A Late Noir with a Moral: Odds Against Tomorrow

 

 Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

Directed by Robert Wise

United Artists, 95 minutes, Not-rated

★★★★

 

Odds Against Tomorrow is a late film noir from 1959. It’s in black and white and  gives some amazing views of an America about to change dramatically. Like most noir movies it’s a crime-gone-wrong film. I wouldn’t call it a gripping story per se–the script is, if I might, a bit nondescript–but there are lots of interesting things going on that make it worth an hour and a half of your time.

 

Ed Burke (Ed Begley) is an ex- New York City cop who flirts with minor crime. He needs money and has a foolproof (right!) plan to make a bundle. His first recruit is Johnny Ingram (Harry Belafonte), a singer deep in debt because of a gambling problem. He’s not a crook, but he is worried about how he can support his wife Ruth (Kim Hamilton) and his cute-as-a-button daughter.

 

Burke next turns to Earle Slater (Robert Ryan), an ex-con that life has kicked around. His live-in squeeze Lorry (Shelley Winters) believes in him, but Earle is distraught, drinks too much, and has too much testosterone. The latter leads him into the arms of not-so-trusted neighbor Helen (Gloria Grahame). Slater is in until he meets Johnny; Earle is a racist who thinks blacks can’t be trusted in a tight situation. A local mob boss vouches for Johnny and Earle reluctantly agrees to go along, but his bias is so visceral that we suspect it will come into play later.

 

Burke’s big plan is that he has been casing a bank far from New York in the town of Melton (actually Hudson, NY). Every night after than bank closes a delivery man delivers sandwiches and coffee to a side door to those tallying up the day’s receipts. Burke reckons that each of them can make at least $150,000 by creating a diversion, sending Johnny to the side door posing as a delivery man, and forcing their way in. It’s not a bad plan, but these are the last days of the old Hollywood Code, so you know that it will go bad.

 

The Code aside, there are numerous reasons to watch the film. Director Robert Wise was a Hollywood liberal who supported civil rights, hence the choice of famed singer Harry Belafonte–probably the most-famous black actor after Paul Robeson and before Sidney Poitier–was no accident. Among the scriptwriters was Abraham Polonsky, who had been blacklisted during the McCarthy years. This alerts us that you should look for social messages in the film, especially in regard to race. The film’s denouement is spectacular and pulls no punches in delivering its moral–even if it does borrow liberally from the 1949 James Cagney film White Heat.

 

Another reason is to catch cameos of people you know for latter work, such as choreographer/dancer Carmen De Lavallade, Wayne Rogers of M*A*S*H fame, and Cicely Tyson. It also has a very good soundtrack that features Belafonte, but also jazz legends such as Bill Evans, Milt Jackson, and Joe Wilder.

 

The cinematography from Joseph C. Brun is incredible. For instance, Brun used infrared to film Ryan walking down West 143^rd Street and other black and white filters and techniques that give the film a grungy underworld feel. To get an idea of what Wise and Brun did, go to this site to see how they transformed New York and Hudson. It features stills from the movie, but if you leave your cursor hover over it you’ll get a color shot from today.  

 

A final note: I’ve called Odds Against Tomorrow a slice of yesteryear. If you know New York, you might be amused by relatively empty streets and characters that drive across town and pull up directly in front of where they want to go. Stifle your giggles; there simply weren’t as many vehicles on the road back then. The population was under 180,000, which is just a tick over half of what it is today. In 1960, there only 61.6 million registered vehicles, less than 21 percent of today’s total. That made driving a car as odd as all men wearing hats and suits everywhere now seems.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

 

Conclave a Powerful Look at What Goes on Behind Closed Doors

 

 

 

 

Conclave  (2024)

Directed by Edward Berger

Focus Features, 120 minutes, PG

★★★★★

 

Perhaps the best reason to see Conclave is that the Catholic Church doesn’t want you to do so. A conclave is held when a pope dies and is responsible for choosing a new one. The College of Cardinals is sequestered in Rome and stay in the Vatican until a new one is chosen. After each day’s deliberations and votes, a plume of black smoke denotes that no pope has been chosen. White smoke means a new pontiff is in place.

 

What could possibly be controversial about any of this? Quite a lot actually. The film directed by Edward Berger is based on a novel, but is less fictional than you might imagine. It’s no secret that the College of Cardinals is a political as the U.S. Congress. We see concerned cardinals gathering around the papal deathbed and when the pope finally expires, gamesmanship rears its head. The job of leading the conclave falls to the Dean, Thomas Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), who might be the only man in the Vatican concerned with conducting a moral process.

 

The leading candidates couldn’t be more different. Aldo Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci) is a liberal reformer like the deceased pope, but Goffredo Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto) insists the new pope must be an Italian who will undo Vatican II and take the church on a rightward reactionary path. Nigerian Joshua Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati) insists it’s time for an African pope and downplays his homophobia and conservative leanings. Joseph Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow) is the fox in the garden who hopes to emerge as the compromise candidate, though there’s an allegation that the pope tried to dismiss him. Perhaps Lawrence himself is a candidate, though he insists he’s an administrator not a spiritual leader. Day two of the conclave is interrupted by whether to seat Archbishop Vincent Benitez (Carlos Diehz), a Mexican national currently serving in Kabul. Benitez champions the poor, has ministered in war zones, and was asked by the pope to help choose his successor.

