Manny Farber's best films of 1951, #9; "Appointment With Danger," directed by Lewis Allen; followed by a summation of What We Have Learned Here

 

The prior entry is here, and, as always, you can move backwards from there for the others. 

Three readers/friends were of great help in getting me access to this picture; I won't name them, but they know who they are, and I thank them. The above image would probably be impossible to get a "clear" version of in any manifestation, but the sight of Alan Ladd walloping Jack Webb seemed to me a no-brainer of an opener. And the background of the handball court gives the whole image the feel, for me at least, of something out of a Farber painting. In any event, here's Manny: 

"Tough, perceptive commercial job glorifying the P-men (Post-Office sleuths), set in an authentically desolate wasteland around Gary, Indiana, crawling with pessimistic mail-robbers who act as though they'd seen too many movies like Asphalt Jungle. Tight plotting, good casting, and sinuously droopy acting by Jan Sterling, as an easily had broad who only really gets excited about—and understands—waxed bop. Interesting for Morgan-Webb bit playing, such sidelights as the semi-demi-hemiquaver of romantic attachment between the head P-man and a beautiful nun."

By the way, those of you following along from Negative Space rather than the recently-issued Farber on Film see this film erroneously cited as Background To Danger; the more current volume supplies the correct title.

I know what you're thinking: "Post-Office sleuths?" Scoff all you like; this picture establishes such sorts as tougher than nails with the introduction of operative Al Goddard, who just knows that his fellow officer could not have been strangled because, he, too, had the Post-Office sleuth training that made him tougher than nails. Before we get a glimpse of Ladd's Goddard, there's this exchange between a uniformed man and a secretary: 

"Mr. Al Goddard. Is he as tough as ever?'

"I just got his order for lunch: a small boy with mustard."

Ahem. I imagine that sounded quite a bit different in 1951 than it might sound today. Work with me here, people.

Prior to Goddard's introduction, we get a good deal of the "Morgan-Webb bit playing," as in Harry Morgan and Jack Webb, long before they paired as good guys for Dragnet, here portraying not merely pessimistic robbers but cold-blooded killers. Here Morgan's George tries to snow a nun (Phyllis Calvert) who will later become the case's star witness.

One notes that Farber's piece was published in The Nation. One wonders at the sort of readership The Nation had back then, that Farber could expect them to know what "Morgan-Webb bit playing" was. Maybe he didn't. Who knows. It's amusing to consider, though. 

Anyway, once said nun becomes the star witness, Webb's Joe (not Friday, obviously) develops a pretty unhealthy obsession with her, resulting in a very bad consequence for his one-time buddy-pal George. Joe then lays an earful about her on ringleader Earl (Citizen Kane's Paul Stewart, acting not as if he's got an ulcer but as if he's constantly anticipating one, a considerably trickier proposition), who finally delivers the immortal (as from his mouth, at least) line, "Forget about the nun, Joe." As much as the gangsters DO talk as if they've seen too many pictures like Asphalt Jungle, there is a genuinely distinct crackle to much of the dialogue, whether it's Goddard discussing the theological perquisites of "obligation" with Calvert's nun, or debating the merits of "waxed bop" with the kept B-girl portrayed by Serling. Arching an eyebrow when she waxes enthusiastic on the genre, Ladd describes it as a band playing "five different tunes at the same time." (The script is by Richard Breen, who'd go on to work with Webb on Dragnet and Pete Kelly's Blues, and Warren Duff, who worked on Angels With Dirty Faces and a lot more.)

The "authentically desolate wasteland" approved by Farber is matched by what seems to be a reasonably accurate account of Post-Office police work and criminal scheming, all the way down to the security loophole that the would-be robbers hope to exploit to the tune of a million bucks. Lewis Allen's direction is as brisk and unfussy as it was in 1944's The Uninvited and would be in 1955's A Bullet For Joey. 

