Last night, we watched a picture called "The Dark Past"(1948), which began as a crime film then turned into a hostage drama, with an unlikely but compelling premise. The movie opens with a voiceover by "Dr. Andrew Collins" (Lee J. Cobb), a police psychiatrist, explaining the nature of his job. We see him reviewing a lineup of criminals, after which he remarks to a detective that one young punk can be saved from a life of crime, "if you'll let me talk to him". Already the film is setting up the idea that psychiatry cures all ills, and when the detective casts doubt about this, telling Dr. Collins that some criminals can't be reformed, the Doc shoots back with "they can be if they are young. Let me tell you the story of Al Walker". From there, we enter flashback mode, as Dr. Collins relates his ex-schperience with an escaped convict named Al Walker (William Holden). Collins is shown at home, at some time in the past, with his wife and young son. Prior to working for the police department, he was a psychology professor at a local college. Here, he's preparing for a vacation at his cabin in the mountains, and when he takes his family up there, it coincides with Al Walker's escape. We see Walker in his getaway car, with two fellow hoodlums, his moll (Nina Foch), and the prison warden, who's been forced along as Walker's hostage. When Walker asks where the hideout is gonna be, one of the hoods tells him it's a shack in the mountains. Walker says "that's the first place the cops will look, an empty shack. Are there any cabins near there"?
The hood answers, "yes, but they've got people in 'em." "All the better" says Walker. "Makes everything look normal." Thus, he and his gang of thugs pull a home invasion on Dr. Collins and his family, who have the unfortunate timing to arrive at their cabin on the night of Al Walker's escape, the news of which is on radio and in the evening paper.
The home invasion itself is scarily depicted, you can feel the fear of the Collins family and another couple, "Frank" and "Laura Stevens" (Adele Jurgens, Wilton Graff), who have driven up in a second car to spend the night. The Stevens' and Dr. Collins' professor pal "Dr. Linder" (Steven Geray), who's handy with guns and shows up later, are mostly red herrings, written in to fill time, as are two scullery maids whom the thugs tie up in the basement. The brunt of the story belongs to Dr. Collins and the killer Walker, with his girl Betty there for emotional support. Dr. Collins is the only one of the hostages who isn't terrified of Walker, who, as we have seen - because we watched him shoot the warden in the back - is a certified psychopath. But Dr. Collins is a professor of psychology, so he sits back and observes Walker, which drives Walker nuts. "Why are you so calm!?" he yells at Collins, who responds by leaning back and lighting his pipe, because it's in Lee J. Cobb's contract (have you ever seen Cobb without his pipe or a cigar? No you haven't; case closed). Collins tells Walker, "I'm calm because you're scared." This is where things get implausible, because any psycho worth his salt would've shut the hostage up, but this is 1948, when psychiatry was just gaining mass acceptance, and the filmmakers want to make a chess game out of it. In fact, they do that later on.
As it turns out, Walker has bad dreams, which he reveals to Dr. Collins when he tries to get some schleep during the long, unwinding night. Dreams are red meat to a shrink, so Collins homes in on this chink in Walker's tough guy armor. He coaxes Walker into describing his dream, over a game of chess, and this is when the wheels begin to fall off on Walker's effort to control the sitchy-ation. At first, he resists the doctor's attempts to psychoanalyse him, until Collin's tells him "you'll never be rid of your nightmares unless you let me help you, but you have to be truthful with me". Then they really get down to business, with Collins trying to figure out the symbolism of Walker's recurring dream.
It's not cut and dried; Walker keeps up his defiant facade throughout, telling Dr. Collins that psychology, or "mind games" as he puts it, is for "screwballs". But he really wants his nightmares to go away, so he allows Collins to question him about his childhood. Of course, this would never happen in a hostage situation in real life, it's almost like Stockholm Syndrome in reverse, but it makes for excellent drama, and you also have the side issues of Betty, Walker's hard-bitten girlfriend who loves him (though her character is only a sketch), and the friends who are staying at the cabin, the wife of whom is a flirtatious babe who will possibly cheat on her older husband with a younger man who's arrived. These diversions would've made interesting subplots, had the writer found a way to work them into the Psych Story. Also, Walker's hoods keep a lookout for a getaway boat that never arrives, and the scullery maids in the basement provide an important last minute twist.
