Les frontières de la vie

The movie came as a rather pleasant surprise. I wasn't expecting much, not having heard of it among Grahame's usual list of noirs. Nonetheless, it's imaginatively directed and generally suspenseful, despite a one-note plot. Refugee Kaban (Gassman) arrives in New York as a stowaway, but will be deported if he doesn't track down a musician friend. So he searches the dives along Times Square looking for the guy he last saw in Europe. While he's tracking his friend, however, the cops are tracking him. There's also a number of sub-plots concerning people he meets on the way, who sort of drift in and out.

There's atmosphere a-plenty as director Shane takes the camera crew along Times Square's night beat, which amounts to a dazzling b&w light show. At the same time, Gassman's gaunt frame and few words add to the carnival of characters. Grahame has a sympathetic role, for a change, which may be why the film remains obscure. Here, she's mostly a tag- along with Gassman and then with the cops. But I really like the unknown Robin Raymond as the personality-plus stripper who lights up the screen in a brief role.

At first, I thought "the glass wall" referred to Kaban's inability to enter the country as a stowaway. But then, the many imposing shots of the glass slab of the UN building changed my reference. Nonetheless, it looks like a number of scenes were actually filmed in the UN, lending the story even more visual appeal. All in all, the movie's a pretty good dramatic travelogue of downtown NYC, slim on plot and dialog but fat on inventive visuals. It's also reminiscent of a time when Europe's post-war DP's (displaced persons) were much in the news.

The Glass Wall (1953)

A great idea, and two great leads--Gloria Grahame as a down and out single girl and Vittoria Gassman as a Eastern European illegal immigrant. And one mediocre directing job--by Maxwell Shane. I had just seen another Shane film that was pretty good, with some great performances ("The Naked Street" with a terrific Anthony Quinn) so I was looking forward to this. It has a great theme (facing the immigration system) and it turns our attention to the new world presence for justice, the United Nations. It also features some real musicians--Jack Teagarden and Shorty Rogers--and one straight small combo big band jazz number. (I put it that way because by 1953 the real scene in New York was bebop, this this style predates it.)

So, the best parts of this movie are terrific, mainly the middle section where the two leads help each other and start to fall in love, with hints of an urban "They Live by Night" in mood. But there are parts where you can't help but laugh, because they are either so improbable or the editing and acting is ridiculously off key. Director Shane also co-wrote this adventure, and here there are hiccups, too, even down to the central premise of a man facing deportation even though he has nowhere to go and has been on the run for a decade. For one, it's hard to believe the immigration laws were so blindly inflexible, but let's say they were. They have the reputation. But certainly New York City wouldn't get turned upside down for one man, not considered dangerous, who has slipped from custody. There are APBs and front page photos and a general panic on the order of Son of Sam.

But we understand the dilemma anyway. It's one man against the system, and that's always an easy one for choosing sides. Grahame plays a woman on the outs with great sympathy and conviction, and she's just the kind of hardened, soft-hearted girl you'd want to fall in with if you were on the lam. And the ending, as badly directed and edited as it is (you'll see), is pure Hitchcock for its setting and high drama. We are taken inside the new United Nations building called the Secretariat in Manhattan (the International Style Le Corbusier skyscraper was finished in 1952), in what must be the first Hollywood movie to do so (and perhaps the last in this manner until "The Interpreter" in 2005, the site being secret and guarded enough that Hitchcock himself in 1958 had to use a model instead of the real location).

This is one case where someone could re-edit it and have something of a minor gem, with high points making it worth the effort. As it is, the speed bumps are nearly fatal.

I'm no authority on the film noir genre, but Glass Wall had enough of the elements as I understand them -- gritty, urban streets; smoky, downstairs jazz rooms; beaten-down characters with nothing to lose; an urban milieu that suggests a struggle for existence; and the overbearing presence of authority -- to be a very satisfying film for me. The plot is simple, has elements of suspense, and is a bit contrived at times, particularly near the end, but I found it easily sustained my interest throughout the film. In a nutshell, a Hungarian refugee, Peter Kaban, who has stowed away on a ship docked in New York's port, is denied entry, and thus escapes into the streets of NYC where he must find the man (now a club musician) whose life as a soldier he saved in Europe during the war, and he must find him before the immigration authorities, supplemented by the police, find him, and before 7:00 AM the next day when the ship leaves port and his legal status becomes such that he would then never receive legal permission for entry into the U.S. New York's gritty survivors either aid him or exploit him, and nobody's life looks easy.

