The Lineup

BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post originally appeared on Edward Copeland's blog.

Coming early on in his career, The Lineup (1958) is the kind of no-nonsense crime film that director Don Siegel excelled at and, in some ways, anticipated the same approach he took to his remake of The Killers (1964) years later. He wastes no time as The Lineup starts off with an exciting chase as a taxi cab driver tries to get away from a pier full of disembarking passengers with a stolen suitcase, runs over a cop and is shot and killed. Inside the case is a statuette containing $100,000 worth of heroin. The two detectives investigating the case – Lt. Ben Guthrie (Warner Anderson) and Inspector Al Quine (Emile Meyer) – return the case to its owner in the hopes that he’ll lead them to a narcotics ring.

For the first 22 minutes of the film, Siegel does a good job showing us the nuts and bolts of a police investigation: inspecting the crime scene, questioning witnesses, the forensics lab, and organizing line-ups of potential suspects. Guthrie and Quine soon discover a rather elaborate heroin smuggling ring. The first third of The Lineup has the look and feel of an episode of Dragnet as we follow around these two just-the-facts cops. This changes once we are introduced to Dancer (Eli Wallach) and his partner Julian (Robert Keith) – two hitmen. They soon meet up with Sandy McLain (Richard Jaeckel), their wheelman who replaced the dead cab driver.

Eli Wallach plays Dancer, a sociopathic hitman who figures into the drug deal. He’s a consummate professional judging from the way he questions McLain about the job at hand. The beauty of Wallach’s performance is how Dancer gradually becomes unraveled over the course of the film and embodies Julian’s observation, “He’s a wonderful pure pathological study. A psychopath with no inhibitions.”

Veteran character actor Robert Keith (The Wild One) plays well off Wallach. He’s got a fantastic froggy, weathered voice that you imagine got that way from years of smoking and drinking. He’s the elder, cultured counterpart to Dancer’s younger vulgarian. Richard Jaeckel is excellent as the alcoholic driver who talks big and is always trying to scam a swig of booze, much to Julian’s chagrin. In a nice touch, Emile Meyer plays one of the investigating detectives, the straight arrow counterpoint to the corrupt cop he played a year earlier in Sweet Smell of Success (1957).

The Lineup was based on the popular television series of the same name. The show’s producers had hired Siegel to direct the pilot episode and then Columbia Studios asked him to direct the film version. Siegel convinced the producers to hire Stirling Silliphant (In the Heat of the Night) to write the screenplay. The screenwriter started writing a story about two hitmen. He and Siegel felt that the film should not be named after the show because audiences would be confused and suggested The Chase instead, which, not surprisingly, the studio did not go for.

Siegel makes great use of all kinds of San Francisco locations, which really gives a sense of place, from the scenes at a pier to the Steinhart Aquarium where Julian and Dancer trail a mother and daughter who unwittingly are carrying a packet of heroin to the Sutro Baths with its ice rink and observation deck, the start of the film’s exciting climax. The Lineup’s most memorable sequence is an intense car chase that takes place on the then-unfinished Embarcadero Freeway, anticipating another insane West Coast car chase, To Live and Die in L.A. (1985).

Siegel’s film is a stripped-down film noir devoid of any narrative fat with a fairly simple, crime does not pay message, but within that structure is a pretty fascinating relationship between Dancer and Julian who carry on, at times, like a bickering old married couple – again a dynamic that Siegel would revisit in The Killers.

SOURCES

Siegel, Don. A Siegel Film: An Autobiography. Faber & Faber. 1996.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

There have been three remakes of the classic 1956 film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers — 1979, 1994, and 2007 respectively. This does not include the countless rip-offs and homages that have been made since the original graced the screen: some good (They Live), some bad (The Astronaut’s Wife) and some just plain ugly (Body Snatchers). By far the superior film in every way is the 1956 version directed by Don Siegel, which continues to thrill and entertain while hopeless rehashes like Abel Ferrara’s film try in vain to recapture the power and the impact of its predecessor. What Ferrara and other imitators don't understand is that extravagant special effects and elaborate chases do not compensate for a non-existent story and weak characters — something that Siegel understood implicitly and wisely avoided in his film.

