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| Stuart Heisler: Among the Living (1941) with Albert Dekker (Paul Raden) and Susan Hayward (Millie Pickens). |
US 1941. Director: Stuart Heisler. 67 min
Sog.: Lester Cole, Brian Marlow. Scen.: Lester Cole, Garrett Fort. F.: Theodor Sparkuhl. M.: Everett Douglas. Scgf.: Haldane Douglas, Hans Dreier. Mus.: Gerard Carbonara.
Int.: Albert Dekker (John Raden/Paul Raden), Susan Hayward (Millie Pickens), Harry Carey (Dr. Ben Saunders), Frances Farmer (Elaine Raden), Gordon Jones (Bill Oakley), Jean Phillips (Peggy Nolan), Ernest Whitman (Pompey), Maude Eburne (signora Pickens).
Prod.: Sol C. Siegel per Paramount Pictures. 35 mm. 67 min
Unreleased in Finland.
Bologna: Il Cinema Ritrovato: Guns for Hire: Frank Tuttle vs. Stuart Heisler
Print: da NBC Universal (2018) per concessione di Park Circus
Introduce Ehsan Khoshbakht.
Viewed at Cinema Jolly, 28 Aug 2020.
Imogen Sara Smith (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020): "Within a running time of just over an hour, Among the Living samples an array of genres: Southern gothic horror, evil-twin thriller, Freudian melodrama, comedy, and politically charged satire. In the opening scene, unemployed mill-workers crowd around the gates of a dilapidated mansion, heckling the funeral of the hated mill-owner – surely voicing the views of Lester Cole, who cowrote the story and screenplay. The son of a union organiser for the garment industry, Cole was one of the most unapologetic communists among the Hollywood Ten. Six years before the congressional hearings that would send him to jail and onto the blacklist, he seems to forecast the mood of the McCarthy era in a climactic scene where a small town’s citizens turn into a frenzied mob, rabidly pursuing a cash reward for the capture of a killer and trying an innocent man before a kangaroo court. The film’s spooky, sinister atmosphere presumably owes much to co-screenwriter Garrett Fort, best known for his work on Dracula and Frankenstein, as well as to German-born cinematographer Theodor Sparkuhl. His inky, densely cluttered interiors and shadowy views down empty alleys make this an early milestone in the development of the noir look. Director Stuart Heisler drives the story along at a fast clip, chasing scares with laughs, as in a hilarious scene where the mentally disturbed Paul Raden (Albert Dekker), just emerged from a lifetime of confinement in a secret room, stumbles into a dive bar. The joint is jumping, and the jazzy, rapid-fire montage of jitterbugging couples is a reminder of Heisler’s background as an editor. A further jolt of energy comes from a turbo-charged young Susan Hayward, playing an avaricious flirt who fastens onto Paul, an early avatar of the childlike, mother-obsessed psycho. More shocking is the venerable Harry Carey as a coldly selfish, unethical doctor, subverting his kindly persona and previewing the kinds of disillusionment that film noir had in store." Imogen Sara Smith (Il Cinema Ritrovato 2020)
AA: In her program note, Imogen Sara Smith sums up deftly the context of Among the Living: inspired by Universal horror (Garrett Fort) and Weimar cinema (Theodor Sparkuhl), it became a predecessor of film noir.
While Among the Living is not a horror film, it draws on the "haunted house" tradition of the cinema (launched by Paul Leni with The Cat and the Canary, 1927, at Universal) which even inspired non-genre films in which the central milieu is a cursed house, including recently Wuthering Heights (1939), Rebecca (1940) and Citizen Kane (1941). We observe the affinity immediately in the opening shots of the Raden House fence.
The protagonists are male, but Among the Living can even be seen as relevant to "female Gothic" via an absent protagonist: the beloved mother of the twin brothers. When mother was being brutally beaten by Dad, Paul intervened, and became himself thrown against the wall so violently that he received permanent brain damage. In addition, the memory of her mother's scream of agony traumatized him for life.
The cast is interesting. Albert Dekker was a fine actor who shone mostly in the theatre and was seldom given leading roles in movies (the horror film Dr. Cyclops comes to mind), but here he receives an actor's dream role: a dual role, and he rises to the challenge magnificently, creating two quite different characters.
