Robert Wise

Robert Wise was a Hollywood establishment filmmaker par excellence for over 60 years.  He began his career as a sound effects editor in 1934 and ended it in 2000, directing a made-for-television movie.  Initially making his reputation as a first class editor - notably cutting “Citizen Kane”, the greatest film ever made - he directed his debut theatrical feature, “The Curse of the Cat People”, in 1943.  39 films and two Oscars for Best Director followed.  Even in his late 80s he remained a genial figure in documentaries and on DVD commentary tracks and was relatively active right up until his death in 2005 at the age of 91.

Wise’s is a contentious name for partisan fans of Orson Welles.  His part in the 1942 butchery of “The Magnificent Ambersons”, Welles’ equally brilliant follow-up to “Citizen Kane”, forever casts a shadow over his artistic reputation.  Reshooting parts of the film and cutting out over forty minutes of priceless footage, Wise’s actions ensured that an American classic was still born.  The fiasco is one of the great tragedies of cinema and the fact that it advanced Wise’s career both politically and in terms of the hands-on experience it afforded him rankles all those who lament Welles’ mistreatment by Hollywood.

Of course messing with “The Magnificent Ambersons” wasn’t Wise’s idea.  He was just following orders like a good studio employee should, especially at a time of regime change.  Loyalty to the studio and playing by Hollywood rules were always Wise’s strengths.  No artistic maverick, his team-player work methods and political savvy were the opposite of Welles’.  There’s little danger of the French labelling Wise an auteur, for his diverse output, spread across so many different genres at so many different times, seems to reflect more chronological, commercial trends than a unified sensibility.  You could even argue that his two Oscar are the ultimate industry recognition for this kind of bland, safe film making.

There is certainly nothing of the Howard Hawks about Wise.  While both men could be labelled genre directors of excellence, only in Hawks to we see consistencies of tone, theme and character across his screwball comedies, his westerns, his war films, and his one science fiction classic.  Wise by contrast adopted a style suitable to the type of movie he was making at the time.  There’s no similarity at all between say, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and “The Sound of Music”.

Whichever way you look at it Wise did make some very good, at times very influential films.  Mainstream audiences might best remember him as a maker of musicals but his real strengths were in the horror, science fiction, war, and film noir genres.

Horror

Horror is the field in which Wise first cut his teeth.  Working for the legendary producer Val Lewton, he made two contributions to the stylish series of films made by RKO studios in the early to mid-40s.  Despite its title, “The Curse of Cat People” is less a horror than you might imagine.  More a fantasy  only tangentially related to the original “Cat People” it enjoys a delicate, subtle tone, Wise effectively blurring the line between dream and reality.  “The Body Snatcher”, made the next year, is closer to what you might expect from the Lewton cycle.  Wise coaxes magnificent performances from icons Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Henry Daniell, the film’s gothic images and tone as good as any horror of the period.

18 years later Wise made his finest contribution to the genre.  “The Haunting” is all the more impressive for achieving its thrills through pure, cinematic means of framing and sound effects and excellence in pace and performance that takes a basic haunted house premise and exploits it to the maximum.  The supernatural is only ever implied, as much in the twitchy face of Julie Harris as the stunning monochrome cinematography.  It is a textbook example of the unseen being far more disturbing than any flashy special effects.

Wise’s last horror film was by far his least.  “Audrey Rose”, made in 1977 at the tail end of the possessed-child cycle initiated by “The Exorcist”, is dull and overlong with an annoyingly mannered performance by Anthony Hopkins as a man who believes his dead daughter has been reincarnated in the body of a middle class New York girl.  Wise shows the odd touch of old form with an opening car crash and at the climax but it’s all very po faced and one-note and unsatisfying, getting bogged down in tedious and melodramatic court room scenes that go nowhere.

