Early short films: Know Your Money | Buyer Beware | Respect the Law | Coffins on Wheels
Feature Films: 711 Ocean Drive | Love Nest | Red Skies of Montana | Dangerous Crossing | This Island Earth | The Lawbreakers | A Thunder of Drums
The Twilight Zone: In Praise of Pip | Black Leather Jackets
The Big Valley: The Way to Kill a Killer
Classic Film and Television Home Page
Some common subjects in Joseph M. Newman films:
Organizations, and how they work:
Common Characters:
Not all of these subjects appear in all of Newman's films.
Know Your Money (1940) is a short film, part of the Crime Does Not Pay series. Newman directed quite a few episodes of Crime Does Not Pay, in the early days of his career before he graduated to making feature-length films.
Crime Does Not Pay seems ancestral to the whole genre of semi-documentary films, that would appear after 1945. John C. Higgins, the scriptwriter of the pioneering T-Men (Anthony Mann, 1947) and other semi-docs, was also one of the scriptwriters on the Crime Does Not Pay series.
Know Your Money is like the later T-Men, in that it is a portrait of the US Secret Service battling a counterfeiting gang, made with the official cooperation of the Secret Service, and showing high-tech work by the Secret Service. Know Your Money is unlike the later T-Men, in that it is a low-key work, without the fervid melodrama of the later film.
In T-Men, Secret Service agents go undercover as crooks, and infiltrate the gang. By contrast, in Know Your Money an agent takes on an undercover role - but not as a crook. Instead, he plays an honest working man making a delivery at one of the gang's fronts. This seems typical of pre-1945 undercover work: playing an honest character, rather than impersonating a crook. Such "honest" undercover roles were typical of comic book detectives of the 1930's and early 1940's, for example.
Know Your Money shows the interest in technology that runs through many of Newman's films. Among the characteristics that will appear later in Newman:
Like many Newman films, Know Your Money gives an inside picture in how organizations work, in full sociological detail. It shows every aspect of how the counterfeiting gang is organized, from the engraver to the printer, to the distributors of the money.
And the film also shows much about the operations of the Secret Service: how its labs work, how it trails suspects, how it does undercover work, how it alerts the public about counterfeit money.
Both portraits are quiet, un-melodramatic, and rich in informative detail: all Newman traditions.
Gangsters in later Newman films are often shown as posing as upper middle class businessmen, suave and socially proper. We get a variation on this in Know Your Money. One of the women who passes the counterfeit money, acts as if she were a highly respectable matron, almost but not quite a Society figure. And the tobacco shop in the film also seems to be a respectable business, although it is far more lower middle class than the smooth acting "country club type gangsters" in later Newman.
The hero, Secret Service agent Evans, is dressed in one of the most spectacular pinstripe suits of the early noir era. The double-breasted suit looks not so much tailored as constructed. One can see why men would take to such suits like wildfire in the 1940's, after a decade of grim looking male garb in the Depression.
In his undercover role, the hero wears a leather jacket. Such jackets were restricted to professions in the pre World War II era: here the hero is pretending to be a delivery man. It will still be a few years until men can wear leather jackets, just as a fashion option. Later, good guy Jeffrey Hunter will be in a leather uniform motorcycle jacket in Red Skies of Montana.
While we learn how the process of such fencing works, the focus of Buyer Beware is less on the typical Newman theme of how an organization like a drug store works as a whole. Instead, Buyer Beware concentrates on how greed can lead a business, step by step, into the deepest levels of corruption. In this, Buyer Beware resembles Respect the Law to come. In both films, businesses start by making rational sounding decisions to save some money by breaking the law or dealing with criminals - and in both films, this leads to nightmarish, overwhelming disasters.
Buyer Beware contains what is now known as a "recall": the police call back tainted drugs. Apparently, in 1940, there were no systematic procedures for a recall, as there are today. An announcement is simply broadcast on the radio. Furthermore, while today government agents would seize suspected drugs or food, in 1940 each drugstore is left to test the drugs on their own. The test is shown on screen, and is an interesting bit of science. One wonders if Buyer Beware played a small role in helping legislators see the need for more systematic recall procedures.
Buyer Beware shows crooks disguising the appearance of a truck. Such scenes later became a commonplace in TV shows. I don't know whether Buyer Beware was the first film to include such scenes. It's a clever idea, and the first person to use it deserves credit.
