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The Cecil B. DeMille Collection

Sign of the Cross, Four Frightened People, Cleopatra, The Crusades, Union Pacific

Universal

Produced and Directed by

Cecil B. DeMille
B&W
1:37 flat full frame
Street Meeting
May 23, 2006
59.98

Reviewed by

Glenn Erickson

Enlist of the Rub out

1932 / 125 min.

Starring

Fredric March, Elissa Landi, Claudette Colbert, Charles Laughton, Ian Keith

Cinematography

Karl Struss

Manoeuvres Direction

Mitchell Leisen (u)

Cloud Compiler

Anne Bauchens (u)

Original Music

Rudolph G. Kopp

Written by

Waldemar Innocent, Sidney Buchman

from a play by

Wilson Barrett

Leading off is this 1932 pre-code sizzler, C.B's prime entry in the "Jesus & Sex" hypocrisy sweepstakes. The pattern is well known: Censors nix nudity, violence, sexual perversion and sadism in normal films, but

The Sign of the Cross

avoids censorship by framing its salacious content in a melodrama shot through with "Christian" values. All of DeMille's sound-era clunkiness is in evidence, with Insultingly lame and obvious writing and direction. On the other hand, the film exhibits DeMille's essentially solid visual sense and surprisingly good acting within the script's simplistic characters. DeMille's general attitude toward his audience is summed up by scholar Robert S. Birchard's old adage "A Simple Story for Simple People." That's no different than "A Sucker is Born Every Minute."

Digest:

Prefect Marcus Superbus (Frederic March) is in a fix — he's fallen in love with a Christian, Mercia (Elissa Landi) even though he's sworn to protect the law condemning all followers of that faith. He entices Mercia to a lavish and decadent champion, not realizing that his enemies will use his love against him. Worse, Marcus' relationship with Emperor Nero (Charles Laughton) suffers because of Nero's the missis Poppea (Claudette Colbert). She's murderously jealous of Marcus, and will use her manipulate with her save to make sure Mercia is thrown to the lions. To settle amicably matters worse, Mercia has no object of renouncing her new faith — the only way Marcus thinks he can spare her life.

The Sign of the Cross

will be the big draw for this collection, at least among well-read cinephiles. The UCLA Archive restored its long, uncut version in the early 1990s and it has since been shown on cable channels like TCM. Before then it was seen only in a radically censored and re-cut wartime version that has to be the absolute height of ugly revisionism. Paramount (DeMille?) trimmed it of material offensive to the Production Code and hired Dudley Nichols to write a new "wraparound" framing story that takes place in an

Allied bomber heading toward Germany

. To explain the righteousness of their mission, an army chaplain tells the story of

The Sign of the Cross

in flashback. The message is that God is behind the Allies. The original film's martyrdom finale is followed by a new shot (if I remember correctly) of the plane flying into a cross-shaped light pattern in the clouds. Onward Christian Soldiers!

This new disc contains only the original version, which has plenty of eye-opening content that proliferated before the Production Code cracked down in 1934. Fans of pre-code films are accustomed to a salacious costume or two; very often the censorable material was racy or lewd dialogue, some eyebrow-wagging inferences or a situation that compromised Church values.

The Sign of the Cross

mixes its Sunday school theme with erotic and violent excess.

Claudette Colbert bathes in a pool of Asses' milk, splashing around so the scene becomes a peek-a-boo peepshow. It ends with Colbert inviting a female guest (Vivian Tobin) to undress and join her, inviting us to imagine that casual lesbian sex will take place. At his afternoon party, Marcus' guests watch Ancaria (Joyzelle Joyner) dance the "Dance of the Naked Moon." She cannot follow through with her wanton gyrations because of the loud singing of some Christians being led to the arena. "We haven't even seen one moon!" a guest complains. Among Marcus' female guests (many of whom appear to have slept with him in the past) are women in almost 100% see-through gowns. It's hardly believable that male patrons sat through

The Sign of the Cross

thinking pious thoughts, although many may have said as much to explain why they were going back to see it again at the first opportunity.

