wrong turn: Carnival of Souls (1962)

    Carnival of Souls. The Criterion Collection, no. 63 [New York, N.Y.], 2016. DVD. 2016. Two-DVD special edition. 2 videodiscs (78 min.): black and white; 1 booklet. ISBN: 9781681431772, 1681431777. OCLC Number 950981645.
    Herk Harvey, director & producer; John Clifford, screenwriter; Maurice Prather, Gene Moore, Dan Palmquist, editors; Maurice Prather, director of photography; Gene Moore, composer. Performers: Candace Hilligoss, Frances Feist, Sidney L. Berger, Art Ellison, Herk Harvey.  
    Summary: a young woman in a small Kansas town is haunted by strange images and events after she experiences a car crash. She agrees to take a job as a church organist in Salt Lake City. En route, she is haunted by a bizarre apparition that compels her toward an abandoned lakeside pavilion. Made by industrial filmmakers on a small budget (reportedly $33,000), this low-keyed horror film was little noticed upon its initial release but over the years has attained the status of cult classic. Filmed on location in and around Lawrence, Kansas, and Salt Lake City, Utah.
    Special features: Disc 1. Selected-scene audio commentary featuring director Herk Harvey and screenwriter John Clifford; deleted scenes; outtakes, accompanied by Gene Moore's organ score. Disc 2. Final Destination: new interview with comedian and writer Dana Gould; Regards from Nowhere: new video essay by film critic David Caims; The Movie That Wouldn't Die!, a documentary on the 1989 reunion of the film's cast and crew; The carnival tour, a 2000 update on the film's locations; excerpts from movies made by the Centron Corporation an industrial film company based in Lawrence, Kansas that once employed Harvey and Clifford; history of the Saltair Resort in Salt Lake City, where scenes in the film were shot; trailer; essay by writer and programmer Kier-La Janisse (insert).


   “I don’t belong in this world.”

  [Note: minor SPOILERS in the comments below.]  Carnival of Souls is such an established cult classic, complete with dedicated fanbase, that I’m pretty much embarrassed to write about it, since what I offer will largely repeat what’s already been said by commentators more astute than I. Nonetheless … as my local library only has a grainy public domain copy, my recently stumbling onto a pristine print of Souls via the tv program Harvey’s Festival of Fear was a fortuitous accident that compels me to opine a bit about my continued appreciation of this one-of-a-kind, still largely under-the-radar masterpiece.
    For all its positive qualities, technically and otherwise, describing the content of Souls is quite the slippery slope. With its shifting center of gravity and shaky narrative one stumbles as to articulate exactly what the film is, insofar as genre is concerned. [1] Psychological horror? Supernatural noir? Neo-surrealist? Well, it’s not really horror, not noir at all, and barely supernatural. Possibly surreal. Definitely psychological. Even more difficult is any attempt to define what message is being conveyed, and for that matter if Souls is a ‘message movie’ at all. To be sure the film has been dissected, spiced, sliced and diced from varying points of view, both online and in print, so I’ll do my best not to go over ground that’s already been covered, but rather offer some personal observations. Aside: based on my own, very unscientific, perusal of writings online it seems the most frequent critical takes on Carnival of Souls is from the feminist and queer perspectives.
 

    Whatever its genre or message, Souls gets better with repeated viewings, and this includes the performers. Candance Hilligoss as Mary gives a wondrous performance, and her nuanced interpretation captures the character perfectly. The supporting and bit players, too, semi-professional at best as they are, do a terrific job. Actually I think the lack of professional actors adds to the story’s verisimilitude, along with the on-location real life locales and the low-keyed, documentary-like presentation of the story. In fact everything about the film is handled with such a sure hand for a first-time, apparently only time, feature film director that we might be forgiven for thinking that the unseen presence of Orson Welles is somewhere in the mix, guiding things along. Indeed there are many Welles-like tableaux along the way, and the comparison of the abandoned pavilion in Souls to the funhouse in The Lady from Shanghai is almost too facile, but I’ll make it anyway.
    Getting back to the cast, I’d be remiss not to mention the performance of Sidney Berger, who plays John Linden, Mary’s lecherous neighbor next door. Like the film itself, he also gets, shall we say, better with repeated viewings, not because he becomes more likeable, but because Mr. Berger’s take is so real, and so natural, removed as it is from the precious affectations of ‘acting.’ To be sure, John is among the most irritating characters in the history of cinema, and it’s one of our crosses to bear that we have to endure his endless come-ons to Mary in order to get to the really good stuff in the film.
    But subsequent viewings reveal the character of John to be, well, if not exactly sympathetic, then at least human, and we can to some extent understand, though not necessarily excuse, his behavior. John is doubtless self-conscious of his proletarian roots and current blue collar status. Thus he sees the regal Mary as quite the catch and a chance to date up. [2] Most of us guys at one time or another in our lives have wanted a woman who was out of our league, and after a rebuff or two we had to suck it up and move on to more suitable company. But John just won’t walk away. His approach is to ratchet up the pressure, and Berger’s all too real performance captures his unsettling combination of imploring, cajoling and implied threat.
    To be fair, if we can be fair to such a jerk, Mary’s hot and cold messages to John can be an understandable source of frustration and confusion, but his misguided strategy is to turn up the heat even more. Maybe it’s the best he can do. It’s ultimately to his credit that when she freaks out after seeing The Man yet again he leaves the situation pronto. Hot item Mary may be, John doesn’t want to deal with a crazy woman. [3]. And we breathe a sigh of relief at his departure. Indeed this is when the film’s highest octane emotional juice really begins to kick in.
   But perhaps a detour to talk about Mary’s possible lesbian inclinations. In the film’s very first image we see Mary, rather incongruously, in a car with two butch girls. By the way why would a class act like Mary be in a car joy riding with a couple of juvenile delinquents in the first place? Are the three a Sapphic ménage à trois? Is this a tipoff, as early as the first scene, of Mary’s latent, or not so latent, lesbianism? Well, maybe, and maybe not. It’s true that later on in the film Mary tells the doctor she’s never had any boyfriends, or felt the need for close (heterosexual) relationships. But if we were to describe Mary’s attitude as to close friendships, it would be asexual, certainly appropriate for a walking ghost. This is reinforced by her skittish responses to John’s romantic overtures: she says yes, sort of, but her actions – her constant pulling away from John’s affectionate entreaties as if disgusted by them – imply no.
    Getting back to things remiss, it would be criminal not to mention Gene Moore’s murky organ music. Its off-kilter harmonies recall the spooky music we hear in Last Year at Marienbad, a film not unlike Souls in its dreamlike ambience and somnambulist characters. By the way, the minister’s sacking Mary for playing a few dissonant chords, when the church is empty at that, seems an extreme punishment, almost to the point of absurdist.
    One could go on and on, given the film’s many confluences and connections. Indeed critics and just plain enthusiasts have gone on and on. But bottom line is: what is it that makes Carnival of Souls such an enduring classic? Some would say the character of Mary: cool, ambiguous, distant, self-possessed, a Hitchcock blonde without the fire underneath. But then again there’s the Saltair pavilion, creepy, other worldly, with its Moorish design giving the impression of levitation. And for some it’s something more undefinable, not so easy to get hold of, like the movie itself. We might call it mood or atmosphere. The uneasy sense of the not quite real, not quite being there, a combination of the quirkily surreal and down-home prosaic. Ultimately Carnival of Souls invites multiple interpretations, but its emotional core remains the same. Like Mary, we search for something. For some of us it’s a sense of belonging, or meaning, for others the redeeming beauty of art, still for others simply the desire to go home. But, at least in the case of Mary, the search is only realized in that ultimate release, death itself. 

  [1]  Carnival of Souls may well fall into the curious subgenre sometimes referred to as the spectral icognizance film (Briefel, 2009),* in which a subject doesn’t realize his/her own death and gradually learns to the truth. The trope was a favorite of the Twilight Zone, used to great effect especially in the ‘After Hours’ and ‘Hitchhiker’ episodes. Movies that employ a spectral insognizance theme or flirt with the idea include The Others, Last Year at Marienbad, Dementia/Daughter of Horror, and Sixth Sense.    
     * Souls has also been cited as being a representative of the ‘highway horror’ subgenre (Murphy 2017).
    
