The Pride of the Yankees (1942)

There are a select few baseball players that are remembered for their character off of the field as much as their prowess on it: Lou Gehrig was one of those players.  Directed by Sam Wood, The Pride of the Yankees starred Gary Cooper as the iconic first baseman with Teresa Wright playing Eleanor, his beloved wife.  The film was released to critical acclaim in 1942, the year after Gehrig tragically died.  Equal parts of baseball, romance, and tragedy make The Pride of the Yankees refreshingly different from most of the inspiring sports movies that have frequented cineplexes for decades.

Lou Gehrig is a typical American child, he desires only to play baseball for the New York Yankees and to please his domineering mother.  His problem is that in order to please his mother, he must give up baseball (though he has prodigious skill with the bat) and become an engineer like his Uncle Otto.  He manages to juggle both his studies and baseball until monetary issues force his hand while he is a student at Columbia: his mother's hospital bills necessitate quick cash that a signing bonus from the Yankees can provide.  Gehrig quickly rises through the minor leagues and is called up to the majors.  He meets the charming Eleanor on the way up to his first at-bat; he trips and she quickly christens him "Tanglefoot" to Gehrig's embarrassment and the crowd's delight.  As Gehrig develops into one of the game's most beloved stars, he falls in love with and eventually weds Eleanor.  Gehrig leads a blissfully happy life, accumulating accolades for his play and respect for his character while setting the record for the most consecutive games played.  One day, illness causes Gehrig to take himself out of the lineup (for the first time in 2130 games) so as to not be a detriment to the team.  A visit to the doctor reveals that the "Iron Horse" is dying; the Yankees host a "Lou Gehrig Day" at the ballpark to commemorate the man.  The film ends with Gehrig's famous speech to the crowd.

The film's greatest strength is Gary Cooper in the lead role, his stiff and often awkward demeanor in the film is ideal  for Gehrig and his apparently sinless existence.  The sole downside of casting Cooper was his age, he was around forty when he played Gehrig: his age distracted from his performance for much of the film's runtime.  It was, and is, nearly impossible to have a forty-something actor play an eighteen year old college student.  Teresa Wright (in one of her first roles) is charming as Lou Gehrig's beloved Eleanor and Walter Brennan does his typical good work in his supporting role as Gehrig's sport-writer friend.  Not to forget Babe Ruth, the film's most famous cast member, who appears on screen in several (brief) scenes; though his appearance appears as more of a novelty than a tribute to Gehrig.

The film is immensely predictable in both the romance and sports portions of the plot, the main difference between the The Pride of the Yankees and other sports films of the same variety is the tragic element that comes into play during the final act.  The romantic portion of the film (which is most of it) is characterized by the fairy-tale-esque relationship that develops between Gehrig and Eleanor.  A scene takes place where Gehrig suggests that he goes to spring training without her so she does not get bored, not ten seconds pass before they run into each others arms because they could not possibly stand to be apart for that long: if it wasn't so gosh darn sweet it would be sickening.  The relationship between Gehrig and his mother has heavy Oedipal overtones during the first half of the film, but abandons them midway through it.  It was a mistake to include them at all.  It was not sweet.  It was just creepy.  A film's portrayal of a domineering mother's relationship with her son does not have to be Oedipal to be effective.  One thing to be noted is that there has rarely been a movie character to approach death with the amount of dignity that Cooper's Gehrig does in The Pride of the Yankees.

The Pride of the Yankees is one thing above all else: a tribute to the man, and in that manner the film works.  Though in the end Gehrig's life story makes for merely an interesting film and not an essential one, with the well-cast Cooper and Wright doing good work despite the (unavoidably) clichéd nature of the film. 

6/10

Note: This review was previously posted on another blog that I wrote.

