Vincente Minnelli's War

Opening credit after Garland and Walker's names. This is an image that has remained in my mind for at least 38 years.

      No one could ever confuse Vincente Minnelli with John Ford, Sam Fuller, John Huston, William Wellman or any other rugged, rough and tumble filmmaker. Minnelli's films featured gentler, kinder, more conflicted - even tormented - personalities : artists { Gene Kelly in An American in Paris, Kirk Douglas in Lust For Life and Two Weeks in Another Town, Frank Sinatra in Some Came Running, to name a few }, lost young men and women { John Kerr in Tea and Sympathy and The Cobweb, George Hamilton in Home From The Hill, Jennifer Jones as Madame Bovary and others }, people trying to discover their own nature, and then be true to it, however difficult that may be. Quickly scanning his oeuvre the musicals he is best remembered for obviously stand out, for Minnelli made some of the best ever : Meet Me in St.Louis, An American in Paris, The Band Wagon, Gigi; Minnelli's musicals are second to none. Along with Busby Berkeley, Minnelli could be called - and I'm sure he has been - the Grandfather of the genre. However a closer look reveals a varied group of films, perhaps more diverse than expected. Domestic family comedies such as Father of the Bride, The Long, Long Trailer, The Courtship of Eddie's Father, dramatic outings like Undercurrent, The Bad & The Beautiful, The Sandpiper. Among his films are two that have the effects of war front and center : 1962's epic The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and 1945's romantic The Clock. If William Wyler's Oscar winning 1946 Best Years of Our Lives is the quintessential film about the effects of veterans coming home to a different America than the one they left, then Minnelli's 1945 film The Clock is the epitome of the war time romance.

The farewell scene in Penn Station, the exact place they first met 48 hours ago. A great still from The Clock.

    Robert Walker plays a soldier on 48 hour leave in New York City who "meets cute" with secretary Judy Garland. Walker plays Joe Allen a green-as-grass soldier from a small town in Indiana, Judy is Alice Mayberry, secretary in one of those impersonal New York City skyscrapers. If Judy has a movie soul-sister, think Hope Lange in 1959's The Best of Everything. They meet when Alice accidentally trips over Joe's feet in Penn Station and breaks the heel of her shoe. Joe, not only lonely but ever the gentleman, helps Alice find a repair shop to fix her shoe and proceeds to ingratiate himself. They end up spending the remainder of Joe's leave together, fall in love and get married.  From this story director Minnelli fashions a romance that is both simple and profound. Minnelli - himself from a small town in Ohio - threw all his love and remembrances, all his experience from his early days in the Big Apple as a Broadway director in the 30's, into recreating New York on the MGM backlot in Culver City. The sights, the people, the noise, the excitement, the overwhelming feeling of being out of one's comfort zone, this is all brought to us from the opening moments of the film when Joe steps off the train at Penn Station. Lost, confused, lonely, intimidated by the sheer size of the place, Walker's sensitive Joe Allen is an early Minnelli lost boy.  

The " meet cute " scene, when the two stars come together for the first time in Minnelli's The Clock.

     All this, and more, happens within a 48 hour time span in a movie than runs 90 minutes. In those 90 minutes Garland and Walker, both fragile and damaged souls in real life, give wonderfully honest performances. Walker's naive Joe Allen is a soldier many could recognize either in themselves or in their sons, boyfriends and brothers. Garland as Alice Mayberry's working girl was one of millions of women who were picking up the slack all over the country, and were surprised they liked it, as the men and boys of America went off to make the world safe for democracy. For Judy it was a long way from the world producer Arthur Freed and Minnelli had charted for her previous films, all musicals.  For the first time we got to see Judy as a straight dramatic actress playing an everyday regular person, not a show biz chanteuse making time with Gene Kelly or Mickey Rooney. No song for her to sing, not even a theme song over the credits. Judy was still the girl next door to millions of servicemen; thanks to Minnelli that girl was beginning to grow into a enchanting young woman { I don't think Garland ever looked lovelier on screen than when she was in the hands of Minnelli, they were to marry shortly after production on The Clock wrapped up } and it was he who helped her achieve that transition, having guided her first in 1944's Meet Me in St.Louis.

     The overall emotional effect of The Clock is done without a gunshot or dead body in sight, yet the realities of the war are always close at hand, lending the movie an urgency and anxiety that many were feeling in those years. In today's cynically moribund marketplace of film The Clock wouldn't play very well, with the comic book mentality of many movies that come off the studio assembly line, but for the most part The Clock has a remarkably restrained believability that works. I first saw this as teenager in the 70's, being home sick from school, on Ben Hunter's Matinee Movie, a mid-day break on what was then KTTV Channel 11 out of Los Angeles, from the soap opera's and game shows that flooded the airwaves in those pre-cable days, and I still like to dust it off every year or so for a viewing. Long after others films have faded from my memory The Clock still works it's magic.

