The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928)

Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer

Screenplay and intertitles by Carl Theodor Dreyer and Joseph Meteil

Runtime: 1 hr, 22 min (1985 restored version)

Joan of Arc’s story is so multi-faceted that it’s no wonder that artists of all stripes keep turning to it for inspiration.  Whether one chooses to profile her military exploits or her famed trial of 1431, the Maid of Orléans provides a great many ways to approach the subject.  Perhaps the most renowned of these stories, however, is the 1928 silent film version directed by the Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer.  Considered one of the landmarks of the silent era, I feel that it was about time that I take a look at The Passion of Joan of Arc.

The Passion of Joan of Arc covers the trial, torture and execution of the title character, mentioning her pre-capture exploits only in passing.  In the role of Joan is Renée Jeanne Falconetti, the only role she ever played on film.  A devout young woman claiming she was sent by God to expel the English from France, Joan is forced to endure the abuse and trickery of her inquisitors, some of whom are given names in the credits but none of whom are identified in the film.  Throughout the trial, we see Joan grapple with her impending death and how the demands of the church conflict with her personal devotion to God.

Falconetti’s turn as Joan is often considered one of the best acting performances in the history of cinema, and it is not hard to see why.  At first her expressions are difficult to swallow; she is wide-eyed and intense from the moment that she steps before the judges.  After some time, however, the strain in Falconetti’s demeanor starts to show.  She exhibits a tension between her idealistic love of God and the harsh reality that she now confronts.  Her profuse tears, sighs of reliefs, stoic reactions and even flashes of laughter are all beautifully conveyed; it’s worthy of a standing ovation.

Falconetti is deservedly the star of the picture, but she gets a top-notch assist from Dreyer’s direction and the crew.  Dreyer, by all accounts, was incredibly demanding during production, putting Falconetti through physical hardships, such as kneeling on hard concrete for extended periods, to force her into a mental state which would approximate that of Joan of Arc.  In addition, Dreyer forbid any of the actors to wear makeup to emphasize the natural humanity of his cast.  It may sound overbearing, but Dreyer’s decisions allow for method acting at its finest.

What ultimately piqued my interest in the film, however, was not Falconetti’s legendary performance or Dreyer’s direction, but the fact that Rudolf Maté did the cinematography.  Maté, who I know as the director of D.O.A., makes extensive use of close-ups and extreme close-ups, putting every twitch and facial feature front and center.  Even his long shots give a sense of claustrophobia.  When the court is first introduced, foreground is cluttered with the heads of the judges.  It’s a wonderful use of the camera which gives The Passion of Joan of Arc a distinctive appearance.

Beyond Dreyer and Maté, the set decorators do their part to add to the movie’s atmosphere.  Granted, one does not see much of the set because of Maté’s frequent use of close-ups, but it’s the emptiness which counts.  Most of the film is dominated by bright white walls, giving the impressions that the characters are having a debate in a vacuum—or, perhaps better, Heaven.  And what little visible set design there is goes a long way.  For instance, the perfectly placed window frame creates the shadow of a cross on the floor of Joan’s cell.

That cross on the floor acts as a pivotal symbol in the film, especially when one of the judges’ shadows covers the cross from Joan’s vision.  There is a war regarding the proper nature of religion in The Passion of Joan of Arc.  On the one hand are the judges, clearly well versed in Catholic dogma but ultimately obscuring the light of the faith; on the other is Joan, standing alone in her alleged heresy, but with a tighter relationship with God than anyone else in the film; there is clear anguish, for example, when her inquisitors deny her communion unless she betray her command to dress as a man.

Joan’s clothing is emblematic of the other major conflict in the film, the one between the material and spiritual worlds.  The theologians, though ostensibly concerned with the affairs of Heaven, view the world through materialist lens.  They are less concerned about what St. Michael told to Joan and more preoccupied with his appearance and dress.  Joan, though, is far closer to the spiritual world, answering questions in the abstract and, thanks to Falconetti’s portrayal, acting in a far more ethereal manner.

