Storm Center

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.

In today's environment--with civil liberties in question and with a book praising Joe McCarthy on the best-seller lists--this powerful and eloquent anti-censorship film needs to be reissued. Bette Davis plays a small-town librarian asked to remove a communist-oriented book from her library. The city council tries to buy her off by offering to build a children's wing to the library that she has been asking for--after thinking, she refuses to remove the book. Not only do they try to take her job from her, but she becomes the target of a smear campaign based on half-truths and innuendo. As other reviews have

stated, both the "good" and the "bad" characters are three-dimensional, and Paul Kelly in particular is superb as an old friend of Bette's who tries to defend her but is caught up in the hysteria. The scene where Kelly is asked to vote to condemn her, pauses, and lowers his head in shame is quite moving. Columbia always made good, solid B-movies, and the direct, matter-of- fact presentation of this material only strengthens the overall impact. Also, The musical score, although subtle and not calling attention to itself, is perfectly crafted. In fact, the film is filled with nice little touches. Note to Columbia/Sony: put this out on DVD immediately! It will get uniformly positive reviews from the critics and it has a message needed now more than ever. If you have any opportunity to see this, do not miss it.

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.

Between the time that Bette Davis finished THE STAR and her appearance in POCKETFUL OF MIRACLES, none of her films was an outstanding box office success. This was not a problem that she alone suffered. Only a handful of the stars of the 1930s and 1940s were able to maintain their starring positions in the 1950s, many being plagued by bad health, aging, or blacklisting. Davis at least still had some films to appear in, including this forgotten one: STORM CENTER. For a woman who was (at the time) washed up, Davis demonstrated she could still deliver a restrained and intelligent performance in a picture with an important message.

THIS CONTAINS SPOILERS

STORM CENTER is about politics and censorship. Davis is a librarian, and is only concerned in running her town library as well as possible, and in encouraging literacy among the children of the town. One of the children is played by Kevin Coughlin, a wonderful child actor who would grow into a capable actor before being killed in a traffic accident when only 30 years old. Kevin is bookish - too bookish according to his "know nothing" blue-collar father (Joe Mantell). There is a struggle or tug of war between Mantell, wanting his son to be more like a typical boy (i.e. a sports oriented kid) and Davis, who wants Kevin's mind to grow.

Adding to her problems is that a book in the library that Davis has put out is controversial. A number of citizens would like it removed. Brian Keith, a new member of the city council, decides to take this up as a political issue (for his own advantage, of course). Soon, all sorts of pressures are put on Davis to get rid of the nasty book, and she refuses to do so. The pressures turn nastier and nastier. Despite the support of an old friend (Paul Kelly), Davis faces dismissal. In the meantime Kevin has been affected by the near hysteria sweeping through the town. His father is pretty happy about that - maybe his son will become normal. The father lets Kevin know that the problem is the library itself. So Kevin, in his own hysterical state, sets fire to the town's library.

I saw this film only once, back in the 1970s. The arson sequence always remained with me, for the director/writer Daniel Taradash, showed the names of the titles of the burning books throughout the building. There is a build-up in the titles, as most are classic or well known works, but the last is a life of Jesus Christ - certainly the last person most right wing American fanatics would think of destroying (at least in their claimed rhetoric) from among all potential targets.

There is a sense of shame at the conclusion from Keith and the townspeople, but Davis shows no triumph over them. She simply starts planning to rebuild the library, and starts planning to help Kevin regain his normal state of mind.

It was a fine piece of film, and it is a pity it is so little known or remembered. More people should have a chance to watch it and decide for themselves about it.

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.