palace never considered overseeing the construction of basic plumbing and power generation for the natives living in the valley below them (though they somehow recruited contractors to supply those things to their house on the hill).

In fact, the whole of Shangri-La’s world is set up on maintaining a strict two-tier system that keeps people content by making sure they never think for themselves. (What passes for education, is a series of patronising missionary-style sing-alongs). Even more chilling, the Grand Lama (a softly spoken Sam Jaffe, under mountains of make-up) has dreams of Shangri-La rebuilding global civilisation after its inevitable destruction, the whole world adopting his simplistic ideology. He means well, but I couldn’t help be reminded of Dr Strangelove orgasmically rising from his chair at the thought of creating a fascist Utopia of sexual bliss under an Earth poisoned by nuclear radiation.

None of these ideas enter into Lost Horizon’s simplistic world-view. It sticks with saying what the world needs is to be crafted into a sort of country estate, a sort of Tibetan Downton Abbey, with everyone happy with their assigned place in the chain. Lost Horizon gets as close as it can to any form of social criticism when Conway bemoans 90 ‘whites’ were saved from that opening Chinese revolution while thousands of natives were left to die. But aside from that, is exactly what it says on the tin: there are no flaws in Shangi-La.

And maybe I’m being impossibly cynical. Lost Horizon is a lovely film to bathe in for a while – after all Capra, at his peak, couldn’t make a clanger if he tried. But there is a more complex story on the edges here. If Lost Horizon had showed us more of Conway’s Gulliver-Like return to civilisation, lost in a series of spinning newspaper headlines, it could have given us more of that. But Capra is no Thomas More or Jonathan Swift. The satirical and suppressive elements under a hierarchical Utopia are alien to his mindset. Lost Horizon is a reassuring promise founded on shaky ground indeed.

The Scarlet Empress (1934)

Marlene Dietrich with a beloved friend (and the film has fun with that rumour) in The Scarlet Empress

Director: Josef von Sternberg

Cast: Marlene Dietrich (Empress Catherine), John Lodge (Count Alexey Razumovsky), Sam Jaffe (Emperor Peter III), Louise Dresser (Empress Elizaveta Petrovna), C. Aubrey Smith (Prince Christian August), Gavin Gordon (Captain Orlov), Olive Tell (Joanna Elizabeth), Ruthelma Stevens (Countess Elizaveta), Davison Calrk (Arch Episcopope), Erville Anderson (Chancellor Bestuzhev-Ryumin)

Did von Sternberg have a bet on when he made this film? “Hey Josef, what’s the maddest film you think you could make and get away with?” Either that, or perhaps he didn’t care anymore and decided his own obsessions with visuals, sexuality and Dietrich were more important than anything else. Regardless, he made The Scarlet Empress, perhaps one of the most bizarre major releases from a 1930s Studio, a sort of camp masterpiece that contains things you just won’t see any in other film, but at the same time is a disjointed, barely plotted ramble through a fable-tinged version of Russian history. Either way, it’s a truly unique film – and how many films can you say that about?

The plot loosely follows the rise of Catherine the Great (Marlene Dietrich) to power, but any resemblance to real people (living or dead) seems to be purely coincidental. Catherine arrives in Russia to power the heir to the throne, Grand Duke Peter (Sam Jaffe), a gurning simpleton more interested in his soldiers (both toys and real ones) and his mistress Elizaveta (Ruthelma Stevens) than Catherine. Russia is ruled by his mother Empress Elizaveta (Louise Dresser), a domineering matriarch. The (initially) innocent Catherine is admired by the rakeish Count Alexey (John Lodge), but must learn to master the skills of the court – and the sensuality of her own body – to take power.

The Scarlet Empress is pretty crazy. If you are coming here for a history lesson on Catherine the Great, keep on walking. Josef von Sternberg called it “a relentless excursion into style” and that’s a pretty good description. It’s a parade of his fascinations (and obsessions), set in a Russia that never really existed but I suspect Sternberg would argue ‘shouldhave done’. This is Russia as a medieval backwater, built entirely from Cossacks, icons and gargoyles, with the Russian court a ramshackle wooden palace with a throne that wouldn’t look out of place in Game of Thrones. Much of the sense of time and place is buried under this and huge chunks of the film may as well be silent cinema, so little does dialogue matter and so skilfully are emotions and events communicated visually.

