A for Artsy, F for Fartsy

Film: F for Fake (Verites et Mensonges)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on rockin’ flatscreen.

In a massive list of films, many of which are strange, F for Fake (sometimes called Verites et Mensonges) may be the strangest, or at least the most unclassifiable. Is it a documentary? Sort of. It is closer to being a filmed essay on the nature of art and forgery. It is also a fortuitous collection of coincidences that, if believed, are almost impossible to reconcile. In a film that is itself about hoaxes, it might be the supreme hoax that everything worked out for Orson Welles the way it did.

The upshot of the film is a profile on the world’s greatest art forger, Elmyr de Hory (who appears in a great deal of the film) Welles, in front of the camera for some scenes and “behind the scenes” but still in front of a camera in an editing room, tells us about the strange career of de Hory, who manufactured a number of original pieces of art in the style of famous artists, passing them off as the work of others.

More Lady, Less Shanghai

Film: The Lady from Shanghai
Format: Internet video on laptop.

I have to say that I’ve been a pretty happy customer of NetFlix for the past couple of years. Eventually, there had to be a problem that would crop up. I got The Lady from Shanghai yesterday in the mail. Since the best way to make use of NetFlix is to turn films around as quickly as possible, when I get a film, I tend to watch it right away. I had my heart set on The Lady from Shanghai today, but the disc I got had a sizable chunk missing from it. I don’t mean that the disc was somehow erased, but that there was an actual piece missing from the DVD.

So rather than dig through the personal collection, I found a copy of the film online and watched that version instead. While there were a few rough spots in the sound, it was a pretty solid print overall. Internet video gets a bad rap sometimes, but I don’t have a huge problem with it in general. I’m just happy I found a copy I could watch, so as to see the film for which I had geared myself up.

Billy the Shake's Greatest Hits

Film: Campanadas a Medianoche (Chimes at Midnight; Falstaff)
Format: Internet video on laptop.

My guess, if I had to make one, is that William Shakespeare enjoyed writing the character of Falstaff. It’s entirely possible, though, that he was simply a favorite of the rabble. Regardless, Sir John Falstaff appears prominently in four of Shakespeare’s plays. He is one of Shakespeare’s more interesting characters, and that’s really saying something. Falstaff is primarily a comic character, one of Shakespeare’s clowns, but there is a true depth and humanity to the character. Falstaff is tragic in the extreme, with enough character faults for an army, but a man it is almost impossible not to like, making his tragedy more poignant.

Campanadas a Medianoche (Chimes at Midnight, or more commonly Falstaff) takes many of the important scenes from Shakespeare’s two “Henry IV” plays, “Henry V” and “The Merry Wives of Windsor” and puts them in one place, a sort of Falstaff’s greatest hits reel, although there is quite a bit here that concerns Prince Hal far more than it does Falstaff and his ilk. Still, it is Falstaff’s film. There is nothing really new here for those who know their Shakespeare; it merely offers the advantage of being the condensed and concentrated Sir John in one package rather than spread out over four.

Falstaff is a rogue, of course, in every sense of the word. He has not many positive qualities save that he truly does seem to love his friends. This doesn’t stop him from harassing them, beating them, and taking the credit for everything they do. He is vastly overweight, a drunkard and a whoremonger as well as a coward. Into this role steps Orson Welles, a good 20 years past his trim physique in Citizen Kane, and larger than his bloated character in Touch of Evil. This is the Welles I remember as a kid—hugely fat, but possessed still of that remarkable voice.

Fortunately for us, this is still Welles in possession of his skill in filmmaking, because Campanadas a Medianoche is the sort of brilliance that few filmmakers could legitimately attempt, let alone pull off. Welles, having become something of an arthouse director at this point in his career, apparently felt free enough to direct what he wanted and do what he wanted, damn the critics and the public both. He plays Falstaff as close to perfectly as can be imagined, a combination of cowardice and bravado, telling massive lies with a straight face, claiming credit for everything that happens around him.

While the film focuses on Falstaff, the story is really about Prince Hal (Keith Baxter), who eventually becomes King Henry V. He is a dissolute youth, preferring the company of Falstaff and other thieves and hooligans. He responds to the call of his father, Henry IV (John Gielgud) to attend the Battle of Shrewsbury and help put down the rebellion of Henry Percy (Norman Rodway). The battle done and Percy slain, Hal returns to his waywardness and sloth. The death of his father, though, causes Hal to awaken to his responsibility, which is where we get Henry V.