   [2] In his crude, rough-around-the-edges way John represents life, and thus he gravitates to things that would give pleasure to a living human being: coffee, food, alcohol, dancing, bars, human company, not least the company of women. By contrast Mary doesn’t quite belong among the living, ergo her resistance to John’s advances. She has no passion in life, except perhaps her music, and even here she seems under the control of something outside herself. Everyone else in Souls, even in a limited way, represents death, not least being The Man, whom we could call the angel of death, but in this context might be might be seen as a competitor for Mary’s affections. If The Man and John are indeed rivals, it’s no great mystery as to who will win this competition. Just when Mary seems to accede, however reluctantly, to John’s romantic overtures and their implied inevitable culmination in the sex act, The Man intervenes in most timely (or is it untimely) fashion. Mary goes full-on hysterical and gradually retreats into madness. As for John, he simply disappears from the movie.

    [3] It’s not only Mary who acts weird: nearly everyone in Souls is a little off, and this may be the result of the limited acting skills of the mostly amateur cast. Be that as it may, landlady Frances Feist is both blandly reassuring and a little bit creepy. The minister and psychiatrist attempt, in their clumsy, eminently patriarchal ways, to fix Mary.** The guy at the drinking fountain in the park is just plain bizarre. Of course all the ghouls who menace Mary, most conspicuously The Man, are by definition strange, if toned down and almost benevolent compared to their siblings in, say, Night of the Living Dead. About the only normal character in Souls is, counter intuitively, John, simply because he is so real, and in his way, upfront about being such a slimebag.
    Insofar as the way it presents the character of Mary, Carnival of Souls is a mildly subversive work in that it portrays Mary as an independent woman who resolutely insists on going her own way. Thus, and eminently apropos for a cult movie, she resonates with those who are just different – eccentrics, gays, introverts, bohemians, and yes (by the standards of the era), independent-minded women, all of whom, like Mary, don’t fit into the world in a conventional way and who want to stop at their own Saltair to enjoy the baths and smell the roses.
     ** The heavy-handed approach of both almost smacks of conversion therapy. Hooray for Mary for resisting these bumbling attempts to control her, or at least guide her to the light.

Further reading:

    Aviva Briefel, “What Some Ghosts Don’t Know: Spectral Incognizance and the Horror Film,” Narrative, v17, n1 (January 2009), pp 95-108
    Kimberley Monteyne, “From the Question of Soul to a Carnival of Souls,” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, v58 n1 (Fall 2018), pp 24-46
    Bernice M. Murphy, Carnival of Souls (1962) and the Highway Safety Film, FORUM 24 (Spring 2017)  
    James Riley, “Have You No Respect? Do You Feel No Reverence?: Narrative and Critical Subversion in Herk Harvey’s Carnival of Souls,” in: Crash Cinema: Representation in Film, edited by Will Godfrey, Jill Good, Mark Goodall, Cambridge Scholars, 2007, pp 14-24
    Lawrence A. Walz, “Mary Henry’s Journey from Owl Creek Bridge,” Literature/Film Quarterly v23, n4  (1995), pp 262-65

no further questions : the case for Perry Mason

     Incredibly, we're creeping up on the 70th anniversary of the first season of the classic Perry Mason television series. The initial episode, 'The Case of the Restless Redhead', was broadcast on Sept 21, 1957, though astute Perryphiles will note that this wasn't the first filmed episode. That honor traditionally is given to 'The Moth Eaten Mink', which was filmed in October 1956, nearly a year before the series premiered. Speaking of dates, an admission: your humble servant is of sufficient certain years to actually have watched some episodes when they originally appeared (though if memory serves me, I didn't, at least I don't recall if I did). The fondness for the Perry show came many years, even decades, later. In any event the use of the word incredibly above refers to the program's timelessly modern look and feel nearly seven decades on, along with its exploring issues that still resonate today. Thus, some reflections on, and much appreciation of, the show may be in order.

     Being a product of the baby boom generation you could say I’m a child of the television era. Some of my earliest and most indelible memories are of watching TV with my two brothers and parents in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Which probably explains my preference for black and white TV programs, movies too. By the way, I watch old movies and classic television almost exclusively at night, for whatever reason. It must have something to do with the magic and other-ness (creepiness too) of black & white, which just doesn’t work as well in the daytime. The commentary tracks on classic film DVDs are another matter. I prefer watching them in the daytime.

     Whatever the case, my favorites were and still are the crime, mystery and cop shows from that era, which might also be deemed the golden age of the private eye television series. My other happy memories were of watching sports on TV. One of my first recollections was watching ‘the greatest (football) game ever played’ at my grandparents’ house. My grandfather wanted the Giants to win (he pronounced them the ‘gEYEnts’). As for me I exulted in the Colts’ victory. Other sports I enjoyed watching were basketball, baseball, boxing, the Olympic games, and even, I’m ashamed to say, professional wrestling, the latter two not so much these days, though, in my defense, I’m told the wrestling matches in them days weren’t choreographed quite so much as they are today, and certainly weren’t as wildly theatrical, the spectacle of which would make the sleaziest Roman emperor blush. Thus the power of television certainly influenced my early life and probably still does in some mysterious, subterranean way in the catacombs of my creative imagination.

     Progressing forward in time, the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties are a bit of a blur as to my television preferences, as are many details of life in general per those decades. But I never lost my taste for crime, melodrama and mystery. Today I’ve developed a fondness for what’s dubbed true crime, the TV version. These programs portray law enforcement as benevolent, competent and well-intended, with only an occasional token bad apple or bungled investigation thrown in for contrast. Many would agree with this portrayal, but then again many would not.

     Whatever the reality, I delude myself that watching such fare is ‘research’, but the truth is that true crime, at least as purveyed by the medium of television, has little, if anything in the way of influence on my creative literary endeavors. Maybe I’m being snobbish, but the television version of ‘true crime’ is really pop crime at its best (or worst, depending upon one’s point of view), a reductive, if admittedly entertaining, exemplar of pop culture’s lowest common denominator principle, buttressed by a large helping of psychology delivered by talking heads, packaged and designed to appeal to an unsophisticated mass audience – how’s that for elitist? One thing I will say for pop crime, as well as crime dramas, is that the stories move along, in contrast to real life. The snail’s paced real-life trials depicted on TV in particular seem to me more about minutiae and ritual than actually dispensing justice.
    
      In any case, as hinted at elsewhere in these pages, the genuine influences on my writing are: the British cozy mystery; Raymond Chandler; film noir; and the pre-Code movies of the early Thirties, the latter of which I took to in a big way, so much so that in my stories I try to imitate the cadence, pacing and attitude that appears in these early classics, not totally inappropriate, especially in the case of my sleuth heroine Kay Francis, a quintessential pre-Code actress though largely forgotten today.
On the subject of influence and imitation, perhaps it's instructive to recall some thoughts penned by the irrepressible Oscar Wilde: “Of course I plagiarize. It is the privilege of the appreciative man.” Then there's: "It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes, and he annexes everything." And: "There is an element of imitation in all the arts ... the danger of valuing it too little is almost as great as the danger of setting too high a value on it."

     Getting back to television, and specifically Perry Mason, my all time favorite shows, not counting things like documentaries, sports, etc., seem to be the Perry show and The Twilight Zone. Both are from the same era, the same network, and have stylistic, and even thematic, similarities. Moreover, actors crisscross from one to the other seamlessly. Other favorites along the way have been The Fugitive, Law & Order, Columbo, The Americans, Dexter and Poirot. And it doesn’t escape me that all of the above, Twilight Zone possibly excepted, deal with crime and criminals. Curiously, having lived in Albuquerque for the better part of three decades, I never warmed to Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul. Go figure.