Cecil B. DeMille didn't invent this kind of double standard. Similar content appeared in American silent films, which often used glimpses of nudity in a reasonable artful content, as with the 1925

Ben-Hur

. Nudity was also common in European pictures, especially the Italian spectacles. But nobody makes this kind of pious claptrap seem as sleazy as DeMille. His voyeuristic attitude is saying "Ah yes, I'm above all this debauchery" while encouraging every viewer to think, "Gee, this kind of thing really goes on in Hollywood? DeMille must be like a Sultan in a harem."

Perhaps the idea is to make the American audience feel so guilty for enjoying their Roman sex show, that they become more enthusiastic about the film's Bible messages. It's sort of like Shelley Winters in

Night of the Hunter

proclaiming "I feel so clean now" after repenting for having dirty thoughts of the marriage bed, or a warped father making a girl feel ashamed of having an attractive body, the vessel of sin. DeMille's had a corner on the pseudo-devout racket and it made him a lot of money, but it's fundamentally unhealthy, I tells ya.

DeMille really cuts loose in the arena finale. It's an opportunity to present the Roman Circus pretty much as it was, an afternoon's entertainment resulting in hundreds of dead gladiators and 'fun' victims of wild animals. That's

before

the Christians are thrown to the lions. Although DeMille's direction doesn't dwell on the gore, it certainly encourages a sadistic imagination, as Karl Struss' camera lovingly shows men battling bears and tigers, and gladiators fighting to the death. The sadism gets kinky as a squad of blonde Amazons do combat with a dozen pygmies played by dwarves in black greasepaint and Fuzzy-Wuzzy wigs. One female warrior impales a pygmy on her sword and holds him screaming over her head, while another Pygmy is beheaded on camera.

Sadism mixes with perverse sex as well. A pack of alligators (I guess Nero's expeditions to the New World were successful) is let loose on a maiden (Sally Rand!) clothed only in garlands of flowers and trussed at a perfect snack-time height. A beautiful woman is lashed naked to a post, much like Fay Wray, as a huge ape approaches menacingly. We get quick cuts of debauched spectators making bets, laughing, drooling with erotic excitement or happily crying at the scene. A few atrocities later, the beautiful woman tied to the post is still alive, leading us to think that ape raped her.

Back down in the "conventional" scenes of

The Sign of the Cross

, DeMille tent-show dramatics are pitched at the level of entertainments twenty and even thirty years out of date. Just like "The Drunkard," the script has every character openly state his or her 'motivation' and position in the morality play: "Can you forgive my behavior yesterday, when I tried to take your soul?" It's a 1932 sound movie but the acting is firmly in the expressionist mold, almost like

Metropolis

: Fredric March even clutches his chest when he speaks of his love for Mercia. From this point on many of DeMille's films would be completely out of touch with the times.

The stars struggle to act inside the confines of DeMille's stiff pageantry, and basically do well. Fredric March handles the flowery language beautifully, even when he has to declare his love to Nero and the entire court. Claudette Colbert is a classy seductress and plays the role straight, showing not a bit of intimidation in the bath scene, where DeMille makes her a literal fish in a voyeur's barrel. Frankly, with his faux-domineering authoritarian style, we have a hard time not thinking of DeMille as something of a puritan sex pervert: "Let's take that bath scene again, Claudette, you know, for my private reel."

Making play-acting into a hammy art form is Charles Laughton in a Roman putty nose. Realizing he's in a dramatic sinkhole, Laughton pulls out all stops to preen and pout while Rome burns. Relaxing, he stretches and wiggles about like a spoiled pig. It's a great piece of throwaway kitsch, which is also a perfect description of

The Sign of the Cross

.

Somewhere among the cast are Mischa Auer (a condemned Christian) and Henry Brandon (a spectator). Angelo Rossito is one of the pygmy warriors. We don't see John Carradine but we definitely hear his voice in the arena.

Four Frightened People

1934 / 78 min.