It is the relationship between Hal and Falstaff that is most interesting. It’s obvious that the two love each other, but it’s evident earlier in the film that Hal is aware that he will have to divorce himself from Falstaff when he becomes king. There is a bit of play acting, first with Falstaff as king, then with Hal as king and Falstaff as Hal. It is in this scene that we learn of the eventual fate of the pair. Falstaff, playing as Hal, begs his father not to banish Falstaff, heaping praise upon himself. While he is pretending to be Hal, it is evident that he is begging Hal to keep him close when he does become king, and Hal acknowledges that he will eventually have to force the man away.

Shakespeare, when done well, is sublime, and this is Shakespeare done very well indeed. It’s a shame Welles didn’t get through the entire catalog. In many ways, a good adaptation of Shakespeare is like watching a well-loved film multiple times. We know what is there, but there is true joy in seeing it acted well and with conviction. Welles, for all his missed potential and physical dissolution, remains one of the three or four best cinematic directors of Shakespeare to ever yell, “Action!”

It’s also worth noting that the Battle of Shrewsbury is magnificent here. While the film is in black-and-white and certainly limited by technology, the battle sequence is still highly effective. Films like Braveheart stole unabashedly from Shrewsbury here, and despite the lack of color, these scenes still look modern.

Campanadas a Medianoche has never gotten a DVD release in the U.S., making it extremely difficult to find. You could do worse than to follow this link.

Why to watch Campanadas a Medianoche: Shakespeare the way it should be done.
Why not to watch: By this time in his career Welles was planetary in scope.

Comeuppance

Film: The Magnificent Ambersons
Format: Internet video on laptop.

Films, particularly older films, have a tendency to deal with the problems of rich white people. I think there’s a reason for that. In many senses, when our characters are divorced from dealing with the realities of everyday life, it allows them (and thus us) to focus on whatever the main theme of the story is. The Magnificent Ambersons is a film that is entirely tied up in the money of its characters, but is not really about the money at all.

The film, as the name implies, concerns the Amberson family roughly around the turn of the last century. In their unnamed town, they are by far the leading family and live in the grandest house. The Ambersons throw actual cotillions, dress for dinner, and are every bit the aristocratic family. It makes them both admired and resented, and thus ripe for any possible hint of a scandal. Most attuned to this is the youngest of the clan, George Amberson Minafer (Tim Holt), roughly college-aged and spoiled beyond measure. We see a glimpse of his boyhood and learn that his mother Isabel (Dolores Costello) has never really disciplined him. And so George grows up doing what he wants when he wants and saying what he wants.

The film opens with the return to town of Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotten), who has built an automobile factory on the outskirts of town. Morgan used to live in town and was one of the leading suitors for George’s mother’s hand. Now a widower, Morgan has returned with his daughter Lucy (Anne Baxter) in tow. It is evident immediately that there are sparks. George and Lucy quickly become a matched pair, and there is evidently still a good deal of attraction between Eugene Morgan and Isabel Amberson-Minafer.

All of this comes to a head when Wilbur Minafer, Isabel’s husband, dies suddenly. Suddenly, the path is open for Eugene to resume his courtship of Isabel, mourning or not. And they two are frequently spotted together, something that George is made aware of by his spinster Aunt Fanny (the underappreciated Agnes Moorehead). And this sends George off on a tear, spinning through the town to discover how much damage this “scandal” has done to the good name of his family. He refuses entry to his house to Morgan and essentially demands that his mother no longer see him. Instead, he and his mother plan a trip and leave the town. Of course, all of this has damaged George’s plans for his life with Lucy, who is still sweet and is smart enough to play dumb about exactly what George is doing, finally and flatly and refusing his declaration of love and proposal of marriage. Genuinely, this is one of the best scenes not only in the film, but of its decade. Lucy plays this throughout and at the finish as we dream of doing in the moments after we are mistreated by someone in our life.

More than anything, The Magnificent Ambersons is a story of pride and the cost of pride. For George Amberson Minafer, pride in his family name is more important than anything else. It is more important to him than his mother’s happiness and more important than his own. And, eventually, he pays the price for this time and time again. Pride is the sin that destroys the family in the end, and destroys George in particular.

