Playing for Time

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

I’m analyzing a television movie for a change. Playing for Time (1980) is a horrifying, yet inspiring award-winning telecast based on a true story set in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. The production won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama (Special) and Best Teleplay by the great Arthur Miller. It also received the prestigious Peabody Award.

The opening credits are shown against a sketch of a swastika overlaid with the abbreviated outline of a woman. We also hear a woman singing. The outline then is superimposed onto the singer played by Vanessa Redgrave (she received the Best Actress Emmy for this role). She portrays Fania Fenelon, a Jewish cabaret performer in Paris. The image suggests the main character of the story is trying to eclipse the despicable nature of the Nazis.

While she sings the film depicts German soldiers and a swastika decorated train invading Paris, disrupting the soothing calm of Fania’s singing. She is then in one of the suffocating cattle cars with so many others, including children, headed for the concentration camp. The editing shows how quickly evil can destroy a free society.

The film intersperses actual footage throughout to stress the reality of the tale. The car has only a bucket for the passengers to relieve themselves. A man dies in the car due to the horrid conditions. When they arrive at the camps the dehumanization shifts into full force. They must strip. The Germans cut off their hair, and they are reduced to being identified by tattooed numbers, like cattle.

The German soldiers crowd the prisoners into cramped barracks and show them smoke from the ovens where the bodies of dead fellow travelers were burned. The prisoners must perform hard labor and endure physical abuse. Fania tells a story to her young friend, Marianne (Melanie Mayron), about a princess to distract her from the presence of the dead woman next to them. The film here introduces the theme of how art can help one face the horrible acts of reality.

That drama enhances that theme when the inmates are asked if anyone can sing Madame Butterfly. Fania now finds a way to make a pact with the devil to survive. The guards bring her to the camp’s orchestra which is comprised of women. Amid this place of horror there is a seed of civilized culture because the Nazi monsters like to think their heinous acts do not infringe on their right to appreciate the arts.

The conductor is the stern Alma Rose (Jane Alexander, winner of a Best Supporting Actress Emmy for her portrayal). Fania must audition for Alma, which is difficult given the physical deprivation she has endured. But her enthusiasm for one of the opera’s beautiful arias overcomes her torment. Lagerfuhrein Maria Mandel (Shirley Knight), who oversees the women at the camp, interrupts her moving rendition showing how the Germans have control over the beauty of the music here. Fania uses her leverage with Mandel to get Marianne to sing with the orchestra, which shows how art can sometimes save those who seem lost. (Marianne acts like a child often, wanting or taking things to satisfy her own needs. She wants to place Fania in the role of a mother who tends to all her wants, which Fania tries to resist).

Mandel wants the orchestra members to look the part, so she gets them clothing that has been confiscated. To the Nazis, the musicians are like puppets that are to perform for the captors’ pleasure. The orchestra’s poor rehearsing is due to it originally being a marching band, Alma yells at the performers, telling them that “music is the holiest activity of mankind.” That description is to stress that there can be heavenly hopes in such a hellish place. The members discover that Fania can orchestrate the music to ensure that all play their parts to create a successful rendition. Alma is happy to learn this fact, but warns Fania that she can’t just have the goal of creating good music. She says they must please the Nazis, and that their jailers’ whims can change rapidly. So, artistry must allow for pragmatism for Alma. Fania has a difficult time realizing how much the Nazis hate her for being a Jew. Alma tells her there is only room for life and death in the camp, and other feelings must be put aside.

The incarcerated orchestra improves greatly and has a concert before Nazi soldiers, who may admire the music but will not condescend to give applause. They simply walk out when the show is done. It is not to be praised but to avoid disapproval, and its consequences, that is the goal.

Fania is willing to share her possessions, but the other inmates can’t seem to get rid of their prejudices despite being objects of discrimination. One, a Catholic, is anti-Semitic and the Polish women are segregated from the rest. What brings them together is music (art is again the savior) as Fania and Marianne sing “Stormy Weather” which conjures up shared feelings about lost romantic loves. However, music can be perverted to accompany vicious behavior as the band is used to produce marching music to exhort the women to do exhausting and degrading labor. At night Fania hears the screams of those either tortured or sent to the gas chambers.

Fania declares she will not descend into becoming an animal. Marianne becomes cynical quickly and prostitutes herself for some food. Fania catches her and tells her she shouldn’t degrade herself. But after the girl leaves food on her desk, Fania’s basic needs win out over her morality, and she eats the food. Fania starts out as controlled and calm. As time goes on, it becomes very difficult for her to witness the atrocities. It starts to make her numb in contrast to the feelings of one of the girls who loves another there. Fania says it is a blessing to have any emotion in such a place.

When Fania gets to sing the Madame Butterfly aria she is very impressive. One of her admirers is, of all people, Dr. Joseph Mengele (Max Wright), who performed grotesque experiments on inmates. In one scene we have such beauty and such horror. Fania makes sure they understand that someone who is Jewish can sing so well when she says her father’s name was Goldstein and that she should be called Fania Goldstein.

For her performance, Fania receives supplies. As the women rummage through the new possessions, one of the musicians says that she must live so she can go to Israel and produce Jewish children to fight for Jewish empowerment. Another wants communism to rise out of the ashes of Germany. While the others see only that the problem is the Nazis, Fania says that the real problem to solve is what would make people who would otherwise be admired become sadistic creatures. Her question is pertinent to the scene where Alma screams at one of the musicians and hits her when she can’t produce the right result. Can circumstances turn anyone into someone brutal? After the incident, Alma tells Fania she was in love with a man in Vienna, but he became a Nazi soldier, and she was arrested for being Jewish. She cries at the heartbreak she endured. Fania admits that Alma’s strength has saved them, but she can’t accept the harshness from her. Alma urges Fania to back her up so they can all survive. She says that Fania must shut out what is going on outside and concentrate on perfecting the music. Alma says it is not that she can’t see what’s going on in the camp, it’s that she refuses to. She is saying that the music and the artistry to make it come alive must be their escape, mentally and hopefully, physically.

