"A Game of Pool"

When we speak of “cinema” we usually refer to a theatrical film, but today I will be dealing with a television show that in my mind has the excellence of some of the finest feature films I’ve ever seen.

The Twilight Zone remains one of the best-loved television series of all time and much of that has to do with its subject matter. The “middle ground between light and shadow” was home to many intriguing ideas, dealing with subjects ranging from nostalgia (“Walking Distance”, “Kick the Can”, “A Stop at Willoughby”) to paranoia (“And the Sky Was Opened”, “The Hitchhiker”, “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street”) to simple everyday mysteries (“Long Live Walter Jameson”, “Nick of Time”). These were masterfully written and performed espisodes that jolted the viewer’s imagination. Other episodes were simpler treatments, often moving towards a peculiarly unique punch line (“To Serve Man”, “The Rip Van Winkle Caper”). Some people loved the show for its take on humanity in moments of crisis, while others merely appreciated the slightly bizarre science fiction moments. There was clearly something for almost everyone.

I’d like to discuss an episode that is among the best of the series, entitled “A Game of Pool.” Shown in 1961 in the third season, the storyline was delightfully straightforward – a lonely, intense everyday pool player named Jesse Cardiff (Jack Klugman) gets his chance to do battle with the legendary champ Fats Brown (Jonathan Winters). Cardiff practices all hours of the day to become the best and the only way he will be known as that is to beat Fats, whose name he is tired of hearing. Brown is deceased, but upon learning of Jesse’s request, comes back to the pool hall in Chicago for this match, which has a stakes of life and death – if Cardiff wins, he can live; if not, he dies. (The device of coming back from beyond in this episode is a lovely Twilight Zone moment.)

There are so many excellent things about this episode from the elegantly uncomplicated art direction of George W. Davis and Phil Barber to the precise editing of Jason H. Bernie to the high-key cinematography of Jack Swain. He wisely decided not to highlight shadows, as that might have been an overdone touch given the human drama of the story (this is after all, not film noir).

Buzz Kulik’s direction is confident and to the point, with beautiful closeups of the two actors’s faces to highlight the tension. The acting by both performers is admirable; Jonathan Winters fits the role of Fats Brown like a glove and offers a low-key, at times sardonic performance. Klugman on the other hand is superb – I believe he was one of the greatest actors ever to appear on television. Everyone recalls his great comic work on The Odd Couple, but watch his work in this episode as well as two others from The Twilight Zone (“A Passage for Trumpet” and “In Praise of Pip”). As Jesse Cardiff, he is at times forceful, then at times insecure, but always focused on the dream he carries. Klugman does wonderful things with the tone and volume of his voice; he knew how to deliver a line simply and with great passion without ever being a ham. This performance is heartbreaking, as Klugman makes us feel the weight of everyone who ever wanted just a little touch of respect from their peers.

It is the screenplay by George Clayton Johnson that is the greatest single contribution of this episode in my mind. Johnson, who also wrote the series’ “Kick The Can” episode, delivers a story here that is a classic tale of the little guy versus the champ. Yet, this is not one of those simple plots where we root for the underdog. Rather, here we are cast in the middle of these two lives, as we realize this is all about the costs of success. Cardiff may desperately want to be champion so he can exorcize the name of Fats Brown, but he will soon understand that becoming a champion carries with it a responsibility that ultimately develops into a burden.

The exchanges between Cardiff and Brown are beautifully written, as plain spoken dialogue that suits these two characters. There are no glorious, overwrought speeeches here - just tough, direct lines spoken by the two characters that remind us of their differences. Yet at the same time, the screenplay takes on notes of wonder and imagination, as Cardiff imagines what it would be like to be champ.

One of my favorite lines is delivered by Fats when he is egging on Jesse for the match. Sensing Cardiff’s sudden doubt about beating him, Brown tells Cardiff, “You’ll never make the grade at anything by playing it safe.”

After a great shot by Cardiff, he asks Brown, “How about that, fat boy?” Brown replies, “Not bad.” To which Cardiff replies, You know, you’re like all the others.” He confidence is at an all-time high here, but that will soon be questioned.