Reading the both funny and accurate description of the film's depiction of the Ladd-Calvert relationship as the "semi-demi-hemiquaver of romantic attachment" made me a bit wistful—who uses such terminology in film criticism any more, or maybe the question should be who uses such terminology with such unpretentious accuracy, right? But before we go there, let's talk about what we've learned from/about Farber, rather than what we know from his absence.

First of all: spending these hours in the Farber film world of '51, I found out it really is true what they say: they really don't make 'em like that anymore. Most of them share a hard-bitten attitude that a lot of contemporary pictures would like to emulate, but just don't know how to. For all of the putative advances that have been made in contemporary cinema in the depiction of sex and violence, and in use of language, there's also something that feels coddled, by comparison, in the supposedly franker contemporary material. Look at something like Losey's The Prowler in comparison with, say, L.A. Confidential (a film I largely admire, incidentally); for all the Production-Code-mandated restraint of the former picture, it oozes a particular kind of sleaziness that Confidential simply can't touch. I used to laugh off quasi-moralists who insisted that self-imposed censorship used to force American film artists to find more creative solutions to getting certain things across; having looked at a series of such well-curated films in a concentrated space of time, my certitude on this point has gotten a major shakeup. 

Also: Farber liked 'em lean, and I don't blame him. Only one of the nine summarized films on his list hits the two hour mark: His Kind of Woman, which might be the exception that proves the rule in that it kind of plays like two different films in the space of its running time. Everything else here is relatively brief picture with no bag, no sag. While Farber clearly enjoyed a picture with a good "hangout" element to it (Woman, The Thing From Another World), he also insisted on tightness of construction. In later years he would semi-dismiss the sacred-to-some (myself included) Rio Bravo as "a soft, slack, not very rousing Western by a man who should know better." Yow. Now of course tightness and temporal brevity were not necessarily mutually exclusive qualities to Farber...then again, looking at the lengths of the Straub-Huillet films he and Patricia Patterson wrote so admiringly of, maybe they were. Call that a subject for future research. 

Even more than the at-least-partial hangout picture, Farber admired movies in which work and process were depicted in detailed, convincing ways. From The People Against O'Hara's "insights into things like the structure and routine of law offices" to The Thing From Another World's "good airplane takeoffs and landings," to the perceptiveness of Danger's glorification of the P-men, the world of work is never far from Farber's mind when dealing with a picture. This remains a constant in his criticism, even after he began collaborating with Patterson; indeed, it animates one of his (their) earliest complaints about Scorsese's Taxi Driver, in the challenging essay The Power and the Gory: "The movie starts off with a lot of material and then abruptly cuts it off...No other Checker cab seems to be operating at night in Manhattan except DeNiro's cab, which never stalls, needs gas, or runs into the delays and quick decisions which are the cabbie existence norm."

Spending so much time with Farber (and Patterson) and now, lately, with the recently departed Robin Wood, is both dispiriting and inspiring. Dispiriting because, a few lonely lights aside, very few writers out there are even aspiring to do what they did, and because the current scene, such as it is, is filling up with happy hacks, humorless self-promoting pseuds, non-writing quasi-moralizing "contrarians," and several other such unedifying types who are united in their insistence that they are "critics."  As many of you know, I've cocked a snoot at some of them from time to time (some would, and have, said that I've done so far too often), but the thing is, it doesn't do any damn good. Even if one could provide a perfectly calibrated mathematical proof to any such type that what he/she does is bad for criticism, bad for art, bad for thinking, such a thing wouldn't move any one of them to reconsider his/her profession or alter his/her practice. So one of my New Year's resolutions is gonna be to ignore them. I'll try to engage in honorable argument with good-faith practitioners of the discipline when it's proper to, but what I want to concentrate on in the next year is becoming a better good faith practitioner of the discipline myself. Truth to tell, I am always sheepish about calling myself a critic, and in the months to come I intend to pursue some professional options of a rather different sort. But as long as I continue writing about film, I think it's a better idea to try to emulate what Wood and Farber actually did (in whatever puny way I can) rather than scold those I feel are dishonoring their craft. Does this mean I'm dropping the "Armond White-ism Of The Week" from my Auteurs "Topics" column? It does; in fact, I did so last week.  That's life; like the Production-Code-bound filmmakers of 1951, I'll have to find more ingenious ways of bringing the supposed comedy. 