Buyer Beware is full of spiffy police dress uniforms. Ralph Byrd, best known for playing comic strip policeman Dick Tracy in numerous movies and serials, makes a strong impression in a brief role. He plays the cop who shoots out the crooks' truck tire. Byrd looks great in his uniform. His hand-raising gesture, ordering the crooks to stop, is a strong image.
One policeman not in uniform is Hugh Beaumont, perhaps best known as the dad on Leave It To Beaver. Beaumont plays a plain clothes officer, as he will in Railroaded! (Anthony Mann, 1947).
Respect the Law (1941) is a short film, part of the Crime Does Not Pay series. Its wholesome title gives little clue that it is Newman's most nightmarish film, dealing with an epidemic of bubonic plague spreading from docks into an American city. It anticipates later semi-docs dealing with similar themes, such as Panic in the Streets (Elia Kazan, 1950).
Through all its melodrama, Respect the Law manages to explain how doctors, police, and city officials might fight an epidemic. It gives an overview of a whole disease-fighting set of institutions.
The doctors in Respect the Law are the scientifically skilled heroes that run through Newman. And like other Newman heroes, they have special "uniforms": the head to toe "plague suits" they wear to guard against infection. This is the earliest I've seen such suits in any film. One associates them with much later "virus hunter" films, such as the TV series The Burning Zone (1996-1997).
Respect the Law is one of the most pro-government regulation films ever made. It is a fierce attack on the modern Libertarian idea that everything will be just swell if government leaves Big Business alone.
The businessman here looks like every image of a distinguished WASP rich businessman ever seen in a movie or magazine advertisement. And he starts out by giving a speech against government bureaucrats and regulators that sounds like every Republican campaign speech of the last 25 years. Then everything starts slowly to go wrong...
Respect the Law reminds one of the first Superman comic book story, Revolution in San Monte (1938), written by Jerry Siegel, art by Joe Shuster. In both, big businessmen get their noses rubbed (by the heroes) in the horrible consequences of their business actions.
The screenwriter of Coffins on Wheels, Howard Dimsdale, later was one of the three writers on A Lady Without Passport (1950), directed by Joseph H. Lewis. Both films center on crooked organizations that sell things to innocent victims, that hurt the victims.
The film contains three different organizations, all high tech:
The detailed look at how the crooked car dealership functions as an institution, is in the Newman tradition.
711 Ocean Drive (1950) crosses the gangster film, and the semi-documentary tradition. Most semi-docs have policemen heroes. Here, however, the protagonist is gangster Edmund O'Brien. As in many other gangster films since the 1930's, we get the complete story of his rise and fall in gangland. Most movie gangsters succeed because they are tougher and better fighters than other people. O'Brien's character is unique in gang film history in that his success is caused by his technological skills. He is an expert on telephones and electronics, and this enables him to create wire services for bookie operations, a lucrative gangland business. This technological background is typical of the semi-docs, rather than gangster films. Semi-docs typically showed police and detectives who were experts in advanced technology, and who regularly used it in their cases. Here it is the crook protagonist who is technological whiz, instead. Edmund O'Brien often played intellectuals, and men of great intelligence, so he is believable in the role of a tech whiz. His policeman character had used radio tracking devices the previous year in White Heat, so he is a natural in this role.
The film has other semi-doc features, as well. Its title is in the numerical address tradition of such works as Henry Hathaway's Call Northside 777 and Phil Karlson's 99 River Street.
More importantly, the film has a finale set against a photogenic, industrial environment, a key feature of most semi-docs. Here we go to Boulder Dam, on the Nevada - Arizona border. This is a truly spectacular site, and the film provides a whole mini-documentary about this Art Deco landmark. O'Brien climbs a huge staircase in the Dam at the end, just like the villains in such earlier semi-docs as Jules Dassin's The Naked City (1948), and Raoul Walsh's White Heat (1949). Many semi-docs have an urban industrial location. By contrast, this film resembles Newman's Red Skies of Montana (1952), in that its technology is located in a rural area out West.
The sections of 711 Ocean Drive that most resemble semi-docs are the opening half hour, which shows O'Brien's skill with telephones, and the eleven minute finale at Boulder Dam. By contrast, most of the film's middle is a fairly traditional gangster movie, with O'Brien and other gangsters all scheming for control of the wire service empire. In my opinion, the semi-doc opening and close are much better than the gangster film middle of this movie. The gangland sections are particularly cold, with all the characters being unsympathetic monsters. There is no one to root for here.
Another personal feature for Newman is the treatment of the gangland empire here. One of Newman's signature subjects, is a systematic look at how some organization works. Here it is organized crime.
