Requiescat in Pace

Though this blog is on hiatus for a few weeks, we must note the passing of Former First Lady Nancy Reagan.  Classic film fans will also recall her career as a Hollywood film actress, as Nancy Davis, and we discussed her role in The Next Voice You Hear (1950) in this previous post.

Condolences to her family and friends.

Ladies of the Noir - Pt 2 - Shadow on the Wall (1950)

Shadow on the Wall (1950) is one of the more unusual examples of film noir in that the hero, the villain, and the victim are all played by females in an era and a genre when a gritty story of intrigue and adventure was mostly told through a male protagonist.

The male protagonist in this story is played by Zachary Scott in a lesser role, but at the same time a very pivotal role. Though he spends a good part of the movie in jail waiting for judgment, he is not relegated to being inconsequential. He is very much a key player, but his fate depends upon the actions of the females.

Scott is married for the second time to a two-timing woman we get rid of early in the film. Or, I should say, Ann Sothern gets rid of her. Miss Sothern’s role here is a bit different than her role we saw here in this post on The Blue Gardenia. There she was typically wisecracking, but here she is more subdued and goes through an interesting transformation. Ann Sothern, with affable if brutal honesty, never thought of herself as a good actress and said as much, but this film gives her a bit more to do than be flippant. She makes a convincing baddie.

Here Miss Sothern is the less glamorous sister of Zachary Scott’s two-timing wife. She begins the film as a likable sister-in-law, and a bit anxious to keep her suave fiancé’s attention. Too late. Her fiancé is having an affair with Mr. Scott’s two-timing wife. Miss Sothern is crushed, once again the victim of her more beautiful sister’s popularity and lack of integrity.

Zachary Scott has just returned home from a trip, and he discovers his wife’s infidelity. Initially stunned, he decides to hold off confronting her until all the guilty parties and injured parties can be together in the same room. In the meantime, he listens to his wife’s lies about where she was all afternoon, and maintains self control even while steam is coming from his ears. He has some souvenirs from the war given to him by a friend he visited. There is a gun among them, which clues us into a future scene of violence.

Barbara Billingsley, The Beaver’s mom, has a brief role as Olga, their maid. I don’t really see her as an “Olga,” but it’s always nice to have the ever-chipper Miss Billingsley drop by.


Young Gigi Perreau plays Scott’s little girl by his first marriage. We see that he has an affectionate relationship with the engaging child. There is a cute scene where she brings in the neighbor boy to watch her father shave, because her pal doesn’t have a daddy and being a boy, he needs to know how to shave. Mr. Scott agreeably conducts a shaving demonstration for the kids.

Because we see that Scott is a nice guy, likes kids, takes over the chore of bathing his daughter, keeps his cool about his two-timing wife, and looks good in a sleeveless undershirt, we form a strong impression of his decency, his intelligence, and his virility early in the film. This is important, because he soon gets hauled off to prison and we could easily forget about him if he were a more dishwater character. But when the action gets going with the trio of females, we never forget about Scott.

It’s kind of like when we watch an old melodrama where the hero and the villain are slugging it out, and somewhere there’s a girl tied up to railroad tracks and the train is coming. We may be watching the fistfight, but in the back of our minds is the girl. And the train. So it is with Mr. Scott. And the electric chair.

There is a confrontation between husband and wife about the infidelity. There is some pushing, the gun gets used, and the husband gets clunked on the head. When he comes to, his wife had been shot dead. He believes he did it, though he does not remember.

The child enters the room as this happens, and when her father is taken to jail, she is remanded to a hospital to treat her psychological trauma. The child has emotionally closed down, and it is up to the doctor, played by Nancy Davis, to help her face the terror she has experienced.


Nancy Davis, the future First Lady as the wife of Ronald Regan, plays her role with an attitude of unemotional professionalism that seems appropriate and rather refreshing. It was, of course, typical for Hollywood heroines to be self-sacrificing and emotional, but here she plays a heroine who really is neither. She is passionate only for the detail of science, and helps the little girl because that is her job, and not for her a particularly womanly crusade. In her play therapy with the child, she is kindly and gentle, but not really motherly. There is always a professional objectivity which is realistic.

Her purpose is only to unlock the girl’s reticence to face her trauma, and to help her to heal emotionally. It is only by accident well on into the film that Miss Davis begins to suspect there is more to the child’s trauma than just witnessing a tragic killing. It occurs to Davis that what the child saw was not her father kill her stepmother, but that somebody else did it. Now Davis must ferret out the truth, not only to help heal the girl, but to save Zachary Scott from the electric chair.

