Shockproof (1949), an intriguing attempt at a romantic noir in shades of black and white from Columbia Pictures, sprang from the imagination of two disparate filmmakers. Though they reportedly never met, this movie was crafted from a script fashioned by the outraged nihilist, Sam Fuller, and directed by the stylish master of domestic angst, Douglas Sirk. Originally entitled “The Lovers” by Fuller, the author described this tale as telling the story of “a woman who, in order to get her lover back, marries someone else.” Fuller‘s rarely produced scripts of that period often bore titles such as “Murder: How to Get Away With It,” and “Crime Pays”, so he may not have been too surprised to see that the studio changed his story considerably by the time it premiered, starting with the title, which became the lurid-sounding Shockproof and altering considerably the doom-laden conclusion, much to Sirk‘s chagrin. Eventually, Fuller, who admired Sirk‘s markedly different style, just said that “[he] didn’t give a damn what they called it”, he was just grateful one of his postwar scripts had finally sold. I enjoyed aspects of this strange hybrid of a movie, and on reflection, saw that the pairing of a hard-boiled guy like Fuller with a slyly observant director of melodramas like Sirk may not have been all that odd, even if the resulting movie might have been more accurately entitled “Startleproof” instead.

Since seeing this movie a few weeks ago, I’ve learned that Shockproof is one of the long out of circulation films to be included in the upcoming boxed set from Sony, The Samuel Fuller Collection, set to go on sale on October 27th, 2009. Other DVDs in this set are It Happened in Hollywood (1937), Adventure in Sahara (1938), Power of the Press (1943),  Scandal Sheet (1952), The Crimson Kimono (1959), and Underworld, U.S.A. (1961). Along with many others who like Douglas Sirk‘s less well known movies, such as Summer Storm (1944), Slightly French (1949) and The First Legion (1951), I’ll hang in there waiting for a similarly sumptuous boxed set devoted to this German-born director…someday.

This film might easily fit into any proposed box set of Douglas Sirk‘s interesting films too, but there are some traces of Fuller‘s touch on this story. Despite obvious softening of the story by the producers, who brought in screenwriter (and co-producer) Helen Deutsch, the scenarist for National Velvet (1944) and Kim (1950), and the later schlock-fest, Valley of the Dolls (1967) , to make this odd story more palatable for mainstream audiences, there are moments when surfaces fall away, revealing the dark heart of this movie and the loneliness of the central characters. Though an unlikely glossy ending is tacked on to the story, the clear if sometimes ghostly traces of Sirk‘s concerns for the differences between appearances and reality and Fuller‘s starkness and characteristic quirks remain.

As in several of Fuller’s later movies, including House of Bamboo, Forty Guns and The Naked Kiss, the hero, played here by Cornel Wilde as a parole officer, is named “Biff”. A highly original filmmaker who was always interested in “why ordinary people go nuts in extraordinary situations”, as Fuller later described it, this movie attempted to blend a couple of readily identifiable noir themes that appealed to me, including explorations of the notion of a femme fatale, how a good man can be destroyed by love, and the punishment society metes out on those who violate convention.  Other Fuller touches seem evident in the often punchy dialogue. When two rather smug parole officers trade quips about the value of a rehabilitation of their clients, mocking a female psychiatrist’s comments on a case after they have eavesdropped on her session with a parolee by exclaiming “It’s heredity! It’s environment! It’s a joke!” and “Put that in your test-tube, Doc!” it seems to be an echo of of Fuller’s penchant for showing the hypocrisy of authority figures. One other sure-fire sign that Fuller was involved in the structure seems evident in the occasional burst of unexpected violent action. The viewer is startled in one disturbingly abrupt scene when an uncredited King Donovan decides to take the shortcut to the bottom of the stairwell of the much-photographed Bradbury Building in Los Angeles, even though that action seems peripheral to the main story.

The story begins promisingly as the camera follows a young woman–seen only from the back at first–as she goes window-shopping in an upscale Los Angeles neighborhood, pausing before a Hollywood store window to study the hollowness and superficial perfection of a mannequin that is dressed to kill in some au courant duds. After a trip to the most modish boutique for a new dress, (very much in the style of Christian Dior‘s return to femininity with the “new look” of the late forties), and a stop at a salon for a peroxide job, the now fashionable woman leaves looking to me just like a blonde version–hairline and all–of erstwhile Columbia star Rita Hayworth, complete with characteristically beautifully made clothes, courtesy of Jean Louis, the house designer at the studio in this period.  After taking her time in pursuit of this transformative cleansing ritual, the woman casually drops by the office of her parole officer, who is–guess who? Cornel Wilde. Slumping down in a seat opposite “Biff” Marat (Wilde), she is told quite bluntly that “she needs to change her brand of men.” The rules for her parole, (which seems to be a possible lifetime arrangement), are simple: No contact with her old boyfriend, no visits to any gambling establishments, she must have a job and live in a place, both of which must be approved by Wilde. Lastly, no marriage, at least for some time, and never without her parole officer’s permission.

