Dead End (1937): Classes Clash and Bogie, Too

Looking for light entertainment a few days ago, I hit upon Dead End, a time capsule, fluffball movie starring pretty Sylvia Sidney as plucky, hard-luck girl Drina, and also featuring 38 year old Humphrey Bogart as the dapper but no-good gangster  ‘Baby Face’ Martin,  blandly handsome JoelMcCrea as the good-hearted, unemployed architect Dave,  and Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall and the other Dead End Kids as, well, dead end kids. Written by Lillian Hellman (from a hit play by Sidney Kingsley) , directed by the great William Wyler, with cinematography by the estimable Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane, Grapes of Wrath, The Best Years of Our Lives, etc) this movie has a great pedigree and it delivers the goods.

If you’re interested in what a ‘class warfare’ attitude really is, this is a good primer of depression era proletarian sentiment. It’s one of several works of Hellman from this period that got her in hot water with HUAC * a few years later.

Manhattan, mid nineteen thirties: the depression seems endless. Low wages, high unemployment. The rich getting richer (and flaunting it); the poor and the working classes getting poorer. The East Side has long been a blue collar, hardscrabble neighborhood, but lately the swells have discovered how dashed pleasant it is to have a nice river view, and they’ve started gentrifying the place. Right along the river are luxury apartments, with doormen, servants, terraces overlooking the water, dames in gowns and furs,  gents in dinner jackets, chauffeured limos, etc.  Out in the street are the Dead End Kids,  a gang of teen urchins, with nowhere to go (literally and figuratively), scruffy, kinda tough, but not so bad really. A few doors down are tenement houses with the salt of the earth proletariat: blue collar workers, widows, single moms, struggling young women looking for a break.

Among these is Drina, a sweet young woman, barely making ends meet, while trying to bring up her teen brother Tommy, a good kid, who, to Drina’s dismay,  is being seduced into life with the gang.  Drina is also in love with her childhood friend, Dave, who, despite a college degree and professional training, can’t find a real job. Dave really likes Drina, but is smitten  with the blonde Kay, of the wealthy set, who has taken a shine to him. Drina is understandably resentful of the rich hussie, when she is not worrying about her brother. Silvia Sidney, little known today, was the big star of this movie, and her character is the center of the story, upright, moral, worthy, yet threatened by the loss of her kid brother and the loss of love.

Meanwhile, Baby Face, a notorious thug with a big rep,  lotsa dough , fancy threads and a price on his head, is back in town visiting the old neighborhood , hoping to hook up with his old flame and see his old mother after many years. There are a lot of ways to describe Bogart, but his mug doesn’t really lend itself to a character called ‘Baby Face’ – a dilemma neatly solved by reference to a  recent  ID  shifting plastic surgery. Well, Mama rejects him and his beloved ex has become a prostitute, so we get to see a very bitter, disheartened Bogie – a disposition his mug IS well suited for.

The Dead End Kids (later known as The Eastside Kids' and later still, as ‘The Bowery Boys”) are entertaining to watch and endearing in this, their first of many  films. They certainly lively up the place. I suspect you’ll recognize them, without realizing where  or when you’ve seen them. Before.

Oh, the story is trite, but it moves along, and is never dull. We’re meant to  root for the everyday folks, and despise  the rich and powerful. There’s a curious resonance to our world. Not much has changed, eh? Except that most pictures back then had predictable happy endings.

Wyler is one of the twentieth century’s great directors, and he can certainly work a plot. Toland’s cinematography is terrific throughout, touches of noir, interesting angles, evocative close-ups. The street and the river are a bit too clean to be believed , but blame Sam Goldwyn, who vetoed a more realistic depiction.

This is by no means a ‘must-see’ flick, but it is pleasant enough and fun to watch.

Available on DVD and as a Netflix streaming movie.

*The infamous House Un-American Activities  Committee. Leaping ahead seventy-five  years, one is tempted to argue that the current House itself is engaged in un-american activities, but that’s another blog entirely.

