The Public Enemy

The Public Enemy (Warner Brothers, 1931) Directed by William A. Wellman

Starring James Cagney, Jean Harlow, Edward Woods, Joan Blondell, Mae Clarke.

The movie is based on a story called Beer and Blood, by John Bright and Kubec Glasmon, two native Chicagoans, who knew the city of gangsters as well as anyone, and many of the scenes in the movie are based on actual gangland killings.

James Cagney plays Tom Powers, who, along with his childhood pal, Matt Doyle (Edward Woods), is a young petty thief, who grows up to be a rum-running hoodlum during Prohibition. Woods, a rather genteel actor, was originally cast as the lead, but director William Wellman quickly realised he was outshone by Cagney, and went to Warners Bros. studio boss Darryl Zanuck to ask for the actors' roles to be reversed. (This was doubly tricky, as Woods was engaged to the daughter of powerful and famously bitchy Hollywood columnist Louella Parsons). But Wellman got his way and, after supporting roles in four earlier and mostly undistinguished feature films, The Public Enemy made Cagney a star.

Cagney's portrayal of Tom Powers was revolutionary in modern cinema; he's amoral, callous and only shows real affection to his rather clinging and cloying mother (played by Beryl Mercer). Film critic Dwight Macdonald, writing in Esquire, said: "Tom Powers is a human wolf, with the heartlessness and grace and innocence of an animal, as incapable of hypocrisy as of feeling; the smiling unreflective delight with which he commits mayhem makes Humphrey Bogart look like a conscience-stricken Hamlet." Macdonald also notes how director William Wellman "uses Cagney with subtlety, keeping him in the background much of the time while secondary characters occupy the foreground...So it is all the more powerful when Cagney moves up into the foreground at the big moments; our taste for this extraordinary actor has not been blunted by seeing too much of him."

In an interview, Cagney revealed that his characterisation of Tom Powers was partly based on an old pal of his father's, called Jack "Dirty Neck" Lafferty (great name!), a criminal who ended up in Sing Sing. But Cagney added: "I played Tom as a kind of tribute to Jack, but without his sense of humour. (My italics) No time to do that." Playwright Robert Sherwood said that part of Cagney's achievement in The Public Enemy was to play Tom Powers as "a complete rat," but still manage to somehow elicit sympathy from the audience.

The Public Enemy is still mostly remembered for a brief scene, when Cagney pushes a grapefruit into the face of actress Mae Clarke. This was based on a real life episode, when Chicago gangster Hymie Weiss rubbed an omelette in his moll's face. Since an omelette would have proved too runny, director Wellman chose half a grapefuit, creating a scene which was both very funny and highly shocking for cinemagoers of the time.


Look out for little physical touches by Cagney (or what he called "goodies"); the way he pushes his cap forward on his head, to denote assertiveness; the shortarm jab or soft punch he uses throughout the movie (which even his mother copies); or the almost balletic dance he executes on the sidewalk after flirting with Jean Harlow during a short car ride. An accomplished dancer, Cagney uses his whole body throughout the movie, making his co-stars look rather wooden in contrast. (Harlow, in particular, is very stagey. Look out for her very stilted vocal performance as she reclines on a sofa, while Cagney comes on like a tortured NY street punk).


Commenting on Cagney's performance, director Martin Scorsese said: "He lets it go. He doesn't care - he gives himself to the camera. He's almost like a psychopath." Scorsese also believes that Cagney's performance marks the moment where "modern screen acting begins." But Scorsese also notes how most of the violence happens offscreen, somehow making it more shocking. This includes the execution of Putty Face, Tom Powers' old criminal mentor, or the scene where a mad-eyed Cagney shoots the gangsters who have murdered his friend Matt Doyle (and we hear the groans of the dying as the wounded Cagney staggers into the street, like a cowboy, his two guns still smoking).


