This Land is Mine (1943): Renoir, Laughton, and O’Hara Take on The Nazis

Posted on March 23, 2024 by 4 Star Films

This Land in Mine initiates itself as a memorial to WWI. We see a statue with a crouching soldier. It’s inscribed with the following message: “In memory of those who died to bring peace to the world.” In the foreground, the Nazi juggernaut rolls into town. Peace did not last thanks to Hitler’s voracious appetite for “Lebensraum.”

The juxtaposition is key, and it says everything Renoir wants us to know without putting words to it. A newspaper is strewn on the ground with a very prominent headline featuring Hitler’s latest invasion. We’re seeing it firsthand.

There is only the very beginning, and it suggests something elegant about Renoir’s critique of the Nazis. In his case, it doesn’t come in the guise of a thriller like we might see with Fritz Lang or Hitchcock — this fit their own proclivities and doubled as pulse-pounding entertainment.

For Renoir, the story is a drama of a different sort. The local school is run by only a handful of teachers who must do their best to keep the school of rowdy adolescents afloat even with so many outside distractions. Suddenly Plato’s Republic and Voltaire’s writings are deemed dangerous by the new administration.

The school’s beloved Professor Sorrel (Philip Merivale) muses what the Nazis have before them is a delicate operation — cutting out the heart without killing the patient. Put in such terms, it sounds tenuous at best if not doomed to fail. Something must give way and perish.

The movie’s not about force or sheer strength, but the resoluteness and free reign of ideas. Because this is what brings people together and allows them to think for themselves about the true tenants of good and evil.

The two primary teachers are the middle-aged, ever-reticent Albert Lorry (Charles Laughton), who still lives with his mother, and the fiery soon-to-be-engaged Louise Martin (Maureen O’Hara). They are tasked with “correcting” their textbooks, though Ms. Martin’s act of passive rebellion is to hold on to the miscreant pages for the day they can be pasted back in. If all this sounds harrowing and positively medieval, stinking of Fahrenheit 451, that’s because it does.

Still, we live in a modern society of self-censoring. Not of ourselves mind you, but we like to cut out all the pages of the culture and the world with ideas we don’t find palatable or don’t summarily agree with. It’s so much easier to insulate ourselves with things that are innocuous and inoffensive from our own tribe. Then, as a result, we’re left with an ill-fated and potentially disastrous conception of the world.

This is partially what allows tyrants to take over and also what allows bipartisanism to poison people, since they never see the human being sitting across from them. Does it say something that I often feel less proud of my country than ever before? It’s not so much for the historical sins, because I’ve always known them to be there, but it’s for what feels like our current failures. And not just our failures but the persistent callousness and cynicism pervading our world.

Walter Slezak was always a fine performer in a bevy of roles as diverse as they come. Here his Nazi is in the mold of military efficiency; he’s totally pragmatic — just trying to do his duty and get by. He knows from experience he wants no sabotage and no martyrs. Because this churns up emotions and will blow up like a powder keg.

Later, he preaches how the children of today are the soldiers of tomorrow. No one knows that better than the Nazis with their Hitler youth regimen and indoctrination. But with that, you have the muddied center that a man like George Sanders train station manager must contend with. He lacks the idealism of the academics, namely, his fiancee O’Hara, the principled young woman who gathers the children together to sing rousing songs in the air raid shelter while the Allied bombs fall overhead.

You have this rowdy boy’s hall out of Mr. Chips set against the backdrop of an occupied city during wartime. It makes for a strange marriage but not an inauthentic one. Because, as we’ve already suggested, it’s another crucial battleground for the hearts and minds of the next generation. These are life-altering battles to be fought on their behalf, and it’s not solely with guns and bombs.

Since it has not been mentioned already, This Land is Mine is an unofficial reunion of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and not just the same players. It’s an extension of this same sweet but painful romance as reflected by the bashful Laughton. He has feelings for his young colleague — they care for one another — but she is with another.

