Peering at “The Woman in the Window”

It’s  sometimes comforting, at a time of extreme tension, to return to the past. Maybe that’s why I decided to turn off the news reports coming out of Minneapolis and watch a movie from 1944, The Woman in the Window. This Edward G. Robinson starrer, which I’ve heard described as helping to launch the “film noir” genre, is a taut little thriller also starring Joan Bennett, Raymond Massey, and Dan Duryea. The director is the great Austria-born Expressionist Fritz Lang, whose credits include Metropolis and M, along with (after he came to America) such noir classics as Scarlet Street and Clash by Night.

 One thing that’s refreshing about watching old movies is that we all know the tropes. If a mild-mannered college professor is first seen lecturing his students about the ambiguity of the Biblical injunction “Thou shalt not kill,” we know for certain that someone’s going to die. If a husband stays behind in the city when his wife and kiddies leave for a family vacation, it’s a good bet that he’ll soon have unexpected company. And if he admires a woman’s sultry portrait in a shop window, there’s an excellent chance that said woman will come into his life in a major way. Moreover, those of us with any knowledge about the studios’ adherence to the so-called Hayes Code in this era are quite clear on the fact that any on-screen moral transgression is eventually going to be punished.

 The marvelously versatile Robinson, who had over a hundred acting credits in roles ranging from good guy to bad guy, from leading man to supporting player, has been called the best actor who was never nominated for an Academy Award. (The Academy belatedly granted him an honorary Oscar in 1973, just after his death at age 79). In “The Woman in the Window,” he’s not without complexity. Though a committed family man, he proclaims to his cronies, over drinks at the local club, that life shouldn’t end at forty. He speaks out for the male need to assert oneself, though he ruefully admits that  too often “the flesh is strong but the spirit is weak.” In other words, in the absence of his (rather bland) wife and kids, he’s ripe for an adventure. When the mysterious artist’s model (a stylish Bennett) invites him first to a cocktail lounge and then to her apartment, he’s ready for anything. (Her come-on is that she wants to show him the artist’s sketches that preceded the painting of the portrait he so admires.)

 We don’t know quite what to make of Bennett’s character, nor of the intruder who changes everything. But an escalating series of events leaves Robinson’s Professor Richard Wanley taking charge of hiding a body. This is made even trickier because one of his close pals,  played by the imposing Raymond Massey, is a district attorney who loves talking about the details of his latest big case, and even invites Wanley along to see where the body was found by law enforcement. Uh oh!

  Suspense definitely mounts. But perhaps we have a hunch where all this is going. The film’s trailer, very much in the style of that hyperbolic era, breathlessly promises “the most startling ending ever filmed.” True, the conclusion is well handled by all involved, but I must admit that I wasn’t truly surprised. I had guessed the secret outcome of this film just ten minutes in. Sometimes, though, it’s fun to go on a journey even when you anticipate its outcome. Better by far than being hit by terrible surprises every time we turn on the news. 

 

Mid-Career Kurosawa, both High and Low

"Red Beard"  

 Spike Lee, always shrewd about finding material, turned to a farflung source for his most recent release, Highest 2 Lowest. His inspiration for this contemporary crime story was a 1963 drama by Japanese master cineaste Akira Kurosawa, known as High and Low. (Its original Japanese title, Heaven and Hell, is certainly more vivid.) Kurosawa, who knew something about borrowing from the best, derived his plot from a 1959 thriller by Ed McBain (a pseudonym of Evan Hunter). Both films drew from McBain’s novel the notion of a wealthy, ambitious man secretly scheming to take over his industry, but being derailed along the way by the kidnapping of a child.

 I haven’t seen Lee’s film, which disappeared rather quickly from local theatres, but as a longtime Kurosawa fan I recently watched High and Low, which most critics strongly admire. This is not the visceral Kurosawa of jidaigeki (period costume dramas) like Rashomon, Seven Samurai, and Yojimbo. Nor is it an elegant take on Shakespearean tragedy (see one of my very favorites, Throne of Blood, which is Kurosawa’s remarkable adaptation of Macbeth). High and Low is set in present-day Yokohama, where its central character (Toshiro Mifune, of course) is a successful manufacturer of women’s shoes. (The Spike Lee version makes him a record exec, which is certainly a cooler profession.) A Japanese bullet train plays an important role in Kurosawa’s plot, and the kidnapper also has drug-dealing on his résumé, preying on immigrant communities. 

 High and Low (which spends most of its first half in the main character’s hilltop mansion) seems static and talky at times, but the tension nicely ramps up, and the ending (which apparently Lee doesn’t copy) is thematically as well as dramatically powerful. Kurosawa didn’t plan this ending—in which Mifune and the kidnapper meet face to face under dramatic circumstances—until he saw the intensity of Tsutomu Yamazaki’s portrayal of an angry young criminal.