All of this combines to make The Passion of Joan of Arc as singularly spiritual work to behold.  From its iconography to its theological arguments to its themes, the film grapples with the faith and strengthens the viewers in the process.  I am not a man of religion, but even as an atheist I can connect with Joan’s struggle to maintain her beliefs in the face of torment.  And as a fan of cinema, I instantly fell in love with its breath-taking camera work and outstanding performances.  Dreyer’s magnum opus, then, is a picture which is damn near impossible to top.

The Virginian (1946)

The Virginian (1946)

Directed by Stuart Gilmore

Screenplay by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, adapted by Howard Estabrook from the novel by Owen Wister

Runtime: 1 hr, 27 min

I will always hesitate to call something in the creative field “inept”, because in almost every field imaginable I don’t have any expertise from which to speak.  What I may perceive as a gross mistake may in fact be a conscious artistic choice that I am simply not seeing.  There are times, however, that I feel confident in going out on a limb and question the skill set of the creative team.  The Virginian, starring Joel McCrea in the title role, is that sort of movie, the sort of film that makes me wonder whether the writers understood plotting.

Based on a Western novel by Owen Wister, the film finds a young Vermont schoolteacher named Molly Wood (Barbara Britton) moving to Medicine Bow, Wyoming for a teaching job.  She is at first smitten with the ever drifting Steve Andrews (Sonny Tufts) and is not at all fond of the Virginian, and yes, that’s what he goes by.  Meanwhile, the town is up in arms regarding a string of cattle thefts lead by the man-in-black, Trampas (Brian Dunleavy).  It’s up to the Virginian to set things right and win the girl, and all in ninety minutes.

A great deal of this film’s issues can be traced back to its plot structure.  There’s obviously nothing unusual about balancing a good vs. evil story with a romance, but the good stories actually balance the two.  The Virginian does not do this.  Rather, it completely drops one of the two plotlines in favor of the other.  In fact, during an extended sequence of chasing the rustlers, I genuinely started to think that Molly’s coming to town was simply a plot device to get the story going.  What happens is that the audience gets a meandering story.

Now, I’ve not read Wister’s novel, so it may be the case that the original story was meandering and that the screenwriters were simply being faithful to the source material.  All the same, something about this plot needs tightening up; scenes can be cut right from the movie without altering a thing.  That’s ultimately what bothers me about this movie: the film offers setups for potentially interesting conflicts, but it rarely offers up any payoffs.  It’s as if the writers were making the story up as they went and only occasionally remembered what they’d wrote before.

For one illustrative example, let’s take the opening sequence of the film.  We see Molly getting on a coach from Bennington to get to the train station.  She is told not to let those Westerners monopolize the ruggedness card, and her beau (Bill Edwards) asks her to stay in Vermont.  Right away, there are two possible avenues for conflict: the whole East vs. West angle and the affections of the boy back home.  The former gets one conversation towards the end; the latter is mentioned in passing.  If that entire introduction was spliced out, no one would know the difference.

Even when the conflicts are in fact followed up on, they resolutions are usually unsatisfying.  By far the worst offender in this department is the romance between Molly and the Virginian.  The Virginian immediately takes a liking to her, but Molly finds him repulsive.  Then, essentially out of nowhere, Molly warms up to him.  It just sort of happens.  From what I can tell, it’s because the Virginian was fond of the horse that the judge gave her.  What happened to the belligerence?  Until the moment they’re a thing, they’ve got the chemistry of a beanbag chair and a dehumidifier.

Still, I could forgive some plotting faults if the characters were interesting.  They are not.  McCrea brings almost no personality to the Virginian—he’s the good guy, and that’s about it.  Trampas does get some interesting lines in, usually advice from his “sainted mother”, but his motives are standard “get rich” scheming.  The only one who is mildly intriguing is Steve Andrews: an old friend of the Virginian’s, now hanging around with Trampas’ gang.  There’s possible pay-off there, but as we’ve established, the resolution is not at all engaging.