Fania and Marianne are half-Jewish which means they should not be gassed. They are told to remove half of the Jewish Star of David sewn on their clothing. Marianne gladly does it, but others in the orchestra ridicule Fania and Marianne for what they see as a capitulation to antisemitism. Fania yells that she doesn’t care about cultures and backgrounds, only that the Nazis have reviled her as an individual. She wavers between feelings about group persecution and the desecration of the individual. She sews the part of the star back on showing how she does not want to turn her back on what makes her who she is. She keeps trying to hold onto her humanity and clashes with Alma when the conductor holds back rewards of food as an incentive to perform well. But Fania also voices the fear that it may be “too late for the whole human race.”

A handyman, Schmuel (Will Lee), tells Fania how they are gassing 12,000 prisoners a day. But, he does not become distressed. He rationalizes the holocaust by saying the victims are all angels who will report to God. The movie suggests that each person either despairs or finds a way to survive the hell he or she is in. That same man gives a message to Fania that the Allies have landed, which means the start of D-Day. The women also learn that the translator who was so useful to the Nazis and would not be intimidated, had escaped with a man. They play the Wedding March showing the joy that music holds. There is some hopeful news arriving amid the bleakness. But that joy is short-lived because the soldiers catch the translator and her male friend and bring them back to the camp to be hanged.

An example of the complexity of the human spirit appears in the scene where the Lagerfuhrein delights in a small blond child, doting on him and letting him play in the orchestra room. Some of the musicians see a human side to her, but another points out how she took the child from the mother, and that wrongful act should not be wiped away. The stark contrast in human behavior is emphasized outside as the Lagerfuhrein plays ball with the child amid corpses on the ground.

Commandant Kramer (Clarence Felder) demonstrates the complete control he has over the women. He takes one girl away to watch his children, removes the piano for the officers, yet still expects the orchestra to meet his expectations. A male Jew is to show one of the female musicians how to play a piece on the cello. As he touches her in silence, placing his hands on hers, there is a poignant moment how much physical affection no longer exists for these captives. The diabolical Mengele intertwines his music appreciation with deviant scientific whims as he wants the orchestra to play Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony for the mentally ill so he can observe the effects on the patients. He will then have the patients gassed. The story continues the contrast between what is creative and what is destructive as real footage of the Nazi forces continuing their concentration camp activities offsets the classical music, and the jarring sounds of screams and gunshots in the background punctuate the elevated music of the great composers.

One of the Polish musicians tells Fania people like to talk to her because she has no causes and only acts like an individual human being with strong feelings. Fania, however, says she can’t help others because she is “dying by inches,” and is starting to develop a failure to thrive, not being interested in eating. She tells the Polish woman that they are not more valuable to save than others. Fania sees the world as beyond salvation now since its sins have been so nullifying.

Alma is overjoyed that she is getting out of the camp to play for the fighting soldiers. She rationalizes that she will not be playing for the murderers who run the camp but for “honorable” men. Fania is angry because Alma doesn’t seem to realize that she will be entertaining those who are fighting for the Nazi way of life. Frau Schmidt (Viveca Lindfors), one of the camp officers, congratulates Alma, and invites her to dinner. Alma wants to believe that Schmidt, who she says has wanted off the camp, has the decency to have kind words for her. It’s as if Fania is now the one who is the more cynical of the two. Fania is right. Schmidt wouldn’t let a Jew get out before her. Mengele (an admirer of Alma’s musical abilities) and other officers gather the orchestra members together and the women find Alma in a coffin. The rumor is that Schmidt poisoned her.

The orchestra descends into anarchy without the strength of Alma, who said she wanted Fania to be the new conductor. However, a frantic and irrational Olga (Christine Baranski) wants to be the leader, and the discordant sounds that the musicians produce under her conducting mirrors the lack of harmony among the women. Marianne has prostituted herself with the camp executioner and the other women scorn her. However, Fania says they have all changed and should not be judgmental because they have learned that each person has the potential to act immorally. Fania takes on the survivalist role of Alma and promises Mengele that the orchestra will strive to perform to Alma’s expectations.

However, there is also a bit of humanity even within the hearts of some of the villains. The Lagerfuhrein has lost the child she took from her mother and now cries as she asks for another rendition of the Madame Butterfly aria to soothe her distress. As has happened often, the sounds of war interrupt the beauty of the music, and the officer reverts to savagery as she shoots a disruptive inmate.

As the Allies attack, the soldiers evacuate the camp in a vain attempt to maintain their lost dominance. The Allied soldiers liberate them from a crowded barn. But, Marianne has lost her soul and injures Fania as she joins her captors with whom she had previously joined sexually. She now can’t remain with the other Jews since she has so compromised herself.

A journalist asks the shaking Fania to say something. Appropriately the story ends with her singing, music being the only way she can exist in a world of horror.

Foreign Correspondent

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

I haven’t discussed an Alfred Hitchcock film in a while so I decided on reviewing Foreign Correspondent (1940). The opening credits have a revolving globe of the Earth above a newspaper building to show the universal need to gather international information. The beginning notes pay tribute to foreign correspondents, saying they were out there investigating dangerous situations while the rest of us were watching “rainbows,” an obvious reference to the Wizard of Oz and the isolationism noted in Casablanca.

Powers (the man who is in charge played by Harry Davenport), who is the city editor of the New York Globe (like the Daily Planet?) says he is not getting enough info from his foreign correspondents. He remembers that Johnny Jones (an everyman name) is a tough reporter. Joel McCrea plays the character and excels in the role. Jones has been proficient in solving criminal activity and Powers wants to find out about the “crime” that Nazi Germany is hatching. He notes that Jones beat up a policeman working on one story, which most likely refers to Hitchcock’s well-known fear of cops.