The audience has already been in on the facts of the murder long before Miss Davis figures it out, so we get to watch with anticipation the murky evidence being untangled. We also get to watch the irresistibly fiendish transformation of Ann Sothern.

She begins as the frustrated, bitter younger sister, deeply hurt by her fiancé’s infidelity. We learn, through flashbacks as is typical in film noir, that she burst in on her sister while Scott was still out cold from being clunked on the head, and she shot her sister. It was done all in an unplanned, frantic moment during an argument, and Sothern immediately regrets the deed. Overwhelmed with guilt, she writes a confession.

But she can’t bring herself to go through with confessing. The vision of herself in the electric chair is too strong for her to save the innocent Zachary Scott. She saves her own skin instead. She just walks away and says nothing.

This action changes the course of the film and changes the course of her life. Lying and deception start to come easier to her now, now that it is a matter of her personal survival. Murder starts to come easier, too.

When she gets wind of Dr. Nancy Davis working with little Gigi Perreau to restore her memory of the murder, Miss Sothern panics. She makes two rather dramatic and spine-tingling attempts on the child’s life, both unsuccessful.

One of these involves manipulating a contraption in the hospital where the girl is put to bed in a water bath to relax her, and she is tied into it. Step-auntie Sothern attempts to drown her. The scene where the code red is called and all the medical staff rush to revive the unconscious child is one of those instances we often see in old movies about medical practices that bludgeons our belief. Nurses run from everywhere, and hot water bottles are produced. Hot water bottles? Remember to keep a hot water bottle in your first aid kits. Good for everything from reviving a drowning victim, to heart attack, stroke, snake bite, and iron deficiency.

The key to reviving the child’s memory lies in a doll, a figure of an Indian which reminds Gigi of a shadow she saw on the wall at the moment of her stepmother’s murder. We see, at the very last moment of the film, that the shadow is Ann Sothern in her feathered hat and trench coat, which is duplicated for us in the film’s final moments. This occurs just as Gigi is about to be turned over to evil Step-Auntie’s guardianship, when she will, no doubt, be murdered. We ache to see the little girl turn around and see it and be reminded, and when at last she does, and her emotional logjam is cleared, and we cheer in utter relief. Ann Sothern falls apart. It’s a scene chock full of movie-watching goodness.

When the newly freed Zachary Scott picks up his child from the custody of Nancy Davis, we see that there is none of the typical succumbing by the writers to have Davis and Scott fall in love. This, too, is refreshing, if only because it is logical. Scott looks at Davis with obvious gratitude and respect, but if there is to be an eventual romance between them, we do not suffer it being pasted as an afterthought to the end of the film.

That Davis is the hero of the film is really only due to her meticulous scientist’s review of data. She never turns into crime-solving Nancy Drew. She is as surprised as anybody that her office notes might reveal a mystery.

Gigi Perreau is the victim, but in a very strong role that she plays well. She is at turns rigid, terrified, thoughtful, and introspective and plays the victim of emotional trauma as well as any adult.

Ann Sothern is the villain, but she slides into that role gradually by turns and subterfuge, and shows that almost anybody could be capable of doing the most heinous deeds in order to survive.

It’s also fun that since film noir is a genre of shadows, here we have a film where a particular shadow is the solution to the crime.

Portrait of Jennie (1948)

“Portrait of Jennie” (1948) has become a fantasy classic, but it did poorly at the box office in an era when more realistic films with grittier themes brought new style and energy to Hollywood filmmaking.

It is inevitably unfair to compare a movie with the novel on which it was based because films and novels are apples and oranges. They require different dynamics of storytelling. That being said, it is unfortunate that the depth and gentleness of author Robert Nathan’s prose was not captured in the screenplay for this film. It is also perhaps understandable why it could not.

The film has many attributes that recommend it, including an interesting use of color tinting at the climatic storm scene where with a sudden bolt of lightning, the night sky and the churning surf turn an eerie green and we are jolted from a black and white film to a surrealistic monochromatic color world. This loses some of its powerful effect when we see close-ups of Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten, their faces also tinted green, and the dramatic eeriness merely becomes grotesque and bizarre. At the very end of the film, we see the finished painting of Jennie in full Technicolor.

The location shooting in New York City with its many scenes set on city streets and in Central Park, and the overhead shots of Manhattan and the skyline are impressive, as well as the use of Graves End Light in Boston Harbor to stand in for the lighthouse where Eben and Jennie struggle against the tidal wave.

