The House on Carroll Street is another film directed by Peter Yates. My last blog article was about Eyewitness, also directed by Yates and a film I enjoyed much more than I thought I would, which is why I decided to see The House on Carroll Street. Both films take place in New York City. Eyewitness was shot on location, and the city is photographed as it was in 1981; in The House on Carroll Street, the city is shown as it might appear in 1951. Both films are rich in color, and the cinematography is spectacular. The House on Carroll Street isn’t nearly as shadowy as Eyewitness, but both films are tense, suspenseful stories that are beautiful to watch.
(This article about The House on Carroll Street contains spoilers.)
The opening credits appear over a sequence at a cemetery. The camera pans over several gravestones, then stops on a young man who is standing in front of a freshly dug grave, that of Meyer Teperson, 1898–1951. The first time that I saw the film, I somehow expected most of the film to be flashbacks that would explain how the young man ends up standing in front of a grave dug for Meyer Teperson, but that wasn’t the case at all, and I don’t know why I had that particular expectation. It came as quite a shock to me when this young man is murdered about halfway through the film! (And no, he is not Meyer Teperson, and the grave is not dug for him.)
Right after the young man’s visit to the cemetery, the film cuts to a U.S. Senate hearing taking place in New York City in 1951. Emily Crane has been called as a witness. She is an assistant picture editor for Life magazine, and she is on the board of an organization called Liberty Watch. She refuses to name any of the other people who work with her at Liberty Watch (she refuses to “name names”). She is cited as being in contempt of Congress because she didn’t bring to the hearing any of the documents listed in her subpoena. Her so-called stubbornness leads to the loss of her job and to surveillance by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
The fact that Emily refuses to cast any suspicion on her friends and coworkers says a lot about her character generally, but it still puts her under suspicion from the federal government, hence the FBI surveillance. The early 1950s were a time of finger-pointing and suspicion because of fears of communism. Anyone suspected of communist ties and brought before a government hearing could save themselves if they were willing to name the people they worked with in suspect organizations or those they believed were communists.
Emily now needs a job because the magazine has decided to fire her after the publicity from her hearing. She interviews for a job reading for Miss Venable, who happens to live on Carroll Street. On the way to her interview, Emily asks directions of a young man on the street. (He is a stranger to Emily, but he is the same young man that viewers saw at the cemetery during the opening sequence.) Miss Venable hires Emily on the spot because she likes her spunk and the way that she reads.
Emily starts working for Miss Venable, who falls asleep one day during a reading sessions. Emily decides to take a break and go out into the courtyard for some fresh air. She sees the young man in a building adjoining the courtyard and hears him translating for Dan Salwyn, the lawyer who questioned her at the congressional hearing. She sees them talking to a third man, one who doesn’t speak English. That man is the one who eventually spots her in the courtyard. He isn’t happy about her presence and closes the window so that she can no longer hear what anyone inside says.
Senator Byington, also from the congressional hearing, is worried about Ray Salwyn’s activities. He is concerned about the number of refugees that Salwyn is bringing into the country and the need for secrecy. He even mentions that he doesn’t want to be sponsoring war criminals as refugees. Senator Byington should be worried: Salwyn is lying to him about bringing former Nazis into the United States, he is taking advantage of the senator’s influence to cover his true intentions, and the house on Carroll Street is being used as a way station for people entering the country under assumed names.
Emily Crane spots the young man leaving the house on Carroll Street one day and decides to follow him as he makes his way back to the cemetery. The young man realizes that he is being followed, and he demands to know what Emily is doing and why. She wants to help him because she believes that he is afraid. He doesn’t believe her, but she is right about one thing: He is afraid.
The young man eventually calls Emily looking for help. He knows that the house he is staying in is being used for criminal activity and he no longer wants to be any part of it. They agree to meet at a bookstore, and when they try to leave to meet the lawyer that Emily knows can help the young man, two men claiming to be from U.S. Immigration try to stop them. The young man recognizes the men and knows that they are not from immigration. He begs Emily to help him escape. They manage to hide in a theater that is in the middle of a live performance, but someone catches up with them eventually, and the young man is killed.