The tragedy of The Magnificent Ambersons, of course, is that it was badly mistreated by the studio, with a third or more of its original length removed. Additionally, director Robert Wise was instructed to make these edits and tack on a false happy ending against the wishes (and without the knowledge) of Welles. The action caused a rift between the two men for years, in part because the editing destroyed the original vision of his film. But that’s very much Welles. He’s the kind of director I hate to love, but love anyway. He very much comes across as someone who knows precisely how talented he could be, and never let a moment go when he didn’t put that in front of other people. But he’s hard to dislike because he was so damnably talented. His complaining seems half like whining and half like justifiable anger at the destruction of what could have been his greatest film.

For the rest of us who aren’t Welles, the tragedy isn’t specifically that the film was edited, but that the footage was destroyed. The reason for destroying the footage was given as needing room for storage. It’s a better guess that it was destroyed to prevent Welles from reediting it. It is tragic. It’s tragic because even in this damaged version, this abridged runt of a complete film, it is an achievement.

I always liked Joseph Cotten because he’s my favorite part of Citizen Kane, but in the last two years, I’ve become a bigger and bigger fan of the man. And while Cotten is great as always, the real performance for me here is Agnes Moorehead who goes from depressed and lonely to vindictive to remorseful to insane in the course of this short film. I also like the narration of Welles over the top of the film. For whatever his personal foibles, Welles had a tremendous narrator voice.

As truncated as this film is, it’s still one of the best of its decade. It would be better in this version even more truncated without the tacked on three-minute feel-good, but it’s still very much worth your 90 minutes.

Why to watch The Magnificent Ambersons: Welles in his prime as a filmmaker.
Why not to watch: What would have made it truly great is been lost forever.

Mexican Standoff

Film: Touch of Evil
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on big ol’ television.

There is a particular vogue among modern film critics—mostly younger and mostly online—to hate Citizen Kane. There is a particular level of independence of thought to be gained, these critics seem to imagine, by publically declaring their dislike of the film that has been voted as the greatest ever made by the AFI. It’s the classic anti-conformity argument. If I as a critic hate what I’m “supposed” to like, I must be trustworthy. Certainly some of these critics genuinely do dislike Kane and I won’t fault them for it, but I know for certain that there are those who hate because it’s cool and rebellious to do so.

That said, Citizen Kane isn’t my favorite Orson Welles project by a long shot. I respect that film and even like it, but given my choice, I’d much rather spend time watching Touch of Evil, which is truly Welles’s magnum opus in my opinion. Everything works perfectly, even Charleton Heston as a Mexican police officer. Yeah, it’s a stretch, but it still seems to work really well.

The opening of the film is one of the greatest ever made. We see a bomb planted in a car as it crosses over the border from Mexico into the U.S. As we follow the car, we are also introduced to a pair of pedestrians. These are Miguel “Mike” Vargas (Heston) and his new bride, Susie (Janet Leigh). They and the car cross the border at about the same time, and we learn of the recent wedding of the pair. Just as they embrace, the car explodes, setting the plot into motion.

Like any good film noir, there are a number of things going on at once here. We’re quickly introduced to the major players on what we’re led to believe is the side of good and law. The main man here is Hank Quinlan (Welles), who as both an actor and as a character has started to go to fat. Quinlan is the police captain on the American side of this border town, and it’s quickly evident that he does things in his own way. He decides what the real story is, and then does what he can to make that story stick. It’s also pretty evident that he dislikes Mexicans intensely, and takes an immediate dislike to Vargas, who has a reputation both as a clean cop and a very good one, having just busted part of a drug ring in Mexico.

While the car bombing is explored, we also learn of that drug bust in Mexico. Vargas has busted a man named Grandi, who has relatives with influence in both sides of this border town. “Uncle Joe” Grandi (Akim Tamiroff) manages to threaten Susie Vargas without really threatening her, and Vargas is attacked by one of Uncle Joe’s flunkies with a vial of acid.