In fact, the only engaging parts of The Virginian are its action sequences.  It is kind of fun watching Trampas and company cause a cattle stampede and seeing them runoff in fear.  And despite the lack of audience investment in it, the inevitable showdown between the Virginian and Trampas is pretty well staged—though it must be said that how it ends is, you guessed it, unsatisfying.  Let’s just say a scared horse gives away someone’s location.  Even when the film is fun to look at, there’s a lot to be desired.

Truth be told, I don’t hate this movie.  For all its numerous faults, it’s not an offensively bad movie.  It’s just not a very well made.  Had they cut the dead weight from the story and given the characters a rewrite, The Virginian might have been an enjoyable little Western—certainly no masterpiece, but at least an entertaining diversion.  As it stands, though, the film just leaves me scratching my head as to exactly what went wrong and who is ultimately to blame.  I could spend all day thinking on that, but it probably wouldn’t pay-off very well.

"Bringing the High Heat": A Short Story

This week, I decided to take a quick break from essays and instead present another short story, in the vein of "Tessy Dubois" from last Halloween.  This story is based on an actual field in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood, named for the man who hit one of the most famous home runs in the history of Major League Baseball.

*          *          *

“Bringing the High Heat"

“Hey, kid.  What are you out so late for?”

There I was, out on a late summer’s stroll through Schenley Park.  I was always fond of seeing this particular section of the city with the full moon out.  Casting its light on the fountains and statues and wide green spaces, it gave one the impression of walking into a bygone era.  It was a reverie I lost myself in frequently, and one I was shaken from when I saw a girl, maybe eleven-years-old, standing alone on a softball field.

The girl—I never learned her name, but when I asked around someone suggested that it was Jessie—looked at me as if my asking her was a source of confusion.  “Playing baseball.”

That much was obvious.  When you see a young girl standing a pitcher’s rubber with a mitt and a faded yellow Pirates cap, there are only some many explanations.  Of course, when one factors in that it was nearly ten o’clock at night and that there was no one else on the field, even those few plausible explanations cease to make much sense.

“I can see you’re playing baseball,” I said, “but you do know that it’s dark out, right?”

“Yeah, I can see,” she said with an air of annoyance that this old geezer was asking her such dumb questions.  I got the same response when I asked if her parents knew where she was (“Yes, naturally”) and whether she was waiting for anyone else (“No, of course not”).

Clearly, I thought, having a conversation with this girl, besides the implications that may carry to passers-by, was not a fruitful proposition.  The old man buried deep within me wanted to moan, “The damn kids today,” and walk off shaking my cane, but as I lacked a cane and an old geezer’s voice that was impossible.  Still, just thinking about her curt response was enough to irritate me, though I’m not sure whether it was the attitude or the lack of substance that proved bothersome.

All that time I was thinking, she didn’t do much beyond staring at the backstop.  Jessie looked right into that chain-link fence, as if she were staring down a capable but middle-of-the-road batter on a 1-0 count.  Only, she took extra time between breaths, ratcheting up the tension; it must have been the bottom of the ninth in her head.  I couldn’t imagine getting much a reaction one way or another from a tangled web of metal, but I could see the expression in her face shift ever-so-slightly from moment to moment.

At first, she seemed cold, giving off the aura of smooth dealer about send a breaking ball right by her adversary.  Then, just for a flash, all that confidence drained from her face.  “He knows it,” it seemed to scream.  “He knows that the heat is coming up and in.”  But just as I thought that a deer-in-the-headlights look was going to occur, I saw a slight smirk cross her lips.  It was a false alarm; the backstop’s posture clearly gave away that he was betting on a change-up.

Suddenly, I heard the rattling of metal and caught a glimpse of the baseball feeling bouncing back to the pitching circle.  To be honest, it caught me off guard.  I had thought that a bullet had just been fired or something.  When I looked up, there was Jessie, still standing in that same spot, but now holding back a laugh.

“Yes, yes,” I said, trying to diffuse things as quickly as possible.  “Laugh, laugh—you got me.”  I brushed off my sleeves in some strange attempt at a gesture and added: “You’ve got quite an arm there, kid.”

“Heh.  Thanks.”  She still laughed, but at least I could tell myself that it was on my own terms.  “This is the perfect spot for baseball.  Wouldn’t you agree?”