711 Ocean Drive is one of the first films to suggest that the modern mob was organizing itself along big business lines. The gangsters here are well dressed men who meet in a luxurious boardroom. They dress and act like big businessmen, not traditional movie crooks. They are just as murderous as traditional gangsters, maybe even more so, but they now act like businessmen, at least in their manners, offices and conversation. Suave, refined acting gangster Don Porter epitomizes this approach here. Unlike O'Brien, who has risen from a working class background, and whose suits are expensive but flashy, Porter looks as if he were born and bred in a country club. Porter's suits are in relentless good taste, as is his menacing conversation. He skillfully conveys the sense that he embodies upper class meanness - he reminds one of polished but ruthless business executives, the sort of men who shut down plants and put people out of work. Don Porter will repeat his characterization in John Cromwell's The Racket (1951). Not just Porter, but all the gang members we meet here look like upper crust WASP's, the kinds of people who have been running non-gang big businesses in America for decades. They are the kind of ruthless overlords most Americans instinctively fear and loathe - almost all of us have had unpleasant experiences on the job with this sort of corporate elite. So the menace they convey as upper class executives is carefully blended with the menace they embody as gangsters, to create a very sinister combination. Newman will repeat this WASP characterization of gangland in The Lawbreakers (1960).
Another feature that anticipates Newman's The Lawbreakers: the detailed look at the financial aspects of the bookie business. Both films give an in-depth look at the financial aspects of the underworld, and its gambling enterprise. They are unusually realistic in this regard. Both films are almost sociological studies of this universe. As in Newman's other sociological films, there are many levels in the gangland society studied here. We get to understand its dynamic as an organization.
The way O'Brien is a lone hero here, fighting for success in a hostile world, is typical of many Newman films. Also Newman-like is the way this world is so heavily oriented towards technology.
O'Brien starts out the film as a phone company repairman, in a leather jacket. The dialogue emphasizes how brainy and technologically skilled he is. This combination, of a leather jacketed working class look unexpectedly concealing major brainpower, also appears in the undercover Secret Service operative in Know Your Money and the aliens masquerading as bikers in Black Leather Jackets.
Edmund O'Brien is a character actor, not a leading man, and the film has tried not to have any flashier looking men around to compete with him. Aside from Don Porter, all the other gangsters and cops in the film are older men. Newman would work with a similarly gifted character actor, Jack Warden, in The Lawbreakers.
The woman at the beginning who wants to marry O'Brien is full of pathos. O'Brien's rejection of her dreams is brutal. She is beautiful, somewhat working class, and a woman who is clearly trying her best. Later, in Dangerous Crossing, Newman will include another woman who is trying unsuccessfully to get married. The heroine of that later film will have her husband disappear on her honeymoon. Much is made in 711 Ocean Drive of O'Brien's disinterest in marriage. It is seen as a character flaw. By contrast, the good guy heroes of both Red Skies of Montana and The Lawbreakers will be married.
Panoramas. The exteriors in 711 Ocean Drive show Newman's fondness for wide, open panoramas. We see broad vistas on city streets in Los Angeles in the beginning, and equally broad views of Boulder Dam at the end. We also go to a ball park parking lot. There are also large interior panoramas at the gas works.
The finale stresses the architecture of Boulder Dam. Newman is an architecturally oriented director.
It is noticeable how crowded and rich in visual detail many of the Boulder Dam shots are. They show a rich profusion of buildings, architectural features and machinery of all kinds. Large groups of people are often surging through them as well. Many of the shots are designed as panoramas, and show very long views with large groups of machines. The director is not afraid of one building overlapping another, or just giving us a glimpse of one machine or building peeping out in the background from behind some obstruction. This is very different from the approach of Antonioni, for example, who tends to build his compositions so that each building or feature has a broad, uninterrupted expanse of the screen.
3D Effects: Height. Many of the outdoor scenes have a 3D quality. Newman often stages Boulder Dam shots from a great height. Sometimes these shots represent police at one level looking down on O'Brien far below at the Dam; other times, Newman has simply moved his camera high up. In all cases, the use of height adds a third dimension to the shot.
3D Effects: Circular Architecture. Other aspects add a three dimensional quality, through the use of rounded architecture:
Outdoor Staircases. When O'Brien leaves police headquarters, he goes down their long outdoor staircase. This is filmed in two shots, broken by a close-up of his ID badge. The second shot includes a pan, following him down the lower part of the staircase. Love Nest will include numerous shots staged on the apartment buildings outdoor staircases, often including camera movement.