It's really good stuff if you accept it for what it is. Walker's dream, and Dr. Collins' interpretation of it, has an Oedipal tinge that the filmmakers can only allude to because it's 1948. Lee J. Cobb does his Lee J. Cobb thing, as if the philosophical weight of the world is on his substantial shoulders, and William Holden makes a frightening if just-a-tad-too-jittery psycho, slightly unbelievable, but then aren't all psychos such? Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Dark Past". It's highly recommended and the picture is razor sharp. ////
The previous night, we watched a prison flick called "20,000 Years in Sing Sing", an early effort from the legendary Michael Curtiz, whose 1955 film "The Scarlet Hour" we very much enjoyed a couple weeks ago. In this one, Spencer Tracy plays "Tommy Connors", a cocky, sharp dressed hoodlum who is headed for Sing Sing on a train. He brags to the coppers escorting him that he'll be bustin' out of there in no time. "The joint ain't been built that can hold me," he says. When they tell him he's never seen Sing Sing, he responds, "I don't care if it's sealed like an armored car, I'll find a way to crack it, and on the slim chance I don't, my lawyer has it all worked out anyway. So how do you like them apples, fellas?" Suffice it to say he's as arrogant as can be, and when he gets to the prison and has the mandatory meeting with the warden, he runs through the same spiel: "I'm different from all these other schmoes.You'll never break me. I don't want no prison job, neither! See these hands? Do they look like they got any callouses?" The warden just looks at him, as if to say : "I've seen every hard case in the world come through here, and they all break sooner or later. You think you're different? Guard, take him to his cell."
Connors complains when his prison uniform is two sizes too big. He refuses to wear it, so, using reverse psychology, the warden tells the guards, "fine, he doesn't have to wear it." Then he puts Connors to work in Sing Sing's ice house, wearing only his skivvies. This angers Connors (he freezes his butt off) and he refuses to come out of his cell. This leads to him being put in solitary, where, after a month, he agrees to break rocks. "Anything to get out of this box", he tells a guard. "But", he adds, "if the warden thinks he's got me down, tell him he ain't seen nothin'". You get where things are going by this point; Connors is an unrepentant con, a hard guy to the end, but then he gets a visit from a girlfriend we didn't know he had (a young Bette Davis in an emotionally charged performance). Seeing her in the visitor's room, Connors becomes tender. The acting here by Tracy and Davis is gripping; it's like Spencer really is in prison and Bette is distraught. Amazing acting, realistic without being Method. (and I like Method so don't get the wrong idea. But this is even realer!)
But back to the plot: Connors finds out that Bette is sleeping with his lawyer to get him out of prison on early release, but the lawyer is actually gonna do the opposite. He wants Connors to serve his full sentence because he has designs on Davis. Meanwhile, other convicts, led by Lyle Talbot, are planning a breakout. They make tools in the machine shop - a cell lock-breaker and a pig-iron gun from scrap metal - and pull their break in the middle of the night. But it's unsuccessful, and leads to several of the culprits being sent to death row, because two guards are killed.
Connors is not among the jailbreakers, which earns him points from the warden. Later, when Bette Davis is almost killed in a deliberately caused car accident by the lawyer, who now wants to get rid of her, the warden offers Connors a day pass to visit her in the hospital, for fear she is going to die. This is part of the warden's rehabilitation plan, to give certain men day passes as a chance to earn trust. Connors, whose arrogance is mostly gone by now, is grateful for the chance to visit Bette in the hospital. He promises to return to Sing Sing that night, but when Bette, in critical condition, tells him what the lawyer did, he plans revenge. Now, his parole might be at stake. Worse, he could end up on death row.
I can't give away any more of the story, but "20,000 Years in Sing Sing" is a classic prison drama, full of other characters besides Tracy and Davis. The warden is played by Arthur Byron, an early actor who was born in 1872. His father was a stage actor named Oliver Dowd Byron, born in 1842, whose career dated to before the Civil War. So there's that Amazing Time Thing again, and the way time stands still, once it's been preserved in the movies. Two Big Thumbs Up for this one, but it's only available on dvd, Netflix or other services, not on Youtube. I got it from the Libe, don't miss it, it's highly recommended! ////
And that's all I know. I'm still listening to Procul Harum, this time their live album and "Grand Hotel". So far, they're really good, especially Gary Brooker, but their style is a little hit-and-miss for me (too....what? Too plaintive? Too much like The Band? Wait a minute......I like The Band. Well, I sort of like them. Some of their music is too Coal Miner-ish.....or is that Gold Miner-ish? Probably I should shut up and just listen.) I know it's sacrilege to say so, but I'm not the world's biggest blues fan. I guess I was expecting the bulk of the Procul music to sound more like "Whiter Shade" (i.e. progressive), and some of it does, but other stuff is a bit too rootsy. Maybe it'll grow on me. And, I'm listening late night to Mahler's 7th (tra-MENN-duss!). And I just began reading "Last Train to Memphis" by Peter Guralnick, because of the Elvis movie, which I didn't review because I'm sure you just saw it. It was tra-MENN-duss, too!
I hope you had a nice day, and I send you Tons of Love as always!
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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