Pushover (1954)

Directed by Richard Quine; produced by Jules Schermer

Detective Paul Sheridan (Fred MacMurray) is assigned to get to know the lovely Lona McLane (Kim Novak), in the hopes that she will lead the police to her fugitive boyfriend, Harry Wheeler (Paul Richards). Sheridan gets to know her too well: he is quickly smitten with her, and she with him. She persuades him to find the $200,000 Wheeler stole from a bank, so the two of them can flee the country and be together. Sheridan succumbs to temptation but, when a cop turns bad, not much can turn out good.

At first glance – second and third glances, too - Pushover looks a lot like MacMurray’s much more famous movie, Double Indemnity, from ten years before. There is the investigator, rather swiftly corrupted by the femme fatale; the plan to get rich quick by theft or fraud; colleagues slowly closing in on the guilty parties. In fact, one wonders why MacMurray would have chosen to star in Pushover, given the similarities that must have been obvious to critics and audiences alike.

Double Indemnity also seemingly has many advantages over Pushover: the greater experience and star-power of Barbara Stanwyck over Novak (given her first credited role here), the bigger name in directors and writers, and of course originality. But judged on its own merits, as every movie should be, Pushover stands a little taller than average height.

MacMurray, a prolific and versatile actor, seemed at ease playing both hero and villain, perhaps because a number of his roles had qualities of both. He is entirely believable here. Novak was probably cast in Pushover for her beauty, but shows why she made a name for herself as an actress, too. The other actors are more than competent: Philip Carey as Sheridan’s partner, McAllister, gives a good portrayal of someone with growing suspicions; E.G. Marshall is a hard task-master as the detectives’ boss, Eckstrom, and Dorothy Malone plays a light-hearted but strong young woman.

Quine’s bigger movies were yet to come when he directed Pushover, but he shows a talent for tension. There is little doubt that Sheridan and Lona’s plan will fail, but watching it stumble along, never really going anywhere, is like seeing a car-crash in slow motion.

The story in one way has an advantage over Double Indemnity. The plan that Sheridan concocts to have both the girl and the money is never more than ad hoc, and observing his improvisations – no more than reactions to a tightening noose – one admires his cleverness while scoffing at his expectations. The disjointed scheme adds to the tension.

Interestingly, both Sheridan and McAllister start the movie as cynics regarding women, and the script shows how, in different ways, they are both proved wrong. On that subject, however, the writing has a flaw: it seems very unlikely that a worldly police lieutenant like Eckstrom would assign a middle-aged man with a, shall we say, lived-in face to romance a girl half his age, when his partner is tall, young and handsome. That Lona is immediately attracted to Sheridan lacks credibility.

If disbelief is suspended for that aspect, however, Pushover becomes an enjoyable semi-remake of Double Indemnity, covering much of the same ground, but in its own style.

 

Witness to Murder (1954)

Directed by Roy Rowland; produced by Chester Erskine

Cheryl Draper (Barbara Stanwyck) is a career-woman living a contented life in Los Angeles. One night, looking out her bedroom window, she sees, across the street in another apartment window, a man strangling a woman. An immediate call to the police brings no justice, however, as the killer, Albert Richter (George Sanders), observing them arrive, assumes rightly that they have come because of his actions. He hides his victim’s body and improvises a plausible story, leading to Cheryl’s story being discounted as a nightmare. Then begins a deadly cat-and-mouse game between witness and murderer, one seeking to prove the truth, and the other trying to conceal it.

Witness to Murder was released the same year as a much more famous movie with a similar premise, Rear Window. Unfortunately for the subject of this review, the former suffers both in comparison and on its own merits.

Stanwyck was of course an excellent actress, and several of her movies are classics, due in large part to her inclusion. By the 1950s, however, the better roles seemed few, perhaps because she was no longer considered leading material for the superior scripts. Witness to Murder is an example of the lesser entries on her resumé.