Toward the end, Brown tells Cardiff, “there’s more to life than this pool hall.” It’s a brilliant line, as it sums up what Cardiff, in all of his intensity and dedication to the game, misses out on in his existence. Become the champ, Johnson is saying, and you may gain some respect from a few, but in the big picture, you lose out on everyday friendship.

Ultimately, Johnson in his screenplay asks several significant questions. Do we have what it takes to dethrone a champion? Do we want to work hard enough to achieve that goal? And finally, what do we gain by becoming the best? These questions raise “A Game of Pool” from a simple human duel to an examination of how we see ourselves among our fellow man. This is an exceptional screenplay and a timeless episode.



A final note: Yes, I goofed on my prediction for Best Editing at this year's Academy Awards. In my last post, I emphatically predicted that "The Dark Knight" would win the award, but of course, it went to "Slumdog Millionaire." Who knew?

Anyway, I'll be back again next year (I hope) with another Oscar prediction. I'm just glad I didn't predict Kate Winslet winning- I probably would have jinxed her. Thank goodness she finally got her long overdue Oscar!

Oscar Trends - A Predictable Category

Quick- what do these movies have in common?

Body and Soul (1947); Champion (1949); Rocky (1976) and Raging Bull (1980). If you answered that they’re all films with boxing as the main subject, you’re right, of course. But the other answer is that they’ve all won Oscars for Best Editing.

Apparently, the Academy members believe that great editing can be summed up in boxing films with their quick cuts back and forth between the antagonists. I’m not critical of the editing in these films; indeed the editing of Body and Soul and Raging Bull is magnificent. Also, it should be pointed out that not every boxing film wins Best Editing, as was the case with Million Dollar Baby (2004), which lost this award in favor of The Aviator, not a surprise, given the dramatic flight sequences (as well as the spectacular crashes) or Cinderella Man (2005) which was passed over in this award in favor of Crash, a bit of a surprise. So it’s not all the time, but it’s clear that if you make a successful boxing movie, you’ll snag a Best Editing nomination and probably win.

It also helps when you have a great car chase as in Bullitt (1968) or The French Connection (1971), which both – you guessed it - won the Best Editing Oscar. Again, a superb job of editing on these films and richly deserved wins, but it does point out how the members love the fast action of a boxing ring or a car chase when it comes to this award.

So I can say with pretty good certainty, as I write this one week before this year’s awards are handed out, that The Dark Knight will win the statue this year for Best Editing. It’s really the only film nominated in this category that has big action scenes, so I’d be surprised if it lost. It will also win as the voters will try and make up for the film not being nominated as Best Picture. This snub is becoming a too predictable trend, as the Oscars – despite their so-called changes – get all serious at awards time and go for the noble, sincere films, while the beautifully crafted entertainment pictures get snubbed. This is similar to the Bourne films of the past few years (especially the first-rate The Bourne Supremacy of 2006). Last year, the Academy handed out the Best Editing award to The Bourne Ultimatum (along with awards for Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing) not only for its brillliantly edited action scenes, but in my mind, also for the omissions over the past years for the technical work in the previous two Bourne films.

While you’re on your own for the other Oscars, you can rest assured that the Best Editing will go to The Dark Knight. (I’m also thinking that it will win a few others such as Best Sound Mixing and Best Sound Editing; I’d love to see Wally Pfister’s terrific cinematography be honored as well but I’m not that confident in this category).

A Touch of Capra

I finally got around to seeing Ghost Town the other day. It was on the plane ride home from Munich and I’m sure if you’ve flown lately, you know how nice it is to see a good film, given all the garbage that gets shown on the airlines. That aside, I liked this film very much for several reasons, for its performances, which most reviewers have mentioned, but also for its message, which has not been the subject of too many critical analyses of this film.

The focal point of this film is the performance of Ricky Gervais, the great British comic actor who starred in the original version of the TV series The Office. Gervais plays Dr. Bertram Pincus, a New York City dentist who just doesn’t care much for people and even less for their problems. He’s got the perfect job since he can shove all sorts of things in his patients’ mouths, meaning he doesn’t have to listen to their concerns.

One day he undergoes a routine operation in which he is dead for seven minutes before coming back to life. Because of this, he can see ghosts, who upon their discovery that the doctor can actually see and hear them, pester the poor guy with their problems. Just what he needs!

