Los tallos amargos (The Bitter Stems) (1956)

I had wanted to see Los tallos amargos (The Bitter Stems) since I first heard Eddie Muller commending it in glowing terms. (The DVD cover calls him a “noirchaelogist;” I know him mostly from his DVD commentaries and YouTube videos of his intros and outros as host of Noir Alley at Turner Classic Movies [TCM].) The DVD I borrowed came with featurettes that explain how the film was rediscovered and restored by Muller’s Film Noir Foundation, among other organizations and personnel. The film has been released on Blu-ray and DVD by Flicker Alley, so it is now getting the exposure that it deserves. I have seen the film several times now, and it did not disappoint.

I have always thought that one of the defining features of film noir is that it shows us what not to do, and Los tallos amargos is one of the best examples of what not to do. Alfredo Gasper, the main character, bases his most momentous decisions on suspicions and assumptions. He does not look for proof; he does not consider anyone else’s opinion or insight. He barges on ahead and, because this is film noir, he makes fatal mistakes.

(This article about Los tallos ameragos contains some spoilers.)

The film starts with a high-angle shot of a cab arriving at a station. The camera angle switches to a somewhat low-angle shot when two men, Alfredo Gasper and Paar Liudas, get out of the cab. An outdoor clock strikes midnight, and it is obviously hot. The two men walk into an underground rail station, where Gasper buys a one-way ticket for Liudas. They are heading to Ituzaingó, Gasper’s hometown outside Buenos Aires, for some time off. Gasper gives Liudas the excuse that a two-way ticket would expire before they could return to the city for work.

Once Gasper and Liudas are on the train for Ituzaingó, several flashbacks (in the form of memories for Gasper, and another hallmark of noir) reveal some of the circumstances leading to this one-way trip for Liudas. Gasper is a journalist at a newspaper called La Voz. Noriega, his chief editor, berates him for his lack of initiative. Nebide, the man for whom he freelances as a translator, complains about his lack of “fluidity” and still does not have the money to pay him. Andreani, a fellow reporter at La Voz, tells Gasper that he, Gasper, likes to obey, but he likes to obey important men, men who he believes do important work. He warns Gasper that this characteristic is a dangerous proclivity.

Gasper goes out with his girlfriend, Susana, after work. They see a war film, which upsets Gasper, and they leave the theater early and abruptly for Susana’s apartment. Their subsequent conversation reveals that Gasper’s behavior is not unusual, that it has happened before. Susana asks about it, but Gasper once again refuses to offer any explanation. On the way home after visiting Susana, Gasper stops at the Magyar nightclub, where he meets Paar Liudas for the first time. They meet by chance (or fate, a feature of noir, which plays its part here). Liudas overhears another reporter talk to Gasper about their work, and he is immediately drawn to Gasper. He tells Gasper that he was the editor of a newspaper, and he was also involved in smuggling before he was a bartender at the Magyar. Someone tipped off the police and he escaped, but he lost all his papers, including his ID documents, in the police raid. He tells Gasper that he doesn’t exist without papers.

It's an odd conversation, one that would probably raise alarm bells for most people. Liudas reveals a lot about himself in a single conversation, and not all of what he reveals is particularly flattering. He has to work under the table because he has no documents, and he has no documents because he lost them in a police raid. He admits to illegal activity, but he doesn’t tell Gasper any of the details of his smuggling operation. He is interested in ways to make easy money—and quickly. Gasper’s defenses may be down because he needs money, too, and he doesn’t feel like he is being paid what he is worth as a newspaper reporter.

Liudas wants to starts a journalism correspondence school to make a quick buck, and he wants Gasper to be his partner. Liudas doesn’t hide the fact that he intends to swindle people by offering cheap courses that he and Gasper create themselves. He tells Gasper that their work will be easy because there are fools everywhere who will believe anything. They also create a fake news service by stealing other journalists’ work and putting false names on the articles. They offer these articles in return for free advertising for their correspondence school.

