Classic Films in Focus: EAST SIDE, WEST SIDE (1949)

Adapted from the novel by Marcia Davenport, East Side, West Side (1949) is more melodrama than murder mystery, although there always seems to be a noir plot lurking beneath its surface. Surprisingly, star Barbara Stanwyck appears in good girl mode as a wronged wife enduring domestic discord. It's not one of Stanwyck's greatest performances - her heroine is too nice even to reproach her philandering husband for most of the film - but the solid cast makes the movie worth watching, most notably Ava Gardner as the truly ruthless siren who woos James Mason away from Stanwyck. Mervyn Leroy directs a cast that also includes Van Heflin, Cyd Charisse, Gale Sondergaard, and future First Lady Nancy Reagan, as Nancy Davis, making one of her earliest appearances on the big screen.

Stanwyck plays Jessie Bourne, a wealthy socialite who has already forgiven her husband, Brandon (James Mason), for a previous affair as the story begins. Jessie is dismayed, however, when the seductive Isabel (Ava Gardner) returns and immediately pursues Brandon again, refusing to believe his assertion that he has turned over a new leaf. As a result of Brandon's scuffle with Isabel's jealous boyfriend, Jessie begins a friendship with a young model named Rosa (Cyd Charisse) and her childhood crush, Mark (Van Heflin). Soon Mark reveals that his feelings for Jessie are more than platonic, but when Isabel is murdered Mark helps Jessie by working to clear Brandon from blame.

The murder and subsequent investigation occupy only the third act, while the majority of the story focuses on Jessie's misplaced loyalty to Brandon in spite of all the evidence that he's a faithless cad who relies on her presumed forgiveness to keep up his shenanigans. It only takes Rosa two minutes to figure out that Brandon is no good; "If I were your wife, I'd cut your heart out," she says, and the audience agrees with her. Jessie, however, clings to her optimism. "He'll change, you'll see. He'll change," she tells her friend, Helen (Nancy Davis), but even Jessie doesn't sound like she believes it. Jessie's mother (Gale Sondergaard) is polite to Brandon in front of Jessie but fervently hopes that her daughter will leave him. With every other character both overtly and covertly urging Jessie to dump her cheating spouse, it's frustrating to watch the heroine stick by him for so long, especially because we aren't used to seeing Stanwyck play doormats.

The bad characters have more fun, particularly Ava Gardner, whose Isabel prowls the Del Rio like a panther in a backless gown. She's a true femme fatale, and she knows it; she taunts Jessie with her power over Brandon, bragging that she can disrupt any effort to extricate him from her clutches. James Mason, handsome but too cosmopolitan to be trustworthy, has a smoldering, debauched look whenever he's in a scene with Gardner. His Brandon glares at Isabel with equal measures of lust and loathing, and we know she's right that the two of them are more alike than Brandon cares to admit. Isabel's circle includes much rougher characters, too; her boyfriend, Alec (Douglas Kennedy) is a bruiser who resents Isabel's interest in Brandon but has his own jealous side piece, Felice (Beverly Michaels), to amuse him when Isabel isn't around. This dangerous crew threatens to push the story into noir territory, and the audience perhaps hopes that they will, but Jessie and Mark are so resolutely moral that we know they'll never be pulled into anything so shady.

If you want to see Stanwyck and Heflin together in really heated noir, try The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946). Catch James Mason in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), A Star is Born (1954), and North by Northwest (1959). Ava Gardner burns up the screen in The Killers (1946), Mogambo (1953), and The Barefoot Contessa (1954). Cyd Charisse also starred in Tension in 1949, but she's best remembered for musicals like Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Band Wagon (1953), and Brigadoon (1954). Mervyn Leroy's other films from the 1940s include Random Harvest (1940), Madame Curie (1943), and Little Women (1949). The Valley of Decision (1945), starring Greer Garson and Gregory Peck, was also adapted from a novel by Marcia Davenport.

Classic Films in Focus: THE BAD SEED (1956)

The Bad Seed (1956) ranks pretty high on the list of classic "evil children" movies, although it's not exactly a straightforward horror film. Director Mervyn LeRoy, working from a stage adaptation of William March's original novel, presents the story more as dark melodrama, like Mildred Pierce (1945) cranked up to eleven. Film historian David Thomson hates the picture and provides a scathing review of it in his book, Have You Seen?, but The Bad Seed might well reveal its true horror only to a female audience, for this movie strikes at the very heart of maternal experience and fear.

Nancy Kelly stars as Christine Penmark, the mother of a seemingly perfect eight year old girl. Pig-tailed princess Rhoda (Patty McCormack) is not, however, as sweet as she appears. When one of Rhoda's classmates drowns at a school picnic, the evidence indicates that Rhoda knows more about what happened than she wants to say. Soon Christine realizes the horrible extent of Rhoda's homicidal tendencies, the hereditary product of a dark secret in Christine's own past.

Male characters exist mostly on the periphery of the story. Christine's husband (William Hopper), leaves town for an extended business trip, and the male criminologists utterly fail to spot the perfect little sociopath in their midst. Only Leroy (Henry Jones), the deranged handyman, sees through Rhoda and plays an active role in the characters' daily lives, and he intentionally taunts the infant serial killer and makes matters worse. All of the other significant characters are female, from bossy Monica Breedlove (Evelyn Varden) to grief-stricken Hortense Daigle (Eileen Heckart), whose little boy becomes one of Rhoda's victims. This women's world of domestic entrapment, uncertainty, and suppression inevitably unhinges many of the characters. Even the teacher, Miss Fern (Joan Croydon), has developed a nervous, strained manner, while Christine completely falls apart, clutching desperately at the useless men as she succumbs to her guilt and horror at Rhoda's amoral acts.

The horror of The Bad Seed derives from this stifled, segregated world in which women have few outlets for their hopes and fears. Maternity is the only accomplishment either Christine or Hortense can claim; each one loses her child in a different way, but the loss triggers similar collapse and self-destruction. Fear of a child's death is one kind of horror, but fear of giving birth to a monster is something even worse. New mothers look hard at their infants and count their fingers and toes, fearful lest anything wrong should have issued from their wombs. A pregnant woman obsesses over every action because blame for a damaged child invariably falls on her. Does the monstrous child repay us for our own failures, or is it some changeling trick, the work of the devil or an evil star? This fear of unnatural offspring drives stories as diverse as the Greek myths, King Lear, and Rosemary's Baby (1968).

The ending of the film pointedly asks viewers not to give away the final twist, so I'll refrain from commenting too much on the subtexts of those scenes. I will, however, say that I think the movie might have ended better about ten minutes earlier than its actual conclusion. You'll know the moment when you reach it. There would have been greater poetic justice, at least for Christine, had the credits simply rolled after that shocking - but absolutely necessary - act.

The Bad Seed earned four Oscar nominations, including nods for Nancy Kelly, Patty McCormack, and Eileen Heckart, all of whom had also appeared in the stage production. Mervyn LeRoy also directed I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Random Harvest (1942), and Mister Roberts (1955). For more awful offspring, try Village of the Damned (1960), The Omen (1976), and The Good Son (1993).