No Way Out (1950)

One of the more tiresome clichés, or prejudices, about "old films" in general, and older Hollywood films in particular, is that they are politically conservative, or reactionary, or at best dated and timid, compared to films of our own, eminently progressive, era. You meet this prejudice in the class room on a regular basis, where students respond to almost any random film you show them with "Wow, it is so ahead of its time." even when the film is firmly of its time. They take their own prejudice of the past to be the true past, and if this film does not confirm that prejudice it seems they are convinced that the film is unusual; it cannot be that they are mistaken. (Surprise is in general a feeling that arises when somebody discovers that their prejudice is belied by reality.) It is unfair to single out students though as any number of articles, books and tweets will tell you that this is a widespread belief, including among film scholars. (There is also a related tendency to believe that people who like older films are also, per extension, politically conservative, or reactionary, but that is a topic for another day.)

I was reminded of this again last week, by two articles that made that assumption. I suppose it comes from people not having seen many older films, and not being interested in them either, yet being convinced of their inferiority. I am not knowledgeable enough about silent films, but films from the 1930s can sometimes be shockingly powerful in their depiction of crime, corruption and racism, and it continues through the decades. I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy 1932), They Won't Forget (Mervyn LeRoy 1937), All the King's Men (Robert Rossen 1949, who also wrote They Won't Forget), Intruder in the Dust (Clarence Brown 1949), Stars in My Crown (Jacques Tourneur 1950), Riot in Cell Bloc 11 (Don Siegel 1954), The Phenix City Story (Phil Karlson 1955), Reprisal! (George Sherman 1956), Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick 1957), Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk 1959), The Intruder (Roger Corman 1962), Shock Corridor (Sam Fuller 1963) and so on and so forth. These were just a handful of the many films made in Hollywood that took a harsh look at the United States. Now I want to focus on another one, No Way Out (1950), which is not as forceful and striking (or unsettling) as the ones mentioned above, but of considerable interest none the less.

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After World War 2, 20th Century Fox and Darryl F. Zanuck embarked on a project of social realism, films about current issues shot in a clear, functional style. Gentlemen's Agreement (Elia Kazan 1947) is a prominent example, about antisemitism. Another is No Way Out, written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, based on an original story by Lesser Samuels. (Philip Yordan also had a hand in the script, as he so often did, or claimed he did.) The theme is racism, and relationships between white and black. It was the first film role for Sidney Poitier, as a doctor fresh from medical school, and with Richard Widmark as a hoodlum and pathological racist.

Despite being an original idea and script, No Way Out feels like an adapted theatre play, the way it is told and staged. The last shot in particular, in its framing, placing of bodies, the use of sound, the length, feels more theatrical than cinematic. I think this was deliberate on Mankiewicz's part, who always had a theatrical streak to him and his films. (This is not meant as criticism, just an observation.) He uses long takes throughout the film, and the pacing is somewhat slow and thoughtful. In keeping with the social realist look, everything is brightly lit, shot at a distance and with depth of field. Unlike other films in this style however, there are few outdoor sequences and little, if any, location work. One scene, when Widmark's character attacks a woman in her home, is shot in darkness with only a rectangular field of light across the middle of the screen, but that is almost the only sequence that deviates from the basic look of the film.

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The story of the film is that two brothers are caught by the police during an attempted robbery, and in the ensuing struggle both are shot. They are taken to hospital and Luther Brooks, the doctor played by Poitier, is the one who is on call. While they are both shot in the leg, one of the brothers show other symptoms and Brooks suspects he has a brain tumour. He tries to save the man, who is already dying, but fails. The other brother, Ray Biddle, played by Widmark, is convinced that the black doctor deliberately killed him, and first tries to stir up a riot in the black areas in Chicago, where the film is set, and when that fails Biddle instead tries to kill Brooks.

One of the weaknesses with the film is that racism is primarily shown in its extreme form. Biddle is clearly mad, so brutal, violent and abusive he would appeal to no one. No white person would watch him and think "that could be me" and Mankiewicz might be said to make things too neat and easy. If that is what racism is, then almost any viewer can think "Of course it is bad, but it has nothing to do with me." There are a few scenes in which the fact that Brooks is black creates some more general tension, but those who are racist in this film are distinctly othered. They are not like you and me. The above-mentioned Gentlemen's Agreement, about antisemitism, is better in that respect because in that film almost everybody show varying degrees of prejudices against Jews, from the casual, unthinking to the self-evident hateful. Most viewers would be able to recognise themselves or people close to them in any of those characters, and therefore their own prejudices would be challenged.

But at the same time, in Gentlemen's Agreement, the main character is not a Jew, but a gentile, played by Gregory Peck, who pretends to be Jewish while writing a story about antisemitism. Mankiewicz has said that he did not want that for No Way Out, and he did not want it to be one of those films in which the main character is mixed-race or light-skinned, and played by a white actor, like in the previous year's Pinky (Elia Kazan 1949). He wanted the lead and hero to be played by a black actor, and be part of the black community. Sidney Poitier gives a strong, nuanced performance, and is the best aspect of the film, together with the dialogue and use of sound. His character would become almost a stereotype, frequently occurring in white liberals' films about racism: he is flawless, calm, wise, kind and professional. Just as Biddle is somebody nobody would defend, Brooks as somebody almost nobody could object to, unless they were crazy like Biddle. Mankiewicz has created two opposites, one almost pure evil and the other almost pure good. Brooks is also a pacifist. His black colleagues, and his brother-in-law, are ready to fight against the white man; not turn the other cheek but strike back. Brooks will have none of that, which also makes him easy for a white audience to accept.

Poitier and Mildred Joanne Smith (playing husband and wife)

There is a riot in the film but, which was unusual at the time, it is the blacks who lead the charge. They have got word that a white racist mob is gathering, and they strike before the mob has got going. The whites do not stand a chance, and it is one instance of the film when it gets more daring. Mankiewicz has provided Brooks as a pacifist alternative, but given the circumstances it is also clear that it was necessary for the black characters to take up arms and attack. They are within their rights Mankiewicz seems to say. (This sequence was one of the reasons No Way Out was initially banned in Chicago, and it was cut or trimmed in various cities and southern states.)

In the end, Biddle fails at killing Brooks, and when he is disarmed, Brooks empties the gun of its bullets and instead uses it to stop the bleeding in Biddle's leg. The symbolism is not subtle, and the film has been criticised for Brooks's unwillingness to strike back. Some has even said he sacrifices himself for the white man. But that is not what is happening. For one thing he is a doctor, and his duty is to save lives, not take lives. He also knows that killing Biddle will only be worse for him than for Biddle. But what primarily complicates the scene, and the character of Brooks overall, comes from the way Poitier plays him. While this is rarely spelled out or shown explicit, Brooks is a man who is constantly aware of racism, of him being a black man in a white world. He feels it all the time, it consumes him, it wears him down and makes him bitter. He is always trying to be the best man, and he is filled with doubt about himself, and this is because of the racism he knows is all around him. This is significantly more subtle than the use of a gun to stop the bleeding, because it is hardly ever spelled out. It is in his eyes, body, movements, and in his voice. His last line in the film is "Don't cry, white boy, you're gonna live." but he says it in a way that suggests he is sorry for this. He does not want to be the man who kills Biddle, even if he would prefer if Biddle had died.

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As is inevitable with Mankiewicz, class is an important aspect of the film. Biddle is poor, white working class, and he is filled with resentment against other classes, and against those who try to move away from the area of which he is from. He is a man who is trapped by his own circumstances, and part of his racism stems from his feeling of being left behind by society, and believing that other people are more concerned about standing up for minorities, such as African Americans, than for people like him. His general hatred against society has found an outlet by being directed against blacks. And a black man who is above his own class he finds even more intolerable.