Susana questions Gasper’s business dealings with Liudas, and viewers learn that Gasper may not be all that different from Liudas. He doesn’t reveal everything to Susana; viewers are privy to his innermost thoughts:

• Susana: “Do you like doing that? To swindle?”

• Alfredo: [to himself] “I don’t know if I like it. You are swindled. And you swindle the rest. Like it or not, you swindle for money. And now I want money. I need money.”

• Susana: [interrupting Alredo’s thoughts] “Alfredo, you haven’t answered me.”

• Alfredo: “You only get rich by swindling, destroying. What, do you want me to keep suffering at the newspaper?”

Liudas eventually reveals to Gasper that he wants all the money transactions for the correspondence school in Gasper’s name. He reasons that it will take too long to renew his identification papers, and he wants to make quick money. He finally reveals that he wants the money so that he can bring his family, his wife and two sons, from Hungary to Argentina. He is worried about them, especially his older son Jarvis, because they are living behind the Iron Curtain, under a Soviet Communist regime, while the Cold War is on. This sounds like a noble cause to Gasper, who wants to do something noble with his life. He throws himself into the cause, just as his fellow news reporter, Andreani, had predicted.

Both Liudas and Gasper are complicated characters, and they may be more similar than each knows. At one point in the film, Liudas tells Elena, a woman he has met in Buenos Aires, the same story about wanting to bring his wife and sons to Argentina from Hungary, but he mentions more of his reasoning, his justification, for creating the correspondence school. He says, “I needed the money, Elena. And I got it. Money saved a lot of people in Europe [during World War II]. It gave false passports. It bought prison guards. So I made money as I could. For them [his wife and sons], Elena. For them to come.” Liudas also mentions some regret for bringing Gasper into his swindle, which helps to soften Liudas’s image somewhat for viewers.

This conversation between Liudas and Elena reminds me of Casablanca, in which a good deal of the plot, in addition to the unresolved love affair between Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund, revolves around people trying to get out of Casablanca any way they can. Most of their efforts require getting enough money to bribe officials for the documents they need to leave the city. Click here for my article about the film.

Gasper becomes suspicious of Liudas, perhaps because he invested so much of his time and profits into a cause that wasn’t really his own. And he starts to doubt that the Liudas family even exists. He eavesdrops on one of Liudas’s phone conversations with Elena. He follows them to a nightclub and tries to listen to their conversation at another table, but all he hears is that Liudas is quite sure that he (Gasper) believes everything that he says, including what he says about his family and a son named Jarvis. Gasper’s suspicions become all-consuming until he is driven by rage to commit murder.

Gasper bludgeons Liudas to death with a sledgehammer at his family home (their destination on the train ride that starts the film) and buries his body in the backyard, along with some seeds that he found in a letter that Liudas was carrying. Gasper doesn’t know where the seeds came from because it started raining when he began digging Liudas’s grave, and the ink on the letter that came with the seeds has run so badly that it is illegible. Viewers learn later that they are acacia pignalta seeds, and their bark has a lot of tannin, which makes them very bitter.

From this point onward, Los tallos amargos depicts the aftermath of the murder and its effects on Gasper. He doesn’t seem to be overwhelmed with guilt. He even says in another interior monologue, this time addressed to Liudas after his death, that he just wants to avoid being discovered, to avoid having to pay for what he has done. But he does panic whenever he fears that someone may be close to discovering the truth. When this happens, Gasper’s weak moments are revealed. He isn’t sorry for what he has done, but he surely doesn’t want anyone else to know about it, a very noir situation indeed.

The DVD that I watched came with commentary by author and film historian Imogen Sara Smith. It has lots of information about the production of the film and its place in the film noir universe. Here is a list of only a few of the great points that Smith makes:

◊ Los tallos amargos is renowned in Argentina but was unknown in the rest of the world until recently.

◊ The first scene with Andreani, in the newspaper offices, is especially interesting because of the insights that he offers to Alfredo Gasper. He tells Gasper that he, Gasper, wants to serve a great man, not be a strong leader himself. Gasper is the kind of person that makes fascism successful.