Jones is ripping up newspapers and making them into snowflakes, showing his cynicism about the profession. Powers doesn’t want a stereotypical foreign correspondent, but instead a “reporter,” someone who has no preconceived ideologies and who can be objective. Powers wants Jones to use an Englishman, Stephen Fisher (Herbert Marshall), head of the Universal Peace Party, who can help Jones get to a Dutch diplomat named Van Meer (Albert Bassermann), to find out what’s going on in Europe. Powers wants him to use the name Harvey Haverstick which sounds more important. At this point the practical Jones just wants an expense account.

Jones travels by ship to London and meets Stebbins (writer Robert Benchley who contributed dialogue to the screenplay), who is an American journalist who is stationed in England. His character is funny as he complains that he has been drinking alcohol too much and now must drink milk, not the drink of tough newsmen.

Jones sees Van Meer getting into a taxi taking him to Fisher’s dinner in his honor. He gets a ride with Van Meer who dodges questions and then shows he is shrewd because he knows Jones is a reporter. He does admit that he feels helpless about the oncoming possibility of a war, which stresses a tone of pessimism. In contrast, Fisher’s daughter, Carol (Laraine Day), argues with others that people say we stumble into war but never into peace. She implies people can embrace peace just as much as war.

Jones encounters Carol at dinner, not knowing she is Fisher’s daughter, which adds to the humor of the film. His cynical ways about whether Fisher is legit miffs Carol, who says her name is “Smith,” which is a counter to Jones’s generic last name. She will not sit with him even after he sends her thirty notes. Fisher announces that Van Meer can’t attend, which surprises Jones, since the man took him to the affair. Fisher reveals that Carol is his daughter, and Jones looks at her with an adoring stare which throws her off her speech. When she looks for her notes she encounters all the messages that Jones sent, further adding to the unnerving chemistry that is developing between them.

Van Meer went to a peace conference in Holland and Jones receives a message to follow him there. Jones confronts Van Meer as he is entering the building where the gathering is to take place, but Van Meer appears not to recognize Jones. Then a supposed reporter (one of many deceptions in the movie) asks to take Van Meer’s picture but he has a gun next to his camera and shoots Van Meer. The scene shows how appearances can be deceiving as Jones, the true journalist, is contrasted against the phony one. It is raining and Jones chases the shooter through a sea of umbrellas. The umbrellas show how the surface can cover the reality beneath and add to confusion for someone seeking the truth. The killer shoots other as he makes a getaway and has help from a man in a car, suggesting a conspiracy is at work. Jones happens to hop into a car which contains a smiling Carol, happy to see the handsome Jones, and Scott ffolliott (George Sanders), a stereotypical unflappable Britisher, and another journalist. He says the wife of an ancestor who Henry VIII beheaded dropped off the capital letter at the beginning of his name to commemorate her husband (Benchley’s witty dialogue is apparent here). They chase after the car transporting the murderer, who fires shots at them, as the police follow. However, they mysteriously lose the killer in a flat plain near some windmills. The wind causes Jones to lose his hat for the second time (think of the Coesn Brothers film Miller’s Crossing where losing a hat makes one seem unsure and foolish). However, after chasing it he notices that a windmill’s blades reversed their motion, and he suspects that the killer is inside. He sends the other two to retrieve the police.

There is a plane flying by and the smart Jones realizes that the windmill is signaling the plane to land. He goes inside and hears men speaking a foreign language. Those from the plane join them as Jones hides on stairs leading toward the top. He discovers the real Van Meer, who is alive but drugged. He tries to stay coherent, saying that there was an attempt to make it look like he was assassinated by using a double. He becomes mute after scribbling something on a piece of paper. Again, we have appearances being deceiving, as represented by Van Meer’s double and the fake assassination. Hitchcock builds suspense by having Jones’s raincoat getting caught in the mill’s mechanism. But he removes it and grasps it before it can be discovered. In addition, Van Meer looks upward, possibly revealing Jones. Instead, he hides, and the foreigners only see a bird and light coming in from a window. Outside of the latter, Jones holds on, trying to prevent a fall, and escapes. (Light becomes a metaphor in the story, especially at the end).

Later, Jones tries to explain what he has observed to the authorities. They go to the windmill and everyone and the car are gone. There is a man sleeping where Jones found Van Meer and he says he has been sleeping there all day and there were no others. We have here a further example of deceptive appearances, and an attempt to discredit Jones. The police and even Carol doubt his story. Hitchcock often has a truthful man being doubted by others, and he again exhibits his distrust of the police.

Jones is quite observant as he notices that the wires to his hotel room have been cut when two men pretending to be policemen say they need to take him to headquarters. He is cool and funny under pressure when one of the men says they all speak English. Jones says not everybody where he comes from can make that claim, obviously referring to some uneducated Americans. He realizes that he knows too much, and these conspirators are out to get rid of him. He pretends to take a bath and goes out the window to Carol’s room. As he goes along the edge of the building he touches a light that extinguishes which leave a sign that says “Hot … Europe,” a reference to the Nazi threat. She is there trying to get support for her father’s peace movement, and she does not believe his story after what happened at the windmill. Jones continues to be the honest man who others do not believe. He is a true journalist because he says, “There’s something fishy going on around here. There’s a big story in this. I can smell it. I can feel it and I’m going to get to the bottom of it if it’s the last thing I do. And nothing’s going to stop me.”

He persists and wins Carol over. He is shrewd again as he asks for several people to go to his hotel room for assistance as a diversion as a valet gets his clothes. Jones and Carol escape and head for a ship. The humor continues as they both profess their love for each other and the desire to marry. With a wink to the audience Jones says, “Well that cuts our love scene quite short.”

