Critical Jim--The Hit Man

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Critical Jim--August Strangers on a Train and K-19: The Widowmaker

By Staff Writer Jim Cohn

August quiz question: August Quiz Question: Shirley Jackson's best known work, "The Lottery," was published in the June 28, 1948 issue of the New Yorker magazine. The short story received the greatest response of any New Yorker story up until that time--hundreds of letters of outrage and even some subscription cancellations.

Correctly tell me what happened to the winner of "The Lottery."

I didn't think my quizzes were too tough, but it's taken three months to get a correct answer. This month a well-deserved Tip of the Black Fedora goes to the very first winner, Ondrea Baker from my adopted hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. (Disclaimer: I do know Ondrea--we used to work together--but she didn't get the answer from me. I wouldn't even give her the website where "The Lottery" can be read for free.) Ondrea correctly answered: "Tessie Hutchinson was stoned to death." To find out why Tessie Hutchinson suffered such violent abuse, read Shirley Jackson's controversial story for free at: www.nobleednews.com/the_lottery.htm or www.underthesun.cc/Jackson/lottery/

Strangers on a Train
(1951)
Based on the novel, Strangers On a Train, by Patricia Highsmith
Screenplay: Czenzi Ormande, Raymond Chandler, based on the adaptation by Whitfield Cook
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Bruno Antony: Robert Walker; Guy Haines: Farley Granger; Anne Morton: Ruth Roman; Barbara Morton: Patricia Hitchcock

The Talented Ms. Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith is the noted author of suspense novels, including Strangers On a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley and other Tom Ripley books, and of several volumes of fantasy, horror, and humor short stories. Her non-fiction, Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, first published nearly forty years ago, still maintains a high ranking at Amazon.com. Born in Texas and raised in New York City, Ms. Highsmith's writings achieved their greatest acceptance in Europe--far more than in her native United States. No less than Graham Greene called her "the poet of apprehension" and said her writing creates, "...a world, claustrophobic and irrational, which we enter each time with a sense of personal danger." Ms. Highsmith's forte was the presentation of anti-heroes who, on the surface, seem as ordinary as your next door neighbor but as the story unfolds reveal themselves to be psychopaths and sociopaths. Perhaps Julian Symons put it best, when he wrote about Patricia Highsmith in the New York Times. "One closes most of her books--and her equally powerful and chilling short stories--with a feeling that the world is more dangerous than one had imagined."

The Movie

In 1951, Bosley Crowther, the noted film critic for the New York Times, reviewed Strangers On a Train. He didn't think well of it. One comment he repeatedly made concerned Hitchcock's use of "touches." He wrote: "Certainly, Mr. Hitchcock is the fellow who can pour on the pictorial stuff and toss what are known as "touches" until they're flying all over the screen. From the slow, stalking murder of a loose girl in a tawdry amusement park to a 'chase' and eventual calamity aboard a runaway merry-go-round, the nimble director keeps piling 'touch' and stunt upon 'touch.' Indeed, his desire to produce them appears his main impulse in this film." If Mr. Crowther were still reviewing today, I wonder how he would compare Strangers On a Train to today's movie offerings, where "touches" in the suspense genre are likely to take the form of punches, slaps, kicks, crashes, and blasts spun out to excruciating length, oft times in slow-motion, and whose sole purpose seems only to be an excuse to raise our adrenalin and testosterone levels.

The movies of yesteryear, such as Hitchcock's, provide subtlety: you aren't smacked in the face with the crime, rather you are slowly led to the understanding that events in the movie bode ill--very ill--for some poor soul. Hitchcock was, and perhaps still is, the acknowledged master of this. He built suspense brick by brick, until, at the end, the whole carefully structured edifice came crashing down around the victim.

Perhaps, if I were reviewing this movie upon its release fifty-two years ago, I would have agreed with Mr. Crowther. After all, tastes change and the "touches" of that day may have seemed more heavy-handed than graceful. Fifty years from now, a younger Critical Jim may wax poetic about the gentler filmmaking of today's movies, perhaps listing for his readers the subtle "touches" of Gone in 60 Seconds (a movie I enjoyed, BTW, but not one with much subtlety).

Despite Mr. Crowther's admonishment to Mr. Hitchcock, it is the "touches" in Strangers On a Train that really made this movie enjoyable for me. So, let me present to you a few of those that I appreciated:

Guy Haines (Farley Granger) visits the music store where his soon-to-be ex-wife, Miriam (Laura Elliot), works. They have an argument inside one of the glass enclosed quiet rooms used to preview recordings. The faces of the customers in other quiet rooms are wonderfully expressive as they first try to ignore the couple and then watch the argument escalate, helpless (as are we) to intercede.

As Bruno Antony (Robert Walker) stalks Miriam through a carnival, a small boy approaches with a balloon in one hand and a toy pistol in the other. He playfully pretends to shoot Antony, and as he walks away, Antony, his face scarily expressionless, bursts the boy's balloon with his cigarette. A sublime example of showing, rather than telling, how serious Antony is about murdering Miriam.

Guy, a semi-professional tennis player, is competing in a match. The camera closes on the fans in the stands, their heads swivel to and fro, following the action...all except Bruno, who stares straight at Guy like a malevolent voodoo doll.

