DICK TRACY, DETECTIVE (1945)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

This 1945 B-film was the first of four produced by RKO Studios. Prior to DETECTIVE, Ralph Byrd was the only actor who had portrayed the famed comic-strip character. For whatever reason, Byrd was unavailable this time, so the studio cast Morgan Conway for this film and the next, DICK TRACY VS. CUEBALL Reportedly exhibitors complained to RKO that audiences didn't accept Conway, after which Byrd was hired to star in the series' final two films.

The plot concerns hardened criminal Splitface (Mike Mazurki), so named because he bears a huge scar bisecting the sides of his face. Splitface gets free of prison and goes on a rampage, slashing up an assortment of citizens. His motive is revenge upon the jury members who sent him up, but a confederate, a psychic grifter named Starling, complicates things by extorting some of the intended victims. Starling seems mildly psychic since he goes into trance and foretells his own death, but the vibe isn't strong enough to sustain the uncanny, though said vibe is supplied in spades by the imposing scarred visage of the hulking murderer Splitface. In addition, there's some business about the daughter of a nightclub owner, played by a not-yet-famous Jane Greer, and there's also a comic mortician named Deathridge.

In contrast to the serials, the RKO flicks incorporated a fair number of supporting characters from the Chester Gould strip-- Junior, Pat Patton, Chief Brandon-- though only the hero's neglected girlfriend Tess Trueheart (Anne Jeffreys) gets much characterization. As the dogged detective, Morgan Conway is an okay substitute for Ralph Byrd, and he acquits himself well in the concluding fight-scene with Splitface.

Conway's two outings as Dick Tracy were the only outstanding roles in his short career, and although director William Berke accrued a much longer (if equally journeyman) set of credits, DICK TRACY DETECTIVE is probably the only film on his resume that even old-time film-buffs would remember, though I found THE MARSHAL'S DAUGHTER mildly interesting. Of the films on Berke's resume, none are visually memorable, but maybe Berke tried to up his game somewhat for this flick, because DETECTIVE makes nice use of noirish shadows and atypical camera angles.

THE MASK OF DIIJON (1946), WHIRLPOOL (1949)

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *uncanny,* (2) *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*


THE MASK OF DIIJON, directed by metaphenomenal veteran Lew Landers, is one of those films, like THE FACE BEHIND THE MASK, that isn't precisely within the expected format of the horror-film. Yet DIIJON is definitely an uncanny film, given that it focuses upon the downfall of a master hypnotist who learns that he has gained the power to mesmerize people in ordinary life, not just on stage.

It's also patently a vehicle for lead actor Erich Von Stroheim, often billed as "the Man You Love to Hate." As an actor Von Stroheim plays along with this conceit. although Diijon is married, neither the actor's performance nor the script gives any indication as to why his wife Victoria ever loved him. Diijon is a magician with a ghoulish act involving the illusion of a living victim being killed beneath a guillotine's blade, but there's no hint that he has any passion for performing. His only passion seems to be to sit around reading books that teach him how to open the deep powers of his mind. Diijon only returns to the stage for pecuniary reasons, but in so doing, he comes to believe  that Victoria is secretly meeting with her ex-boyfriend Tony. His delving into secrets of the mind unleashes in him formidable hypnotic powers, which he then uses to seek revenge on his wife and her supposed lover. Naturally, things go wrong for the effete villain, leaving Victoria clear to hook up with the young, well-scrubbed Tony.

Von Stroheim is really the only element of the film worth watching, but there's not much he can do to juice up this by-the-numbers hokum.

WHIRLPOOL is obviously an "A" production, boasting Otto Preminger as director and name-stars like Gene Tierney, Jose Ferrer and Richard Conte in the cast. Yet this film also shows very little insight in the handling of its psychological subject matter, coming off a bit like "road company Hitchcock."

Ann Sutton (Tierney) is a woman who seemingly has it all, being married to a well-off psychoanalyst (Conte). Yet one day she starts shoplifting, and is caught. Only the unexpected aid of a stranger named Korvo (Ferrer) saves her from prosecution.

