Saturday, February 22, 2014

Of Mice and Men (1939)

Director: Lewis Milestone                               Writer: John Steinbeck
Film Score: Aaron Copeland                          Cinematography: Norbert Brodine
Starring: Burgess Meredith, Lon Chaney Jr., Betty Field and Charles Bickford

Lewis Milestone’s independent production of John Steinbeck’s best selling novel Of Mice and Men had the misfortune of being produced in 1939, a year that was so full of great films that there was very little elbow room at the Oscars that year. Had it been made a year earlier it’s likely it would have won several awards, possibly even best picture. Still, it did manage to earn four nominations, including best picture and best score for Aaron Copeland’s music plus two others in technical categories. The story of two itinerant farm workers during the Depression is one of the greatest works of American literature. It’s a small novel, like Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, but is no less powerful for it’s size. In fact, the characters of Lennie and George have become cultural icons that, though diminished over time, still resonate large in the popular culture of the past and as a result Steinbeck’s novel has inspired four film adaptations and countless stage productions. But that’s no surprise as Steinbeck’s original story even reads like a play, with specific interior settings and only a few scene changes, and so it is ideally suited for adaptation for the screen.

The story begins with two men on the run, Burgess Meredith as George, and Lon Chaney Jr. as Lennie. After hiding from a mob that’s out to kill them, they hop a freight train and make their way to a ranch where they both begin a new job. Unfortunately the owner’s son, Bob Steele, is a small hothead who likes to fight. He immediately takes a dislike to Lennie, believing he can best him and feel better about himself in the process. One big problem on the ranch, however, is Steele’s wife, Betty Field. Lonely for any kind of company, she hangs out with the farm hands and winds up driving Steele insane with jealousy. Meanwhile Chaney, as the mentally disabled giant, is fond of petting soft things, like the puppy George gets him or the rabbits that he’s promised they’ll have on their own farm some day. The two befriend an old cripple, Roman Bohnen, who has a lot of money saved up from his disability payments, and together they plan to get their own farm as soon as George can set it up with the owners of some land he knows. Along the way George also makes a friend in muleskinner Charles Bickford. But fate is not kind to the plans of ordinary men, and this time there’s nowhere to run to.

Though ninety-nine percent of the dialogue and the rest of the screenplay are right out of Steinbeck’s novel, Eugene Solow is listed as the screenwriter for the film. This is one of major problems with adapting classic literature for the screen--especially something as simple and straight forward as this story--because screenwriters feel compelled to change things that don’t need changing in order to justify their existence. When John Huston decided to remake The Maltese Falcon at Warner Brothers after two unsuccessful attempts by the studio, he simply gave Dashiell Hammett’s novel to his secretary and told her to type it up in screenplay form. The result was one of the best screenplays Jack Warner said he had ever seen. Of course it was. And the same thing should have happened on this film. While the first half of the film is severely condensed, one of the most glaring--and utterly incomprehensible--changes in the film is with the dead mouse that Lennie carries around in his pocket. Solow changes it to a bird, which makes absolutely no sense. Lennie likes to pet soft and furry things, like the mouse, not the feathers of a dead bird. The change is even more egregious when the two lines of the Robert Burns poem that Steinbeck took his title from are written out on the door of the empty freight car at the beginning of the film. Trying to make “improvements” on classic literature is always a recipe for failure, but fortunately the film succeeds despite Solow’s tinkering.

The film is most notable for launching the career of Lon Chaney Jr., as well as immediately typecasting him. It is a brilliant performance, one he perfected in the company of the West Coast theater production. He lobbied for the part with director Lewis Milestone and won the role in the film. And it’s easy to see why. He elicits pathos for a character that no one has been able to match. Other performers have brought their own interpretation to the role but Chaney had something no other actor could duplicate. But it came with a price, and he found it difficult if not impossible to be cast in any kind of dramatic role. As a result, Chaney became mired in cheap horror films for the rest of his career. Burgess Meredith, in one of his first few films, is a perfect partner for Chaney, and the casting of those two leads is what really makes the film so memorable. Though the rest of the cast is fairly average, in the aggregate they are very good. Director Lewis Milestone--after making some incredibly good films in the early thirties, and winning two Academy Awards--was on a major downward slide at this point in his career, but he still does a nice job. With all of that talent, in addition to Aaron Copeland’s quintessential American film score, Of Mice and Men is more than deserving its place as a Hollywood classic.

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