         By 1960 MetroGoldwynMayer, despite the success of Ben-Hur { 11 Oscars, box office record breaker }, was still a company with financial trouble. With big Ben's enormous success, the powers that be decided remakes of great films from the studio's past was the way to stay solvent with cash and Oscars. Thenceforth Leo The Lion thrust upon the public a 1960 remake from 1931's Oscar-winning Cimarron with Glenn Ford and directed by western auteur Anthony Mann. What was suppose to be a cash cow was instead a dead duck. Critics blasted it and the public stayed away in droves { it lost nearly $2 million of 1960 dollars, }  The know-it-alls in Culver City had earmarked a redeux of the movie that made Valentino a star forty years previous, the WWI epic Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse for their big 1961 movie-of-the-year.

Old school poster art to promote the film.

      Most, if not all, film historians feel this remake was a bad idea from the get-go. I'm not so sure, for Minnelli's take on the subject has some beautiful moments. The story was updated from WWI to WWII and if Minnelli had his way the leads would have been young, sexy French actor Alain Delon { 25 in 1960 }, not stodgy middle aged Glenn Ford { 44 in 1960 } and Romy Schneider.  But Schneider passed and with a budget of $7 million { over $50 million in today's inflated dollars, still a sizable chunk of change, pre-advertising and distribution costs } the bosses at Metro, having vetoed Delon as an unproven box office commodity, insisted that a proven star with clout at the box office was necessary. Having just signed Ford to a big fat, star-friendly contract, and also the star of the aforementioned box office loser Cimarron, which had yet to be released, Metro decided they should get their monies worth and { mis } cast Ford as the Argentinian playboy/artist Julio. Playing the love interest opposite Ford  Minnelli cast Ingmar Bergman favorite, Swedish star Ingrid Thulin, then about 34. Having compromised on his lead actors Minnelli decided on a diverse cast of supporting players : some old timers like former heartthrob, Frenchman Charles Boyer, Casablanca's Paul Heinreid and Oscar winner Paul Lukas, but also newcomers like Karl Boehm fresh from Michael Powell's disturbing Peeping Tom, and MGM contract player Yvette Mimieux, plus dependable character actor Lee J. Cobb.

Vincente and his beloved camera crane.

      With a somewhat eclectic and international band of players, after interior filming on the stages in Culver City, Minnelli took his cast and crew to Europe, France specifically, for exteriors that are lovingly captured on film. When the film was completed the studio had a two and a half hour drama of love and sacrifice. Some colorized stock footage of the fall of France with bombs dropping all around, sirens signaling an air raid and talk of the blackout, with its shuttered windows and dark draped restaurants give the viewer a short hand sense of what was going down all around our main characters, but the thrust of the film stayed with Julio and his adulterous affair with the married Marguerite. 

Glenn Ford and the lovely Ingrid Thulin as the illicit lovers sitting on a Minnelli red cushion. Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1962.

          When all was said and done, the film's final tally was $7.5 million{ $58 million adjusted for inflation } and the MGM exec's held their breath, hoping lightning would strike twice with their most recent remake. Premiering the picture in Washington D.C. on February 7, 1962, the film was roundly blasted by American critics as ridiculous, unnecessary and unrealistic and what author Stephen Harvey called " it's era's prime candidate for the Heaven's Gate sweepstakes"  { I would defer that dubious honor to another, greater MGM fiasco 1962's Mutiny On The Bounty or Fox's Cleopatra a year later } It may be all those things, but it is also a visual feast { what Minnelli production isn't }, with photography by the legendary Milton Krasner, a nearly 40 year veteran of the cinematic wars with a great eye for composition { All About Eve, A Double Life, Scarlet Street, his Oscar-winner Three Coins in the Fountain and many, many more }, a brilliant musical score byAndre Previn that evokes the passion and upheaval the two lovers are feeling, Tony Duquette's design of the mythical Four Horsemen is stunning, with elegant costumes by Walter Plunkett, Orry-Kelly, etc; in other words, no dollar was spared to bring the best to the screen. So what went wrong? If I were to pinpoint the weaknesses I would have to say Ford and the script. Maybe it's not so much the screenplay, but the story. The original Four Horsemen was essentially a star vehicle that was shaped for Valentino and made him the heartthrob of the silent era, with his smoldering tango the highlight of the 1921 original. By 1960 the idea of a Latin lover was obviously out of touch with the Rock N' Roll Eisenhower years. Updating the film from WWI to WWII didn't help much; when the first Four Horsemen saw light WWI had just finished and was fresh in everyone's mind, so it had an immediacy. The update to WWII came over fifteen years after that great conflict had ended, the world, as it must, had moved on. In other words, the picture seemed old fashioned.

Charles Boyer with Glenn Ford as father and son. Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1962.

