MOVIETONE NEW8 . - Parallax View Annex

narrative or most deeply-felt scenes carefully composed
and relatively lengthy shots with nearly imperceptible
camera movement, actor stability, and
minimal interposed cuts. Even more essential to
Howard's style was his penchant for chiaroscuro. The
sharpest black-white contrasts seem to have represented
for him the indissolubility of joy and darkness in
life, and their continual juxtaposition in shot after
shot of film after film testifies to the director's
philosophical duality (although it is clearly darkness
which predominates in his compositions).
All these : features are notably part of the
aforementioned scene of Back Door in which Frankie
returns to his childhood home to question the black
family living there about his mother. And it is
precisely in its so-called "static" quality, of which
Nugent complained, that Howard's attitude and
approach are distilled to their essence; for it is this
quality which supports and at the same time reveals
and becomes part of the filmmaker's concept of the
somber, crushing, but inevitable and somehow dignifying
burden of existence. -
The characters-Frankie, Mrs. Hambleton and her
two children-are set in position at the start of the
scene and scarcely gesture during its several minutes'
length. In an unstressed allusion to his own childhood'
in the house, Frankie is placed next to the seated and
Inexpressive boy of the family, at whom he occasionally
glances while listening respectfully and attentively,
but with a kind of intense distraction, to the
mother as she talks about the fate of his parents. He
finally addresses the boy directly to ask if the child is
going to be a railroad porter like the relative whom
the mother has held up as a success in life. The
passive boy returns Frankie's neutral look and murmurs
a noncommittal "Maybe," fusing as he does
into a composite figure with the man across the years'
difference in their ages, forming because of his color
nearly the photographic negative of the boy Frankie
visible in and indivisible from the man. It is a rich and
reverberatory understatement of the kind that in-
forms the entire scene. When Mrs. Hambleton reports
i to Frankie that they took his mother "away to
Toleda. Is that the place where they carry crazy
people?" Ford as Frankie replies, "Yeah, that's the
place," in the same simple, straightforwardly accepting
manner that characterizes Lydon's performance
-and the entire cast's, for that matter-without
resorting to a blink, a gulp or even a tremor of the
lower lip. And when the chance to display a theatrical
bitterness presents itself with the black woman's
attempt to comfort him that his father "died with the
most loveliest .smile.on his face," his response-v'Was
he plastered?"-is still muted and given with almost a
flush of embarr.assment at being unable to contain,
not his bitterness, but his anguish. Sentimental, to be
sure, but sincere, authentic and without guile, subterfuge
or appeal for effect.
This distinctive' vision extends to the technical
aspects of the film and also provides another instance
of the widely, and sometimes wildly, varying nature
of B films so often overlooked. Though there are
literally hundreds of Bs that appear to have been
made by Brownies with Brownies in front of High
School Drama Society settings, there are many, like
Back Door, that reflect the most precise attention to
aesthetic and technical matters. The finished film
clearly displays Howard's (and Hal Mohr's) careful
compositions and lighting setups; the director's (and
the art director's) stress on the importance of
appropriate and veracious, though not necessarily
expensive, sets; and the most detailed consideration
in casting, exemplified by the exact physical pairing
of child with adult actors-not just Lydon with Ford,
but also with the look-alike youngsters who are
matched to the unusual appearances of Patricia Ellis
and Van Heflin. It is a categoric demonstration of the
range of possibilities and the freedom of choice
inherent in the B system.
Freedom is perhaps the most difficult concept for
the general consciousness to reconcile with the
B film, for the misapprehension of the classification
has centered on two of its comparatively few restrictions:
the lack of star actors and the limited budget.
There were others, of course, and serious ones-the
small salaries, for example, most often meant besides
poor acting, even poorer direction and scripts. But
what should be realized is that this process of
minimization did not operate unfailingly, and that
when a filmmaker of even a limited talent and vision
apprehended and responded to the possibilities of the
category, it provided to some extent a less encumbered
outlet for his expression than 'the nominally
grander categories of film.•
James Damico is a play- and TV-writer who resides in
New York City. He has previously published film
criticism in The Journal of Popular Film.