Tales From The Warner Archives #14: "Safe In Hell" (William Wellman, 1931)

At the risk of sounding slightly spoil-sportish, allow me to suggest good rule for the cinematic archeologist is not to always expect too much. Lord knows there are plenty of ostensibly lost gems scattered throughout the various histories and archives of histories of cinema, and I'm pretty well convinced that strictly as far as I'm concerned, there's more to be gleaned from a bad or indifferent movie made fifty or sixty or seventy or eighty years ago than there is from something like, say I Am Number Four. That's not because bad movies of the past are "better" than bad movies of the present—I mean, that's an arguable point, but it's not one that I'm prepared to get into here—but because the commonplaces and clichés and bad-faith moves of past cinema are such that they provide and interesting contrast to, or signpost for, the codes of the present. 

But I'm not talking about bad movies here anyway. I'm talking about the possible expectation that maybe EVERY pre-code Vitaphone production unearthed and displayed on TCM or by the Warner Archive is gonna represent some kind of underappreciated classic. I'm also talking about directorial reputation. One measure of the influence and impact of Andrew Sarris' 1968 book The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 is the way that, four decades and change after its initial publication, there's almost a whole subgenre of criticism devoted to arguing with its categorizations and assessments. (See Kent Jones' great celebratory essay on Sarris, "Hail The Conquering Hero," collected in his exceptional Physical Evidence: Selected Film Criticism, which has this great passage: "'I can't get those fucking categories out of my head,' a friend once complained, like the woman who hears the ticking time bomb in the opening shot of Touch of Evil.) The Tom Milne monograph on Mamoulian I discussed in a below post, is very nearly a book-length attempted refutation of not just Sarris' "Less Than Meets The Eye" categorization but each of the arguments behind it. Similarly, individual essays and near-countless film blogs come to the defense of such other "Less" victims as Wilder (Sarris himself eventually copped that he had underrated Billy), Huston, Milestone, Reed, and even that most seemingly unlikely candidate for rehabilitation, Fred Zinneman Zinnemann, perpetrator of A Man For All Seasons and, gak, The Nun's Story. (UPDATE: In my juggling of reference books for this piece I got so caught up that I neglected to mention that the thoroughly estimable D. Cairns actually did a pretty persuasive job on Zinneman Zinnemann at his superb blog Shadowplay, with a series of entries beginning here.)

And then there's Wellman, and here, I think, expanded access to his output really has done the most in making a convincing case that he deserves a kick upstairs, if not to the "Pantheon," then at the very least to... "The Far Side Of Paradise?" Maybe, given the current state of micro/macro threading cinephilia, "Expressive Esoterica." To be fair, Sarris did give his famed italics to two of the six films that made up TCM Archives revelatory all-Wellman, six film Forbidden Hollywood Collection: Volume Three, and those two, the searing Heroes For Sale and the almost documentary-direct Wild Boys of the Road, both from 1933, are pretty clearly the best of the lot. But one look at the opening of 1931's Other Men's Women, with its plain but vivid location shooting creating an immediately engrossing sense of place, is enough to convince one that Sarris seriously underrated it. Or is that really the case? Is the opening of Other Men's Women really so special and so particular to what Wellman did that it's entirely apt to attribute the effectiveness of this quality to his direction, or has it more to do with the relative novelty of what we, as 21st century film watchers, are seeing? 

Such are the questions that dog the latter-day auteurist, I suppose. As far as Sarris is concerned, a substantial part of his anti-Wellman argument hinges on his dislike of one of Wellman's most-praised films, the ostensible humanist classic The Ox-Bow Incident, from 1943. Clearly Sarris can't stand this picture in the same way I can't stand High Noon (don't get me started). The film, he says, "looks grotesque today with its painted backdrops treated like the natural vistas of a Ford Western." A Wellman defender might be inspired to call on a famous exchange from Rio Bravo, wherein the question "Is that all you've got?" is answered with a pragmatic, resigned, "It's what I got." Still, on the parallel subject tip, in which Sarris says Hawks' Scarface > Wellman's The Public Enemy, McCarey's The Awful Truth > Wellman's Nothing Sacred, and Ford's They Were Expendable > Wellman's The Story Of G.I. Joe, I'd have to say he's dead on with the first two and not quite playing fair with the last example. 