Gervais is brilliant in this film, especially in the hospital scenes when he answers one of those annoying questionnares about everything from when he last ate solid food to how well his laxatives worked. How we’d all love to say the things he does in this scene! He’s also great in his scenes with Gwen (Tea Leoni, in a quirky, captivating performance) with whom he falls in love. Gwen, you see, was married to Frank Herlihy (Greg Kinnear), a businessman who cheated on her. Now Frank (who recently died and is now a ghost) wants the doctor to sway Gwen away from marrying a self-righteous jerk who is involved in organizing medical help for Third World countries (that doesn’t make him a jerk, of course, it’s the way the character is written, as some sort of modern day savior). Kinnear, who is making a nice living playing everyday characters with some annoying tics, won’t give up until Dr. Pincus does the job he asks him to carry out. The more the doctor resists, the more Frank talks to the other ghosts he knows and convinces them to ask the doctor to help them as well.

While the film plays cute at times, the story is effective enough and the performances are so good that we accept some of the limitations of the project. Yet there is one brilliant scene in the film that few have discussed. The message here is that when you die, you don’t just go to heaven (or the other place) right away. No, it turns out that we all have some unfinished business we need to have taken care of. As we’re dead, we can’t do it, so we have to tell our story to someone who has undergone death and has then come back to life.

The scene comes after Dr. Pincus’ associate tells him that one day he should understand that the world doesn’t revolve around him and that he needs to actually listen to other people and help them from time to time. It sounds a bit corny, but it comes across in a subtle way and when Pincus finally understands that message, he becomes a new man, so to speak.

Dr. Pincus goes to the ghosts and listens to their stories. All the ghosts have requests for him; some are simple like the father who needs to tell his son where he lost his stuffed animal, while other are more dramatic, like the construction workers who die because of a mechanical problem on their truck. They know why they died, but their foreman thinks he was careless and caused their deaths. They can’t tell him, so Dr. Pincus must relieve this man of his overwhelming guilt.

The scene that follows is really quite special, told without words with only a quiet, bittersweet theme performed by violin and piano as Pincus goes to the people whose lives were touched by these ghosts before they died. As the doctor clears things up with the living, we see the ghosts’ reactions for a second just before the screen turns to white, signifying their departure to their afterlife. It’s a very moving scene and it’s one that has a touch of Frank Capra to it. Like one of the great scenes from Capra's best works such as Meet John Doe or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, this scene does share a common message of humanity – all of us need to show our fellow man a little more understanding. It’s this decency that made Capra’s films ring true and it’s this same feeling that makes this scene so wonderful.

It’s this message that makes Ghost Town an above average comedy. The film ends with a cute line about Dr. Pincus being able to help Gwen with a minor problem (or is it a major one?), but it’s a line that fits perfectly and has a sentiment that has been earned. How nice that writer/director David Koepp fashioned a modern-day comedy that isn’t afraid to deal with our deepest emotions about our fellow man.

The Warner Brothers Story

The first time I saw Richard Schickel on television talking about the movies, he struck me as a bit of a curmudgeon. The fact that I disagreed with him didn’t win me over to his side either.

That was a long time ago and I learned soon afterwards that Schickel was not a cranky analyst, but one of the most astute observers of film in America. He’s written books about several filmmakers, from D.W. Griffith to Elia Kazan to Clint Eastwood and directed the wonderful television series The Men Who Made The Movies (1973) among other works. He recently directed the PBS series You Must Remember This (2008), a history of the Warner Brothers studio.

A book of the same title was released in conjunction with the series and it’s a dazzling project. It’s part coffee table book – although you’d need a pretty big coffee table to hold it – part historical documentary treatment and part a look at what this studio’s message was and continues to be. If you’re simply looking for a pictorial look at 85 years of classic movies, this is for you, but it also is meant for serious students of Hollywood’s past and present as well.

Schickel along with his collaborator, British writier George Perry (most of the essays in the book are credited to Schickel) combine to present a wonderful social history of the studio’s work, especially in the 1930s and ’40s. Schickel makes the point that Warner movies of the ‘30s were as tough as the times in the country, stuck in the midst of a major financial depression. By the time World War ll came, the message of the films was tougher, as though the studio was preparing their audiences for the troubles across the sea. His analysis of 1941’s Sergeant York, as a film that depicted an unassuming American hero, as a moral equivalent for the country’s behavior in the face of danger, is well espoused.