There are two other main characters in the film, Edie, played by Linda Darnell, and Dr. Wharton, played by Stephen McNally, who is the head doctor and Brooks' mentor. Edie used to be married to the dead brother, and also had an affair with Ray Biddle, but now she wants to leave that world behind her. She is conflicted about this, and at first uneasy with Brooks and blacks in general. But during the course of the film she changes and grows, and she is the only one who does this. The other characters are more or less the same the entire film. In one scene she goes to Dr. Wharton's home because she feels sick and exhausted. He is about to leave, and instead he leaves her in the care of his housekeeper Gladys, played by Amanda Randolph. Edie is at first hostile to Gladys, but surrenders and spends the night in her care. The next morning they have breakfast together, and it is a beautiful scene because they find they have something in common. They are bonding as two women living under a patriarchy; both victims of violence and abuse from men. Edie wants to know what makes men, the white men she has known, like that, like "wild animals", and compares them to dogs chasing a rabbit, tearing it apart and then moving on to chasing a new one. Gladys has no answer. The character of Gladys is traditional, and it was one of the very few kinds of roles available to black actors until then, but it is still a fine performance.

No Way Out is not just about racism, it is about class and gender too, and, to use of current phrase, Mankiewicz takes an intersectional view. This is another way in which I find it to be more complex and satisfying than it first appears. Mankiewicz has made several films that are much better, not least their visuals and narrative, but this one is still good.


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Mankiewicz's comment about wanting a black actor for the lead is from Joseph L. Mankiewicz: Interviews (2008) p. 171

Information about banned and cut versions comes from the American Film Institute's website.

I have written about Intruder in the Dust before: https://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2013/01/intruder-in-dust-1949.html

I have written about Reprisal! before: https://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2015/04/2-x-george-sherman-reprisal-1956-and.html

And about Mankiewicz: https://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2017/04/demille-vs-mankiewicz-october-22-1950.html

And about the not unrelated Lydia Bailey (Jean Negulesco 1952): https://fredrikonfilm.blogspot.com/2017/06/lydia-bailey-1952.html 

Irving Lerner

In 1943 Irving Lerner directed two short documentaries, both pretty good: Swedes in America (aka Ingrid Bergman Answers) and The Autobiography of a "Jeep". At the time he was working for OWI, the United States Office for War Information and this should not come as a surprise because during his career Lerner did so many different things in movies that it beggars belief. He made anthropological films for Columbia University. He was unofficial editor on Spartacus (Anthony Mann/Stanley Kubrick 1960) and he was assistant to Mann on two other films, Men at War (1957) and God's Little Acre (1958). He acted in a few films and he worked in different capacities with such famous documentary filmmakers as Willard Van Dyke and Robert Flaherty, sometimes as co-director. The last film on which Lerner worked was Scorsese's New York, New York (1977), as an editor. He died during the making of the film and Scorsese dedicated it to him. Lerner was also a man of strong left-wing beliefs and in 1944 he was even accused of spying for the Soviet Union. (His point man was Arthur Adams who, despite the name, was a Russian agent working in the US. Adams was actually born in Sweden, in the town of Eskilstuna, to a Swedish father and a Russian mother.)

Lerner himself

From 1948 to 1952 Lerner had been a teaching film at the University of Southern California, and then he apparently felt the time was right the start making his own feature-length films. He directed at least seven fiction films and some also list him as uncredited director on A Town Called Bastard (aka A Town Called Hell 1971), for which only Robert Parrish received credit, but I do not know what the deal is what that. I have seen only three of them, Murder by Contract (1958), City of Fear (1959) and Cry of Battle (1963), but I have read enough about the other four, Man Crazy (1953), Edge of Fury (1958, co-directed with Robert Gurney Jr.), Studs Lonigan (1960) and The Royal Hunt of the Sun (1969), to be interested in them too. His first feature, Man Crazy, was written and produced by Philip Yordan, as was Studs Lonigan and The Royal Hunt of the Sun. Yordan was also the credited writer on both Men at War and God's Little Acre, although on the first of them he was just the front for the blacklisted Ben Maddow. Maddow also was an uncredited writer on Murder by Contract. So there was a fairly tight little group. Lerner was also a close friend of Fritz Lang, to the extent that Lerner's wife allegedly wondered exactly how close they were.

Murder by Contract

But it would not matter that Lerner is an interesting person if the films were bad, but they are not. At least not those I have seen. The most famous (comparatively speaking) is Murder by Contract, a low-budget film shot during one week and starring Vince Edwards. He plays Claude, who, unsatisfied with his regular job and impatient to fulfil his dream of buying his own house in Ohio, decides to become a hired killer. As he sees it, it is just another job, a business like any other. It is a quite remarkable film (Scorsese was of course a huge fan) and it is easy to imagine Godard watching it repeatedly. It is very tense and hardboiled, filled with eccentric details, unusual editing, handheld camera work and suggestive pans. The characters are also colourful, not just Claude but also the other people he meets. Especially the two men who are his guides when he comes to Los Angeles to do a job. (He is not particularly eager to get going. First, he wants to see the sights, gaze at the Pacific Ocean and go swimming.) In one scene Claude walks around in a gun store and is amazed by it all. What is it with all these guns? And he wonders (self-servingly) why it is that if you kill one man you are a murderer but if you drop bombs on cities, killing thousands of people, you are a hero. The film is also interesting for Claude's weird relationship to women, and it is what is to become his undoing. Murder by Contract is on the one hand pretty typical for its kind but it manages to put so much interesting stuff into its 75 minutes and is shot, by Lucien Ballard, in such an inspiring style that it is close to irresistible. The unusual score by Perry Botkin is another strength.

City of Fear is also a low-budget film shot in a week, it also stars Vince Edwards and is again shot by Lucien Ballard. The excellent jazz score is by Jerry Goldsmith. But despite all this the film is less special and more conventional than Murder by Contract. This time Edwards plays an escaped convict who has by mistake brought with him a metal canister with Cobalt-60, a highly toxic radioactive substance. (He thinks it is heroin in the canister, which he is unable to open.) The police are desperately trying to find him before he opens the canister and inadvertently contaminates the city, while he is getting sicker and sicker by being so close to the canister all day. He is coughing, sweating, gets covered in rashes and starts to bleed through his nose. It is a good thriller, playing on the fear of nuclear power and radiation, yet more ordinary and less visually imaginative than Murder by Contract.

City of Fear

Best of the three I have seen though is Cry of Battle (aka To Be a Man). It is very different from the other two as it was shot in the Philippines and set during the second world war, and it has three big stars, Van Heflin, James MacArthur and Rita Moreno. The rest of the cast consists of Philippine actors, some of them famous locally. The cinematographer is also from the Philippines, Felipe Sacdalan (read a profile here). It tells a rather unusual story, and deals with male chauvinism and racism. The main character is David, a young American, played by MacArthur, whose father owns a plantation and who has lived a sheltered life. But when the Japanese attack the Philippines all of his old life is gone at the blink of an eye. The film begins in 1941, right after the Japanese assault, when David is attacked with some marauding soldiers. He is rescued by a Philippine resistance fighter (played by Leopoldo Salcedo) and is brought to a hut where he stays for a time with an old man and a young woman (played by Marilou Muñoz). They do not speak English, only Tagalog, so David has to learn it in order to communicate with them. But then another American appears, Joe, played by Heflin, and again David's sheltered life is shattered. Joe is deeply unpleasant, he hates the Philippine people and treat women with contempt and sexual aggression. After Joe rapes the young woman they both have to flee, and eventually get caught up in the resistance against the Japanese. But the real conflict is between Joe and David, the ugly American versus to naive and, if you will, quiet American. (The script was based on a book by Benjamin Appel and written by the former blacklisted Bernard Gordon.)