How could anyone disagree?  Where we stood at that moment was where Forbes Field stood all those years ago, back when the plaza was a parking lot and the Pirates were pennant contenders.  It had been torn down back in 1971, but nobody could ever forget the baseball history that laced this tract of land.  A section of wall still stands in the park, and right beside it—right where Jessie was pitching—was a softball field dedicated to Bill Mazeroski.

As I contemplated the significance of this little softball field, Jessie shouted, “You know, someday, I’ll be pitching for the Pirates!”  She threw the ball up into the air and caught it with a jump.  “Yeah, just you wait—Game 7, World Series, strikeout to win the game!”

I couldn’t help but smile.  “Hope you grow up fast,” I said.  “They could use you right now.”  I had fastened my jacket and was about to go on my way, when something pulled me back.  Later I rationalized that I didn’t want to leave her alone at this hour, but that really could not have been it.  “Do you want a catcher?”

Jessie did give a response, and a potent one at that: a mitt thrown right at my chest.  “All right!” she said, savoring the moment.  She put on her announcer’s voice: “It’s all come down to this, folks: the Yankees and the Pirates are tied 9-9 in the final game of the World Series.  If the Pirates can get a run across, they’ll win it all.”  The set-up sounded rather familiar to me, but I had some trouble piecing it together.  Then: “And up to the plate comes number 9, Bill Mazeroski.”

“Hang on,” I said; I caught myself waving my arms as if I were asking the ump for timeout.  “Why are you Ralph Terry here?  I thought you were a Pirates fan.”

“Exactly!” she said with electricity.  “Hey, if I can strike out Maz, then I can get everybody.”

Squatting back down, I had to admire her passion and reasoning there.  Clearly, the Pirates ran through her blood.  The organization needed fans like that, and I wasn’t sure there were that many left.

After sending one into the dirt—“Ach,” she said, “I tried getting him to chase a slider”—Jessie stood perfectly still.  Just like before, as a matter of fact.  I saw her face, those many muscles controlling expression, going through the exact same process as before: stoicism, terror, smugness.  I saw her bring the baseball up to her chest and take a deep sigh.

She was bringing the high heat.  And Maz was about to send it over the left-field fence.

I threw down two fingers.  She threw the ball, leaving me to hope that she saw them in time.

D.O.A. (1950)

D.O.A. (1950)

Directed by Rudolph Maté

Screenplay by Russell Rouse and Clarence Greene

Runtime: 1 hr, 23 min

Existence oftentimes seems predicated on simple twists of fate; mere coincidence can end up cutting us down in the end.  You may just be doing your own thing, minding your own business, but before you know you are implicated in some grand scheme of which you want absolutely no part.  It’s a most sinister form of “wrong place, wrong time” syndrome, the kind in which you aren’t even aware you are in until it’s too late.  This is the sort of scenario which forms the basis for Rudolph Maté’s 1950 film noir, D.O.A.

Frank Bigelow (Edmond O’Brien) walks into a police station to report a murder: his own.  In film noir tradition, he tells his story in flashback.  While on a spur-of-the-moment vacation in San Francisco, Bigelow, an account, discovers that he’s been poisoned and is beyond medical help.  Upon hearing that a man named Eugene Phillips, who wanted to get in contact with Bigelow, has committed suicide, Bigelow sets out to find out who murdered him and why.  What follows is a twisted tale of crime, adultery, and downright craziness.

Bigelow’s search hinges on a case involving stolen iridium, and his lines of inquiry bring him into contact with numerous colorful characters: Phillips’ grieving widow (Lynn Baggett) and Halliday, the comptroller of Phillips’ business (William Ching); Marla Rakubian (Laurette Luez), the requisite femme fatale, and the insane, sadistic enforcer Chester (Neville Brand).  Most of all, however, Bigelow is driven by his love for his secretary Paula (Pamela Britton), who aids him and pleads with him throughout the case.