The cast of the film are superb, with the luminescent Jennifer Jones seemingly re-creating the unselfconscious innocence which won her the Academy Award in “Song of Bernadette” (1943) as she plays Jennie, who ages from a girl at the beginning of the film (with some costuming and trick photography), to a young woman by the end of the film. Joseph Cotten plays what is probably one of his last roles as a romantic lead, the down and out artist struggling to find his muse. The wonderful Ethel Barrymore has a pivotal role as Miss Spinney, the crusty art dealer who spurs Eben’s genius and changes his fortunes, and displays unaccustomed sympathy to a young artist who is clearly lost and heartsick.

Lillian Gish plays a small role as Jennie’s teacher, Mother Mary of Mercy with that famous silent movie expressive face. It is a shame that Miss Barrymore and Miss Gish have no scenes together. That would be something. It’s interesting that these two grand dames of theatre and the early days of film had so much history and experience behind them, and yet were nowhere near done with their working years. Miss Gish, in particular, kept working practically until she died at close to 100 years of age. It’s always great to see the very old partnered on screen with the very young.

David Wayne as Gus makes a strong film debut in this film, and at the very final scene we see three teenaged girls who all went on to careers in film, television, and the White House. They are Anne Francis, Nancy Olson, and Nancy Davis, who we last saw (see entry December 27, 2007) in “The Next Voice You Hear” (1950).

The film presents another rare example in Maude Simmons, playing an African-American character which is not stereotyped or demeaned. This was the second of only three film roles ever played by Miss Simmons, who is Clara, a former theatre wardrobe mistress who knew Jennie as a child, “She used to sit on my lap. I used to give her rock candy.” She helps Eben uncover clues about Jennie’s life. She is a stately, well-spoken, gentlewoman. Eben, and we ourselves, are led to her by former theatre backstage figure Pete played by Felix Bressart who directs Eben to Clara and remarks sympathetically, “Those colored people. Very wise people …They know what trouble is.” It is an unusual comment, out of context and having nothing to do with the story, and shows us, perhaps a bit self consciously, that Hollywood is starting to slide out of the era of ridiculous and insulting caricature.

The character of Gus, the taxi driver who befriends Eben and helps in his quest for Jennie, is however changed to a very stereotyped Irishman, with a brogue (who actually plays the harp in one scene) and a comic ethic chauvinism which gets Eben a job painting a mural in a local bar, of the Irish patriot Michael Collins. In the book, the mural is a pastoral scene enlivened by nude maidens in repose. Eben is urged by the skittish bar owner, and jokingly by Gus, to “keep it clean.”

Perhaps the shift to a fully clothed subject is for the benefit of film. However in the novel Gus is not Irish. He is Gus Meyer, a good natured working stiff who mentions his Jewish background, and with his own simple religious philosophizing, provides a springboard to Eben’s spiritual awakening. This spiritual awakening is where the film really differs from the novel.

As Eben considers how Jennie, who ages each time he meets her, could possibly be from another time and who is gradually catching up to him and his time, where she hopes they will eventually be the same age, he spends a great deal of effort rejecting, and then learning to accept the impossible. Author Robert Nathan writes lyrical passages on Eben’s stream-of-consciousness brooding on the unreality presented by Jennie’s existence in his life, and how time could possibly move not in a straight line, but in elliptical patterns. There is a great deal of ruminating on God’s place in this mystery of Jennie.

Mr. Nathan writes, “We think of God, we think of the mystery of the universe, but we do not think about it very much, and we do not really believe that it is a mystery, or that we could not understand it if it were explained to us. Perhaps that is because when all is said and done, we do not really believe in God. In our hearts, we are convinced that it is our world, not His.”

As Eben struggles with rationalizing Jennie’s existence in some sort of time warp, “One must sometimes believe what one cannot understand. That is the method of the scientist as well as the mystic; faced with a universe which must be endless and infinite, he accepts it, although he cannot really imagine it.”

And as Eben finally lets go of his doubt and simply believes for the sake of believing, he grows more confident in the frightening modern world around him and feels safer in it. “Once upon a time, not so very long ago, men thought that the earth was flat, and that where the earth and heaven met, the world ended. Yet when they finally set sail for that tremendous place, they sailed right through it, and found themselves back again where they had started from. It taught them only that the earth was round.

“It might have taught them more.”

Such passages made “Portrait of Jennie” an intriguing and beautifully written novel, and far more spiritual and philosophical than the film, but these are Eben’s thoughts and it is difficult to film first person narrative without clogging the story with a lot of voice over narration. A film cannot be passive; it must have action. This is where the film and the novel differ most. In the novel, Jennie is both Eben’s muse and a real person with whom he begins to fall in love, and she with him. In the movie, it is more of a mystery with Eben’s seeking to prove Jennie’s existence. Not how she could possibly come to him over the mists of time, but is she actually real, or just his imagination?