There are several startling scenes in the film, despite many lyrical passages and moments of beauty. One of the resistance fighters that they met is a woman, Sisa, played by Rita Moreno. (Moreno was from Puerto Rico, but in the film she plays a Filipina.) David falls in love with her but Joe, obviously, treats her like a sex object, and she is accustomed to have to play along with the men to stay alive. In one scene a jealous David screams "You're a whore!" to her. She is silent for a moment and then she strikes back. He knows nothing about the world, and what it takes to survives, she points out. He is just ignorant about the evils she has to face. And what is he, Sisa asks. Considering how he survives, is he not a whore himself, if she is one? He does not know how to respond to that, unable to handle her justified combination of weariness and anger.

I will not give away the ending, but that too is pretty powerful. Cry of Battle, with its strange lyrical visual style, harsh subject matter and interesting politics, can stand alone but it is also an interesting companion piece to John Ford's They Were Expendable (1945), which is also set in and around the Philippines. But in Ford's film the focus is only on the American soldiers, not on the people who actually live there. Ford's film is artistically superior but Cry of Battle is rather special too.

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My earlier piece on They Were Expendable is here.

Lerner's close personal friend Lang also made a film about the war in the Philippines, with the clunky title American Guerrilla in the Philippines (1950). I will have to write about it too, one day. Especially since it was made for 20th Century Fox.

Here is a film Lerner made with Joseph Strick in 1948, a nine minutes long film called Muscle Beach. I do not know how to define it.

City of Fear

Lydia Bailey (1952)

Since I began writing about Henry Hathaway in 2011 there have been many posts about films and filmmakers from 20th Century Fox; no studio has gotten more attention even though this was not part of any plan. It just seemed that one post led to another, about Otto Preminger, Henry King, Elia Kazan, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Joseph MacDonald, who were all at Fox, as was John Ford for a while. There they worked for Darryl F. Zanuck, the head of the studio, who had a close relationship with them all and had a big influence on the shape of the films. Note though that these filmmakers also had their individual themes, tastes and ideas, about acting and style and so on, which developed over time. Those who already had had careers before they came to Fox would often arrive with their unique, personal style and themes already in place, whereas many of those who began their careers at Fox evolved over time, becoming more idiosyncratic. (Kazan did not really blossom until the 1950s when he was working away from Fox, mostly with Warner Bros.)

Another of Zanuck's directors was Jean Negulesco, (the two of them were keen croquet players and Negulesco apparently a sore loser). He was born in Romania; one of the many who came from Mitteleuropa and eventually ended up in Hollywood. Negulesco had spent his teenage years in Vienna and then moved to Paris to be an artist and designer, and was rather good at it. He went across the Atlantic in the mid-1920s for a New York exhibition of his paintings, and found his way to Hollywood. He first did a series of velvety noirs at Warner, such as The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), and later, in the 1950s, came to be known for his Technicolor and CinemaScope romances, such as How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and Three Coins in a Fountain (1954). Andrew Sarris memorably divided (in The American Cinema) Negulesco's career into two parts, B.C. and A.C. (i.e. Before CinemaScope and After CinemaScope). Sarris preferred the B.C. part and said the A.C. part was "completely worthless", but whether that is fair is debatable. Though The Mask of Dimitrios is probably Negulesco's best film, tied with Deep Valley (1947), there are merits in some of the later films too and Negulesco's known classics are mostly from the A.C. era, such as the two mentioned above. But Negulesco's career is mostly forgotten and unseen, and among the many unknown films there are many that are far more interesting than the famous ones.

Ida Lupino and Dane Clark in Deep Valley

After the second world war, Zanuck, who was a liberal of sorts, decided to embark on a project to highlight social issues, including racism. This resulted in films like Gentlemen's Agreement (Kazan 1947), Pinky (Kazan 1949) and No Way Out (Mankiewicz 1950). Negulesco's Lydia Bailey (1952) is also one of Zanuck's, shall we say, racially conscious films. But unlike the earlier ones, which are more restrained and in black and white, Lydia Bailey is very emotional and in aggressive Technicolor. The argument here is not that Lydia Bailey is a forgotten masterpiece; in terms of artistry and acting it is average to good, and not even Negulesco's best film. The argument is that it has interesting politics and that it fits in with other more famous films about racial issues made at the time.

It is set in 1802 in what is now called Haiti but was then Saint-Domingue; a French colony in which the slaves had rebelled in 1791, inspired by the French revolution, and partly led by Toussaint Louverture. In 1802 a new rebellion had broken out and in 1804, so after the end of the film's story, the French left and Haiti was declared an independent state. So there is a factual basis for the film, and Toussaint Louverture appears in the film (or rather a character by that name, spelled L'ouverture), as does Pauline Bonaparte, the sister of Napoleon, but most of the main characters are fictional.

While most of Negulesco's films were focused on women, often with one or several as leading characters, that is not the case with Lydia Bailey, despite its title. The main character is instead an American lawyer, Albion Hamlin, He arrives in Saint-Domingue to get a signature on some papers to grant his impoverished government access to a large estate on mainland US, which will be a much-needed source of income. The reason he is sent to Saint-Domingue is because Lydia Bailey, the woman who can sign over the rights, are living there with a French aristocrat, Gabriel D'autremont, on a plantation. With the Americans evacuating the place and both the French and the Haitians suspicious of Hamlin's mission and loyalties he is immediately in danger. He is helped by King Dick, a Haitian and former slave, who is close to the leader of the resistance movement, i.e. Toussaint Louverture. Soon this American, Hamlin, who at first took no interest in the local politics, finds himself fighting side by side with King Dick against imperialism and oppression. Sympathising with the Haitians, Hamlin says that if he was one of them "I'd kill every white man I could lay my hands on." It is at times a cruel film, as it begins with the murder of a young boy and towards the end there is another killing of a child.

One might almost get the feeling that Lydia Bailey was based on some unknown historical novel by Graham Greene but the source material is a novel written by Kenneth Roberts, and adapted by Phillip Dunne and Michael Blankfort. The film is an anti-imperialist rallying call, where most of the heroes are black Haitians, and the white characters are either evil or, in the case of Hamlin and Lydia Bailey, naive and in need of an education to come around to the side of justice. King Dick, as part of this education, quotes Plato and says that "True courage is to follow a wise man." with himself obviously being that wise man. Hamlin says at the end that he now understands why the Haitians consider Toussaint Louverture as their George Washington. (Thomas Jefferson is also name-checked, as is Benjamin Franklin.)

While not shot on location it does have an atmospheric and vibrant style and Technicolor is used to vivid effect. There are many shots and images that are extraordinary in their use of colour. It could very well be Negulesco's most stylish colour film, with the help of cinematographer Harry Jackson. There is also a very fine close-up of Lydia Bailey as she is about to leave the plantation and her old life. She suddenly stops, and the camera lingers on her face for a long time while she seems to process everything that is going on, and then she collects herself and continue her escape.

