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I Play the Long Shots
Jun. 9th, 2013 06:49 pmBeen watching a lot of old movies this weekend -- mainly because Andrew put in RKO 281 last week, the HBO drama about the making of Citizen Kane, with Liv Schreiber as Welles (and if the wiki entry on his life and career is at all accurate, he was perfectly cast as Orson Welles and not just because of his looks.)
So then, of course, we had to watch Kane. After that we were in an old-movie groove, so Andrew put in The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not. Today we returned to Welles with The Lady from Shanghai (I love that movie, but I haven't anything specifically to say about it just now) and then back to Bogart/Bacall with Key Largo. Except I'm starting to think that Gaye Dawn, the washed-up singer played by Clare Trevor, is really the other lead character in Key Largo.
The story follows the "reluctant hero" arc -- Frank McCloud (Bogart) resists the villain as best he can but can't quite bring himself to risk a full frontal attack until the last reel (because otherwise the story would be over too soon) -- but Gaye is on a similar path throughout, and she's got a much tougher climb -- he's a disillusioned but functional and highly competent military vet; she's Johnny Rocco's alcoholic mistress who owes him her career, such as it was, and has been under his thumb for pretty much her whole adult life, yet she's ultimately more useful in stopping him than Bacall's Nora.
I automatically brace myself whenever an old movie plot involves Native Americans; even when they're sympathetic characters it can come off as patronizing. Here I thought it might go that way -- initially they're largely there to give the white characters a chance to show themselves as good or bad by their behaviour towards them. But in the end even the well-intentioned interactions backfire -- Lionel Barrymore's Mr. Temple (and yeah, everyone in this movie has a vaguely symbolic-sounding name) blames himself for inadvertently causing the deaths of the Osceola brothers because if they hadn't trusted him, they would have stayed away and not wound up wrongly shot by the deputy. Which is... an interesting PoV for the time (Gaye points out that the person who's really guilty of all the carnage, though, is Rocco: "*Nobody* in this world is safe, as long as *he's* alive."
So then, of course, we had to watch Kane. After that we were in an old-movie groove, so Andrew put in The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not. Today we returned to Welles with The Lady from Shanghai (I love that movie, but I haven't anything specifically to say about it just now) and then back to Bogart/Bacall with Key Largo. Except I'm starting to think that Gaye Dawn, the washed-up singer played by Clare Trevor, is really the other lead character in Key Largo.
The story follows the "reluctant hero" arc -- Frank McCloud (Bogart) resists the villain as best he can but can't quite bring himself to risk a full frontal attack until the last reel (because otherwise the story would be over too soon) -- but Gaye is on a similar path throughout, and she's got a much tougher climb -- he's a disillusioned but functional and highly competent military vet; she's Johnny Rocco's alcoholic mistress who owes him her career, such as it was, and has been under his thumb for pretty much her whole adult life, yet she's ultimately more useful in stopping him than Bacall's Nora.
I automatically brace myself whenever an old movie plot involves Native Americans; even when they're sympathetic characters it can come off as patronizing. Here I thought it might go that way -- initially they're largely there to give the white characters a chance to show themselves as good or bad by their behaviour towards them. But in the end even the well-intentioned interactions backfire -- Lionel Barrymore's Mr. Temple (and yeah, everyone in this movie has a vaguely symbolic-sounding name) blames himself for inadvertently causing the deaths of the Osceola brothers because if they hadn't trusted him, they would have stayed away and not wound up wrongly shot by the deputy. Which is... an interesting PoV for the time (Gaye points out that the person who's really guilty of all the carnage, though, is Rocco: "*Nobody* in this world is safe, as long as *he's* alive."