Corridors. Throughout the film, O'Brien is associated with long corridors full of high tech machinery. When he is introduced, he is standing in such a corridor in the telephone company. The corridor stretches away into the distance. It is filled with line-switching equipment. At the end of the film, O'Brien is in similar long corridors, deep in the heart of Boulder Dam. The camera always establishes deep perspective looks down such corridors. They are typically empty of other humans, just O'Brien and the machinery. They often look somewhat dark and underground. The bookie office where O'Brien does much of his work is also deep in the heart of a building. Like the corridors, the bookie office is completely windowless. O'Brien does not own any of these locations. He always looks somewhat lost, a solitary worker trying to cope with a vast high tech institution.
The finale has a fairly long expository piece, in which the guide tells the tourists facts about the Dam while they are in a corridor far below the surface. Such institutional corridors were commonly shown in semi-documentary films. They often tend to be in public places or institutions: police stations, train depots, hospitals, orphanages. These great corridors are places where the public interfaces with the institutions. In some ways, these locales are less photogenic and far less unique in style or visual appearance than the rest of the Dam. But they still are featured prominently here, as they typically are in the semi-doc tradition. Such corridors tend to be very "convincing" to the viewers: the viewer can easily imagine himself or herself as actually present in some institution, when they see ordinary members of the public, like themselves, walking in such corridors. They help viewers imagine they are actually present in the locales shown in the film. They are sort of half-way houses, drawing viewers into the unique, spectacular institutions shown in the semi-docs. That is its role here: the corridor is the first shot inside the Dam itself. It is the viewer's introduction to the Dam's interior.
Love Nest (1951) is a mild little comedy. Judged as entertainment, this inoffensive film is not one of Newman's better works. Watching a young couple trying to run an apartment building in New York City is just not that interesting. The film does have a good-natured quality, that is sweet and relaxing, however.
One can link Love Nest to some Newman traditions:
Love Nest is rich in long take camera movements. As Newman himself points out in his delightful DVD commentary, he often filmed scenes in long take "two-shots", rather than cutting back and forth between the characters. These shots regularly move the camera, to follow characters around the room, through doors, or up and down staircases. Newman's staging is natural, graceful, and unobtrusive. His characters' movements seem realistic and natural in the context of the film's action. And the camera is always moving to where it gives the audience the best view of the actors.
The movements tend to have a start-and-stop quality. The camera will be still, for a piece of dialogue or bit of business. Then the characters will suddenly move, and the camera will swing around with them, to get a good view of their new location. The camera will then stop for a while, again, while another bit of business is played out.
None of the camera moves are as extreme or as elaborate, as those of Max Ophuls, say. Still, some of the movements ultimately become fairly complex. Shots in the couple's basement apartment often go on for long takes, while the camera swings around, peers through doorways, moves from room to room etc. One of the longest shots is the one where the lights fail: it moves through many different actions, settings, and rooms of the basement. And both the indoor and outdoor staircases are treated with complex shots that follow the characters' motions.
Red Skies of Montana (1952) deals with firefighters who try to stop forest fires from raging out of control in the contemporary West. Aside from its Western locations, the film has little to do with the traditions of the Western. The film is very close to the conventions of the semi-documentary film noir. As in the semi-docs, we have a heroic government institution organized on militaristic lines, in this case, the US Forest Service. Parts of the film are narrated by an official sounding voice. Much of the film is shot on authentic locations. The government institution uses the latest high tech equipment and devices in its work, in this case, a range of fire fighting devices, parachutes, planes, helicopters, radios and walkie talkies to do its work. All of these devices and techniques are presented to the viewers in documentary fashion, so we get an inside look at this branch of government service. The work is full of danger and suspense. All of these things are features of the semi-doc film noir.
There are some obvious differences between Red Skies of Montana and a true film noir. First, this film is in color, not black and white. Second, there are no crime elements in this film. There are no bad guys or crooks, and no one goes undercover to infiltrate their criminal enterprises. Consequently, it is clear that this movie is not a film noir in any sense of the word. Still, its techniques and subject matter draw heavily on the traditions of the semi-doc.
Also noir like are some of the emotions of the main characters. Richard Widmark's firefighter gets amnesia after a terrible blaze, and he is tormented by what he is afraid he might have done during this blackout. Amnesia is a perennial film noir theme, showing up in Street of Chance, Spellbound, Somewhere in the Night, and so on - there are probably others, but I can't remember! Widmark's amnesia is the central subject of this movie. His tormented anguish is typical of the emotionally disturbed characters he often played in noir movies. Noir often let men experience intense feelings that were otherwise taboo in the macho culture. After all, these are macho men. They parachute into forest fires and risk their lives. So they are allowed to let their feelings erupt all over the screen.
