SCFZ poll: William Wellman

[karl]

I've seen a lot of Wellman's movies and consider him perhaps the most underrated American director. So, as usual, to highlight some little-knowns:

1. Robin Hood of El Dorado
2. Buffalo Bill
3. Westward the Women
4. The Story of G.I. Joe
5. So Big!


I'm pleased that Safe in Hell is so popular here.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Seen 6 at poll's open, now seen 17.

1. Midnight Mary (1933)
2. Roxie Hart (1942)
3. Lilly Turner (1933)
4. Safe in Hell (1931)
5. Night Nurse (1931)

For me, Wellman in the director's chair is always a good sign. (Surprised he was classed Less Than Meets Than Eye by Andrew Sarris, I'd at least give him Expressive Esoterica or Lightly Likeable if not Far Side of Paradise.) He was especially notable during his early '30s days at Warner Bros., making several of the most memorable pre-Code titles. Thematically, I find that period of his career has some inner consistency: tales of tragic characters struggling to find safety in a Depression world out to crush them, rocked back and forth by seas of troubles from forwarding address to forwarding address. The films are short and punchy, packing many rise-and-falls into 65 minutes in keeping with the Never Safe For Long messaging. I also noticed a recurring visual motif of prison bars both literal and figural, which we can likely partly credit to Wellman since it shows up across films with different cinematographers (Van Trees, Hickox). The more I see unity across them, the more I think that Wellman's pre-Code period ranks among the great streaks of creativity in studio-era Hollywood annals. Far Side of Paradise then, but, as Lilly Turner says, "Nobody can ever hang on to anything."

[john ryan]

Seen 13

1. The Ox-bow Incident
2. Night Nurse
3. A Star is Born
4. Track of the Cat
5. Heroes for Sale

[ItsUhhMee]

Seen 9

1. Oxbow Incident
2. Public Enemy
3. Wings

[...]

Surprised he was classed Less Than Meets Than Eye by Andrew Sarris, I'd at least give him Expressive Esoterica or Lightly Likeable if not Far Side of Paradise.

It sorta shows the weakness of Sarris' approach and his excessive devotion to the "auteur" thing where Wellman doesn't really fit all that well. I never much liked either Sarris or Kael in general and in their argument about Auteurism (though of course they both did sometimes make useful observations and provided salient criticisms at times.)

The choice of favoring some kind of consistency of vision and "meaning" in a body of work over the making a reasonably large number of good movies that may not cohere into a greater whole is both choosing what determines value before the fact in rewarding consistency for its own sake, even when what makes a director consistent may not be all that special beyond the similarity involved and tends to reward non-artistic influences that strongly shape a director's ability to control their circumstances and exert influence and "authorship" of a film. Wellman had plenty of talent and may have made more good movies than say Hawks or Ford during the pre-code years. Many directors during that time showed much more "personality" in their films than they would post-code and could be considered roughly equal or better to Ford and Hawks if just the thirties were considered alone. But Ford and Hawks grew in their level of control over the films they made which is important to note on its own and even more so in comparison to their peers stuck in the studio system where their control over projects was more limited. Wellman, like some other moderately famous Hollywood directors, was able to exert some influence on the projects he took on, but in a give and take manner where he also had to make films he wasn't really interested in as well.

His body of work, from what I've seen, which is 30ish movies, has a lot of good work, but doesn't really lend itself to any sense of a greater whole. Watching one of his late movies isn't really improved by knowing his earlier ones, something that's true of directors like Hawks and Ford, and other than Wellman liking to make movies about airplanes and pilots, which isn't all that uncommon a thing in itself for Hollywood, there isn't a lot I've seen that says "Wellman" when you see it, with even his well made films often being so for a variety of reasons.