In the book, Gus actually meets Jennie, as does Eben’s unpleasant landlady, and Miss Spinney reads evidence of her existence from a newspaper report on her being a steamship passenger who was lost at sea. In the movie, nobody sees Jennie but Eben, and the other characters disbelieve him. In the book we also have the colorful character of Arne, Eben’s friend and fellow artist, but unfortunately he is not included in the film.

The great storm in the novel is likely inspired by the unusual Hurricane of 1938, which seemingly came out of nowhere and pummeled a New England unused to tropical storms. With no warning, it left several hundred dead. In the film, the storm is a fictional 1920s event that Eben tries to circumvent and prevent Jennie’s tragic death by putting himself at the place it happened on the date it happened. In the novel, the storm is not foreseen by anything other than a vague premonition by Jennie, because it is not yet part of history. At the end of the novel, both Jennie and Eben are finally together in the present.

This is too ethereal even for a fantasy film, so the film must have more action than the novel and becomes a last minute race to save Jennie and change the course of history.

The film gives us good performances, if a somewhat cumbersome production. Jennifer Jones’ actual portrait was painted for the film by artist Robert Brackman, and producer David O. Selznick, who was also Miss Jones' future husband, reportedly displayed the painting in his home afterwards. Jennifer Jones’ fey qualities and soft voice, and that slight speech impediment all helped to instill a childlike quality to her younger Jennie, who as she ages never loses that clean look of innocence. Mr. Matthews, Miss Spinney’s partner in the art dealership, comments that, “There ought to be something timeless about a woman.” There surely seems to be about Jennifer Jones.

“Portrait of Jennie” was her fourth and final pairing with Joseph Cotten. She was just about to enter her 30s and he was in his mid-40s, and time would not really stand still for either of them, nor their careers.

The Next Voice You Hear (1950)

“The Next Voice You Hear” (1950) has all the typical elements of a 1950s science fiction film. It gives us what are supposed to be typical average Americans becoming completely unnerved by an unexplained and unnatural phenomenon. There is a tense undercurrent running in their not-so-safe-as-they-think world. Then suddenly, they are visited upon by an unstoppable force. In this case, it happens to be the voice of God.

This quiet, fascinating movie has all the footprints of the backwash of World War II and the early days of the Cold War, when the worst trouble the world had ever seen quickly melted away into, not relief, but anxiety-driven competition with Communist bloc countries and nightmares over the atom bomb. The victory proclaimed at the end of the war was lessened by the realization of “what do we do now?” So, too, when God speaks through the radio, the people in this story have to decide is it real, and if so, what we do now?

James Whitmore and Nancy Davis had been in only a few films before they were paired as Joe and Mary Smith in this movie. They have an easy chemistry, at turns joking and teasing; at turns sweetly affectionate. They have a young son, and are expecting the birth of their second child any day. A couple of nice touches in this film include the way Whitmore lightly touches his wife’s face, stroking her with one finger behind her ear, repeated when he wants to comfort her, or just get her attention. Also, the way in which Miss Davis appears beautifully unglamorous, something about her pallid face more than her maternity top tells us not only is she pregnant but is really, really tired of it and just wants to have this baby. It is one of the few films of this period, I think, where the appearance of pregnancy is illustrated a bit more realistically than before.

Also, a note on the score by David Raksin, which we hear at the opening titles and at the end of the film. It is hymn-like, with elements that are both sobering and majestic, and yet there is a wistful, soaring quality to the music that is really very stirring and sweet. Mr. Raksin had also done the haunting score to “Laura” (1944).

The Smiths live in a Los Angeles suburb, in a very small house filled with furnishings that look they came from the box tops mom saves, or from trading stamps. Mr. Whitmore plays a common working man, who takes his lunch to the aircraft factory in a metal lunchbox and gripes about his bullying supervisor. The starter on his car is broken and floods the carburetor every morning. He works as hard as he can but never seems to get ahead, and he worries about his wife and the coming baby. He is a good guy with a bit of a temper, who gets flustered a bit, but clearly loves his family.

Miss Davis plays her typical housewife role with charming understatement. She is quite natural as a woman just as set in her rut as her husband is set in his, and a little desperate as to how to get out of it and not sure that she wants to. She has a way of studying her scene partners, and that goes a long way to create a bond with them for the audience. She exudes warmth in a role that might not otherwise have a lot of meat to it. One is astonished that she will one day, as the wife of Ronald Regan, become First Lady of the United States. Here she is so preoccupied with sneaking a restricted extra piece of bread and butter that we cannot envision her having State dinners in the White House.