Jeffrey Hunter's young firefighter is also obsessed: he suspects that Widmark might have caused his father's death. Both characters' obsession is typical of what Alain Silver has defined as the main feelings of film noir, alienation and obsession.
This film is written by Harry Kleiner, who also did Widmark's earlier semi-doc, William Keighley's The Street With No Name (1948). Both films have a great number of uniformed men in them. Once again, the Hunter character is in a leather bomber jacket, just like the younger hero Mark Stevens in the previous film. This time the jacket is part of his Forest Service uniform. Hunter also rides a motorcycle in this one. He is one of the few "good" heroes in American film to be a cyclist; the next year, The Wild One (1953) would suggest that motorcyclists were an anti-social group of rebels, an image Hollywood has promoted ever since. Before that film, motorcyclists were largely sympathetic. For example, the kind young man who gives the priest a motorcycle ride in Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest (1950) represents all of the good possibilities of life. And motorcycles were regularly ridden by young heroes in British mystery novels of the 1920's, such as Freeman Wills Crofts' The Pit-Prop Syndicate (1921).
The film is notable for what may be defined as "open backgrounds that stretch away into the distance". For example, there are scenes that show the main street of the Montana town, and other scenes at airports. We see buildings, cars, roads, that extend far into the distance in all directions. Each is clearly photographed. There seems to be a fairly regular progression of equipment at all distances, near, middle and far. Together these make up an elaborate panorama, a stage set containing large numbers of relevant, discrete objects at all ranges and distances. Similarly, there are many such shots at the Forest Service's camp. These too have buildings and equipment at all distances and directions, all relevant to the plot and subject matter of the film. Such elaborate outdoor constructions seem unusual in film. They resemble the Environmental Art of the 1960's. They seem more like art constructs, than the mere location shooting of much film. Another outdoor scene in this style: the parachute school, where people are trained to get out of parachutes stuck in trees.
Most of the actual action is staged in the relative foreground. This is not the "depth staging" of much film noir, with tiny figures performing key actions at great distances from the camera. It is unclear if the color photography would allow such devices here.
Some of the indoor scenes use similar staging, especially those which take place in very large rooms. The scenes in the parachute room are gems of this style. We see all sorts of snow white parachutes hanging from the ceiling, through which the characters slowly segue. These shots are unique, and are among the visual high points of the film.
Perhaps by accident, many of the shots emphasize verticals. The outdoor scenes are full of tall trees. Both the outdoor and indoor parachute scenes have the parachutes being straight white vertical lines.
Dangerous Crossing (1953) is a mystery that takes place aboard an ocean liner. A woman's husband disappears, and everyone on ship assumes she's crazy and that her husband never existed. The film is in the tradition of a series of melodramas about sinister conspiracies to make women seem irrational: one thinks of George Cukor's Gaslight (1944), Jacques Tourneur's Experiment Perilous (1944) and Douglas Sirk's Sleep, My Love (1948). All of these films are gripping works of storytelling. Dangerous Crossing differs from all of these films in that it contains elements of genuine mystery. The audience is baffled throughout by what is going on. By contrast, in the three previous works, the audience has a good understanding of all the sinister forces at work throughout most of the picture. The story has a brilliantly constructed plot, courtesy mystery great John Dickson Carr: it is based on Carr's radio play Cabin B-13 (1944).
Just as no one believed hero Richard Widmark in Red Skies of Montana, so here no one believes the heroine Jeanne Crain. Both are up against an entire community of doubters.
The shipboard world of this film resembles the fire-fighting universe of Red Skies of Montana. Both are isolated universes, involving much high technology equipment. The men in both worlds are uniformed, and are part of a quasi-militarized unit. There is a contrast here between the uniformed officers, and the suit worn in the opening scenes by missing husband Carl Betz.
Dangerous Crossing opens with a crane shot. First the camera is high above a passageway leading to a ship, during the closing credit titles. Then the camera lowers down, till it reaches ground level. It is now behind a cart full of suitcases. It slowly penetrates through this and several other layers of passengers and equipment, till it eventually finds the heroine, streaming through masses of moving people. This is a crane shot that might be found in the works of Mizoguchi. It is inventively staged, with the motions of the various layers of people through the passage offered in counterpoint to the movement of the camera itself.