Adapted from Jack Finney’s excellent novel The Body Snatchers (1954), Siegel’s film is the best of all the versions made because it is the most faithful to the novel. The film begins with suspenseful music while the credits are shown over a sky filled with rushing clouds. After the credits end we meet a frantic Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) who is being questioned by the police. When a psychiatrist arrives Miles goes wild, until reassured that his story will be heard. What follows is a flashback account of how Dr. Bennell, with the help of an old girlfriend, Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter) uncover a secret plot by aliens from outer space to take over the inhabitants of the small town of Santa Mira. It is a subtle invasion that at first glance does not appear to be that much of a threat, but as Miles and Becky soon discover, its implications reach far and wide, threatening not only close friends like Jack and "Teddy" Belicec (King Donovan and Carolyn Jones), but all of humanity.

Like the novel, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a real marvel of pacing — achieved by gradually building the suspense, until the tension is too much. When Miles begins to tell his story, he starts by saying, “At first glance everything looked the same. It wasn’t. Something evil had taken possession of the town.” While these words are spoken, Siegel presents an ordinary looking small town. Miles’ words are a teaser that makes us curious. We want to know what this evil force is, how it has taken the town captive, and why it seems so normal. It is this curiosity that draws us into the story. At first everything seems normal, but little details appear that suggest otherwise. Maybe it is the scared child running out in front of Miles’ car, the same boy who later claims that his mother is not his mother, crying, “Don’t let her get me!” These events are all warning signs that point to a larger, impending danger that threatens the small town.

The film's inception lies in the hands of producer Walter Wanger who had read Finney's story in its original serial form in Collier's magazine. He felt that it would make a good low-budget film for Allied Artists and asked Don Siegel to direct. After convincing screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring to join the production, the film began to take shape. From the start, the three men shared the same approach to the material. Their intention was to have the film act as a metaphor for the way "the majority of people in the world unfortunately are pods, existing without any intellectual aspirations and incapable of love,” remembers Siegel.

Originally, producer Walter Wanger and director Don Siegel wanted to shoot Invasion of the Body Snatchers on location in Jack Finney's model for Santa Mira, Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco. In the first week of January 1955, Siegel, Wagner, and screenwriter Daniel Mainwaring visited Finney to talk about the film version and to take a look at Mill Valley. The location proved to be too expensive and Siegel and some Allied Artists executives found locations resembling Mill Valley in nearby Sierra Madre, Chatsworth, Glendale, the Los Feliz neighborhood, and in Bronson and Beachwood Canyons. However, much of the film was shot in the Allied Artists studio on the east side of Hollywood. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was originally budgeted for a 24-day schedule at $454,864 and the studio asked Wanger to cut the budget significantly. The producer proposed a shooting schedule of 20 days and a budget of $350,000.

Initially, Wanger considered Gig Young, Dick Powell, Joseph Cotton, and several others for the role of Miles. For Becky, he thought of casting Anne Bancroft, Donna Reed, Kim Hunter, Vera Miles, and others. With the lower budget, Wanger had to abandon these choices and cast Richard Kiley who had just starred in Phoenix City Story for Allied Artists. Kiley turned the role down and Wanger cast two relative newcomers in the lead roles: Kevin McCarthy, who had just starred in Siegel's Annapolis Story (1955), and Dana Wynter, who had done several major dramatic roles on television but had not done a film.

The film was shot in 23 days between March 23, 1955 and April 18. The cast and crew worked a six-day week with only Sundays off. The production went over schedule by three days because of night-for-night shooting that Siegel wanted. The final budget was $382,190. Siegel used his lack of budget and unknown actors to create an authentic, natural feeling of normalcy to the proceedings. This became one of the strengths of the film. We so easily believe that this is Smalltown, U.S.A. that when the horror of what is really happening becomes apparent the shock is that much more significant. Siegel, a former special effects expert, knew full well the pitfalls of relying too much on effects and not on the plot. "Instead of doing what so many science fiction and horror films do — spend all their money on special effects and put poor actors on the screen — we concentrated on the performers. The main thing about the picture, however, was that it was about something and that's rare." And so Siegel actually used the handicap of a small budget to his advantage by downplaying the special effects in favor of creating strong, three-dimensional characters and telling a suspenseful, often scary story.