[eleanor]

seen 2
the ox-bow incident

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

Definitely agree with that. I have mixed feelings on auteurism. The central ideal for Sarris and the Cahierists before him seems to have been directors succeeding at expressing their beliefs, typically through camera movement, despite the commercial many-hands film industry they worked in. In short, the ideal is Individualism despite Mass Industry and/or Collaboration. It's certainly very neat to see the existence of a director (or any film worker) with a distinctive artistic vision or at least distinct 'type' of movie associated with them, as expressed by coherence of themes and style across their credits. But is that the Most Important Thing? Sarris calls for this as the primary approach to film evaluation and film history writing, which is such a limiting, simplistic approach! Andre Bazin criticized the auteurists early on for neglecting "the genius of the system" and while I wouldn't want to be seen as praising Hollywood cinema for exemplifying capitalist industrial organization, I take Bazin to more be defending collaborative artistry over individual artistry. In other words, credit a movie's quality to the bevy of artisans working together across lighting and editing and acting etc., rather than individual geniuses succeeding despite the system.

Another problem is that auteurist's typically don't evaluate whether a director's artistic vision is good or bad. I recall reading a 1985 article by Janet Staiger called "The Politics of Film Canons," which, though it had its own problems, did a great job of articulating another of Sarris's mistakes: not caring what the director stands for, only marveling that they have a worldview expressed through movies. So D.W. Griffith is Pantheon for Sarris, even though Griffith's worldview is morally unconscionable. That Griffith expresses white supremacist ideology matters less to Sarris than the fact that Griffith expresses beliefs with recurrence and formal eloquence, making him a director with something to say, all that matters. I can understand praising Griffith as a great director, by certain criterion, but it's a problem that one can't imagine Sarris having a section entitled Skillful But Immoral directors. (See also, his cringe-worthy entry on Ida Lupino, which isn't really an entry on Lupino but a dissertation on the question of whether directing is a man's job, results offensively inconclusive.)

For me, Wellman is an interesting limit case. I recently read an excellent piece by Edward Buscombe on Raoul Walsh's Warner Bros. period. Rather than read this period as simply expressing auteurist genius or as simply being Warner Bros. doing, Buscombe argues that the interests of the studio heads and the interests/talents of the director happened to coalesce nicely, leading to an appropriately complex, collaborative understanding of those films' authorship. I guess I'd argue that the same could be said of Warner Bros. and Wellman during the pre-Code period. While Hitchcock, Hawks, and Ford were obvious artists with considerable control, a director like Wellman or Walsh might just be a sign that the movie is likely an A picture with good genre film credentials. But then, that same sign could be provided by seeing cinematographer Sidney Hickox listed in the credits (The Big Sleep, White Heat, Them, Dames, Safe In Hell, etc.).

All that said, auteurism is a lot of fun and extremely convenient to boot, and Sarris's The American Cinema remains one of my favourite desk references.

[...]

Yeah, the idea that, say, Tim Burton or Woody Allen has a consistent style and set of themes that show authorship is true enough, but to what end or value? Not that Sarris was entirely wrong or anything, a body of work that does carry a meaning greater than the sum of its individual works can be a mark of a great director. People aren't wrong to talk about Ford like that and obviously many directors that work outside studio systems show that's unquestionably true. Looking at a body of work as Sarris did is important and Kael was being ridiculous in suggesting otherwise, just as Sarris made his case for auteurism look foolish for ignoring the many problems with it. That's the beauty of the arguments between the two, no one was a better advocate for auteurism than Kael when she argued against it and no one provided better argument against auteurism than Sarris arguing with Kael. Neither was much good at the whole argument thing, Sarris was too much a fanboy worried about ranking and categorizing and Kael too happy snarking to believe there was much of any value to movies at all. They would have fit the twitter era perfectly.

[Evelyn Library P.I.]

That's the beauty of the arguments between the two, no one was a better advocate for auteurism than Kael when she argued against it and no one provided better argument against auteurism than Sarris arguing with Kael.

Lol! I never thought to put it that way myself, but that's so good and strikes me as absolutely true. Both were such partisans, such controversialists, at least in their film writing, that the debate seemed to be the end itself rather than a means of finding out what is true. Wound up talking past each other, really, but ironically it feels fitting that they were each other's best advocate. After all, they each probably owe much of their career success to the other. They needed each other, like Tom needs Jerry and Jerry needs Tom.

[wba]

Surprised he was classed Less Than Meets Than Eye by Andrew Sarris, I'd at least give him Expressive Esoterica or Lightly Likeable if not Far Side of Paradise.