Mrs. Lory (Una O’Connor) is a demonstrative lady, with deep-seated opinions, but her maternal love knows no bounds, and it’s phenomenal to watch in action. Her son is imprisoned, no fault of his own. In a world of daily paranoia, he’s one of 10 innocents imprisoned in recompense for two German soldiers murdered in the streets by a saboteur. It’s a debilitating moral dilemma for those who know the perpetrator intimately. After all, it is one life weighed against ten others.

It occurs to me that the man who made Le Grande Illusion could not sell his characters short in time of war. The generation changed and brought with it a new enemy — and we’ve toiled with history to make Hitler and his ilk a different kind of evil — but that almost makes it too easy. We can keep them at arm’s length with a clear conscience.

George Sanders says something telling as he commiserates with the town’s mayor. They are both in undesirable positions of power where they either compromise with the powers that be or fall under fiercer tyranny. Their acquiescing is deemed to be spineless. Sanders retorts:

“It’s easy for people in free countries to call us names, but you wait to see how they behave when the Germans march in. They’ll shake hands. Make the best of it.” A lesser film would have made them mere stooges and collaborators. I made the mistake of believing this was all they were. However, although the moral gradient is quite nuanced, it doesn’t mean Renoir doesn’t have a clear preference.

It comes in the form of Albert, a seemingly diffident man who nevertheless evolves when challenges are thrust upon him. Laughton has every opportunity to save himself quite easily, and yet he resolves to stand for an idea with his fallen friends.

When Laughton gets on the stand and talks about the Nazis’ assault on working-class people, making them into slaves pitted against a middle-class afraid of chaos and disorder, it’s very plainly Renoir’s point of view aided by scribe Dudley Nichols. Truth under any form cannot be allowed to live under the occupation. This is what Laughton stands up for because it is far too precious to go down without a fight.

There’s a lot of rousing defiance in the final act, good for stirring up the patriots, but what did it for me was Laughton’s exit. He gets his kiss and is unceremoniously shoved out of his classroom. But he’s a new man pushing the guards away, hands in pockets, perfectly at peace with the moment. His newfound courage is evident to all.

After watching the film, I had to ask myself the question: If this land is mine — the land I call home — why don’t I start acting like it? It’s so easy to cast aspersions on others and quite another thing to take personal responsibility.

4/5 Stars

The Informer (1935): John Ford and Victor McLaglen

Posted on February 22, 2022 by 4 Star Films

The opening title card sets the stage in strife-torn Dublin in 1922 with a reference to Judas, the man who betrayed Jesus Christ to be killed. The allusive nature of the story becomes apparent only with time, connecting with John Ford’s own deeply religious inclinations as an Irish Catholic.

I won’t say Ford’s able to make a soundstage more atmospheric than the real place because reality would provide a grittier, more authentic ambiance, but here we have the mist, large vacant sets, and crumpled up newspapers that flutter around like tumbleweeds. It’s Dublin as can only be conceived in the dream factories of the studio system.

Some might forget before John Wayne was one of his primary avatars, Victor McLaglen came to represent Ford’s version of hardy masculinity even earlier, and it’s no different here. Even when he was displaced in later years, he still found time to turn up in the director’s pictures, most notably in The Quiet Man and his cavalry trilogy. Ford never seemed to forget actors who had put in their service with him.

As The Informer set down its roots, it feels a bit like watching Hitchcock’s England pictures from the ’30s. You can see the early brushstrokes of the master, but it’s almost as if the technology hasn’t quite caught up with their ambitions and the capabilities of what they’re yearning to do. Sound, color, lighting, and the like would improve in the ’50s and ’60s as would both men’s budgets leading to some of their finest achievements and a plethora of the most lauded pictures Hollywood has ever known.