In London, Jones meets Fisher and Krug (Eduardo Ciannelli), and recounts that he saw Van Meer killed, but does not mention the double because he recognizes Krug as one of the men at the windmill. When Krug leaves the room, he tells Fisher what he knows. Fisher talks privately with Krug, and we realize that Fisher is one of the conspirators. Krug leaves and Jones is upset by this act and says he wants to spill the story now. Fisher convinces him to keep his story quiet so as not to endanger Van Meer. He also says Jones can have a private eye to protect him since he is in danger. The man they will use is really an assassin. We have more deception as people who seem friendly are deadly. Fisher almost seems admiring when he describes how the supposed enemy is quite cunning, since he is really talking about himself. However, he almost hesitates to go forward with the plan, since he sees how attached his daughter is to Jones.

Rowley (Edmund Gwenn) is the private eye who is supposed to protect Jones, but pushes him in front of a truck. Jones is not hit, and Rowley covers by saying it was safer to push than to pull. Pretending (deceit again) that they are being followed, Rowley gets a reluctant Jones to go into a church and up to the top of the tower. He tries to push him off. We see a man fall to his death, but there is a delay which heightens the tension until we learn that Jones stepped aside, and it was Rowley that fell. (Hitchcock will kill off a lead character quickly in Psycho, but not here. He also likes cliffhangers as he has falling from heights, for example, in North by Northwest, Saboteur, and Vertigo).

Because it was Fisher who hooked Jones up with Rowley, Jones now knows Fisher isn’t the upstanding man he pretends to be. ffolliott shows up at Stebbins’s office and says he suspected Fisher because of his own investigating. He says that there was some memorized section of a peace initiative that the real kidnappers are trying to extract from Van Meer. He suggests that Jones and Carol hide under the guise of protecting Jones, but ffolliott will say that Carol was kidnapped, as a way to invent leverage over Fisher (false fronts erected all around). Even ffolliott schemes involving his allies as he called Carol earlier to suggest hiding (and he doesn’t tell her about her father), and ffolliott does not tell Jones of the ploy. Everybody here twists the truth.

Carol hears Jones setting up a separate room at a hotel for her to keep her away longer so ffolliott can contact Fisher. She leaves for home when she discovers Jones’s secret scheme and believes he is just using her to get at her father, and spoils ffolliott’s attempt to get Van Meer’s whereabouts. ffolliott follows Fisher after hearing him say the address to a cab driver and tells Stebbins to bring Jones later. He is hoping to discover where Van Meer is. Carol answers the phone and recognizes Kruger’s voice, which make her wonder why that man is calling her father.

ffolliott is caught at the place where they are keeping Van Meer just as Fisher pretends he is still Van Meer’s friend to get the clause of the treaty out of him. The journalist says that Fisher is not his friend, and it is enough for the drugged Van Meer to realize the deception since there are no police to help him. He says there is “no help for the whole poor, suffering world.” Van Meer’s assessment is an accurate prediction of the Nazi onslaught that will follow.

The captors off screen torture Van Meer and he starts to divulge the information. Ffolliott breaks the window, and unlike Rowley, his fall is broken by an awning. However, the bad guys escape as Jones arrives. Van Meer is unconscious and not able to corroborate ffolliott’s story. Thus, Scotland Yard is reluctant to pursue Fisher due to his respected, but false, position. As the conspirators head for the United States, England declares war on Germany.

Carol is on the plane with her father and reveals her knowledge of Fisher’s connection to Kruger. He confesses his deception as a spy for Germany. He feels ashamed now for what he has done. Jones and ffolliott are also on the plane. Carol is still devoted to her father even as Jones says he didn’t come to take down her father, it was only where the story led.

At that moment a German ship shells the plane, mistakenly thinking it’s a bomber. The fog of war is taking hold. Now even the pilots lie to prevent panic, saying that it was target practice and the firing is an accident. Luckily, Carol distributes life vests, realizing lies will not protect anyone. The plane goes into the ocean and Fisher sacrifices himself so others can stay afloat on a wing, gaining some redemption for himself.

An American ship rescues the remaining main characters. Jones does not want to soil Fisher’s name because of his love for Carol. She grants him leave because, as Rick from Casablanca says, their story isn’t that important compared to the rest of the world. The captain of the ship says no information should be released while onboard. Here, Jones uses deception to get the truth out by pretending to talk to his “uncle” while letting the phone stay off the hook as he details the story to his boss, Powers, by arguing for its release to the captain.

The once reluctant foreign correspondent now reports the war from various places in Europe in the epilogue to the story. His broadcast speech over the radio at the end is an argument against isolationism as he reports while bombs rain from the sky. He tells listeners in the United States to rally against the darkness of fascism that is coming when he says it’s, “as if the lights were all out everywhere except in America. Keep those lights burning … they’re the only lights left in the world.” It is a plea for truth to combat lies, which has become an ongoing battle.

The next film is Badlands.

Closely Watched Trains

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

I occasionally write a post about a film my movie class watched and discussed at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute. We recently saw Closely Watched Trains, a Czechoslovakian film which is a tragicomedy that received the Best Foreign Language Oscar of 1966. The story takes place in that country during the Nazi occupation. There is a sarcastic saying that fascist countries can make the trains run on time. The line may imply that the machinery of the state dehumanizes people. It follows that the compensation for the loss of freedom is not worth the sacrifice paid by the dominated citizens. The trains in this context also may be a reference to the shipping of Jews to concentration camps. The placement of the story in the past allowed the filmmakers to make hidden references to the oppression Czechoslovakia suffered under Russian rule.

The film centers on Milos Hrma (Vaclav Neckar), who comes from a family of lazy losers. His great grandfather was a soldier, but students hit him with a stone, and he retired early. Milos says, “he didn’t do anything after that except buying a bottle of rum and a pack of tobacco every day.” His train-driver father retired early and just sits around all day. Milos is an apprentice train dispatcher at a small station. He enjoys wearing his new uniform and when his cap is placed on his head, the image suggests a mock coronation, implying the grandness of the ceremony is only in Milos’s head.