Maté and the screenwriters use the cast of characters to craft an exciting world, largely consisting of San Francisco and Los Angeles.  Because the roles are so engaging—Brand in particular is a pure scene-stealer—the criminal dealings and gunplay have a serious heft to them.  Whether they instill sympathy, loathing, or terror, every actor on the screen elicits significant emotional response.  This prevents D.O.A. from getting bogged down in its plot, which ultimately proves inconsequential and a little bit contrived.

O’Brien’s Bigelow, interestingly, might be the least engaging character in the film.  He almost places a dramatic version of the straight-man, which makes sense; he’s the everyday guy who, because he happened to sign a bill of sale some time ago, finds himself a dead man.  Though he responds with anguish at first, as the reality of the situation sinks in, Bigelow becomes more and more stoic, accepting his fate with strength while not actively trying to change.  He’s also (understandably) fatalistic, which may explain some of his risky behavior in his detective work.

O’Brien’s co-star, Britton, is equally as good playing Paula.  At first glance, Paula is the first and most obvious suspect, by virtue of being the only character with any clear connection to Bigelow.  But Britton’s performance—confused, distraught and reassuring—makes it apparent that she had nothing to with it.  This also allows for D.O.A. to be a true mystery.  The only person with any apparent motivation to poison Bigelow is not the killer, so who wants Bigelow dead and gone is anyone’s guess.

Adding to the mystery atmosphere is the film’s style and cinematography.  Rudolph Maté was an acclaimed cinematographer in Europe, and he doesn’t let that style go to waste in his directorial debut.  Of particular note is the opening sequence: as the opening credits roll, Bigelow is making his way through the police station toward the homicide department.  The camera follows him down seemingly endless hallways, which ratchets up the tension immediately.  This type of sequence is repeated twice in the film, and each time makes it clear that time is of the essence.

D.O.A. is a bit restrained by its low budget and production values, though.  The film that was shown on the local PBS affiliate was grainy, and the beginning of scenes seemed amateurish, in that the actors reacting to the scene beginning was a common sight.  D.O.A. was not a big budget production, so some problems with the appearance of the film are to be expected.  That said, the low end production values do detract from the experience, and that I was cognizant of them demonstrates that they can distract from the film’s proceedings.

Despite not being as polished as it could have stood to be, D.O.A. is still an incredibly fun film noir.  From the near-literal dead man walking angle to the stolen iridium to the everyman dragged into hell, Maté’s film holds its own as a thriller.  If you are like me and are not particular genre savvy, then I expect that D.O.A. will keep you guessing until the very end, wondering why the hell anyone would want—nay, need—a lowly CPA out of the way, and how the hell Bigelow manages to find his killer in time.

Wings of Desire (1987)

Wings of Desire (1987)

Directed by Wim Wenders

Screenplay by Wim Wenders and Peter Handke

Runtime: 2 hr, 8 min

There are some films for which I have a hard time writing an introduction.  Usually this is because they are so nondescript that there doesn’t seem to be much worth mentioning.  Other times, however, it’s because there are so many directions to take it.  Where exactly does one start with this sort of movie?  Perhaps the importance of time in film would make a good starting point, but I know I’ve used that before and fairly recently.  Well, with no known direction, I’ll just start by saying this movie is easily a masterpiece in my book.

Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire (German title: Der Himmel über Berlin, literally The Sky over Berlin) follows angels, present and former, who go about and observe the people of Berlin.  They listen in on the people’s thoughts, which need not correspond with what they are doing.  However, the angels, as they exist not in the “now” but in “forever”, are unable to experience much of anything; neither time nor sensation has more than an abstract meaning to them.  It is this longing for experience that leads the angel Damiel (Bruno Ganz) to fall.

The filmmakers attempt to show the world both through the lens of the eternal angels and from the perspective of the temporal humans.  Of course, to show the first perspective on film is not easy; it’s a medium defined by stimuli and time.  To achieve this end, the world from the angels’ point of view is shot in a gorgeous black-and-white.  These sequences are a sight to behold, for certain, but they also give the film a surreal, almost fantastical quality, especially when combined with the aerial cinematography.  It’s a perfect demonstration of the utility of monochrome.