Though the script was based on a Guy Endore novel and was adapted by acclaimed writers Ben Hecht and Andrew Solt, it never gives the audience a credible reason for Ann's psychological quirk. Its best shot at so doing is a knee-jerk Freudianism, asserting first that Ann married her husband William as a father-substitute when Ann's father died, and then that, for some reason, this led her to start stealing things.

Korvo is the most interesting character here. He's a smooth con-man who doesn't want to work for his daily bread, rather like the psychotic villain from the 1990 thriller PACIFIC HEIGHTS. To this end he has mastered the talent of hypnotism, and he uses it to control Ann's actions so that she becomes his patsy in a murder.  Most interestingly, Korvo even uses self-hypnosis in order to give himself an alibi for the killing.

WHIRLPOOL is a diverting enough melodrama despite its simplistic characters, but for me its main interest is that its hypnotic mastermind is about as "naturalistic" as a villain of this type can get. Whereas both WHIRLPOOL and DIIJON take place in contemporary environments, DIIJON creates a world where Von Stroheim's weird talents are a source of strangeness, propelling the film into the domain of the uncanny. But WHIRLPOOL never represents hypnotism as anything but a mundane talent, and so Korvo remains an entirely naturalistic character.

MR. MOTO TAKES A CHANCE (1938), DANGER ISLAND (1939)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: (1) *fair,* (2) *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*



SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS


I've reviewed a smattering of Charlie Chan films, which generally tend toward the naturalistic but sometimes include uncanny tropes as well. In contrast, Chan's greatest competitor in Hollywood films-- the "Mister Moto" series from 20th-Century Fox-- would seem to be entirely naturalistic in attitude.

MR. MOTO TAKES A CHANCE is one of the best of the eight Fox mysteries, all featuring the redoubtable Peter Lorre as the Japanese agent whose interests usually coincide with those of his Western allies from America and Europe. The movie packs a lot of characters and situations into its tight 63 minutes. Aviatrix Victoria crashlands in French Indochina, near the village of Tong Moi. Moto is already there, posing an archaeologist studying ancient ruins, and so are two American movie-makers, a portly rajah who gets a yen for Victoria, and Bokor, the local medicine man-- whose name is apparently swiped from the Haitian word for "evil sorcerer."

The complicated shenanigans end up being about guns being smuggled to Indochinese rebels. In the real world, I would have thought that a Japanese spy would have been trying to help the Indochinese kick out the French, in order to further Japan's mission for the "Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere." Nevertheless, Moto is working to support colonialism here, and in keeping with this ideology, the only authorities one sees are the corrupt Rajah and the superstitious Bokor. Asian culture as a whole isn't given a bad name here, though the trope of "exotic lands and customs" remains at the level of the naturalistic.

Moto, already undercover as an archaeologist, assumes a new identity as "Guruji," a wandering Buddhist monk. He appears in time to save the Americans from Bokor's wrath. This scene includes a naturalistic version of the "enthralling illusionism" trope, in that Moto proves his monkish powers to the natives by first charming a snake and then appearing to resist the heat of a burning brand pressed to his skin. The film doesn't explain how Moto performs these feats of illusionism, but they are conveyed to the viewer as being entirely naturalistic, as opposed, say, to the use of hypnotism and stage magic in the Charlie Chan film BLACK MAGIC.

On a side-note, heroine Victoria, as played by Rochelle Hudson, is a little more gutsy than many mystery-heroines. The character here turns out to be a spy (big surprise), and by coincidence the real-life actress apparently participated in some level of civilian espionage, as well.

DANGER ISLAND, one of the last three Moto films released in 1939, is a rather weak-by-comparison story of the spy-detective investigating diamond smuggling in Puerto Rico. Ordinary the "exotic lands" trope wouldn't be worth noting for this type of mundane mystery. However, there is a brief reference to certain local swamps being "haunted," and a moment in which the director shows the swampland looking "spooky." However, this never registers as anything but a vagrant impression. The scene is roughly the equivalent of those scenes in Charlie Chan films in which the comedy-relief characters would blunder into wax-museums or carnival "haunted house" attractions.

