May 25, 2021

Rewatching Wichita

Posted by Just Another Film Buff under All Posts, Hollywood, Translations | Tags: , , , , , |
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[On the request of a reader, here is a translation of a text on Jacques Tourneur’s Wichita (1955) written by Jean-Claude Biette in issue no. 281 of Cahiers du cinéma in October 1977. The copy of the article I have seems to be missing a few words towards the end; but with this kind of writing, you never really know.]

The Story

Cowboys are about to enter Wichita with a large quantity of cattle, Wyatt Earp, who is going the same way, joins them. As is their custom, the cattle owner’s employees intend to spend a large part of their pay at saloons and brothels. Earp, on the other hand, wants to deposit his savings and start a business, no matter which one, in Wichita. He likes order. The bigwigs of Wichita like order too, but if they want their town to prosper—not survive, but prosper, as is often mentioned ––(the newly built railroad allows the cattle gathered by the cowboys in Wichita to be shipped and resold at a large profit to all the surrounding states), they have to accept the traditional outbursts, shootings, drinking and debauchery of the cowboys who mark their passage with revels. The mayor, however, asks Wyatt Earp to ensure an order that the town lacks under the current sheriff, who is venal and ineffective. The famous gunman (W.E.), who wants peace and doesn’t want to be used as a target in any case, refuses the sheriff’s job. The death of a five-year-old child by a stray bullet on the first night of revelry persuades Earp to accept the sheriff’s star. He begins by forbidding firearms within the confines of Wichita and expels all those who violate this rule from the town. The bigwigs know that the cowboys wouldn’t want to part with their firearms, and that they might not want to work with Wichita anymore. They decide to force the resignation of the intransigent sheriff who applies the law too harshly. Fresh disturbances interrupt the bigwigs’ demand to Wyatt Earp and force the latter to send for his two brothers, whom one of the bigwigs—like the viewer—mistakes for killers whom he expects to hire. The daughter of a rich landowner has meanwhile fallen in love with Wyatt Earp. The father, fearing that his daughter will be widowed too soon (being a sheriff means being a permanent target), does everything to prevent the affair and the marriage. But it is his own wife who is killed by a bullet intended for Wyatt Earp. After the funeral, the cowboys, who had been driven out of Wichita once, return for a final showdown with the sheriff. Wyatt Earp is victorious and, having imposed his order (the elimination of the two brothers, who are too violent to be a part of the society of Wichita: they put their personal vengeance above the possibility of dealing with things on economic or ideological grounds), regains the confidence of the bigwigs. He can now get married and set out to restore order in another city…

The Film

The invisible thread that links the story, as we can sense it from the script, to the mise en scène, as the film exhibits it today, is constituted by the double opposition of the “two brothers” theme, a theme that is redoubled, multiplied by two or rather multiplied by itself, and thus surreptitiously highlighted, throughout the film. When, at the beginning of the film, Wyatt Earp joins the cowboys, he is, as night falls, robbed of his savings by two brothers who are presented as violent, devious, united in evil, full of hatred for the law which they instinctively feel is embodied in Wyatt Earp. He settles scores with them—humiliates them and takes back his money—in front of other cowboys. And these two brothers will become W.E.’s most relentless enemies—without their perpetual, muted presence, the mise en scène would end up striking a balance between order and violence, a compromise between Wichita and the cowboys’ outbursts with the help of one or more contrivances set up by the script, but without any organic necessity in the film. It is they, these brothers—this is not just the script’s craftiness, but a fundamental theme of the film’s mise en scène—who convince the other cowboys to obey their desire for revenge (which, as it happens, involves the frank acceptance of death).

There comes a moment when the social law (that of a society for which the supreme value is prosperity) and the law of representation (that of the Western) reach their climax: the romantic idyll with the necessary consequence that is marriage (then, of course, family etc.)—namely, the picnic scene where the location of the two characters forces Earp to pull up his fiancée (who has just declared her full acceptance of the role imposed on women) into his shot so that she can place her lips onto his; It is in the few shots that immediately follow this climax—the perfect Hollywood kiss—that two hitherto unseen riders, whose close resemblance in height, facial features and expressions designate them as brothers and as a replica of the two cowboy brothers driven by vengeance, commit a formidable transgression on many levels.

  • They enter Wichita with their guns, blithely crossing the sign on which they have just read the ban.
  • They take the ambiguity about them to an extreme by posing as hitmen in order to catch a bigwig red-handed in the act of hiring hitmen to kill Wyatt Earp, who is none other than their brother (the mise en scène makes you sense the solidity of the institution of law all the more since it excludes the viewer from the knowledge and power of this ruse for a while before revealing it in its unquestionable effect: The police officers’ word cannot be doubted, especially as all three are brothers).
  • These two brothers exude a virility (they are the only ones in the film with really blue eyes, which, as actors know, is a sign of seduction—it registers strongly on the film stock), which seems amplified by their resemblance (the outlaw brothers don’t resemble one another), a virility too radiant to not convey a sense, threatening or stoking the possible homosexuality of the cowboys (which is integrated without fuss into the network of violence, disorder and acts that are uncontrollable and spontaneous, nocturnal and warm, whose vehicle in the film these men are) of the homosexual character of the law, a law that is deceptively clear and icy, which constantly unites the image of what it orders (the Hollywood kiss signifying marriage) to the equally seductive image of what it forbids.