The principal problem is the screenplay. The premise of the ignored witness in a crime-drama depends to a great extent on the reaction of others to the witness’s claim. In The Window (reviewed on this blog in November of 2020), a boy’s assertion that he saw a murder comes amid the many incredible tales he tells; he is thus disbelieved. Rear Window takes another path: the wheelchair-bound voyeur is indeed believed by his friends, who help him investigate when the police do not. The detective in that movie does not entirely dismiss the claims.

In Witness to Murder, the detective (Gary Merrill) annoyingly insists that Cheryl dreamed the episode, and accept Richter’s version of events over the woman’s. Certainly Richter is smart: when frantically attempting to hide the corpse, he initially considers and silently rejects a broom-closet down the corridor from his flat; viewers assume that he thinks the police will look there. They don’t, which signals that the killer is smarter than the police. Indeed, he is one step ahead of them through most of the movie.

Further, the murderer, who has things his own way through the story, does something needless at one point; one can guess that he did it only because the writers could not think of a way of implicating him at last.

The writing is lacking in other ways. For one, the character of Albert Richter is more interesting than that of either Cheryl Draper or the police lieutenant; the last two begin a romance that feels perfunctory and unnecessary, and Cheryl is repeatedly referred to as a ‘girl’ – Stanwyck was 47 at the time.

The direction is adequate but no more. It gives the impression of an early television drama, rather than a cinematic release, and there is very little tension created; what tension exists seems to come from Sanders’s acting more than anything else. Stanwyck’s performance, despite the history of her talent, comes across as melodramatic.

A minor entry in the thriller genre, Witness to Murder is surpassed by other films with similar plots, and will likely leave viewers unsatisfied.

Mank (2020)

Directed by David Fincher; produced Ceán Chaffin, Eric Roth and Douglas Urbanski

Brilliant but alcoholic writer Herman Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman), injured in a car-wreck, is sent to a remote village in the desert to recover – and to work without distractions on his new project, the screenplay for a new film, Citizen Kane. As he struggles with the story, he recalls the various events that led to, and inspired, the script for what would become one of the most famous movies in history. Involving studio politics, personal enmity, love, friendship and death, Mankiewicz’s struggle becomes both typical of, and unique in, Hollywood.

A quietly excellent film, Mank creates a fascinating portrait of a talented man who, though he worked on the scripts of dozens of motion pictures, received credit for very little of his work, except, of course, the biggest movie of them all. Mank is more than a little reminiscent of Citizen Kane’s style, filmed in black-and-white, using flashbacks to tell the story of honesty and talent amid hypocrisy and corruption.

The writing is rich, as one would expect in a tale of those who live in and create make-believe, and if the words spoken are not genuine, then they are certainly credible. Mankiewicz here is very likeable, in a rascally fashion, good-hearted, intelligent and self-destructive. That self-destruction, while it ultimately led to his alcoholic demise, is shown in Mank to be less connected with drink as with lapses in judgement.

Those lapses allow the story to show other famous people of that most brilliant period of cinematic history, including John Houseman (Sam Troughton), Ben Hecht (Jeff Harms) and Charles MacArthur (John Churchill). Indeed, at times, though principally near the beginning, the script threatens to become similar to a Hollywood autobiography, full of name-dropping. This is, I think, more to establish the setting than for anything else.

Mankiewicz’s interaction, though, is less with other writers than with studio bosses. The latter are shown without exception to be interested only in their own success, and that of those they serve. Louis B Mayer (Arliss Howard) is depicted as a vicious humbug, and even Irving Thalberg (Ferdinand Kingsley), whom history usually treats well, is shown as putting profit – if not always money – ahead of principles.

The story does a good job of showing the evolution of the plot of Citizen Kane, as Mankiewicz becomes acquainted with William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) and his larger-than-life life. There is a memorable speech by an intoxicated Mankiewicz which explains, perhaps too literally, the allegory behind the story.

