Tag: Van Johnson

Madame Curie (1943)

Halting science biopic, that’s really an attempt to make a spiritual sequel to Mrs Miniver

Director: Mervyn LeRoy

Cast: Greer Garson (Marie Curie), Walter Pidgeon (Pierre Curie), Henry Travers (Eugene Curie), Albert Bassermann (Professor Jean Perot), Robert Walker (David le Gros), C. Aubrey Smith (Lord Kelvin), Dame May Whitty (Madame Eugene Curie), Victor Francen (University President), Reginald Owen (Dr Becquerel), Van Johnson (Reporter)

Marie Curie was one of History’s greatest scientists, her discoveries (partially alongside her husband Pierre) of radioactivity and a parade of elements, essentially laying the groundwork for many of the discoveries of the Twentieth Century (with two Nobel prizes along the way). Hers is an extraordinary life – something that doesn’t quite come into focus in this run-of-the-mill biopic, that re-focuses her life through the lens of her marriage to Pierre and skips lightly over the scientific import (and content) of her work. You could switch it off still not quite understanding what it was Marie Curie did.

What it was really about was repackaging Curie’s life into a thematic sequel to the previous year’s Oscar-winning hit Mrs Miniver. With the poster screaming “Mr and Mrs Miniver together again!”, the star-team of Garson and Pidgeon fitted their roles to match: Garson’s Marie Curie would be stoic, dependable, hiding her emotions under quiet restraint while calmly carrying on; Pidgeon’s Pierre was dry, decent, stiff-upper-lipped and patrician. Madame Curie covers the twelve years of their marriage as a Miniver-style package of struggle against adversity with Pierre’s death as a final act gut punch. Science (and history) is jettisoned when it doesn’t meet this model.

Not only Garson and Pidgeon, but Travers, Whitty, producer Sidney Franklin, cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg, composer Herbert Stothard and editor Harold F Kress among others all returned and while Wyler wasn’t back to direct, Mervyn LeRoy, director of Garson’s other 1942 hit Random Harvest, was. Heck even the clumsily crafted voiceover was spoken by Miniver writer James Hilton. Of course, the Miniver model was a good one, so many parts of Madame Curie that replicate it work well. But it also points up the film’s lack of inspiration, not to mention that it’s hard to think either of the Curies were particularly like the versions of them we see here.

Much of the opening half of Madame Curie zeroes in on the relationship between the future husband-and-wife who, like all Hollywood scientists, are so dottily pre-occupied with their heavy-duty science-thinking they barely notice they are crazy for each other. Some endearing moments seep out of this: Pierre’s bashful gifting of a copy of his book to Marie (including clumsily pointing out a heartfelt inscription to her she fails to spot) or Pierre’s functional proposal, stressing the benefits to their scientific work. But this material constantly edges out any space for a real understanding of their work.

It fits with the romanticism of the script, which pretty much starts with the word “She was poor, she was beautiful” and carries on in a similar vein from there (I lost count of the number of times Garson’s beauty was commented on, so much so I snorted when she says at one point she’s not used to hearing such compliments). Madame Curie has a mediocre script: it’s the sort of film where people constantly, clumsily, address each other by name (even Marie and Pierre) and info-dump things each of them already know at each other. Hilton’s voiceover pops up to vaguely explain some scientific points the script isn’t nimble enough to put into dialogue.

It would be intriguing to imagine how Madame Curie might have changes its science coverage if it had been made a few years later, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been eradicated by those following in Curie’s footsteps. Certainly, the film’s bare acknowledgment of the life-shortening doses of radiation the Curies were unwittingly absorbing during their work would have changed (a doctor does suggest those strange burns on Marie’s hands may be something to worry about). So naively unplayed is this, that it’s hard not to snort when Pierre comments after a post-radium discovery rest-trip “we didn’t realise how sick we were”. In actuality, Pierre’s tragic death in a traffic accident was more likely linked to his radiation-related ill health than his absent-minded professor qualities (Madame Curie highlights his distraction early on with him nearly being crushed under carriage wheel after walking Marie home).

Madame Curie does attempt to explore some of the sexism Marie faced – although it undermines this by constantly placing most of the rebuttal in the mouth of Pierre. Various fuddy-duddy academics sniff at the idea of a woman knowing of what she speaks, while both Pierre and his assistant (an engaging Robert Walker) assume before her arrival at his lab that she must be some twisted harridan and certainly will be no use with the test tubes. To be honest, it’s not helped by those constant references to Garson’s looks or (indeed) her fundamental mis-casting. Garson’s middle-distance starring and soft-spoken politeness never fits with anyone’s idea of what Marie Curie might have been like and a bolted-on description of her as stubborn doesn’t change that.

Walter Pidgeon, surprisingly, is better suited as Pierre, his mid-Atlantic stiffness rather well-suited to the film’s vision of the absent-minded Pierre and he’s genuinely rather sweet and funny when struggling to understand and express his emotions. There are strong turns from Travers and Whitty as his feuding parents, a sprightly cameo from C Aubrey Smith as Lord Kelvin and Albert Bassermann provides avuncular concern as Marie and Pierre’s mentor. The Oscar-nominated sets are also impressive.