The best thing about DANGER ISLAND is its own comedy relief. Wrestler Twister McGurk (Warren Hymer) takes a liking to Moto after the agent continually bests McGurk with judo moves. The sight of the clueless American towering over, yet following in the wake of, the diminutive yet subtle "Asian" is the highlight of this routine entry. 

HUGO (2011), THE MYSTERIOUS HOUSE OF DOCTOR C (1976)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: (1) *good* (2) poor
FRYEAN MYTHOS: (1) *drama* (2) comedy
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: (1) *sociological, psychological* (2) *psychological*

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

 

In some ways Martin Scorcese’s HUGO—based on Brian Selznick’s novel THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET—is the perfect naturalistic exemplar of the trope I call “enthralling hypnotism and illusionism.”  Hypnotism, the art of seeming to make people surrender their wills, is not on display here.  However, whereas in previous entries I’ve usually spoken of “illusionism” in terms of stage-magic, here it refers to “movie-magic,” the ability of filmmakers to create a “dream-screen” to which filmgoers surrender their “reality principle.”

I won’t go into the details of HUGO’s plot, which concerns, in brief, the fortuitous way in which the unsupervised orphan boy Hugo stumbles across an old man who proves to be (remember the spoilers) the once-heralded silent fantasy-filmmaker Georges Melies.  Scorcese brings every ounce of his formidable directing-talent to the fore in this valentine to early cinema-history.  And though Scorcese is best known for realistic crime drama, HUGO is predicated on the notion that cinema’s greatest achievement is its ability to capture magical fantasies—even though the film HUGO itself does not properly belong in the annals of metaphenomenal film.

 The irony of HUGO is that the only way cinema can manifest dreams is through the medium of technology—and not the futuristic technology of science fiction, but the vaguely “steampunk” technology of the late 19^th century, from which filmmaking technology was born.  Presumably following Cabret’s book, Scorcese’s story makes clear that the re-invention of man’s culture through his technology also implies the reinvention of man himself— essentially a benevolent rewriting of the Frankenstein myth. 

The story dovetails two developments in the 19^th century, for the birth of film technology was also the period in which humans began their first fumbling steps with automatons.  One such automaton provides a link between Hugo and Melies.  At no time does this primitive version of a robot do any of the things associated with science-fiction robots, whether railing at its creators or serving as an obedient “Ariel” to a masterful “Prospero.”  First and last, it, like all other forms of technology in HUGO, is just a machine that does nothing more than what it’s been made to do.  And yet, whenever Scorcese’s camera lingers on the automaton, the viewer cannot help but expect to see it come alive. It only does so once, in Hugo’s dream, as he imagines himself being overwhelmed and consumed by machines.  But that nightmare is never more than another dream, and the upbeat tone of HUGO makes clear that in this world all dreams are grist for the “dream screen.”

Interestingly, some film-critics have spoken of cinema’s beginnings as divided between two polarized attitudes: that of Melies, who embraced fantasy and dreamlike illusion, and of the Lumiere Brothers, who reputedly emphasized documentarian examinations of reality.  As HUGO depicts history, the Lumieres are the first out of the gate, for the film depicts Melies as attending one of their early cinematic efforts.  When these pioneers decline to share their secrets with Melies, he steals those secrets and puts them to his diametrically opposed use.  Yet though Scorcese recognizes the Lumieres’ primacy, it’s Melies the fantasist whom he chooses to celebrate.  

To be sure, those who are familiar with Scorcese’s frequent tub-thumping efforts for film preservation-- often seen on the TCM movie channel—may feel toward the end that the whole film has been a big commercial for Scorcese’s idée fixee.  Nevertheless, HUGO, though not a fantasy-film in either the uncanny or marvelous categories, shows supreme respect for the art of fantasy itself.