The train dispatcher, Hubicka (Josef Somr), is a ladies’ man, apparently having had many sexual conquests. He exhorts Milos, a virgin, to pursue the conductor, Masa (Jitka Scoffin), who shows an interest in Milos. At her urging, they attempt to have sex, but the inexperienced and anxious Milos has a premature ejaculation and is unable to consummate the act. Milos is in such despair that he attempts suicide, but is rescued. As he is carried to a physician, Milos is naked except for a wrinkled sheet covering his lower body. The image resembles Michelangelo’s Pieta. Could this be a foreshadowing of the need to have an individual sacrifice for the good of the many?

The doctor tries to calm Milos down, telling him what he underwent was common, and to think about other topics so as not to climax so quickly. The class disagreed as to whether the tone of the film was inconsistent, taking a light-hearted view of sex and then combining it with the topic of Nazism and suicide. The film does not depict the brutality of the Nazis, which is consistent with its lighter approach, but it also downplays the repression that the Czechs were undergoing.

Hubicka charms the telegraphist, Zdenicka (Jitka Zelenohorska), into letting him use the station’s rubber stamps to place print marks on her thighs and buttocks. I wondered if this playful activity on the surface suggested its demonic opposite which was the tattooing of numbers on those interned in the concentration camps. At the least, it makes fun of the overemphasis on bureaucracy.

Zdenicka’s mother observes the print on her daughter’s body while the young woman is asleep, and is in an outrage. She ironically lifts the girl’s skirt to show just about anyone what an outrageous act was done, at the same time being even more outrageous by exposing her daughter’s behind. She takes Zdenicka to the pompous Zednicek (Vlastimil Brodski), the Councilor, who is a Nazi collaborator, who previously espoused Nazi propaganda. He is emotionless in listening to the mother’s complaints. The whole episode suggests an abandonment of valuing human feelings for efficient regimentation.

There were comments by members of the class that the movie seemed to be preoccupied with sex, and that women were portrayed as sex objects willing to satisfy the urges of the men. It could be that given the state of the country, sex was a diversion from the Nazi oppression. A resistance agent, Viktoria (Nada Urbankova), brings explosives to the train station to get the workers to blow up a German train carrying ammunitions. She is older than Milos and is successful in making him sexually efficient. Her character, as well as the other uninhibited women, show females awakening the latent masculinity of the males and empowering them to act.

After feeling that he is no longer a “flop” but is now “a real man,” Milos says, “I cut myself off from the past entirely.” He detaches himself from the failed men in his family and his own prior ineptitude. Milos takes the bomb with a timer and climbs a tower which spans the train tracks. When the Nazi train carrying ammunition passes under him, Milos drops the explosive onto it. But, he pays the price for his heroic action as a German soldier on the train shoots him. Milos falls onto the train. In Elizabethan times, death and sex were equated, since the sexual climax in poetry was depicted as a sort of bodily release.

After the train travels away, there are several detonations, and the train is destroyed. The explosions could be seen as an orgasmic eruption against repression. The blast blows Milos’s cap near Masa’s feet. Because he has redeemed his family, fellow workers, and himself, the head covering can now truly be seen as a crown of distinction.

The next film is Wall Street.

The Stranger

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

 

The title of this 1946 movie, The Stranger, directed and starring Orson Welles, who also contributed to the script, suggests the unknown, which by its uncertainty can be a threat. It also implies that what we think we know about a person may not be the truth, and if one has placed trust in a false appearance of reality, betrayal of that trust is possible in the situation. The credits display over a large Gothic clock, which refers to the preoccupation of the villain in the story and points to his mechanistic mind. It may also be a metaphor for how the intricate parts of the mind of the protagonist works in solving a mystery to find the antagonist. The clock is part of a church which symbolizes religious purity on the surface, but evil and danger may exist below the outward appearance of things. There is also a cemetery situated near this church which reminds us of how death is close by. 

 

Government agent Wilson (Edward G. Robinson) forcefully insists to set a trap for a Nazi war criminal by releasing the unsuspecting Konrad Meinike (Konstantin Shayne) from jail who will lead them to the man they seek. (Wilson breaks his pipe while being emphatic, and the use of the pipe reappears later). Meinike travels to South America under an assumed name. There is a man whose face is hidden by a sign, implying that we can’t know all that is happening around us. He sends a woman, who is his wife, to secretly follow the man. The hidden fellow now is only shown in a black silhouette as he calls Wilson, who he and his spouse are working for. We have an atmosphere of suspense as the black and white photography stresses that secret activities lurk in the shadows. The spy tells Wilson that Meinike is going to have a passport photograph taken.

 

Meinike is reflected in the camera lens of the photographer (John Brown), which emphasizes that what we see in life and art is viewed through a lens controlled by subjective manipulation, which alters the perception of reality. Meinike demands that the photographer tell him where is Franz Kindler, who is the Nazi Wilson is pursuing. The photographer is frightened and says Kindler is dead (a deception). Meinike states he represents a supreme authority, another lie as it does not turn out to be some Nazi official as we might assume. The photographer tells him that Kindler is indeed alive and hiding in a proper Connecticut town named Harper as Professor Charles Rankin, another sham. 

 

The photographer hands Meinike a postcard which has a picture of a church with the clock we saw at the start of the movie. The next shot neatly replaces the picture with the actual church and town, a reference to how the postcard is a version once removed from reality, and we are watching a movie that is another step removed from truth. Wilson is on the bus arriving in Harper with Meinike who is also a passenger. As they disembark, Wilson drops his pipe (there it is again) on the seat that Meinike sat on, and Meinike appears shaken, as if the pipe is a warning, and he realizes he is a marked man. Potter (Billy House), who owns the store where the bus stops, listens to a comedy routine on the radio and his continuous laughing contrasts with the seriousness surrounding the two men who have arrived. 