◊ Susana is a successful modern woman. She works and lives on her own in her own apartment. Gasper still lives in his family home, with his mother. Susanna is not a femme fatale in this film noir.

◊ The scene with Susana naked under the sheets tells us that she and Gasper are sleeping together. It is not a scene that would have been allowed in American films of the 1950s because of the production code.

◊ War and violence are recurring motifs in the film.

◊ Argentina didn’t join World War II until late, in 1945. The novel on which the film is based makes it clear that Gasper would have fought for the Nazis had he joined the war. Many Argentines did join the war and fought on different sides.

◊ Hungary was still behind the Iron Curtain in 1956. It is very believable that Liudas would have family back in Hungary about whom he would be very worried.

◊ Liudas knows how to spot a mark. He is both sympathetic and suspicious, a very ambiguous character. He could always be just a likable rogue.

◊ Newspaper reporting was a much more glamorous occupation in the 1930s and 1940s.

◊ Correspondence courses have something in common with modern for-profit colleges: They are scams.

Los tallos amargos (The Bitter Stems) definitely shows us what not to do. Gasper bases his actions on suspicions and assumptions. The only time that he considers the consequences of his actions is when someone seems to be on the verge of discovering the truth. He makes several fatal mistakes, and Liudas isn’t the only one to suffer the consequences. Unlike other noirs, where viewers have to pay attention to details, Los tallos amargos is a simple story. There are some cultural references that are hard for modern-day, non-Argentinian viewers to understand, but Imogen Sara Smith’s commentary clarifies some of them. It’s definitely worth a listen after seeing this wonderful film.

1956 release date  •  Directed by Fernando Ayala  •  Screenplay by Sergio Leonardo  •  Based on the novel by Adolfo Jasco  •  Music by Astor Piazzolla  •  Edited by Gerardo Rinaldi, Antonio Ripoll  •  Cinematography by Ricardo Younis

Carlos Cores as Alfredo Gasper  •  Julia Sandoval as Susana  •  Vassili Lambrinos as Paar Liudas  •  Aída Luz as Elena  •  Gilda Lousek as Esther Gasper  •  Pablo Moret as Jarvis Liudas  •  Bernardo Perrone as Andreani  •  Virginia Romay as Mrs. Gasper

Produced by Artistas Argentinos Asociados

 

SOuthside 1-1000 (1950)

I wanted to see SOuthside 1-1000 when I learned that Don DeFore has a starring role. I remember watching him in the reruns of a sitcom called Hazel, and then I learned that he appears in some films noir, too, most notably Too Late for Tears. In Too Late for Tears, he has a supporting role, and he is great as the brother-in-law who finally catches up with Lizabeth Scott, the female lead and femme fatale. He has a starring role in SOuthside 1-1000, where he plays John Riggs, a Secret Service agent on the trail of counterfeiters. But be prepared if you are a fan like me: Don DeFore’s first appearance in SOuthside 1-1000 is a little more than eleven minutes after the start of the film.

SOuthside 1-1000 is available online. Click here to watch it at the Internet Archive.

SOuthside 1-1000 is a semidocumentary that starts by lauding the U.S. government, the U.S. Treasury in particular; the U.S. dollar; and the postwar U.S. economy. U.S. filmgoers in the 1950s would have been enjoying peacetime after the end of World War II and a victory for the United States, so this type of introduction probably would have seemed like well-deserved praise. Once viewers get past the lengthy introduction, the story itself becomes more suspenseful and interesting, with a few plot twists along the way that I found to be pleasant surprises.

The lengthy introduction is stuffed with facts and is told by a voice-over narrator whose job continues throughout the film. The introduction, however, is the longest part of his job, and today’s viewers might find it a bit tedious. Maybe viewers in 1950 did, too, although so much about the postwar United States was so new that maybe all the details were much more interesting more than seventy years ago. Some of the details provide a link to the film’s narrative and include the following:

◊ The Cold War, with its two camps, free versus totalitarian, is in full swing.

◊ Rearmament is needed to fight the Cold War.

◊ The most powerful weapon in this fight is the American dollar.