Starring

Claudette Colbert, Herbert Marshall, Mary Boland, William Gargan, Leo Carrillo

Cinematography

Karl Struss

Art Direction

Roland Anderson

Film Senior editor

Anne Bauchens

Written by

Lenore J. Coffee, Bartlett Cormack

from a story by

Arnot E. Robertson

There are plenty of non-PC movies from the 1930s that are quaint or harmless or completely understandable. It's not unusual to run into an amusing comedy or drama with a thoughtful plot, that suddenly confronts us with an anti-Semitic joke or a racial smear.

It's another thing to run into a movie written and directed with an essentially rotten social-political mindset.

Four Frightened People

is a movie about 'civilized' people lost in a Malay jungle that shows almost nothing beyond the prejudices of its makers. DeMille's attitudes here are really depressing.

Digest:

A cholera outbreak on a steamer at sea maroons four Americans on a Malay island. Radio journalist Stewart Corder (William Gargan) takes a tough-guy disposition, while social matron and step by step activist Mrs. Mardick (Mary Boland) proves herself resilient tipsy pressure, if a bit too talkative. Manageable chemist Arnold Ainger (Herbert Marshall) has been made too unasserted by a despotic ball, and schoolteacher Judy Jones (Claudette Colbert) is initially overwhelmed by the situation.

Besides hogging credit (it's amazing how many key contributions to these films are 'uncredited'), Cecil B. DeMille considered himself an expert at writing inter-titles and narration. The first two minutes of

Four Frightened People

are an unnecessary series of static cards that display DeMille's bigoted viewpoint. The first badly overwritten line describes a "perspiring Malay coast" and distinguishes between Malays, coolies and "people" — showing that our director definitely considers some races to be inferior. DeMille then describes the less wealthy characters, a chemist and a mousy geography teacher as 'unimportant.' DeMille wants to make a social statement, but only reveals his exclusive, country-club bigotry.

The castaways stumble through the forest making mistakes and blaming each other, and their values slowly change as they become 'more primitive' — e.g., start thinking about sex. The inflexible leader Corder humiliates Judy and gets them all captured by natives. Mrs. Mardick stays in the village as a hostage while the rest keep wandering, wasting time making elaborate camps and tangling with more forest natives. They're given a 'funny' guide in Montague (Leo Carrillo), a native who wears an English necktie. He emulates the white man's ways so fully that he's too proud to ask for directions.

Nothing really happens until a Chimpanzee steals Judy's clothes, forcing her to make do for a costume with a few rags and ferns. The very un-gentlemanly men watch her bathe in a waterfall and then compete for her attentions. Judy Jones has started as a completely repressed "librarian" type (sorry, Jaci) and now blooms into Jane of the Jungle. We're supposed to think that the three of them are doing well in the wild, as we soon see Judy wearing panther skins. Here's where Herbert Marshall's Arnold Ainger character takes over, wooing Judy with completely idiotic poetic drivel about the moon. He's married, you see, and Jane doesn't want them to ever be rescued so they can stay together.

Savant overreacts to the snobby ignorance of

Four Frightened People

because it hides a contemptible political conservatism. DeMille was right wing and his attitudes found their way into his movies. It's too bad that Universal skipped his 1933

This Day and Age

as it's a much clearer picture of the director's pro-Fascist sentimentality. In a happy American town, a bunch of college frat boys win roles in a yearly Student's Day at city hall, playing the roles of Mayor, police chief, City Attorney, etc. for 24 hours. When a loveable (but patronizingly stereotyped) Jewish tailor is murdered by a rotten gangster (Charles Bickford), the boys form a vigilante mob, seize and torture suspects for information, and finally extract a confession from the gangster by suspending him over a pit of rats! The movie ends with a torch-lit rally and a march to a bonfire. It's as if the movie had been funded by the German-American Bund as pro-Nazi propaganda. It promotes a lynch mob, terror tactics and Hitler Youth sentiments. The students don't burn books but they let it be known that the law is for sissies.

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Fifteen years later, C.B. DeMille was a Hollywood leader in the HUAC housecleaning, and tried to pass a rule in the Director's Guild demanding loyalty oaths from all members. Although many UCLA students in the early 70s were definitely politicized, I didn't always feel certain of my attitudes. But there was nothing ambiguous about

This Day and Age

, a Fascist film plain and simple!

