The Ox-Bow incident 1943 - A brilliantry structured classic western-noir about vigilante justice

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IMDB rating: 8,1

Director: William A. Wellman
Main Cast: Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Mary Beth Hughes, Anthony Quinn, William Eythe, Harry Morgan, Jane Darwell, Matt Briggs, Harry Davenport, Frank Conroy

"This now-classic indictment of mob rule was a pet project of both star Henry Fonda and director William Wellman, both of whom agreed to work on lesser 20th Century-Fox projects in exchange for this film.
The Ox-Bow Incident was an anomaly at the time it was released. Produced in the middle of World War II, when Hollywood was concentrating on movies that either boosted morale or entertained, it did neither: it was a major studio release, with a hot young star (Henry Fonda) in the lead, about an unjustified lynching in the 1870s West. Walter Van Tilburg Clark's novel had been kicking around for years, but Hollywood had never had much luck making movies about mob violence and vigilante justice (Fritz Lang's Fury had been a box-office disaster for MGM before the war, despite the presence of Spencer Tracy), and no one was anxious to film it. Twentieth Century-Fox production chief Darryl F. Zanuck agreed to do the movie only because Fonda and Wellman agreed to do other films for the studio, and the result was a movie that was singularly unpopular during its initial release but which has aged magnificently. It was a labor of love by all concerned, a chilling indictment of American justice and America's past in which there are no heroes, just participants who are less guilty than others. Once the war was over, and the movie made it to television, it began to find an audience; the belated response from critics and viewers, as well his pride in having made it, inspired Fonda's similar effort 14 years later to make 12 Angry Men, a movie built on a similar theme. Ironically, 12 Angry Men also took decades to find its audience and begin recording a profit. For all its lack of recognition at the time, The Ox-Bow Incident has become, along with Otto Preminger's Laura, perhaps the most distinctive and well-remembered film issued by Fox during the first half of the 1940s." - www.allmovie.com

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The public enemy 1931 - William A. Wellman's landmark gangster movie

IMDB Link
IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: William A. Wellman
Main Cast: James Cagney, Jean Harlow, Edward Woods, Joan Blondell, Donald Cook

"One of the great pre-Production Code gangster films, William Wellman's The Public Enemy made James Cagney a star, providing him with his defining role: Tom Powers, a bitter Chicago gangster driven to a tragic end. Like its contemporaries Little Caesar and Scarface, The Public Enemy was surprisingly ambitious in its examination of the social causes that drive young men into a life of crime, closely examining the allure of street gangs to working-class youths. Although the film goes to great lengths to claim that it does not glamorize criminal activity - providing a moralistic introduction and conclusion designed to ward off censorship - many powerful people felt otherwise, and the film's notoriety helped install the more draconian Production Code of 1934. The film's mixed message occurs largely because Cagney is so charismatic an antihero, especially compared to his straight-arrow brother, played woodenly by Donald Cook. Though the film is sometimes visually static, a common problem given the constraints of early sound cinema, it remains bracing and brutal, filled with an air of menace and hopelessness." - www.allmovie.com

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Safe in hell 1931 - A stunning precursor of film noir both thematically and stylistically

Donald Cook and Dorothy Mackaill in Safe in Hell (1931)

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0022335/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,2

Director: William A. Wellman
Main Cast: Dorothy Mackaill, Donald Cook, Ralf Harolde, Victor Varconi, Nina Mae McKinney, Charles Middleton, Clarence Muse

"A young Barbara Stanwyck was considered for the starring role as the exiled call-girl in this extremely frank pre production-code drama directed by William A. Wellman from a play by Houston Branch. The role eventually went to Dorothy Mackaill, an evocative British-born veteran adept at playing less than respectable women. Mackaill is Gilda Karlson, a call-girl fleeing New Orleans the supposed murder of her latest 'john', Piet Van Saal (Ralf Harolde). Old boyfriend Carl Erickson (Donald Cook) arranges for safe passage to Tortuga, a Caribbean Island without extradition laws. After 'marrying' the girl in the eyes of God but without the benefit of clergy, Carl leaves on his ship. Having successfully kept an international array of escaped crooks at bay, Gilda suddenly finds herself face-to-face with Van Saal, still very much alive and on Tortuga because an insurance scam went astray. The island's jealous executioner, Bruno (Morgan Wallace), hands the girl a gun 'to protect herself'. Van Saal attacks her, and this time Gilda manages to kill her tormentor. About to be acquitted of murder by a sympathetic jury, Gilda chooses to 'confess' in order to escape a trap set by Bruno. To the strains of Pagan Moon, the wronged girl bravely faces the gallows. Forthrightly told and extremely well acted, Safe in Hell features two prominent African-American performers - Nina Mae McKinney and Clarence Muse - portraying completely un-stereotypical characters. Muse, in fact, persuaded director Wellman to drop the screenplay's standard 'black' lines in favor of straight dialogue. McKinney, famous for playing the vamp in King Vidor's all-black Hallelujah! (1929), performs When It's Sleepy Time Down South by Clarence Muse.
Wellman and cinematographer Sid Hickox stage many of the scenes in chiaroscuro darkness, and even the opening title — in which the words 'Safe In Hell' appear as cutouts in a black field with fire billowing forth from behind the letters — is visually stunning and sets the mood for the film instead of merely announcing what it's called. (The title and the director's name — in small print on the same card — are the only credits we see at the outset; the other credits are relegated to the end, in the fashion that's now become standard but was highly unusual in 1931.) The script requires the actors, Mackaill and Cook in particular, to make some pretty abrupt hairpin turns in emotions and motivations, but it's a testament to their skill (especially Mackaill's— Cook's is a pretty straightforward good-guy lead and his only spectacular sequence is the early one in which his loathing suddenly turns into desperate protectiveness and love when she's about to be arrested) that all the emotional turns are quite credible and she's equally believable as a bad girl and a good one."