◊ Protecting the money and the money supply is the goal of the Secret Service.

◊ A counterfeiter is a saboteur.

◊ The film is the story of one (fictional) counterfeiting ring.

The story is based on a true case, but it is fictional, and it is helpful to keep this mind because the semidocumentay style and the voice-over narration can almost make the film sound like nonfiction. The film covers a specific fictional story about a counterfeiting ring, and one counterfeiter in particular, a model prisoner, Eugene Deane, who studies the Bible in prison. He was originally an artist studying in Paris, but he finds it easier to earn more by printing his own money, that is, counterfeiting, in and out of prison. He uses the prison chaplain as a courier. When Secret Service agents, including John Riggs, investigate Eugene Deane’s prison cell, they find etching tools in the sink drain in his cell.

The story gets more interesting with the Secret Service investigation of Eugene Deane, but it gets even more interesting when John Riggs goes undercover. Riggs is the lead investigator, and the leads in his case are drying up. Riggs wants to keep the case from going cold, which is the point when he decides to go undercover. The one slim lead he has is the fact that a member of the counterfeiting ring stayed in the Hayworth Hotel in Los Angeles. So he decides to go for an extended stay at the Hayworth as Nick Starnes, a racket guy from back East.

(This article about SOuthside 1-1000 contains all the spoilers.)

Nora Craig is the hotel manager for the Hayward Hotel, and Nick Starnes (Riggs) starts with her in his quest for leads about the counterfeiting ring. The best way to do that is to ask her out on a date, and Riggs thinks he might be on the right track when he learns that Nora Craig lives in a ritzy apartment that seems to be beyond her means. He eventually learns that Eugene Deane, the counterfeiter who is printing money in his prison cell, is Nora Craig’s biological father, and she, not Eugene Deane, is the ringleader. Nora Craig tells John Riggs that Deane was her biological father, but she grew up with her mother and stepfather and took her stepfather’s name.

Nora Craig eventually learns that John Riggs is a T-man (a Secret Service or U.S. Treasury agent). She is infuriated about being duped, and she is intent on exacting revenge. She drives to the spot where Riggs is arranging to buy counterfeit money to use as evidence, and she blows his cover instead. Riggs is about to be killed when his boss and other Secret Service agents and police officers show up. Riggs is saved while a shootout ensues, but Craig tries to escape with all the money. She is pursued by Riggs, and she falls to her death from a bridge onto railroad tracks and is killed. The film ends there—and with closing music on the soundtrack that is surprisingly upbeat for such a somber ending.

SOuthside 1-1000 is a film that emphasizes its semidocumentary style over its stars. I mentioned that the voice-over introduction is long, and the stars aren’t introduced until well into the film’s running time, for example:

◊ The voice-over introduction is five minutes, thirteen seconds long, which is the point when viewers get to the specific fictional story.

◊ Don DeFore (as John Riggs/Nick Starnes, the male lead) makes his first appearance at eleven minutes, fourteen seconds.

◊ Andrea King (as Nora Craig, the female lead) makes her first appearance at almost the halfway point, at thirty-five minutes, forty-nine seconds.

The film’s title is styled as a phone number from the days way before cell phones and even before operator-less phone calling. The same is true for the titles of the films for all my blog articles in December, and all of the them differ from each other in small ways. In the 1950s, an area code as the phone number prefix was unnecessary—unless, of course, you intended to call outside your local zone, which is probably another phone concept that seems ancient to modern viewers.

Today’s viewers do not need to know anything about telephone history to appreciate SOuthside 1-1000, but it can’t hurt to have a slang dictionary on hand! I often turn on the English-language subtitles for classic films so I can catch the slang terms and look them up later. SOuthside 1-1000 uses a couple of terms that are helpful to know before watching:

◊ bunco: slang for “fraud” (see the Urban Dictionary for more information)

◊ queer: slang for “counterfeit” (click here and then scroll down)

I enjoyed the film very much, but the long voice-over introduction is a drag on the action. Once it’s over, the plot is much more complicated. The suspense builds so gradually that the amount of tension in the narrative comes as a surprise. Don DeFore is worth the wait, especially if you are as much of a fan as I am. Perhaps I am a little biased: The plot of the film took so long to introduce one of my favorite film noir actors that it might be easy for me to pick on the film’s faults!

