Hope for the Color-Blind
Three of my five favorite films—The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, and Mask of Dimitrios—have one thing in common: they’re in glorious black-and-white.
The American Film Institute polled its members in 1998 and again in 2007. The poll topper for the best film ever made, both times, was Citizen Kane. And yes, it’s in black-and-white.
The other day mystery writer/editor Ed Gorman and I were discussing some of our favorite films over on Facebook, and of course many of them were black-and-white. Irish science fiction editor John Kenny joined the discussion, and told us that his kids won’t watch any black-and-white film. A number of other parents had the same complaint. It reminded me of an incident about a decade ago, when I was teaching at Clarion, and David Barr Kirtley handed in a story titled “The Black Bird,” about 90% metaphor and 100% brilliant. (I later bought it for an anthology I was editing.) We had a class of 19. Since he was the writer David’s opinion didn’t count, but the total was that two of the students loved the story and 16—the 16 youngest—didn’t. It occurred to me to ask for a show of hands: how many of them had actually seen The Maltese Falcon? Two hands went up—the two who liked the story. I asked the other 16 why they hadn’t watched this classic, which is on somewhere almost every week. The answer, from all of them: it was in black-and-white.
So before these brilliant films, and the opportunity to watch them, get swallowed up by history, I thought I’d point out some excellent fantasies, as well-made (or better) than any $70 million full-color travesty playing in the theaters today. Here they are, in no particular order:
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Portrait of Jennie (1948). This is adapted from Robert Nathan’s novel, which managed to stay in print for three-quarters of a century. Joseph Cotton is a struggling painter; he has skills and technique, but there’s simply no soul, no feeling, in his paintings. One night he is wandering through the park and runs into a little girl, maybe seven or eight years old, named Jennie. They talk, and he is charmed by her (in a non-pedophile way). A few nights later he runs into her again—only now she’s maybe eleven. And every few nights he meets her, and each time she’s older, trying (as she explains) to catch up to him. He is captivated, and begins painting her portrait. Jennie, who is played by Jennifer Jones in one of her better performances, tells him details of her life, and he realizes that she was a little girl maybe 30 years ago. Gradually, as she changes from a girl to a young woman, he falls in love with her, and the portrait finally begins showing the one quality that was missing in his previous paintings. He tries to learn more about her, and discovers that she died about a quarter century ago in a boating accident. He rushes to the scene of the accident, not sure this all hasn’t been a dream, and arrives just too late to save her—but his feelings for her translate into the painting that makes his reputation, the “Portrait of Jennie.”
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Miracle on 34th Street (1947). A charming fantasy in which one of those bell-ringing Santas you see on every street corner and store front in December turns out to be the real Santa. Edmond Gwenn plays Santa, a very very young Natalie Wood plays a girl who believes in him, and the film’s a delight from the beginning right through the trial where the government can’t prove he isn’t Santa, and the Post Office settles the issue once and for all.
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The Canterville Ghost (1944). Charles Laughton plays Sir Simon de Canterville, a 17th Century nobleman who flees to his castle to avoid a duel to the death. As a punishment for his cowardice, his father seals him in the room where he is hiding, and curses him to spend all eternity as a ghost, unable to rest in his grave until a descendant performs an act of heroism. Move the clock ahead past three centuries of cowards, and we come to the latest descendant, Cuffy Williams, a cowardly U.S. soldier played by Robert Young. It takes a 6-year-old noblewoman, Margaret O’Brien, to bring matters to a happy solution.
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The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947). A young widow, played by Gene Tierney, inherits a seaside cottage that is haunted by the ghost of a roguish sea captain, played by Rex Harrison. When her sources of income dry up, it’s Harrison to the rescue, dictating his obscenity-laced and salacious memoir to her. She manages to sell the manuscript, begins to make a living in publishing, and the romance between Mrs. Muir and the ghost continues to grow. Finally, an old lady, she breathes her last—and suddenly there is the ghost, waiting for her, and hand-in-hand they go out through the front door and wander off together into the mist.
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The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) From Stephen Vincent Benet’s Pulitzer winner, and re-released as All That Money Can Buy. Jabez Stone, a local farmer, has two kinds of luck: bad and worse. In desperation, he sells his soul to Mr. Scratch (the devil, played by Walter Huston) to keep his farm, then realizes what he’s done and gets the best lawyer in the country, Daniel Webster (played by Edward Arnold), to plead his case to keep his soul before a jury consisting of corpses and ghosts who are all in Satan’s thrall. Undeterred, Webster goes to work, and in the climax delivers such a brilliant and passionate oration that even the dead, soulless jury votes in favor of his client.
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Death Takes a Holiday (1934)y. A real oldie, and it still moves people. Frederic March plays Death, who can’t understand why people fear him so, and he comes to Earth in human form to find out. And he falls in love. And no one dies, not even the thousands of people who are in utter agony and should die. And eventually he must make a choice: stay with the woman he loves, or leave her and go back to work so that people can die once again.
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Topper (1937). Taken from the bestseller by the fantastic humorist (or humorous fantasist) Thorne Smith, this is the story of George and Marion Kirby (Cary Grant and Constance Bennett), who drive recklessly once too often and die in a crash. Since they have lived a totally useless life, consisting mostly of drinking, carousing, and partying, they find themselves not in heaven or hell, but in limbo. To ascend to the higher level, they must do a good deed, and they decide to help their friend, Cosmo Topper (Roland Young). Problems ensue when Marion falls for Topper, George gets jealous and vengeful, Topper’s wife is not amused, and the story goes from one outrageous scene to another before it’s finally resolved.