Wilde comes on like gangbusters, playing a very straight arrow opposite the beautiful ex-con, but soon that stern moral tone turns into something else. Getting a pat on the back for his hard approach to his work from his rather lackadaisical superior, (Howard St. John, an actor who specialized in hearty blowhards, with an occasional wince of conscience), Marat is rather inexplicably doing a 180 degree turn; growing closer to the tough beauty by escorting her to the dingy rented room where she is welcomed by the contemptuous landlady as a known felon. He eventually asks Knight out to dinner, explaining that it is just “to break the ice.” At this point in the movie, I started to tell myself that in some ways society was much less structured than now back in the ’40s. However, even then, having a female parolee socializing with her keeper seems just a bit too cozy, not to mention, unprofessional and unethical. However, this being Hollywood, let’s not let the penal code of behavior for state bureaucrats mar our story.  Soon, seething with resentment and a feeling of confinement as palpable as she knew in stir, Jenny Marsh (Patricia Knight) is seeking out her old main squeeze, who is working on a scam to get her out of Wilde‘s jurisdiction.

Starlet Patricia Knight, (who also happened to be Mrs. Cornel Wilde between 1937-1951, the years of his biggest stardom), plays this sullen gal who has just served five years for plugging a guy for her smooth, allegedly “classy” boyfriend, played with appropriate oiliness by the aptly named Harry Wesson (John Baragrey). The actress, whose rather frozen features seem to reflect a permanent “deer caught in the headlights” look, despite her beauty and rather stiff poise, may have earned this role at the behest of her husband, who, while proud of his beautiful wife, never quite found the career satisfaction for both of them, despite years that the couple had spent separately on stage and building his career. At his request, Knight tested for the coveted lead opposite him in 20th Century Fox’s Forever Amber, though that part would go first to Peggy Cummins and later be filmed with Linda Darnell after Cummins was dismissed from the cast of that Restoration era potboiler.

After her duplicitous activities and return to her old high life antics are detected, Wilde becomes even more determined to help this gal straighten out and fly right. In an even stranger stab at rehab for the blonde hussy, Parole Officer Marat takes her home to earn her respectable keep by tending to his blind Italian Mama (Esther Minciotti) while his little brother Tommy (Charles Bates). At this point I seriously began to wonder if Wilde had a mild form of a Messiah complex, though, as the film went along, it became quite clear that Biff was clueless in part because he was so alone. Wilde also seemed to be a moralistic character whose lack of occasional healthy self-doubt help to make him rather insufferable. His only real friends, aside from his rather sycophantic boss, seemed to be his family and his parolees, another of whom is also in residence at the distinctively cozy-looking Marat homestead, which appears to have been photographed in the old, now gone, Bunker Hill neighborhood of Los Angeles. Gradually, the hauteur and emotionally frigid air affected by the young woman melts in the presence of the warm and generous working class household’s residents. She struggles to fit in, finding herself unexpectedly drawn to this simpler way of life, though she is still emotionally linked to her old life. This conflict, interestingly, is one that Sirk explored in several movies, especially All That Heaven Allows (1955), though on somewhat more subtle level in that later movie.

The interior of this home, btw, was an elaborately overstuffed world unto itself, with seemingly every surface covered with some patterned material, wallpaper,  homey objets d’art, and different planes broken up by windows, staircases and, of course, as in any Sirk movie, a mirror or three. At this point in the movie, I felt Knight‘s oppressive claustrophobia and was honestly dismayed when she found herself at first repulsed and then attracted to the straight arrow Biff and the embrace of his family. When Biff’s hand, like his unconscious urges, soon reaches out for hers in a darkened theater when the improvised family goes to the movies, her reaction is mixed. Of course, when this occurs the little brother has also reached for her hand at the same exciting moment in the movie on the screen, so this is all perfectly innocent, right? Knight‘s expression of disturbed and startled revulsion at this extremely odd sign of a growing bond in this scene would seem to indicate that her own feelings are less than kindly toward her parole officer, but unseen events turn that logical conclusion on its head.