Much of the film, particularly the street scenes, were said to be filmed with hidden cameras, and that touch gives an active, life-like realism to Glass Wall. The city looks so vibrant and active at night with the various types of humanity jostling each other for a good time, companionship, or just simple survival, economic or otherwise. Vittorio Gassman plays the Kaban role, and perhaps he looks too delicately good-looking to suggest the utter determination of his character as he roams the streets of New York, while severely injured and harassed by almost everyone, to prevent deportation back to Hungary; but for sure,a handsome face on a character hardened by concentration camp experiences can mask an iron will. You have to root for Peter Kaban because despite the horrendous experiences of his brief life, his personality retains a decency and kindness that eventually wins over his initial, also desperate, female accomplice and also helps with his other female helper. Eight points for making Times Square look again to be a social magnet on what has to be a bustling Saturday night!

Aboard a Liberty ship, Vittorio Gassman passes the Statue of Liberty, prior to docking in New York, only to be informed that as a stowaway, the authorities are not at liberty to grant his liberty and accuse him of attempting to take liberties. What a liberty!

Desperate to avoid deportation and sustaining broken ribs in the process (just to add to the missing finger nails and bayonet wound he has already received courtesy of Hitler), Gassman succeeds in jumping ship and escaping into the city. His objective is to locate Tom, (Jerry Paris), a jazz clarinetist and former soldier, whose life he saved during the war. Proof that he contributed to the allied cause will allow him permanent residency in the U. S., but it is a manic race against time and in a city of eight million people, the odds are not in his favour.

Enthralled by the razzle dazzle, the affluence, opulence and optimism of Times Square by night, including the shot of a cinema showing Alan Ladd and Lizabeth Scott's Red Mountain, he remains, nonetheless immersed in the trauma of his own past and uncomfortably isolated. His search leads him to several jazz joints, where we are treated to cameos by Jack Teagarden, Shorty Rogers and the all too fleetingly glimpsed vanguard of the quiet avante-garde, groundbreaking saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre.

Along the way, he befriends misfit and kindred spirit Gloria Grahame, on the run from unwisely stealing burly Kathleen Freeman's coat, which would have looked like something from Rent a Tent draped over her comparatively sleek frame. Ignoring Petula Clark's advice they decide that the subway is the safest place to spend the night, before the anguished immigrant makes his last-ditch attempt to reach the U. N. building.

Gassman ticks all the boxes as the troubled, insecure loner, haunted by a tortured, mysterious past, injured, on the lam and embroiled in a race against the clock. The rest of the cast consists of officialdom, Gassman sympathizers and jazz musicians. Not even a whiff of a femme fatale, a corrupt syndicate or a hoodlum in this unusual noir. The closest we come to a gangster is an acne ridden teenage street punk, who hopes that Grahame gets hit by a garbage truck.

There is much to applaud in The Glass Wall, but it's not all good news....and on that subject, would one illegal immigrant REALLY be the hottest story in New York, dominating all the front pages? Whilst Joe Turkel's swaggering, over the top tirade smacks of an 'I'm way too cool for THIS movie' bravura. Gassman himself falls victim to the over acting bug, delivering a tsunami of idealistic platitudes concluding with an impassioned 'Nobody listens!' before promptly scarpering from the people who ARE prepared to listen and taking the world's fastest elevator to the roof.

However, the compassionate nature of the subject matter, the performances of Grahame and Gassman, with their 'You and me against the world' mantra, sharply tapping into our empathy with the underdog, the sights and sounds of Times Square under darkness and the jazz vignettes, all synergize to carry this movie over the line. Confronted by The Glass Wall, can those who love and support Gassman provide him with... The Glass Key?

This film is a tribute by the amazing cinematographer, Joseph Biroc, to New York of the 50s. It's a movie that is stunning to watch as it serves to document the fun that New York was in that period after WWII. The splendid night photography of the Times Square area before the arrival of the seediness of the ensuing years, and today's theme park feeling, makes us forget that that it served as the mecca of entertainment and night life in Manhattan. We get to watch the crowds and some of the films that were playing at the time.

The director, Maxwell Shane, presents a story that might have been dramatic at the time, but in the global village, where illegal aliens are all over the city and the country, this movie shows a dated take on things since everything is different now. This is the era that Arthur Miller presented in "A View from the Bridge" about the illegal immigrants. America wasn't a tolerant nation at the time!

Vittorio Glassman, one of Italy's best actors, plays the stowaway that comes to America only to be refused entrance. No one can believe his story of survival in the European concentration camps. When he escapes into the streets of Manhattan we get the feel of what the town was like. Mr. Glassman whose body of work in the Italian cinema was unique, shows an interesting portrait as the man who is not wanted in America.

Gloria Grahame, as the girl out of luck in the naked city, plays the woman who befriends Kaban and believes him. Jerry Paris is Tom, the former G.I. who was helped by Kaban in Europe. Robin Raymond is Tanya the stripper with a heart of gold who takes Kaban home out the kindness of her heart.

The scenes at the United Nations are magnificently staged. The chase to a recently inaugurated building is one of the best things of the movie. Finally, everything that went wrong is put to order and Kaban is redeemed as a hero and a man who has told the truth from the beginning.