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I Married a Witch (1942). Another fantasy/comedy taken from a Thorne Smith novel, this time The Passionate Witch, which was completed by Norman Matson when Smith died suddenly while writing it. This one stars Frederic March as a candidate for governor and Veronica Lake as a resurrected witch who falls in love with him, helps him with the governorship, and undergoes numerous changes from witch to woman to ghost and back again before there’s a satisfactory conclusion.
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Topper Returns (1938) is the third Topper movie (the less-than-inspired Topper Takes a Trip was the second). It once again features Roland Young and Billie Burke as Cosmo Topper, but this time there is no George and Marion Kirby (the married ghosts), but rather a murder victim, Joan Blondell, who wants to solve her own murder in time to prevent her friend Carol Landis from being murdered. And if that sounds too serious, remember that these are Thorne Smith’s characters.
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Lost Horizon (1937). Directed by Frank Capra, this story of a lost land of eternal youth stars Ronald Coleman and Jane Wyatt, and if you don’t know story, what are you doing reading Black Gate? (But just in case: an airplane is hijacked and lands in the Himalayas, and is taken to Shangri-La, an idyllic valley where everyone lives in peace and no one ever grows old. Coleman’s hijacking turns out not to have been an accident or a crime; the High Lama is finally dying of old age after hundreds of years and has chosen Coleman as his successor. Circumstances lead Coleman to leave with his brother and a woman from the village, who soon ages and dies once beyond Shangri-La’s border. They are rescued by a search team that’s looking for them, but Coleman soon eludes them and after seemingly endless searching, sees Shangri-La in the distance and heads for it.
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The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945). Taken from the Oscar Wilde story, this stars Hurd Hatfield as Dorian Gray, a handsome young man who is totally corrupt. He has his portrait painted, and as his sins and debaucheries continue, his face remains unmarked, but the portrait, which he hides in the attic, becomes uglier and uglier. Eventually a shred of conscience convinces him to stab the portrait with a knife, and as the portrait is destroyed, he himself dies, as the two were somehow linked. Nice supporting cast of Angela Lansbury, George Sanders, Peter Lawford, and Donna Reed.
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The Bishop’s Wife (1947). A charming fantasy, in which an Anglican bishop (David Niven), who has ignored family and friends in the attempt to plan and build an elaborate new cathedral, has reached a dead end, and prays for guidance—and lo and behold, here comes Dudley (Cary Grant), an angel sent to help him. Dudley instantly charms everyone else in Niven’s household—his maid, his daughter, even his wife—but Niven is no closer to getting his cathedral, and very soon it appears that Niven’s wife (Loretta Young) is falling for Dudley. Finally Niven lies and tells Dudley that funding and designs for the building have arrived, his prays were answered, and Dudley can go away. Dudley doesn’t quite believe it, and Niven realizes that he’s probably lost his wife without having gained his cathedral. When he admits that his wife means more to him than the cathedral, Dudley reappears to tell him that his prayer has been answered. No, not that he’ll get his cathedral, but that he realizes what’s important in life. “But I asked for a cathedral,” says Niven. “No,” says Dudley, “you asked for guidance.” And now he has it.
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The Seventh Seal (1957). Not all black-and-white fantasies have to be made before 1950, and not all have to come from the United States. This 1957 Swedish classic by Ingmar Bergman takes place during the Black Plague, and features the most famous chess game ever filmed, between a knight (Max von Sydow) and Death, with the knight’s soul as the stakes. The film ends with a very solemn and very memorable dance of death.
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Dracula (1931). So okay, Dracula is an antique. It creaks. It’s overwritten and overacted and underachieved. But it has the definitive Dracula of the first three-quarters of a century of filmmaking, as portrayed by Bela Lugosi. It wasn’t until Frank Langella’s version that the image of Dracula changed, and people realized he could be articulate, speak without an accent, and be sexually appealing to women of all ages. Prior to that, every performance in every vampire film owed something to Bela.
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King Kong (1933). I know some people consider King Kong a science fiction film rather than a fantasy, but they are people who never heard of the square-cube law, and haven’t figured out what all these multi-ton carnivorous dinosaurs found to eat on that tiny island. It’s a fantasy through-and-through, and it ends with one of the half-dozen classic lines in film history, right up there with “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” and “Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” “It was beauty killed the beast” takes a back seat to none of them. Yeah, the special effects were a little shaky, but I’ve yet to hear anyone call either of the remakes a classic.
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It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). This Frank Capra film is probably (and by far) the most-watched black-and-white fantasy in history. George Bailey, after a life of doing good deeds for others, is dead broke and has all kinds of problems, and decides to end it all. His bumbling guardian angel beseeches him not to. George mutters that he wishes he’d never been born. The angel shows him with the lives of all the people he’s helped, all the people who love him, would be like if indeed he never had been born. Totally moved, George pleads for his life back, rushes home to the town and family he loves, and finds that they—and life—are repaying him on this Christmas Eve.
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There are many more, of course. I haven’t even touched on the black-and-white fantasy musicals, which include One Touch of Venus (a riff on Thorne Smith’s The Night Life of the Gods with music by Kurt Weill); I Married an Angel (a wry, almost cynical Rodgers and Hart show); Cabin in the Sky (a delightful all-black musical); and more.
So the next time your kid says “Humphrey who?” or “Whoever heard of someone spelling her name ‘Bette’?” buy or rent him one of these black-and-white fantasies and show him what he’s been missing. And if you’re under 35 or 40, take a look yourself.
Who knows? You may discover a whole new interest.