2/20/24
Newsletter #561
The Crack of Dawn
I decided to stop watching movies or TV shows because they were just aggravating the shit out of me. That left me with watching attorneys discussing Trump’s various court cases, YouTube video compilations of fails and the “craziest things caught on camera.” I quickly grew bored. As I’ve previously mentioned, I then began watching Hallmark movies. Unfortunately, most of those suck, so I moved on. Having signed up for YouTube Premium, they show a lot of oddball movies for “free,” meaning I don’t have to pay any more than I’ve already paid. So now I start watching many more movies than I used to, and the second they go astray, I bail. Amongst these movies are some old favorites. I feel a certain warmth as soon as I start watching a movie that I know I like and don’t have to start speculating what went wrong. Also, many of these older films now have new digital transfers that look marvelous. I watched Zulu (1964) for about the tenth time, mainly because the red uniforms of the British Army are so vivid against the blue African skies. I love the fact that it says in the credits, “Introducing Michael Caine,” and his first movie is a A Hill in Korea (retitled Hell in Korea, 1956), eight years earlier.
I just watched a beautifully restored version of Fail Safe (1964), which I think is an underappreciated movie, and one of Sidney Lumet’s best. Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove went into production at the same time in 1963. When Kubrick became aware of Fail Safe, that’s what caused him to decide to make his movie (called Red Alert at that time), a comedy and he brought in Terry Southern to rewrite the script. That’s also when Kubrick decided that he was going to beat Fail Safe to the theaters, which he did. Dr. Strangelove got all the accolades and Oscar nominations, as it deserved, and it killed Fail Safe, which is a great movie, but as dead-ass serious as is humanly possible. Luckily for me as a kid, I saw Fail Safe first, got the shit scared out of me, then saw Dr. Strangelove and was able to see the absurdity even more clearly.
I love Fail Safe. First of all, it’s shot in the starkest black and white ever and is just great-looking. Oddly, it’s the first feature of cinematographer, Gerald Hirschfeld, who is remembered as the DP of Young Frankenstein (1974), which is also stark black and white, and also looks terrific. Second, the cast of Fail Safe is wonderful: Henry Fonda as the president (you can’t do better than that), Walter Matthau as a smart-ass professor, young Larry Hagman as the Russian interpreter, Dom DeLuise as a bumbling soldier, and introducing Fritz Weaver. Third (but really first), is Sidney Lumet’s direction. Man, does he have that camera right up in the actor’s faces, and at exactly the right times. Lumet has one interesting shot after another after another, and his blocking is perfect. Actors moving from background to foreground, shifts of focus, everything covered and handled expertly. When Sidney Lumet was firing on all cylinders, he was as good as it got.
And fourth (but really second), is that the film was cut by the master editor, Ralph Rosenblum, who was the top editor in New York for many years. He cut all of Woody Allen’s movies, until he after Annie Hall (1977). He edited The Producers for Mel Brooks. Rosenblum wrote a very good book about editing called, When the Shooting Stops, the Cutting Begins. In any case, Ralph Rosenblum made use of everything available to him in post-production, such as optical effects (which pre-dated digital effects). With Fail Safe he used an optical effect that I’ve never seen used as he used it. The effect was Solarization, which made the image look kind of three-dimensional, overexposed, and slightly negative. He used the effect in a few places, but on all the stock footage of the jets and it magically removes the curse of cutting to stock footage, which is a loss in belief that this shot was meant to be in this movie. Rosenblum also used optical snap-zooms, where it zooms really fast on images that weren’t shot as zooms. He uses this effect to a powerful advantage at the powerful end of the movie.
Let me not forget both the book by Harvey Wheeler and Eugene Burdick, which was riveting and frightening, and a very smart, snappy screenplay by Walter Bernstein.
Beyond any of that, Fail Safe is a fascinating cornucopia of analogue devices – nothing is digital, but it’s loaded with the most futuristic-looking machines of 1963. When it becomes time for the president to speak directly to the Russian premier, the “hot line” is made of steel, appears to weigh about 20 pounds, and looks like a steam punk prop. Unlike any other movie set in a missile control room with a “Big Board” showing the positions of the jets and missiles, which is always a process shot – meaning the actors are playing against a blue or green screen and the image is put in later during post – this movie uses an actual giant black and white TV screen so that the actors can actually see what’s happening and react to it. Sadly, in 1963 (when it was shot) they hadn’t yet figured out how to synchronize a TV set to a movie camera. You’ve seen this problem a million times, where you can see the lines and distortion in the unsynchronized TV image. That’s my only gripe with Fail Safe, and I think it just adds a little more reality to the situation.
Fail Safe was unfairly overlooked in its day — understandably so going up against Dr. Strangelove — but taken as its own work of cinematic art, it’s brilliant.
Thanks Josh - I will add "Fail Safe" to my Watchlist. A shame when Films, Albums, Songs or Events
suffer from unlucky timing-coincidence. Like when Farah F passed away in the shadows... on the same day as Michael J. That was 15 years ago already. Whew.