Comments

[bill]

"So one of my New Year's resolutions is gonna be to ignore them. I'll try to engage in honorable argument with good-faith practitioners of the discipline when it's proper to, but what I want to concentrate on in the next year is becoming a better good faith practitioner of the discipline myself."

Probably wise. For everybody, and broadly speaking, too. I'm certainly not a critic (you are, though), but in general I think it would be a fine idea for me to avoid arguments, particularly on-line, whenever possible. We'll see how long that last, because I'm supposed to stop smoking some time next year, too.

I should have asked for that Farber book for Christmas. It's possible I still wouldn't have gotten it, because I asked for a lot of stuff and I have expensive tastes, but I might have. It's embarrassing to say this out loud, but this series has been my first exposure to Farber, and I like what I see. Very much.

Merry Christmas, and all that.

[Tom Russell]

As someone who used to argue quite a bit back in my old USENET days, I can say from personal experience that the less I start arguments/snoot-cock, the happier (and healthier) I am, and the more time I have for honorable argumentation/debate and to create other works of substance. Hope your resolution holds, if only because it might result in a happier and healthier Glenn.

[Ben Sachs]

Since Saturday, I've been at a loss for words in response to Robin Wood's passing. Few writers of any genre have inspired me more. I write criticism here and there, but it's hardly a vocation for me the way it was for him (and, of course, Farber). But his writing challenged me to truly look at everything I watch--unencumbered by notions of genre, cultural standing, etc. Ultimately, he demonstrated that the committed watching shaped by movies could teach us to better look at ourselves and the world we live in.

Glenn, I'm moved by your resolution here. As critics--even as viewers--we can all do better. I look forward to your "good-faith" practice of the form; I hope to produce some myself.

(Though as far as the cattiness goes, even Wood was inclined to take Pauline Kael to task now and then. I think he even went so far as to call her anti-feminist in "Vietnam to Reagan.")

[Glenn Kenny]

Thanks, Ben. Wood can also be found taking Roger Ebert and J. Hoberman to task, among others. One also recalls that Farber once referred to Susan Sontag and "Andy" Sarris as "brutal scorekeeper critics...an odd duo, hard and soft—a Simone de Beauvoir and a boneless Soupy Sales—whose special commodities include chutzpah, the ability to convert any perception into a wisecrack or a squashed metaphor, and the mobility of a Hollywood sex queen for being where the action is." Ouch. And Sarris and Sontag maintained admiration of Farber for all that—how could they not?

[Ben Sachs]

Personally, I wouldn't mind being compared to Soupy Sales. Have you read any of his liner notes for Motown in the 60s?

It's nice to learn that Sontag and Sarris wouldn't carry a grudge. I try to remind myself now and then that the most valuable criticism is born out of love--and I think all of the critics discussed here were of this persuasion, at least when they were at their best. (And am I incorrect, or did Bazin try never to write a negative review?)

[bill]

Glenn, how would you compare Farber and Agee? Of that rough time period, I only really know Agee (and it's been a while), but what I've read of Farber here reminds me of him. I loved Agee's capsule reviews, and how precise and thorough they managed to be. His long form stuff was great, too, and both Farber and Agee seemed to have a healthy appreciation for the simple pleasures of film (I'm thinking, as I often have since reading it, of Farber's "good takeoffs and landings" line in his THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD piece).

[Glenn Kenny]

Agee and Farber were friends, although Farber had some serious differences with Agee's critical method, which he outlined in a 1958 piece called "Nearer My Agee To Thee." I'd say if you enjoy Agee you'll also get a lot out of Farber. They really go together in some ways, and are important parts of the film-crit continuum.