Moneyball (2011): Home Run

Moneyball is about baseball the way The Social Network is about Facebook; which is to say that it's not, not really. The Social Network was actually about Mark Zuckerberg, and the way in which his insecurities, his single-mindedness, his inspiration and his competitive nature combined to produce this remarkable achievement. In much the same way, and with similar success, Moneyball is about Billy Beane, his insecurities, his single-mindedness, his inspiration, and his competive spirit, all of which came together to produce another kind of surprising achievement - the 2002 Oakland A's. Not coincidentally, the screenplays for both movies were written or cowritten by the brilliant Aaron Sorkin (whose other works include The West Wing, A Few Good Men, the American President, and Charlie Wilson's War). There’s big difference here, however: Zuckerberg , as played by Jesse Eisenberg, came across as a brilliant, but very weird, aspergers-ish nerd in The Social Network; on the other hand, Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, is depicted as a heroic good-guy: yes he's a bit quirky, and yes he's brilliant, but he is also amusing, perceptive, rebellious, considerate, athletic and as handsome as Brad Pitt. (The real Billy Beane's pretty nice looking as well, by the way.)

Pitt gives perhaps his greatest performance as Beane, a man with something to prove, who lays it all on the line. He is on the screen virtually all the time in this flick (except for a few on-field baseball moments), sometimes in extreme close-up, and the only disappointment is that when the film is over, he doesn't meet us in the lobby and come home with us. Pitt is so likable, and seems so natural on the silver screen, you hardly notice he's acting. His nuanced performance is reason enough to see this picture.

Jonah Hill plays Beane’s young assistant, Peter Brand, a fictional character loosely based on Beane’s actual assistant at the time, Paul DePodesta, but amalgamating characteristics of other staff members as well. Hill looks nothing like DePodesta, and acts nothing like DePodesta. Doesn't matter. Hill is as terrific playing “Peter Brand”, as Pitt is vis-à-vis Billy Beane. Brand is socially awkward, and an amusing naif in the world of professional athletes. But he loves baseball, and is a student of the game’s statistics, and in particular, of sabermetrics ("the search for objective knowledge about baseball"). He’s a Yale-educated Robin to Pitt’s Batman.

None of this stuff sits well with the old school baseball guys, the tobacco chawin’ scouts, the minor-league coaches and managers, or, for that matter the A’s team manager at the time, Art Howe, convincingly (if inaccurately) played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. These guys evaluate players the old-fashioned way - how theylook, how they swing, their batting average, home runs, catching and throwing and even the quality of their girlfriends or wives. Beane and Brand understand that their team simply can’t compete using the traditional approach – they don’t have the money. They also believe that a good portion of traditional baseball “wisdom” about building a team is horseshit. So by necessity and via creativity, these guys gamble on a different approach, based on a simple logic: How many runs will this player contribute versus that player? After all the team with the most runs (not the sweetest swings) is the team that wins. They focus on players with a high OBP (on base percentage), regardless of batting average, and pitchers that can get opposing batters out in a pinch, regardless of how they look doing it. In seeking a different kind of player, Beane and Brand hope to find “affordable” guys overlooked by the traditionalists running other teams. 5-tool players are expensive, and they don’t always work out so well. Beane knows this from personal experience.

Beane put his plan into effect in 2002. At first, it looked like the skeptics were right. The Athletics got off to an awful start. But then, with some nudging from Brad, um, I mean Billy, things started to turn around, and the rest, as they say, is history. In August 2002 came “The Streak” when the A’s shocked the world (and themselves) and set a major league record by winning 20 games in a row. Even knowing the story in advance, this is thrilling, uplifting stuff. (I especially enjoyed this part, because I was a fan at that time, and was at the ballpark for some of those games.)

But you don’t need to be an A’s fan or even a baseball fan to enjoy this picture. I know this because critics around the country from New York, Boston and Washington, DC to Miami, Chicago and L.A., have lauded Moneyball. Says the New York Post: “A crowd-pleasing baseball movie for people - like me - who don't like baseball movies.” Says The Miami Herald: “The movie is an absolute triumph of culturally relevant filmmaking – a film that will thrill and fascinate sport junkies and non-fans alike. If you like baseball, you will love this movie. If you hate baseball, you will still love this movie.”