TK

Night of the Demon

“Like one upon a lonesome road he walks in fear and dread,
because he knows that close behind a frightful fiend doth tread.”
- Coleridge



Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon (1957) is a (largely) subtle and atmospheric movie set in England and based on the M. R. James short story Casting the Runes (1911). Many critics regard it as one of the high points in the horror genre, despite the somewhat clunky, though brief, monster footage that was in keeping with the contemporary trend in horror ‘monster’ movies; think of Jack Arnold’s Creature of the Black Lagoon (1954), for example, or the giant ants in Gordon Douglas’ Them! (1954).

The plot concerns an American Professor, John Holden, flying to England and investigating a Satanic cult’ led by Julian Karswell. He had been invited there by Professor Henry Harrington, but in the interim, he has mysteriously died and his niece, Joanna, blames Karswell. Holden, of course, becomes involved with Joanna but remains sceptical of Karswell’s powers until it is almost too late.

As you’d expect from Tourneur, who had directed several unnerving classics of the genre like I Walked with a Zombie and Cat People (both 1942), as well as the seminal film noir, Out of The Past (1947), the mise-en-scène's combination of cinematography and lighting creates an atmosphere of fear – take the sequence where Holden leaves Karswell’s house and returns to Joanna Harrington through the menacing woods; the séance that starts off comical but swiftly

turns unsettling; the children’s party at Karswell’s estate when he demonstrates his powers to the sceptical Holden; or Holden alone in the dark, narrow, empty hotel corridor.

However, you will have to be charitable to the special effects involved in the demon’s two brief appearances and Holden’s fight with a stuffed ‘leopard’!

Screenwriter Charles Bennett, who had worked with Alfred Hitchcock on a number of films (The Thity Nine Steps (1939), Sabotage (1936) and Foreign Correspondent (1940), among others), held the rights to the original story and wrote a script based on it under the title The Haunted. He sold the script to independent producer and former child actor Hal E. Chester, who initially planned to make a monster movie aimed at a teenage audience. However, when the script was submitted to the BBFC, they balked at a film that seemed to acknowledge the existence of demons and the successful practice of black magic and demanded a number of changes, including the removal of a scene in which a painting of a black mass was to be shown! Eventually, it was decided to go for an X certificate and an older audience, but even then, the BBFC demanded cuts, including references to what being a “true believer” entails. Bizarrely, this sequence remains in the final cut that was released in the UK.

Tourneur has since claimed that he rewrote some of the script to give it a “pseudo-honest” feel to it. He was brought in to direct under recommendation to Chester from the producer Ted Richmond; the producer of Tourneur's previous film Nightfall (1957). Arguments occurred during filming between Chester and Tourneur. One event was during the filming of the wind scene, Tourneur tried to convince him that he needed to upgrade his two electric fans to two airplane engines. When Chester hesitated, Tourneur's friend and leading actor Dana Andrews threatened to leave.

Although it’s often suggested that Chester insisted on the inclusion of the monster after most of the movie was shot, it’s now apparent that he wanted this from the start to make it more commercial and he secured the help of blacklisted Cy Enfield to intergrate the monster in the story and Enfield may even have directed the process shots involving its appearance – against the wishes of Tourneur who claimed, “The scenes where you see the demon were shot without me...the audience should never have been completely certain of having seen the demon."



Tourneur, speaking to Midi-minuit fantastique, as printed in Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall (Johns Hopkins University Press), by Chris Fujiwara, claimed, “The scenes in which you really see the demon were shot without me. All except one. I shot the sequence in the woods where Dana Andrews is chased by this sort of cloud. This technique should have been used for the other sequences. The audience should never have been completely certain of having seen the demon. They should have just unveiled it little by little, without ever really showing it. They ruined the film by showing it from the very beginning with a guy we don’t know opening his garage, who doesn’t interest us in the least.”

However, it was in the original script and its presence had been debated over before any of the film was shot, so there is no doubt Tourneur knew of it.

Bennett’s reaction to the visualisation of the demon was even angrier: "If [Chester] walked up my driveway right now, I'd shoot him dead."