November 12, 1950, release date  •  Directed by Boris Ingster  •  Screenplay by Boris Ingster, Leo Townsend  •  Based on a story by Bert C. Brown, Milton M. Raison  •  Music by Paul Sawtell  •  Edited by Chirstian Nyby  •  Cinematography by Russell Harlan

Don DeFore as John Riggs/Nick Starnes  •  Andrea King as Nora Craig, the hotel manager  •  George Tobias as Reggie  •  Barry Kelley as Bill Evans  •  Morris Ankrum as Eugene Deane  •  Robert Osterloh as Albert  •  Charles Cane as Harris  •  Kippee Valez as the nightclub singer  •  Joe Turkel as Frankie  •  John Harmon as Nimble Willie  •  G. Pat Collins as Treasury Agent Hugh B. Pringle  •  Douglas Spencer as the prison chaplain  •  Joan Miller as Clara Evans  •  William Forrest as the prison warden  •  Bennie Bartlett as Eddie, the hotel bell boy  •  Gerald Mohr as the narrator

Distributed by Allied Artists Productions  •  Produced by King Brothers Productions

Dial 1119 (1950)

I saw Dial 1119 for the first time about ten years ago, and I honestly couldn’t remember much about it. I’ve seen it a couple more times recently, and I was pleasantly surprised. The film is short, only about seventy-five minutes long, and it is undoubtedly a B movie, even though it was produced and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, a big-name studio. Its themes are sophisticated for a B film produced seventy-five years ago. These themes are revealed through the storyline and the characters’ conversations—no voice-over narrator is needed to explain anything to viewers.

(This blog post about Dial 1119 contains all the spoilers.)

Some of the characters (Harry, Helen, Skip, Chuckles) who are hostages or victims later in the film are briefly introduced at the start of the narrative to give viewers their separate backstories, and each short sequence shows the characters interacting with others in their lives. Viewers learn about these characters, but they still don’t know a whole about them—not yet anyway. The storyline begins in earnest with Gunther Wyckoff, the main character, on a bus heading to Terminal City.

A woman passenger sitting on the bus next to Gunther offers him part of her sandwich, but he barely acknowledges her. He has his eye on the bus driver’s gun in a holster at the front of the bus. He is so intent on it that even his seatmate notices it. When the bus pauses for a five-minute stop, Gunther steals the gun. When the bus reaches its destination and the bus driver confronts him, Gunther shoots and kills him. No one hears the gunshot because another bus driver is honking impatiently to get moving in the queue to drop off passengers. Gunther has time to walk away before anyone notices him or the female passenger can talk to police officers.

Gunther Wyckoff is in Terminal City to visit Doctor John D. Faron, who is a police psychiatrist. The doctor is not at his office at the Criminal Courts Building, and he isn’t at home either. Gunther notices the Oasis Bar across the street from the doctor’s apartment and heads there to keep watch for Faron. Since the murder of the bus driver and the honking of another bus’s horn, the soundtrack is incredibly quiet, so much so that I thought the DVD I was watching had been damaged. The quiet is very unsettling, but that is the point.

It isn’t long before police officers are investigating the murder of the bus driver, and isn’t long before they identify Gunther Wyckoff as the murderer. His fingerprints are on file because he has already been incarcerated for murder at the Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He has escaped to find Doctor Faron.

Gunther uses the Oasis Bar as a lookout point for the doctor. He notices the bar’s air conditioner and the ribbon fluttering outside its vent. The incident shows something is off about Gunther (besides murder, that is), and the ribbon and the air conditioner actually play a part in the story later. When the news about the bus driver’s murder and Gunther Wyckoff’s involvement is broadcast on the television at the Oasis Bar, Chuckles, the bartender, recognizes Gunther. Chuckles has his own gun on a shelf behind the bar, and he hopes to use it to stop Gunther, but Gunther shoots and kills him before he has the chance to help himself and the others. Helen is already in the bar, and she screams when Chuckles is killed. Her scream is heard by passersby outside on the street, and one of them hails an officer.