High Noon (1952)

Cinema, despite its indisputable international nature, often has genres or themes that are closely tied with a particular region or nation; perhaps no instance of this is as notable as the Western's intimate link, both thematically and geographically, with the United States.  High Noon is a Western film unlike any other that had preceded it, its inherent uniqueness primarily stems from its nearly unheard of decision to allow its characters to move beyond the typical stereotypes of the fearless hero, the dutiful sidekick, and the supportive wife and townspeople.  Directed by Fred Zinnemann, the film stars Gary Cooper as Sheriff Will Kane with Grace Kelly, and Lloyd Bridges in supporting roles as his new bride and his deputy, respectively.

The film opens with Will Kane, a respected and highly competent sheriff in a small town, being married to his young Quaker bride Amy in a courthouse.  The newlyweds plan on leaving town that morning to open a general store somewhere where his violent profession and her haunted memories (both her father and brother were gunned down previously) will not sour their marriage.  Their happiness is short-lived as news comes in that the most dangerous man Kane ever put behind bars, Frank Miller, is out on a legal technicality and arriving on a train that morning with the intent to murder Kane and reclaim the town he once controlled.  Kane determines to stay in town to face both his enemy and his fears, while the townspeople remain inactive due to their own fear of Miller's retribution.  Amy, a pacifist, refuses to accept Kane's reasoning that Miller would follow them until Kane was dead if he did not face him now and threatens to leave without him.  His deputy sees Kane's bravery and determination as insulting to his own character, causing him to back away from his duties and lash out against Kane; this causes a rift with his lover Helen Ramirez, who had been involved with the honor-bound sheriff in the past.  As the clock ticks along, Kane's internal struggle with his fears, his duties, and the revelation of the true character of all of the people that he had protected during his years as sheriff comes to a head when he goes out alone to face the man intent on making his new bride a widow.

High Noon, at first glance, appears to be a standard, run-of-the-mill Western film, of the sort that Cooper had starred in prior to (and after, for that matter) High Noon.  The changes to the standard format implemented by Zinnemann and the writers are inspired.  The use of real time allowed for the tension that the audience feels while watching to build in tandem with the fear and hesitation felt by Kane.  Real time, though not unique to the film, is used in such a way that the film is able to seem both frantic and meditative simultaneously; the combined effect packs a blow aimed squarely at those blacklisting artists in Hollywood powerful enough to cause those who were preaching in favor of McCarthyism to lash out in protest and rage. John Wayne and Howard Hawks were appalled enough by the film to make Rio Bravo in protest, the film was decent but is hardly the masterwork or genre-transcending film that High Noon is.

The greatest strength that High Noon as a film possesses is the performance of Will Kane given by Gary Cooper.  Cooper, one of cinema's most beloved and enduring stars, took the character of the small town sheriff and did something unheard of at the time: he portrayed the hero as human.  Kane asked for help, he showed apprehension, and he struggled with his choices, but he still showed up to face his fears and defend himself and the town that essentially turned his back on him.  The willingness to have the hero be a character worth admiring and emulating, as well as someone with the potential for fear and failure elevated High Noon into the  upper echelons of Western cinema, and cinema in general.  The other actors in the film perform ably, especially Lloyd Bridges as the immature and petty deputy who cannot conceive of why Kane would stand and fight alone when he could so easily run.  Grace Kelly is nice to look at, but her performance as the pacifistic Amy is stale and does not demonstrate her skills as an actress like later films (particulalry those directed by Alfred Hitchcock) would.

All in all, High Noon is both an enjoyable Western and a fascinating parable on the foolishness of assuming that those around you are also willing to protect and assist you in times of crisis (whether that crisis is a villain arriving on a train or a senator obsessed with rooting out communists).  Gary Cooper gives one of his best performances as Will Kane and proved, for the umpteenth time, why he was and is one of America's favorite movie stars.  High Noon is not a long film, but it still remains one of the biggest ones, in terms of importance and daring, to have ever been filmed.

10/10

Note: This review was previously posted on another blog I wrote.