Throughout the book, there are timelines of what happened at the Warners lot – and throughout America and the world – in each year the studio has been in business (since 1923). There are dozens of remarkable photos (I love the one of Errol Flynn being fitted for a costume in a cramped office) and reproductions of gorgeous one sheet posters for various films. Biographies of the major stars, such as Bogart, Cagney and Davis share space with those of lesser celebrated actors such as Leslie Howard along with craftsmen such as director Michael Curtiz (he of Casablanca and Yankee Doodle Dandy fame), Busby Berkeley and composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Schickel also deals with the social consciousness of the Warner executives (he points out how this was the “New Deal Studio”) and gives examples of some of their projects that address social ills. Films such as The Life of Emile Zola and Black Legion (a 1937 work about bigotry starring Humphrey Bogart) were powerful attacks on fascism. Schickel also details 1943’s Mission to Moscow, the studio’s attempt at pleasing the Soviet Union, a country that had become a major war ally. Serious at the time of release, Schickel remarks how ridiculous the film looks today, labeling it, “the most blatant piece of pro-Stalinist propoganda ever offered by the American mass media.”

From the early success of the Rin Tin Tin series to the recent triumphs of such works as Million Dollar Baby and The Departed, this book covers most of the studio's most famous films. Many things have changed over the past 85 years at the Warner Studio, but above all, Schickel would argue, the individuals in charge of production always made films that were earnest and at the same time entertaining.

You Must Remember This: The Warner Brothers Story by Richard Schickel and George Perry, Running Press, $50

Underrated - "The Sea Wolf"

During its heyday in the 1930s and ‘40s, the Warner Brothers studio was known for its edgy criminal films and serious melodramas. The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942) and Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) are its most famous films from this timeframe, but there were dozens of other beautifully crafted works as well including The Roaring Twenties (1939), High Sierra (1941), They Died With Their Boots On (1941) and Now, Voyager (1942).

A wonderful film that has remained under the radar is The Sea Wolf (1941), directed by Michael Curtiz. Born in Hungary, he would enjoy his greatest triumphs at Warner Brothers with an impressive lineup of films he directed from the Errol Flynn swashbucklers such as Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) to his best-known works such as Casablanca and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Curtiz’s finest films were full of energy featuring memorable characters; The Sea Wolf is a prime example.

Based on Jack London’s 1904 novel, The Sea Wolf is a tale of Captain Wolf Larsen, an intense sea captain who is a walking set of contradictions. Tyrannical in his treatment of his crew and other human beings, he is also a reflective, educated individual who has read the works of Darwin and Milton. Larsen is proud of what he has accomplished, at one point recalling his accomplishments from an early age, rising from cabin boy to captain of his own ship. Given this power, he acts as he sees fit; when the legalities of his decisions are questioned by a new crew member Larsen tells him, “I’m obeying the law, the law of the sea.”

One of the film’s many assets is the quality work of the actors, none more so that Edward G. Robinson as Larsen. Robinson, who could chew up the scenery on occasion, reins it in here, as he gives the captain the necessary rough edges while at the same time dealing with matters onboard in a even-handed, if slightly harsh fashion. He can be quiet and reasonable at one moment and then cruel and childish the next, as in the scene where he asks the crew to refrain from making fun of the ship’s alcoholic doctor (Gene Lockhart, in a touching performance) and then immediately kicks him down a flight of steps. It is one of several moments that sums up Larsen’s complexities and it is handled with great assurance by Robinson. For me, this is arguably his best screen performance.

John Garfield has a small part as a con that joins the crew of the ship (named Ghost) to hide from the law. His character is a bit of a screen stereoptype – tough on the exterior, yet revealing his tenderness underneath – but Garfield manages to flesh out his character of George Leach quite nicely. Garfield, who would go on to bigger and better things, has a lot of charisma on display in this small role.

Ida Lupino is fine as another con on the run who is picked up at sea along with the writer Van Weyden. Lupino’s part is also small and she brings what she can to it. Alexander Knox, portraying Van Weyden, is thoughtful and quite serious. His best scene is one between Larsen and himself as he tells the captain the description of him for his next book. Knox’s character is nicely written, as he is a fish out of water and we as the audience can identify with his struggle to maintain his dignity amidst the rowdiness of the ship.