Biff is soon declaring his rather surprising love for his beautiful if rather frosty house guest and legal responsibility, even though he is unaware that she is still slipping away to see her scamming boyfriend Baragray regularly. With the urging of her calculating lover, a secret marriage, breaking all the rules for paroler and parolee, and putting Wilde‘s future career in penology in serious jeopardy, is the result, even though gradually Knight has come to return his love and his professional and personal downfall is imminent.  Finding herself blackmailed by her now former lover, a murder results, with Miss Marsh (Patricia Knight) as Suspect #1, even if it may have been in self-defense, at least in the mind of the newly married parolee.  Interestingly, even after admitting that she loves Cornel Wilde’s character, their life as a couple becomes even more fraught with guilt, deceit and fear, leading me to wonder if Fuller and Sirk were making a commentary on the state of marriage.

In a rush of dramatic imagery reminiscent of desperate scenes from Fritz Lang‘s films such as You Only Live Once (1937) and foreshadowing nearly simultaneous work by Joseph H. Lewis in Gun Crazy (1950), the movie breaks out of the domestic drama and that house in need of a good airing as the lovers take it on the lam. Bickering, making up, starving and hunted, the desperate but in love pair eventually land in one of the more vivid settings of the film–an oil field, where Wilde has acquired a job that requires little documentation. Now living in a stark, bare shack in marked contrast to the enfolding warmth of the Marat house, the future seems as dark and dirty as the oil derricks in the background, (a repeated motif in Sirk films). The couple’s lack of privacy in an atmosphere of working class crudeness, and the constant tension of their precarious existence might have led to a logical ending.

Instead, in a twist that probably was born in the mind of Harry Cohn, the pair turn themselves in to the police, realizing that they will never draw a peaceful breath as fugitives. Surprisingly, Jean’s ex-boyfriend and would be extortionist (John Baragrey) lives, and has an unlikely epiphany, leading him to exonerate the pair from any guilt in his attempted murder. This perposterous scene, according to some sources, may not have been directed by Sirk and certainly didn’t reflect Fuller‘s original shoot out at the end of the movie. Based on the fact that Columbia Pictures under Harry Cohn never seems to have been averse to assigning different directors to various parts of any movie, it may have been shot by an available contract director. Despite this, the film has a hard to forget atmosphere, filled with guilt

This dramatically illogical ending sent me howling from the DVR, but intrigued to seek out more of both Sirk and Fuller‘s films as well as looking for other movies featuring Cornel Wilde and Patricia Knight. However, despite the fact that the pair had weathered numerous separations and reconciliations during their turbulent marriage as Wilde became a star, they had, as Louella Parsons once observed, a considerable bond. In one of the gossip doyenne’s column the following once appeared: “I’ll bet if Patricia committed a murder, Cornel would whitewash her. I’ve seen a lot of men in love in my day, but I’ve never seen one as adoring and blind to all faults as Cornel Wilde“. The couple would call it a day in ’51, and both would marry others, with Wilde continuing to make some films for many years, though Knight‘s film career ended by ’51. In later years, the volatile pair remained on such good terms that Patricia Knight helped to do research on the first forty years of Cornel Wilde‘s hectic life for his memoirs.

In the course of this film’s somewhat checkered history, it had been relatively forgotten until recent years, when the resurgence of interest in the movie led to its rediscovery and exhibitions in repertory movie houses and on Turner Classic Movies. It has been broadcast on TCM in the recent past, and may be again in the future. Interestingly, one of the lasting cultural ripples of this movie has been the influence of a still from the movie showing Patricia Knight standing over the body of John Bargarey in a room filled with jarring edges and planes. British artist Richard Hamilton, after coming across a haunting picture from Shockproof on the floor of an artist’s studio workshop in the early 1950s, eventually created a series of images based on the pose of the actress transfixed in space in the ’60s. You can see more about this artist and his work here. The artist’s fragmented use of angles and planes, floating anxiously free of any clear horizon, was inspired by this influential still, seen below.  The artist’s work illustrated “a point about my style”,  according to Douglas Sirk,  “very well.” I can’t help but add that the cinematography of Charles Lawton, Jr., and the art direction of Carl Anderson (and his crew) might also deserve some of the credit for the intriguing design choices and sets, as well as the director’s eye.

Sources:

Briggs, Colin, Helen Cherry, Catherine Craig, Patricia Knight: The Wind Beneath Their Wings, Classic Images Magazine, May 21, 2009.
Dick, Bernard F., editor, Columbia Pictures: Portrait of a Studio, University Press of Kentucky, 1992.
Fuller, Samuel, Fuller, Christa Lang, Rudes, Jerome Henry, A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking, Hal Leonard Corp., 2004.
Sirk, Douglas, Halliday, John, Sirk on Sirk, Viking Press, 1972.