Later, on ship, the entrance of the heroine and their new husband into their cabin is staged as a single long take. The take involves both complex camera movement and staging. It mixes long shots and close-ups, with the characters moving all over the cabin, sitting on the bed, rising, and so on. It is not clear why Newman is doing this. But it does give the whole shot a "special" quality. This scene will be the couple's only in the cabin, and in retrospect it will take on some of the qualities of a myth. So Newman's special staging of this scene adds force to this plot significance.
This Island Earth (1955) is one of the best of the 1950's science fiction films. It is important in that it shows spaceships, and an advanced civilization on another planet outside of our solar system. These features perhaps helped pave the way for Forbidden Planet (Fred Wilcox, 1956) the next year. These are among the more sophisticated science fiction films of the era, in terms of the sf concepts they embody. As has often been noted, Forbidden Planet is a main ancestor of Star Trek.
This Island Earth also looks back at The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951). Both deal with advanced aliens who come to Earth in flying saucer shaped spaceships. In both, we see the interior of the ships, which is a triumph of modernistic design (but otherwise, very different looking in the two films.) Both have scenes in which Earth scientists are assembled from nations and cultures all over the globe - underscoring that science is a global affair, and that humans are facing alien beings who form a common challenge to all of humanity. In both, the aliens are played by "sophisticated", upper crust actors.
Imagery from this film will recur in Russell Mulcahy's music video, Video Killed the Radio Star (1979). This is one of the most famous of all music videos.
The film shows many common features with Newman's semi-docs.
Newman shows us in a systematic way how these technological worlds work - the hero's plane, hero's lab, the alien's Earth lab, the spaceship, the alien planet. This is in keeping with his expositions of how institutions work. The alien way of life gets the full Newman sociological treatment.
The aliens' home planet is dysfunctional, and heading for disaster. This recalls other Newman worlds, such as the burned out forests in Red Skies of Montana, and the non-functioning Cavalry unit in A Thunder of Drums.
The main alien has to defy his superiors, like many other Newman characters trapped in failing organizations.
The hero here gets to wear a wide variety of spiffy costumes. He wears some of the sharpest suits seen in what was an otherwise dull era of men's clothes, the mid-1950's. His white trenchcoat is totally cool. He also gets to don a flight suit over his suit, at the start of the film. The hero is mainly dressed in shades of gray and white, throughout the film. In the 1970's and 1980's, gray was established as the dressiest color for men, especially for business suits. It is not clear if it had the same connotation in the 1950's, but it looks very good here. The style and color of the hero's gray suits resembles those worn by Gregory Peck in Designing Woman (Vincente Minnelli, 1957). These contrast with the hero's bright red helmet, which he wears as a pilot. The film throughout makes good use of accents of very bright, pure color.
As an inventor, pilot of advanced planes, man with government contracts, glamour figure and celebrity popular with the press, the hero of this film bears some resemblance to Howard Hughes. The way leading lady Faith Domergue was associated with Hughes in real life also underscores this. However, such glamorous scientists were also a figure common in prose science fiction, and in such 1950's science fiction comic books as Mystery in Space and Strange Adventures. The Hughes resemblance could be just a coincidence. There also could be general similarities between the way many sf novels and comics of the era depicted technological research, and the real life aviation industry of which Hughes was a part. In any case, unlike Max Ophuls' Caught (1949), this film steers away from any depiction of Hughes' sleazy personal life or emotional issues. The hero here is noble and pure - and the film is probably better for it.
The Lawbreakers (1960) is one of Newman's most obscure movies. It is not listed in Leonard Maltin's 2001 Movie & Video Guide, or in Andrew Sarris' The American Cinema. Aside from leads Jack Warden and Vera Miles, its cast consists of obscure but talented character actors. The Lawbreakers was reportedly originally made for TV, which might explain this obscurity.
The Lawbreakers is part of the revival of the gangster film around 1960. Like Samuel Fuller's Underworld U.S.A. (1961), The Lawbreakers suggests that organized crime is infiltrating American life, and masquerading as a respectable part of the community. The gangsters here look and dress like leading citizens of the community, and employ highly respectable front men to launder money and conduct business. In both films they have fancy, respectable business offices, and wear decent looking suits. All of the gangsters here are non-ethnic looking white people. Some have Irish sounding names, but otherwise this is one of the least ethnic looks at organized crime in Hollywood history. These are men who could blend into any city's 1960 business community.