A pleasant surprise is Barry Fitzgerald, who seemed to show up in about one-third of the melodramas of the time. For me, Fitzgerald was too one-dimensional in many of his performances, relying on his thick Irish broque to lend emotion to his character, but here, he adopts a low-key approach and delivers an excellent performance. His character is quite mean-spirited (a bit of an alter-ego of the captain) and Fitzgerald is appropriately menacing with a devlish laugh. His scene with Van Weyden, when he reads the writer’s quotes about Larsen, is one of his best in the film.

The screenplay by Robert Rossen is first-rate and definitely one of the best of the many strengths of the film. Rossen would go on to be an excellent director later in his career with films such as All the King’s Men and The Hustler, but he was first and foremost an outstanding writer, having penned the screenplays for such Warners films as The Roaring Twenties , Blues in the Night (1941) and Edge of Darkness (1943).

His writing here is tough and to the point. Characters such as Larsen are allowed to dream for a while but those moments are brief, as the harsh reality of his existence returns. There are so many good lines here, as when Larsen tells the drunken doctor, “Sit down until you finish drinking your supper” or when Larsen tells Van Weyden, “I’ll choose my death as I chose my life. I did everything by myself.”

One of the best-written scenes takes place when Larsen enters his quarters and discovers Van Weyden reading his copy of “Paradise Lost.” This is a crucial scene, as we discover the conflicting nature of Larsen, as a man who loves reading classic works – if only to prove his intelligence to others – yet wonders if the insight gained from understanding these writings have made this endeavor worthwhile.

At one point in the scene, Larsen tells Van Weyden that he (Van Weyden) is fortunate as he has a family that loves him and would support him if times ever were bad:


LARSEN
You wouldn’t have to struggle for a living. You wouldn’t have to live in a world where your hand was turned against every man’s and every man’s against yours, even your own brother’s.

VAN WEYDEN
You seem to find it necessary to justify yourself, don’t you Captain Larsen?

LARSEN
My strength justifies me, Mr. Van Weyden. The fact that I can kill you or let you live as I choose. The fact that I control the destinies of all onboard the ship, the fact that it’s my will and my will alone that rules here. That’s justification enough.


That’s great screenwriting!


Much credit also belongs to other contributors to the film, including Sol Polito’s cinematography and Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s score. Polito, who could always be counted on to create the proper mood for a melodrama, as he did in dozens of films from I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932) or Now, Voyager (1942), does so again here, as he uses shadows and fog to great effect. Light is at a minumum here, not only in the belly of the ship, but everywhere on board.

Korngold’s score is appropriately somber, although he does include a haunting love theme for the characters portrayed by Garfield and Lupino. Unlike some composers at the time who would write wall-to-wall scores, Korngold kept the music in the background for most of this film. This was one of the more subdued scores for the man who contributed brilliant music to other Warners films such as 1942’s Kings Row (one of the greatest film scores of all time, in my opinion), Juarez (1939) and The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Regarding Curtiz, he directs the film with a steady hand, using many closeups, which help heighten the underlying message of power and class. His direction is at times claustrophobic, a wise choice for scenes aboard a ragtag ship, but he also creates space at certain moments, as in the scene with the blood transfusion; as Curtiz films this, he lets each character – Larsen, Leach and the ship’s doctor – have his moment.

Warner Brothers, like other movie companies during the height of the studio system, made hundreds of solid films like The Sea Wolf. Other films may have won more awards, but honest, well-crafted, entertaining projects such as this deserve to be remembered just as much.


A final note: Apparently Jack Warner wanted to change the title of The Sea Wolf, as he felt it was too similar to his studio's film of the previous year, The Sea Hawk (also directed by Curtiz). Producer Henry Blanke resisted and London's title was retained.

The Colors of 'Eden' - The Visual Style of "East of Eden"

Elia Kazan came to the movies in the mid 1940s with a reputation as a brilliant theater director and as might be expected, his first few films - such as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945) and Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) - were a bit theatrical in their staging. Mindful of this, Kazan purposely opened up the action in his underrated film, Panic in the Streets (1950), where he made the city of New Orleans the focus, filming the back streets, cafes and harbor with a gritty, cool detachment. He continued his maturity as a location director with Viva Zapata! (1952) and On the Waterfront (1954), but it was with East of Eden (1954) that Kazan accomplished his finest work visually.