The project was originally called, The Body Snatchers after the Finney serial. However, Wanger wanted to avoid confusion with the Val Lewton 1945 horror film with a very similar title. The producer was unable to come up with a title and accepted the studio's choice, They Come from Another World that was assigned in summer 1955. Siegel protested this title and suggest two alternatives: Better Off Dead and Sleep No More, while Wanger offered Evil in the Night and World in Danger. None of these were chosen as the studio finally settled on Invasion of the Body Snatchers in late 1955. Wanger saw the final cut in December 1955 and protested the use of the Superscope format. Its use had been a part of the early plans for the film but the first print was not made until December. Wanger felt that the film lost sharpness and detail. Siegel had originally shot Invasion of the Body Snatchers in the 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The Superscope look was a post-production lab process designed to make the film resemble the popular Cinemascope format.

The studio scheduled three previews for the film on the last days of June and the first day of July 1955. According to Wanger's memos at the time, the previews were successful. However, later reports by Mainwaring and Siegel contradict this, claiming that audiences could not follow the film and laughed in the wrong places. In response, the studio removed much of the film's humor, "humanity", and "quality", according to Wanger. He scheduled another preview in mid-August that did not go well. The studio decided to change the film's title to a more conventional science fiction one. In later interviews, Siegel pointed out that it was studio policy not to mix humor with horror. Both Siegel and Mainwaring were satisfied with the film as shot. It was originally intended to end with Miles screaming hysterically as truckloads of pods pass him by. The studio, wary of such a pessimistic conclusion, insisted on adding a prologue and epilogue to the movie that suggested a more optimistic outcome to the story which is thus told mainly in flashback. Siegel decided to shoot these scenes because he knew the studio would put them in regardless and if he filmed them then perhaps he could do a little damage control. Mainwaring scripted this framing story and Siegel shot it on September 16, 1955 at Allied Artists.

Siegel had problems with these sequences because as he saw it, they let "you know right away that something unusual is going on. If you start, as I wanted to, with McCarthy arriving in the town of Santa Mira, it reveals it slowly, we understand why McCarthy can't readily accept the terrible thing that appears to be happening. And the dramatic impact of the ending is reduced with the epilogue." Allied Artist also made Siegel cut out a lot of the humor in the film, but enough survived for the director's intended effect. "I felt the idea of pods growing into a likeness of a person would strike the characters as preposterous. I wanted to play it that way," Siegel remembers, "with the characters not taking the threat seriously. For example, if you told me now that there was a pod in my likeness in the other room, I would joke about it. However, when I opened the door and saw the pod, the full shock and horror would hit me and the fun would be gone. I wanted the people in the film to behave like normal people." Despite the studio's constant meddling, Siegel managed to create an impressive film whose impact has not diminished over the years.

In addition to these bookends, Wanger wanted to add a variety of speeches and prefaces. He suggested a voice-over introduction for Miles. While the film was being shot, Wanger tried to get permission in England to use a Winston Churchill quotation as a preface to the film. The producer also tried to get Orson Welles to voice the preface and a trailer for the film. He wrote speeches for Welles' opening on June 15, 1955 and spent considerable time trying to convince Welles to do it but was unsuccessful and considered science fiction author Ray Bradbury instead but this also did not happen. Mainwaring eventually wrote the voice-over narration himself. The shorter version of the film was often rerun late at night on T.V. stations and one PBS showing in 1988. The full theatrical version was not widely released until 1978 when a remake was produced starring Donald Sutherland.

By giving us only bits and pieces at a time, Siegel slowly begins to reveal the threat of alien invasion. People act normal enough, but something is slightly askew. People seem to have emotions, but as one character observes, “There is just the pretense of it.” Body Snatchers feeds on our fear of dehumanization and conformity — not only of ourselves, but our family and friends. A lot of the suspense in the film is derived from the fact that the characters must stay awake to remain human; to sleep means becoming a pod. Sleep is an important motif of the film, to the point where Siegel originally wanted it to be called Sleep No More, a reference to Shakespeare's play, Macbeth. For Siegel, sleep is a metaphor for conformity or the stifling of any intellectual curiosity. People often sleepwalk through their whole lives — never truly alive. And like Miles in the film, we are surrounded daily by these intellectual sleepers, being subtly invaded by their ever-growing numbers. Again, the studio stepped in and imposed a more science fiction/horror-like title which the filmmaker had no choice but to accept.

