groening-2

I found "Out of the Fog" to be a dreary film, in part because it takes place entirely at night (in a Hollywood studio's version of the slums of Brooklyn), and in part because its take on human nature is bleak.

John Garfield, as a small-time gangster, offers up no redeeming qualities; he's pure evil in a smarmy sort of way, and so not very interesting. According to TCM's Robert Osborne, Humphrey Bogart was considered for this role. Though Garfield was strong in other movies, I believe Bogie would have brought more to the table in this one than we see from Garfield.

Ida Lupino as the working class girl who wants to see a bigger, brighter world, falls equally short. She's sweet and kind to her father, yet dates Garfield's Goff character even after learning that Goff is shaking down dear old Dad. Her acting fails to reconcile these two facts (although the screenplay may equally be to blame).

Though "Out of the Fog" apparently had its roots in socialist perspective, it comes off as patronizing; the working class folk should be happy with their lot, it suggests, and when their pleas for help are ignored by their government (represented by the court here), their only ally is the working class cop who walks the local beat.

"Out of the Fog" fails as a film noir crime drama and as a morality tale. The ending is happy -- though everyone we're supposed to care about returns to their bleak existence -- but it is an unsatisfying resolution.

Seeing this film 30 years after its release makes its intentions clearer then when I saw it back then, but it still fails to deliver fully.

One way of understanding "Shampoo" is as a movie about the '60s. It may be hard for some to believe today, but by 1975 the '60s, as a culturally time-stamped era, were over. Long over. The '60s really began with John F. Kennedy's assassination and ended with Richard Nixon's resignation (November 1963 to August 1974). The times and the atmosphere had changed by the mid-1970s, probably because the youth rebellion movement fractured as the Vietnam War wound down, and because many student radicals either "joined the human race" (as a Steely Dan song from the period put it), became more radical underground, or went off to live in the woods somewhere.

But what does "Shampoo" mean to say about those wild years? Warren Beatty's George character takes pains to note that he's not a hippie. And he's not. He's devoid of social and political values, and he says, late in the film, that he has no interest in fighting the Establishment. What he is interested in is casual sex -- and that certainly was part of the social upheaval of those years -- and he's interested in hair styles. But not much more. So is the film suggesting that in the end, the '60s were about soulless, casual sex and hair? It's not by accident that the film takes places in the 24-hour period in which Nixon becomes president. And the film was made just after (or just before?) Nixon resigned in disgrace. The TV clips of Nixon and his vice president Spiro Agnew expressing their hope for an open and inclusive government ring funny but sadly against what we know would follow. Is "Shampoo" saying that with all the partying and hedonism, the younger generation missed the boat and allowed Nixon to get elected? Interestingly, George doesn't vote, nor do we see any of his women friends voting, or even acknowledging the election.

Or is "Shampoo" about the shallow California lifestyle that was fully ripe by the mid-1970s? The Eagles' landmark album statement "Hotel California," which savaged the vapidity of that cocaine- and sex-addled culture, was released just a year after this film (see also Jackson Browne's song, "The Pretender"). It also occurs to me that Beatty may be satirizing himself -- or at least the version of himself that Carly Simon satirized in "You're So Vain" -- in this role.

"Shampoo" is worth seeing to understand the reassessment of the '60s that was already underway by the mid-1970s. But films like "Deer Hunter" and "Nashville" I think do it better. "Shampoo" falls short in that we can't really sympathize with Beatty's character, or with anyone else. The perspective we have is as distanced and as numb as George is in his relationships with women. There's lots of "fucking," as George puts it, but not much building tension or release achieved here.

In the end, it's not entirely clear what the film is saying about 1968, 1975 or about people like George.

"Secret Command" wastes what must have been a fairly large budget and high-power cast on a predictable story with little suspense or drama.

Pat O'Brien is miscast in the leading man role, failing to convey the quiet masculine strength and sexuality called for here.

The home-life scenes, with the European orphans, designed to tug at our heart strings, don't quite work either, and detract from the drama of the hunt for Nazis in the shipyard. And our hero is never really put in any danger.

I have a fondness for the World War II propaganda flicks, but even I didn't warm to this one. What I generally like about the propaganda films is that they have some edge to them, since they are dealing with life and death stuff. "Secret Command" seems to go light on these elements.

A posted comment questioned "Secret Command" winning a special effects Oscar, and I found myself wondering about that as well. I concluded that the underwater shots, and the (apparent) location shots on the crane were considered "special" effects in the 1940s. (Today we assume special effects relates to only fabricated shots or images.)