I will address two topics regarding the look of this film. One is the Cinemascope process used in this film, the first of Kazan’s career. I will begin however with the color pallete designed by Kazan, his director of photography, Ted McCord and his costume designer, Anna Hill Johnstone.

Inspired by the Northern California setting of John Steinbeck’s celebrated novel, Kazan settled on two major color schemes; one an earthy look, focusing on brown and dark red, the other, a bright expression of the countryside with an emphasis on green. While the color green symbolizes beauty for much of the film, it would take on a much different sensation at the film’s conclusion.

The dark brown wood tones are the basic color of a few of the principal settings in the film, such as the bordello run by Kate (Jo Van Fleet), who now lives in Monterey away from her former husband Adam Trask (Raymond Massey) and her two sons, Cal (James Dean) and Aron (Richard Davalos). Along with the sherrif’s office and the dining room where Cal must read the Bible to his father, these locations are dimly lit, as though they are equated with darkness and evil. While the Bible reading is in effect, an action of faith and goodness, it becomes a point of dispair and conflict between Cal and Adam. The deep brown and dark yellow hues of this room embrace this mood.

Several characters are costumed in brown or other deep colors; Kate wears a scarlet outfit (complete with matching gloves) during her meeting with Cal at her office when she decides to loan him money, Albrecht, the local German-American is often seen in a dark brown suit, while Aron is wearing brown pants in his first scene. Adam by the way is often seen in a dark gray suit, which matches his serious, business-like, no-nonsense approach.

Two characters are dressed in a manner outside this color scheme. Abra (Julie Harris), the girlfriend of Aron who represents goodness, joy and life (as Adam Trask himself might have put it), wears a variety of brightly lit clothes, from the yellow skirt in her introductory scene to a strikingly beautiful pale green dress she wears at the ceremony at the train station. This dress, incidentally, is seen onscreen for approximately ten seconds, which tells you the freedom that costume designer Anna Hill Johnstone must have enjoyed for this project.

Johnstone also adds a gorgeous splash of color in a scene just preceding this, where employees of Adam are sorting the heads of lettuce. Johnstone designed a different dress for each of the Mexican women and the colors are bright and lucid with plenty of pastels of pink, powder blue and burnt orange. Again, these dresses are seen for only a few seconds; Johnstone was certainly given a demanding workload for the film and she responded brilliantly. (A wonderful bonus on the superb 2005 DVD release celebrating the 50th anniversary of the film is a 22-minute film of the wardrobe tests of Dean, Harris, Davalos and a few other characters.)

The other character that has a different color design for his wardrobe is Cal, who we first see in a tan sweater and light gray (almost cream-colored) pants. As Cal is seen as an outcast – the “bad son” – naturally the look of his clothes are outside the norm. Interestingly, Cal does embrace the earthy color scheme himself later in the film, wearing a brown suit that we first see as he performs his lively dance in the bean fields and later at the birthday party for his father. Clearly this shift away from the brighter colors to the more typical look of brown for the film marks a desire for Cal to fit in with the others, first as a businessman (the bean fields are part of his business plan to earn money) and then yearning for love from his father.

While the earthy tones mark much of the film’s visuals, the color green plays a critical role in this approach as well. Green represents the beauty of the local vegetable fields, which provide the characters with their living. The green lettuce is equated with money and the hopes of Adam, who plans to ship the crop on boxcars filled with ice (this is several years before air conditioning). Thus green represents more than everyday beauty; it signifies hope and future success or doom for the Trasks.

Green takes on a very different meaning in the last sequence of the film. Felled by a stroke, Adam lies almost motionless on his bed in a room in which green seems to be everywhere. The walls are various shades of green, there is a green lamp by the side of the bed, a framed photo sits inside a dark green mat and even Abra wears an olive green dress in this sequence. Here the brightness of green (money and stability for the future) is replaced by the darkness of this color, as a last hope for reconciliation and love before the ultimate calling of death. The last shot of the film, as the camera cranes back to show Cal at the side of the bed watching over his father is highly emotional, made more so by the dark, detached nature of the green in this room (as well as the deep brown wood of the large headboard – signfying a final return to the earth).