These are just a few of the "touches" that Bosley Crowther hated and I love. How many can you find? And, while you're watching, don't forget to enjoy the show. It may not be Hitchcock's finest suspense film, but that merely means it's better than ninety-percent of the other suspense films of its, or any, time.

September Quiz Question: Perhaps Patricia Highsmith's most enduring literary creation is Tom Ripley, who premiered in her 1955 novel, The Talented Mr. Ripley. The story was recently made into a film of that name, starring Matt Damon in the title role.

Correctly name the books that used Tom Ripley as their main character, tell the year of publication for each, and win a Tip of the Black Fedora in next month's column from Critical Jim, The Hit Man. Send your answers to Critical Jim at ReadersRoom2@aol.com.
*****

K-19: The Widowmaker
(2002)
Based on a story by Louis Nowra

Screenplay: Christopher Kyle
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Cast: Alexei Vostrikov: Harrison Ford; Mikhail Polenin: Liam Neeson; Vadim Radchentko: Peter Sarsgaard; Pavel Loktev: Christian Camargo; Demichev: Steve Nicholson

The Storyteller Down Under

In the States, Louis Nowra does not have a household name. But, in his native Australia, Mr. Nowra is considered at the forefront of Aussie literature and theater. The winner of numerous national and international awards, he has been a working writer for more than thirty years, creating original works and adaptations for stage, screen (both movie and television), opera and radio, and authoring novels, short stories, memoirs and other non-fiction for print media. His works bring out the relationships of his characters to each other and to the particular environment he's placed them in. He builds from that foundation to illuminate larger themes of class, culture, politics, disenfranchisement, and social rituals...and does it with humor. K-19: The Widowmaker is his first foray into films with an American studio. With more stories like this one to tell, and tell well, the name Louis Nowra might be in your household sooner than you think.

The Movie

Speaking of "touches," there's a whole sub-genre of the suspense category that depends on them so deeply that without "touches" they probably wouldn't even get made. I'm speaking, of course, of the "submarine" movie.

K-19: The Widowmaker employs all of the standard submarine-movie "touches" and throws in somber Russian music and the bleak landscape of the Soviet far north, to boot-perhaps a metaphor for the cold-war era in which the movie takes place.

Submarine movies usually contain some or all of the following elements:

They take place during times of high international tension. The K-19 incident takes place in 1961 at the height of the cold war and nuclear paranoia (Remember ducking under your grade school desk and tucking your head between your legs...as if that would save you?).

They work as a microcosm of world events and international relationships, but on a personal level. The sacrifices made by the crew of the K-19 in the interest of world peace may have foreshadowed the end of the cold war three decades later.

Omens--Nine men died during the building of K-19; the sub's doctor is killed the day the sub is to leave port; the champagne bottle doesn't break at the ship's christening ceremony to which a sailor comments, "We are doomed."

By definition, the claustrophobic environment of the submarine dominates and dictates the action of the story. In this case, meticulous care was taken to duplicate the K-19 using the original blueprints to build the replica around a similar Soviet sub of that era and hiring a former Soviet sub commander to check the accuracy of the prop and to train the cast to move like veterans through the cramped space. The painstaking measures pay off handsomely. After five minutes, you want to open the door and step out on the porch to remind yourself you're not really under water.

A crewman, pining for his wife or girlfriend at home. Peter Sarsgaard plays the heartbroken lieutenant, K-19's nuclear officer, filling his first commission since graduating at the top of his class from training school.

The crewman with frayed nerves who refuses to climb into the sub's interior as it readies to descend; the crewman with "cabin fever" who tries to open the hatch to climb out of the sub after it's underwater. This movie has both.

What I liked best about K-19: The Widowmaker wasn't the "touches," themselves, but that they are all used to advance the story. Nothing is thrown in because some executive thought another gimmick would punch up a scene. Nowhere is this more true than in the two most important elements of the submarine sub-genre: equipment pushed to the limit and men acquitting themselves under intense pressure.

Equipment pushed to the limit usually involves a scene where the sub must dive to its maximum depth and, maybe, beyond. The tension builds as the hull creaks under tons of water pressure and the navigator calls out the increasing depth--"One hundred meters...one-twenty-five...one-fifty...." You know the scene I mean. Soon the audience is sweating as hard as the crew is. K-19:The Widowmaker has this obligatory scene, but rather than standing on its own, it's used to set up the equipment failure and the confrontation of the sub's two captains--hard-driving Vostrikov (Harrison Ford) and nice-guy Polenin (Liam Neeson)--that are the real story.

Without giving away the end, we all know the cold war didn't become a hot one. In no small measure, that was due to the officers and crew of the K-19, whose actions embodied heroism and grace under unthinkable conditions, and whose sacrifice enabled the world to avoid nuclear war and see another millennium. Their story is well-served by K-19: The Widowmaker. Put it at the top of your "must see" list.

Other submarine movies I recommend are: Das Boot, The Hunt for Red October, and The Enemy Below. Do you have comments about Jim's reviews? He'd love to hear from you. Contact him at: ReadersRoom2@aol.com

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