Things continue to come to a boil, and the two plots intersect in one important point—Quinlan’s hunch about the source of the car bomb. The man killed in the car was wealthy, and left $1 million to his daughter. It’s discovered that the daughter has been running around with a Mexican worker, something he forbade, which makes that boyfriend suspect number one. In Quinlan’s mind this is especially true because the boyfriend is Mexican. Exploring the apartment the two lovers share, Quinlan’s assistant Menzies (Joseph Calleia) finds two sticks of dynamite, closing the case. The problem is that Vargas saw the box the dynamite was found in, and the box had been empty. Essentially, he has proof that Quinlan and Menzies framed the young man, and Vargas suspects this isn’t the first time.

As it happens Uncle Joe Grandi is there when all of this goes down, and he plots with Quinlan to take care of the problem that is plaguing both of them—Vargas. If Vargas can be discredited, then the conviction in the bombing will stick (planted evidence and all), and Grandi’s brother will get out of the drug charge. And so the movie goes.

This film is tuned to the absolute perfect pitch throughout. It’s so tightly wound, it feels like it could be played like a guitar string. As each plot point becomes evident, everything is wound even tighter until it finally reaches its breaking point.

As a case in point, Susie’s stay at the motel is pitch-perfect and brutal. Exhausted from her day, she is taken to an out-of-the-way motel on the American side of the town. As it happens, the motel is owned by Grandi, who wants her husband to back off his brother. Grandi sends his minions to keep her awake, and then frighten her. The scene of the assault on Susie is played as if it will become a rape scene—and a gang rape scene at that. What we learn later is that the hoodlums merely trashed the motel room, planted drug evidence, and then drugged her to discredit her and play into Quinlan’s story that the Vargases are drug addicts. But we don’t find this out right away. We see the assault, we hear Quinlan mention that Vargas is a junkie, and then the film puts the two threads together for us.

If the film has a weakness, it’s the casting of Charleton Heston in Mexican brownface. Despite the heavy makeup, he still doesn’t look Mexican, and he certainly doesn’t sound Mexican. It’s a piece that requires overlooking, perhaps considering him as a cop from another state and thus out of his jurisdiction in that respect rather than a legal representative of a foreign government.

Despite this oddity, Touch of Evil is a near-perfect film. The characters speak exactly as you want them to, and act exactly as you feel they should. Menzies is a lapdog and a sycophant. Quinlan is a racist and plays the martyr card to full effect. Vargas is upright and a straight arrow, and believes in the power of law. But it’s Susie Vargas who gets the most of my sympathy. Not only is she poorly treated, she shows early on that she’s got a spine, and that she can be pretty rough when she needs to be. It does make me wonder at why a couple of years later in Psycho she’d run into trouble in a motel room again, though.

What truly makes this movie work for me, though, is that it works on multiple levels. On the one hand, it’s a pretty good noir, filled with questionable morals and actions, crime, punishment, and shadowy lighting. It’s entirely possible to simply watch this for the great plot and acting and enjoy it completely. It works on a deeper level, too. Quinlan admits toward the end of the film that he frames people, but only those he knows are guilty. While this makes him a criminal in a very real sense, in a way, don’t we expect our police to do this? To keep dangerous people off the streets by any means necessary? On still a third level, it plays to Welles’s favorite theme—that of a powerful man destroyed by his own demons. We see the wheels come off for Quinlan. Offered a drink, he protests—he’s given up alcohol. Later, he protests more weakly and hops off the wagon with gusto, beginning his long slide from framing those who need to be taken off the street to framing the innocent Susie Vargas to protect his own career.

This is Welles at his finest. He was still the great director for this film, and while he was starting to come apart physically, he hadn’t yet become the farce he eventually became late in his career. This movie hits on all cylinders, and represents the pinnacle of the Welles canon, and sits near the pinnacle of film noir as a genre. Everyone should see this.

Why to watch Touch of Evil: The greatest moment of Orson Welles.
Why not to watch: It’s sad to see what happened to Welles afterwards.

RKO 281

Film: Citizen Kane
Format: VHS from personal collection projected on screen.

For all the hoopla that surrounds it, Citizen Kane has a very strange reputation. It has been hailed by the American Film Institute as the greatest film ever made, a distinction the AFI has given Citizen Kane more than once. On the other hand, I can’t tell you the number of people who tell me how much they dislike the film, or find it boring and a waste of time. My conclusion of these differing opinions? The AFI knows in general what it’s talking about, and a lot of people have crappy taste and are really, really stupid.