     I’ve read comments online and elsewhere that Perry Mason has lots of film noirish elements, and to some extent I agree: same era (at least in part); crime and mystery content; murder; (mostly) urban setting; femmes fatales; and most of all, the black & white look. There’s also a certain congruence in that the traditional film noir bookend year was 1958, or thereabouts, just as television was hitting its stride and appropriating the noir ethos for the small screen, especially in shows like Perry, Route 66, the various jazz detectives, and police dramas like Naked City. Elements of noir also appeared in other genres like straight drama, westerns, and even sci fi/paranormal (Twilight Zone, One Step Beyond and Outer Limits being the best examples).

     As for the character of Perry Mason, he has delighted fans and devotees in several mediums for nearly a century: movies, novels, magazines, board games, theater, comic books, TV, and radiohave surged forth. Probably graphic novels too, but I’m not familiar with any. A recent, and to me, successful take on the old formula has been the two seasons of the HBO cable series Perry Mason (2020-2023), which offers its own, decidedly peculiar and frequently surprising, variations on the old themes. By the way, for clarification, unless otherwise noted, when I talk about Perry Mason and use terms like Perry-verse, Perry canon, Perry universe, Perry oeuvre and the like, I’m referring to the classic CBS series that ran from 1957 to 1966.

     But was Perry truly a noir? While I’ll grant there are some similarities, at heart I see Perry Mason as closer in spirit, and content, to the classic British cozy mystery. Perry takes the role of the eccentric sleuth (ably assisted by Paul Drake), Della is an American version of Miss Lemmon, there’s a murder, almost always committed off-screen (thus little visible violence), several equally suspicious suspects, and a final reckoning, in this case the gathering of suspects in the courtroom, and, crucially, it’s the little details that catch the bad guy, and often the murderer is the least likely suspect. Despite the brutal acts that get the ball rolling, the tone is generally polite and civil (Perry’s back and forths with Hamilton Burger notwithstanding), and when the dust settles order is restored and all is well with the world.

     More to the point, why is Perry Mason so popular? All nine seasons have been released on DVD, and it seems to have been in syndication forever. In our neck of the woods I can catch it – and often do – weekdays twice a day, different episodes, on MeTV, at 8:00 a.m. and then at 10:30 p.m. Alas the morning version runs an hour and as a result there are cuts to fit in the commercials. As far as I can tell the late night entry, at sixty-five minutes, broadcasts the full episode.

     But as for Perry’s popularity, the most facile explanation is that in the Perry universe truth, right, and justice, buttressed by indisputable evidence, and delivered in quintessentially American style, always win out – frequently they do not in real life – and this illusory take on reality is reassuring in our not so reassuring times. But the explanation for the show’s popularity, at least for me, may be more subtle, even mysterious (sometimes not so mysterious), and decidedly personal. Something has to do with the black and white look, which I find very comforting (color images, be they television, cinematic, or on a computer screen, are like a window to reality, which we certainly get enough of in, well, real life). Perhaps the formula. It’s satisfying to watch how it plays out and the way they tinker with the template a bit.1

     But before getting to the additional, more obvious, joys of the Perry show, we might be allowed a sociological detour. To be precise, some Perryphiles have commented that the show has a leftist vibe, and while I appreciate this point of view I think the truth is a bit more complicated. If we do a broad brushstroke interpretation, Perry actually endorses the American legal, and by implication, political, system, with its true-justice-triumphs-in-the-end and the American-system-is-fair-after-all message. Of course a program whose entire raison d'être is at least one murder per week, frequently accompanied by attendant, lesser crimes, can’t lay claim to depicting a perfect society. However, the Perry folks finesse this contradiction by implying that the bad things that happen are the work of depraved, misguided individuals and not the system itself, which is benevolent and just. And whatever Hamilton Burger’s faults, he’s not totally illogical or especially malevolent in his assumptions. In short, he sincerely wants to dispense justice. It’s just that ultimately Perry gets the job done a little better. Among other things, he uncovers hitherto unrevealed evidence, often discovered by ace detective Paul Drake, that vindicates the defendant. Other times he applies psychological pressure, usually in the form of his aggressive interrogations, that forces the real culprit to confess, or offer something akin to a confession.

     Moreover, the tone of Perry, even in the occasional oddball episodes, is strictly late Fifties civil, and thus presents American society as stable, wholesome, even bland, in other words, more or less an endorsement of capitalism, patriarchy, and heteronormality that was, and still largely is, the American model. Indeed the basic gestalt isn’t that different from Leave it to Beaver or Donna Reed. Maybe it was a CBS thing (or more likely, a censorship thing). Suffice to say, the idea of Perry as a commentary on, and reflection of, American society in the 1950s and 1960s is a fascinating, and debatable, issue that likely won’t be resolved anytime soon. And it occurs to me that such matters are prime grist for an enterprising PhD student or two, and indeed such studies have probably already been done.

     Even though CBS was the most liberal of the three networks in the 1950s and 1960s, Perry Mason’s leftist sentiments, such as they are, express themselves in quiet, under-the-radar ways. One example: while Perry’s clients come from all ranks of the socio-economic spectrum – defendants range from the destitute to the filthy rich – he often represents the little guy, pro bono no less, while the big folks, i.e. big money, usually are the guilty party in these stories.

     But it would be remiss not to mention at least one conspicuous example where Perry Mason dropped the ball, and that’s civil rights. Being as it was the dominant domestic political issue of the late 1950s and early 1960s, civil rights was the proverbial elephant in the living room, but we look in vain throughout the 270-odd episodes of Perry and find not one overt reference to the Civil Rights Movement, much less an entire story. But perhaps the Perry writers sneaked in progressive ideas, even nods to civil rights, through other means, in particular the generally sympathetic treatment of African-American, Asian, and Hispanic characters.2 One caveat: even Perry sometimes tended to have Caucasian actors portray Asians.

     While it’s hard to dispute that Perry Mason was produced by white people, for white people, and watched by white people, nonetheless there are ethnics and minorities sprinkled throughout. Over the nine seasons we had two African-American judges (a couple of women judges too), a black court clerk, a black expert witness, a black woman in an episode’s first scene (in which she’s a resident of a minimum-security prison), a black actor playing a white character, a black night watchman, black mechanic, two black policemen, black jailer, black ‘hostess,’ an Asian caretaker, Asian hero, two Asian heroines, two black bartenders, blacks and Asians in the galleries and juries, and in public places like restaurants.3 For the times such casting was fairly daring.
     In addition, there was also what we would call a Japanese episode, a Hawaiian episode, and a Chinese episode, complete with de rigueur exoticized treatment. And there are probably other examples that I don’t recall at the moment. In a strange reversal, characters who hail from Britain, Central Europe, or the Slavic countries are usually depicted as villains, or at least as shady, slippery types. Likewise for those who have an upper crust, faintly British vibe (though the actors may be American [read: Victor Buono and Jacques Abuchon]).

     Perry Mason’s progressive bent also finds expression in characters who practice otherwise unconventional lifestyles or engage in ‘inappropriate’ relationships – bohemians, eccentrics, drifters, grifters, psychics, self-styled artists, wayward nephews/nieces, recluses, hitchhikers, runaways, as well as subtle suggestions of lesbians, lavender males, and relatives who are a little too fond of each other. This is the Perry subversive strain at its best.

     This more or less gets us back to the pleasures offered by the program, and much of the credit has to go to the overall production design and high quality of delivery each week. And yes, there are a few clinkers along the way, but the highly consistent level of quality was a small miracle given the time and budget constraints, and in this context long-time executive producer Gail Patrick Jackson must be noted as one the true unsung heroines of the Perry universe.4

     But in my case the appeal of Perry and -like shows from television’s Golden Age might be more personal. A recent viewing of a Twilight Zone marathon on the H&I network underscored this fact, especially so because I’m of sufficient certain years to have seen some of the TZ episodes when they were first broadcast back in the day. They say you can’t go home again, but experiencing these black and white gems allows us to re-live slivers of memorable early experiences, however different their present contexts may be. In a word, we invoke that overused term nostalgia, or put another way, the uncomplicated memory of a simpler time, and childhood recollections of baseball, visits to the lake, picnics in the park, and ice cream floats at Dairy Queen, all of which I suppose falls under the umbrella of nostalgia.

