|
|
Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 9, No. 16 |
|
JULES DASSIN ...OUT OF THE DARKNESS
|
Once blacklisted director Dassin had the last laugh
of TheColumnists.com
Like so many other supremely talented filmmakers of the 1940s, Jules Dassin had to leave Hollywood at the peak of his early promise because Sen. Joe McCarthy and his right wing cabal known as the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) came looking for him while the movie studios quietly blacklisted him as a suspected communist.
This was the man who already had, almost back to back, delivered four impressive films that in a few short years would be hailed as classic films noir--"Brute Force" (1947), "The Naked City" (1948), "Thieves' Highway" (1949) and "Night and the City" (1950). Meanwhile, a fifth film he made in 1944 already was recognized as one of the most popular family films of the 1940s--the original film version of "The Canterville Ghost" (1944) with Charles Laughton and child star Margaret O'Brien.
For some blacklisted artists such as screenwriters Dalton Trumbo, John Howard Lawson and Lester Cole, having to flee to Europe would mean long years with meager earnings, often filtered through "fronts"--people who put their names on the scripts of blacklisted writers. Some filmmakers would wait decades to be "rehabilitated" by a new generation of Hollywood studio executives.
Jules Dassin had a totally different experience. He reinvented himself, becoming an almost European-style filmmaker. He even turned to acting, sometimes as himself and other times under the name "Perlo Vita," taking roles in his own movies, often to save the expense of hiring a higher-priced actor. He made his films in France, where "communist" was just another political party affiliation, and had his greatest success in Greece, where commnnists were a dime a dozen.
Within five years, Dassin began to have the last laugh on the American political witch-hunters--a laugh that lasted all the rest of his life, which, sadly, ended last week when he finally died at the ripe old age of 96, his place in cinema history long since gauranteed.
 |
 |
 |
Above: Posters from three popular Dassin films made after leaving Hollywood for Europe.
"Rififi" (1955), made in France; "He Who Must Die" (1957) and "Topkapi" (1964).
Dassin resumed his wave of acclaimed films, which included "Rififi" (1955), perhaps the most renowned "caper" film of all time; "He Who Must Die" (1957), a dramatic religious allegory that earned the kind of raves that only Ingmar Bergman received for such films; the joyously racy "Never on Sunday" (1960), his all-time most popular film, and that other great "caper" film, "Topkapi" (1964), which, like "Never on Sunday," was a big hit in America as well as the rest of the world.
Dassin's "comeback" from the
blacklist was complete after just 10 years. He was nominated
for 1960 Academy Awards for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay
for "Never on Sunday"--he lost to Billy Wilder and
his "The Apartment" in both categories--and the title
tune from the movie by Greek composer Manos Hadjidakis won the
Oscar for Best Song and became a blockbuster Top 40 hit in America.
Then, in 1964, Peter Ustinov won the Best Supporting Actor Academy
Award under Dassin's direction in "Topkapi."
And--oh, yes--along the way Dassin married one of the most beautiful women on Earth, the acclaimed Greek actress Melina Mercouri, the star of both "Never on Sunday" and "Topkapi" and many of Dassin's other films. Mercouri had been nominated for Best Actress for "Never on Sunday" and became an international sensation from her exposure in that film about a free-living Greek prostitute.
Ironically, Dassin was a product of the Hollywood studio system and migrated there in 1940 from New York where he acted in Yiddish theatre, wrote for network radio shows and directed stage productions. His Hollywood career began with him serving briefly as an assistant to writer-director Garson Kanin and director Alfred Hitchcock. He then signed on with MGM and started as a director of short subjects. Like another young director at MGM, Fred Zinnemann (future Oscar winner for "From Here to Eternity," "A Man For All Seasons"), MGM assigned Dassin to "B" feature films, the first being an undistinguished cheapie called "Nazi Agent" (1942) in which Conrad Veidt played twin brothers, one good and one evil.
That same year, Dassin directed a "B" comedy called "The Affairs of Martha," which featured actress Marsha Hunt, who would be blacklisted herself by the end of the decade. Finally, toward the end of 1942, Dassin got to direct an "A" picture--"Reunion in France" starring MGM diva Joan Crawford and John Wayne.
 |
 |
At left, the poster from Dassin's only "A" drama at MGM, "Reunion in France." At right,
the late Richard Widmark in Dassin's "Night and the City" (1950), a noir classic.
But his only creditworthy film during his MGM period was "The Canterville Ghost" (1944), based on an Oscar Wilde story, updated to the present. It was a gentle family comedy in which American military personnel are billeted at a haunted mansion in England where jocular ghost Charles Laughton half-heartedly attempts to scare them away. The picture was stolen by child star Margaret O'Brien, whose reign at MGM was just beginning.
Dassin left MGM in 1946 after directing Lucille Ball in a silly comedy called "Two Smart People" and immediately his career got much more serious--and he finally began to attract attention. His first two films were for producer Mark Hellinger, a journalist who wrote and then produced films of an extremely realistic nature, starting with his version of Ernest Hemingway's "The Killers" (1946), directed by Robert Siodmak and now an acknowledged film noir masterpiece.
Dassin directed Hellinger's next two pictures, produced independently and released by Universal-International: "Brute Force" (1947) and "The Naked City" (1948).
Without a doubt, "Brute Force" is the ultimate prison drama, keyed to the explosively robust performance of Burt Lancaster as a convict who's tormented by twisted prison warden Hume Cronyn, an actor Dassin had worked with at MGM who; gave his all-time nastiest performance in the film. The film seems astonishingly realistic even today, long after movies have become steeped in violence. Lancaster literally seethes anger on screen and the harsh experience of "Brute Force" surely helped move Hollywood toward a new level of gritty candor.