However, grab this in the right mood and this is a film it’s impossible not to admire and even fall in love with a little bit. There really is nothing like this, and like much of Sternberg’s work there is a visual sweep and drama here that few other filmmakers can match. There are some truly striking images, from Cossacks riding through the palace, to Sam Jaffe’s gargoyle like face as Grand Duke Peter, to a giant drill bit punching through the eye of a wooden icon. The jaw dropping production design – sets that dwarf the actors – is mixed with misty lighting for romantic assignations and deep shadows for (literally) backstairs court intrigue.

In all this, the story counts for very little, with the primary focus being Sternberg’s obsessions. Many of those seem to be sexual. The Scarlet Empress was released right on the cusp of the Production Code being enforced in Hollywood – and it’s hard to imagine it could ever have been passed once the code was fully enforced. The film lays it’s hand out early with an S&M tinged Russian torture montage (with naked women in iron maidens, whippings, beheadings and a giant bell with the clapper replaced by a human being) and hardly stops from there. Later montages feature explosions of Peter’s soldiers, looting, shooting and orgying across Russia.

The primary lesson Catherine needs to learn in Russia is to use the power of her own sexuality. The idea of politics is even openly rejected by Catherine in favour of mastering her seductive powers. Initially a blushing, mousy innocent, she becomes increasingly coquettish and seductive as the film unfolds. In an early scene she nervously fingers a riding crop – by later in the film she’s bending it in her hands with all the confidence of a Dominatrix. Lovers come and go, as she wins supporters over to her side (she “added the army to her list of conquests” a caption deadpans at one point). Trysts grow in confidence, as Dietrich’s performance progresses from innocence to dominant knowingness.

Dietrich is as close as she’s been to a prop here, striking a series of poses in a performance that’s largely campily two dimensional. For the first 70 minutes she’s given almost nothing to do other than strike a bemused face: for the remaining 40 minutes she’s like Sternberg’s wet dream of a sexually aggressive domineering woman. Basic notes are what most of the cast are kept to, fitting the impression that they are just props in a silent film. John Lodge scowls and poses as Count Alexey and is as wooden as most of the set. Sam Jaffe is one of the gargoyles made flesh. Louise Dresser is an older version of the sexual kingpin Catherine becomes.

But that’s because it’s all about the mood and the style. The Scarlet Empress has that in absolute spades. It’s as close as you can get in the 1930s to a director of a major Hollywood studio film, pouring money into something that maybe only he will like. It’s silent film roots can be seen not only in its vast impressionistic sets, but also in the steady parade of title cards that dance across the screen to communicate what passes for the story. Acting and story are very much secondary to the mood of sexual exuberance and craziness that dominates nearly every frame of the action. The film was a massive bomb on release – perhaps because no one else could quite work out what it was – and it’s taken decades for its overblown mad genius to be recognised. But it’s a film unlike any other and for that alone you should see it.

Gentleman's Agreement (1947)

Gregory Peck takes on anti-Semitic prejudice in Gentleman’s Agreement

Director: Elia Kazan

Cast: Gregory Peck (Philip Schuyler Green), Dorothy McGuire (Kathy Lacey), John Garfield (Dave Goldman), Celeste Holm (Anne Dettrey), Anne Revere (Mrs Green), June Havoc (Elaine Wales), Albert Dekker (John Minify), Jane Wyatt (Jane), Dean Stockwell (Tommy Green), Sam Jaffe (Professor Fred Lieberman)

What was daring 60 years ago, often seems tame today. In 1947, Gentleman’s Agreement, an expose of anti-Semitism in America, was a potential career-ending risk for its stars. It won three Oscars, including the Big One (beating the similarly themed Crossfire, an anti-Semitic murder mystery – and better, more entertaining film). Today, Gentleman’s Agreement seems like a time capsule on celluloid: extremely earnest Hollywood movie-making at its most socially responsible – and only scratches the surface of prejudice and its dangers, capping everything with a neat happy ending.

Journalist Philip Schuyler Green (Gregory Peck) is commissioned to write a series of expose pieces on anti-Semitism. His editor doesn’t want the “cold facts”, he wants the sort of unique “angle” that’s Green’s specialism. Phil decides to pass himself off as a Jew so he can find out what it’s really like. Only Phil’s fiancée Kathy (Dorothy McGuire) will know the truth. Phil finds out first-hand the knee-jerk prejudice and barriers Jews in New York face – something hammered home as he begins to relate to the experiences of his Jewish school-friend-turned-war-hero Dave Goldman (John Garfield). Phil starts to realise even Kathy may talk the talk of opposing prejudice, but doesn’t always walk the walk.