     But as the fellow said, I begin to digress. The multiple pleasures of the Perry show, yes. With no disrespect to the yeoman work done by writers, directors, composers, cameramen, and regular cast members, for me the greatest joy of watching and re-watching the Perry’s is the pleasure received from the guest casts, and in particular how well matched actor and character are in the great majority of stories.5 A special delight is that so many of the players are veterans of classic film – the Forties and Fifties especially, and in some cases even earlier – with a goodly number who were prominently featured in films noirs, and this in part reinforces the impression that the Perry show was television noir.
Much as Alfred Hitchcock famously pronounced that a thriller is only as good as its villain, we might say that a Perry episode is only as good as the guest cast, and I challenge any Perryphile to name a truly memorable episode that had a middling cast.

     By the way, I define guest casts to be those who play characters associated either directly or indirectly with the victim: spouses, relatives, significant others, business partners, witnesses, lawyers, agents, employees, clients, and of course the victim and eventual revealed culprit. To this group I would arbitrarily add the six pinch-hitting lawyers who filled in when Mason/Burr was out due to injury or illness. Excluded are anyone in official capacity: judges and medical examiners, assistant district attorneys, policemen, court clerks and guards/matrons, many of whom appear on multiple occasions and might be considered regular cast members.6

     A curious note: numerous guest performers appear more than once. Julie Adams, Virginia Field, Ruta Lee, Dabbs Greer, Whit Bissell, Richard Erdman, Mala Powers, Lisa Gaye, and Gloria Talbott are only a few examples. But what’s interesting is that no guest player ever repeats an exact character. Character types, yes, almost to the point of typecasting: Stuart Irwin and Robert Harris as sweating neurotics; Patricia Barry as duplicitous femmes fatales; Anne Barton and Bethel Leslie as long suffering wives; Bill Williams as abrasive villains; Kathryn Givney as dictatorial, eminently unpleasant, family matriarchs; Richard Erdman, William Campbell, and Harry Jackson as scheming ne'er-do-wells.

     Then there’s another group that falls somewhere in-between guest casts and regular cast members, and that’s the various extras and bit players who show up in numerous contexts – we glimpse them in restaurants, offices, night clubs, department stores, casinos, hotel lobbies, sidewalks, hallways, at the circus, racetrack, theater and other public venues – but most of all in the courtroom galleries and juries. Certain actors and actresses appear again and again, and it’s never clear whether they’re actually playing the same character each time. Some of the more visually prominent individuals include: Pencil Mustache Man, ‘Sasha Magaloff,’ Little Old Lady in a Hat, various Distinguished Ladies and Distinguished Gentlemen, Cute Brunette, Mediterranean Girl, and the Purple Woman Girl.7 There are probably others and I can’t claim to have listed them all. It’s in this group that we come to my favorite, ‘Miss Carmody.’

     By the way, just so there's no confusion, a second 'Miss Carmody' appears in Season 8 in the person of a 'Sharon Carmody' (played by Mary Ann Mobley), a one-off character who has no connection to the ubiquitous Miss Carmody that's our concern here. Our Miss Carmody is an attractive, elegantly coiffed and dressed, thirty-something blonde whom we frequently see in the gallery. The actress’s name has never been revealed in the credits, and initial research suggests she may have worked as an extra in other venues in addition to Perry, but I've yet to confirm.

     As for her Perry Mason contributions, ‘Miss Carmody’ appears in multiple guises – secretary, waitress, greeter, nurse, grocery store customer, receptionist, racetrack fan, restaurant customer, and of course face in the gallery – and we’re never certain whether she’s always playing the same character or multiple ones. By the way her name derives from the identity of a character she played in the “Blushing Pearls” episode. Curious that she didn’t receive a credit for this performance, playing a crucial, if peripheral, character. Miss Carmody’s appearances run the gamut of all nine seasons and while it’s a subjective thing I think she actually became more attractive as she got older. It's always fun for me to stumble upon a Miss Carmody sighting in a Perry. I scan the galleries to see what folks are there and in particular to find out if Miss C will turn up. In any event, stay tuned for further thoughts on Perry, Miss Carmody and the rest of the Perry universe.

    1 Further reading: Heather L. Rivera and Robert Arp, Perry Mason and Philosophy: The Case of the Awesome Attorney, (Popular Culture and Philosophy), Open Court, 2020; Thomas Leitch, Perry Mason (TV Milestones), Wayne State University Press, 2005; Elayne Rapping, Law and Justice as Seen on TV, NYU Press, 2003; J. Madison Davis, "The Life and Times of Perry Mason: The Evolution of Today's Legal Thrillers," World Literature Today v86 n6 (Nov.-Dec. 2012), pp 9-11.
    2 To the Perry creators’ credit they avoided casting African-Americans in clichéd or negative roles such as drug dealers, pimps, maids, mob bosses, prostitutes, athletes, entertainers, or destitute poor. Curiously, it’s the Hispanics (Mexicans and Mexican-Americans mostly) who get the short end in the Perry universe, as they are frequently portrayed stereotypically by vocation, accent, or clothes. Another group that gets the worst of it are the Native Americans. I could be wrong but I don't recall ever seeing a character played by a Native American actor, even in a bit part or cameo.
    3 The Twilight Zone went Perry one better with an episode (“The Big Tall Wish”) with a near all-black cast.
    4 A fun bit of trivia: in 1932 Gail Patrick Jackson, who then went by ‘Gail Patrick’, was one of the four finalists in the national contest for the coveted role of the Panther Woman in the horror cult classic Island of Lost Souls. She lost out to Kathleen Burke but later commented that losing the Panther Woman contest was the best thing that ever happened to her. She went on to a successful career as an actress, mostly in B movies, but is best remembered today for her work with the Perry show.
     5 Alas, my enthusiasm for the guest casts is tempered by a certain sadness when I contemplate that almost all of the cast members, guest and regular, have passed on. To see them perform at their absolute peak, both physically and artistically, is always a privilege, and it serves as a sobering reminder that none of us is immortal and it's always a stacked deck when we're playing the mortality hand.
    6 Many of the thespians of officialdom appear multiple times playing the same character, especially the judges. Exceptions: in one case a judge was also a guest cast member, and that was Lillian Bronson, who appeared as a judge three times and once as the doting housekeeper who looks after “The Sulky Girl." Other exceptions are 'Miss Carmody,' who, in addition to her many guises, had also appeared as a jail and court matron, and Don Dubbins, who was a Deputy D.A. three times and other characters in four stories.
     Paul Fix was a kind of hybrid in the guest cast/not guest cast sweepstakes. He appeared in five episodes as a District Attorney. In four of the five appearances the character's name was Hale, and in one no name was given. In each episode he was the District Attorney, but the story took place in a different city each time.
    7 For me it’s fun to speculate on these and other uncredited performers: who were these actors and actresses anyway? What happened to their careers? Could someone make a living by appearing as an extra and bit player? Did they appear in other TV series? How were they selected, and why did certain individuals like Miss Carmody become such favorites?

too late for tears : Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant (1972)

   
    Die bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant: ein Krankheitsfall gewidmet dem, der hier Marlene wurde = The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. Written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Janus Films; Tango Film Produktion. Originally produced as a motion picture in 1972. Kurt Raab, art director; Michael Ballhaus, cinematographer; Maja Lemcke, contume designs; Thea Eymèsz, editor. ISBN: 9781604659405; ISBN: 1604659408. The Criterion collection, 740. Disc 1: feature film; disc 2: bonus features.
   Performers: Margit Carstensen, Hanna Schygulla, Katrin Schaake, Eva Mattes, Eva, Gisela Fackeldey, Irm Hermann. Summary: One of the earliest and best-loved films of this period in Fassbinder's career, which balances a realistic depiction of tormented romance with staging that remains true to the director's roots in experimental theater. This unforgettable, unforgiving dissection of the imbalanced relationship between a haughty fashion designer and a beautiful but icy ingenue is based on a sly gender reversal of the writer-director's own desperate obsession with a young actor.
   Special features: Disc 2: Outsiders (documentary features actors Margit Carstensen, Eva Mattes, Katrin Schaake, and Hanna Schygulla discussing the production of the film and their experiences working with director Rainer Werner Fassbinder); Michael Ballhaus interview; Jan Shattuc interview; Role play: women on Fassbinder (1992 German television documentary by Thomas Honickel featuring interviews with actors Margit Carstensen, Irm Hermann, Hanna Schygulla, and Rosel Zech); New English subtitle translation. Insert, essay by critic Peter Matthews.