The second Dassin film for Hellinger was even more influential. "The Naked City" adopted a documentary style, filmed on actual New York locations with cameras broken loose from the standard Hollywood soundstage approach. It's day-to-day chronicling of a New York police murder investigation is widely believed to have influenced Jack Webb when he was creating his "Dragnet" radio series, later to become one of TV's giant early hits. Dassin's "Naked City" also is often hailed as the film that led to the development of the so-called "police procedural" genre of crime story that today dominates network television and the mystery best seller lists. The movie later was turned into a popular TV series.
After World War II, filmmakers were much more interested in making films that were true-to-life, no doubt because of the horrors many of them had seen as servicemen. Dassin not only acted upon this trend, but clearly helped develop it. After the Hellinger films, Dassin went to 20th Century-Fox, which also was busy making realistic films in the noir style. His "Thieves' Highway" (1949), a grim drama about truckers driving from southern California to San Francisco markets and their involvement with the mob, again has reached the status of a noir classic.
As Dassin was leaving to film his next dark film, "Night and the City," in England, his troubles with McCarthyism began and he eventually decided not to return to the U.S. That film, which starred the late Richard Widmark as an American hustler trying to find a place in the criminal underworld of London, has continued to grow in stature until it's now an icon of the noir movement. Like several of his noir films, "Night and the City" has been remastered in digital format and is now available as part of the distinguished Criterion Collection of DVDs, which distributes only the most respected American and foreign films, including many of the most sought-after noir classics.
Without a studio deal, Dassin struggled for the next several years in Europe until he finally put together the deal to make "Rififi" in 1955. This acclaimed French thriller put him right back at the top of the noir filmmakers list.
Based on the novel by Auguste LeBreton, which Dassin adapted for the screen with Rene Wheeler and the author, "Rififi" is the story of four expert thieves, who all fear each other, and their attempt to pull off an extremely difficult jewelry heist. Dassin, using the name Perlo Vita, plays one of the four. The film is most famous for the heist sequence itself, which runs half an hour without any spoken dialogue, but maintains almost intolerable suspense.
Dassin next went to Sweden where he made the allegorical drama "He Who Must Die" (1957), which takes place during the Turkish-Greek war of hte 1920s. It's about Greek villagers who put on an annual Passion Play, which is interrupted by the arrival of refugees who start tearing the village apart. Ultimately, the actors in the Passion Play are forced to live out, in reality, their roles in the story of Christ's crucifixion.
Nest Dassin made the star-filled "Where the Hot Wind Blows" (1958) as a French-Italian co-production, starring Italians Gina Lollobrigida and Marcello Mastroianni, Frenchmen Pierre Brasseur and Yves Montand and Greece's Melina Mercouri.
 |
"Never on Sunday" with his real-life wife, Merlina Mercouri. He received Oscar nominations for its direction and screenplay. |
But his next production, again with Mercouri, who was by now his wife, was the topper of his European career--the rollicking "Never on Sunday." Filmed entirely in Greece, the movie became a phenomenon, helped along by the magical Hadjidakis musical score. I remember seeing it as a college senior with my roommates and returning home, eager to do what Dassin and Mercouri did in the film--toss our wine glasses against the fireplace, shattering them after each drink.
"Never on Sunday" also launched a Greek dancing craze in the U.S. and, yes, I got into that, too! I believe I probably drank more ouzo and retsina wine that year, washing down plates of roast lamb, dolmades and other Greek food specialties, than was good for anyone's health. Looking back, it now seems a very rosy period, all set to Greek music.
Dassin and Mercouri followed that up with "Phaedra" (1962), in which the volatitle Mercouri has an affair with Tony Perkins. Somehow that pairing didn't produce the right kind of chemistry and the film wasn't a very big moneymaker. (It generally wasn't known in those days that Perkins was gay.)
Finally, Dassin cranked up his last great hit, a version of Eric Ambler's novel "The Light of Day" called "Topkapi." It's about a gang of rascals who attempt to steal a valuable jeweled icon from the museum in Constantinople. Filmed lavishly on location in Istanbul with an international cast that included Greek Melina Mercouri, Englishmen Peter Ustinov and Robert Morley, German Maximilian Schell and Turk Akim Tamiroff, "Topkapi" was the grandest sort of big, colorful caper film, once again underscored by Hadjidakis music. It was an immense hit.
Dassin by then was only in his mid-50s, but he never again was able to come up with a box office hit to match his earlier films. He did make American films again, most notably the 1968 "Up Tight," an ill-advised remake of John Ford's "The Informer" wiht an all-black cast and an update storyline. In the late 1960s, Dassin did a Broadway musical stage version of "Never on Sunday" called "Illya, Darling," which flopped despite Mercouri reprising her movie role.
Mercouri's life was much more eventful during the post-"Topkapi" years than his. She had been expelled from Greece in 1967 by the ruling military junta, but she later returned and in 1977 ran as a Socialist candidate and won a seat in the Greek parliament. She remained a political activist until her death in 1994. She was then in her 70s.
Though "Never on Sunday" is probably the best remembered film directed by Jules Dassin--and I'm a devoted lover of that happy movie--I believe his long-time reputation will rest on his great crime and caper classics of film noir. They don't seem to date like the others and keep being rediscovered by new generations of film fans who really can't believe he was able to make something like "Brute Force" or "The Naked City" in late 1940s America and are stunned to learn that "Rififi" was made by an expatriate American director and not some French New Wave hotshot.
Jules Dassin may have suffered some humiliation when he left America because of right wing harassment, but it has only enhanced his standing as one of the great film directors of the 20th century.
©2008 by Ron Miller. This column first posted April 7, 2008.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or . To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|