It sorta shows the weakness of Sarris' approach and his excessive devotion to the "auteur" thing where Wellman doesn't really fit all that well. I never much liked either Sarris or Kael in general and in their argument about Auteurism (though of course they both did sometimes make useful observations and provided salient criticisms at times.)

The choice of favoring some kind of consistency of vision and "meaning" in a body of work over the making a reasonably large number of good movies that may not cohere into a greater whole is both choosing what determines value before the fact in rewarding consistency for its own sake, even when what makes a director consistent may not be all that special beyond the similarity involved and tends to reward non-artistic influences that strongly shape a director's ability to control their circumstances and exert influence and "authorship" of a film.

Well put, greg. Completely agree.

I'm a devoted auteurist myself, but in my opinion every filmmaker is automatically an auteur - by default. And the best are defined by the fact that they make the best films.
Never understood that "thematic consistency" thing. Why should I care? I wanna see a good film. And in my opinion switching styles and genres and themes and whatnot is much more difficult and artistically rewarding anyway.

Wellman, for my money, is as good and fascinating as Ford or Hawks. If not more so.

PS: I also think Sarris and Kael never had much interesting stuff to say about anything. They were mediocre and pretty much forgettable film critics. That's all.

[...]

Well, there is some important differences between filmmakers who choose the stories they film and those who are assigned them in terms of how one can get a feel for their worldview over a body of movies that inform each other compared to a body of work where the movies don't have much commonality in ideals and form. Watching, for example, Cheyenne Autumn on its own isn't as meaningful as it is in connecting it to Ford's body of work, in particular My Darling Clementine, which uses some of the same characters in a radically different way. Any individual Woody Allen movie might read differently on its own compared to thinking of them in terms of a whole. Even if one has not seen other Woody Allen movies, knowing something about Allen informs some of the films strongly, Stardust Memories, for example, has a different sort of sense knowing Allen's career than it would were it made by some first time director or someone unknown to the viewer. The movie is "about" Allen's feelings on his place in film and life and knowing about that gives the movie added resonance. One might say the same for Manhattan in a different way, depending on how one sees Allen and the movie, among other things.

We're in an era where many filmmakers have more influence over their work and develop bodies of work that have some at least vague sense of coherence in ways that weren't always possible in studio systems. That doesn't mean the director isn't still important and adding their vision to the movies, just that their vision is often put in more in service of someone else's work than that of more purely their own, not that movie making is ever a completely pure process, but there is certainly degrees of control that make big differences. A director working on one of the superhero films nowadays is greatly limited by what Disney/Marvel allows for those movies, where their story and visual demands give a director less control and where action scenes may be taken from the main director and filmed in second units to suit the company style.

Wellman has little that suggests a worldview in his films. He clearly liked airplanes and seemed to get more flying movies because of that, but the rest of his work only has some vague possible connections in terms of how his vision shapes the movies. He seems to have a gift for paring down, but that goes in a couple different ways where he might play with abstraction in more "symbolic" works, paring down the "reality" of the story, where in his early films he more pared down inessential emotional beats or unimportant actions to hit on the big notes without giving space for a rest at the end. But even so, it'd be hard to identify Wellman movies as a group by looking at them as they don't have much in common where other directors have more of a signature and say something about the director and their view of life and art. Good or bad, Wellman isn't really one of those which is the case for a number of talented studio directors, which suggests how important all the elements of the system were beyond the director's chair in determining the quality of movies, which isn't quite the same case for directors with more control.

Or to put it in musical terms, it's the difference between seeing the director as a composer and a conductor. Sarris was arguing for directors as composers, but didn't always differentiate in the quality of the compositions, where Kael wanted to leave directors more as conductors with her enjoyment of the piece sufficient evidence of quality with any concerns over the makers more or less secondary. Kael wasn't much on bodies of work, though she did have favorite directors, while Sarris was all about not being able to judge anything until you've seen everything. They both had their points, Kael is much easier for those who don't watch many movies to appreciate for her attitude of them not mattering much, ironically I guess given that her job was in reviewing them making it even less important then the movies, where Sarris' attitude was almost an impossibility to attain, but he took movies as art seriously where Kael often didn't. Neither really works as an example to follow today given how things have changed since their heydays, but they served to define a debate that informed how people talk about movies and how they get made, for good and bad.