Gentleman’s Agreement is an extraordinarily earnest piece of film-making, that doesn’t just wear its liberal heart on its sleeve, it stretches it across its entire shirt. The plot frequently halts for someone to deliver a set-piece speech on the evils of prejudice, and Phil’s son (well played by a young Dean Stockwell) serves as an audience surrogate for Peck to fill us in on how prejudice is the enemy-within. There is no doubting, watching the film, everyone passionately believes in its importance (Garfield, a Jew born in Brooklyn, took a huge pay cut to be involved). It’s just a shame that the film itself is to flat, overburdened by its own sense of importance.

It’s as least as interesting for what it doesn’t say. There is something damning about the fact Hollywood only felt comfortable making films about anti-Semitism after the Holocaust. A Jewish character objects to the Phil’s article with the standard line used by Hollywood Jewish studio owners – drawing attention to it only makes the problem worse (remember all references to Jewishness was removed from The Life of Emile Zola). Additionally, there are only passing references (if that) to sexism or any other form of racism or prejudice, and virtually every character we see is white, WASPY and middle-class. Hollywood could only handle one prejudice at a time, apparently.

Gentleman’s Agreement is strong on the everyday nature of prejudice – off-hand remarks about money and facial characteristics, a character protesting “that some of my best friends…” and so on. But, considering it was made in the shadow of one of the worst racially-motivated atrocities in history (the closest reference to the Holocaust is Peck refering to anti-Semitism being not just happening “far away in some dark place with low-class morons”), the film could (and should) have gone further on the dangers of prejudice. Saying that, this was still a big step for Hollywood. And while the film frequently appears preachy, po-faced and stodgy today, it was still a brave piece of film-making, even if it’s gingerly taking kid-steps towards confronting a problem.

Phil’s investigation of anti-Semitism is unfocused and vague. He speaks to only three Jews – a schoolfriend, an atheist Einstein figure (played by Sam Jaffe) he bumps into at a dinner party, and a secretary ashamed of her heritage who despises “the wrong sort” of Jew. Never once do we see him go to a Synagogue, visit a Jewish community or step outside the bounds of his world of country clubs, posh hotels and gated communities. The story may be about how prejudice exists in places we wouldn’t expect, but a film on anti-Jewish prejudice really should have a place in it for more than this, rather than Jewishness being a label Phil puts on and shrugs off later with a “ta da, gotcha!”

The film’s heart is in showing how “someone like us” could be prejudiced, sometimes without even realising it. Phil’s fiancée Kathy (a decent performance in a thankless part by Dorothy McGuire) turns out to have more than a few anti-Semitic bones in her body. Kathy is the classic liberal, believing every word of her own press about equal opportunities, while quietly urging people to fit in and be like her (gentile) friends. The film slowly exposes Kathy’s subconscious unease, her willingness to accept certain inequalities to avoid confronting the status quo. Watching today, it’s hard not to see Kathy as a pretty dreadful, hypocritical person. But while Gentleman’s Agreement wants to shake us, it still wants a happy ending – so she repents and learns her lesson.

It’s a shame, as this rather dull love plot is the film’s weakest thread. Far more interesting would have been seeing Phil actually out in the real world (Kazan’s immersive location shooting, which he used for Panic on the Streets and On the Waterfront, would have improved this film ten-fold). It’s also unfortunate Phil’s colleague Anne (played with Oscar-winning charisma by Celeste Holm) not only seems better suited to Phil, but a much nicer, braver person – it’s hard not to watch the whole film rooting for Phil to dump the tiresome Kathy for the engaging Anne.

Gentleman’s Agreement’s study of prejudice seems very tame, but its heart is in the right place. For even tackling the issue it deserves praise, even if it’s rather stunted dramatically. Kazan’s direction is as earnest (and at times lifeless) as the film, but he does fine work with actors. Peck is at his most morally certain, with a great sense of affronted liberalism, McGuire is very good, Garfield wonderfully humane, Holm marvellous, Anne Revere excellent as Phil’s drily witty mum. A braver film could (and should) have been made – and Crossfire makes all the same points, but quicker and with a lot more dramatic interest. Gentleman’s Agreement sometimes feels like a rather self-important bore at a dinner party, but at least you know it has conviction and means well.