An American ‘star’ was vital to help the film’s distribution in the US – a factor in the appearances of many American actors in British films of this time, whether second-grade types like Forrest Tucker in Hammer’s The Abominable Snowman (1957) or former starts like Brian Donleavy in the same studio’s The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and Quatermass 2 (1957). Dana Andrews fits into this second category – a major star whose career was experiencing a downturn (not unlike Tourneur’s) and like Donleavy, it was said that his drinking hampered his performance and there are certainly scenes in Night of the Demon where he seems a little off-key.



The most striking performance is Niall McGinnis as Karswell; his affability conceals his sinister intent and while he is ruthless to others, he is aware that he's tapped into the secrets of demonology to gain power, but he also knows he is vulnerable to the forces of the demon too.



The film’s production designer was Ken Adam, later to make a name for himself on the James Bond series as well as by his work with Stanley Kubrick. A particularly fine example of his art is the set for the interior of Karswell’s house. While its columns and statues suggest a temple, the chess-board floor pattern indicates the battle of wills between Holden and Karswell and the space of the set is beautifully exploited by Tourneur’s use of deep focus when Holden breaks in and is filmed from the top of the stairs, seemingly alone until a hand dramatically grabs the top of the banister.

Chester cut thirteen minutes of the film for the American film release and the title was changed to Curse of the Demon. Some of the narration is absent from the titles, the aeroplane sequence is shorter and some of the scenes with Karswell and his mother are cut. One key scene missing is the one with Karswell's mother showing Joanna the occult book; another is Holden's visit to the Hobart farm to secure a release for his examination of Rand Hobart. Holden's experience in the hallway of the hotel is moved and the new fades and dissolves aren’t well-disguised and one cut even occurs in the middle of a previous dissolve!

Night of the Demon was released in the UK in December 1957 as part of a double bill with the American film 20 Million Miles to Earth. In the United States, as Curse of the Demon, it played drive-ins and cinemas with The True Story of Lynn Stuart and The Revenge of Frankenstein.

Credits:

Night of the Demon (1957)
Director: Jacques Tourneur Writer(s): (in credits order) M.R. James (story Casting the Runes) (as Montague R. James), Charles Bennett and Hal E. Chester
Cast: Dana Andrews - Dr. John Holden, Peggy Cummins - Joanna Harrington, Niall MacGinnis - Dr. Julian Karswell, Maurice Denham - Professor Henry Harrington, Athene Seyler - Mrs. Karswell, Liam Redmond - Professor Mark O'Brien, Reginald Beckwith - Mr. Meek, Ewan Roberts - Lloyd Williamson, Peter Elliott - Professor K.T. Kumar, Rosamund Greenwood - Mrs. Meek, Brian Wilde - Rand Hobart, Richard Leech - Inspector Mottrarn, Lloyd Lamble - Detective Simmons, Peter Hobbes - Superintendent, Charles Lloyd Pack - Chemist, John Salew - Librarian, Janet Barrow - Mrs. Hobart (deleted from US print), Percy Herbert - Farmer (deleted from US print), Lynn Tracy - Air Hostess (deleted from US print), Ballard Berkeley - 1st Reporter, Shay Gorman - Narrator, Walter Horsbrugh - Bates, the Butler, Michael Peake - 2nd Reporter, Leonard Sharp - Ticket Collector

A detailed piece on the film:
http://alsolikelife.com/shooting/2008/06/918-59-night-of-the-demon-aka-curse-of-the-demon-1957-jacques-tourneur/
A comparison between the source material and the film:
http://hollywoodgothique.com/curseofthedemon1957.html
A website dealing with M. R. James:
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/GS.html
M. R. James; Casting the Runes:
http://www.fadl12200.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/castrunes2.html

A good book on the making of the film and some of the controversies around it is Tony Earnshaw's Beating the Devil: The Making of Night of the Demon (The National Museum of Photography, Film and Television and Tomahawk Press, 2005)

The title song of Kate Bush's album Hounds of Love, uses a soundbyte of dialogue from Night of the Demon: “It’s in the trees…it’s coming", a line spoken during the séance as someone has a vision of the demon’s attack.