Cleopatra

1934 / 100 min.

Starring

Claudette Colbert, Warren William, Henry Wilcoxon, Joseph Schildkraut, Ian Keith, Gertrude Michael, C. Aubrey Smith

Cinematography

Victor Milner

Art Direction

Roland Anderson, Hans Dreier (u)

Film Editorial writer

Anne Bauchens (u)

Indigenous Music

Rudolph Kopp

Written by

Bartlett Cormack, Waldemar Young, Vincent Lawrence

Cleopatra

is a little on the silly side, but it isn't half bad — it's easily better than Joseph L. Manckiewicz's ridiculous studio-busting bore from 1963. Savant's not up on his Shakespeare but the film appears to incorporate big pieces of

Julius Caesar

into its mix. The basic story is straightforward and the acting from the three main leads is fine — Claudette Colbert plays Cleo of the Nile as a sympathetic version of her Poppea from

Sign of the Cross

two years earlier.

Synopsis:

Julius Caesar (Warren William) arrives in Alexandria and is told that Cleopatra has fled the country leaving her brother in charge. The Ruler has actually been kidnapped and radical to pay the debt of nature in the what’s coming to one, but she manages to get lodged with someone and smuggle herself into Caesar's presence hidden in a carpet. Caesar thinks he's impervious to Cleo's charms but she entices him with promises of riches from India. Caesar returns to Rome with Cleopatra, and her presence is just enough to abscond the senate (the usual unite of thugs headed by Brutus & Cassius) think he's planning to announce himself King. After the Ides of Procession, Marc Antony (Henry Wilcoxon) goes forth to bring Cleopatra back in captivity, but is also seduced … and not by the Queen's strategy. They lay out a distinguished ceaselessly rowing on Cleo's barge …

Cleopatra

starts out with a still image of a naked female behind the titles, but after that it's a Production Code feature all the way. The dancing girls in Cleo's traveling burlesque show — I mean, royal court — are all reasonably covered up, although Claudette remains fetching in minimal Queen of the Desert outfits. The funny thing about the revealing gowns in

Sign of the Cross

was that no matter what else was shown, female navels were always modestly covered up!

Without any pre-code naughtiness to detail,

Cleopatra

needs to be taken on its merits. Even with the nobles speaking modern colloquial English the script is more literate for this kind of film and the show frequently manages a heady atmosphere, as when an entire scene is dedicated to showing off one of Cleopatra's dresses.

Henry Wilcoxon's sturdy Marc Anthony succumbs to Cleo's charms by first being teased with an interesting feast — especially some tiny roasted birds that he pops into his mouth like corn chips. Cleopatra is presented as all women to all men, the perfect consort-Queen for any would-be world conqueror. Roman politics prevents a union with Julius Caesar, and when Cleo allies with Antony they become a B.C. version of Bonnie & Clyde — misunderstood lovers (sniff!) to be plowed under by the unfeeling armies of fate. (spoiler) The ending is a bit penny-dreadful in conception … Cleo goes out to deal with the enemy without telling Marc; Marc jumps to a wrong conclusion and then jumps on his sword. With the enemy breaking down the gates, Cleo reaches for that Asp she's kept handy all these years.

Cleopatra

is lacking in nude bathing scenes but C.B.'s second unit people and his long-time editrix Anne Bauchers (notably unbilled) contribute a suitably violent war montage. It's always interesting that the Production Code removed all hints of sexuality while allowing gory stuff like soldiers impaled on spikes and sword blows that give the impression of heads being cleaved in twain.

C.B. politicizes the show as well. Julius Caesar might as well be Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a demagogue President trying to be elected King. His main deal with the Egyptians is to get tons of grain to flood the "unemployed" boroughs of Rome, thereby cementing his popularity. The implication is that the Republic is in danger because a too-popular Democrat is paying too much attention to the needs of the people.

