Storm Center

This is a very flawed movie but well worth watching. We all live in a world saturated with politically correct nonsense as demonstrated by the reviews of this over-the-top parody of selfrighteousness. Just to set the record a bit straighter, McCarthy was not interested in banning books. Actually that was more in keeping with the mission of HUAC, aka Bobby Kennedy, et al. Tailgunner Joe was interested in communists working within the government to bring the United States down. Anyone remember Alger Hiss? To give this confused and confusing movie its due, we can all agree that book banning is bad and book burning is worse. That said, this movie is right on point that books should be exposed to light and air but never to flames. The best thing about the movie is the fact that the librarian actually loved the children more than the books. Let us enjoy Bette and the movie for what it is and not follow it into the soul deadening and intellectually arid wasteland of political correctness.

Plot-- A town librarian follows her conscience by refusing to remove a communist book from the library. This sets off a chain of events as the town struggles to find its own civic conscience.

Please allow me a moment before turning to the movie itself, which is notable for being the first to take on the purges of what's known as the McCarthy era. Importantly, there's a popular assumption that has arisen about that period and goes with the movie. I want to briefly question that assumption.

Put simply, the main misconception about the McCarthy era (early 1950's) is that it failed. In a sense the movie reflects that misconception in its ending, when the community resolves to rebuild the library. Nonetheless, the right-wing purges of New Deal liberals from positions of influence (Henry Wallace among the most notable) succeeded by leaving a permanent imprint on the nation's political direction. More importantly, the chill that went through liberal ranks led to considerable self-censorship, sinking any hopes that the US might expand New Deal policies into European-type social democracy. Being branded a "com-symp" could not only get a person dismissed from positions of influence, (teaching, engineering, administration, union leadership, etc.), but also risk established relationships, whether personal or professional. Popular history likes to think the period was something our liberal democracy got over quickly once McCarthy was censured. But the senator was only a spokesman of a broader powerplay, the effects of whose chill last to the present day. That's especially evident in the constricted nature of the Democratic Party, which never recovered from the loss of its progressive New Deal Wing. Nor, for that matter, did the vigor of the union movement. In sum, the fact that the Senator himself crashed and burned should not be confused with the success of the program as a whole, which was much greater than popular history likes to admit.

The movie itself is safely centrist, reducing the highly charged Cold War issues to the single one of free speech, a constitutional right that presumably principled liberals and conservatives could both support. Nor does the movie risk political partisanship by caricaturing the opposing factions. After all, the censorship faction has a point: we're in a war, they assert. It may be a cold war, but it's a war, no less. And censorship is accepted in wartime. To that, the movie libertarians reply that freedom of speech must be preserved to distinguish us from our totalitarian enemy, (presumably the unmentioned Soviets), otherwise we loose a key difference.

As to the movie itself, the acting is low-key, though Davis oh-so-perfectly enunciates her lines, while the boy's (Coughlin) melodramatic part appears badly over-done. I assume writer Tarradash was using the boy to symbolize what could happen to the younger generation should the anti-intellectual push get a toe-hold. The photography is rather flat b&w, presumably not to distract from the key message. Overall, it's not a particularly distinguished production apart from its place in film history. But, whatever else, the hopeful message should not be allowed to detract from the lasting ill-effects of that crucial period.

I guess I'll have to be the outlier here and state that "Storm Center" is an overdone B movie starring Bette Davis. The premise is excellent -a librarian, Mrs. Hull (Davis) refuses to remove a book about Communism from the library. An ambitious politician, played by Brian Keith, discovers that Mrs. Hull joined a few organizations during the war that were Communist fronts. The fact that she quit them when she realized this doesn't make much of an impression on him. She ends up losing her job and being branded a Communist.

There isn't any doubt that a Communist was about the worst thing you could be called or suspected of being in the '50s, and the film makes an excellent point about the damage gossip and innuendo can do, and how people used the accusations as a soap box for their own means. The main problem I had with the film was the 9-year-old boy (Kevin Coughlin) who was close to Mrs. Hull and turns on her once his idiot father badmouths her. I'm sorry, but are we supposed to believe this kid is normal, and his reactions are because he thinks this woman is a Communist? The kid is another Unibomber in the making - a deeply disturbed child. I just can't blame it on Communist rumors.

Davis gives a good, if mannered performance, and is very effective when she talks about how she could have stood anything but the children turning away from her. "Storm Center" has a good message even today, but I could have done without the psycho kid.

Bette Davis plays the title role and in fact she is the Storm Center of this film, a librarian who wouldn't remove a book from the shelf called The Communist Dream. Bette had the notion that those who want to should read the book and find out if it was a dream or a nightmare.

This is one of Davis's best performances, one that had it been in an A film might have earned her another Academy Award nomination. Bette plays a World War I widow whose work is her life as a librarian in your average small town USA. The character is very close to the real Davis who remarked that work is the one thing in life that is stable and when done well, will give you more satisfaction and no pain than any relationship.

A chance remark by her associate at the library, Kim Hunter to Brian Keith a city councilman she's dating sends the ambitious Keith off on a Red hunt. Keith finds out that she joined many do gooder organizations back in the day later labeled Communist fronts and together with the aforementioned book is proof positive that the Red Menace has come to town.

There's also a subplot involving young Kevin Coughlin, a bright young kid who totally does not connect with his blue collar dad, Joe Mantell. Davis has befriended him, but when the stories about her start to circulate faster than the library books out, he turns on her most dramatically and sets the stage for the film's climax. If there was a special award that year for best performance by a child, Coughlin would have taken it hands down.

Writer Daniel Taradash directed Storm Center in his one and only time in the director's chair, he should have done more. There are a lot of carefully done small performances in Storm Center showing a lot of small town types. Taradash carefully did his characters, there are no stereotypes as you might expect in a film like this.

Two of Davis's most consistent supporters are café owner Joseph Kearns and minister Edward Platt. I liked Platt's performance very much, the minister is not some bible thumping right-wing clown, but a very intelligent man who understands what the Constitution and the First Amendment are all about.

Paul Kelly has a nice performance here as well, one of his last. He plays a judge who is a decent man, but a guy inclined to always go along and take the easy way out. He's Davis's long time friend and he thinks he's giving her good advice in telling her to just go along with the majority wishes.

Sad to say Storm Center is maybe more relevant today than it was at the time it was out. Back then it was a book called The Communist Dream, today it's Heather Has Two Mommies. All over America there are politicians like Keith looking to make cheap points exploiting prejudice.

Storm Center is an underrated gem of a film, one of the best in Davis's career. There's an old adage in that when you talk about the Bill of Rights you're a conservative, when you actually try to put them in practice you're a radical. I've rarely seen that demonstrated better on screen than in Storm Center and the performances of Brian Keith and Bette Davis.

There is just a handful of contemporary movies from the fifties dealing with that dark chapter of McCarthyism. "Invasion of the body snatchers" and the allegoric western "Silver Lode" are well known. Hence it's strange that this one, probably the most decided and direct anti-McCarthyism movie of them all, is almost forgotten today. Screenwriter Daniel Taradash's ("Picnic" / "From here to Eternity") directorial debut "Storm Center" is utterly convincing and politically correct. There are fine performances throughout (especially Brian Keith does a good job), and even the kid actors are bearable. The title credits are an early artwork by Saul Bass who obviously must have been involved in directing the climactic burning books sequences.