 

As the conclave unfolds, lots of dirty secrets reveal themselves–so many that Lawrence becomes a serious candidate. He is reluctant to toss his miter into the ring and is also  tainted as it is he who cracked the whip that felled several would-be popes. Was he secretly plotting? The conclave becomes a cat-and-mouse thriller the spotlights puffed up pronouncements and deflating counters. When a terrorist attack leads Bellini to insist a strong pope–read himself–is needed because the church is at war with secularism and sin, Benitez humbly asks, “What do any of you know of war?”

 

Another hard question emerges: Who is actually in charge? A film about Cardinals is, by nature, androcentric. Ahh, but what about the sisters (nuns) who do the housekeeping, prepare the meals, and have their own grudges and history with some of the cardinals?  Isabella Rosellini is Sister Agnes. Watch her carefully. In a conclave reduced to puppet play, who’s to say she can’t pull some strings?

 

Conclave is part thriller, part drama, part morality play, and part Crying Game. The cinematography of Stéphane Fontaine is impressive. He takes some liberties at times but does a credible job of filming a faux Sistine Chapel. Berger and Fontaine had to recreate the very look and feel of the Vatican; needless to say, they had no access to the real thing. The acting is uniformly strong, though one might say that making Tucci Italian American instead of a native Italian might have been a misstep. I can certainly see Fiennes garnering Oscar consideration, though I suspect the film won’t go very far for fear of offending Catholics.

 

As a personal note, I think the Tedescos of the world are wrong. The Catholic Church is riddled with problems. Note that several of the cardinals feared the Papal Curia, the Vatican’s administrative wing. It was so corrupt that Pope Francis replaced it 2022.  The treasury has also came under scrutiny, not to mention the church’s pedophilia scandals and abuses of unwed mothers and indigenous peoples. Conclave made me think that when Francis passes on, the next papal selection should be televised. To put a religious spin on it, there’s a reason the Gospel of John proclaims, “... everyone who does wicked things hates the light.”

 

Rob Weir

The Old Oak: Ken Loach's Bittersweet Swan Song

 

 

 

The Old Oak (2023/24)

Directed by Ken Loach

Zeitgeist Films, 114 minutes, Not Rated

★★★★★

 

The Old Oak will probably be the final film from 88-year-old British director Ken Loach. A lot of Loach’s films get limited distribution in the United States because Loach is an unrepentant radical socialist–so much so that he was booted from the British Labour Party for calling out its antisemitic leanings. Unlike U.S. politicians pandering for votes, Loach is an unabashed defender of working people. John Sayles is the only comparable American director who comes to mind.

 

The Old Oak is the name of a tavern in Northeast England ravaged by Margaret Thatcher’s mine closures during the 1980s. It is operated by Tommy Joe (“TJ”) Ballantine (Dave Turner) and is a place where a lot of old timers gather to bemoan the town’s downward slide and refight old battles like the 1984 miners’ strike. TJ causes a stir when he and local do-gooder Laura (Claire Rodgerson) help Syrian refugee families move into some of the town’s numerous empty flats. There’s nothing like newcomers to stir up localist and ethnocentric anger. A couple of toughs break the camera of Yara (Ebla Mari), the member of the Syrian group with a good command of English. Her determination to have those responsible replace her camera places the Syrians on a collision course between those displaced by war versus locals who want no part of them.

 

As so often the case, hate masks the reality that there is no turf to protect. TJ knows that the town–unnamed, but probably in County Durham–needs a miracle to revive it. He’s not sure how much longer he can keep The Old Oak open and tries to stay above the outrage, but refuses to be part of those who want to set up a meeting to discuss what to “do about” invaders from outside. This puts TJ at odds with old comrades, including Charlie (Trevor Fox) who has been a good mate for decades.  Although Yara and her mother are deeply interested in learning how to fit in and help the town, theirs is a difficult against-the-tide swim against racism and fear. So much so that when a tentative coming together experiment begins to prove successful, there remain those who would sabotage it.

 

Loach deftly confronts the gaps between the solidarity of yesteryear and broken dreams left in the wake of Thatcherism. In a nuanced touch, he uses his characters to question whether the defeated are using solidarity as if they were trapped in 1984 amber. Without spelling it out, Loach makes us question whether solidarity is supposed to be the passion of a moment, or the fuel that drives an ongoing social movement. If the latter, who are the insiders and who is an outside obstacle?

 

Subtle moves aside, Loach knows which side he’s on and isn’t afraid to advocate for it. Some of his films have had difficulty finding distribution as they were deemed propaganda. Yet, if you watch them–and you should–you can’t help but think that “propaganda” is frequently just a label that those who hold power use to discredit those who question the morality of their motives. As noted above, Loach is a champion  of working blue-collar families who live paycheck to paycheck (or dole check to dole check) and dream merely of “making do.” To use an old Quaker standard, Loach seeks to speak truth to power. In doing so, we turn our attention to those whose diminished dreams lead them into futile rearguard actions. Is this how anyone should live?

 

Another reason why Loach films often have short stays in theater is his insistence on  background authenticity. His characters assume local dialect and speech patterns. Some Loach films have been subtitled, even though everyone is speaking English. The Old Oak has a decided “Geordie” flavor, an accent common in and around Newcastle.  It has a few unfamiliar idioms, though they are not hard to unravel within context. The Geordie accent, though, is no more difficult to decipher than the upper crust speech of, say, Downton Abbey.

 

The Old Oak was much praised in Europe. Some Loach films are quite grim, but this one leaves us with both an enhanced analysis of social class and hope. It is a small slice of life that packs a wider and more powerful wallop.

 

Rob Weir