The Sheila Variations

Under-rated movies: #6

6. Four Daughters

So here is another nearly-forgotten film - even though at the time it was nominated for Oscars left and right, and directed by Michael Curtiz - who was eventually responsible for - well, for a TON of movies that are now considered classics. Hungarian-born, he apparently spoke absolute gobbledy-gook - and only a very few people could understand what he was saying. No matter, he made some pretty great films in a very non-precious way. Four Daughters was done in 1938 - and it was basically set up as a vehicle for a new leading man - Jeffrey Lynn - which is almost laughable when you see it now. Unfortunately for Lynn - a smaller part of the outsider who barges into this family's neat little existence, was given to John Garfield - in his film debut. Garfield is in the film for, maybe, half an hour - but he's all you can look at when he is on screen. When he's not in a scene, you keep wondering when he will show up again. You yearn to see him again. He brings with him a sense of the unpredictable. He's dangerous. He's sexy. Jeffrey Lynn didn't stand a chance - even though he might have been a fine actor. It's just that a new style was coming - and you had to either get with the program or be seen as "dated". Certain stars will never be "dated" - Cary Grant's work stands up today. More than 'stands up'. He still shows everybody else up, in my opinion. Same with Irene Dunne. Bette Davis. A few others. I want to make it clear that I am not sayinig one style is BETTER than another. Ronald Colman, a master of the old-style, is a marvelous actor. It's just that when you watch him NOW you have to adjust to the old style - whereas no such adjustment has to be made with Grant, Dunne, Garfield, etc etc.

John Garfield is as good as all of those. He's a limited actor - but that doesn't matter. Nowadays, people seem to think that unless you can play a limping retarded one-armed Inuit - you are not a good actor. Uhm - what about knowing what it is that you do, how you fit in, who you are, and play it like hell?? Angelina Jolie does that, like gangbusters. She's not perfect - but she seems to understand who she is, and what parts she would be credible in. She was this way from the start, which is why her work is so superior to ... pretty much everyone else's. She's not trying to play a mousy waifish ugly person who can't get a date - some beautiful women seem to think they need to do that in order to prove they are good actresses. I realize it's hard to be taken seriously if you're beautiful - but plenty of awesome actresses made great careers out of playing beautiful women. They didn't put on a prosthetic nose in order to legitimize themselves. Jolie is a babe, and she knows it. Jolie probably couldn't play STUPID, and she knows it. She can play RECKLESS, but that's not the same as being a dim bulb. Something in Jolie's eyes radiates intelligence. She seems to choose her parts well - so far. No shame in having limits - it can be the best thing for an actor to admit them, and GO with them!

Garfield is Marlon Brando 10 years before Marlon Brando. (He was actually the producer's first choice to play Stanley in Streetcar on Broadway.) He is the introduction of this new kind of acting ... he is the introduction of the sexiness of the anti-hero. And he eventually became a gigantic star before he was ultimate destroyed. I've got a real soft spot for John Garfield (Jules Garfinkle was his real name - damned bigots ... but his good friends all still called him "Jules-y".) Anyway - it is so so worth it to keep your eye open for this hard to find film - maybe it's on Netflix? It's a good story, and the 4 daughters of the title are wonderful - but Garfield is like a message from the future. He really is.

His style - his naturalistic style - foreshadows Brando, Pacino, Duvall - the new generation.

Steven Vineberg wrote a book about Method actors through the ages - and while it can be a bit tiresome, there's a lot of great stuff in there - and he devotes an entire chapter to Garfield in Four Daughters - which is why I sought out the film in the first place. I had heard the legendary stories of Garfield on stage with the Group Theatre, and I had also seen Postman Always Rings Twice - but had never heard of his screen debut.

Listen to Vineberg's description of Garfield:

But the particularly independent nature of the role (Mickey is an outsider, never truly integrated into the family) liberated Garfield. Unshaven, his eyes half-closed, his hair mussed, his hat battered and his tie loose, he makes such a striking first entrance that it's probably not an exaggeration to say he was a star by the end of the reel

Totally. His first entrance is all it would take to make the entire audience lean forward and go: "Who the hell is that??"

Vineberg goes on:

It's a theatrical entrance: He thrusts himself into the Lemps' living room, bums a cigarette from Felix, and starts right in on the wisecracks, disdaining everything in the Lemp household as "normal" and "domestic". What Garfield does is bring Odets's street-wise rebel, with his dark Semitic looks, into a small-town middle-class house full of Gentiles. Borden isn't written as Jewish, of course: Because of Hollywood's Jewish studio heads' obsession with assimilation (their terror of anti-Semitism), Garfield wans't allowed to play specifically Jewish characters until after the war. But in a sense he never played anything else, because he was always drawing so closely on himself. In this early performance, you can spot a slight staginess, a trace of theatrical self-consciosness, but he's got more dynamic presence and genuine banked energy than anyone else on screen, and his acting carries infinitely more wit and authority than that of his dimpled costafs. Four Daughters is a carefully cultivated Norman Rockwell fantasy, but Garfield is an emissary from the real world. It's only when he's on screen that we believe there's a Depression going on outside the Lemp household.

It's one of those completely forgotten moments of genius. Everyone talks about how Ed Norton in Primal Fear has to be the best debut of an actor ever. Fine. He was great. But people who say that must have very short memories. How 'bout Tim Hutton in Ordinary People? Or - how 'bout farther back? Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not? Or even farther back - Garfield in Four Daughters.

This is a star-making moment.

More on Garfield in this movie - Vineberg says he "broods through the film like a ghetto Heathcliff." This type of acting has become not only so common now - but it's pretty much how you are supposed to practice your craft - that it's hard to realize how truly revolutionary Garfield was at the time.

The best thing about Four Daughters is that you can see the two acting styles up side by side. Nothing wrong with any of the daughters in the film - as a matter of fact, they are uniformly adorable, and they don't push, or over-act. But they're recognizable types. Nothing wrong with that, again - it's just that Garfield, by resisting a little label, takes all the focus - He actually seems HUMAN.

More:

Garfield carries this stuff off by displaying a bright-eyed tough-hide sincerity (and he's most successful when he throws his lines away). In his scenes with Priscilla Lane he's a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, eager to make a good impression but not sure how to go about it. Ann tries to straighten Mickey out, to infect him with her wholesome optimism, but he stays resolutely bent. Even his manner of sitting on a couch -- his hip thrown sideways, his leg twisted -- has a renegade quality to it ...

Garfield plays outsiders like Mickey Borden brilliantly - injured men with restless, brooding minds and a feeling of entrapment that amounts almost to paranoia. In fact, he rarely plays anything else. Mickey touches us most when he's standing apart from the other characters, watching the Lemp family hijinks around the Christmas tree; though they've tried to include him, he feels naturally left out.

The romance of the outsider. The guy who doesn't fit in. The guy who bucks convention. It all seems like a cliche now - but back then? It was a revelation- and Garfield's debut still seems fresh and dangerous to contemporary eyes.

See it!!

Part 1 here.

Posted by sheila