But I think there's maybe some kind of consensus that Wellman's blunt, meat-and-potatoes brand of cinematic expression found perhaps its fullest flower in the down and dirty space between 1927 and 1934, and this brings us—finally, I know—to Safe In Hell, a 1931 programmer recently preserved on DVD by the aforementioned Warner Archive. And, no, it is not a lost classic or anything of the sort, but it is a brisk eye-opener, as see the below view of lead actress Dorothy Mackall. 

Awwww yeah, whazzup girlfriend, etc. And her character, Gilda (really!) is taking a call from her madame, or female pimp, or what have you, instructing her to hie to a hotel where a "lonely" guy is waiting for her. It's almost always bracing to see no-nonsese depictions of the oldest profession in "old" movies, and those among us of an age to remember when film education made the use of the word "damn" in Gone With The Wind stand for some kind of anti-censorship breakthrough, and when "hell" itself was a mild sweat word, might even be impressed by this film's title. The excitement continues when Gilda gets to the hotel and discovers that the lonely guy is, in point of fact, the very man who ruined her. There's an indignant tussle, and not only does Gilda leave the premises under the impression that she's killed the bum, but the whole damn hotel is going up in flames as she lams it. Fortunately, she's got an earnest sailor sort-of boyfriend who, after getting a little huffy about the fact that she's been, you know, having sex for money, accepts her guilty-with-an-explanation plea and smuggles her out of New Orleans, depositing her on a mysterious Caribbean island where she'll keep until they find a legit way out of this mess. Problem being, the immediate attraction of this location—that it's a great place for reprobates to go and disappear without hassle from the law—is also its greatest liability, particular in light of the fact that comely Gilda attains the not really devoutly-to-be-wished status of "only white woman on the island" (yup, those are the exact words) immediately upon stepping off the boat. The screen capture at top gives a pretty good flavor of what the white men on the island are like. (That's the ineffable Gustav von Seyffertitz at left as Larson, a former ship's captain whose criminal escapade proves especially charming in the telling.) Adding to Gilda's problem is the apparently sacred vow she took to now-once-again-absent sailor boy, to remain pure while he sails off doing his thing. Mosquito netting's not gonna be very effective in keeping any of these droolers at bay. The sole moments of respite come via the friendly natives of the island, hotel keeper Leonie, played by the charismatic Nina Mae McKinney among them. 

Not only does she serve up a delicious dinner complete with sparkling wine, she does so while singing "When It's Sleepy Time Down South." The song, later popularized by Louis Armstrong, debuted in this picture. (The Wikipedia entry on the film notes "[u]nusually for the time, the characters portrayed by the main African-American actors in the films, Nina Mae McKinney and Noble Johnson are among the most reputable in the film. Even though their parts were written in dialect in the film's script, they spoke normally in the film itself.William Wellman's biographer, Frank T. Thompson, speculated that either McKinney and Johnson, who were popular favorites at the time, had enough clout with the studio to avoid using 'Negro dialect', or else that Wellman 'just wanted to avoid a convenient cliche.'") (Some careful readers may, by the way, recall McKinney as a key figure in a salacious anecdote related by Louise Brooks in her book Lulu in Hollywood, which I won't spoil here, by way of encouraging those of you who haven't read it to go out and do so.)

In any event, tension not only mounts but breaks when a VERY unexpected new fugitive arrives on the island and not only directly makes trouble for Gilda, but stirs up the already nearly-aboil resentments of all the other guys who she's not sleeping with. Soon it's almost literally, erm, do-or-die time for Gilda, and this point yields up, for me at least, the most startling sequence of the film, in which the specific object of disgusting hangman Mr. Bruno's lust is highlighted in an iris-in that also provides a disquieting example of the Kuleshov effect.

It's a perdition-steeped shot sequence to warm the cockles of a sadism-savvy surrealist's heart, and it pole-vaults Safe in Hell briefly into a realm that transcends its tawdry moralism, which is in fact about to rear its head most definitively directly after this bit. Whether Wellman meant for this particular juxtaposition to jar so resonantly...well, would to aver so be special pleading, or is it really just anybody's guess. Maybe it's a "Subject For Future Research."