The certainty now that Wyatt Earp is indeed the brother of these two strange riders adds to the threat and the sparkle perfidiously maintained by the law, those of an incest, perhaps even a double incest, the last safeguard of the police word.

What then is the function of these two new brothers in the film?

It consists in amplifying Wyatt Earp’s action on the story level, in multiplying its effects by the unbreakable link of the double (and therefore infinite) brotherhood, but above all in reinforcing the dynamics of the revenge of the two other brothers, the cowboys, wronged by their theft and humiliated, and in compensating for the extreme linearity of the script (which threatens to be mechanical) with lines of force that are secondary at first sight, but which, underneath, revive the struggle between law and order on the one hand (with their bases: the economic interests that enable the prosperity of the city, i.e., of the bigwigs) and disorder and violence on the other (with their bases: hatred, revenge and also greed).

At this point, it is difficult not to see that the script constitutes the foundations of the mise en scène, since the latter seeks nothing other than to go as deep as possible into the social, ideological, moral and semantic content of the script. (Besides, I don’t see what other function the mise en scène of a film could have). Whether or not Jacques Tourneur wanted to achieve this versatility is of little importance. That he is able to find his bearings, after having made this type of cinema, is not, for us, viewers, critics, filmmakers or apprentice filmmakers, essential: he never sought to hide himself or his films behind his mastery, and film historians have not been mistaken in not considering him a master; he is much better than that.

We can limit ourselves to seeing that his mise en scène is based on an equalisation of strong and weak moments which allows everything—characters, settings, camera movements, episodes (the death of a child, the death of a mother as a driving force that makes W.E. act and identify with the law)— to be transformed into signs. Jacques Tourneur sticks to the indispensable minimum of realism: someone galloping or fighting is not filmed according to a criterion of efficiency, as in many Westerns, but according to the function he occupies in the narrative; as a vehicle in a narrative time. To this end, as in Hawks’ films, everything calls for an equal importance. The mise en scène is thus the current that runs through a network of signs—here, the signs of the genre that is the Western—thanks to the vehicles that are the characters and the sequence of events (the causal relationships and the rhythm proper to each action from shot to shot etc.).

One may note, in Wichita, the full use of the widescreen, where the depth of field is provided by the diagonal of the screen, and the countless entries and exits from the frame, which are a legacy of the densest silent cinema.

Finally, as they are, the themes and meanings (the economic and ideological links within the small society of Wichita, and between Wichita and its off-screen zone marked by the boundary sign on which the prohibition of armed entry into the town is nailed—a “historical” fact) are the result of the mise en scène: the script is satisfied with proposing the former in the raw form of absolute truths (the emphasis on the characterization of the hero as being naturally attracted by law and order, just as the cowboys are naturally attracted by “Wine/Women/Wichita”, as it is posted on a stagecoach of whores that crosses the entrance sign to Wichita) and relies on the director’s conventional vitality to soften the latter with the grace of a calming and willingly picturesque illustration. Rather like Hawks, Jacques Tourneur corrects nothing, questions nothing, and doesn’t mount a direct critique through the voice of characters that Hollywood would never fail to break or silence: he accepts everything that a script gives him and is content to carry the logic of the script as far as possible. But then he constructs his own agenda:

  • by filming values (those proposed by Hollywood or any other system of representation firmly rooted in the social) as things.
  • by filming things as signs.
  • by filming characters as individuals who believe in values as much as things (for which the viewer experiences the same illusory faith, since he can see and hear them in the film, and the capacity contained in the film to surprise the metamorphosis) and who live in a social network of signs.

For Jacques Tourneur, the characters in a story are perfect strangers whose mystery does not have to be clarified or explained.

 

 

June 13, 2020

Reaching for the Sun (1941)

Posted by Just Another Film Buff under All Posts, Hollywood, Review | Tags: , , , , , , , |
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[From my column on studio-era Hollywood films for Firstpost]

With the American economy recovering under the New Deal and workers getting back to the factories, it would seem that a more fundamental anxiety about the industrial age resurfaced in Hollywood cinema. Fordist production of the previous decades had vitiated the skilled workforce, reducing the factory employee to a tiny cog in the production machinery—an awareness that was heightened by the brief favour socialism enjoyed in the country in the late 1930s. Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936) responded most famously to this alienation of the worker by satirizing the principles of industrial management. The Paramount production Reaching for the Sun (1941) takes a less jovial route, exploring the theme within the framework of romantic comedy and marital drama.

Adapted from Wessel Smitter’s novel F.O.B. Detroit (1938), Reaching for the Sun follows Russ (Joel McCrea), a backwoods clam-digger who moves to Detroit to work in a car factory so he can afford an outboard motor for his boat. He plans to get back to the countryside as soon as he purchases the motor, but just as his roommate and colleague Bennie (Eddie Bracken) warns, he falls in love, marries and has a child in the city before he knows it. Obliged to toil at the factory to support his family, but also facing the opposition of his wife Rita (Ellen Drew) who wants to continue living in the city, Russ finds his dream of moving back to the woods slipping away from him.

