Arrowsmith

Here is John Ford’s very first Oscar nominated film.  Let’s just say he could only go up from here.

Arrowsmith is based on the novel by Sinclair Lewis about a young medical research scientist with so much potential.  All Martin Arrowsmith’s (Ronald Colman) life seems to be in preparation to be a great scientist.  He’s told by his professor and mentor that he could do great things in the world of research, but Martin meets a young nurse, Leora (Helen Hayes) and marries.  A research scientists salary won’t support them, so they move to her hometown in South Dakota and Martin becomes the town’s doctor.

Throughout the film, the men of science who work in laboratories trying to find cures for diseases look down on private doctors.  They write them off as pill distributors, only helping one person at a time.  These lab rats seem to thrive on the idea that though their work may be slow and tedious, their rewards will be much greater in the end.  It seems that Martin is selling out.

Martin quickly finds out that he’s not very good at practicing medicine.  It’s not so much that he’s a bad doctor, but that he is not motivated by running house to house distributing pills.  When a disease breaks out among the town’s cattle, Martin steps into the case, just for fun.  He ends up turning his kitchen into a lab and creating a serum to cure the infected cattle.  We easily see that he’s more invigorated by creating medicine rather than delivering babies or pulling children’s loose teeth.

Word soon gets around about Martin, the cow doctor, and when Leora loses their baby they decide to move back to New York, where Martin will work under his old professor again.  His research starts slow at first and of course once he’s a little discouraged he makes a great discovery.  Along this time there’s also an outbreak of plague, which propels the Arrowsmiths to go to the West Indies to see if his newly discovered medicine can help.

All that just seems like perfect timing, don’t it?  But don’t worry, the travels prove to be tragic and Myrna Loy shows up as a beautiful Hollywood headliner in the last quarter who doesn’t really have much other purpose in the film.  Hard to believe this trite plot line has been reused for over eighty years now.

Honestly, this seems like one of the first boring biographical films made just for an Oscar buzz.  It’s not biographical, but it has that sort of feel, building Arrowsmith up to some hero with all sorts of drama around him.  I don’t know how well the film follows the novel, (perhaps Loy’s character has more time and purpose) but I think you’d get much more satisfaction out of any novel than this film.

“That’s no compliment, it’s a scientific fact.”

 

A Farewell to Arms

A while back, I had a conversation with a friend about movies.  She talked excitedly about how some of her favorite films starred Gary Cooper, but unfortunately went to see The Back-Up Plan with Jennifer Lopez and shook her head saying, “They don’t make them as well as they used to.”  I had to agree.

Which brings me to A Farewell to Arms, a romanticized adaptation of Hemingway’s novel.  Don’t avoid films from the ’30’s, you’ll find less holes in their plots than you will with today’s.  When it ended, I realized I was completely invested in the story and genuinly concerned about both lead characters.  My usual stance is to find faults and groan at how trivial the plot is, but there was something more to this film.  There’s an honest sincerity that comes out when these two people are separated by war, a plot that can be overused, but has never been as wonderful as this.

Gary Cooper plays Lt. Frederic Henry, a ambulance driver in WWI who falls in love with Catherine (Helen Hayes), a nurse.  Catherine has already suffered heartbreak through the war when her old boyfriend was “blown to bits.”  She decided to become a nurse hoping to take care of him with a minor picturesque wound, so she’s pretty disenchanted.  There’s an odd sense of female duty Catherine feels about being with Henry, she says, “We must give ourselves for these men,” even though she doubts that she’ll see him again.  When Henry returns to Milan after being injured in a blitz, Catherine is overjoyed and with a priests blessing, they consider themselves married.  Henry’s recovery is full of celebration and Catherine ducking around her work to be with him.  When bottles of booze are discovered in his room, the head nurse orders him back to the front lines.  Catherine bears a brave face and doesn’t tell him that she is pregnant, another side of her duty.  She decides to move to Switzerland to have the child.  Soon, Henry realizes the war means nothing to him and all he wants is to run away with Catherine, so he deserts the war and runs back to Milan in search of Catherine.

The title obviously comes from Henry’s desertion, which is not a theme I expected in the era between wars.  There are so many war films filled with patriotic duty, honor and love just postponed that sometimes we forget the other perspective.  Not everyone was a proud willing soldier, sometimes it feels like they were told to keep quiet and only let the patriotic ones speak.  Had this film been put off for a few years, we might have never known it.

This film is very good at talking so delicately about sex.  It’s always kept romantic and when terms start to deviate or become invasive, the conversation is stopped.   Catherine asks, “How many women have you, you know, loved?” and we understand that pause.  What’s even better is that Henry says none, an obvious lie to Catherine, but she doesn’t care and even takes it as a compliment to protect her.  This whole watered down, careful conversation might be so foreign or dull to us, but that’s how it was done back then.  Your grandpa might have been a player, but he ain’t gonna tell your grandma that.

When you think about it, the anti war message, topics of sex and an unwed mother are all pretty daring subjects for the early thirties.  I would recommend A Farewell to Arms to anyone, and in the twenty-first century these topics are still very relevant.

Airport

Welcome to the 1970’s, where disasters became big in the box office.  Airport was one of the first to make big bucks over depicting a day where everything goes wrong and lead the way for films like Earthquake, The Towering Inferno and the rest of the Airport series.  But perhaps Airport’s greatest achievement was inspiring the best spoof ever made, Airplane!

I’ll admit it, I love Airplane! and have seen it too many times.  So it was a little difficult at first to take Airport seriously.  But Airplane! mostly spoofs Zero Hour! and other installments of the Airport series.   So don’t write off Airport too fast, once the gears of the plot start moving together it’s almost intriguing and suspenseful.

The whole film is one crazy night at an airport.  There’s a huge blizzard delaying flights and one plane is stuck on the runway.  The nearby neighborhood is filing a lawsuit because planes rattle their houses.  A stewardess discovers that she’s pregnant with a married pilot’s child.  An old woman is caught for being a stowaway.  And a man has a bomb on a flight to Rome.  Talk about a bad night.

Thankfully, most of these problems are very unlikely to happen today (I mean besides unplanned kids and snowstorms).  But it’s fun to look back at the airport of yesteryear where they didn’t scan your bag, ticket or shoes.

The plot jumps back and forth between action in the terminal, on the runway, the tower, the jammed highway and of course the plane.  For some, it may feel that too much is going on at once, and one character might be forgotten for a while until everything gels together.

The most enjoyable plot line is of the little old woman who stows away on planes to see her daughter.  Played by Helen Hayes, Ada is a delightful little thing just playing the system and doing it well.  In the end, she gets to be one of the heroes aboard the plane and snatches Airport’s only Oscar for best supporting actress.

For those who enjoy disaster films of the 70’s or airport melodramas, Airport is for you.  If you want the same basic idea but full of zany laughs, just watch Airplane! And for a quote that could fit either film:

“Hold the whipped cream; I just had dessert.”