Warren William's Caesar is a more interesting character than Henry Wilcoxon's Antony, but neither strikes real sparks with Colbert. Her sexuality is better described as "self-contained." DeMille has little interest in her except as a pretext to mount his elaborate pageants, which come off as stage effects, a la Florenz Ziegfeld. Even Cleopatra's barge has a broad, shiny dance floor. The special effects and art direction are appropriately lavish, with Cleo's hoochie-koochie dancers making a unique entrance. She tells Antony that the fishermen are hauling up clams for their dinner, and the nets turn out to be full of dancing girls.

The Crusades

1935 / 125 min.

Starring

Loretta Infantile, Henry Wilcoxon, Ian Keith, C. Aubrey Smith, Katherine DeMille, Joseph Schildkraut, Alan Hale, C. Henry Gordon

Cinematography

Champion Milner

Art Handling

Roland Anderson (u)

Vapour Editor

Anne Bauchens (u)

Original Music

Rudolph G. Kopp

Written by

Harold Lamb, Waldemar Juvenile, Dudley Nichols

This entirely loopy version of history gets its basic facts right but otherwise interprets the Crusade (there seems to be only one in this telling) in completely contradictory terms: The sworn pact to destroy the Infidels eventually boils down to a tame truce with the Saracen Sultan Saladin. The Muslims remain in military control of Jerusalem, yet Richard the Lionheart's new bride calls the entire affair a victory by redefining the word. It sounds an awful lot like "Mission Accomplished."

Actually, young Loretta Young's character Berengaria remains in control of

The Crusades

, which is awful history but an amusingly confected screen story. Once again C.B. combines kitschy mock-piety with his idea of racy sex. It is yet another DeMille movie that will do anything to keep its romantic hero and heroine from actually sleeping with each other.

Epitomization:

Non-believer Richard the Lionheart (Henry Wilcoxon) joins the Crusades to keep marrying Princess Alice of France (Katherine DeMille). With his army starving in Marseilles, Richard barters with the King of Navarre for provisions. The price is federation to the King's daughter, Princess Berengaria (Loretta Young). Richard sends his sword to choose his place in the integration lip-service, as he has no drawing to be a grave husband. In the Holy Dirt Richard is part of an uneasy bond that lays siege to the city of Acre. The French are threatening to leave over the tiny to their Princess Alice, while the scurvy Marquis of Montserrat (Joseph Schildkraut) plots to infanticide Richard to help his fellow-man John befit Royal of England. Richard pledges not to bed Berengaria until his sword has taken Jerusalem, and Berengaria tries to get to herself killed so she'll no longer be in the moving of the alliance. To top it all free, the enemy Sultan Saladin (Ian Keith) is both honorable and a gentleman … and smitten by Bengaria himself.

Mr. Entertainment Cecil B. DeMille forced the story of the Crusades into a commercial product perfect for 1935. It has tons of religious posturing from a non-denominational Holy Man called "The Hermit" (C. Aubrey Smith). This makes us wonder why DeMille purposely avoids any mention of Rome or The Pope being behind the Crusades, when it was a Catholic show all the way.

DeMille has some giant crowd scenes and a few minutes of busy battles with good montage work and under-cranked cameras, but his real subject is the relationship between Richard and his accidental bride Berengaria, a bashful blonde from Spanish Navarre. The dark-haired Loretta Young looks a little odd in ten pounds of blonde wig but is still a knockout; this was the girl who got her start in the business at age 14 when her older sister brought her to a Hollywood nightclub. Ruling queen of the dance floor Joan Crawford realized that nobody could take their eyes off the ravishing Loretta, and told the sister to take Loretta home and keep her there!

For all the begetting to be found in the Bible, DeMille sticks firmly with the principle that his quasi-religious epics should have no real sex. Therefore Berengaria and Richard stick to a crazy marriage plan that bests anything Luis Buñuel could dream up. She marries

his sword

by proxy, placing the sword as both a phallic symbol and a militant sign of the Cross. Their one chance at a marriage bed becomes a comic relief scene, until a Saracen attack saves Berengaria from a carnal compromise. Although it reinterprets every point of history in completely suspect terms,

The Crusades

does an excellent job of making its story events hinge upon a rocky marital relationship.