But, for all Madame Curie is stuffed with lines like “our notion of the universe will be changed!” it struggles to make the viewer understand why we should care about the Curie’s work. Instead, it’s domestic drama in a laboratory, lacking any real inspiration in its desperation by its makers to pull off the Miniver trick once more. Failing to really do that, and failing to really cover the science, it ends up falling between both stools, destined to be far more forgettable than a film about one of history’s most important figures deserves to be.

Battleground (1949)

Marvellously realistic, grunt’s-eye view of war, very well made and still carrying impact

Director: William A Wellman

Cast: Van Johnson (PFC Holley), John Hodiak (Pvt Jarvess), Ricardo Montalbán (Pvt Roderigues), George Murphy (Pvt “Pop” Stazak), Marshall Thompson (Pvt Layton), Jerome Courtland Pvt Abner Spudler), Don Taylor (Cpl Standiferd), Bruce Cowling (Sgt Wolowicz), James Whitmore (Staff Sgt Kinnie), Douglas Fowley (Pvt “Kipp” Kippton), Leon Ames (Chaplain), Herbert Anderson (Pvt Hansan), Denise Darcel (Denise), Richard Jaeckel (Pvt Bettis)

Apparently, the Hays Code would let bad language slide, if it was being used about War Heroes. Not many 40s film start with a credit crawl proudly calling its cast a bunch of bastards (in this case “the Bastards of Boulogne”). That’s our Battleground, the Battle of the Bulge, based on the experiences of screenwriter Robert Pirosh (who won an Oscar). Reflecting Pirosh’s experience, this is the Battle from the Grunt-eye-view, following a platoon of privates and sergeants pushed up from the rear to Bastogne, filling in the time between terrifying shelling and German advances, with grouching about everything from the food, to the lack of leave to the rotten army life.

As such, it’s not a surprise that Battleground proved a huge, multi-Oscar nominated hit (including Best Picture). Many in the audience surely saw their own war experiences reflected back at them: crappy rations, freezing cold fox-holes and the horrifying prospect of sudden death from the sky, that many American GIs knew from the war. Louis B Mayer believed the country was sick of war but producer Dore Schary persisted and was proved absolutely right.

It’s a film soaking in authenticity, that genuinely feels like it’s been filmed in the mist and snow covered chill of Boulogne rather than the sunny uplands of California (it’s cinematography won a deserved Oscar for Paul C Vogel). Director, William A Wellman, a decorated veteran from World War One, not only knew how soldiers thought, he was also grimly familiar with the mix of machismo, grit and terror on the front. Most of the cast were veterans, some only just out of uniform: and Battleground was the first film that put its cast through boot-camp to get them bonding like a company.

It’s a film rooted in the detail of army banter, with the same topics coming up time-and-again, in the distinctive language of the trenches. There is the insular togetherness of men who have seen a great deal of suffering and survived. Where a fellow soldier may get on your nerves but you’ll defend him to the death. The suspicion and dismissive attitude to replacement recruits until they have earned their chops. The delight in small moments of humanity also ring true: the Californian private thrilled at seeing snow for the first time, the protective way Van Johnson’s Private Holly guards and protects the eggs he’s dying to eat, the eager joy (and suppressed disappointment) when mail arrives (or fails to). These little touches make the characters feel real, their bonds feel lived in – and makes their moments of fear and panic all the more real.

And Battleground is perhaps unique in 40s war films for not judging soldiers when they show fear (in fact, when new recruit Layton confesses to being scared out of his wits, grizzled cynic Jarvess supportively congratulates him on joining a club everyone is a member of). When the men re-encounter Bettis, a man who ran at the first shelling, there is no judgement or condemnation towards him. After all, so many of them nearly did it themselves. All of them fear becoming a bleeding heap, sobbing for their mamas (as we see one of them do in a quietly affecting moment). Private Holly, our closest thing to a hero, twice nearly cuts-and-runs but both times circumstances and self-reproach see him disguise this with acts of bravery. Others may suspect the truth, but it’s what a man does that matters not why he does it.

Battleground gives a focus most war film never give. There are no generals, no sense of tactics or scale and precious little of the enemy. The Battle of the Bulge is a slog, sitting in a snow-filled pit trying not to die. Paranoia and fear is constant: news of German’s disguised as GIs lead to several awkward encounters, including a darkly funny scene of patrols demanding each other to name various pieces of American trivia to prove their bona fidas (even a senior officer). When they sit down to read the GI news, the men are mystified not only about who they are fighting (“Who is von Rundstedt?”) but even the name the press give the battle (“What’s the Bulge?”). Half of them have no idea where they are (opinion seems divided on Belgium or Luxembourg), few speak French and there is a sense that what the war is about matters less than surviving it.

Perhaps to combat this, in a potentially sentimental moment that Wellman and Pirosh manage to make feel uplifting, an army chaplin (well played by Leon Ames) assures the men ‘why they fight’ really does matter – and that if, later, people question the point of sending young Americans thousands of miles to die for strangers, then they know not of what they speak. In Battleground this sense of pride and honour, that what they are doing matters, is an essential battery recharge after weeks of freezing struggle: and it still carries real impact now, reflecting on what so many did for a cause larger than themselves.