THE MYSTERIOUS HOUSE OF DR. C is one of the films whose history is more interesting than the film itself.  The movie was first launched in 1968 as an adaptation of the 1870 comic ballet "Coppelia," which itself was largely based on E.T.A. Hoffman’s short story, “The Sandman.” Not being a ballet enthusiast I have no knowledge of the original work, but since I view (through my  Fryean literary lens) "Sandman" as an extremely depressing ironic horror-tale.  it seems like the a strange choice on which to base a frothy musical comedy.

Further, though the initial release of the Spanish film "Fantástico mundo del doctor Coppelius" was in 1968, it met with little attention, so its producers rearranged the original film and added new material for an equally unsuccessful release in 1976.  As that version was the one to debut on TCM in 2011, I'm reviewing that one only here.

Whereas HUGO was written as a 21^st century take on the 19^th century’s fascination with automata, Hoffman’s story was a roughly contemporaneous take upon the marvelous machines, such as the famous chess-playing automaton "the Turk," which was exhibited from the late 18th through the early 19th centuries.  Hoffman's 1816 tale concerns a semi-hysterical narrator—possibly the ancestor to most of Poe’s storytellers—who has encountered a mysterious Doctor Coppelius.  The narrator compares the weird doctor to the “Sandman” of folktales.  The narrator falls in love with the young female protégé of Coppelius, only to be driven to distraction when he discovers that she is nothing more than a mechanical creature.  In 1919 Sigmund Freud famously interpreted the story in terms of the Oedipus Complex and labeled the story “uncanny” in that one was never sure whether or not the events were real or the product of a demented imagination.  This reading surely affected the view of Todorov in his study THE FANTASTIC, where he views all fantasy through this same Freudian lens.

While it might be hard for some to say whether or not Hoffman’s story is “uncanny” or “marvelous,” MYSTERIOUS HOUSE OF DR. C solves the quandary by abolishing it and hewing to a naturalistic interpretation of the universe.  In this inversion of Hoffman, Doctor Coppelius is not a sinister mad scientist or even a nasty father-figure, but a harmless crank who tries to make automata.  Through an assortment of  contrivances, the girl Swanhilda pretends to be one of his automata and goes through a series of comic mishaps posing as a robot girl and trying to win her beloved.

Judged as a musical, HOUSE is mainly a curio, not very memorable in terms of song, dance, or performance.  The film's crazy doctor doesn't even make a functioning automaton, which apparently does happen in the ballet. Thus MYSTERIOUS HOUSE OF DOCTOR C is really all about dispelling any sense of "mystery" in favor of a cheery comic "reality."

      

MISS ROBIN CRUSOE (1954)

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*


ROBINSON CRUSOE, meet THELMA AND LOUISE.

Not really, but for the first thirty minutes of this bargain-basement, gender-switching take on the Daniel Defoe novel, the audience does see two women stranded on an island but allied in a common cause against the tyranny of men.  However, as CRUSOE is a light romance, the ladies' negative experiences with the male gender must be proven to be nothing more than Darn Bad Luck.  Thus a studly male makes it to the island as well, literally (as the lobby card above shows) coming between "Miss Robin Crusoe" and her black female companion, unimaginatively dubbed Friday (which allegedly means "day of freedom" in some country or other).

Unlike Defoe's Crusoe, Miss Robin (Amanda Blake) is shipwrecked on an island with one other survivor of her ship, a male sailor.  He immediately chases Robin with rape in mind, but she runs to the top of a cliff and manages to kill him by pushing him off. Her mental soliloquy then informs the audience that she was the only woman aboard her father's ship, and that every man aboard had been lusting for her until the day of the wreck. This experience isn't the sole reason for her hatred of men: before that, as she will inform one of her two island-companions, her drunken father drove her mother to death and forced Robin to work in a public house (implicitly as a serving-girl, though one imagines this still wasn't the best place to encounter a nice guy).  Later her nasty father took her on board the ship to save the cost of a cabin boy, but though the dead paternal unit isn't explicitly identified as having molested his daughter, he certainly put her in a position where her rape was highly probable.  One might hazard that the nameless sailor she manages to kill is a stand-in for her worthless dad.  Later the association of sex, the sea and ships will crop up again.