[wba]

I know who Sarris and Kael were, and that they were "important" or were (and are) considered such by some movie fans. And they were certainly influential. But in my opinion they were just average hacks in their respective fields, namely writing about movies. I simply can not take them and their ideas seriously, or as seriously as some people took and take them. In my opinion they simply didn't have much understanding of the art of film and the art of filmmaking.

As for directors, in my opinion their "job" is to direct, which is an art (like that of a cinematographer or that of an actor), and a difficult one, and one of the arts I personally consider to be the "highest" or simpler put the most satisfying to experience. And I don't really care that much, if a director has to direct what is given to him or if he can choose freely as he wishes. I admit, it's a nice bonus, if a filmmaker has a vision of their own, which might enhance a film if taken via an autobiographical or thematic or any other kind of reading and analyses. But in the end, the film as such is more important to me. Coherence or an uncompromising vision and an unlimited freedom - if a guy isn't a great artist all of that won't help. And if he's a genius he will probably still be a genius when faced with constrictions. A great director for me is a director who is great at directing (so going by your analogy I'm probably more in the "conductor" sphere, at least when it comes to collaborative art - which is all filmmaking where the director isn't the sole creator of EVERYTHING connected with the film). Similar to a great instrumentalist or a great conductor. I don't care if a pianist wrote the stuff he's playing or if Chopin wrote it. Similarly I don't really care if the director wrote the screenplay or did the camera or whatnot. If he's good at it, sure, why not, let him dabble in other arts (there are great directors who are also great actors for example). But most director's aren't good at much else. And they needn't be.

In the end, the greatness of a filmmaker for me lies in simple mathematics. If a filmmaker made 40 films and 20 of those are fantastic (and outstandingly directed), for me he's a better artist than another one who made 40 films of which I consider "merely" 10 to be great. So yes, to better judge a filmmaker, it's best to know all of his work. All other judgments are usually preliminary. So I hate statements like "this guy is a hack" when the person has merely seen a handful of that filmmakers work.
Put simply, I judge a filmmaker on the quality of his work on display. Not on what his intentions or limitations were. If somebody chooses to work on a superhero film by Disney, it's their decision. He could as well make experimental films in his yard. Nobody is forced to direct films, nobody is forced to be a movie director. So there are no excuses.

[flip]

interesting results - i thought a lot of later wellman films (battleground, yellow sky, track of the cat, westward the women, etc) would do well, but it's wellman's pre-code period that dominates the top of our (perhaps surprisingly long) list. i'll post a top fifteen to letterboxd instead of the usual top ten:


results

1. The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) -- 26 pts
2. The Public Enemy (1931) -- 25 pts
3. Beggars of Life (1928) -- 16 pts
4. Wild Boys of the Road (1933) -- 15 pts
4. Heroes for Sale (1933) -- 15 pts
6. Safe in Hell (1931) -- 13 pts
7. Night Nurse (1931) -- 12 pts
7. Wings (1927) -- 12 pts
9. Track of the Cat (1954) -- 7 pts
9. Nothing Sacred (1937) -- 7 pts
11. The Hatchet Man (1932) -- 6 pts
11. A Star is Born (1937) -- 6 pts
13. Yellow Sky (1948) -- 5 pts
13. The Robin Hood of El Dorado (1936) -- 5 pts
13. Midnight Mary (1933) -- 5 pts
16. Westward the Women (1951) -- 4 pts
16. Battleground (1949) -- 4 pts
16. Roxie Hart (1942) -- 4 pts
16. Buffalo Bill (1944) -- 4 pts
16. Other Men's Women (1931) -- 4 pts
21. Lilly Turner (1933) -- 3 pts
22. The Story of GI Joe (1945) -- 2 pts
22. The Boob (1926) -- 2 pts
24. So Big! (1932) -- 1 pt

[flip]

up at letterboxd:

https://letterboxd.com/fliptrotsky/list ... -poll-137/