Le mura di Gerico

Holy Marcel! What a soap opera! Going into this film, you would think this was a film with Cornel Wilde and Kirk Douglas battling each other. Not at all. Its about the ladies - and they are magnificent.

First there is dipsomaniac Ann Dvorac. She is stuck in an unhappy marriage with Wilde, but won't let him go.

Then there is Anne Baxter. She has loved Wilde since childhood. Wilde falls in love with her. Its 1910. They can't do anything about it.

Then there is Linda Darnell. She is married to Kirk Douglas. He is Wolfe's former best friend and thanks to his ambitious wife, his political rival. She also loves Wilde, but when he rebufs her advances she wants revenge. She does this through ambition, gossip and slander. She accomplishes all this with subtlety, which makes her twice as dangerous.

Of course this all ends up going in circles. What do they do in soap operas to keep the drama going? Throw in a murder trial and a shooting!

All three ladies are stunning in appearance, style and performances. Kirk Douglas doesn't bother fighting for a place or even seem to question, "What's Cornell got that I haven't?"

This is a very local soap opera in a small town in the midwest where everyone knows everybody and boredom is escaped by garden parties and rural balls with pianolas, while there is some trouble brewing under the surface. The county attorney Cornel Wilde is married to Ann Dvorak, an alcoholic, and the leading town nespaper man Kirk Douglas brings a bombshell beauty for a wife to town called Linda Darnell. She outshines everyone else and is the most dangerous of all. Gradually Anne Baxter sails up to challenge her in the last moment, but then this surprisingly good film has already advanced into high gear drama ending up in a murder trial.

At first you will suspect that the argument will be about drinking problems, especially as Kirk makes an issue of it in his paper and Cornel's wife never shows herself except when drunk. Neither couple has any children. Kirk is the one who at an early stage wonders why any man should ever marry a woman, and his question proves reasonable, when it is all too late.

Alfred Newman provides the music, always amazingly reliably excellent, and the environment of a small midwest very conventional town around 1910 is endearingly charming. You will be surprised to find such a small local world being able to come up with such a very intriguing drama.

From 1948, The Walls of Jericho stars Cornel Wilde, Linda Darnell, Kirk Douglas, and Anne Baxter, directed by John Stahl.

Wilde plays Dave Connors, the county attorney in the small town of Jericho, Kansas, at the turn of the century. He's loved by the townspeople and is considering a run for Congress. His life isn't an easy one: his wife (Ann Dvorak) is a drunk and unpleasant.

When his best friend, newspaperman Tucker Wedge (Douglas) introduced Dave to his new wife Algeria (Darnell), it's obvious she's used to a much fancier way of life. She also immediately attracted to Dave.

When she can't get anywhere with him, she convinces her husband to start a campaign about problems in town and blame Dave - except there aren't any problems. Then she convinces Tucker to run for Congress.

Dave, however, is in love with Julia (Anne Baxter) - it's a chaste love, but when they finally declare themselves, he realizes if he runs for Congress, he will never be able to see her even platonically. So he drops out, thwarting Algeria's plans yet again.

Julia leaves town anyway. However, circumstances, bring them back together. Just what Tucker's wife was waiting for.

Darnell has a real Gene Tierney conniver role here - in fact, Gene was set to play it - and she does it well. Anne Baxter is appropriately noble. Cornel Wilde never did it for me. He just can't warm up the camera.

The direction is somewhat static. I saw this on YouTube where all the background noise is described as "applause"

Cornell Wilde is the county attorney in the small Kansas town of Jericho. His best friend is Kirk Douglas, the editor of the local newspaper. Wilde is running for Congress, but the appearance of Anne Baxter, who left town a child and has come back a lawyer, stops Wilde from running. He does not wish to go to Washington with his always angry wife, Ann Dvorak. Instead, Douglas and his gossipy wife, Linda Darnell go to Congress, and Miss Baxter leaves for Kansas City rather than begin a "tawdry, backstreet affair." But when Colleen Townsend is accused of murdering a man in Jericho. Miss Baxter calls in Wilde to get her back to Jericho and assist in the defense.... despite the gossip.

It's director John Stahl's last tear jerker, a genre he excelled in in the 1930s. He would round off his career with two light comedies and die in 1950 at the age of 63. At first I wondered why Stahl had been the choice for this movie, instead of 20th Century-Fox's resident master of small-town life, Henry King. The answer soon became clear. The set pieces that open the movie are looks at the neighborhoods and relationships during the Mauve Decade that offer edgy, disapproving looks at the small-minded and evilly gossipy people who make the venue a purgatory, even as sentimental songs come out of Victrolas and pianolas. Stahl excelled in the portrayal of nastiness under the calm facade. King liked small towns.

I didn't enjoy the movie much. This sort of weeper has never been my cup of tea, and the big ending with a trial, a shooting, and Wilde lying in a hospital bed, possibly dying (surely not in a Hollywood movie!) was way over the top for me. But there's no arguing that Stahl's acerbic attitude toward the "nice" people is on full display here.

I applaud any movie that has a lot of dramatic incidents but doesn't spill over into melodrama. This is one that fits the bill! Between the alcoholism, unhappy marriages, potential adulterous affairs, town scandals, and a murder trial, it was never overdone or overacted. There are a lot of familiar faces here (Cornell Wilde, Anne Baxter, Kirk Douglas, Linda Darnell, Ann Dvorak, barton MacLane) and they all play their parts well.

Anyone would want to see these walls of Jericho come tumbling down ("Where are you, Joshua?"), ones that keep you in a bad marriage, make you the victim of vicious gossip, and keep you from someone you love.

The ending is left rather ambiguous, as the way it's shown, you're not quite sure if it's going to be happy or sad. I'm opting for happy!