Ben-Hur (1959)

Charlton Heston fights for freedom in the large scale but strangely empty Ben-Hur

Director: William Wyler

Cast: Charlton Heston (Judah Ben-Hur), Jack Hawkins (Quintus Arrius), Haya Harareet (Esther), Stephen Boyd (Messala), Hugh Griffith (Sheik Ilderim), Martha Scott (Miriam), Cathy O’Donnell (Tirzah), Sam Jaffe (Simonides), Finlay Currie (Balthasar), Frank Thring (Pontius Pilate), Terence Longdon (Drusus), George Relph (Tiberius Caesar), Andre Morell (Sextus)

Ben-Hur is big. Hammering home its monumentalism, the poster features the colossal stone-carved title dwarfing the people below. It’s the sort of Hollywood epic where the numbers – 10,000 extras! 2,500 horses! Over a million props! 1.1 million feet of film! 11 Oscars! – are as much a part of what you are sitting down to watch as the characters and story. Ben-Hur sits at the apex of the Hollywood Biblical epic: three and a half hours long, the most expensive film ever made (at the time). Age hasn’t always treated it kindly, and its eleven Oscars give it a sort of classic status it’s very hard for the first-time viewer to reconcile with what you actually see on the screen. Fundamentally, Ben-Hur is part spectacle, part pageant: some striking sequences linked together by the twee and the forgettable. Entertainingly middle-brow and over honoured, it’s a classic mostly because of what it represents rather than what it is.

Adapted from General Lew Wallace’s best-selling doorstop (he basically invented the airport novel, decades before the first airport ever opened), the story follows the fortunes of Jewish prince Judah Ben-Hur (Charlton Heston) in the early years of the first millennium. Ben-Hur grew up regarding Roman officer Messala (Stephen Boyd) as a brother. But when Ben-Hur refuses to help Messala identify Jewish insurgents, their friendship comes to an end. Before we know it, Messala suses trumped up charges to send Ben-Hur in chains to a life rowing as a galley slave while his mother Miriam (Martha Scott) and sister Tirzah (Cathy O’Donnell) are imprisoned. Ben-Hur survives the galleys – even becoming the adopted son of Roman Consul Quintus Arrius (Jack Hawkins). When he returns to Jerusalem, will he take his revenge on Messala? Or will the teachings of the mysterious preacher spreading the word of God change his life?

For bursts of its (huge) run-time Ben-Hur is gripping, exciting stuff. The action when it comes is superbly done and some of the moments of high-emotion really hit the spot. But it’s impossible to avoid that, for large chunks of time in-between, Ben-Hur is ponderous, overlong, more than a bit self-important and a little twee. Frequently the film grinds to a halt to parade its numbers: after all we need a long intro to the chariot race so we can see all those extras and horses. Things like this frequently don’t drive forward the story, or help the pace: but Ben-Hur was at least as much about wowing the audience as it was about telling a story.

William Wyler was offered more money than any director in history to bring it to the screen. He produces a film as faultless in its professionalism, as it is impersonal. Wyler – a director who worked best with actor-led stories – struggled with the vastness of Hur: his visual compositions often an awkward attempt to mix the width of the frame with the intimacy of two characters talking. His style doesn’t help here: the heaviness of the cameras made them difficult to move, making many of the conversation scenes of the film rather flat and dull to look at. Wyler doesn’t put a foot wrong, but it feels more like a competent professional ticking boxes.

It’s the big set piece moments – of which there three – which really have stuck in people’s minds. Those would be: the early scenes with Messala/Ben-Hur, the naval battle sequence and the chariot race. Outside of those moments – which are all, in their own ways, very memorable – it’s amazing to me every time I watch it how much of the film I fail to remember. I certainly had forgotten how damn much of the movie is left post Chariot race (over 45 minutes!), the film dragging on through the Miriam/Tirzah leprosy sub-plot intercut with moments from the life of Jesus (often with dialogue of the “He’s giving a Sermon on that Mount” variety). There are several moments in the film where events play out at great length inversely proportional to their interest.

But those set-pieces are great. The chariot race alone probably made the film the success it is. It’s ten minutes of compelling drama, gripping stunts: a feast of tight editing, dynamic camera work and thundering sound effects. Shot by a second unit – although, to be fair, supervised in its planning and editing by Wyler – it’s the heart of the movie. Viscerally enjoyable, it perhaps stands out because it’s the most earthy, exciting, real thing in a movie that can be rather stagy and turgid.