This is the first film done by Orson Welles, and it’s one hell of a debut. It’s essentially a character study rather than focusing on a plot. We start with the death of our title character, media tycoon and former political candidate Charles Foster Kane (Welles). He dies uttering the single word “Rosebud,” creating a mystery. No one, it seems, knows who or what “Rosebud” is or was.

The task of discovering the truth behind the word falls to a reporter named Thompson (William Alland). He interviews a number of people who knew Kane or who worked with Kane in an attempt to come to the truth of the word, and ends up discovering instead the story of the man’s life. Thus, the entire film is told in flashback through the memories of those who knew him.

Kane gained his fortune by accident; a boarder at his parent’s boarding house left the deed to an allegedly played-out mine which turned out to be filled with gold. His mother (Agnes Moorehead) puts the young Charles in the care of Thatcher (George Coulouris). Charles takes an immediate and intense dislike to Thatcher, something that continues throughout the rest of the film.

Upon his graduation, Kane decides to take over the running of a newspaper that is a part of his holdings, and he uses it to attack big businesses and (at least in his own mind) assist the common working people. Helping him do this are his friends Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane, and we never to learn Bernstein’s first name) and Jedediah Leland (Joseph Cotten). Kane uses his money and influence to hire away the best writers from other papers and push his own circulation to the top of the charts, using this platform to influence public policy and national events. He also begins collecting art treasures from around the world and, on a trip to Europe, finds himself engaged to Emily (Ruth Warrick), who also happens to be the niece of the sitting president.

Eventually, buoyed by his wealth, fame, and success, Kane runs for governor, but is caught in a compromising position with a young “singer” named Susan Alexander (Dorothy Comingore). He loses the election, is divorced by Emily, and marries Susan with the intent on turning her into a great opera singer. The plan backfires mainly because of her complete lack of talent, and when she can take the catcalls and boos no longer, she attempts suicide. With this, Kane builds a huge fortress called Xanadu for her, and the two become completely isolated.

However, Susan doesn’t want isolation; she wants nightlife, and after a few fights, she too leaves the great man, leaving him in his crumbling palace with his crumbling media empire around him to die alone, bringing us back to the beginning of the film. The people in the film never do discover what “Rosebud” is, although we in the audience do. You’ve either seen this or know it already, or don’t want it spoiled, so I won’t spoil it. Suffice to say that “Rosebud” actually does tie up a great deal of information about who Kane was and what he really wanted from life.

The noteworthy thing about Citizen Kane is everything about Citizen Kane. It enjoys one of the greatest scripts ever penned, with some genuinely insightful and marvelous lines. There is a moment, for instance, when Bernstein comments to the reporter that “Rosebud” might be a woman. The reporter demurs, but Bernstein insists that he can still remember a girl he saw for just a second on a ferry decades ago. It’s a great image.

My favorite character in the film is Jed Leland, particularly the older version in the nursing home. He’s an irascible old coot, calling Kane’s palace “Sloppy Joe’s” and repeatedly asking the reporter to find a way to slip him in some cigars without the doctor knowing. He’s a great character—funny, irreverent, and honest in a way that only the old without anything to lose can be. Susan Alexander Kane is far more poignant, having slipped deeply into alcoholism after her divorce from Kane.

But more than the script and the great characters, this is a tremendous film to watch simply for the technical aspects of film. Welles may have been working on his first movie, but he shows that he as a flair for the dramatic and the subtle. Powerful characters like Kane are almost always filmed from below, making them towering presences in the film, while the weaker characters like Susan are virtually always shot from above, making them look more vulnerable. Light and shadow are used brilliantly, and the make-up work is consistently excellent—Welles looks his age in the early scenes and truly looks old instead of under heavy cosmetics in the later scenes.

It’s nearly impossible to discuss this movie without at least mentioning William Randolph Hearst, since the film acts as a sort of unofficial biography of the publishing magnate. Hearst did his best to quash the film, and in fact no Hearst publication reviewed the movie until about forty years after the film’s release. Hearst was unsuccessful in stopping the movie from release, which is all to the good. Citizen Kane is a true work of cinematic art.

I understand why people dislike this film. The plot, such as it is, is about a single man and the life he lived. It’s an intense, warts-and-all character study with no real action. But it is staggering, a monumental achievement. It’s not my favorite film, but it is one that I never tire of watching, and while I like many other movies more than this one, I can’t argue with the thoughts that put this as the greatest achievement ever made in film.