The Lawbreakers is structured to give equal time to the police and to the gang members. Lead policeman is Jack Warden, a crusading cop who is head of his city's Homicide Division. The gangsters are involved in the collection and processing of money from the numbers racket. As in Fuller's film, the suggestion is that huge amounts of money are flowing in from such activities, enabling the underworld to make itself look and feel like any other American business, at least on the surface.
The Lawbreakers is far less interested in melodrama, than in explaining the mechanisms by which its two main institutions, the police and organized crime, operate. Scene after scene methodically explores the nature of these organizations. Emphasis is given to the different sort of positions the two groups contain, and how the men in those positions interact. We get a complete look at the internal business of such groups. There is an unusually complete portrait of the inner workings of the police, showing how different branches of the police cooperate with each other, deal with rivalries for promotion, and deal with each other and the press on a workaday level. The conduct of cases is explored in depth. The police here have to cope with a corrupt Commissioner who is in the pay of organized crime. The whole effect is virtually a sociological study, an anthropological look inside an American social institution.
Many of the scenes in the film are talky, but it is interesting and informative talk. Newman establish a mood of what Andrew Sarris called "contemplative calm", designed to get the viewers to meditate on the sociological study unreeling before them. When melodramatic actions eventually do occur, they are enmeshed within a grid of information and characterization of the various groups in the film. Newman's other films have often systematically explored the internal workings of some institution: the firefighters of Red Skies of Montana, the ship's officers and crew of Dangerous Crossing. Like the leads of both of those films, Jack Warden here has to defy his superiors, pursuing a genuinely independent path within these institutions. These are not single acts of defiance; instead all the heroes have to follow an independent direction through the entire course of the film. These men are self starters, people who have the courage to act systematically on their own convictions, without much encouragement from society. They concentrate more on working hard on their own actions; they are less interested in grand scenes of defiance with their superiors. Instead they tend to quietly go their own way, employing reason and persuasion with their skeptical superiors to allow them room to operate.
The Racket showed the personal lives and homes of its cops. One sequence in The Lawbreakers shows Jack Warden's family life. This too is structured to give an inside look at the relationships within this institution. It has plenty of warmth and friendliness. But it is oddly similar in tone to the look at life inside the police.
The calm, methodical tone here perhaps relates the film to the semi-documentary tradition, a tradition often invoked by Newman's other films. However, unlike other semi-docs, there is little emphasis on location photography, undercover cops, or high technology. Nor do the mobsters here have the frightening tone of those in Anthony Mann's semi-documentary films, for instance.
There is a finale at a train depot, in the semi-doc tradition. Even here, we see more of the interior of the passenger depot, and less of the industrial areas supporting trains, on which earlier semi-docs would have concentrated.
Among semi-docs, this film is perhaps closest to John Cromwell's The Racket (1951), a film that also looks inside both police and the mob, and which also deals with both police corruption and the attempt of organized crime to present a respectable front. The Racket also contained newspapermen interacting with the police, just as in The Lawbreakers.
It is unusual to see Vera Miles in the role of a villainess. She was extremely convincing in her roles as a good woman in Alfred Hitchcock's films. She is surprisingly successful here, playing a film noir femme fatale.
A Thunder of Drums (1961) is a grim Western. Unlike 1950's Westerns, which depict a glamorized, escapist West in full color, this film tries to show how dismal and miserable the West was. It is especially structured to show all the bad aspects of Cavalry life. We are at a small, isolated troop outpost in Arizona. The commander (Richard Boone) is a disillusioned sourball, the troops are getting killed off like flies by marauders, funerals are common, the troop's uniforms are full of holes and in rags, and the lack of women leads to endless squabbling over the few around. The commander even has trouble keeping his payroll going. Such mundane financial matters are almost never mentioned in other Westerns, which tend to show people floating around the West with no visible means of support. Here we get a complete inside look at a Cavalry post and how it functions as a practical institution. Such a sociological study of an institution is a Newman trademark.
After an opening section setting forth many of these problems, the film sends a fresh young Lieutenant to join the troop. He is one of Newman's fish out of water, a typical Newman "man who has trouble fitting into a militarized, uniformed organization". He is played by George Hamilton, who often played rich, polished young men who were born with a silver spoon in their mouths: see Vincente Minnelli's Home From the Hill (1960).
I cannot say that I like A Thunder of Drums very much. Its grimness lacks entertainment value. Also, an expose of organizational problems in the 1870's US Cavalry lacks much current relevancy or interest. The film also seems poor in terms of storytelling and visual style.