As many commentators register, in the female roles we meet a rising star (Susan Hayward) and a falling star (Frances Farmer). Frances Farmer was for Howard Hawks the best actress he ever worked with (in Come and Get It), and I agree, but here her participation is very subdued.
As Imogen Smith states, the shock of the casting is Harry Carey, the D. W. Griffith veteran and mentor of John Ford and John Wayne. He plays the doctor who has forged death certificates and kept the dark secret of Paul Raden who has been locked in his chamber for decades.
In the staging of crowd scenes Stuart Heisler excels. Scenes at bars and dances and in the streets are vivid and the account of the escalating mob violence is alarming. As soon as a reward is promised, a vigilante mentality emerges.
Because people are not aware of the presence of twin brothers, the innocent one is almost lynched. Lynch mobs had been memorably depicted by Fritz Lang (M, Fury), John Ford (Young Mr. Lincoln) and James Whale (Frankenstein), but Heisler's approach is clearly personal. His passion for the theme became even more evident in Storm Warning.
The killer himself, the deranged Paul Raden, belongs to the non compos mentis category: of unsound mind, like John Steinbeck's Lennie in Of Mice and Men, as many commentators observe. He is a victim as much as a villain. This is well interpreted by Albert Dekker.
There is not much mourning in the funeral of old man Raden, the hated pillar of Radentown. In the finale young John Raden plans to re-open the Radentown Mills that had been closed during the Depression.
A brilliant 2018 NBC Universal print of a film that has been for a long time hard to come by in good quality copies.
John Raden, scion of the wealthiest family in the town of Raden, returns home for his father's funeral with his new wife Elaine after an absence of twenty-five years. John is shocked to learn from the family physician, Dr. Ben Saunders, that Paul, John's twin brother, who he thought had died when he was ten, is actually still alive and lives at the old estate with his black caretaker Pompey. Ben explains that Paul went insane as a child after his father struck him severely when Paul saw him abusing his mother. His father, hoping to spare John, sent John away and Ben falsified Paul's death certificate. Paul now has become crazed by the thought of his father being buried next to his dear mother and murders Pompey in order to get away from the house, after which he exhumes his father's body. Although Paul seeks out Ben, he flees from him when he realizes that Ben intends to continue keeping him prisoner in the old Raden house. While Paul wanders into the city, Ben falsifies Pompey's death certificate, saying that he died of a heart attack. Paul uses a pseudonym at a boardinghouse where Millie Pickens, the landlady's daughter, flirts with him until he naïvely gives her money to buy a new dress. Paul then finds John and his wife at the hotel, but when John mentions Ben's name, Paul becomes irrational and strikes John. Disturbed, Paul later wanders into a café where Peggy Nolan, a slinky blonde, entices him into buying her a drink. When he starts to speak about Millie, however, with whom he is infatuated, Peggy becomes offended and dances with another man. The drink and the noise affect Paul, and he lurches outside, lurking in the shadows until Peggy leaves late at night. Paul follows Peggy and, at the end of a dark alley, strangles her to death. The next day, the newspaper links Peggy and Pompey's deaths because both bodies were found in the same position. Bill Oakley, a boarder and one of many citizens who are already angry because they have been unemployed since the Radens closed the textile mill, forms a vigilante group, which is incited to action when John, pressured by Ben, announces a $5,000 reward for the capture of the killer. Millie eagerly gets her father's pistol and takes the unwilling Paul to Raden House, which the townspeople think of as a haunted house, because she thinks it is the likeliest hiding place for the murderer. When Millie starts to go into Paul's mother's bedroom, he becomes unbalanced and tries to kill her. She is rescued by Bill and his friend, who have followed them there. A fight ensues between the three men, but when Paul is shot, he escapes, and John enters the house and is mistaken for his maniacal brother. News spreads that the killer has been captured, and the angry crowd forces the town judge to hold a hearing immediately. John is unable to convince the people of his identity until Ben, who has been convinced by Elaine to tell the truth, arrives and reveals the true history. Ben is arrested and Paul is found slumped over his mother's grave, dead.
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