She is played by Anne Francis and Dale Robertson plays Hamlin, but the real star is William Marshall as King Dick, in his first performance. He would later mainly play bit parts in TV-series and also the title role in Blacula (William Crain 1972). He had a very successful stage career however. Here he is easy-going, resourceful, resolute, witty, intelligent, compassionate and a natural leader. It is impossible not to be seduced by him, even though he is at times quite ruthless. In the end he waves goodbye to Hamlin and Bailey as they flee to an American gunboat. The last shot is of him standing in the harbour, one arm raised, with Cap-Français burning behind him, before he turns around to go back to continue his fight for a free Haiti.

It is easy to draw connections to the real world of 1952, when the film was made. At the time the French were fighting, and losing, a war in Indochina against the Vietnamese. In 1954 their time was up, after the battle of Dien Bien Phu. When the French left the Americans stepped in (and this time Graham Greene did write about it, The Quiet American), to well-known and disastrous results. But here, in Lydia Bailey, the American hero stands with the oppressed and the colonised.

The world premiere of the film took place in Haiti, in Port-au-Prince, with the president Paul Magloire holding a reception. What the Haitians thought of the film I do not know.

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There were other films from 1949 about racial intolerance, Lost Boundaries (Alfred Werner) and Home of the Brave (Mark Robson), but they were not produced by Zanuck and Fox. Most of these late 1940s anti-racist films are compromised in various ways but it is worth pointing out that one stands out: Clarence Brown's Intruder in the Dust (1949). It is the best of them, and Brown managed to get financed by MGM. I wrote about it here.

My earlier piece about Henry King here. My earlier piece about Otto Preminger here. My earlier piece about Joseph MacDonald here. My earlier piece about Kazan's Wild River here.

To see someone like yourself on the screen

Belle (Amma Asante 2013) is a conventional British period piece set in the 1780s, among rich people in a stately mansion. Conventional except for one thing. The main character is black.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Dido in Belle

At first I was annoyed by how conventional it was but after a while I changed my mind and felt that this was actually a good thing, as this underlines the message that it is the black character that stands out here, not the form, and that there is no reason why a conventional period piece could not have a black actor as its lead. This is what I meant by the title of this post, to see someone like yourself on screen might be a liberating and fulfilling thing if you are not used to that, or not used to doing that in such a setting or in such a character. That Belle is based on a true story and the people in it are actual historic figures made it easier to make it perhaps but it does not have to be based on a true story. Casting might be colour-blind as it is sometimes called. Kenneth Branagh cast Denzel Washington in his adaptation of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (1993) for example and especially in a Shakespeare adaptation anything should be possible. Although, and here the trouble with colour-blind casting appears, having a white actor play Othello, even if not in blackface as was the case in earlier films, would not really wash. Or maybe it would if for example that was the only part played by a white actor.

Robert Sean Leonard, Washington and Richard Briers

When I saw 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen 2013) I was impressed by the first part, when Solomon Northup lived a good life as a happily married man in 19th century New York. I had never seen a period piece from that time before in which black characters were portrayed in such a joyful and prosperous situation. I had on the other hand seen several films in which they played slaves. I do wonder whether it would not be a good thing if there were some films that also captured that kind of good life, as it too is a historical fact. It would be the unexpected and bring more visual reference points, and it would be a step forward in terms of equality. I can understand if some would consider it wrong. That since slavery was (still is) such a monstrous thing it should always be the focus, and by showing black characters who are actually enjoying life in 19th century America we might de-centre the institution of slavery, similar to how Stanley Kubrick allegedly disliked Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg 1993) because it was a film about the few Jews that survived the Holocaust. I seems unclear if and when Kubrick actually said that, and in any event it is unfair because Spielberg were not denying the extent of how many were killed, he only chose on particular story among many others, and the story of Oscar Schindler deserves to be told. By the same token you might criticise 12 Years a Slave because it is about a slave who survived and it has a happy ending. But that is obviously not my view.

These are important discussions to have, to think about representation and portrayal of various groups and minorities in our films. But sometimes calls for equality of representation seem to not have been thought through. For example, word is spreading that James Bond should be played by a woman. I find this something of a paradox. Either the woman plays James Bond, a male character, which would be highly unusual and probably not be taken seriously. Or she would play a female character, perhaps called Jane Bond. But then she would not, in fact, play James Bond, but a different character. Therein lies the paradox. So it is difficult to know whether those who are advocating that a woman should play Bond mean what they say or are just having some fun. The symbolic meaning of having a woman at the centre of this lengthy, immensely successful and trendsetting series is however considerable so it is worth considering, and an obvious alternative, which would not be a paradox of any kind, would be to upgrade Miss Moneypenny to a 00. She showed her capabilities in the field in Skyfall (Sam Mendes 2012) and M had probably meant for her to be a field agent had things not taken a bad turn. But as Bond (and Daniel Craig) seemed to be wanting to retire after Spectre (Sam Mendes 2015) and Miss Moneypenny clearly unhappy behind her desk, there is no reason why she could not be put into training again and eventually given the license. Everything else in up-coming films could remain as it has been for so long, only M would be sending Miss Moneypenny on missions instead of Bond. She could just take over the franchise, and Naomie Harris could stay on to play the part for a few years. That would be really exciting.

Harris as Moneypenny in Skyfall

Sometimes discussions about representation become ungratifying. I was once interviewed on radio on that topic and the approach they had was angry and ignorant. "Why are there no films about people with disabilities or queer characters?" was basically their question. There are of course a lot of such films and I mentioned perhaps 20 to 30 different films. Their response was usually "Oh, I had never heard about that film." to which I resisted to urge to reply "Well, whose fault is that?" If they actually were so concerned about it they might at least have googled "films about people in wheelchairs" and other similar questions, instead of assuming that:

a) if I do not know about it, it must be because it does not exist 

b) nobody has thought about this before, I am the first. 

That is just narcissism masquerading as progressiveness, and I have often encountered this, I have even heard people burst out "Why are there no female directors?" even though there are hundreds of female directors. This has puzzled me before but that radio interview explained something. When questions about queer films came up Rainer Werner Fassbinder was mentioned and the reaction was "Oh please, who wants to see old German films?" The problem for them was not so much that there were no such films, the problem was that there were no such films that they could be bothered to watch. If it was not a Hollywood action film then no thanks. So the beef is not necessarily "Why are there no films with queer characters?" The beef is "Why are there no films with queer characters shown at my nearest cinema and which have a lot of explosions and people fighting robots?" These two questions are not the same, and alas the people who are asking the first question but are really asking the second question often come across as narrow-minded and lazy, rather than enlightened and progressive. It is like when people ask "Why are there so few films with other than white actors in the leads?" The answer to that question is that in fact the overwhelming majority of films being made any given year do not have white actors in the leads because most films are made in Africa and South and South-East Asia. The question is actually Eurocentric (or westcentric).

Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das in Fire (Deepa Mehta 1996)

But. This does not mean that there is not a legitimate case to make against mainstream Hollywood concerning, for example, whitewashing, as when films based on true stories change the ethnicity of the characters so even though they might have been Hispanics or Asian-Americans in real life, in the film they are white, or for the lack of original parts for other than white actors, or for the lack of LGBT characters and so on. Since mainstream Hollywood films have such a global reach it is fair to highlight their deficiencies. But these are not easy questions. What is a fair representation? Should each group of people in the United State, such as African-Americans, Native Americans, Italian-Americans, Asian-Americans, Arab-Americans, gay, lesbians, transgender, senior citizens, people with disabilities and so on, all be represented by the same percentage as their prevalence in society at large, including, say, clammers or morticians? I suppose not. But even though most would agree that things are not good enough now there will never be a time when everybody are satisfied. There will always be some who feel left out or forgotten or under-represented. This is not a problem to be solved, this is a perpetual struggle, as it must be, since people change all the time and our demands and expectations also change all the time.