Comments

[lipranzer]

I would definitely agree about Hawks' SCARFACE (still my favorite of the studio system gangster films) over PUBLIC ENEMY, and while you'll have to point out how pitting THEY WERE EXPENDABLE against THE STORY OF G.I. JOE isn't quite playing fair, I do prefer Ford's film quite a bit more, but I think NOTHING SACRED is as good as, if not better than, THE AWFUL TRUTH (and no, I'm not just saying this because Walter Connolly's character name is "Oliver Stone", nor am I saying this because Cameron Crowe uses a photo still from NOTHING SACRED in SINGLES). I like McCarey's film an awful lot - though Irene Dunne normally bugs me, she always worked well with Cary Grant - but NOTHING SACRED is one of my very favorite Ben Hecht scripts, being one of his most acidic and funniest, and it's also one of my favorite Carole Lombard performances as well.

[Glenn Kenny]

@ lipranzer: I just think G.I. JOE is a fundamentally different film from EXPENDABLE, in spite of the similarities of theme and emphasis. And i think they're fundamentally...well, equal in the final analysis. Just watched NOTHING SACRED in its new Blu-ray edition the other night, and its acidity and briskness always impress me, but I dunno...AWFUL TRUTH has Asta as "Mr. Smith!"

[D Cairns]

Don't see any reason to compare The Awful Truth to Nothing Sacred, even if they both use farce mechanics. Charm and lovability are such big parts of The Awful Truth's modus operandi, and largely irrelevant to Nothing Sacred's. The films could certainly swap titles, but otherwise, chalk and cheese.

Noble Johnson does appear in Safe in Hell, but the prominently featured player partnering NMM is Clarence Muse, mightiest of termite artists, always grabbing what he can get in often the least promising roles. Here, he does not "talk normally" but in a pitch-perfect English accent!

[D Cairns]

But yes, I'd agree that those three movies by Ford, McCarey and Hawks are better than the three Wellman's. But then, Ford never made a gangster movie as good as Nothing Sacred and McCarey never made a war movie as good as GI Joe. Hawks is a trickier case, being such a good all-rounder. He'd beat Wellman on aviation flicks, which they both loved. But he never made a hobo movie as good as Wild Boys of the Road.

[The Siren]

Loved this essay, as indeed I love Safe in Hell. Unlike Kent's friend (and boy do I want to read that essay of his, I must get that book) I forgot the Sarris categories almost as soon as I read them, and did so deliberately. What, precisely, do they do for me as a cinephile? Does it lessen my pleasure in The Public Enemy if it isn't as good as Scarface? (Even if I agree, which I don't. I prefer Public Enemy, and offer my own equation: Cagney > Muni.) I think Sarris wants it to, at least a little. Include me out; I find such list-jiggering the least useful and at times a downright pernicious aspect of hard-core auteurism. Movies are not Pokemon cards. I don't collect viewing experiences so I can shuffle around powers.

The Ox-Bow Incident is a beautiful film; just wrote up the finale. So glad you linked to David Cairns' wonderful Zinnemann series. He has a great piece on High Noon--I didn't realize that was your Going My Way.

[The Siren]

P.S. I am afraid I sound hostile toward Sarris, and I'm very much not; his insights on separate films and filmmakers are often glorious. But the rankings/categories -- I dislike them. Intensely.

[Glenn Kenny]

Thanks Siren. I think the categorizations in "The American Cinema" are witty and that Sarris often makes his case for them; and OF COURSE I disagree with him on Kubrick, Lester, and a whole BUNCH of others. Not to harp on the thing that you're probably most anxious about having said, I'm intrigued by your implied misgivings as to whether or not Sarris' intentions in slating directors was wholly benign. Myself aside, critics aren't ego-less; and Sarris put together "American Cinema" as he was approaching 40, after a good many years of a good many folk scoffing at his ideas and suppositions. It's not crazy to infer that he wanted more than just to make his mark, and that he might have wanted to get some of his own back. The book was a gambit, and it paid off, because it changed the way so many of us talk about film. Watching the way so many contemporary (and in some cases, youthful) critics strain to make their mark with monthly grandstand plays that you don't even have to read between the lines to quake (laughing) at their desperate grasping desire to be taken VERY SERIOUSLY, DAMMIT (and like Warren Zevon said, "I ain't namin' names"), one does marvel at how Sarris kind of made it look easy.