Running it close is the naval battle sequence – show-casing a gravely Jack Hawkins – very well-done (and disguising its water tank shooting origins), particularly because Wyler keeps most of the focus on the slave rowers in the bowels of the ship. While fire and arrows fly up top, and boarding parties clash, it’s from the slaves perspective that we see a vessel approach to ram the ship – and their terror at drowning that we feel. It’s another fine use of the epic big-screen. With virtually no dialogue, it’s also a triumph of visual story-telling, communicating a host of emotions and actions with brilliant efficiency.

The Messala/Ben-Hur sequences have stuck in the mind for other reasons. Long-running debates exist about who actually wrote the script. The credit goes to Ken Turnberg, but Gore Vidal long claimed his fingerprints were on most of the dialogue. (Wyler and Heston disagreed, giving the credit to playwright Christopher Fry – Heston even thanked Fry in his Oscar acceptance speech.) Vidal liked to claim he directed Boyd to play these scenes as if Messala was a spurned lover of Ben-Hur – taking an equal delight in claiming Heston had no idea of this subtext. Wyler argued he had no memory of this, and denied any such direction to Boyd took place. The truth will never really be known, but to me the idea of the writer on a film like this taking creative control seems a stretch.

Anyway, it adds a frisson to the scenes – and its undeniable there is more than a touch of camp to them. To be honest I think a lot of this is due to Stephen Boyd’s OTT performance as Messala. He plays every single scene at a ludicrous pitch – throughout the chariot race he makes Dick Dastardly look the model of underplaying – and I can well imagine Vidal enjoyed taking advantage of his over-emphasis in these sequences to spin an amusing story of sneaking in a homo-erotic subtext.

The acting in general is fairly mundane – for all the film won two Oscars for its performers. Heston (in his only nomination) was named Best Actor. He’s a monumental actor, best used in roles that could have been chiselled from marble, but this is not his best (look to Khartoum, Agony and the Ecstasy or Planet of the Apes for starters). Much like Boyd he’s prone to over-emotionalism (most of the last 40 minutes feature him throwing his face into his hands), intermixed with moments of stony po-facedness. Hugh Griffith won the other Oscar (insanely generous considering he beat out Scott and O’Connell in Anatomy of a Murder) and his hammy, black-face is increasingly uncomfortable. Few of the other performers make much of an impact (although I enjoyed seeing an unbilled John Le Mesurier as a Roman doctor).

The one thing about Ben-Hur that lives up to its grandness is Miklos Rosza’s brilliant -and hugely influential – score. A brilliant mix of the inspiring epic, the grandiose and the deeply spiritual, you can hear its DNA throughout the works of John Williams and several others. It’s one of the longest scores of all time (three hours of music!) but it captures the tone of every scene perfectly, helping to build the overall effect.

It even manages to make some of the Jesus sequences work. The film is never more twee than when it touches on the Bible. Jesus is only ever shown from behind, but always as the classic long-haired, beatific figure, practically floating through the ether. Sequences that show the nativity, the sermon on the mount and the crucifixion have a Sunday School earnestness about them, largely free of drama and seem designed to be as inoffensive (and uninteresting) as possible. It’s when the film is as its most self-consciously earnest.

And Ben-Hur is a very earnest film. A professional job – with a director wrestling all those numbers – it’s got some striking sequences but even more flat, twee and forgettable moments. With acting that ranges from overly-earnest to just over the top, its classic status is more about what it is. The largest, most expensive, most honoured film of the Biblical epic genre. Its’ most famous for all those Oscars and the chariot race: in other words ten minutes of its screen time and garlands from a ceremony we often say honours the wrong films. Judged on film merits, Ben-Hur is not the best but not the worst. But it’s more about all its numbers, the vast array of things in it. It represents Big Studio investment: it’s about money. No wonder Hollywood garlanded it with so many Oscars.