The great controversy of Citizen Kane – or, rather, the great controversy involving its script – is the involvement of Mankiewicz versus Orson Welles. Both won Oscars for the screenplay and both have their champions, one party believing that Mankiewicz alone wrote the script. That is the version shown in Mank. This is the primary flaw in the movie, as it is generally held that Welles had as great an input as did Mankiewicz, though possibly not at the same time. In fact, the argument over credit creates the impression in Mank that the two men grew to despise each other. Another view of their relationship – and of Welles’s part in Citizen Kane’s production - may be seen in RKO 281 with Liev Schreiber and John Malkovich (both miscast) as Welles and Mankiewicz, respectively.

The acting is uniformly superb. Oldman plays an earnest but broken man, someone who knows his strengths and his faults, and knows he doesn’t always use one set to cover the other. As he mutters to himself, with irony, after a hurtful faux pas, “Always the smartest guy in the room…” Oldman makes the viewer believe that Mankiewicz has both heart and brains, but doesn’t always use them.

Amanda Seyfried offers the best interpretation of Marion Davies, Hearst’s mistress, yet given on film, aided by her remarkable likeness to the earlier actress. There is heart to this character, too, and, if not a great intelligence, then sense, which she has more of than Mankiewicz. A positive element in the movie is the unlikely friendship that grows between her and Mankiewicz, each understanding and tolerating the other’s weaknesses. Dance gives a nearly subdued portrayal of Hearst, and there are times when one is almost sympathetic to the tyrannical tycoon, which is probably not the film’s intention.

The direction is in keeping with the rest of the movie’s quality, though it is not spectacular. It allows the actors to bring the script to life, and provides support, staying in the background, as it were. The sets, costumes and props are all convincing.

As history, Mank is like many films: it takes liberties with what really happen and, unfortunately, a partisan view of events. That aspect, mentioned earlier as the primary flaw, is joined by another, more unavoidable problem, in that it may be most appreciated by an audience already informed of the people and happenings shown. One might benefit from a programme, like those formerly given to play-goers, to describe the cast. In any case, however, Mank is a greatly entertaining, skillfully made movie, not perfect, but a must for anyone with even a vague interest in Hollywood’s Golden Era.

 

Woman on the Run (1950)

Directed by Norman Foster; produced by Howard Welsch

Frank Johnson (Ross Elliott) is an ordinary man out walking his dog one night. It’s his ill luck to witness a gangland murder. He’s seen the killer, and when the police detective (Robert Keith) investigating the crime pressures him into being the star witness - and the mob’s star target - he spontaneously flees. His estranged wife, Eleanor (Anne Sheridan), has to track him down, with the aid of a newspaper reporter (Dennis O’Keefe), before both the cops and the killer find him. Along the way, she learns a great deal about her husband - and herself.

What starts out as a routine crime-story becomes a tense and involving thriller, thanks largely to the acting of Sheridan and O’Keefe. These two work well together. They are able to make their characters evolve: Sheridan through the course of the movie, and O’Keefe in a small but significant way.

Sheridan, whose face was made for the sarcastic riposte, and who could play both romantic leading lady and smart-alecky sidekick, combines the two roles here. O’Keefe likewise could handle good guy and bad: his Danny Legget accurately describes himself as “obnoxious but pleasant.”

The script and the story are also advantages to Woman on the Run. The plot reveals a key element about two fifths of the way through the film, something that changes the complexion of the story. At first thought, it might seem to ruin the movie, throwing away a good surprise. Then it becomes clear that the revelation adds tension to the film, and was a good decision.

The script benefits from the dialogue between Sheridan and O’Keefe. They reputedly wrote many of their own lines, and this makes them sound natural, in both words and delivery. The rest of the screenplay, co-written by the director and Alan Campbell, unfolds a kind of mystery as it tells its principal tale of crime: Eleanor Johnson slowly realises that there is more to her husband than she ever thought, even when she was first in love with him.

The movie makes excellent use of San Francisco locations, but the direction is fairly ordinary until the climax, which is Hitchcockian in its stress, and almost nightmarish from Eleanor’s point of view.

Woman on the Run gives a fine actress rare top-billing in a crime drama, and she, her leading man, supporting players, the writers and director, all make for a lesser-known film noir entry that deserves a bigger audience.