Russ is first presented an innocent idealist living in harmony with nature, untouched by the harsh realities of industrial life. He lives for his clams, whistles at birds and deer. There’s not a resentful bone in his body: when he sees another clam-digger making a bigger haul with his motor boat, he simply tilts his head, as though to say “lucky man!”. McCrea’s towering stature bestows a rich dialectical quality to the character. Despite his lumberjack-like build, Russ is a gentle giant who gets knocked down repeatedly by Herman (Albert Dekker), his romantic rival at the factory. He keeps his hands close to his body even when he’s agitated. When he punches through a door in a rare fit of rage, it’s an evidently clumsy blow, made against his natural instinct.

Rita, in total contrast, is a world-wise city girl, a waitress and a taxi dancer who ribs Russ’ Southern-boy courteousness (“What will you have, or is that too personal?”). She has no abiding relation to nature: she doesn’t want to move to the countryside and falls into a brook the only time Russ takes her there. When they relocate to a new house, Rita points to a sorry excuse for a tree, telling Russ she picked this spot because she knows how much he loves nature: “The man said in the spring it has leaves and everything.” Just beyond this tree is a construction crane moving about its limb ominously.

The central theme of Smitter’s book, reprised as a secondary motif in the film, is modern man’s enslavement by his own inventions. “A machine geared to a man is one thing. A man geared to a machine is something else.”, writes the author. When we first see Russ in the film, he wedges out a truck stuck in the mud using a pair of logs. But the initial temptation of an outboard motor gradually brings him in contact with bigger and bigger machines. His first fight with Herman is with bare fists, the second with crowbars and pliers, and his final battle takes place through gigantic machines the two men operate. In the latter skirmish, Russ and Herman are barely visible, having become ghosts in the machines.

The film’s primary focus, however, is the machine that modern life as a whole is. Director William Wellman and scriptwriter Leslie River displace the immediate socio-industrial thrust of Smitter’s story on to an existential plane. Their Russ is a Thoreau-like figure wanting to live away from community in self-sufficiency, but who is caught in the rigmarole of social life, his personality gradually hollowed out by everyday grind. When Rita blasts him for obsessing over his outboard motor, he pensively tells Bennie that, without it, “I’ll be like everyone else”.

The machine thus comes to represent the life Russ dreams of, the identity he tries to hold on to. But, like the car in Ritwik Ghatak’s Ajantrik (1958), it is also a physical entity that supplants Russ’ human relations. Just after he purchases the motor, Russ carries it gently like a baby wrapped in rags. He addresses it with a “she” and nurtures dreams for it. In a humorous scene, he and Bennie try to get the motor started in their boarding house, just as two bumbling men would handle an abandoned baby. The machine competes with both Rita and Russ’ real baby for his attention and resources; at one point, it lies next to him on his marital bed, after Rita and her baby have left the house.

A contemporary New York Times review regretted such a comic treatment of the subject, criticizing the way the film strips away the socio-political import of the book. While this may be a fair objection, it should also be noted that the light touch of the film does not imply frivolity of intention. Producer and director Wellman, who retired early from filmmaking to spend more time with his family, often made pictures about characters who had to make hard choices between professional and personal lives. He recognizes the modern apprehension at the heart of the story. His success lies in finding a form that registers this hefty idea without letting it overwhelm the narrative.

A number of scenes in his film function on a register that is neither wholly comic or dramatic, an ambivalence that works in its favour. In a reconciliatory exchange, Rita inquires how important she is for Russ. Russ tells what she wants to hear, but when she asks “more than the outboard motor?”, he goes silent in a manner that’s both poignant and funny. In another sequence, Russ and Bennie attend a class for to-be-fathers where they are to learn how to handle newborns. It’s a broadly comic scene about changing gender roles, but Russ’ reaction to the idea of washing a baby’s bottom, a mixture of fear and worry, is the opposite of what such a comic scene demands. Towards the end, just after Rita has left with the baby, Russ receives a laudatory certificate from the class for being the best father—an ironic moment that’s tragic even if Rita and the baby were with him.

This heartfelt angst about the costs of domestic life is complex and unresolvable, all the more why the film’s ending seems so ridiculously contrived. Where Smitter’s novel leaves Russ hopelessly crippled after an industrial accident, he not only gets artificial legs in the film, but is able to move to the countryside with Rita and the baby. While there’s little reason to suspect that Wellman, known for his obstinacy and independent spirit, had to compromise, the postcard picturesqueness with which this tacked-on happy ending is filmed — Rita tossing a steak and singing a folk tune in the country house—can’t possibly be taken at face value. Considering that Wellman shows a large banner at the car factory reading “Quality First” (and not “Safety First”) just after Russ’ accident, we may suppose self-parody at work. It may be that a country on the brink of a great war simply needed to believe in such happy endings.

 

[Originally published at Firstpost]