[Kevyn Knox]

I agree that Sarris' categories are silly - but as an obsessive list-maker myself, I cannot help but be fascinated by them. I too disagree with many of them but who the hell would agree with everything anyone said. My biggest disagreement has always been his low ranking of Wellman. With films such as Wild Boys of the Road, Other Men's Women, Public Enemy, Heroes For Sale, The Purchase Price, Night Nurse, So Big!, Lady of Burlesque, Nothing Sacred, A Star is Born, Ox-Bow Incident, Battleground, Buffalo Bill, Roxie Hart, Track of the Cat and Safe in Hell, he is certainly MORE than meets Mr. Sarris' eye.

[Oliver_C]

Gilbert Adair wrote very enthusiastically about 'Other Men's Women' in 'Flickers' (currently going for overinflated secondhand prices on Amazon.co.uk).

[Ted Kroll]

You have to put Sarris' project in context. Back in the day it was radical and revolutionary to consider Hitchcock as anything more than a jokester with interesting technical chops. Ford was a has-been who made Westerns with John Wayne who couldn't act his way out of a paper bag. Stanley Kramer was profound. Von Sternberg was camp. Who ever heard of Ophuls? And you have no idea how difficult it was to see any of these films that Sarris talked about. If you were lucky, you had seen 'Vertigo' or 'The Searchers' first run, otherwise they didn't exist. The silent era was represented by the standard histories - a little bit of Griffith, of course Chaplin (and there was this other guy Keaton) and Eisenstein was king (or kommissar) - but most of it was regarded as primitive child's play. 'Citizen Kane' popped up on the 5 O' Clock matinee hacked to pieces to fit in an hour. Cinephiles ('film buffs') in those days gathered in covens like in the 'The Seventh Victim' watching third generation 16 mm dupes. Most of the cinema produced in Hollywood was held in intellectual contempt and ridicule - Sirk's films were a joke that didn't even rate a parody on Mad Magazine.

Sarris' lists and categories were a revelation that pointed the way to see cinema as cinema, not as failed literature or low brow slumming. I am constantly amazed that the 'Auteur Theory' is a matter of any controversy these days. It is a battle fought and won. The fact that we are discussing 'Other Men's Wives' and 'Safe in Hell' is because Sarris and others (Gene Archer, comes to mind) looked into the heritage of American film and said out loud - 'this stuff is great - take a look'. "The American Cinema' is a starting point, a unlocking of a door and for me a liberation not an end-all canon.

You have to be of a certain age to truly appreciate what an eye-opener 'The American Cinema' was when it was published. Over the years it has been a source of much amusement to nitpick with Sarris' choices, but in great measure he got it right. The movies themselves - they are what is important.

[Kevyn Knox]

Sarris' book was one of the works that got me deeper into film history than I had been in my rather stunted cinephile teen years. The other book was John Kobal's 1988 (I think) book on the 100 greatest films. Both books are very dog-eared sitting there on my shelves. Both books brought many directors I had yet seen back in the late 1980's (when I was 19-23ish).

[Oliver_C]

You and I must be of similar ages. I have fond late-80s memories of Kobal's 'Top 100 Movies' (I recall 'Night of the Living Dead' just squeaking in), as well as the first edition (1989) of Christie and Thompson's 'Scorsese on Scorsese'.

[Ted K.]

Since all of us are different in so many countless ways, it seems to me that anything said about a shelved film like Safe In Hell can be questioned without enough thought because it's so different and unique after it has come back to us. This film was originally intended for an audience of 1931, but now we have some unique Wellman, workmanship of "I don't give a crap, here's some gritty stuff." Who cares now? Well let's see. It's some different film making for 1931 with huge dramatic impact today, this day. Yea, that's right, today. Get used to it. The fact that Wellman was ahead of his time and made one of his shots in film in the direction of fantasy, tragedy, and sentiment good for anyone
without hangups and modern "evolved" spins is blessed by me. It's good stuff, as long as we're human and don't get too caught up in our own dreamed up sensitivities about ourselves. Thanks Wellman, wherever you are. This film is remarkable today. It's likely that the fools who think that the scenario Wellman created in Safe In Hell are impossible are from the stuffy housebound critics with little or no outgoing life experience of their own. Shush, you arm chair critics. There are a lot more things that have gone on in antiquity than you could even guess at. You've got a good film here. And, try making any film yourself, much less Safe In Hell. It ain't an easy process. Wellman made somewhat of a masterpiece here.