Science Fiction:

Wise made one genuine science fiction classic: 1951’s “The Day the Earth Stood Still”.  Again we see a mastery of atmosphere and confidence with special effects, the director putting the formal, thriller elements ahead of the script’s potentially didactic, anti-war message.  Very much a film of the cold war, reflecting societal concern over the atomic bomb, its tale of an alien ship landing in the American capital to deliver a pacifistic message is amongst the most optimistic of an often dystopian genre.

Less influential but equally respectable in terms of craft is “The Andromedia Strain” made two decades later.  In a sense the premise is the opposite of that of “Earth”’s: an alien microb has the potential to end life on earth if not defeated by a team of specialist research scientists.

On the strength of Wise’s reputation as something of a science fiction expert he was hand picked to direct “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”, the initial big screen version of the cult television series.  Coming to a project with untold political baggage, with a wordy, heavy-handed script at odds with the tone of the original show, and having to deal with delays and deadlines in special effects that were beyond his control, Wise arguably did a good job.  The film remains an acquired taste, never much loved by cast or fans, a reflection the serious, overly earnest side of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry’s vision.  Wise was caught in the middle between Roddenberry, studio executives and a very unhappy collection of actors.

War

Perhaps there are no major classics amongst Wise’s war films but there are at at least three solid achievements.  “The Desert Rats” manages to stand alone from the film that inspired it, telling the story of the North African desert campaign from the Allied side.  “Run Silent, Run Deep” is one of the very best submarine dramas, Wise marshalling a big, talented cast of very differing performing styles, including Clark Gabe, Burt Lancaster, Jack Warden and, on debut, Don Rickles.  The integration of human drama with impressive model work ensures a tense, satisfying and always credible story, one every inch the equal of the later, somewhat overrated “Das Boot”.

“The Sand Pebbles” would seem to have been something of a pet project for Wise, one that garnered him his only non-musical related Oscar nomination for producing.  It also saw Steve McQueen receive his only acting nomination, playing a member of gunship crew in 1920s China.  The pacifistic themes play out against a backdrop of racial tension and political unrest.

Film Noir

Wise made three significant noir films whilst his true story capital punishment drama “I Want to Live” - for which Susan Hayward won an Oscar - has noir elements.

“Born to Kill” is a great vehicle for the always underrated Claire Trevor as well as for the Lawrence Tierney.  One of those crazy, obsessive love stories between crazy, obsessive people that get more crazy and obsessive as they go on.

“The Set-Up” is borderline great.  Shot in real time, the tale of a boxer in the twilight of his career sold out to the mob by his manager gives actual ex-boxer Robert Ryan something to sink his teeth into.  Stylish visuals, very credible fight scenes, a down-beat, cynical tone and non-cop out ending mean it ranks with the very best of the genre.

Almost as good is “Odds Against Tomorrow”.  Ryan this time plays a psychopathic racist, teamed in a heist with a desparate black man and a disgraced cop.  A moody jazz score and location shooting are amongst the film’s many virtues.  Raw rather than subtle, one of the least melodramatic of the era’s race themed films, it plays like “White Heat” crossed with “The Defiant Ones”.

Stepping back from this generic analysis of Wise’s career to look at his filmography chronologically it’s clear that he went into decline as a filmmaker when tempted into bigger, higher budget projects that weren’t necessarily his forte.  “The Hindenburg”, “Audrey Rose” and “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” effectively spelt the end of Wise as a major filmmaker just as “Star!”, the Gertrude Lawrence biopic he director in 1968, was one of the key flops of its era, pointing to an end to the era of lavish musicals which Wise’s “West Side Story” and “Sound of Music” had help sustain.

Foremost amongst his strengths was an ability to direct actors.  Ensemble casts like those featured in “The Body Snatcher”, “The Haunting”, “Run Silent, Run Deep” and “Odds Against Tomorrow” are marshalled expertly, Wise demonstrating that he didn’t need huge budgets or any gimmicks to put across interesting human drama.  Control over tone and pace were also a crucial part of his skillset.