The visual style of the film is also the result of the CinemaScope process in which it was filmed. Introduced in Hollywood in 1953, CinemaScope was a wide screen format with an aspect ratio of 2.66:1, twice as wide as the standard format at the time of 1.33:1. (The 2005 DVD is presented in anamorphic widescreen with a ratio of 2.35:1) East of Eden marked Kazan’s first venture into this sweeping visual approach and it gave the director the freedom and inspiration to tell his story with some striking compositions.

Perhaps the signature shot of the film is the one of the train carrying Adam’s lettuce out of town on its eastern journey. As the train curves from left to right in the scene, we see two small children running after it, adding a sense of depth to the composition. The camera pans in the same direction as Adam walks past the depot to a few feet past an abandoned structure, to get a better view of the train, as he watches his future slowly move away from him. Cal then enters the frame in the front left, adding a touching signifigance, as this moment represents a great deal for him as well as he embraced his father’s plan and worked diligently in order to achieve success and win his father’s love in return. The shot is beautiful to look at as well as being emotionally powerful.

There is another image involving this same train that is also quite remarkable, though few critics have remarked upon it. This takes place alongside the lettuce fields and in this remarkable shot, the train makes it way along the tracks on the extreme left of the screen; here the train is almost shot in a vertical fashion as opposed to the horizontal sweep of the previously mentioned scene. Just to the right of the train are two horse-drawn wagons and just to their right, we see crates of lettuce and a small ice truck. The background of this shot is dominated by the seemingly endless lettuce fields (dotted by a few workers) and the brilliant blue skies interspersed with puffy clouds that hang over the rugged Santa Lucia Mountains. Kazan and McCord have combined the width of CinemaScope with impressive depth of field in this image, adding a poetic touch worthy of Steinbeck’s vision.

Another remarkable scene is the encounter between Cal and Abra in the lettuce fields, as they sit upon a picnic bench and talk as Abra awaits the arrival of Aron. Kazan uses several over the shoulder shots of these two with Abra looking almost angelic in a cool pink dress contrasted with Cal appearing in a common laborer’s dull gray shirt and blue overalls. Although the deeply saturated yellows and greens are evident from both points of view, McCord photographs these images differently. As we see Cal through Abra’s eyes, the focus on him is razor sharp, making the background a bit hazy. However, as we see Cal’s view of Abra, both the flowers and she are equally in focus. This is a reflection of how the two characters view each other; Abra is fascinated with Cal, as she begins to move from fear to admiration of him (later during the celebrated ferris wheel scene, her emotions turn to love), while Cal merely sees Abra as he always has – as Aron’s girlfriend. This is the brightest, most verdant scene in the film and McCord’s excellent photography underscores the fact that the optimism of this moment would be a sadly fleeting one.

Over the years, some influential critics have knocked the film on matters ranging from Dean’s performance to the oversimplification (in their opinion) of the emotional truths of the subject. Yet the praise for the film’s visuals has been almost without question. If Steinbeck’s Biblical allegory was to work onscreen, Kazan had to create a remarkable series of images as a metaphor for the dreams and everyday realities of characters that were so deeply connected with their surroundings. He succeeded brilliantly.


Final notes

Ted McCord was a veteran cinematographer who enjoyed a Hollywood career that lasted over 50 years. He was one of the best of the Warner Brothers house cameramen during the 1940s and ‘50s; he worked on films such as Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Action in the North Atlantic and 1948’s Johnny Belinda, for which he earned an Academy Award nomination. In all, he received three Academy Award nods, his last coming for The Sound of Music in 1965, his penultimate film. He never won an Oscar. Remarkably, he was not nominated for an Academy Award for his work on East of Eden.

Anna Hill Johnstone was a costume designer in Hollywood for more than 40 years. She worked on several of Kazan’s films from Baby Doll and A Face in the Crowd in the 1950s to later works such as America, America (1963) and his final film The Last Tycoon (1976). She was nominated for an Academy Award for her costumes for The Godfather (1972) and Ragtime (1991). She never won as Oscar. Remarkably, she was not nominated for an Academy Award for her work on East of Eden.

-Tom Hyland