Unless an angel decides to fall, their closest contact with humanity is the thoughts of the Berliners.  Great swaths of the movie are dedicated to following the people of Berlin, both through their daily minutiae and through momentous events in their lives.  These glimpses, however, are fragmented.  We hear their minds in mid-thought, pondering their future, their finances, or their purpose—before moving on to the next human.  All their thoughts and actions are temporal and fleeting, standing in sharp contrast to the existence of the angels.

It is this quality, this attachment to time, that drives Damiel’s desire to live life as a human.  That, and there’s a girl.  He becomes attracted to a circus trapeze artist named Marion (Solveig Dommartin).  In many ways, Marion appears to be a human angel.  Whereas the angels, figuratively at least, reside above Berlin, Marion during her act gracefully soars above the circus audience.  They both long for contact, for some experience, and Marion is by far the most loquaciously philosophical of the human characters in the film.  No wonder Damiel is drawn to her.

What may be less clear is why an angel would want to fall in this particular locale.  Wings of Desire may be a commentary on the state of Berlin.  Since the angels mention the (Berlin) Olympic Games happened fifty years ago, this would place the action of the film in 1986.  The mood of the city appears to be somewhere between ennui and anxiety.  Most of the humans’ reflections are very heavy, and the simple question of “Why?” is pervasive.  Damiel’s fellow angel Cassiel (Otto Sander) even witnesses a man (Sigurd Rachman) commit suicide by jumping off a building.  This is not the happiest of places.

But then again, there is still much joy to be found as well.  Much of this comes from Peter Falk, who plays himself (or some variation on himself).  Falk is in Berlin to shoot a picture set in Nazi Germany, which sounds dire, yes, but he is most in love with life.  He takes great pleasure in sketching the extras for the film, reveling in the human form and all its imperfections.  Falk also adds levity to the film, particularly when he spends several minutes with a costumer trying to find the perfect hat for his character to wear.

In fact, looking back, the beauties of the human world are everywhere.  The children laugh and shout with glee during a circus performance.  Marion and the other acts sing half-drunkenly after the show.  We see hundreds of people taking in a performance by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, who play the aptly titled “From Her to Eternity”.  When I stop to think, the world of Wings of Desire is filled with reasons to experience time and sensation.  I dare call it life-affirming that Damiel, an eternal being, longs for a slice of this action.

Wenders’ film, then, is surely something to treasure, celebrating and honoring the perks of being human even in the face of incredible heaviness.  It’s not the kind of film that needs to preach its message, and even when the characters do start to monologue, it feels more like poetry.  In fact, that’s the perfect descriptor of this movie: poetic.  It does not need a clearly defined plot or even full-on trains of thought to impart its meaning.  Like many a poem, Wings of Desire is all about creating a mood, and after watching it, I know that I am in the mood to live.

On "Badge of Pride" and the Acceptance of LGBT Cops

A couple of months ago, I saw a short documentary feature called Badge of Pride, which portrayed that stuggles and hopes of openly gay cops in the Toronto Police Service.  At just under forty-five minutes of runtime, Badge of Pride is a tad too slight and relies heavily on the anecdotes of the interviewed officers, but Min Sook Lee's film does bring some important issues to light, and raises the question of how accepting of the LGBT community society actually is.

Naturally, society has come a long way is the past several decades, certainly when compared to the 1980s.  What is now Pride Week in Toronto was originally conceived as a protest against the 1981 police raids on Toronto's gay bathhouses, during which over 300 men were arrested (Badge).  Meanwhile, according to Michael R. Stevenson, a 1987 study of U.S. college freshmen found that "62.5% of men and 44.6% of women agreed that homosexual relations should be forbidden" (500).

Over time, tolerance and acceptance of homosexuals have increased, although problems still remain.  Jeni Loftus reports that between 1973 and 1998, while hostility to the LGBT community declined, every year a majority of Americans said that homosexuality was "always wrong" (767).  Keep in mind that it was not until 2003 that the Supreme Court of the United States, in the decision Lawrence v. Texas, struck down anti-sodomy laws as unconstitutional.

