Midnight Oil:Movies and More

Blowing in the Wind

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the bathroom . . .but more about that later.

This week on Saturday Night at the Movies two tough guy movies were on the bill of fare. I must say that I was looking forward with much anticipation to viewing once again “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”. The second feature, “Angels with Dirty Faces”, was one that I had not seen before.

In “Angels with Dirty Faces”, James Cagney starred as Rocky Sullivan playing opposite Pat O’Brien as his childhood buddy turned priest, Father Jerry Connelly. Even though this film was unknown to me and I did not know how it turned out in the end, it did not hold my attention the way that “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” did.

“The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” was simply a much better film. Both films star Humphrey Bogart in roles where he portrays an unsavoury character: Jim Frazier, the sleazy lawyer in “Angels” and Fred C. Dobbs, the paranoid would-be prospector in “Sierra Madre”. The plots of both movies are somewhat predictable: the central figures become entrapped in a downward spiral of crime and violence while they pursue material gain. It all ends in disaster – the electric chair for Sullivan and decapitation in a dirty mud hole for Dobbs.

Much could be said and has been said about the undiluted use and authenticity of the Mexican location and of Mexican actors without translation in “Sierra Madre”. The excellent film score, while providing great “mood music”, might be seen as intrusive by some in the way it cues the emotions that we are supposed to be feeling during the film. Walter Huston is absolutely wonderful as the indefatigable and utterly likeable Howard. Can you believe that his own son, John Huston, directed him in this great performance?

 My interest in “Angels with Dirty Faces” picked up only towards the end with the execution scene. This scene brought to mind the riveting treatment of capital punishment in America depicted in “Dead Man Walking” (1995) with Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. Although I found that the emotional tension conveyed by the execution scene was nothing to compare with that created in “Dead Man Walking”, I did find that this was the most interesting bit of the film.

Will Rocky play the tough guy all the way to the gallows or will he do as Father Connelly asks in order to save the kids from a life of crime by turning chicken for the press gallery? Is Rocky really so tough after all? Is he beyond redemption? Cagney plays the part in an ambiguous way. In his cell just before the execution, he continues to sneer, swagger and sling one-liners at the guards as the rest of the inmates on death row cheer him on. However, as the action of the scene begins, the camera hones in on Cagney holding a cigarette in a hand that trembles noticeably. As a device to heighten the adrenalin while protecting squeamish sensibilities, we do not actually see Rocky getting electrocuted – we just hear the screams. We hear Rocky crying and screaming pathetically just before the moment of execution. However, it is also reported that Rocky spits in the eye of the guard who was strapping him into the chair. Is Rocky defiant to the bitter end or does he engage in one last magnificent gesture of selflessness by acting the part of the repentant and cowardly criminal? It is hard to tell.

The press corps and Father Connelly each have their own read on these final events in the life of the gangster. It is a reading of the events that serves their own purposes: to make money through sensationalism for the newspapers and to save souls from hellfire for the Church. It seems to me that the character of Rocky himself was much more ambiguous than such a simplistic reading of the action permits. Unlike the maniacal mobster we saw Cagney play a few weeks ago in “White Heat”, this gangster movie goes to great lengths to show that Rocky Sullivan is a bad guy who was made, not born. Rocky has a human side. It shows through with his love interest, Laury (Ann Sheridan), with his boyhood friend, Jerry, and when he messes around with the kids. If Rocky, underneath his tough guy image, had no heart, then one supposes that there would be no real dramatic tension in that final execution scene. Bad guys who are bad through and through, well, you don’t feel so bad about them getting the chair. Bad guys like Rocky who got a few tough breaks in life, but who have a heart peeking through the gangster persona, well, you have mixed feelings about seeing them get fried.

 So when does the bad guy turn bad? Where does the bad come from; the inside or the outside? Both of these films explore these questions about human nature in an interesting and entertaining fashion.

Take Fred C. Dobbs, for instance, a part played so magnificently by Humphrey Bogart in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”. When we first meet Dobbs on the streets of Tampico, he is a penniless vagrant with nothing but the shirt on his back. We see that the character played by Bogart is, at least in the beginning, an essentially decent fellow. When Dobbs and Curtin are cheated out of their hard earned pay by the welcher, McCormick, they beat him up in a barroom brawl. The fight scene ends with Dobbs and Curtin taking only what they are owed and throwing the rest of the money back in McCormick’s battered face. By the time Dobbs walks out of the hills with his bags of gold and meets his untimely demise at the hands of the banditos, he is a murderous, paranoid traitor obsessed by greed. Dobbs has attempted to murder his friend, stolen the gold belonging to his partner and mentor (Howard), and given the cold shoulder to the practice of mercy (e.g. the half-drowned Indian boy and providing for Cody’s widow).

What happened “out in them thar hills”?