 Meinike runs off to a school after looking up an address in a phone book, and Wilson tails him. Meinike knows he is being followed and leads Wilson into the gymnasium where he lets loose a rope with an attached ring that knocks Wilson to the ground. He appears to be dead (but remember appearances are deceiving in this story). Meinike then goes through a door that warns about using gymnasium equipment at one’s own “risk.” It’s as if the movie is saying that once one enters this realm of intrigue, danger is imminent. 

 

Having discovered the address from the phone book, Meinike practically bursts into Rankin’s house. He then softens his approach (more dissembling) and asks his wife-to-be on that day, Mary Longstreet (Loretta Young), if he can wait for the absent Rankin. Meinike decides to wait outside and encounters Rankin (Welles) by calling him Kindler. Rankin immediately wants to hide his association with the man and tells him to go into the woods (the archetypal place which represents the hiding of wrongful deeds), and follow the path near the church, the religious façade masking their dark motivations. In their meeting, Meinike tells Rankin he is a changed man. But Rankin says he is, too, but his change is superficial. He has destroyed all documents that could disclose his true identity. He says he is about to marry the daughter of a Supreme Court justice. He notes her lovely appearance, and adds everything is a perfect “camouflage,” which is meant to cover up his despicable past “til the day when we strike again.” He is in hiding until there is another war when he can fight as an enemy from within the country he has deceived. But Meinike has become a born-again Christian and says war is an “abomination.” He says God opened all doors for him and allowed him to be free. The clever Rankin realizes that the authorities allowed Mienike to escape to lead them to Rankin. Meinike admits he was followed but he believes he killed Wilson. He asks Rankin to pray on his knees and confess his sins in order to be forgiven by God. As they kneel, Rankin repeats holy words but as a diversion and he strangles Meinike to eliminate being found out (think of the contrast between Michael Corleone’s religious words at the baptism scene versus his simultaneous murderous commands being carried out in The Godfather).

 

As Rankin and Mary are getting married, Wilson recovers after being knocked out, and retrieves his pipe, which could be a reference to the detective work of Sherlock Holmes. He questions Potter, since he is the town clerk, and says he knows everybody living there. They play checkers, which Potter wins by diverting Wilson, and the game of opponents playing against each other mirrors what’s happening in the plot. For instance, Rankin used deceptive ploys earlier as he led some of his college students away from Meinike’s body and covered the corpse up after the wedding ceremony. 

 Wilson finds out about the wedding and then asks Potter questions relating to recent residents in the town. He then begins to eliminate those people as suspects as he narrows in on his prey. He goes into the church and finds Noah Longstreet (Richard Long), Mary’s brother, cleaning the inside of the building. Wilson knows about clocks and discovers from Noah that his brother-in-law, Rankin, will be returning from his honeymoon in time for examinations at the school where he teaches, and will be working on the clock. By hardly saying anything, he allows Noah to convey all of this information, including the exact day of the couple’s return. Noah does not look too happy about his sister’s marriage, suggesting he is not a fan of Rankin.

 Wilson, who is knowledgeable about antiques, discusses a Paul Revere item (symbolic of the American fight for freedom?) in the study of Judge Adam Longstreet (Philip Merivale), Mary’s father, when Mary and Rankin (who would not be a fan of Revere) arrive. By pretending to be an antiques specialist, Wilson is also hiding the truth, but his deception is an undercover act to reveal a criminal. Noah is there as well as is Dr. Jeffrey Lawrence (Byron Keith), who treated Wilson for his head wound. This fact is mentioned, and Rankin, the clock specialist, hesitates eating as his mind starts to click into gear. He most likely suspects Wilson based on his recent arrival and Meinike’s relating how he attacked his stalker. The Judge was talking with someone who reported that there were Germans about who wanted to revive Nazism. Wilson deliberately asks Rankin, who is a history instructor, what he thinks of these stories. Rankin seems to be making an objective psychological examination of the German psyche, but he is actually declaring German resolve against defeat. He argues that the German does not link himself to others who have found a broader sense of truth, and has not “come to know for whom the bell tolled.” He says the German still sees himself as a victim of other countries who he considers “inferior,” and recalls the greatness of his Teutonic ancestry embodied in German myths, as he waits for another Hitler who will be his messiah. Wilson says that Rankin must not believe that governmental reforms will work in Germany. Rankin says external concepts of liberty and democracy can’t be imposed from outside and will not take root in Germany. He believes the only solution is “annihilation.” Mary finds it difficult to believe that her husband holds that only a “Carthaginian peace,” which means a total domination of a defeated people, is what is needed to stop the zealously dedicated Germans from rising again. When presented with the concepts of Karl Marx who theoretically wanted to reform and unite the Germans, Rankin says that Marx was a Jew, not a German. Mary invites Wilson to a faculty event, but he declines, saying he will be leaving the town. 

 

Wilson says in a phone call that he agrees with the person on the other end that Rankin is “above suspicion.” Meanwhile, at home, Mary says it is coincidental that her husband and Wilson are both interested in antique clocks. Rankin already is suspicious of that similarity, and asks to take the family dog for a walk. It is night, which is a time of concealment, and Rankin is being sneaky again among the shadows of the trees as he checks out Meinike’s shallow grave. However, he was not thinking by taking the dog, Red, with him, who starts to dig up the corpse. Rankin attempts to drive the dog away, even kicking the poor animal (offscreen, of course), which shows his cruelty. 