The look of the film is closer to 1950's Westerns, than it is to such later exposes of the West as Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971). Later Westerns tend to show the grinding poverty of the real old West, with everybody living in complete squalor. There does not even seem to be any color in later post 1970 Westerns, often times. A Thunder of Drums at least has the relatively glamorous fort and brightly colored costumes typcial of the 1950's Western. It concentrates more on problems in the Cavalry than on the poverty of the West.
In Praise of Pip (1963) was the first episode Newman directed of the TV series, The Twilight Zone. On its DVD commentary, actor Bill Mumy says it was the first American TV series to depict casualties from the Vietnam War. This makes the show a sociological landmark.
In Praise of Pip contains three separate subplots, which are wildly disparate in tone and content. One shows Pip in Vietnam; one shows his father as a small-time bookie back in the USA; and finally, we get a fantasy finale at an amusement park. The Vietnam segments are remarkable in bringing up a major social issue - but brief. The bookie melodrama is not very interesting. And the finale is rich in visual spectacle.
The finale was shot on location at a real amusement park in Los Angeles (apparently near Santa Monica). It resembles the end of 711 Ocean Drive, which was also shot at a real location, Boulder Dam. Both locales are visually spectacular. And in both, Newman pulls out all the stops to make a pictorially splendid sequence.
The hero of 711 Ocean Drive was often seen moving down long corridors in Boulder Dam. The house of mirrors in In Praise of Pip is shot so that it looks as if the characters are in deep, mirrored corridors. They are surrounded by metal frames, just as the corridors in Boulder Dam seemed full of high tech fixtures.
The ferris wheel is an example of the circular architecture seen in Newman.
While brief, the Vietnam scenes have a similar approach to other Lewis films, in that they show how some organization works. Here, we see the process of how US Army medics treat a wounded soldier. It is very much a formal, systematic process.
The bookie scenes also explain how a gambling mob works. They bring the hero into conflict with his boss: a frequent Newman subject.
The lead is played by Jack Klugman. At that time, he was definitely a character actor, rather than a star. Newman frequently has character performers in leads.
Black Leather Jackets (1964) was the third episode Newman directed of the TV series, The Twilight Zone.
The Twilight Zone has routinely been labeled "science fiction", ever since it was first broadcast. But many of its episodes are actually fantasy or supernatural, not science fiction. Black Leather Jackets is distinctive in the series in being an actual science fiction show.
Black Leather Jackets resembles the early scenes of Newman's own This Island Earth (1955), in:
Black Leather Jackets reflects Newman themes:
It would be interesting to know who did the costumes for The Twilight Zone. The costume designer is not credited on-screen. And understandably enough, the IMDB has no costume credits either.
The costumes for Black Leather Jackets are some of the spiffiest motorcycle outfits in the history of the cinema. These guys have really been glamorized to the max.
WARNING: SPOILERS
The Way to Kill a Killer adheres to Newman's basic approach: a film that shows in methodical detail how an organization works. Here we look at cattle ranches in the 19th Century American West. Newman is just as methodical in this Western setting as he is any modern day story. A good deal of detail is set forth on how both the large Barkley and new, small Montoya cattle raising outfits work. The struggles of the small start-up Montoya outfit perhaps recall those of the new apartment building owner couple in Love Nest.
Perhaps more surprisingly, the film also adopts an "organizational" approach to race relations. After all, the racial system is a social organization, too. The Way to Kill a Killer sets forth its many complex twists and turns in logical detail. Here the relations are between Anglo whites and Hispanic Americans. The organizational approach allows for an illuminating film, that reaches fairly deep into some of the complexities of the race relationship.
The Way to Kill a Killer bears the world view of 1960's exploration into race, reflecting the national conversation going on during the Civil Rights movement. It includes in its mix white Liberal Guilt. Frankly, I found this refreshingly realistic. For quite a while discussions in the USA of 2008 have been controlled by shrill, hard core right wing racism. It is nice to see some different and more liberal points of view emerge out of the cinematic time machine from 1965.
The Way to Kill a Killer is in the tradition of Newman's other science-based films. The Way to Kill a Killer specifically recalls Respect the Law, which also was about an attempt to control an epidemic. However, it is far from being any sort of retread of the earlier film.
The Way to Kill a Killer is a low budget TV show. It does not have the spectacle of some other Newman works. It has only two medical workers, not the large crews of scientists seen in some other Newman films.
Nor are there any specialized medical costumes or uniforms. Nick Barkley (Peter Breck) wears the same leather vest he usually wears in other Big Valley episodes: this might relate to the Newman characters in modern day films who wear leather jackets.