I was watching a replay of “Sierra Madre” on video the Sunday following Saturday Night at the Movies. It was just getting to the part where Dobbs attempts to murder Curtin after a spat about (what else?) the gold. Dobbs leaves Curtin, who unbeknownst to him, is only wounded back in the bush. Dobbs returns to the camp to sit by the fire and ruminate on the recent events: “Your conscience – it can pester you to death. Makes me sick with all of this talking and fussing – (Dobbs is the only one present. He is talking to himself.) But if you don’t believe in it, what can it do to you?”

 At this point, the camera focuses on the campfire in the foreground. The fire goes from being a domesticated little campfire to the leaping flames of a raging inferno. Taken in conjunction with Dobbs’ remarks about the pangs of conscience, I suppose that one is supposed to be reminded of the flames of hellfire. If you ignore your conscience and refuse to believe what it is saying to you, what can happen to you? Even if you don’t believe in literal hellfire (there is evidence in the film that Dobbs does believe in such a thing) at the very least, the flames could be said to represent the corrosive effect of Fred C. Dobb’s own greed on his personhood.

And then it happened. I had to stop the video to go to the bathroom. I clicked off the video machine and left the T.V. set on with T.V.O.’s programme “Big Ideas” playing in the background. When I returned, who should appear on the screen immediately after the hellfire scene but the most Reverend John Spong speaking to us from St. Barnabas church in Toronto? See what happened in my encounter with the reverend .

I am back now after that most diverting little excursus into history and theology. I flicked the video machine back on and continued to watch “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”. Early on in the film, before the trio actually set out to go prospecting for gold, there is a little piece of dialogue between Curtin and Dobbs. Howard, the old prospector has asserted that gold is a curse, that it inevitably corrupts men’s souls, his own soul included. Dobbs wonders aloud if this is true. He says, “It seems to me that gold can be as much of a blessing as it is a curse. What do you think?” (posing the question to Curtin) Curtin replies, “I suppose it depends on the man – on what’s in him.”

 Another slightly different take on the issue of the corruption of greed and the human condition is found in Howard’s mouth late in the film. As Howard bandages up Curtin’s wounds inflicted by the murderous Dobbs, he says in his homespun philosophy kind of way, “I don’t blame him (Dobbs) too much. He’s not a real killer. Dobbs is as honest as the next fellow. The mistake was that big temptation – nearly $100,000 in gold. No, my mistake was leaving you two out there alone with that gold. I might have been tempted too if I was a lot younger and I was out there with you.”

At the conclusion, Fred C. Dobbs ends up with his head rolling off into a mud hole, chopped off by a machete courtesy of some greedy Mexican banditos who value his boots more than his bags of gold. It is an absurd situation. Dobbs was never in the mood to laugh though it seems after the gold got hold of him. It seems that Dobbs can quote his Sunday school teacher, an influential moral authority in his life it would appear, but not live out what she taught: “My Sunday School teacher used to say you have to learn to swallow disappointments in this sad life.” Curtin and Howard, on the other hand, appear to have learned this lesson well. Curtin goes from being obsessed with getting his gold back and seeking revenge on Dobbs to laughing uproariously along with Howard when they find out that their ten months of hard work and thousands of dollars in gold are gone with the wind. All that is left is a little canvas sack stuck to a prickly cactus.

Howard, through a few lucky breaks and his own genius for accommodating to people and situations will be taken care of for life by the grateful Indian villagers. Curtin too escapes the clutches of destructive greed through an odd combination of fate, character, and his own choices. He can’t seek revenge on Dobbs because Dobbs is already dead. Curtin’s naturally positive outlook and generous spirit cause him to look North with hope to peach groves in Texas and to Cody’s widow. He is ready to get on with the next chapter of his life. There seems to be an element of choice in Curtin’s “attitude adjustment” at the end of the film. We see him go through some kind of emotional and moral process of letting go as he talks out loud to Howard and himself about the horrors of the fate of Fred C. Dobbs and an evaluation of his own current state: “After all, when the worst happens, it’s not so bad. I’m really no worse off than I was in Tampico. I’m out about $200. That’s not much to lose in comparison to what Dobb’s lost.

Curtin is no hero of ethical behaviour. Remember that he cast his vote in favour of murdering the unfortunate Cody when push came to shove. In this movie at least, it seems to that a guy like Curtin stumbles his way to survival and virtue than anything else. Maybe Curtin will be a better man in the future for all of his experiences on the Sierra Madre, or maybe he won’t. If one adopts the fatalistic perspective of Howard, temptation, if you are unlucky enough to be exposed to such a thing, is pretty much irresistible for mere humans; it’s better to take things easy, wiser to stay out of harm’s way, and more fun to laugh at the good and the bad that life brings along.

Next week on TVOnrario's Saturday Night at the Movies, June 25 at 8pm EST, “A Star is Born” with Judy Garland and James Mason.

Suggested reading:

• “Angels . . .” Supposedly, the Dead End kids used in the movie terrorized everyone on the movie set with their rowdy behviour and Cagney used the mannerisms of a real pimp he knew from Hell’s Kitchen in New York to enliven the character of Rocky Sullivan. See more . . .
• The original dope on being human and being tempted: James 1:13-15.
• Has your stuff got a hold on you? – Words from a recovering shopaholic