      Glenn Ford as Julio was too old, too American, too stiff for the part of a devil-may-care rich boy from South America, who just wants to have fun and bed down with as  many women as he can, but inadvertently gets involved with the French resistance. A fine actor in the right part { Blackboard Jungle, Gilda, The Big Heat } Ford, try though he does, is simply out of his element. Thulin is an other matter. I find her most alluring, however her portrayal of the unfaithful wife of Paul Heinreid's Etienne, is impossible judge properly because the boys at Metro decided her Swedish accent too think and unintelligible, so they hired Angela Lansbury to dub over her every line. Why would a studio hire a foreign actor and later decide she couldn't be understood?  Had they never spoke to he ?  How about a verbal screen test to she how her voice would sound in English? To my way of thinking, that's bad management on the part of Metro. Lee J.Cobb's patriarch Madariaga is thickly sliced ham as only Cobb was capable of { witness also his work in The Brothers Karamazov, for which he was rewarded with an Oscar nom for Supporting Actor of 1958, or his screen debut in Golden Boy as William Holden father }. Whether these issues were brought to Minnelli's attention during filming is impossible to say, other than the script problems and the casting of Ford, Minnelli - always a good company man - was mum on the subject. I enjoy the film despite it's flaws and like it on it's own terms. Is it a classic, no. But a film hat has so much to offer should never be dismissed out of hand. I can understand, to a certain degree, the critics carping at the film's credibility gap, but let's not kid ourselves; we are in Minnelli-land. What did they expect?  Minnelli's a director who always, even in his most basic films, found beauty everywhere and filmed it accordingly. It's possible Four Horsemen would have been more effective as a lower budget, filmed in gritty black and white, with a Cinema verite or neo-realistic style . Critics expecting a Rossellini or DeSica, should have reviewed Open City or The Bicycle Thief. 

Lee J Cobb as the patriarch Madariaga, Glenn Ford as his grandson. Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1962.

       Four Horsemen would fail at the box office, too. Losing over $5.8 million { over $40 million today } the film would rapidly expedite Minnelli's fall from grace. When production on the film began in 1961, Minnelli was only two years past winning his only Oscar for directing Gigi, more recently he guided Judy Holliday and Dean Martin thru the musical Bells Are Ringing, more success would follow in Home From The Hill with Robert Mitchum in one of those big melodramas Minnelli did so well. After the Four Horsemen debacle Minnelli would encounter trouble and more resistance than usual with his next project Two Weeks in Another Town, being re-edited without his say of the cuts involved; follow by an underrated, charming, yet at times dark exploration of childhood, The Courtship of Eddie's Father, with a more appropriately cast Glenn Ford alongside scene stealer Ronny Howard; 1964's sex-changing comedy Goodbye, Charlie, and his last big hit 1965's The Sandpiper, although that movie was crunched by critics, it made a bucket full of cash thanks to the film's two stars, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, then at the peak of their notorious reputation. Minnelli was high up on Warner Brothers list of directors for My Fair Lady, and he wanted to do it, but his asking price was too high, so Jack Warner went with the more cost-friendly George Cukor. Cukor's version is grand, lush entertainment, if visually static. Minnelli's cinema had a tendency for fluid, swooping camera movements. Along with Max Ophuls and Michael Curtiz, Minnelli is one of the cinema's masters of the moving camera, his take on the Lerner and Loewe musical would've been fascinating viewing; it makes the mouth water as a great never-was of film. As the 1960's wore on more filmmakers from the classic period of 1930-1960 found themselves increasingly out of work or with long periods between assignments. The list of great directors who gave up on film making yet lived on for many years is impressive : Raoul Walsh, King Vidor, William Wellman, Rouben Mamoulian, Frank Capra, William Wyler, Leo McCarey. These men just stopped making films by 1970, yet all, except for McCarey, lived on for at least ten or more years in retirement, for one reason or another. Then there was another group, a little younger than those movie pioneers, who found it harder and harder to get a film made in the free-for-all, catch-as-catch-can world of independent film production that Hollywood had recently embraced : Joseph Mankiewicz, Cukor, Billy Wilder, Howard Hawks, George Stevens, Elia Kazan, these and a few others had long periods between films as some projects would come together, get delayed or be swept away when a new regime would take over what would become a revolving door of new studio executives. Add Minnelli to the list of these latter filmmakers. From 1965, when he finished The Sandpiper, to his death in 1986, Minnelli would helm only two more films, On A Clear Day You Can See Forever in 1970 was to be his final musical and 1976's A Matter of Time which, despite daughter Liza starring, is not a musical. On A Clear Day didn't do well, though it's worth seeing and entertaining enough, but A Matter of Time was an utter disaster, with the cutting being taken out of his hands by Samuel Z. Arkoff, the film's producer, and when shown in theaters proved a box office dud. Such a sad exit for one of the great stylists of the movies. Minnelli's real war was in fought on the soundstages, cutting rooms and inner sanctums of the studio bosses, fighting to get the image from his head up to the screen. In that war Vincente Minnelli won more battles than he lost, and we all benefited from his vision.