The same year that anti-sodomy laws were struck down in the United States, the case Halpern v. Attorney General of Canada legalized same-sex marriage in the province of Ontario.  Two years later, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of Toronto's Pride Week, the chief of Toronto's police took part in the proceedings.  Badge of Pride, which began filming in 2006, uses the apparent progressive swing as background for the film, and asks whether things have changed as much as we may think.

Badge of Pride follows four members of the Toronto Police Service: three constables (Jackie O'Keefe, Paul Regan, and Todd Hillhouse, the latter of whom was promoted to sergeant during filming) and a detective (Judy Nosworthy).  These four discuss their impressions of the workplace environment and what it means to be an out-of-closet member of the police force.  Sometimes the experience is positive, and other times their treatment is worrisome.

The question of whether the Toronto police is accepting of the LBGT community is best demonstrated in the contrast between Regan and O'Keefe's impressions.  Regan, who the filmmakers report as the most prominent openly gay cop in Toronto, reports having almost no problems from his coworkers or his superiors.  Though he does say that some of his partners are uncomfortable hearing about his sex life, Regan tends to be optimistic about his position and that state of gay cops in general.

O'Keefe, however, explicitly states that Regan's optimism is misplaced and believes that he will eventually come up against internal discrimination and harrassment.  O'Keefe speaks from her own experience; she mentions receiving threatening messages from a senior officer regarding her being a proudly open lesbian: "You have to remember who signs your checks," she recalls hearing, "and you have to remember who puts a roof over your head."

Sadly, the stories of the other two cops tends to support O'Keefe's side of the argument.  The harrassment from his comrades that Hillhouse faced was beyond absurd, up to and including his harrassers spying on his house from their squad car on the side of the road.  Nosworthy, meanwhile, compares the environment of the police department to that of a high school, with homophobic slurs thrown about on a regular basis.

It also appears that the strain of homophobia within the Toronto Police Service extends past individual officers and into the LGBT community as a whole.  After all, it wasn't until the year before Lee began filming that the police participated in Pride Week.  Gay-friendly heterosexual officers also appear reluctant to show their support, for fear of repercussions.  This is especially evident at Nosworthy's wedding--several of her coworkers attended, but none of them wished to appear on camera.

This makes O'Keefe's skepticism of Regan's outlook understandable, for certain, and Regan's camera presence--rarely looking directly at the camera or interviewer--suggests a reticence to talk.  However, it could also be that O'Keefe and Regan's viewpoints are influenced by their level of involvement in gay-related politics.  Lee describes O'Keefe as having been a "radical lesbian feminist" before joining the force, while Regan mentions thatthe whole Toronto pride scene just wasn't for him.

How much of the arguments presented in the film hold up today is unclear.  Badge of Pride was first screened in 2009, and must have wrapped up production well before then.  Several years have passed, and while, assuming past trends have not significantly altered, the Toronto of 2012 would be more accepting of gay cops than the Toronto of 2009.  But in the grand scheme of things, three years is not that long.  However one slices it, there is still a long way to go.

Works cited:
Badge of Pride. Dir. Min Sook Lee. PBS. WNET, New York, 27 June 2012.
     Television.

Halpern v. Attorney General of Canada. 60 O.R. 321. Court of Appeal for Ontario.
     2003. Ontario Courts. Judges' Library, n.d. Web. 28 June 2012.

Lawrence v. Texas. 539 U.S. 558. Supreme Court of the US. 2003. Supreme Court.
     Legal Information Inst., Cornell U Law School, n.d. Web. 28 June 2012.

Loftus, Jeni. "America's Liberalization in Attitudes toward Homosexuality, 1973 to
     1998." American Sociological Review 66.5 (2001): 762-82. JSTOR. Web. 28 June
     2012.

Stevenson, Michael R. "Promoting Tolerance for Homosexuality: An Evaluation of
     Intervention Strategies." The Journal of Sex Research 25.4 (1988): 500-11.
     JSTOR. Web. 28 June 2012.

Norma Rae (1979)

Norma Rae (1979)

Directed by Martin Ritt

Screenplay by Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr.