Mary McDonnell and Alfre Woodard in Passion Fish (John Sayles 1992)

At the same time, it is also important not to forget that we are talking about art, and art is not real life. It is not the business of art to satisfy each and every one or to follow some official guidelines when it comes to representation. Art must also be cut some slack, otherwise we would never have had any art to begin with. We should not be complaisant, we should call out racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia and such when it appears, but we cannot demand of art that it be better than us humans who make it. And we should always be mindful that our own interpretation is not the only one to make, not the "correct" one. What one feminist thinks is trash another feminist might feel is empowering and liberating. Some find this ambiguity scary and it makes them uncomfortable, but such people are frequently afraid of art as such and should not necessarily be trusted. 

Tony Leung and Leslie Cheung in Happy Together (Wong Kar-Wai 1997)

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A recent article in New York Times about Asian-American actors taking a united stand against whitewashing. 

Representation is not only about issues with the body (skin colour, gender, illnesses), it can also be about class for example, but I limited myself in this post, it is already long enough. 

By saying that art must be cut some slack and not be ruled by official guidelines regarding representations some might suggest that this is just me showing off my privileges, as a white male and all, but that is not really an argument. It is also a reminder that prejudices come in all shapes and forms. Sometimes person A will lambaste the alleged privileges (white, male cis-person and whatnot) of person B, oblivious to the fact that person B is actually a woman, or black, or gay. The thinking there is that "Since you have that opinion you must be a white male." which is, well, a prejudice. Engage with the argument, not the sexuality or skin colour of the person making it.

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)

What do you care about Black Rock?

I don't care anything about Black Rock. Only it just seems to me that there aren't many towns like this in America. But one town like it is enough. And because I think something kind of bad happened here, Miss Wirth, something I can't seem to find a handle to.

You don't know what you're talking about.

Well, I know this much. The rule of law has left here and the guerrillas have taken over.

The Americans and the Japanese have had an awkward relationship ever since 1853 when Commodore Perry's gunboats opened up Japan to the outside world and brought the Tokugawa Shogunate to an end. They are now close allies but in the 1980s USA was convinced that Japan would take over as the number one power and buy up America (a fear which can be seen in films as diverse as Gung Ho (Ron Howard 1986) and Die Hard (John McTiernan 1988)), and during the 1930s they were enemies and fought each other during World War 2, after which the US occupied Japan until 1952. Many films have been made about the war in the Pacific between 1941 and 1945, including John Ford's They Were Expendable (1945). Considerably fewer films have been made about what happened with the Japanese who were in the US during the war, and the Japanese-Americans. One of those rare films is Bad Day at Black Rock (John Sturges 1955).

It is set in 1945 and takes places during 24 hours, from when the Southern Pacific makes a brief and unexpected stop at Black Rock (stopping for the first time in four years) until the train comes along the same time the next day, again making a brief and unexpected stop. In between a stranger, Macreedy, played by Spencer Tracy, has been forced to take on almost the whole town as the people in it first want him to leave and then want to kill him. Once something bad happened in Black Rock and ever since the town has been walking dead, consumed by fear and guilt. For some Macreedy is seen as a threat but to others as a chance for redemption.

The town's unofficial leader as a man called Smith, played by Robert Ryan, and he is clearly responsible for the bad thing that happened, whatever it was. Macreedy has come to Black Rock to visit the father of a friend, a Japanese man called Komoko. But he is not there anymore and his place has been burned to the ground. In one particularly powerful sequence Macreedy is trying to coax Smith into admitting that he killed Komoko, and that he killed him only because he was Japanese. Macreedy is gentle, soft-spoken and sitting down, Smith is tense, aggravated and standing up, menacing.

The film was shot on location in the dry, hot inland of California, close to where during the war there had been a relocation camp in which thousands of Japanese-Americans had been locked up. This is also something that comes up in the dialogue. The different men in the town all have their different reasons for why they acted like they did, and now act like they do. For Smith it is a combination of disappointment (for not being accepted by the army when he tried to enlist) and pure racism; hatred of the Japanese. But it is also because he knows that his way of life and his breed is doomed, they have no place in a modern, post-war America. In some ways he is related to Ethan Edwards in Ford's The Searchers (1956), another embittered man for whom there is no place in a post-war era. (It is also possible to draw a connection to the Bundy gang who are currently occupying a wildlife refuge in Oregon.) But he is not unique, and maybe he is called Smith to emphasise how ordinary he is. He could be anybody.

Perhaps unexpectedly this is a MGM production, produced by Dore Schary, who was keen on having his liberal inclinations seen in the films he produced. Bad Day at Black Rock had a pointed progressive political message, and the heads at the studio were not keen on it, but Schary prevailed. It was also MGM's first film in CinemaScope, and likewise its director John Sturges' first film in that format. Sturges said he would do it on condition that he was left alone on set, and he did get to make it his way. One thing he did was to get rid of all the extras. The only people seen in the film are the main characters, except for the first and last scene. Sturges did not want any distractions in his compositions, and they are powerful. He is one of the great Scope directors, a natural for compositions, and this was obvious already here in his first try. It looks spectacular, and Sturges seems to be thrilled by what he can do with the wide frame and frequently, by his staging and blocking, draws attention to the images so that they become like still lifes. In some scenes it is as if Sturges suddenly freezes the action for a few seconds, like in this impromptu meeting between several men in a series of elaborately composed shots. The point is not so much what they are talking about as for Sturges to show what he can do, and what the format can do.

The script by Millard Kaufman, is very good, and the dialogue as well, but it is Sturges's handling of the material that makes the film the great work of art that it is.

There is one absence in the film: they all speak of the Japanese but no one is seen, which is part of the force of the film. They are not there anymore because bad things happen in places like Black Rock.

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For those who wish to explore more of Sturges at his best there is The Law and Jake Wade (1958) and The Hour of the Gun (1967).

Here are two earlier related articles:
On the two Sturges, Preston and John.
On The Great Escape (1963).

Another recommended film is House of Bamboo (Sam Fuller 1955), see accompanying post here.

The Law and Jake Wade

Smoke Signals (1998)

Although there are several hundred films about American Indians there are few that are actually made by American Indians. Perhaps around 100 films in total (including short films, features and documentaries), with few being given a general release and almost all of them made in the last 20 years or so. The first that was given a commercial release was Smoke Signals (Chris Eyre 1998), based on Sherman Alexie's short story "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona", making it something of a milestone.

It is a road movie of sorts, and in many ways a quintessential American indie film of its time, in style, tone and theme. Two cousins who grow up together since one of them, Thomas, lost his parents in a fire when he was newly born, travel by bus from Plummer, Idaho, to Phoenix, Arizona (which takes about 24 hours), to collect the ashes of their dead dad/uncle. He had left his family many years ago and his son, Victor, feels nothing but bitterness towards him. Bitterness seems to be Victor's default feeling towards most things in life, perhaps towards life itself, whereas Thomas is a more cheerful guy, who might be considered childish and naive, but the film suggests that it is rather he who is the wise one and the cranky Victor the immature one who must grow up and face the true facts of his childhood. That is one theme of the film, to forget the sins of our fathers, such as they are. The film effortlessly moves back and forth in time, between the time of the death of Thomas's parents, the time when Victor's dad left, and the present, capturing their lives in snapshots of grief. But in the present the mood is more varied, switching between satire and pathos, laughter and anger.

Victor and Thomas come from the Coeur d'Alene reservation, and that fact that the film is not just about any two guys going on a life-changing road trip but actually about American Indians, and their part in American history and culture, is what gives the film its edge. The way they live, the way they travel, where they get to sit on the bus, how they look at the world, how the world looks at them, all of this is profoundly related to the fact that they are Indians. The filmmakers have said that they wanted to make a film that said something like "We are still here, you did not manage to wipe us all out, much as you tried." and from this the film receives its force, despite being slightly unsatisfying otherwise, such as the complete change of Victor's personality towards the end.

Beyond showing the life for contemporary Indians, the strength of the film is often related to its humour. When Thomas and Victor are set to leave the reservation to go to Phoenix, they and two girls joke about getting passports and perhaps get vaccinated, now that they are travelling abroad. At another point they make up a song about John Wayne's teeth, and a running joke in the film is a play on the quote from the Lakota leader Tȟašúŋke Witkó, or Crazy Horse, "Today is a good day to die." which here is given in many variations, such as "Sometimes it's a good day to die, and sometimes it's a good day to have breakfast." Another example is the conversation in the clip below. But the humour is always grounded in a sense of anger or sadness.



The two most common approaches from Hollywood towards American Indians has been either to depict them as brutal enemies to be feared or as victims to be pitied. Depictions of Indians on film is also addressed in Smoke Signals, not just regarding Dances With Wolves (Kevin Costner 1990) and John Wayne but in general. At one point a TV is showing a Western, and Thomas says "The only thing more pathetic than Indians on TV is Indians watching Indians on TV." In Smoke Signals, when they get to tell their own story, things are very different, and about time too.

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There is some debate as to which was the first film directed by an American Indian, but this is one contender, White Fawn's Devotion (James Young Deer 1910).



Here is an interview from 1998 with those who made Smoke Signals.

This recent article in the New York Times, about a series of suicides among teenagers in Pine Ridge Reservation, gives an example of the struggles that continues.

This blog post is related to my two previous posts about some films of George Sherman, the first one here and the second here, films about racism and hatred towards American Indians in a historical context.

Tomahawk (1951)

Following last week's post about two films by George Sherman, this post will focus on another of his best films, Tomahawk (1951). It is one of several films produced in the 1950s by Universal-International studio about the wars between American Indians and the US government, and of which George Sherman directed a handful. The screenplay was written by Silvia Richards and Maurice Geraghty. Richards was otherwise working with Fritz Lang at the time (they were also romantically involved) and she wrote two of Lang's films, The Secret Beyond the Door (1947) and Rancho Notorious (1952), as well as Ruby Gentry (King Vidor 1952). Geraghty had written a number of westerns, including a few directed by Sherman, such as the very good Calamity Jane and Sam Bass (1949). It was produced by Leonard Goldstein, who worked with Sherman on many films until Goldstein's death in 1954.

Tomahawk is primarily set in 1866, in Wyoming and South Dakota, and there are two stories in the film: the larger historic events and the personal story of Jim Bridger and Monahseetah, and these two stories coalesce. The historical background is the so-called Red Cloud's War, named after a leader of the Sioux nation, Maȟpíya Lúta, or Red Cloud, that took place in these parts of USA between 1866 and 1868. The Sioux and the US government cannot come to an agreement about the land, and the US has built a fort, Phil Kearny, as part of a trade route through what should have been Sioux land, and the fort becomes an irritant for them. In the winter of 1866 Red Cloud and his men lured an army unit of up to a 100 men into a trap and killed them all in a battle (known as the Fetterman Massacre) and after one more year of fighting Red Cloud eventually won this war after he took the fight to the courts, and the Treaty of Fort Laramie (or Sioux Treaty) was signed in 1868. Fort Phil Kearny was abandoned and the Sioux got their land. But the land would continue to be irresistible to the whites and soon war broke out again, and the Indians were inevitably defeated. The court cases have continued to the present time however, and some are still not settled.

That was the historical background on which the film is based, and the film stays relatively close to it, and in order to emphasise its historical grounding a voice-over in the beginning and the end provides some of the historical context. The film opens with the camera panning over a cloudy sky and then moving to the ground, to a large grass plain on which a conference is taking place between the Sioux and representatives from the US government (see image above). The voice-over asks whether there is anybody who has the ability to see both sides of this conflict and then answers with "Jim Bridger is such a man". Jim Bridger is based on a real person with the same name who was a scout and trapper and a trader and something of a celebrity in his time, although the Jim Bridger in the film is much younger than the real Bridger was in 1866. His personal story in Tomahawk is that he lived with the Cheyenne and that his wife and child were Cheyenne too but they were murdered by a group of renegade US soldiers. Bridget is also present at the conference (at least in the film), as is his sister-in-law, Monahseetah and his friend Sol Beckworth. At the conference he is clearly on the side of the Sioux, and he does not try to hide his contempt for the US government's lies and deceptions. Also present at the conference is of course the leaders of the Sioux nation, including Red Cloud who leaves the conference in anger, but says that as long as no Sioux is killed he will not go to war, and the soldiers go back to Fort Phil Kearny. When Monahseetah recognises a lieutenant among the soldiers, the man whom she believes killed her parents and her sister, Bridger's wife, they go to the fort to make clear whether the lieutenant is that man and if so seek justice, or rather revenge.

Bridger and Monahseetah

Bridger, who is white but has lived and worked with Indians his adult life, and speaks several languages, is the obvious hero in the film, even though he is a bitter and mournful man, and even though the US soldiers are distrustful. The colonel at Fort Phil Kearny asks him where his loyalties are, with the Sioux or with the cavalry. Bridger answers that he does not want to take sides. "I'm talking about the fight. If it comes, you can't be on both sides." the colonel says. "I cross that bridge when I have to." Bridger responds. In the film the real enemies are the US government and individual soldiers, who can be racists and murderers. The lieutenant, with his short blonde hair, looks rather like a Nazi villain and in the end, when faced with Bridger's vengeance, he defends himself by saying he was just following orders. But, as in Sherman's Reprisal! (1956) discussed in the previous post, racism is everywhere. There is a woman who has fallen for Bridger, Julie Madden, and he tells her about what happened to his wife. "I'm so sorry." she says, and he angrily replies "You're sorry, but only for me. You're not sorry for her. She was just an Indian..." But Bridger cannot just stay outside and observe, as a white man in Sioux territory his position is fraught, whatever he might think. He and Red Cloud's favourite son do not get along and eventually they fight it out, a fight to the death with Bridger the survivor. He does not want to fight, or kill, but it came to that anyway. That is the final straw for Red Cloud.

The above mentioned Fetterman Massacre is depicted in the film, although the film version have fewer men involved and is not set in wintertime. Directly afterwards comes yet another attack by the Sioux against the remaining soldiers, including the civilian Bridger. But now the soldiers have been equipped with new, modern rifles, much more efficient and quicker than the old ones. Red Cloud's strategy is based on the slowness of the older weapons and as a consequence most of his men are mowed down, in front of the sad eyes of Bridger. Afterwards the colonel talks about their victory, and Bridger replies "You didn't beat them Colonel, it was those breech-loaders [the new guns]. It was a mechanical thing that beat them."

Finally, as happened in real life, a new treaty is signed and Fort Phil Kearny is abandoned. That is where the film ends, with the Sioux as the winners. It is probably the only film where the happy ending has the US cavalry leaving their fort and triumphant Sioux burning it down behind the retreating soldiers.

Tomahawk does work rather well as a history lesson, even if it of course is not 100% accurate. It also works well as a film. Van Heflin who plays Bridger is very good, and the fact that the film is shot on location where the real events too place does wonders. What is unusual in the film is that the Sioux and Cheyenne speak their own languages, and Bridger too speaks their languages, and when he and Monahseetah speak with each other it is not in English but Cheyenne (although she is played by Susan Cabot, and not an American Indian). Visually Sherman's images are impressive, with the humans often appearing as little dots under an immense sky and on the open landscapes, the horizon seemingly endless. Some shots are exceptional in this regard. There is only one scene with obvious fake, plastic background, and it is unfortunate because it is also the emotionally most intense scene in the film, when Bridger is telling Julie Madden about the killing of his wife and child. He is covered in sweat, and can barely speak the words, so unbearable are they. It is an uncomfortable scene, and a significant one too. The same racism and brutality that would later come to the surface again, in for example My Lai, is exposed.

This will be the last Sherman post for a while. I still have very little information about the context and the working relationships and practises at Universal in the 1950s, but I imagine that these films were made by a small group dedicated to doing progressive stuff, and that they might very well have had problems with McCarthyism.* But it is not only at Universal. Sherman also made films for Columbia, with similar themes and mood, such as Reprisal!. The research continues, and there will most likely be more posts on Sherman in the future.

Tomahawk is what the Sioux call Bridger.

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*So-called pro-Indian films were rather common in the 1950s, beginning with two releases in 1950, The Devil's Doorway, directed by Anthony Mann, and the major hit Broken Arrow, directed by Delmer Daves. Sherman's Comanche Territory from the same year is also pro-Indian (it ends with Maureen O'Hara's feisty saloon keeper stealing a wagon filled with guns and handing them out to a group of Comanche so they can defend themselves against the white settlers), although the tone of that film is more light-hearted. This is not to say that there were no pro-Indian films prior to 1950, it is just that they were not explicitly called that.

My earlier post about George Sherman are here (a full overview of his career), here, and here.

Update: I had inexplicably written Colorado Territory instead of Comanche Territory, but that has now been corrected. Colorado Territory is an even better film though, directed by Raoul Walsh in his prime.

2 x George Sherman: Reprisal! (1956) and The Last of the Fast Guns (1958)

Last year I wrote a long piece about the director George Sherman. Today I will return to him and look closer at two of his best films. There are two things in particular that stand out in Sherman's body of work, the progressive politics and the visuals (sometimes in combination with exceptionally fine use of sound) but the focus this time will be almost exclusively on the themes of these two films. There will be an additional post next week.

The 70 minutes of Reprisal! (1956) is one of the angriest attacks on racism that American cinema has to offer, and of all of Sherman's bitter and polemical films this might be the clearest and most direct. It is so streamlined and focused that it becomes almost an abstraction, turning over all possible angles of racial hatred and pointing out is contradictions, its relentlessness, its stupidity and its costs, and it leaves nobody untouched. In one scene a white man is pointing a gun at an American Indian* lying on the ground after having been knocked of his horse. The man with the gun shouts "Get up!" but the Indian answers "What different does it make if I'm in the dust or standing up? I'm an Indian!" in a voice signalling the oppression and terror, the dehumanisation, his people have suffered through several generations.

The film begins with a slow pan over an inhospitable landscape until it reaches a barren tree, where the camera stops. There are two bodies on the ground and there are two ropes hanging from the tree. Then the title Reprisal! appears in red letters over the tree. There has been a lynching of two Indians, and three brothers are the accused. At a trial, held in a saloon, the crowd is firmly on the side of the accused, and their lawyer's argument is basically that the men are innocent, and the testimony of an Indian is not worth anything, in fact the very fact that an Indian was allowed to testify is a sin, and in any event killing Indians is not a crime. The jury takes ten seconds to come up with the verdict, pronouncing the men innocent (although they are clearly not). 

While the trial has been going on a stranger, Madden, has come to town, surprised by the empty streets, so he wanders into the saloon too, and witnesses the ordeal. He has come to take possession of some land that he has bought, and he befriends the local magistrate and his pretty daughter. The daughter is also a defender of the Indians, an outspoken liberal. Madden though does not want to get involved, he just wants to get his land and start to build a future for himself. But that is not to be. He is clearly torn, filled with bottled-up rage and clearly sympathetic to the Indians. He is a stand-up guy, handsome and brave, a conventional hero of Westerns. After 40 minutes it is revealed that his mother was Indian and she raised him by herself, he is of mixed race, but he only wants to acknowledge one half, the white half, because that is the only way he will be able to live free and have his own land to work on. Or so he believes, but with the town so consumed by racism, with drunken men riding into "Indiantown" with guns blazing and scaring away the Indians' horses, he eventually has to accept that he cannot live in hiding. Especially not when his maternal grandfather finds him, and wants to stay with him. "You are my only remaining kin." he says with sad eyes, the old man only wanting to be near his grandson, even if it means pretending to be his servant, so nobody will suspect that something strange is going on. But the grandfather also asks difficult questions. "Who are your people? Where do you belong? Where?"

In the end the people in the town try to lynch Madden, because he is siding with the Indians and because the townspeople think he killed a man (which he did not). He is saved by an Indian woman, and a few seconds after the street was packed with people he is standing all alone, the rope still around him, abandoned by everybody, including the liberal woman who could not bear the thought of him with an Indian woman, "A, a squaw." she says, ashamed of her own prejudices. (That shot of the street emptying in the blink of an eye, and him standing there alone, has an incredible force, and there are a few such scenes in the film. Scenes with tensions so high you might think the frame will catch fire.)

Finally the man renounces his white half, acknowledges his grandfather, after his death, and rides away, now an Indian. No longer Madden but Neola. All he wants is to be treated just like a man, not a white or an Indian, but just a man. This the world will not allow. At least not yet.

You could read the film as it is, about racism in the old west, but you might as easily read it as an allegory about racism in 1950s America, with African Americans in the place of the American Indians. Of course, by the standards of today Reprisal! might be seen as having flaws in its representation of the Indians, but that does not take away its honest intentions and palpable anger and disgust. 

The Last of the Fast Guns (1958) has a different tone, it is not angry or political in the same way, but it has the same sadness and bitterness that is to be found in most of Sherman's best films. This is a film which is primarily set outdoors, where Sherman is most at home, in some mountains in Mexico, and it opens when the main character Brad Ellison, all dressed in black, arrives in a small town to kill a man. They meet at the square and there is a cut to some graves outside town, which Brad passed on his way, and then some shots are heard. We never see the gunfight; we can just assume that it took place and that those graves will not be wanting for bodies. Then Brad is called in to see an old man, crippled and in a wheelchair. The old man gives Brad an assignment, to find the man's missing brother, who might be somewhere in Mexico. Brad, tired and weary and aware that he will not live for very long (27 is old for a person such as him), accepts the assignment and the money and rides down south to see what he can find. 

On the way he stops at an old ruin in which some men are hiding out. They know each other and when Brad arrives they ask about some friends they have in common. Brad tell them their friends are all dead, gunned down, some have been shot in the back by their friends, such as Jesse James. Even Billy the Kid is dead, killed by Pat Garrett. The men look aghast. "We just found out the sun is setting." one of them says, visibly shaken. It is an exceptional scene, and illustrative of the terseness of the film, where few words are spoken and the words that are spoken are often clipped and hard. 

When Brad has come deep into Mexico he makes some friends, he meets a woman and a wise old priest, yet he continues his pursuit of the missing man, the ghost he is chasing. People speak of him, but they all say that he has died. Nobody has seen him die, but they all seem to know that he has. But where is the grave? "Up in the hills." Brad also meets another man on horseback, Miles Lang, all dressed in white, and they become friends, riding together. They are basically the same person, the white half and the black half, where the black is the future and the white is the past, the man he once was and no longer wants to be, and whom he may have to kill in order to become free.

The priest, a poor, humble man, tries to talk some sense into Brad. "There is treasure to be found in the hills, but it is not gold. It is peace of mind." Because that is what the priest has found. He was living a stressful life like a business man, but now he has peace. It was either that or death, and Brad knows that he too has that choice. Peace of mind in the hills or inevitable death. Yet the choice is surprisingly hard.

The Last of the Fast Guns is a wonderful film, a great film even, unusual in many respects, and with a special kind of poetry. As always with Sherman the visuals are very impressive and the mountains in which the second half of the film is set are put to vivid use. The film was shot in various parts of Mexico, such as Cuernavaca, Tepoztlan, Taxco and the Estudios Churubusco, and the cinematographer was from Mexico, Álex Phillips Jr. The film might be Sherman's greatest achievement.

Reprisal! and The Last of the Fast Guns have not only Sherman in common, they are also both written by David P. Harmon, alone on The Last of the Fast Guns and together with Raphael Hayes and David Dortort on Reprisal!. All of these writers would otherwise write almost exclusively for TV, and at least Reprisal! feels like a TV movie at times, stylistically. The Last of the Fast Guns however does not, and the Sherman touch is stronger on it. But they are both essential.

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*There is no consensus on which term to use. Some prefer to be called Native Americans (or First Nations), some prefer to be called American Indians, and some prefer to be called by their own nations, such as Sioux or Cheyenne. Another suggested term is Indigenous, which seems to be the least popular.

A related post is one I wrote last year about racism in American cinema.
Two earlier posts about Sherman here and here.

David Dortort was also one of the writers on The Lusty Men (Nicholas Ray 1952), a film which is rather different from Reprisal! and perhaps Ray's greatest film. Álex Phillips Jr. was cinematographer for over 100 films in Mexico, and sometimes in the US, and one of them was Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974).

The sentiments of our time

This is a film blog but I will make an exception today and say a few things about something unrelated to film, and instead related to last week's terror in Paris. It was not the first, nor the last, nor the worst terror attack we have seen, and in terms of people killed it pales in comparison to recent massacres perpetrated by Boko Haram in Nigeria and the Talibans in Pakistan, among others. But as it was a direct attack on writers and illustrators, on people such as myself, and in Paris too, a place to which I have always felt unusually close, I wanted to say something. And it is this:

A number of racists and assorted nitwits have, inevitably, said "This is the true face of Islam, this is how it really is!" Simultaneously there are those, much more benevolent and sympathetic, who say that "This is not Islam. This is the opposite of what Islam is." While their motives are very different both sides are claiming to know what Islam really is, and can judge which version is the true version. But that is untenable. The big religions have millions of believers who each have their own version of their religion, and when you talk of Christianity or Islam or Judaism you have to accept that it is both good and bad. God, as portrayed in the Bible, is not a benign, cuddly uncle but frequently petty, vindictive and even genocidal. A kind priest who hides illegal immigrants is not more of a "true" Christian than the awful homophobes at Westboro Baptist Church. Islam contains love, poetry and kindness as well as misogyny and extremism; the grand ayatollah Ali al-Sistani as well as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Daesh; Sayyid Qutb as well as my kind history teacher in college. If you want to talk seriously about religion you cannot just cherry-pick the stuff you like and say "This is the truth, this is the real Islam/Christianity/Judaism/Hinduism." There is no such thing; we must acknowledge the totality of any given religion.

Many have also tried to contextualise (or "explain") the events, some with the best of intentions, others with more dubious motives. Some, boldly saying that we need to look at history, look all the way back to 2003 and the war in Iraq. Others at least manage to invoke France's colonial affairs in Algeria. But all these efforts are painfully inadequate. For one thing, what exactly did the Jewish deli store in Porte de Vincennes have to do with whatever Bush and Blair were up to in Iraq? But more to the point, if what happened to Charlie Hebdo can be "explained" (yes, I insist in using "") by referring to Iraq, what are we to do with the assassination attempt on Ettore Capriolo in Milan in 1991 or the attempt on William Nygaard in Oslo in 1993? Or the firebombing of book stores in London and newspapers in the US in the late 80s and early 90s? These attacks (and possibly the murder of the Japanese translator Hitoshi Igarashi in 1991) were because the victims had sold, defended or somehow engaged with Salman Rushdie's book The Satanic Verses and the motives for the attacks were the same as for the attacks on Charlie Hebdo. Certain fanatics felt offended by Rushdie's book, and took it upon themselves to kill and maim whomever they saw fit to kill and maim, and so it was in Paris last week. If you want to provide a historical context then do that (and be prepared to take the long view, Al Qaeda are still angry about things that happened in 1492), do not just regurgitate you own pet peeves. Instead analyse the situation based on what actually happened, not solely on the identity of the perpetrators because that is a form of racism too. And the argument "The war in Iraq was a bad thing, therefore all bad things that has happened after it is because of it", and equivalents thereof, is an intellectual dead end.

Quite a few tweets as well as several articles have been published on the theme "Charlie Hebdo is a racist paper and those who worked there were only interested in making a lot of money and kicking down on the weakest members of French society". That is one view but it is worth remembering that Charlie Hebdo is a left-wing/anarchist paper which has been attacking every single French president and government since the 1960s, has repeatedly criticised racism, religions (all of them) and fascism, and frequently attacked the French military and police for their violence, racial profiling and overreach. This despite constantly being harassed, threatened with closure, censored, on occasion in effect closed down by the authorities, and additionally having received multiple death threats and been attacked with bombs and such. You may criticise them for their images of Muhammed but saying that they were cowards sucking up to power and pandering to racists is really pushing it.

Finally a few words on anti-Semitism, which is rising all over Europe and was also part of the motivation for the attacks. As you know anti-Semitism is not something new. For an example of how prevalent and widespread it was fairly recently, and in the most civilised of setting, consider Lionel Trilling, one of the leading intellectuals in post-war America. He was a Jew and even though this was after the Holocaust, prejudices and anti-Semitism were still rampant in the US. To quote:

[Trilling] was the first Jew to become an assistant professor in the department; he was appointed by the autocratic president of [Columbia] university, Nicholas Murray Butler, during the summer vacation, so that the faculty would not have to be consulted. Afterward, his former dissertation adviser, Emery Neff, paid a visit to him and his wife, Diana, to explain that he should not understand his promotion to mean that the department would welcome any more Jews.

In Europe it was even worse, especially before but still after the war. It never went away and now it is growing again, in tandem with Islamophobia. Alas, a difference between the two phobias is that many self-named progressives and left-wingers are surprisingly often hesitant to understand, acknowledge or condemn anti-Semitism, whether it comes from high up (such as from the late Hugo Chávez) or from down on the streets. And again "explanations" are provided, with plenty of blame put on the politics of Israel. But politicians blaming their country's problems on "the Jews", as is popular in Venezuela or Turkey, among other places, or the killing of Jewish children on the streets of Europe cannot be "explained". It is part of an ancient tradition which has nothing to do with Israel, regardless of the many appalling actions of its government.

The world is getting uglier by the day it seems like, with intolerance, pettiness, stupidity and equivocations coming from all directions, from all sides of the political spectrum. But maybe it was always thus. I will end with a quote from Trilling himself, from a letter he wrote to a friend in 1946: "What revolts and disgusts me . . . is the hideous involvement of ideals, feelings, social indignations, exhibitions of martyrdom, self-pity. I expect a quantum of injustice in any imperium, expect contradictions as the price of order—what brings me to the puking-point is the fine feelings."