For now, they work with what they have and manage to spin a decent cinematic yarn all the same. Because necessity is the mother of invention; still, it’s also about how you utilize the time and resources on hand to make something as substantive as possible.

The Informer was made for RKO probably due to the fact no one else was willing to take a chance on it. It’s a meager picture in many regards, and this is easy to forget since it was a stunning success during that year’s award season. But it was a film made for a relative pittance over the course of a couple of weeks plus change.

While one would probably never call it Ford’s most profound achievement, you can tell he’s put his blood into it — his history as a proud Irish-American — and its core dilemma is a powerful bulwark to build a film around and an acting performance.

Gypo Nolan (McLaglen) is a man caught in the middle of civil unrest plaguing the lands since their inception. The British think he’s with the Irish and the Irish think he’s with The British. Mostly he’s out for himself just trying to subsist and earn himself a bit of merriment. Still, he can’t scrounge up a job from either side. It’s far from a desirable place to be.

He does have a few friends: Katie (Margot Grahame) is his lady although because he’s not good for much money, she works as a streetwalker to scrape out a living. Still, she’s devoted to the big lovable oaf. Another is Frankie McPhillips (Wallace Ford), a wanted hoodlum for the IRA resistance and a brother in arms for Gypo. They’ve grown up together and as is the prerequisite for a community like this, their friendship is forged in a life lived in proximity. Gypo loves the man, but he’s also penniless with no prospects.

It’s not exactly 30 pieces of silver, but Gypo makes a rash decision to sell out his friend — this isn’t so much of a spoiler — because this becomes the context for the rest of the movie. He’s tortured by his conscience even as no one suspects him in the wake of the tragedy he instigated against his friend and the man’s grieving family.

His only defense is to swim in self-absorbed debauchery. It gets him out of the moment providing a brief escape from his guilt. He belts a policeman and another lad on a street corner before wrangling fish and chips for a whole host of onlookers in a show of drunken generosity thanks to his newfound wealth.

In another scene, he stumbles in on a hotsy-totsy establishment run by a local matron where all the men and women wear top hats over drinks, conversation, and other things. He bowls them over with his rowdy entrance pushing down pipsqueak and gathering pretty girls up around him. These all feel like a part of his mental smokescreen.

Behind the scenes it’s a much grimmer scenario as the pragmatic Dan Gallager (Preston Foster) sends his cronies out into the streets to track down Frankie’s betrayer. This isn’t a mission of mercy. They live in a kill or be killed economy, and they’re prepared to take the necessary actions to preserve their cause against traitors, even those with deep roots in the community.

The drunken Gypo is pulled into a meeting with another suspect (Donald Meek) as the truth is slowly sussed out. The tribunal standing by has echoes of M, though it’s now been superimposed by this sense of Catholic guilt and justice.

McLaglen makes his way through the entire movie boisterous, gruff, and drunk like any good McLaglen performance except this easily must be the bar by which to judge all others. It’s either a really good job of acting or Ford helped him get into the part with a little trickery and added encouragement from the spirits. At least that’s how the story goes. Either way, it works with the actor dispensing this trail of blustering, sniveling, disoriented guilt, and gravitas making the picture go.

Dudley Nichol’s script doesn’t necessarily employ great prose — it’s not a thing of beauty — but Ford is able to utilize its framework to tell a worthy story. The final images culminate in the ultimate biblical picture.

Gypo stumbles into a church with one final chance to pay recompense for his sins. He gains absolution from the Mother (Una O’Connor), standing before the Crucifix, arms outstretched (May God Have Mercy on His Soul). The sentimentality doesn’t feel like typical Ford — though he could certainly be deceptive about it — and this form of religious iconography is something relatively apparent even in his final picture Six Women.

The Informer’s unparalleled success paved the road for him ahead with many great entries to come. Ford certainly was a master in blending classical storytelling with his personal vision. It shows how personal filmmaking can break through the barriers and resonate with audiences on an impactful level.

4/5 Stars