Runtime: 1 hr, 50 min

In the United States, organized labor has become progressively weaker, with the percentage of union workers in the labor pool well within single digits.  Such was not always the case, however, as conflicts between employers and unions were ever present.  I would hazard that most of us would associate these struggles with the Industrial Revolution: the Pullman strike, the lead up to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, etc.  But these conflicts continued well beyond that, and Norma Rae is based on one such effort.

Norma Rae Webster, played by Sally Field, is an analogue of Crystal Lee Sutton, a woman who fought to unionize the local textile factory.  The film naturally takes liberties with the real life events but several pivotal scenes are faithfully reproduced.  Norma Rae is something of an anomaly in her Southern town.  She has agitated with management before, has been with multiple men and is even willing to challenge the authority of the local church.  Whereas most everyone else is willing to maintain the status quo, Norma Rae is liable to shake things up.

It is this feistiness that draws the attention of Reuben Warshowsky (Ron Leibman), a union organizer from New York.  He thinks that she’d be a perfect driving force to unionize the factory’s laborers.  Unfortunately, Reuben’s efforts tend to be met with hostility or apathy.  Norma’s father (John Calvin) calls Reuben a communist, and Reuben is dismayed that only seventeen people, out of a workforce of 800, showed up to one of the organization meetings.  Clearly, winning over textile workers is an uphill battle.

Many of the problems faced in Norma Rae can be attributed to a fear of the “other”.  Reuben jokes that he figured all Southern men would be like Ashleigh Wilkes, yet not one mill family will let him stay at their residence.  Not only is he a union agitator from the North, but also he’s Jewish; Norma Rae tells him that she’s never seen a Jew in her life.  And unsurprisingly, race gets involved.  Norma Rae’s husband Sonny (Beau Bridges) is shocked that black men are in their house for a union meeting, and management plays on the white workers fears to disrupt the organizational process.

Yet Norma Rae and Reuben soldier on, and their actors make their struggles both gripping and human.  Sally Field has the spunk that her character needs, but all the stress in her life—the family and the union both need her attention, not to mention the whole textile worker thing—gradually build and wear on her, to the point where her mental health may be shaky.  Leibman, who for some reason reminds me of Cosmo Kramer, is both jovial and demanding, a wisecracker who is, make no mistake about it, on a mission.  And appropriately, his whole demeanor differs drastically from the rest of the town’s.

What Norma Rae and Reuben are up against is also well done, in that it actually isn’t done all that much.  There is no single villain in Norma Rae.  Yes, there’s the textile mill’s owners and management, but they’re not in the film that much, and when they are they tend to be shown all at once, so that no one character shines through.  The antagonist, then, is a force, something which drives a great many people against the union’s cause.  How exactly does one fight a force?  It sure as hell would be easier for them if the big bad were one evil dude.

The lack of this antagonistic person(s) does result in a film which seems to eschew some narrative elements.  There isn’t any moment where the heroes’ hopes appear shattered for any length of time—if there’s no one to overcome, then any setbacks can more easily be shrugged off as the norm.  I attribute part of this to some pacing issues.  Norma Rae gets arrested at one point and she tells her children that her name may be dragged through the mud.  Nothing really comes of this however, as the film just skips to the vote to unionize the factory.  An actual antagonist may have resulted in more focused obstacles and resolutions.

However, Norma Rae compensates this problem with a thoroughly oppressive atmosphere which is established almost immediately.  The pounding of machinery in the factory makes it difficult for people to hear and can easily induce temporary deafness.  Add on the pressure for workers to speed up their labors and continue to work despite any pain or numbness, and the result is a living hell within the factory walls.  In fact, this chaotic atmosphere is done so well that one would buy the total silence of the floor during a demonstration as something well worth celebrating.

Norma Rae itself is something worth celebrating.  Set aside whether unionization is actually beneficial for a second, because this film ultimately isn’t about that.  It’s not even about going up against some faceless concrete authority.  It’s a simple film about taking a stand for one’s beliefs and refusing to stand down.  Granted, to be in that position may mean the surrender of one’s reason momentarily, but it is still a powerful portrait of a woman with a goal, and by God she will not give up until that goal is reached.