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

A masterplan goes wrong in John Huston’s crime drama The Asphalt Jungle

Director: John Huston

Cast: Sterling Hayden (Dix Handley), Louis Calhern (Alonzo D Emmerich), Jean Hagen (“Doll” Conovan), James Whitmore (Gus Minissi), Sam Jaffe (“Doc” Erwin Riedenschneider), John McIntire (Police Commissioner Hardy), Marc Lawrence (Cobby), Barry Kelley (Lt. Ditrich), Marilyn Monroe (Angela Phinlay), Brad Dexter (Bob Brannom)

“Doc” Erwin Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe) is out of the slammer after seven years, and the self-proclaimed “Professor” of criminal plans has a scheme for one final job. But rather than sell it to the highest bidder, Doc approaches crooked lawyer Alonzo Emmerich (Louis Calhern) to fund the crime and then split the proceeds with Doc. To carry out his robbery on a jewellery safe in a bank, he’ll need a gang including get-away driver Gus (James Whitmore) and Gus’ pal and “hooligan” Dix Handley (Sterling Hayden). But even the best laid plans of criminals can fall foul of events and the basic untrustworthiness of criminals themselves.

John Huston surprised some by turning his attention – Oscar in hand from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre – to noir cops and robber’s thrillers, but that was to forget he had made his name with his masterful adaptation of Dashell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon. And in The Asphalt Jungle he created a small scale but almost perfect slice of criminalise noir, a brilliantly paced and acted film beautifully assembled that effortlessly chronicles the disastrous fall out of a robbery where it seemed everything was going perfectly.

Huston’s direction of the piece is, as nearly always, superlative. His painterly framing of scenes is dead on the money here, his framing of the actors within the scene absolutely without fault. Huston has an uncanny scene for arranging his actors in the minimum number of shots necessary, reducing dramatically the need for clumsy cut aways. Instead multiple actors are often artfully arranged in the frame, allowing the performers to react in the moment and the camera itself to capture the complete story in one smooth shot. It also allows for some great character intros, not least a shot of the Police commissioner in the background of the frame while foregrounded are the hands of his subordinate Dietrich, nervously fondling his hat. Straight away we get the mood of the scene.

This is all part of the brilliant noirish construction of a film that largely features sympathetic criminals – and it’s clear that the film’s sympathy is with the robbers here, the cops either incompetent, bureaucrats or corrupt themselves – either turning on each other, crumbling under pressure, making rudimentary errors that wind up getting them caught or failing into tragic fates that are left questioning what the point of it all was. This is all superbly caught in the moody darkness and shadows that soak over the picture, and highlighted further by the superb script, that packs some excellent lines and beautiful thematic points throughout the film.

It’s also helped by some great performances. Sam Jaffe (Oscar-nominated) is terrific as the cunning calm and businesslike “Doc” who seems unable to understand why things are not quite panning out as he planned, but is heartily sorry that it’s the case. He at least has honour among thieves, refusing to abandon his fellow criminals and quietly disappointed when betrayal raises its head. I love as well his screamish apology that the crime will involve one “hooligan” – or heavy – since he’s not the sort of guy who likes to resort to messy crimes (no matter that things quickly slide out of hand). He’s the sort of professional who expects everyone to play by the same rules, but that doesn’t stop him having his own private passions, particularly for the fairer sex, that will wind up catching him out.

He’s especially proved wrong since Sterling Hayden’s ‘hooligan’ Dix turns out to be the moral force of the gang, despite his down-on-his-luck scruffiness. Hitting crime as a way to finance his dream of buying back his family’s horse farm – and sadly losing most of that finance on the horses – Hayden is gloomy faced and gruff but has his own clear moral code in an affectingly gentle performance of vulnerability beneath the toughness. Debts and betrayal are anathema to him, and he winds up far more of the decent crook than any of the rest – he’s also the only one of the lot who can hold down a loving relationship, forging a genuinely sweet relationship with Jean Hagen’s Doll. Huston’s sympathies are clearly with the down-on-his-luck Dix, a decent guy who has just lost at life.

Of course the crook they can’t trust is the lawyer, a fine performance of snivelling weasliness under a veneer of culture from Louis Calhern. Puffed up, arrogant but desperate for the money and fundamentally weak and easily led, Calhern is excellent as the money man who only adds to the gang’s troubles, led on by Brad Dexter’s wonderfully impatient and ruthless hired gun. Calhern’s sad air of corrupted authority is only enhanced by his lecherous delight in his lusciously young mistress, a radiant early performance from Marilyn Monroe (shot like a classic painting by Huston).

Huston’s film throws this gang together flies together into a superbly detailed and gripping drama of the planning, execution and dreadful fall out of a robbery that clearly inspired the (perhaps even better) Rififi (so much so that it practically has the same story and structure), The Asphalt Jungle is a fabulously made and written pleasure, unpretentious but wonderful story telling marshalled expertly by a director at the top of his game.