  For me, one of the intriguing aspects of High and Low is that it is followed in the Kurosawa canon by a film that couldn’t be more different. Red Beard (Akahige, 1965) returns Kurosawa to the Tokugawa period (early 19^th century), when clothing and manners were quite distinct from what they are now. It’s a medical drama (based on a book of Japanese stories) that easily calls to mind such all-American projects as a popular TV series of the era, Dr. Kildare. This long-running series, based on a 1938 Hollywood film, pits an idealistic young doctor (Richard Chamberlain) against a shrewd veteran of the profession (Raymond Massey). During its five-year run, Kildare evolves from intern into experienced physician, tempering his idealism with lessons learned on the job.

 Red Beard is not so very different, though it’s set in an era when medical knowledge is limited and traditional social values are hard to navigate. One distinction is that the film is named after the seasoned doctor, not the young one. The nickname Red Beard refers to the character played by Mifune (in his very last Kurosawa role). He’s a dynamo whose iconoclasm is not always appreciated, though he has a deep commitment to his patients and his profession. Into his clinic comes young Dr. Yasumoto (Yuzo Kayama, whom I well remember as a Japanese pop singer). Yasumoto is cocky about his intended future: he has studied modern medicine at a Dutch clinic in Nagasaki, and he now fully intends to take a cushy post in the court of a local lord. But gradually, under the tutelage of the irascible but brilliant Red Beard, he develop a higher regard for those in genuine need.

 The opinions expressed above are all mine, but for a fascinating in-depth assessment of the  filmmaker at mid-career I strongly recommend Donald Ritchie’s 1965 work, The Films of Akira Kurosawa.

 

 

The Play’s the Thing: "Arsenic and Old Lace"

Once upon a time, hit movies got their start as Broadway plays. This was long true of blockbuster musicals, of course: think of the stage-to-screen metamorphosis of (for example) Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and Fiddler on the Roof. (Today, though musical theatre is a much harder sell than it once was, the current box-office success of the screen’s Wicked reminds us how a beloved stage play can translate into a motion picture bonanza.)  But stage comedies without musical underpinnings have also been the source of screen success. Think back to 1936, and the Kaufman and Hart screwball stage hit, You Can’t Take It With You, about a family of lovable eccentrics whose daughter falls in love with the son of a stodgy banker.  Two years later, the play was filmed with an all-star cast led by Jean Arthur, James Stewart, and Lionel Barrymore, winning Oscars for Best Picture and for Frank Capra’s direction.  

The awards racked up by You Can’t Take It With You may have been somewhat unique (it’s rare for light comedies to take home top prizes), but there was a time when many a Broadway comedy enjoyed additional kudos for its screen iteration. Clearly loads of people who lived far from Broadway were eager to see shows they’d only heard about, especially if their favorite Hollywood stars appeared in the movie version. Here’s one example: a little farce called The Solid Gold Cadillac, a big Broadway hit of the 1954-55 season, was filmed in 1956. The little old lady of the stage version—someone who upends the business world with her unexpected financial savvy—became in the film the much-younger, much-cuter Judy Holliday, who won critical praise and a Golden Globe nomination. 

Which leads me to mention that the little-old-lady star of the original stage version of The Solid Gold Cadillac was Josephine Hull, who was almost 80 when she created the role. Though she lost that part to the thirty-something Holliday, she did appear on screen in several classic stage-to-screen transfers, including Harvey (that’s the one with the invisible rabbit) and Arsenic and Old Lace. For the latter, released on screen in 1944, Frank Capra was again involved. This time the laughs came from a macabre set-up involving a Brooklyn theatre critic whose two sweet elderly aunts have a surprising habit of bumping off lonely old men with glasses of elderberry wine, delicately laced with arsenic, strychnine, and cyanide.

 In the film version, Mortimer Brewster (a newlywed after a lifetime of disparaging marriage) is played by none other than Cary Grant. I’ve enjoyed Grant’s appearances in many film comedies (from Bringing Up Baby to Charade), but this may be his most physical role of all. His job is chiefly to react with astonishment to all the zany, grisly doings occurring around him, and Grant is definitely up to the challenge: watching him drop his jaw, bug out his eyes, and do elaborate double-takes is a masterclass in comedic acting. But there are lots of other talented farceurs involved. Chief among them are Jack Carson as a cop with dramatic ambitions, Edward Everett Horton as the proprietor of a lunatic asylum, Jean Adair as Josephine Hull’s lovably addled sister, and the inimitable Peter Lorre as a surgeon with a serious drinking problem. The stage version had featured Boris Karloff as Mortimer’s disfigured (and very scary) brother. As the biggest name in the cast (as well as the play’s chief investor), Karloff couldn’t leave the play to perform in the film version, so Raymond Massey (in Frankenstein-adjacent Karloff makeup) does the honors.