Moneyball is based on the excellent book of the same name by Michael Lewis. Lewis was fascinated by the application of economic and statistical analysis to the building of a championship baseball team by Beane and the A's, notwithstanding a team budget that ranked last in the majors, with a player payroll less than a third that of the rival New York Yankees. Moneyball director Bennett Miller wisely homes in on Beane himself, and goes lighter on the economics and the statistical analyses, which, to be honest, would not a good movie make. Good choice.   As another reviewer put it, “Never before have statistics added up to such electrifying entertainment.”

There are some flaws. In emphasizing the Billy Beane strategy, the movie ignores or undervalues some remarkable player contributions to the Athletics brilliant season, such as pitcher Barry Zito's Cy Young Award winning 23 wins, or Miguel Tejada's MVP worthy hitting, fielding and general hustle. But this is not a documentary about the A's, it's a biopic about their amazing general manager.

I'd call it one of the best movies of the year.

In theaters in wide release.

Contagion (2011): Pandemic Procedural

Contagion is an intelligent, star-studded study of what can happen when a new, virulent and deadly virus is unleashed on the world. It’s a disaster movie, but not an end-of-the world apocalyptic flick. I describe it as a pandemic procedural, because much of the narrative focus is on how scientists and public health authorities at the CDC (Center for Disease Control) and WHO (World Health Organization) deal with the scientific, societal and political repercussions of the pandemic. This may sound dull, but it’s not – it is fascinating and absorbing. You’ll leave the theater with lots to think about.

As with most disaster pictures, Contagion is ultimately about society, and how, for better or worse, people cope with a catastrophe or calamity. In the case of a flu-like plague, where a large swath of the world (and U.S.) population is susceptible, and with, say, a 25% mortality rate, should we close down airports or quarantine entire cities to slow its spread? Can we? Should we apprehend and quarantine everyone who has been exposed to the virus? Where? If there is a possible, but unproven antidote, should we run it through months of testing, though thousands are dying, or do we cross our fingers and disseminate it right away? Who gets it first? If your town is afflicted, would you continue to take public transit, would you send your kids to school, would you even go out to a public place, like the grocery, and risk infection? If you run a grocery, are you going to expose your own or your employees’ lives by even opening your doors? Don’t you have a moral obligation to the public to stay open? Should public employees protect themselves and their families first, or go out and protect the public?

How would you react in a pandemic, selfishly or selflessly- if it's your and your family’s lives at stake? Would you play by the rules or would you look out for number one? Would you trust government pronouncements about the situation? Do you think they're going to tell you the truth?

Like I said, this movie serves up some hearty food for thought. To their credit, writer Scott Z. Burns and director Stephen Soderbergh do this without crassly pulling at the heartstrings. There is no trumped-up romance to distract us. Despite the star quality of its cast, the film does not give us a singular protagonist or hero to carry us through the tumult.

Instead, we are presented with a broad set of characters - a husband and father (Matt Damon) whose wife (Gwyneth Paltrow) and child are afflicted, researchers and public health officials (Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Jennifer Ehle, Elliott Gould) trying to cope with catastrophe, Chinese villagers desperately seeking the means to ensure they will get timely help, an administrator (Laurence Fishburne) torn between his public duty and personal responsibilities. Taken together this patchwork of characters provides us with a global vantage point to watch as the pandemic and its fallout develop.
The performances are uniformly excellent, with special kudos to Winslet and Fishburne.

Soderbergh knows how to entertain (viz. Out of Sight; Traffic, Erin Brockovich, Ocean's Eleven, etc.), and he paces the action perfectly. The film starts with an announcement of "Day 2", and proceeds chronologically through Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, etc. This technique, coupled with the action on the ground, adds to the tension and propels us along. What about Day 1, you ask? We get there eventually.

Even pandemic procedurals need a villain, and, let's face it, it's pretty hard to personify or vilify a virus. But, again, this is really a human story, and we are offered an appropriately creepy character, one Alan Krumwiede (Jude Law), a paranoid, almost messianic blogger, questioning authority, challenging official pronouncements, suggesting a conspiracy, and promoting his own remedy for the virus. Law handles his assignment beautifully: Krumweide is, by turns, convincing, creepy, galvanizing, and scary. A standout performance.

Contagion is an intelligent film for adults, but if you’ve got a kid along with you (12 and up, please – this is appropriately a PG-13 rated movie), you’ll have an opportunity for some interesting conversation on the way home.

In theaters in wide release.