Despite the compromises Siegel was forced to make, his original intentions were not diminished. Through subtle references and imagery, he managed to convey his fears of conformity and present the solution to this problem in the form of its hero: Miles Bennell who embodies individuality and humanity — something that the pods (read modern industrial society) try to destroy. Unfortunately, Invasion of the Body Snatchers was not blessed with a big budget or big name stars and as a result critics and box office success ignored it upon initial release. Over the years, film buffs and student groups began to take interest in the film and an ever-growing cult following developed leading to its rediscovery in the 1960s by French New Wave critics who declared it to be one of the best and most influential science fiction films of the 1950s, alongside such classics as The Thing (1951), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), and Them! (1954).

American critics underestimated the widespread influence it has had since its initial release. A much imitated (see The Hidden amongst many others) film, it still manages to captivate and delight people today. The film has been read on many different levels, most often as a subtext for protesting Senator Joseph McCarthy and his Red Scare mentality or as an anti-Communist allegory. First and foremost it is an entertaining film that blends a science fiction premise with film noir and horror elements (in particular, its use of unusual camera angles, close-ups, sharp editing, music, and lighting). Despite three remakes, the original film is the superior version because its director, Don Siegel understood Finney’s novel and was able to translate its intent successfully to the screen without relying on flashy special effects and trickery like so many contemporary science fiction films.

SOURCES

LaValley, Al. Ed. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Rutgers University Press. 1989.

“Lady, I don’t have the time.”: Lee Marvin in The Killers

BLOGGER'S NOTE: This post is part of the Lee Marvin Blog-A-Thon being coordinated by Richard Harland Smith at Movie Morlocks.

“The current cycle of crime films is a vicarious way to participate in the crime wave without committing a crime. That feeling is latent within each of us. Everybody wants to get even with somebody.” – Lee Marvin in a January 1969 interview with Playboy magazine

The first feature-length adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's short story, "The Killers" was directed by Robert Siodmak in 1946 and featured a young Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner as the two leads. It was a simple tale of a man who had hit rock bottom so badly that he allowed two hitmen to kill him. The doomed man was the focus of Siodmark’s film while, on the surface, it may seem that Don Siegel’s 1964 film version is all about doomed race car driver Johnny North. After all, he is given the bulk of The Killers’ screen time through flashbacks by the people that knew and loved him. However, Siegel drops in subtle visual clues throughout the film to suggest that the film is actually about the two professional killers as with an emphasis on the elder more experienced one, Charlie, played by Lee Marvin. It is interesting to note that the first and last image of the film is of Charlie – the first tip off that this is his story and not North’s.

A great, menacing soundtrack by John Williams plays over the opening credits and immediately establishes the tough tone of Siegel’s film. Charlie and Lee (Clu Gulager) are ultra-cool, well-dressed hitmen that have been hired to kill ex-race car driver Johnny North (John Cassavetes) — now working as a teacher at a school for the blind. Even though he’s warned in advance, North does nothing and just lets the two men kill him. Afterwards, Charlie is bothered by the job. Something just does not feel right. And so, he and Lee decide to track down the people that knew North and find out why their victim didn’t run when he had the chance.

Along with Point Blank (1967), The Killers is one of the finest performances of Marvin’s career. He exudes a calm, malevolent nature through the simplest gesture or look and has a deep, weathered voice that conveys a lifetime of experience. For example, in the opening scene when Charlie and Lee question the receptionist at the school for the blind about North, the younger hitman fidgets with the furniture, taking some flowers out of a vase, sniffing them while pouring the water out onto the desk. The veteran killer concentrates on the frightened woman. Marvin uses that great voice of his to get the information he wants, uttering the immortal line, “I’m sorry lady, we don’t have the time.” This won’t be the last time he says that line. This scene is simultaneously funny and filled with tension in the way that the two men carry themselves. And yet we never lose sight of the fact that Charlie and Lee are there for only one reason: to kill North. Nothing is going to get in their way.

After they kill North, we see a more relaxed, casual side of Charlie. He and Lee are traveling on a train. The younger hitman still has his tie, vest and sunglasses on while the elder killer looks much more relaxed with the top button of his dress shirt undone, his shirt sleeves rolled up and his tie and sunglasses removed. However, something is bothering Charlie. Why didn’t North try to make a run for it? Charlie and Lee got paid a lot of money for a simple hit. They also find out that North was part of a million dollar heist – where’s the money? They don’t know who hired them but Charlie wants to find out. He wants that million dollars as he tells his partner, “But me, I’m getting old. My hair’s turning gray, my feet are sore and I’m tired of running.” It this slight admission that he’s getting older that humanizes Charlie for a brief moment and provides motivation for their quest. Half of a million dollars would certainly allow Charlie to retire in style.