There are a lot of quiet, introspective and insightful moments to this film, even when the fireworks start happening when God interrupts our regularly scheduled broadcast to talk on the radio. Even the fireworks are quiet, and we never actually hear the voice of God. The characters do in another room, but our attention is always focused somewhere else so we always miss it. The subtlety with which this film discusses God, possibly the most controversial subject in the history of mankind, is remarkable when we consider that William A. Wellman directed the film. Mr. Wellman brought us gritty gangster films in the 1930s, sexy screwball comedies, and films which pushed the envelope in pre-Code days.

At first Joe Smith thinks the voice of God is a hoax, and there is a funny bit when his wife asks it if sounded like Lionel Barrymore, a staple on radio as much as in the movies, famous for his Scrooge. She also suggests it might be an Orson Welles production, recalling “The War of the Worlds” broadcast of 1938.

God announces he will be with us for the next few days.

“Wouldn’t it be kind of funny if it really was God?” Mary Smith wonders aloud, and we are allowed another of several nice, slow close-ups. The use of silence to increase dramatic tension between characters reminds me a little of director William Wyler’s technique in his films.

The Smiths cannot be bothered fretting over God, though. They have lives to live. Things continually go wrong for Joe, taking over his sick son’s paper route for the day and getting chased by a dog, getting tickets from a traffic cop, getting bawled out at work.

Then another radio message from God seems to indicate the Creator is just as bewildered by them as they are about Him. Some still think it is a hoax, but they read in the newspaper that the voice is heard all over the country and in Europe. The FCC begins an investigation.

Tellingly for the era, there are no reports “from behind the Iron Curtain.” Their son asks Joe Smith how God is heard in France, and Joe responds, “I guess there’s enough people over there that understand English.” But the boy rejects this, deciding that if the voice is really God’s, He could do the impossible and speak to everybody in a way everybody could understand.

“If it’s God, I guess he could do anything.” Children accept the powers of superheroes without analyzing it too much. His dad is still having a problem rationalizing it. His buddies wonder if the Russians are pulling the hoax.

As the days pass, and the radio message from God occurs every night at 8:30, they begin to believe it is Him, and they get freaked. But they still have jobs to go to, even though they begin to await a terrible judgment and everybody washes his car in the neighborhood as if that’s going to set things right with the Lord. Mary has false labor after a panicky rush to the hospital, and wearily, and sheepishly mumbles after a long night, “Feel like such a fool leaving here as big as when I came in.” It is these continual reminders of normality that make the film so compelling, as if they counterbalance this new Twilight Zone world to which they must adjust.

God reminds them of His miracles, things as normal as rain and trees, and prods them to create miracles of their own, “miracles of understanding, and peace, and loving kindness.”

Yet some, like the Smith’s visiting Aunt Ethel, are convinced Judgment Day is at hand and they will be punished. The fear that has been building up over the days is now acute, and erupts, and they fight, and they drink, and they nearly come apart.

Joe Smith confronts his supervisor from work, also his neighbor. He is an atheist and berates Joe, “People silly enough to believe in God are silly enough to believe God’s talking on the radio.” It is a great leveling remark, and when Joe tells him he does not have a right to talk that way, he reminds Joe, and us, that he does.

Joe, Mary, and their son fear God plenty now, and fear the coming of the new baby, as Mary’s mother died in childbirth. They are all obsessed by danger. Eventually, they decide that they should not be afraid of life, and they should not be afraid of God. They still haven’t gotten around to not being afraid of the Russians yet or nuclear war, but one step at a time.

They pull themselves together to face whatever is their inevitable fate, and gather at a packed church where a radio, and not a minister, speaks to them from the pulpit. It seems to say that mass communication has become our new religion, but I suppose that is a topic for another time. Still, the idea is intriguing.

They are told by the announcer that all people of all religions are waiting for God’s message by radio, in churches, temples, synagogues, and mosques. Then his intro for the Almighty, “And the next voice you hear….” is met with silence.

We have another nerve-racking silent moment, and then the minister suddenly realizes that it’s the seventh day and God must be resting.

Show’s over, but the miracles continue as Mary goes into labor and delivers a baby daughter. Her big brother asks dad, “Our baby, what will she do when she’s afraid? She never heard the Voice.” They will just have to tell her about it, and Joe strokes the ear of his drugged up wife as she is wheeled out of the delivery room, to that swelling, sweet music. The film does not always measure up to the sum total of its parts, but it is an intriguing attempt to deal with a difficult subject without being too preachy or contriving a pat solution to our most basic impulse of belief and faith, and what happens when you’re called upon to evaluate all that.