Emily is understandably distraught, and she is now in trouble with the local police department. But assistance comes from an unlikely source: one of the FBI agents who have been surveilling her. FBI Special Agent Mike Cochran has shown up and put in a good word for her. In spite of her record as an unwilling witness in a federal hearing investigating communism, the New York City police detective interviewing her agrees to let her go.
It is not clear that Ray Salwyn ever saw Emily in the courtyard on Carroll Street, but he is keeping tabs on her anyway. He breaks into her apartment and tells her that he wants to help her, but he takes her by surprise while she is in her bathtub, and he is in her apartment uninvited. Is he trying to bring her onto his team? Does he think that she can be bribed? It’s hard to know at this point, but Salwyn eventually loses patience with Emily and she finds herself in real danger before too long.
Emily Crane is a strong leading character who is quite resourceful. She follows the young man to learn more about him. She is curious about the goings-on in the house on Carroll Street and tries to learn more. After the house has been vacated, she breaks in (with encouragement from Miss Venable) to do some investigating of her own.
And these are the very reasons that I found the scene in that vacant house, where she comes upon FBI Agent Mike Cochran and an unidentified intruder, so incongruous. She does nothing to help Cochran as he wrestles with the man. In fact, she jumps from one spot to the next trying to stay out of their way. I wanted her to look for something to hit that unidentified man right on the crown of his head!
Well, I guess it goes without saying that I didn’t get my way. And maybe it was an unrealistic expectation for a film that was set in the 1950s, when women weren’t expected to do much more than become wives and mothers and move to the suburbs. But Emily takes charge again after that fight between Cochran and the stranger. She continues investigating, looking for clues and answers, and making Dan Salwyn angrier and angrier. She learns that Ray Salwyn is smuggling Nazis into the United States and giving them the identities of deceased Jewish Americans. The young man who was killed was getting the names off the tombstones in the cemetery for this very purpose.
The House on Carroll Street isn’t just a noir about international intrigue and illegal human trafficking. A romance begins to blossom between Mike Cochran and Emily Crane. She keeps telling him that they will never work as a couple because they are like oil and water. He is a civil servant working for a government that is turning on its own citizens—she is one of them. The film is ambiguous about the future of their relationship but not about the way they feel about one another. Emily is the one to pause the relationship because of her ideals, but I think she really cares for Mike Cochran; she just doesn’t know what to do with him.
The music on the soundtrack is dark, with deep bass notes that hint at foreboding, even in the opening sequence. The music emphasizes the action and the emotions of the characters. New York City reimagined in the 1950s looks beautiful. The cinematography works well for a noir that is also a romance. I found myself thinking about a film that took place in New York City just ten years after the time period of The House on Carroll Street: Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961). The filmmakers for The House on Carroll Street succeeded in choosing locations in the city that would invoke the 1950s.
The House on Carroll Street didn’t get very good reviews when it was first released, and that is really a shame. Roger Ebert compared its style to that of Alfred Hitchcock’s. It is a throwback film—that’s the whole point. And I think it deserves another look, especially from fans of film noir.
March 4, 1988, release date • Directed by Peter Yates • Screenplay by Walter Bernstein • Music by Georges Lelerue • Edited by Ray Lovejoy • Cinematography by Michael Ballhaus
Kelly McGillis as Emily Crane • Jeff Daniels as FBI special agent Mike Cochran • Mandy Patinkin as Ray Salwen • Jessica Tandy as Miss Venable • Jonathan Hogan as the lawyer Alan Engels • Remak Ramsay as Senator Byington • Ken Welsh as FBI special agent Joe Hackett • Christopher Buchholz as the boy Stefan • Bill Moore as Meyer Teperson • Gregory Jbara as Tom, the office boy • Jamey Sheridan as a train porter
Distributed by Orion Pictures • Produced by Orion Pictures
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