After managing to build herself a treehouse against the elements, Robin mopes about a while until, as in the novel, a tribe of black islanders paddle their canoes to the island in order to execute a sacrifice, the tribeswoman (Roberta Hayes) who will become Friday (and to some extent, Robin's "savage" alter ego).  Robin snatches Friday from the jaws of sacrifice and repels the black island-men with her firearms; in addition, Friday proves more than competent, killing one islander with a knife and another with a spear.  Friday, who like her people has never seen firearms before, initially regards Robin as a god. Robin modestly tries to convince her that they are equals, though the relationship, as in the novel, remains one in which Robin still gives all the orders.  Once or twice there are dim suggestions that Friday may come to have some feeling for Robin beyond friendship-- Friday looks lovingly down at a sleeping Robin Crusoe-- but I tend to think that the filmmakers were thinking less of Lesbos than of the ideal of Mammy-ism: of the phenomenon of a black woman treating a white woman as if the latter were her child.

Friday, having almost been sacrificed by a bunch of male tribesmen, enthusiastically agrees with Robin's animadversions against all men.  Enter polite male castaway Jonathan (George Nader).  Initially Robin has Friday tie the man up to prevent his trying anything, but after a little sane male reasoning she lets him go off to some other part of the island.  At the same time Robin, using tools saved from her ship's wreck, endeavors to fix the damaged two-person lifeboat in which she and the sailor arrived on the island.  Jonathan finds out about the boat and seems too interested for Robin's liking. Friday likes the new arrival even less, and fails to inform the man when he accidentally samples some poison fruit.  Ironically, this gambit backfires on Friday, as civilized Robin nurtures the hated male back to health.

Soon Robin begins to regard Jonathan in a new light.  One night Friday takes it into her head to build a big fire and dance around it with heathen abandon.  Robin watches the dance and it unlocks all her buried erotic emotions, paving the way for a seashore tryst between her and Jonathan.

However, as so often happens with the break of day after the night of passion, Robin awakes from her post-coital sleep to the sight of betrayal: Jonathan rowing away from the island in her lifeboat, leaving both Robin and Friday behind.  To say the least, this does not improve Robin's opinion of men.

Naturally, all's well that ends well: Jonathan really left so that he'd have a better chance to find a manned vessel, which he does, and he returns just in time to help Robin and Friday fight off the return of the pissed-off black islanders.  The film closes with their marriage, and though the audience never finds out what happened to Friday afterward, at least she's still alive at story's end and so isn't used for the egregious "heroic death of the loyal black servant" trope.

The scene in which the civilized white woman is "enlivened" by the savage black woman has its basis in Caucasian culture's framing of sociological terms like "savage" and "civilized," but it's not that noteworthy.  Jonathan's theft of the boat, though, is more significant, because it appears so quickly after his "theft" of Robin's virginity, and so reinforces the Robin character's association between the sea and rapacious males.  Moreover, the way that he steals the boat only after she's let down on her guard and allowed herself to be seduced has a strong folkloric vibe to it.  It's as if, as long as she's got her virgo intacta, he can't steal the boat; once she yields, he can whisk away with the prize like Heracles escaping with the girdle of Hippolyta.

As for the categorization of the film's phenomenality, the only thing that renders it a little dubious is a short scene following Jonathan's abandonment.  Robin, wandering the island full of betrayal, happens upon Friday, who has constructed a man-shaped image on the earth out of stones.  She appears to tell the future from the stones, telling Robin, "Good man come back."  Robin kicks the stones apart, whereon Friday dourly predicts, "Now bad men come."  As it happens, both predictions come true, but because it's not decisively established that Friday can predict the future-- since she could be just uttering her own fears and/or preferences-- I regard this as a species of illusionism, and hence beneath the naturalistic version of the "enthralling hypnotism and illusionism" trope.