1. With the beginning of each month, the Criterion Channel adds new collections of movies to its offerings -- and others go away. I just watched Sweet Smell of Success a few days ago and marveled at the work of its Director of Photography, James Wong Howe. Excitement surged through my entire self when I opened up the site at criterion channel.com today and discovered that one of the new collections of movies features twenty-five movies shot by James Wong Howe, including, of course, Sweet Smell of Success, but also Hud, Picnic, Funny Lady, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and, well, nineteen others. This new collection also features a videotaped introduction to Howe's work and the way his career has inspired other cinematographers of color by Bradford Young. I immediately clicked on Young's presentation and in just fifteen minutes my understanding and appreciation of James Wong Howe's work grew exponentially.
Will I watch all twenty-four of James Wong Howe's movies?
Sounds like a fun project here at Vizio University.
2. But there's more!
When the subject of movies comes up with family members, I sometimes tease myself by saying something like "Yes, I watched another bunch of black and white, grim, existential, despairing British movies made in the spirit of The Spy Who Came in From the Cold this week."
I am drawn to such movies and, starting today, the Criterion Channel is featuring a collection entitled The British New Wave, a collection of seventeen movies made between about 1959 and 1964, mostly in black and white, often shot in a documentary style and on location in industrial towns. Known for their gritty realism and their exploration of such topics as working class discontent, adultery, abortion and other social issues, these movies are sometimes known as "angry young men" films and as "kitchen dramas".
I am stoked to watch as many of these movies as possible. In her introduction to these movies, Alicia Malone got me even more fired up.
After all, I know the rest of the family can hardly wait for me to describe at dinner how I've watched another set of black and white, grim, existential, despairing British movies.
They love how fun I am!
3. My question this evening, after my electrifying discovery of these two new Criterion collections, was simple: Where do I start?
Since I was unfamiliar with John Garfield's work and I read that He Ran All the Way (1951) was his last movie before he was blacklisted as un-American and then died at 39 in 1952, I decided to introduce myself to his work and see how James Wong Howe shot this noir story of desperation and fear.
Howe's first shot in He Ran All the Way made my jaw drop. I immediately put the movie on pause and admired it for several minutes.
It's a black and white still life picture. Morning light struggles to make its way through a half opened grimy window and creates shadows as it come in behind empty Pabst Blue Ribbon cans, a juice can, a small pitcher, and an empty used plate sitting atop old magazines. Just outside the window is a brick wall and as the camera tracks a cluttered and cramped kitchen Howe immediately establishes that we are in an unkempt tenement, a claustorphobic space with heedless occupants. Howe slowly swings the camera to a bed. There's nothing physically dividing the kitchen from the bed where a man tosses and turns and groans during a nightmare.
The man is Nick Robey (John Garfield) and with great economy, James Wong Howe has given us the physical details of the world Nick Robey is desperate to escape.
From here the movie takes us to Nick Robey committing a crime. During his escape from the crime scene, he goes to a public swimming pool where he meets a good-hearted woman named Peg (Shelley Winters) and charms his way into her family's apartment where Nick Robey holds them hostage as he tries to figure out how to escape the manhunt underway to capture him.
I'll leave it at that except to say that John Garfield's gripping portrayal of Nick Robey's menacing paranoia, his occasional tenderness, his swift mood changes, all of which comprise his descent into madness, moved me to see why, as I later found out, John Garfield is considered to be what Eddie Muller called, "the pied piper of actors" bringing to Hollywood movies the principles of the Method, embodying the kind of realism and full occupation of a character later made even more famous by actors such as Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Kim Stanley, Barbara Loder and many others.
Undergirding the realism of the acting in this movie is James Wong Howe's brilliant black and white photography. The ways he shoots in low lit environments, creates conflict between light and darkness, and creates shadows that darken scene after scene works to give us a visual experience of the movie's inward darkness, the confusion of its characters, and the movie's ubiquitous fear and tension.
If it weren't for the Criterion Channel creating this collection of movies shot by James Wong Howe, I never would have heard of, let along watched, He Ran All the Way.
I am eager to watch more of these movies and further expand my experience with James Wong Howe's work.
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