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Nothing sacred 1937 - See the big fight! Lombard vs. March!

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029322/
IMDB rating: 7,5

Director: William A. Wellman
Main Cast: Carole Lombard, Fredric March, Charles Winninger, Walter Connolly

"Nothing Sacred is among the best screwball comedies of the 1930s, and one of the few to have been filmed in Technicolor (avoid those two-color reissue prints), allowing modern viewers to see what New York City looked liked back in 1937. Carole Lombard and Fredric March lead a strong, versatile cast, and William Wellman's crisp direction keeps the story brisk and peppy. Screenwriter Ben Hecht gives the story an unusually sardonic edge, with fine dialogue and interesting secondary plot twists. Overall, the film plays well for current-day audiences, and the New York location gives the film a distinctive visual texture. The musical score by Oscar Levant both mocks and celebrates the George Gershwinesque musical style then in vogue. Nothing Sacred was later adapted into a Broadway musical, Hazel Flagg, which in turn was filmed by Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis as Living It Up (1954), with Lewis in the Carole Lombard role." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/nothing-sacred-v35733/

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A star is born 1937 - Is the price of stardom a broken heart?

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029606/
IMDB rating: 7,7

Directors: Jack Conway, William A. Wellman
Main Cast: Janet Gaynor, Fredric March, Adolphe Menjou, May Robson, Andy Devine, Owen Moore, Peggy Wood

"A Star is born came into being when producer David O. Selznick decided to tell a 'true behind-the-scenes' story of Hollywood. The truth, of course, was filtered a bit for box-office purposes, although Selznick and an army of screenwriters based much of their script on actual people and events. (Especially the marriage of Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Fay. The latter was a huge Broadway star who just started to wash up and his young wife's career in Hollywood began to take off. The writers were at great pains to insist at the beginning of the movie that 'all resemblance to any person is purely coincidental...' and all of that. But everyone in Hollywood knew at the time.) A star is born showcased Janet Gaynor's last great performance and established one of the screen's most enduring tales of tragic love. A triumph of top-grade production values, writing, and acting, it represented the zenith of efforts from United Artists in the late 1930s, and remains entertaining and relevant when viewed by current-day audiences. This is one of the best films of the 1930s, particularly notable for the acting and the high level of technical work, as director William Wellman adroitly combines a rich visual style with the luminous performances of the film's stars. An honorary Oscar selected by a panel of cinematographers went to Howard Greene's Technicolor work, helping to change Academy rules two years later to recognize color cinematography as a separate category from Black & White. The film received seven Oscar nominations overall, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress for Gaynor, and Best Actor for Fredric March, winning for Wellman and co-scripter Robert Carson as Best Original Story." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/a-star-is-born-v46638/

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Wild boys of the road 1933 - Girls living like boys! Boys living like savages!

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024772/
IMDB rating: 7,5

Director: William A. Wellman
Main Cast: Frankie Darro, Edwin Phillips, Rochelle Hudson, Dorothy Coonan Wellman, Sterling Holloway

"Despite some flaws, William Wellman's bitingly realistic depiction of the bleak prospects awaiting the hordes of teenagers who took to the road in search of work during the Depression remains one of the most memorably affecting features on that era. While talented tough-kid Frankie Darro (as Eddie Smith) is the ostensible star, the film is episodically structured around a group of these rail-riding kids and the ease with which characters are dropped and picked up underlines the randomness of their lives. The film is permeated by the director's characteristic mixture of harshness and tenderness, as comic interludes alternate with scenes of abject desperation. As usual, Wellman was testing the limits of censorship, with a then-shocking suggestion of rape, and in the film's best-known scene, a mutilation which still has the power to disturb. The initial naïveté of these kids may seem incredible in a far more cynical age, but Wellman, who had taken to the road himself 20 years earlier, imbues their disillusionment with a depth that feels personal. Although the film is bereft of any political or economic analysis of the causes of the Depression, and the unbelievably positive tacked-on ending seems to bely everything that's gone before, it's difficult to imagine how it could have been otherwise in the Hollywood of the period. It also seems possible that the ubiquitous figure of the cop-as-obstacle spoke to contemporary audiences more eloquently than any analysis." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/wild-boys-of-the-road-v117016

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