1958 - THE LONG HOT SUMMER, half baked southern family drama

Take a couple of William Faulkner stories about the old South and rewrite them to focus on everyone's favorite 50's movie couple, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward and you end up with this mediocre film.  We're in Mississippi (although shot in Louisiana) where the problems of the rich Varner family seem to be of monumental importance.  Daughter Clara played by Joanne Woodward has been "keeping company" with repressed homosexual  Alan Stewart.  Into Clara's life comes virile Ben Quick who walks around with his shirt off a whole lot.

The head of the Varner family is played by Orson Welles giving one of his over the top performances in someone else's film.  Angela Lansbury is his long time mistress who wants to get married.  Tony Franciosa is his wimpy son who is married to "hot to trot" Lee Remick.  In this cast there is not a southerner in the bunch.  The main plot seems to be will independent and spirited southern belle Clara see the light and end up with Ben Quick, a tough guy on the outside but in reality a very sensitive soul or will she continue to purse the repressed gay guy.  I wonder how it will all come out?

 

This film does have widescreen on location photography to recommend it.  Orson Welles is really the whole show with his glorious hammy performance  and all these young method actors are at the beginnings of their career.  The director Martin Ritt was a New York guy who had trained at the Actors Studio with all of these performers so he knew how to work with them.  Welles was his usual bad boy self on the film but apparently Ritt was able to tame him.

 

There is really nothing all that remarkable about this film.  If anything it’s full of lots of good Hollywood liberals who probably didn’t have a clue about southern culture.  The writers Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr. pasted together a screenplay which was really just a watered down version of Tennessee Williams's Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.  Newman and Woodward were good east coast Democrats and director Martin Ritt was also a left winger. Probably the farthest south any of these Hollywood guys ever got was Mailibu California.

The running time is 115 minutes.

1968 - THE BROTHERHOOD, almost a warm up for The Godfather.

 Preceding The Godfather by a few years, The Brotherhood has a lot in common with that film since it deals with many of the same issues.  Briefly, Kirk Douglas in the head of a Mafia family which is part of a larger organization.  As the organization attempts to establish itself into more legitimate enterprises, Douglas resists the group's plans.  The film also focuses on Douglas's brother played by the actor Alec Cord who decides to be a part of the Mafia family business.  The conflict comes about as the old ways of doing things i.e. murdering informants clashes with the the organization's future business plans.

The director is Martin Ritt, a Hollywood craftsman who was always good when it came to working with actors and telling a story.  Kirk Douglas may seem miscast, but he's very good as the Don with a sense of honor about the good old Mafia code days.  Alec Cord I remember from a number of western films but he's also good as the conflicted brother of Kirk Douglas.  Irene Papas plays Douglas's wife but it's really not much of a part for this talented performer.

 

For the most part this is a fine film with an interesting story and an especially fascinating climax. 

The cinematographer was Boris Kaufman a guy who worked with Elia Kazan, Sidney Lumet and going way back in time,  Jean Vigo.

Lewis John Carino, a fairly decent writer wrote the screenplay, the running time is 96 minutes.

1967 - HOMBRE, a fairly good western

Paul Newman is the title character Hombre a white man raised by native Americans who prefers their company over his own Caucasian race.  New York actor Martin Balsam plays a Hispanic character called what else Mendez.  Australian actor Diane Cilento is a woman running a boarding house.  Richard Boone is the bad guy and Cameron Mitchell is the corrupt sheriff.  All the character cliches are in order for this western.

Anyway,  everyone leaves on a stagecoach which is held up by outlaws.  The white guy hating white guys, Hombre played by Newman has to step up and save the lives of the other passengers.  The film was directed by good Hollywood liberal Martin Ritt and actually he does a good job moving the story along.  Paul Newman another good Hollywood liberal gives a very minimal performance in this film if he spoke over two hundred words in this film I would be surprised to learn that.  Newman wears a ridiculous wig as he is supposed to be channeling his inner Native American.  However no wig in the world is going to fool anyone that it's still famous actor Paul Newman.  Diane Cilento gives the best performance in the film even if she is stuck as the voice of compassion and reason in the film.

 

The film's plot is supposedly partially about the plight of the Native American, but there is hardly a Native American in it.  However it has great photography courtesy of legendary cameraman James Wong Howe.  Hombre isn't a bad film it's just such an obvious one.  It's the kind of film that well meaning Hollywood do-gooders turn out that in the end really isn't all that courageous or very relevant to the plight of Native Americans.

 

The film was written by a couple of writers who had worked with Martin Ritt in the past Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr.they were good Hollywood liberals.  The running time is 111 minutes.

1957 - NO DOWN PAYMENT, life in the suburbs circa the 1950's

That era of American conformity the 1950's is dramatized in this soap opera of a film about life in a housing development where four couples are probably a little too neighborly for their own good.

Since this is a film about the 1950's shot at 20th Century Fox during the 1950's the cast is a bunch of the studio's contract players.  The director is Martin Ritt a guy who was skilled at handling actors.  The screenwriter was Phillip Yordan a writer known more for large scale films like 55 Days at Peking or Fall of the Roman Empire than an intimate drama like this.

The film sets up some interesting situations the alcoholic used car salesman who's life is slowly coming apart, the World War II veteran who is suffering from what is now called PTSD, the manager of a hardware store dealing with racism and a husband who works as an engineer but acts like a wimp even after the veteran rapes his wife.  However it all descends into conventional soap opera histrionics.

This is definitely a missed opportunity to look at suburban life, the various plots are too easily resolved and while the actors give it their best shot, the need to wrap things up in under two hours hurts the effectiveness of the film.  Probably the best things in the film are the art and production design.  The homes and back yards had a nice burb vibe to them.

 105 minutes.