As a final note, it’s worth seeking out the fictionalized making-of film RKO 281, which was the production number for Kane.

Why to watch Citizen Kane: The greatest film ever made according to a great many people.
Why not to watch: You’re one of those people who won’t watch a film more than 10 years old and are thus an idiot.

Wilkommen, Stranger

Films: Cabaret, The Stranger
Format: DVDs from DeKalb Public Library on laptop


While it’s only been a couple of days since I updated this blog, it feels like weeks. Since it feels like weeks since I’ve watched a movie, jumping right into a style that is generally anathema to me seems like a strange choice. However, it’s been awhile since I’ve watched a musical, and they aren’t going away from the list, so Cabaret it is.

Our story in general centers on Sally Bowles (Liza Minnelli), a performer at The Kit Kat Club in Weimar-era Berlin. It’s a decadent time, in part because of rampant economic depression. Times are difficult for everyone, and to counteract this, places like the sexy, sordid Kit Kat have a booming business as people attempt to hide from their many worries and problems. Sally is a singer in the club, not one of the dancers/strippers, but her act is racy nonetheless.

A great deal of this raciness comes from the emcee (Joel Grey), who invites the patrons (and the audience) to observe the cabaret and enjoy themselves. After a couple of quick musical numbers, we get a much better introduction to our main cast. Sally, we learn, is an American in Berlin. She’d like to be a movie star, and is willing to do anything to get there. If this means she needs to sleep her way to the top, she’s more than willing to do so with anyone who even hints at being able to help her. Morality is slippery in Weimar Berlin, and that seems to suit Sally just fine.

We’re also introduced to Brian Roberts (Michael York), a poor student who has come to Berlin to give lessons in English to make enough money to finish his schooling. He ends up living in the same boarding house as Sally and the odd crew of German citizens, and while he appears to be initially attracted to Sally, he is also wary of her.

One of Brian’s first students is Fritz (Fritz Wepper), a poor gigolo who wants nothing more than to marry into money. Conveniently, another of Brian’s early clients is Natalia Landauer (Marisa Berenson), an heir to a great fortune. That she’s also attractive and young is bonus for Fritz, who immediately begins to woo her.

Meanwhile, Sally and Brian begin a mild (in Sally’s opinion) affair. Things change when she meets Maximilian von Heune (Helmut Griem), a millionaire and a Baron. In short, Maximilian is the man of Sally’s dreams. He’s young, good-looking, and wealthy as all hell. The fact that he’s married isn’t much of an impediment. He has an agreement with his wife that the two of them will stay married but will allow each other to have any sexual escapades they wish. Sally and Brian both spend a great deal of time with him until he eventually ditches them.

At this time, Sally discovers that she is pregnant, and isn’t sure of who the father might be. She considers an abortion, but is convinced out of it by Brian, who intends to marry her. At this point, the real crux of the story shows up, and would require a spoiler—and I don’t really have the wherewithal for it tonight.

I know that this film is based on a play, but I’ve never seen Cabaret staged, so I’m not sure how much of the more lurid and shocking elements in the movie are in the staged drama. We discover right around the time Sally starts considering an abortion that Brian is bisexual, having slept with Maximilian a number of times, just as Sally has. Pretty racy stuff for 1972, although right in the wheelhouse of director Bob Fosse.

At the risk of significantly troubling any Liza Minnelli fans, theater people, or flamboyant gay men in the audience, I really dislike Sally Bowles as a character. She’s annoying. She talks constantly and always about herself and is constantly extreme in her actions and opinions. She needs a good slap across the face to bring her back into a world that isn’t focused directly on her. Brian loses his patience with her at some point, and I almost cheered.

Despite this, and believe me this surprises me entirely, I found this movie extremely watchable. Sally is terribly annoying, and yet she’s also pitiable. She’s so desperate to do anything to get to where she wants to go that she’s immediately degraded. He world and life are so terrible and she is so desperate for that world and that life to be extraordinary that I feel for her despite the fact that I dislike her.

Of course the real show-stopper number is the title song, which comes at the end, and Liza belts it out with real heart. The lyrics here are worth listening to, since they give over the whole story of the film. Also of interest is the role of the emcee. We never see him off the stage, but we do see the progression of Weimar Germany’s descent into national socialism with his act on stage, and eventually the rise of the fascist party, all through what he does on stage.