Battleground’s cast is largely made up of MGM contract players seizing the opportunity to embody the sort of gritty, earthy parts so rarely available to actors serving in second-string roles or uninteresting leads in B-movies. Van Johnson’s Holly masks his fear with rumbunctious enthusiasm and exaggerated moaning. George Murphy gives a career-best turn as a determined veteran, ready to go home. John Hodiak’s Jarvess is a pillar of wisdom, Ricardo Montalbán’s Roderigues a burst of exuberant life. James Whitmore (Oscar-nominated) as Sergeant Kinnie practically defines Hollywood’s view of the grizzled, grouchy sergeant who secretly loves his men.

It all comes together very well and if Battleground feels overlong and even a bit repetitive at times, that’s to be expected considering it’s reflecting the experience of its characters. But there can be few 40s films as clear-eyed, realistic and unjudgmental about the pressures ordinary soldiers felt under extraordinary circumstances. That focused on the grim slog of surviving, over the glamour of conventional heroism in battle. And perhaps that’s why Battleground spoke to so many and feels so different.

23 Paces to Baker Street (1956)

Van Johnson hears something’s up

Director: Henry Hathaway

Cast: Van Johnson (Philip Hannon), Vera Miles (Jean Lennox), Cecil Parker (Bob Matthews), Maurice Denham (Inspector Grovening), Isobel Elsom (Lady Syrett), Estelle Winwood (Barmaid), Liam Redmond (Mr. Murch), Martin Benson (Pillings), Patricia Laffan (Alice MacDonald)

It’s an age-old truth that the movies always believe we can admire a hero more, if we see them struggling to overcome some form of disadvantage or disability that would normally rule them out of carrying out the actions they are trying to do. So what fits into that mould better than a blind man going up against a gang of criminals?

Philip Hannon (Van Johnson) is a successful American playwright living in London, who has lost his sight. One day in a pub, he overhears a conversation between a man and a woman that he suspects is related to the planning of a crime. But, unable to persuade the police of his suspicions, he has only his former secretary Jean (Vera Miles) and butler Bob (Cecil Parker) to help him investigate.

This is the sort of reliable B movie material, with some decent parts and interesting twists, that usually gets remade as a big-star, big-budget modern Hollywood drama. You know the sort of thing: Russell Crowe is a blind writer investigating a crime. In fact, it’s almost a surprise that this has never been remade, as it is an entertaining, diverting small-scale movie – the sort of thing that you can imagine settling down in front on a wet Sunday afternoon.

It’s a sort of sub-Hitchcock drama –fairly similar in tone to Rear Window – and there are several beats in there that totally fit with the master’s dramatic style. In fact, that’s what makes it such a quintessential B movie: everything about it feels like a slightly cheaper alternative to a major picture. Which isn’t a criticism as such: it’s just a very workmanlike, efficient little thriller, which fits neatly into Hathaway’s CV of safe, unspectacular film making. It’s still well made and does exactly what you would expect, but it’s not going to knock anyone’s socks off.

Van Johnson may similarly be a low rent Jimmy Stewart, but he’s pretty effective in this role, suitably vulnerable in places, while still suggesting enough of the prickly demeanour of the man who doesn’t want to be a victim. He also resists the temptation to overplay the blindness – something the whole film actually does quite well. As the man holding the entire film together he does a good job, and he even manages to be more or less believable as a successful playwright. Watching it, you think it’s a bit of shame he’s not better known today – he’s a good (if unspectacular) actor. Vera Miles offers some good support as a supportive love interest while Cecil Parker is quite droll as the butler.

The mystery itself has a few nice twists in it – the final twist is nicely set-up, enough for you to see it coming as we reach the dénouement (a well-staged confrontation in a darkened flat, which gets a lot of tension from watching our blind lead trying to identify all the lights in the house so he can remove their bulbs). The story sometimes doesn’t give us too much of a chance to work out the twists and turns before key clues are revealed by Hannon, but that’s no major problem. It’s also quite well filmed, with some nice shots of 50s London skylines.

It’s a decent and interestingly done film that gets some fresh content out of the blindness of its hero, never portraying him as a victim but as a proactive and determined man. Claims that this is some sort of lost classic are overdone – it’s never more than a sub-Hitchcock B picture – but it’s still highly watchable, has some engaging characters and some decent thriller sequences, and you care about the lead characters, even if you don’t particularly care about the crime itself and its victims (the victims in particular are pretty vague characters). It also relies rather heavily on the legendary heightened senses that blind always seem to have in Hollywood films. But for something that basically sounds like the plot of an ITV two part drama, this is solid craftsmanship.

One final note: the title means nothing. At one point Hannon guides a man through the fog. Turns out he’s 23 paces from his destination: Baker Street. The Hollywood suits were keen to drop in the “Baker Street” reference, to suggest a link to Sherlock Holmes. So goes to show – Conan Doyle, always good box office!