Charlie and Lee decide to track down the other accomplices in the heist. In order to do so, they find North’s mechanic (played with blubbery bluster by Claude Akins). As Charlie puts the pressure on him, he says once again, “We don’t have the time.” There is now a bit of urgency in Charlie’s methods. As he said earlier, he’s tired of running and it is this urgency that motivates him to track down the money.

However, Charlie and Lee hit a dead end with the mechanic and go out for dinner. An interesting thing happens during this scene. At first, a mildly depressed Charlie is unable to eat his “fine steak,” but after he gets an encouraging call and a tip on the whereabouts of another one of North’s accomplices, his mood changes instantly and he happily begins cutting into his food. Charlie has become reinvigorated and tells Lee that it just isn’t the money that he’s after: “But I gotta find out what makes a man decide not to run. Why all of the sudden he’d rather die?” (Incidentally, this question is what also convinced Marvin to do the film) However, it is this curiosity that will ultimately be Charlie’s undoing.

Marvin delivers an economic performance which helps convey the all-business attitude of his character. He belonged to a dying breed of actor that you just don’t see anymore. Most actors today, if they’re lucky, take a whole film to convey the kind of toughness that Marvin has naturally. “Tough guys” of today – Russell Crowe, Jason Statham, Clive Owen, et al – don’t even come close to someone like Marvin. You can just tell from the way he looks and acts that he would kill you if you ever got in his way. And this kind of hard living attitude carried over into the actor’s real life as he alluded to in a 1969 interview with Playboy magazine and in Don Siegel’s memoir, A Siegel Film. The director recalls how Marvin showed up drunk the first two days of principal photography. The actor became such a disruptive influence on the set that Siegel had to intervene. Instead of dressing him down in front of everybody, he talked to Marvin in private. According to Siegel, Marvin never showed up to work drunk again.

When Charlie and Lee finally confront the film’s heavy, Jack Browning, played by Ronald Reagan in an inspired bit of casting. It was the first and only time that he played a bad guy in a movie. Browning would also be his last film role before he went into politics. It’s great to see a casually intense actor like Marvin square off against a limited one like Reagan. Charlie paces back and forth across the room with a gun in his hand while Browning sits there stiff as a board playing dumb while he’s accused of ordering the hit on North. Marvin does an excellent job working the room and questioning Reagan’s character. He clearly owns this scene.

Charlie shows just how brutal he can be when he questioning North’s girlfriend, Sheila (Angie Dickinson), and doesn’t like her answers. So, he and Lee hang her out of a window high above the street, scaring the answers out of her. Sheila pleads for her life at the end of the film putting all of the blame on Jack who says nothing, grimly accepting his fate at the hands of the uncompromising Charlie. Even after Charlie shoots and kills Jack, Sheila continues to pathetically plead for her life and Charlie utters that immortal line, “Lady, I don’t have the time,” before shooting and killing her. He kills her last because it is revenge for North's death. Through flashbacks we learn that she not only double-crossed the doomed race car driver but she broke his heart too.

However, the damage to Charlie has been done. He has been mortally wounded by a sniper rifle at the hands of Jack earlier on. Charlie staggers out onto the front lawn of Jack’s house just as the police arrive. In a haze, he points his right hand like a gun and collapses dead, the precious money he spent the entire film pursuing fluttering all around him. Siegel then cuts to a long shot of Charlie’s dead body with the money lying in the heart of suburbia with its manicured green lawns and tract houses.

Siegel’s film takes place mostly during the day with a bright color scheme. This is due largely because the picture was originally intended to be a made-for-television movie (the first of its kind) but the harsh depiction of violence was too much for NBC and it was eventually released theatrically. The artificial T.V. look, with its extensive use of rear projection, gives The Killers an almost surreal kind of feel that works surprisingly well. Even though it is bright and colorful, the attitude of the film is pure, gritty film noir. Life is cheap and the film concludes on an uncompromisingly nihilistic note as Siegel ends things with a hell of a final image that underlines the very thing that resulted in everyone’s demise: money.