Gunther orders everyone who is still in the bar to stay put and takes them all hostage. The five hostages include:

◊ Freddy, who is a woman and a regular customer at the bar

◊ Skip, the waiter, who works for Chuckles

◊ Helen, who is meeting Earl, not a female friend of hers as she promised her mother earlier in the evening

◊ Earl, who is just trying to get Helen to go away with him and doesn’t care about her

◊ Harry, a newspaper reporter

Chuckles, the bartender and owner of the Oasis Bar is already dead. His murder is one of the reasons that the others are taken hostage.

Police officers gather outside the Oasis Bar, as does a crowd of civilians. One of the officers on hand for the quickly developing hostage situation is Captain Keiver. Doctor Faron finally arrives on scene and stops to talk to the captain. Both Doctor Faron and Captain Keiver are already familiar with Gunther Wyckoff because Keiver testified against him and Faron’s professional opinion kept Gunther from being executed three years earlier, something Captain Keiver isn’t very happy about. This time, Keiver wants to do everything he can to make sure that no additional people are hurt, including Doctor Faron. He refuses to allow the doctor to enter the Oasis Bar and talk to Gunther, even though Gunther has already made this specific request. But he will allow the doctor to talk to Gunther on the phone.

The film makes a couple of interesting statements about television journalism and bystander behavior. A bus for Channel 11, WKYL television, pulls up to the scene—or as close to the scene as the police allow. The television reporters are intent on setting up a live feed and broadcasting the action as it happens. They aim for sensationalism, which isn’t hard for them to do with a convicted murderer holding hostages. Many of the bystanders on the street about a block away from the Oasis Bar treat the hostage situation as a spectacle, something for their entertainment. An ice cream truck even drives up to sell assorted frozen treats to the crowd and make some money. People start buying as soon as the truck stops. With the remove of a television broadcast and the luxury of snacks to purchase, the civilian bystanders can afford to be a little distracted, and they show less and less concern for the plight of the hostages.

Doctor Faron and Captain Keiver discuss Gunther Wyckoff and their options. They point out opposing arguments about law and order versus social justice, punishment (including the death penalty, which was more common in the United States in 1950) versus compassion. Their conversations present some philosophical arguments, and here is one example:

• Doctor Faron: “. . . We no longer execute the sick. We’re not in the Middle Ages.”

• Captain Keiver: “I’m not arguing morality. If Gunther Wyckoff had gone to the chair, the life of one man, maybe two—maybe all the people in that bar would have been spared tonight.”

• Faron: “Hank, listen to me for just a moment. Wyckoff has always been unbalanced. Most of us are, in one way or another. But the pressures of tension and circumstances made this boy a killer.”

• Keiver: “This is not news to me.”

Gunther Wyckoff is apparently suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He remembers his World War II military service in battle vividly, and he is having trouble adjusting to civilian life. He tells this to the hostages, and he describes one battle in particular very convincingly. In the middle of his monologue, Gunther notices that the air conditioner has been turned off: The ribbon is no longer fluttering. He shoots Officer Ulrich, who is in the air-conditioning duct attempting to confront Gunther and free the hostages. Captain Keiver learns that Ulrich is wounded and will be lucky to survive the ride to the hospital; thus, he is likely to be Gunther’s third victim just that day.

Doctor Faron disobeys Captain Keiver’s instructions to stay away from the Oasis Bar and approaches the bar with the intention of talking to Gunther Wyckoff in person. The television crew captures his approach while he is on the street and broadcasts it live on television. Gunther is pleased when he sees the broadcast on the bar’s television and allows the doctor to enter the bar.