    I discovered Rainer Werner Fassbinder rather late in life, at sixty something years to be more or less exact, and by a most indirect route. I’d seen a few snippets of his films [1], but as far as I knew nothing all the way through. And I’d heard his name mentioned in film groups, lectures and documentaries. This is quite a confession from a self-anointed film buff who prides himself on his offbeat tastes, which include foreign movies. Only later did I discover that Fassbinder was the most prominent exponent of the New German Cinema that emerged in the 1970s, and arguably the most important German director since the great auteurs of the 1920s and 1930s.

    The roundabout way I came across Fassbinder was, appropriately enough, via a Douglas Sirk movie, the 1954 weepie Magnificent Obsession. Sirk was also German by birth but Americanized by profession and career. My Fassbinder discovery moment, or more specific, the discovery of his importance, insofar as it applies to Sirk, was via the commentary track of Magnificent Obsession, in which it was mentioned that the two main factors in the Sirk renaissance of the 1990s were feminism and Fassbinder. Later I learned that Fassbinder was an admirer of Sirk's films and moreover that his Ali: Fear Eats the Soul was a kind of remake of Sirk's All That Heaven Allows.
    But getting back to Bitter Tears, and even as a Fassbinder novice, for me this has to be the director’s ultimate masterpiece. The amazing camera movements, poetically incisive script, surreal set, and spot on performances he draws from the all-women cast are little short of miraculous for one of 27 years at the time, even taking into consideration that the film’s fluid visuals and high gloss look may be as much the contributions of cameraman Michael Ballhaus and costume designer Maja Lemcke as that of Fassbinder’s auteurist vision.
    As an aside, I invoke the inevitable, and admittedly facile, comparison, specifically the seemingly ever hovering ghost of Orson Welles (actually Welles was alive and kicking – and making movies – in the early Seventies and didn’t pass on until over a decade later). Anyhow I’m tempted to call Fassbinder the German Orson Welles – but I won’t. Still, and much like Welles, Fassbinder never quite repeated the pinnacle he achieved in the extraordinary early effort that was Bitter Tears (though for some devotees the true pinnacle is Ali: Fear Eats the Soul). Another aside: I have to wonder, this time a Kane-esque reference: did Fassbinder have total artistic control, including final cut approval, over Bitter Tears, a control he might not have had in later efforts? Given how much of a control freak Fassbinder reportedly was, it would be surprising if he didn't demand total authority over all his productions. Whether he got it is another matter.
    Yet another Welles connection, of a sort. Both Welles and Fassbinder were reputed to be short tempered, intimidating, and domineering taskmeisters, to the point of threats of physical violence for noncompliance on Fassbinder’s part. But this reputation has to be treated with kid gloves: there are also stories that Welles at least was wonderful to work with. So who can say? Incidentally both frequently appeared as characters in their own films, usually as the villain or otherwise playing an unpleasant sort.
    Speaking of casts, the aforementioned all-female cast of Bitter Tears is a marvel and Fassbinder gets the absolute most out of his hand-picked divas, especially Margit Carstensen in the performance of a lifetime. Throughout the film she seems to be channeling Joan Crawford – and more than a pinch of Norma Desmond – with her intense acting style. As a nice contrast we have Katrin Schaake as Petra’s best pal Sidonie, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Liza Minelli’s Sally Bowles, not least for her Twenties style hairdo. Both films were released in 1972 and the similarity may be coincidental, but considering the films’ strong German elements one has to wonder. It must be admitted, however, that Cabaret’s German-ness is achieved more by proxy (i.e. setting and era) than actual production.
    Then there’s the enigmatic, unspeaking Marlene (Irm Hermann), who functions as a kind of companion/servant/secretary and all-around Sancho Panza to Petra. But she could be many more things, and various interpretations have spewed forth. Since we see her working on Petra’s designs, and we never actually see Petra working, is she a kind of fashion design ghostwriter for her mistress? In any case it’s hard to imagine anyone else playing the respective characters in Bitter Tears [2], and maybe not too much of an exaggeration to opine that these will be the roles the actresses are remembered for, quite a claim given their long and distinguished careers.
    I leave to others to sort out Bitter Tears’ socio-economic, psychosexual, existential, and even political undercurrents. And as much as Tears deals with archetypal themes like lust, betrayal, obsession, narcissism and the like, it’s still a work of its time. To wit, and strangely enough perhaps, with its close to the bone, unsentimentalized view of the human condition, Tears strikes me as similar in tone and execution (if infinitely more polished and classy) to the slice-of-life, rough around the edges movies popular in the U.S. during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Of course one could make the same claim for any number of Fassbinder films. In any case, the lack of a music score also contributes to the Bitter Tears' verismo, somewhat voyeuristic vibe. Actually there is music, of a sort. Source music, compliments of The Platters, the Walker Brothers, and Giuseppe Verdi intermittently wafts in the background.
    Whatever the film’s aesthetic or other subtexts, I prefer to appreciate The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant as pure cinema. And what cinema it is, incredibly rich, multi-faceted, beautiful to look at, and eminently rewarding of repeated viewings. In a word, everything works in this movie, and its stately paced 124 minutes never seem to drag.

     1 To date I’ve only seen a minimum of his considerable oeuvre: Lili Marleen, Bitter Tears, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and Faustrecht der Freiheit in their entirety, and snippets of Veronika Voss, Despair, and Berlin Alexanderplatz.
   2 The stunning Hanna Schygulla takes the role of the beautiful ingenue Karin, whom Petra, Pygmalion-like, decides to mold into a top fashion model. Here we see echoes of Hitchcock and his control over his icy blonde actresses, as well as the makeover(s) – first by Tom Helmore and later by James Stewart – of Madeline (Kim Novak) in Vertigo. Then again, Petra’s brutal dismissal of Karin – “no, she’s not talented, she just sells herself well” – might be an unconscious self-indictment. Perhaps it’s Fassbinder’s sly way of reminding us that there’s a thin line between ‘genius’ and salesmanship. An interesting bit of trivia: Margit Carstensen was only three years older than Hanna Schygulla, though the characters they portray seem to have a much greater age difference: Karin is perhaps in her early twenties and Petra fortyish.

"I have a taste for poison" : Quo Vadis (1951)

      Quo Vadis. Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Produced by Sam Zimbalist; screenplay by John Lee Mahin and S.N. Behrman, Sonya Levien; directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Based on the novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz. Originally produced as a motion picture in 1951. Performers: Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, Leo Genn, Peter Ustinov, Patricia Laffan, Finlay Currie, Nora Swinburne, Buddy Baer, Marina Berti, Abraham Zofaer. Summary: the story of Emperor Nero’s persecution of the Christians set against the canvas of the decadence and decay of the Roman Empire.

     In a separate post I wrote, favorably, of the of the movie Pompeii. It inspired me to investigate, among other things, volcano stories. But the theme of Ancient Rome led me elsewhere, specifically to those bloated late Forties and early Fifties epic movies, for which, guilty pleasure-esque, I confess a fondness. One of my favorites is Quo Vadis.

     To be sure, there are things about QV I’m not so fond of: the slow patches, Finlay Currie’s heavy-handed monologues, the overture, the romantic subplot with the Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr characters. But these quibbles can be overlooked in view of the pluses: the huge spectacle, costumes and sets; Strelsa Brown’s golden-voiced invocation of the gods; Peter Ustinov’s serious scenery chewing as Nero, as well as his more low keyed interactions with mentor and ‘critic’ Petronius (Leo Genn). Finally the Miklos Rosza score which set the template for historical epics.

     But for my money the best thing about QV is Patricia Laffan’s scrumptious turn as Empress Poppea. Everything about her – wardrobe, pet leopards, sideways glances, nibbling on a red tinted magnifying glass, munching grapes as she watches lions devour the Christians, and not least, her plummy, slithering enunciation – just screams glorious excess and depraved sexuality. But there’s nothing screaming or excessive about her performance, which can be described as a miraculous tightrope walk of understated nuance combined with touches of high camp.

     I’m not familiar with Miss Laffan’s theatre work but it’s no exaggeration to say she was criminally underutilized as a film actress [1]. To be sure there were a few minor roles, including nice cameos in Shoot First and 23 Steps to Baker Street. Alas she’s best remembered today as the man-hungry Nyah in the sci-fi cult classic Devil Girl From Mars. But we're the richer for her supreme cinematic moment, which occurs in a far more worthy vehicle, namely Quo Vadis, where she plays, well, a different kind of man-eater, one with greater appetites and literally much more color.

Slithering malice

     We first view her in QV, significantly, from the back, which gives us a pleasing peek at her topographic charms. Reclining resplendent in green dress and regal purple cape, leopards in tow, Poppea observes the ponderous goings on at Nero’s court. She appears to be both bored and suspiciously alert, but in any case her visage suggests she just can’t wait for all the pomp to be over so she can get back to her scheming. Miss Laffan must have enjoyed this role immensely as she chews over every line she speaks, suggestively projecting the character’s barely concealed sadism and perverse lust. In fact so serpentine is her Poppea that we have to wonder: was the historical Poppea as irredeemably evil and corrupt as the portrayals in pop culture make her out to be? Maybe so. This was Ancient Rome after all.

     In any case has an actress ever brought elegantly sinister depravity to the screen with such relish, and in such a sensually alluring package? [2] Most of all, we admire her pluck. Much as Poppea always seems to be pre-empting Nero in Quo Vadis, it’s only appropriate that Patricia Laffan, the actress who embodies Poppea, does the equally impossible: (almost) upstaging Peter Ustinov, in his signature role at that [3].

[1] Incredibly, aside from QV and the aforementioned 23 Steps, Patricia Laffan made no American films, and even these two films have dubious American bonafides, one shot in Italy with a largely British cast and the other shot in and around London. Maybe the filmmakers thought her screen persona was too Lady Macbeth-like and as a result she’d be hard to cast.

[2] For all her beauty and ability as an actress, Claudette Colbert, the Poppea from Sign of the Cross (1932), nude milk bath and all, simply can’t compare, at least in this writer’s humble opinion.

[3] Aside from Ustinov I've pretty much neglected the rest of the mostly splendid cast. Leo Genn as Petronius and Rosalie Crutchley as Acte especially shine. The one weak link is Robert Taylor, whose bland presence and Midwestern twang seems singularly out of place amongst the other cast members' savoire faire and cultivated Brit accents.  

any dream was better than no dream ... The Day of the Locust (1975)

   The Day of the Locust [DVD]. Hollywood, Calif.: Paramount Pictures, 2004. John Schlesinger, director. Based on the novel by Nathanael West. Director of photography, Conrad Hall; music, John Barry; editor, Jim Clark. Summary: a naive young set designer seeks work in Tinseltown and falls in love with an aspiring actress who lives with her alcoholic father, a former vaudevillian entertainer turned snake oil salesman. Originally produced as a motion picture in 1975. Performers: Karen Black, Burgess Meredith, Donald Sutherland, William Atherton, Richard A. Dysart, Geraldine Page, Paul Stewart.


     John Schlesinger’s bitterly sardonic take on Nathanael West’s blistering novel hasn’t lost any of its bite even today, a half century later. Alas, like West’s novel, the film version languishes under the radar, and indeed a reconsideration of both is long overdue [1]. Day of the Locust is in the tradition of such gloves-off portrayals of the dark side of the movie business the likes of Sunset Boulevard and The Bad and the Beautiful, just more so. At 144 minutes Locust is a tad long with many weird detours, dead ends and lost weekends, but director Schlesinger keeps things moving apace so well that we don’t really notice.    

     First, a comment on the look of the movie. Locust is at heart a dark fairy tale – some would say a horror film – that takes place (nearly) nine decades ago. Yes, it’s still the Depression [2]. Thus it deserves a strange look, and gets it, filmed through a mist-like gauzy overlay that actually adds to the film’s mystique. Moreover, the story is rendered through a prism of mid 1970s cinéma vérité aesthetic, Seventies style slice-of-life chic if you will, but in this case a glamorous, if falsely so, slice.

     For me the centerpiece of the film, figuratively and literally – it takes place about half way through – is the visit to Big Sister’s revival. It breezes by much too quickly and ostensibly doesn’t have a lot to do with the Hollywood milieu, then again maybe it does. The revival meeting's schtick is really a massive production number that mirrors the hype and glitz of Hollywood productions. Entertainment and show business by any other name, while the ka-ching of cash registers and the counting of money provide a realpolitik if admittedly heavy-handed obbligato [3]. Moreover, the religious frenzy at the revival parallels the later, gaudy opening night extravaganza, complete with de rigueur searchlights, of DeMille’s The Buccaneer. In the latter the potential for violence releases itself in an orgy of destruction and rampant savagery that still shocks even today in our supposedly seen-and-heard-it-all world. Perhaps the gala opening is a metaphor for American society itself in the Thirties, but it actually comes too close for comfort in our supposedly more enlightened 21st Century: the fans who jostle, shove and gouge for a glimpse of the god- and goddess-like stars are selfish, materialistic sorts, obsessed with the glamor of the illusion, or is it the illusion of glamour? Either way, the various losers, hangers-on, and assorted white trash that do their best to crash the première mirror the locust-like little people that litter the film and which Tod keeps bumping into. In Nathanael West’s vision even those on the inside or the fringes will be pulled down into the Hadean cauldron with the rest of us ordinary mortals. And seemingly benign characters such as Hackett, Claude Estee and Helverston, because of their very casual cruelty and aloofness to the industry's savage indifference to the little guy, are more loathsome than the various abrasive grotesques that flit in and out.
    By the way, Geraldine Page is wonderful as the evangelist with pizazz, the aforementioned Big Sister, one of those offbeat characters she does so well. The role actually anticipates – by nearly a half century – similar characters in the television miniseries Penny Dreadful: City of Angels and Perry Mason (they just love including those Thirties-era spiritual leaders as secondary characters in Hollywood period pieces). As the fellow said, the end times may be upon us, but they can be very entertaining. 

     But in a movie of myriad disturbing images and scenes, for me the most brutal and heartless of the lot is the impromptu cockfight which looks all the world like the real thing. Truly a heartbreaking result as a bloodied animal lies on the floor, probably mortally wounded. Perhaps appropriately, after the cockfight the spectators enjoy a dinner party that transitions to a kind of PG-rated bacchanal, with Faye as the main attraction.

"magic is what I'm selling"

     But getting back to humans, the various losers, grotesques and other outsiders who populate Locust, waiting at the stop sign of life for their one big break, are actually depicted in one of Hackett’s tableau as three chalk faced folks wait on a bench at a bus stop. West himself had a love-hate relationship with the film industry that mirrored his own contradictory nature: he was both a romantic and cynic; a plagiarist who was also a gifted, original writer; a savage critic of the Hollywood dream who never quite gave up on the dream.

     In any case, West knew of what he spoke: he toiled as a writer of B scripts and like Locust’s hero Tod Hackett lived in dive hotels and run-down apartments. He knew all too well the labyrinthine mechanics of the movie business and the frustrations of the extras, bit players, assistant directors, and, lowest of all, writers. Tod Hackett, Locust’s hero and arguably a West self-portrait, is one of the few haves in a world of have-nots. A rather high-minded artiste just beginning his career as a set designer, he struggles to come to terms with going Hollywood, and appropriately his opus maximus, created on the sly, is a painterly tableau titled “The Burning of Los Angeles.”
     Along the way Hackett encounters various seedy and colorful characters, among them an actress neighbor who catches his eye. He also crosses paths with the actress’s father, a washed-up vaudevillian turned snake oil salesman, as well as a certain Homer Simpson, onetime accountant convalescing in California’s balmy climate. Monosyllabic cowboys, amorous Mexicans, and a curmudgeonly midget named Abe Kusich add to the mix. Not many of the characters who populate Locust are likable, not even the ostensible good guy Tod. But that was the idea: West wanted to portray the desperate low-lifes and perpetual wannabes existing under the façade of Hollywood glitz and glamour. Unpalatable the little people may be, we still feel sympathy for them and this is part of West’s genius.

     All these elements are beautifully realized by the film, especially the performances, which are generally over-the-top, and rightly so. This makes them so on the money because the exaggerated deliveries are in their way genuine, masking as they do the desperation and disappointment the characters feel. Meriting a singling out are Karen Black in the performance of a career as the vacuous Faye Greener, Burgess Meredith as Faye’s alcoholic father, Natalie Schafer as brothel madam Audrey (a long way from hoity-toity Mrs. Howell), and the great Billy Barty as the obstreperous dwarf Abe Kusich. More sedate are a bland William Atherton as our nominal hero Tod Hackett and Richard Dysart as a cold fish Hollywood executive with a taste for softcore porn and high class call girls. Good performances, true, by Atherton and Dysart but as haves in a world of have nots their characters can afford to be more guarded and reserved. Contrary to the critical and fan rave reviews for Donald Sutherland, I wasn’t taken with his zombie-like interpretation of the Homer Simpson.

     My only complaint is that the Paramount DVD has zero bonus features, a major oversight considering the film’s literary, historic and aesthetic connections. There seems to be a ‘limited edition’ blu-ray, which I understand has a generous sampling of supplements. And this is only just. Day of the Locust is a forgotten masterpiece that deserves a presentation and packaging worthy of its stature.   

   [1] To be technically correct, academics and cultists have long been familiar with West’s magnum opus, but among the general public West doesn’t have the high profile of the likes of Hammett, Chandler, and Cain.  

   [2] I may have missed it but I don’t recall any overt references to the year in which Locust is taking place. But from all the clues we’re given I place it to be ca. 1938.

   [3] The show biz connection couldn't be made plainer when Harry hallucinates that his on-stage 'cure' is another performance and the ecstatic faithful are his audience. 'I stole the show,' he later reminisces.

a ghost of a chance with you ...

     The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation; produced by Fred Kohlmar; screenplay by Philip Dunne; directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz; director of photography, Charles Lang, Jr.; music, Bernard Herrmann. Burbank, Calif. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, [2013]. Originally produced as a motion picture in 1947. From the novel by R.A. Dick (pseud. Josephine Leslie).
    Performers: Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison, George Sanders, Natalie Wood, Vanessa Brown, Edna Best, Anna Lee, Robert Coote. Special features: commentaries by Greg Kimble, Christopher Husted, Jeanine Bassinger and Kenneth Geist; biography: "Rex Harrison: the man who would be king"; theatrical trailer; still gallery. Summary: at the turn of the century a young widow and her daughter move into a cottage on the English coast. Soon she learns that the cottage is haunted by the ghost of its former owner, a sea captain. When he finds he can't scare her away, they soon fall into a most unlikely love affair.


    Dating as it does from an era rife with ghost movies (most of them silly comedies), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, along with The Uninvited, is my favorite [1]. That being said, I reluctantly admit that in my most recent viewing I was somewhat less taken with Mrs. Muir than I had been in the past. Still, the film is a triumph, an under the radar gem that has crept up in critical and popular esteem over the years. Update: a second viewing, this one with the superb commentary by Greg Kimble and Christopher Husted, has inspired me to warm to the film a little more and further appreciate its many felicities, albeit within its historical and stylistic context. By the way, I’m less enthusiastic about the second commentary track by Jeanine Bassinger and Kenneth Geist.

    But getting back to ghost movies: curious that so few reviewers and commentators note the obvious parallels to The Uninvited [2]. Both are gothicized tales set on the English sea coast, both have the requisite haunted house (and attendant film noirish look), both deal with issues of love beyond death, both are set in the early Twentieth Century [3], and, perhaps most important, both treat their subjects seriously (though Mrs. Muir has its share of lighter moments). Both films also reflect the unseen presence of Orson Welles, and both are obvious first cousins to the Val Lewton supernatural noir thrillers of the 1940s. But despite the similarities in content and even style, somehow the tone is different. Partly this is a result of director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s emphasis on words and script, thus Mrs. Muir has a more writerly and dialogue-rich sheen, especially the snappy back and forth between Harrison and Tierney. As mentioned above, Mrs. Muir is almost a comedy, but, happily, not quite. It pulls off its comic elements with pitch perfect timing, never overstaying the welcome. In contrast, Uninvited’s attempts at humor seem heavy footed and out of place.
   

    In any case, the performances in Mrs. Muir are all right on the money. It took me a while to warm to Rex Harrison, but I think he got better as the film progressed and the character softened. However, it’s Gene Tierney’s movie and, for me, the performance of a career. Her Brit accent sounds authentic enough, and the subtleties she brings to the character are a wonder. I think her acting is even better as the elderly Lucy Muir, who gets more sympathetic as she ages while at the same time becomes crankier. And of course George Sanders is terrific in a very George Sanders type of role as the charming cad. That he could put across this kind of character in his sleep shouldn’t lessen our appreciation of his marvelous portrayal. Among the supporting cast especial mention must be made of Vanessa Brown as the adult version of Anna. Echt-English in appearance and accent, she’s just right, and I wish she’d had a bigger role. The short scene between her and Tierney is perhaps the most moving in the entire film. As Herrmann’s score wafts in the background, they talk about the ghost, life and love, and it’s hard to hold back the tears. Finally, amongst the supporting players, if you like, there’s the seemingly inevitable cute yorkie in a movie with this setting and era (there’s also a cute yorkie in Uninvited, by the way).

     Bernard Herrmann’s music for Mrs. Muir (reputedly his personal favorite among his film scores) has been praised to the skies, deservingly so. Alas, my DVD copy frequently minimized the music or in some cases rendered it inaudible, buried as it were beneath the dialogue. This is especially unfortunate since the obscured passages are among the most exquisite in the entire film. Anyhow the music’s low keyed eloquence suggests a longing for the infinite, a love beyond death that’s the raison dêtre for the entire story. Indeed it’s not too much of an exaggeration to say the music really carries the movie, more than any other element. There’s a feeling of melancholy that, if you’ll pardon the pun, haunts the entire film, and the music perfectly expresses and contributes to this sense of longing, regret and unrequitedness. In contrast, Victor Young’s lushly romantic score for Uninvited, perfect in its way, really can’t compare – in style or aesthetic merit.
    To summarize, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir is a perfectly wonderful movie: it brings together all the elements to form a near flawless work of art. In doing so it represents what was best about moviemaking in the studio era.   

[1]  As readers of this blog must divine, I’m a big fan of the above-mentioned Val Lewton psychological horror films from the 1940s, and though it’s a subtle point, I consider them a different animal from both Mrs. Muir and Uninvited: for all their spooky, ghost like ambience, the Lewton films have no ghosts, in fact only a couple of them have overtly supernatural elements, and even these are depicted ambiguously enough to be arguable.     
[2]  Another explanation for the similarity of the films, at least in their look, is the presence of ace cameraman Charles Lang, who did the cinematography for both. Even so, Mrs. Muir has somewhat lighter, crisper visuals than Uninvited, the gloomier look of which is very much appropriate for the dark psychological undercurrents. A personal note: I admire and greatly enjoy both films, but at the moment lean towards Uninvited, but only by a whisker.
[3] Yes, it’s pushing it to say both date from more or less the same era, since Uninvited is set in 1937 and Mrs. Muir ca. 1900. And yet, much of the culture, architecture, and Victorian/Edwardian attitudes are cut from the same cloth.