 

The remark about Marx wakes up Wilson from his sleep, and he calls Washington, D. C. He says that a Nazi would call Karl Marx a Jew, and not a German, which shows condescension toward the communist theorist because of his Jewish heritage. So, Wilson decides not to return to Washington yet. Rankin appears like a black ghost as he approaches Mary in the dark of their bedroom. She wakes up startled and says she had a dream about the “little man” (Meinike) who came to their house. She says in the dream the man moved but his shadow remained behind and began to spread. It could signify the danger that his appearance brought to her false world where appearances seemed benign. Red cries because Rankin put him in the cellar and says during the day he must be kept on a leash. From a practical stance, Rankin doesn’t want the dog near the grave again. But the action also shows his propensity to hide the truth.

 

Wilson visits Noah who has Red with him since Mary most likely showed her opposition to having the dog restrained. They go out on a boat and Wilson states he can see that Noah does not like his brother-in-law. Wilson divulges he is a sort of “detective” because he wants someone in the Longstreet family he can trust, someone who is not devious and can be open to believing about Rankin’s notorious past. Wilson wants Noah to do some digging to bring to light Rankin’s activities on the day of his wedding. 

 

Wilson goes to Potter’s store and asks about the bag Meinike left there and has not come back to retrieve. He tells Potter he can open it up given how long ago it was left. Wilson is there waiting for Rankin’s regular stop at the store, and Wilson knows Potter will mention the bag. When Potter describes Meinike, Mary recognizes the description and Wilson observes Rankin grabbing his wife’s arm as if to restrain her from asking any further questions. Her hesitancy reveals to Wilson that Meinike went to see Rankin. Noah shows up and says Red keeps running off into the woods, most likely checking out the grave. Wilson shares his conclusions with Noah, and tells him that his sister must discover who her husband really is. He wonders what excuse Rankin is fabricating (more duplicity) to cover up why he didn’t want Mary to ask Potter about the visitor to the house.

 

The segue to the next scene answers that question. Rankin says he was a student in Geneva and a woman fell in love with him. They were on a boat and she said she would drown herself if he didn’t commit to her. She jumped off and he says he dived in but couldn’t save her. He says that Meinike was the girl’s brother, knew they were on the boat, and extorted him so he wouldn’t implicate Rankin in her death. He showed up again on their wedding day and he says he gave Meinike more money and the man went away. Mary seems to buy his explanation, but she astutely asks why didn’t the man take his belongings. Rankin offers that once he had money he probably felt he could buy better possessions. He tells Mary that he wants to work on the church clock for a while because it calms him. She says he doesn’t have to walk her home because, “in Harper, there’s nothing to be afraid of.” The line reminds one of the apparently safe town in Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, where beneath the illusion of security lurks the existence of evil.

 

Noah finds Red and he is dead. He and Wilson take him to the doctor who determines that the dog was poisoned. Wilson uses his detective skills to conclude that the mud and leaves on the front paws of the dog indicate he was digging. He calculates how far the animal was found from where he was poisoned based on the doctor’s account of how fast the poison worked. Wilson correctly deduces that Red was digging up Meinike’s body. The dog’s unearthing the corpse fits as a metaphor for what Wilson is doing, exposing what has been hidden below the dissembling surface. 

 

Rankin learns from Potter that Wilson and Noah took the dog to the doctor and that there is a search for the man who left his bag at the store. Rankin returns home and Mary finds him packing. Rankin truthfully tells her that he is not the man who she believes she married. His existence has been a disguise. She insists he is the man who she fell in love with. But he confesses to killing Red, and says, “murder can be a chain, Mary, with one link leading to another until it circles your neck.” It is an apt metaphor about how violence breeds violence until it claims the one who began its inception. He also admits to killing the man who visited her (Meinike) with the same hands that embraces her. It is an ironic contrast that the parts of the body that show love and tenderness can also be used to destroy life. It points to the duality of human nature. But, Rankin uses the truth to fortify his previous lie, making it appear as if he was protecting Mary and her father. He says that Meinike knew Mary's father was wealthy and wanted more of a payoff which prompted Rankin’s attack on the man. He has manipulated her feelings and, since there is nothing to connect him to the dead man, she promises to keep his secret. Through his deception she is now complicit in his crime.

 

The body is discovered, and Wilson underestimates the story that Rankin has concocted, believing that what he told Mary would contradict his initial statement about Meinike. But Rankin has been consistent about the extortion lie. Wilson says that Mary must now learn the whole truth about her husband. Meanwhile, Mary is getting nervous, worried about having to identify the body. Rankin attempts to calm her to make sure she provides a consistent story. He fakes his intention to confess to the police if she can’t handle the situation just to reassure her of his devotion to her. Mary’s father calls her and wants to see her alone. While the couple talk, Rankin fiddles with the clock in the room and says he will go work on the church clock while Mary sees her father. The references to the clocks stress that time is running out for Rankin.

 

Mary finds Wilson with her father. Mary lies when she says she doesn’t recognize Meinike’s photograph. Wilson tells her that she is protecting a murderer. He now reveals his own hidden agenda. He works for the Allied Commission for the Punishment of War Criminals. He says that Meinike ran one of the Nazi concentration camps. Wilson then shows her footage of the mass graves and gas chambers. He says that Franz Kindler conceived of the plan to exterminate as many of Germany’s enemies as possible so that the country would emerge superior to other nations at the end of World War II. He shows the horrors of the camp to convince Mary that she is harboring the monster that created the Nazi death machine. Kindler was an anonymous partner in the genocidal plan so there is no way to identify him, except that he had a mania for clocks. The cold efficiency of how the concentration camps carried out the executions resembles the precise mechanism of how parts of a timepiece work together. Wilson tells Mary that he had Meinike released so he would lead Wilson to Kindler and that only the person who knows who Meinike came to see in Harper can identify Kindler. Mary is stunned and in denial, not believing that Rankin could be Kindler. She denies that anyone visited her on the day Meinike arrived, and says that they are trying to involve her in “a lie.” But a lie is exactly what she has become part of, only it is not Wilson’s but her husband’s deceitful web in which she is entangled. After Mary runs off, Wilson tells Judge Longstreet that his daughter is grappling with the facts versus her not wanting to believe she could fall in love with a monster. Wilson says that if she is unreliable as Rankin’s ally, then he may attempt to kill her. He is using her as bait, and he admits to his manipulation of the Judge’s daughter, but in essence he is fighting coldness with coldness. 

 

After Wilson states his plan, the church clock chimes, emphasizing the precision of both actors in the cat-and-mouse game and how the contest is coming to an end. Mary runs to the church and climbs the stairs to the clock tower. She tells Rankin the meeting was a trap, but she divulged nothing and that they can prove Rankin isn’t who they say he is by verifying his attendance at the school in Geneva where he said he knew Meinike and his sister. They walk out among the crowd that has assembled to congratulate Rankin for getting the clock to chime. The John Donne poem, referenced earlier by Rankin, comes to mind, which reads, “For Whom the Bell Tolls/It tolls for thee,” indicating that death impacts all of humanity, not just those singled out as victims.

 

Mary starts closing the drapes in her house, symbolizing her desire to cover things up and not let the light reveal what is going on. Rankin is at Potter’s store. He finds out that Wilson has picked up the ice cream that was ordered for the party at their house that night. He hurries home, most likely worried that Mary might divulge something about the dead man. At the party there is much talk about the murder which greatly upsets Mary. Someone mentions Ralph Waldo Emerson’s statement about crime. Wilson knows the quote which says, “things are arranged for truth and benefit, and there is no den in the wide world to hide a rogue.” There are always clues left behind because, “The laws and substances of nature - water, snow, wind, gravitation - become penalties to the thief.” So, despite efforts to hide wrongful acts, the truth will be revealed, which is consistent with the theme of the film about appearances attempting to conceal reality. 

 

Mary’s denial of her husband’s guilt is starting to break down as she becomes agitated, cries, and rips off a necklace of pearls, the beads spilling on the floor representing how her defenses protecting Rankin are falling apart. The housekeeper, Sara (Martha Wentworth) reports this incident to Wilson, Mary's father, and Dr. Lawrence. Wilson knows that as she reveals her lack of resolve, Mary will become more of a target for her husband. So, he tells Sara she must be vigilant and relate all incidents. Mary’s father essentially tells Sara that Mary is walking through a minefield of the everyday where a planned attack may appear (that word again) as an accident. 

 

From that warning we nicely segue to Rankin sawing cuts into the ladder that leads to the church clock tower. He also announces at a meeting that he will soon finish the work of the German clockmakers who preceded him concerning the church timepiece. Metaphorically, his statement sounds like he wants to continue the work of the Nazi genocide machine. This idea is reinforced as he draws a swastika on a piece of paper as he calls Mary to go secretly to the church tower. It is clever that Potter then plays Rankin at checkers and says to Rankin that it’s his move, which Rankin has just made regarding Mary.

 

Sara makes a fuss about Mary leaving, and pretends (again a charade, but for beneficial purposes) that she is ill. Mary calls Noah and asks that he go to the church to tell Rankin she will be late. She wants Noah not to divulge his activity, which would draw her brother behind Rankin’s veil of deceit. But, Noah calls Wilson and they go to the church while Rankin is still with Potter. Wilson grabs one of the sawed rungs and it gives way. Luckily, he recovers with Noah there to help. Wilson can even smell the glue where the wood was temporarily attached. 

 When Rankin returns home and finds Mary is still alive, he is stunned and becomes unhinged, fiddling with his grandfather clock like it is a security blanket that will restore order. When she explains that she sent Noah to the church he becomes enraged that she told someone of the meeting. He blurts out that if Noah was killed it would be her fault. Mary then becomes frightened as she realizes her husband was attempting to kill her. She now sees that who she thought was her husband is really “the stranger,” and yells, like an accusation, his real name, “Franz Kindler!” Kindler escapes just before Wilson arrives with Noah, and Mary faints out of relief that her brother is still alive. 

 

Mary awakes in the night and goes to the church, climbing up the bell tower, suspecting that Kindler is hiding there. She came by way of the cemetery (an ominous path) and does find her husband there. She says she was not followed. Wilson and the others discover that she left, and Wilson suspects she is heading for the clocktower. She is carrying a box, but it is a decoy to make Kindler think she had something to give him so he would help her up. She also can play games of strategy. She says that she is there to kill him, but he says she will die instead. She is okay with that if she takes him with her. He says from that height he can see the goings on below, like “God,” and compares the citizens to “ants.” His statement reveals the deluded “master race” belief of the Nazis. But Wilson appears and tells Kindler that he only has to look outside to see all of the people rushing to apprehend the Nazi, which sounds like the citizens of the town that went to destroy Frankenstein’s monster. Kindler says it’s a trick, and Wilson angrily says he doesn’t need tricks, which Wilson says is what Kindler is all about. His bag of deception has now been ripped apart. Wilson says that the world for Kindler has shrunk to the town of Harper and now to the bell tower. Wilson seems to be saying that the Nazi’s area of existence is approaching the size of a prison cell. Wilson notes that the people whom Kindler belittled are now there to take him down.

 

Kindler uses that lame Nazi excuse that he was “just following orders,” but Wilson points out that Kindler was the one giving the orders. He is able to knock the gun away from Kindler, and Mary grabs it and starts shooting, wounding Kindler. He manages to climb out onto the exterior of the church clock. (This use of mayhem on a place that symbolizes law and justice echoes Alfred Hitchcock’s use of Mount Rushmore in North by Northwest and the Statue of Liberty in Saboteur). One of the large rotating figures, an angel with a sword chasing, appropriately, a demon stabs Kindler, the real evil creature. He is ironically done in by the mechanism he worshipped, and falls to his actual death and symbolically topples from his delusional belief in his superiority.

The next film is It Happened One Night.