Surprised that I liked it? I was. It seems to be as real a portrait of Weimar as we can hope to have, or at least as good of one as we’re likely to get with musical numbers. We know from history that Sally is doomed, that much of the world is doomed. It’s likely that Sally knows this deep in her heart as well, but there she is on stage, reaching for that elusive dream anyway.


Cabaret deals with the beginnings of the Nazi takeover in Germany; The Stranger, directed by Orson Welles, deals at least in some respects with the aftermath. Here, the premise is that Nazi war criminals have escaped from Germany and made their way in secret to the United States where they keep their secrets as close as they possibly can, fearful of detection. Wilson (Edward G. Robinson) is the early version of a Nazi hunter, pursuing a man named Franz Kindler. Kindler was one of the masterminds of the Holocaust, so the capture of him is of intense interest to the American authorities.

To capture Kindler, the authorities release a man named Konrad Meinike with the hopes that he will head directly to Kindler. They arrange for him to escape confinement and he heads to Connecticut, where Kindler is hiding. Kindler lives in a small town where he has taken the name of Charles Rankin (Orson Welles). Rankin teaches at the local school and speaks English with a perfectly decent American accent. In short, his cover is nearly perfect and he is above suspicion.

That is, until Meinike shows up. Meinike has converted to Christianity, and unknown to Rankin, has stopped by the house of Mary Longstreet (Loretta Young), the daughter of a Supreme Court justice and Rankin’s fiancé. Rankin, realizing that Meinike has been released to help the authorities track him down, kills Meinike and buries the body in the woods.

Wilson, however, is a much more implacable foe than the little German man. He begins to suspect Rankin almost immediately, and works to force him to implicate himself. There’s the body in the woods, of course, and Rankin’s history. Additionally, there’s a comment that Rankin makes about Germany that starts Wilson’s mind working. His problem is that he has no proof, and certainly no admission from the man himself. He recruits Mary’s brother Noah (Richard Long) to help him trap Rankin and force an admission from him. And thus is set in motion a cat-and-mouse game with a number of fascinating twists and turns.

A great deal of the plot centers on a large town clock that is several centuries old. Rankin is fascinated with such things and is working all hours at restoring it, or at least claims this. Much of his time in the clock tower isn’t really spent there at all, but covering his own tracks regarding Meinike and his own past, as well as trying to outwit Wilson. He’s lost none of his cold, calculating nature, which becomes evident about half an hour in when he poisons his wife’s dog to prevent the dog from digging up the body he’s hidden in the woods.

The Stranger is a difficult film to comment on. Of the Welles films I have seen (and I haven’t seen them all by a long shot), it’s the weakest. This isn’t to suggest that the film is not worth watching or that it doesn’t belong on the list, only that I tend to expect a lot more from Orson Welles back when his career was in bloom and he was still more than merely a good filmmaker, but was a great one, and a relevant one.

There’s also nothing specifically disappointing here. The cast is as good as one could find at the time. Edward G. Robinson is stellar in his role, as always, and since he was so easily typecast as a gangster in Little Caesar, it’s great to see him play the role of the good guy here and in other films. Welles himself is dark and brooding, a role he took to pretty naturally, it seems. The film is well-written and directed, and contains any number of memorable speeches. It’s also one of the first post-World War II films to show actual Holocaust footage, even if most of what is shown is actually off-camera.

Is it worth watching? Does it belong on the list? Sure. I think it does. Even a mediocre Welles film from the mid-1940s is as good or better than a great film from most directors. There’s a real intensity to this film that was difficult to find in war pictures of the same era. There’s a feeling throughout not only that Kindler/Rankin is a terrible man who deserves his fate, but a sense of needing to cleanse the world of him. But it’s also realistic. Few people are completely evil or have no positive character traits. Kindler/Rankin, for instance appears to genuinely love Mary and want the best for her. It certainly doesn’t redeem him, but it does humanize him in a way that would be easy to skip, since he’s also a Nazi war criminal who helped conceive of one of the greatest evils in history.

It’s worth a watch, even if Welles made other, better films.

Why to watch Cabaret: A tremendous, gutsy story.
Why not to watch: Sally Bowles is damnably annoying.

Why to watch The Stranger: Film noir at the top of the form.
Why not to watch: Welles made better movies.