"no hay banda": Mulholland Drive (2001)

    Mulholland Drive. David Lynch (director, screenwriter), Alain Sarde (producer), Pierre Edelman (producer), Mary Sweeney (producer, editor), Neal Edelstein (producer), Michael Polaire (producer), Tony Krantz (producer), Angelo Badalamenti (composer). Performers: Justin Theroux, Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Ann Miller, Dan Hedaya, Mark Pellegrino. DVD Video, English, 2015. [Director-approved two-DVD special edition]. The Criterion Collection, [New York, N.Y.], 2015. #779. Originally produced as a motion picture in 2001.
    Summary: Betty Elms has only just arrived in Hollywood to become a movie star when she meets an enigmatic brunette with amnesia. Meanwhile, as the two set off to solve the second woman's identity, filmmaker Adam Kesher runs into ominous trouble while casting his latest project.
    Special features: Disc 2: Interviews: David Lynch and Naomi Watts (27 min.); Laura Harring, Johanna Ray, Justin Theroux, and Naomi Watts (36 min.); Angelo Badalamenti (20 min.); Peter Deming and Jack Fisk (22 min.); deleted scene; on-set footage (25 min.); trailer. Includes a booklet featuring an interview with Lynch from filmmaker and writer Chris Rodley's 2005 edition of the book "Lynch on Lynch."
  

Sunset Blvd. meets the Twilight Zone …

     I’m still not sure whether I think Mulholland Drive is the best movie I’ve ever seen, or the worst, as I’ve reacted both ways at different times. No surprise, given the polarized opinions of fans, devotees and (anti)devotees. For the moment I’ll split the difference and opine that Mulholland Dr. is a tad overrated, but still pretty darn good. And even if repeated viewings bring me no closer to understanding the true meaning or correct interpretation, I do confess that I rather enjoy the film more each time I see it.
     Nonlinear story lines in movies have been around a long time [1], and perhaps the most successful, in my opinion, is Last Year at Marienbad. For me Marienbad had a kind of inner logic and consistency – admittedly elusive and difficult to articulate – that nonetheless place it among the truly great. The other movie Mulholland reminds me of, strangely enough, is the offbeat crypto-noir Dementia (aka Daughter of Horror), which also has a dreamscape tableaux, shifting reality/fantasy, off-kilter narrative, femme fatale in peril, nasty villains, and most of all, atmosphere to burn [2].
     But what is MD about? Whatever else it may be, MD for me is at heart a meditation on the dark side of Hollywood, served up full-on phantasmagoric. In a word, MD makes The Big Sleep look like a straightforward crime story and Sunset Blvd. a Hallmark Hall of Fame weepie (coincidentally, both Big Sleep and Sunset Blvd. explore the seamy underbelly of Los Angeles culture and the movie business, but using a different cinematic language).
     Getting back to MD, the first more or less two-thirds of the film seduces us into believing the story is a conventional mystery, albeit with quirky touches, but a mystery that will ultimately give us the payoff (read: solution) at the end. But it’s the last forty-five minutes where things really get weird and play with our expectations big-time. Was it just a dream after all? Parts of it a dream? Or the hallucinations of a mentally ill young woman? And what’s the significance of the cowboy? It’s as though the hall of mirrors scene in The Lady from Shanghai (a film not dissimilar to MD) has transmogrified into the most gloriously excessive cinematic roller coaster, with huge swaths of color and (mostly) beautiful faces set amidst a feverish LA/Hollywood backdrop.
     MD for me is best appreciated as pure style: the acting, camerawork, script, production design, and especially the look of the film are brilliantly done. Make no mistake, MD is beautiful to watch, not the least beauteous being our two leading ladies, who have never looked better, or performed better. And yes, the steamy lesbian scene, the one we wait nearly two hours to get to, is a doozy, guaranteed to get one, shall we say, hot under the collar. The acting throughout is good to excellent, and sometimes just plain eccentric. I’ve already sung the praises of Naomi Watts and Laura Harring. Justin Theroux is fine as a pompous auteur director who’s harassed by shady characters [3], and it’s a joy to see the great Ann Miller in her last film.
     It occurs to me that my comments above (and below) reference lots of movies and their similarities and dissimilarities to Mulholland Dr, and maybe that’s the point, and one way to interpret the film, not only as a pastiche of L.A. but of the movie business and just plain movies, especially old movies (is it any accident that the mystery woman takes the name of ‘Rita,’ after seeing a poster of film noir’s definitive femme fatale, Gilda?). For gosh sakes, Laura Harring even looks like Rita Hayworth [4].   
      Then there’s my own, rather novel take, in which the first two-thirds of the movie (Act 1, if you will) is the reality and the remaining third (Act 2) is the dream sequence (I’ve noticed that few commentators take this approach). There’s a certain logic here: Act 2 is presented more like a dream, or feverish hallucination, depending on your point of view. But this interpretation does have its complications: Act 1 ends abruptly, to say the least, with lots of loose ends left dangling. Case in point: if Act 1 is reality, then who is the dead woman in apartment 17, and why didn’t Betty and Rita do anything about it, like reporting it to the authorities? And there’s the butch tenant who lives in apartment 12. Who is she? Is she the murderer? And what's the significance of Club Silencio? Even with these inconsistencies, seeing Act 1 as the reality is more reassuring and satisfying, certainly emotionally so and also, if debatably, aesthetically. But then again, maybe this movie isn’t about satisfying and reassuring. So there it is.
     My alternate interpretation is that both Acts 1 and 2 are reality, and Act 2 simply updates the story by a year or two. Adam Kesher is at the top of his game and Rita and Betty have fallen out as a couple. Rita is now a rising star in the Hollywood constellation, and just happens to be Kesher's future wife, while Betty's early success in acting has vanished and she now lives a life of semi-poverty and gradual mental disintegration. Betty and Rita have new names - Diane and Camilla respectively - and Ann Miller appears inexplicably as Kesher's mother. Eventually Betty arranges for a contract killer to murder Rita and it's implied that this indeed happens. Perhaps grief stricken, Betty has a complete mental collapse and takes her own life. Then again I wonder, is MD ultimately about mental illness and the collective mental illness the film culture creates?
     Whatever the final verdit on the meaning of Mulholland Drive, I can’t resist seeing the film as ending on a positive note, as the ghost-like images of Rita and Betty are superimposed above the L.A. skyline, implying that our two, presumably deceased, heroines, are finally together, in a kind of Hollywood Heaven.   
     Highly recommended then, with the usual not-for-all-tastes caveat [5].

  1 Even Citizen Kane is nonlinear, if presented in an arguably more audience friendly way.   
   2 Most of these tropes also harken back to the Val Lewton thrillers of the 1940s: bumpy narrative, ambiguous characters, unresolved plot threads, Sapphic undercurrent, mysterious walks at night.* This makes me wonder: is MD really a horror film masquerading as a mystery?
      * Admittedly in the Lewton films the presentation and representation of these tropes is, by necessity (read: censor mandated), less extreme.
   3 Some commentators see a Fellini-like quality in the Theroux character, not altogether inappropriate, since on a superficial level, MD is a very Felliniesque movie. But for me Adam Kesher is more of an Orson Welles, right down to the scene where his project is taken away from him by the Big Money people.
   4 As the story progresses the Rita/Camilla character, both in her actions and looks, takes on a distinctly more sinister, femme fatale edge, almost to the point of predatory and vampiric.
   5 Considering its relatively youthful vintage – not yet a quarter century – Mulholland Dr. is one of the most written about movies of all time. Hundreds, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of posts, articles, reviews, think pieces and such have appeared over time. Ergo the film has been dissected, critiqued, sanctified, pilloried, explained and appreciated from myriad points of view: feminist, (anti)feminist, queer, Freudian, Jungian, socio-economic, racialist, misogynist, surrealist and purely cinematic interpretations have surged forth. The most convincing approach, for my money, is the L.A./Hollywood dark side backdrop,** served up full on neo-noir and told through the lives of the two (or is it four?) women played so well by Mses. Harring and Watts.
    ** By extension one might take the dark Hollywood critique as a metaphor for the basic dishonesty of the American Dream. The patriarchal, capitalistic, commodified, heteronormal model that’s American culture sells us an illusory bill of goods (advertising industry, anyone?), not that different from the Hollywood Dream sold by the forces that make the movies. 
     Interesting here the connection to film noir. The noir pedigree – doomed protagonists, duplicitous femmes fatales, decaying cities, corrupt rich, downbeat endings – that David Lynch draws upon in many of his films and especially Mulholland Dr. might well be seen as the original template for the cinematic critique of the American Dream.