Fourteen Hours (1951)

Directed by Henry Hathaway; produced by Sol C Siegel

A young man (Richard Basehart), staying at a New York hotel, accepts his breakfast from a waiter (Frank Faylen). A minute later, the waiter finds the guest on the ledge outside the window, fifteen floors above the street. For the next half-day, police and psychiatrists find themselves in a stand-off against the man and his desire to kill himself.

Fewer plots could be simpler than that of Fourteen Hours, yet few so simple are handled so well. The story revolves around the ledge and the room behind it – I am surprised to find that it was not adapted from a stage-play – but the acting, directing and writing make it riveting.

Basehart is one of the unsung stars of the late 1940s through the ‘50s. He was convincing in every role: psychopathic killer in He Walks By Night, would-be patriotic dictator in the French Revolution film noir Reign of Terror, reluctant soldier and leader in Fixed Bayonets!, unhappy husband in Tension – and the confused, anguished Robert Cosick in Fourteen Hours. When we first see him, it is literally on the brink, and his violent shaking – from the sheer nervousness of the situation – is almost contagious to the audience. He makes his character someone who knew he had to step out on to the ledge, but is unsure of what should follow, not wanting the help he knows he needs. Basehart is entirely credible.

Paul Douglas, as unlikely a lead actor as you’ll find in movies, plays Dunnigan, an ordinary traffic cop who first sees and communicates with Cosick. His sympathy and honesty appeal to the would-be suicide, and Dunnigan is kept on the job by his less successful superiors. Dunnigan knows he is out of his depth and tries to evade the responsibility, but when he realises he may be Cosick’s best chance, he gains confidence, with both his bosses and the young man. Douglas’s face reveals much of his character, as when he reacts with silent disgust to some remarks of on-lookers about Cosick.

Other actors stand out, such as Howard Da Silva (his name spelled ‘da Silva’ here) as the coarse, frustrated police deputy chief; Agnes Moorehead as the self-absorbed mother you really want to smack, and Robert Keith as the father who’s aware of his shortcomings as a parent but who also loves the son he barely knows. Fourteen Hours is loaded with thespian talent, contemporary and future: Grace Kelly has her first movie role, Jeffrey Hunter and Debra Paget as a pair just starting a relationship; Barbara Bel Geddes as Cosick’s girlfriend; Jeff Corey, John Randolph, Brian Keith (Robert’s son), John Cassavetes, Ossie Davis, Harvey Lembeck and Richard Beymer all have bit parts.

The direction is spot-on. Hathaway, a veteran director by 1951, with many more films ahead of him, quite a few of them westerns, manages to make suspenseful 92 minutes largely comprising a man standing still. He uses some characters to create tension - Moorehead’s is a walking reason for Cosick to jump - while some attempts to resolve the situation are indicated to the audience – but not the characters - as disasters waiting to happen. There are little touches that add to the film, such as when Cosick smiles at the simplicity of watching a cigarette fall fifteen floors, or the crowd’s reaction, heard in the background, when the jumper stoops to accept a glass of water.

The script is the weakest of the three elements that make this picture, though it is still strong. It loses points for including a couple of side-stories (those involving Kelly on the one hand, and Hunter and Paget on the other). These, like the cabbies’ macabre bet, were put in to show the effect of Cosick’s situation on other people. The side-stories, however, seem shoe-horned in, and contrived.

Apart from these, the writing is very good. Though we have a psychiatrist’s explanation of Cosick’s motives, we are never really sure of why he is threatening suicide. Despite claims by some characters, he is clearly not seeking publicity; confused, he can’t get his mind around a solution to his problems because he can’t figure out exactly what the problems are. His motives are, in any case, unimportant except as a means of coaxing him from death, and those trying to do just that understand it. As an aside, while undoubtedly the way things were handled in ‘51, the police reaction in Fourteen Hours would make today’s crisis-negotiators cringe.

Suspenseful, even exciting, Fourteen Hours has all the elements to hold one’s attention – if not for the period of time in the title, then certainly for the whole length of the movie.