Gunther tells Doctor Faron that he wanted to meet him in person because he wants to kill him. Doctor Faron wants to help him, but Gunther feels that the doctor tricked him the last time (when he was incarcerated three years ago). This time, he wants everyone to know “the truth.” But Doctor Faron reminds Gunther that he was never a soldier:

• Faron: “You never were a soldier. You were drafted and wanted to go but you were rejected. Weren’t you, Gunther?”

• Wyckoff: “Doctor, you better shut up.”

• Faron: “You couldn’t face the reason they rejected you. You went out of your head. You killed. Then to justify a killing you knew was wrong, you invented a dream. You made yourself believe you were a soldier.”

Gunther shoots Faron to keep him from talking any more. He doesn’t want to hear the truth and never did. He has used the war to convince himself that he was indeed drafted and served in battle. As a soldier, he would have killed without criminal consequences, but as a civilian who kills, he most certainly does face those consequences. Doctor Faron insists on the truth, which Gunther cannot bear, so he shoots and kills the doctor (his fourth victim in one day).

Now Gunther wants to kill the hostages because they heard what the doctor said, and he knows that they believe the doctor and not him, just like people did before, as he says. He orders them to stand at the bar, and Freddy notices, in the mirror behind the bar, the gun that Chuckles keeps on a shelf. When Skip rushes Gunther, she grabs the gun and shoots Gunther. Gunther is only injured, however, and runs out of the bar to be killed in a hail of police fire. The hostages return to their everyday lives and concerns rather quickly. The police officers outside the bar break up the crowd, telling the bystanders, “Break it up. Party’s over.”

The film does make some negative observations about human nature, especially for people who are in proximity to danger, who are observing it from behind the safety of a police barricade or through a television broadcast. But it also says something about how humans shy away from the unpleasant. It even showcases an extreme case in Gunther Wyckoff, who invents a false story for himself so he doesn’t have to face a truth he doesn’t want to believe or so he won’t have to take responsibility for his actions.

One of the plot details that I especially enjoyed was that Freddy, one of the female bar patrons, is one of two people who save themselves and the rest of the hostages. Freddy is the one who reaches over the bar and grabs it off the shelf when Skip, a bartender working for Chuckles, jumps Gunther. I also enjoyed the thoughtful conversations between Doctor Faron and Captain Keiver, two people who take their jobs seriously and weigh the consequences of their actions. The issues they raise are not resolved in the film. And how could they be? Captain Keiver’s job and his responsibilities are very different from those of Doctor Faron. It’s even more enjoyable to follow a story like this one that presents real-life issues and lets viewers mull them over for themselves.

Dial 1119 was a pleasant surprise. I enjoyed the story, which kept me guessing. I didn’t know how it would end. The themes about PTSD and mental illness are surprisingly sophisticated, and Marshall Thompson gives a wonderful performance as a young man who has lost touch with reality. I read a review online (and I wish I could remember where online) in which the writer thought that James Dean would have made a better Gunther Wyckoff. But I disagree. Now, I have to admit that I have never been a huge fan of James Dean, but I don’t think he would have given the kind of subtle performance that Marshal Thompson did. Like the female passenger on the bus riding with him to Terminal City, you know that there is something wrong about Gunther Wyckoff, but you cannot put your finger on it right away.

November 3, 1950, release date  •  Directed by Gerald Mayer  •  Screenplay by John Monks, Jr.  •  Based on a story by Hugh King, Don McGuire  •  Music by André Previn  •  Edited by Newell P. Kimlin  •  Cinematography by Paul Vogel

Marshall Thompson as Gunther Wyckoff  •  Virginia Field as Freddy  •  Andrea King as Helen  •  Sam Levene as Doctor John D. Faron  •  Leon Ames as Earl  •  Keefe Brasselle as Skip  •  Richard Rober as Captain Henry (“Hank”) Keiver  •  James Bell as Harrison (“Harry”) D. Barnes  •  William Conrad as Chuckles, the bartender  •  Dick Simmons as the television announcer  •  Hal Baylor as Lieutenant Whitey Tallman  •  Barbara Billingsley as Dorothy, secretary to the newspaper editor  •  John Maxwell as Frank, the managing editor

Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer  •  Produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer