I have only recently been introduced to the joys of streaming movies. My internet connection previously had not even realised the 21st Century had dawned. In fact, for a long time it only had a nodding aquaintance with the 20th.
Despite my new-found, new-fangled connectivity, I still much prefer DVDs and Blu-Ray for my movie watching pleasures. I like a disc, I like to see them on a shelf, I like them
with extras.
Many of my purchases in the past year or two have been of an older vintage. Not
that I think of them as old, mind you, but you young folk out there will. It’s not that they used to make films better, because there was a lot of
dross back then (as there is today). But it is true that they regularly made films that stand the test of time.
Well, at least to old fogeys like me.
I want to focus on one of them today. It's a thriller, you could call it crime, and it is an absolute winner.
BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK is a title
that slid into common parlance in the Skelton household when I was working for
a living to mean a helluva day at the office. And there was a vast number of
them thar days, let me tell you.
Spencer Tracy was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar in 1955
for this movie, directed by John Sturges, who later went on to make ‘The Magnificent
Seven’, ‘The Great Escape’ and other classics. Apparently, this was his favourite of his own films.
In case you haven't seen it:
Set just after World War Two, Tracy plays John J. Macreedy, a
one-armed man in a black suit who arrives in a dusty western town by train. The
locals, personified by Robert Ryan, Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine and others, are suspicious
and they make their views plain. Macreedy is in no hurry to tell them why he’s
there and that makes them even more distrustful.
Naturally, this is a town with a secret, a particular nasty,
dark one, and they don’t want it to be revealed.
Just as naturally, Macreedy is there to do just that.
Although he doesn’t know it.
I love the film, simple as that. Despite the 1950s streamliner
trains and the cars and the telephones, it is a western, which appeals to me.
As one of the characters says:
‘Somebody's always looking for something in this part of the
West. To the historians, it's the "Old West." To the book writers,
it's the "Wild West." To the businessman, it's the "Undeveloped
West." They say we're all poor and backward and I guess we are. We don't
even have enough water. But to us, this place is our West. And I wish they'd
leave us alone.’
But it’s also a thriller and a bloody good one. It hit
screens on the back of a slew of quite dreadful red-baiting movies, made as
both studio heads and stars sought to curry favour with the House UnAmerican
Committee investigating the red threat to US society.
Like ‘High Noon’ and other films of the period, it drew on
that hysteria and used it in the story-telling.
But as I was watching it, I began to think about how it
would be treated if remade today. We have hysteria. We have suspicion and
racism (one of the themes of the film, by the way).
The quick answer is, I believe they would ruin it.
It runs at a tight, taut 94 minutes so the first thing they
would do is push it up to over two hours. However, the running time is fine as
it is. The story is told with economy and speed and a fair amount of wit,
courtesy of screenwriter Millard Kaufman. That wit is something else that might
be sacrificed today.
Of course, they might prefer to make it for TV, and stretch
the story out to eight episodes by adding all sorts of dark, and frankly unnecessary,
subplots. Darkness is the name of the game now. And, generally, a big soggy
patch midway through the series. Yes, even the much vaunted first season of
‘True Detective’.
In the film, Tracy tells the always watchable Walter Brennan – one of the few
locals to help him – why he is in town. It involves a debt to a dead man stemming
from an incident during the war.
Now, if they remade it, we would have to see that. The star,
whoever he was, would insist on it to establish his character. We would have to
have a flashback, showing how that debt came to be due but in the film we just
hear about it. And that’s all we need. We don’t need to see Macreedy in action,
being wounded, being saved from death by the man. Because, in the scheme of
things, that is not integral to the action in this little dusty desert town.
(Tracy and Brennan were on different sides of the political spectrum and did not get on at all during filming. Tracy was a liberal, Brennan a conservative and at one point communicated with each other through John Sturges. Ah, the magic of the movies!)
There is a celebrated fight scene between the one-armed
Macreedy and local heavy Ernest Borgnine during which the former knocks lumps
out of the latter using karate, or judo, or some sort of martial art. By
today’s standards it looks tame but in 1955 this was something. Even the Production code raised its eyebrow, believing the use of the martial art was somehow unheroic.
At one point, Borgnine is knocked through a door. What Sturges didn't tell him was that the door had been nailed shut so that it was more impressive when he crashed through. The stunned look as he stood up was real. John Sturges said the actor never forgave him for it.
If that scene was shot today, the Macreedy character would
be required to take on ALL the bad guys at once, and beat them. Preferably on a staircase.
Incidentally, Borgnine pipped Tracy to that Academy Award
for his role as ‘Marty’.
Similarly, the climax is little more than a night time
showdown between Tracy and Robert Ryan. Today, he would have to vanquish half
the town. Maybe even blow it up for good measure.
These days we can’t have our hero simply take down one guy, it
has to be an entire army. The outlandish antics of the super hero and (in my
opinion) gaming characters mean that young audiences will not accept the simple
mano-a-mano, unless it’s wrapped up
in some kind of CGI way.
Yes, I know – I’m just a crabbit old man, saying they don’t
make ‘em like they used to. I don’t have a down on modern cinema – I enjoy much
of it. I believe there are many decent movies being made.
But they really don’t
make films like Bad Day at Black Rock anymore. Not with this kind of
understated story telling. They don’t even make that many thrillers now, which
is a shame.
OK, I’m ready to watch it again. This time with the
commentary.
I’m old, but I can geek with the best of them.