When C.B. succeeds in being entertaining, his restrictive attitudes become less offensive.

The Crusades

is fairly enjoyable. The ending twists are more than a little ludicrous, with Berengaria mediating between Christian and Islamic warriors with the anachronistic plea, "after all, we all worship one God … what difference is it if we give him different names?" Love conquers all — as long as there's no sex involved.

It's easy to spot a subdued Mischa Auer as a priest, but I didn't catch Ann Sheridan as a Christian Slave Girl or J. Carrol Naish as a slave dealer (strictly wholesale).

Mixing Pacific

1939 / 139 min.

Starring

Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Akim Tamiroff, Robert Preston, Brian Donlevy, Henry Kolker, Anthony Quinn, Lynne Overman

Cinematography

Prizewinner Milner

Art Direction

Roland Anderson, Hans Dreier

Film Editor-in-chief

Anne Bauchens

Special Effects by

Gordon Jennings, George Tomasini, Loren L. Ryder, Barney Wolff, Jan Domela, Paul K. Lerpae

Original Music

Sigmund Krumgold, John Leipold

Written by

Jack Cunningham, Walter DeLeon, C. Gardner Sullivan, Jesse Lasky Jr., Ernest Haycox

from his novel

Trouble Shooters

The last DeMille entry ends the collection on a high note.

Union Pacific

is a big and enormously enjoyable western saga with plenty of fun characterizations and exciting incident. The stars are so likeable we hardly notice DeMille's shameful warping of history and reactionary attitudes. The clever script manages to make every outrageous cliché seem like something to applaud.

Synopsis:

With the blessing of Abraham Lincoln, the visionary Uniting Pacific railroad forges ahead with its purpose to girdle the country with rails. Engineer's daughter Mollie Monahan (Barbara Stanwyck) was born on the tracks and represents the Irish immigrants impatient to do their part in the gigantic undertaking. But shifty Eastern financiers arrange bet everything on the dud of the project, and stock manipulator Asa M. Barrows (Henry Kolker) hires unscrupulous gambling-classroom proprietor Sid Campeau (Brian Donlevy) to sluggardly the work broaden by distracting the workers with booze and bargirls. His partner Dick Allen (Robert Preston) is only half crooked, as he loves Mollie. The railroad hires Captain Jeff Butler (Joel McCrea) as a "troubleshooter" to keep peace with the Indians and get rid of Campeau and his thugs … including Dick, Jeff's valued battle buddy.

Union Pacific

is a rousing epic that would be twice as memorable if it had an inspirational music score instead of a cheap stack of adapted themes. Its bold images of trains crossing the plains repeatedly evoked memories of Tiomkin's

Duel in the Sun

score.

But there's plenty here to like. Barbara Stanwyck's excellent acting brings to life Mollie Monahan, one of DeMille's ultra-thin characterizations conceived to embody the 'free spirit' of the "unimportant" (see

Four Frightened People

, above) workers come to build America. The naive love triangle between Stanwyck, Preston and McCrea works beautifully. Part of the thanks for this should go to the elevating and forgiving nature of the western genre, which generously embraces historical myths or philosophies of any persuasion.

Historians upset by the historical lies and distortions in Warners'


They Died with Their Boots On


will have apoplexy over

Union Pacific

. In this version of events the railroad was the lone progressive voice in the nation, forging ahead with the intercontinental railroad when everybody else said it couldn't be done. The main conflict in the story is between do-gooders who are for America and progress, and the vermin who are against it — you know, the sinful types who make shady deals or traffic in liquor and vice.

Any high school course now teaches that the intercontinental railroad was the shady deal of the century worked up between congress and moneyed interests. There was nothing financially risky about it at all: Everyone wanted to go west to shoot buffalo, mine gold and homestead. And the rail builders held firm until they won ridiculous freebie concessions from the lawmakers, including easement rights that made them the property holders of a wide strip of land wherever the railroad went – for all purposes.  

The latest scandals to even come close to this all-time no-risk deal is the FCC's giveaway of the public broadcasting spectrum to private interests, or the corporate cronyism profiting mightily from the Middle East war on terror.

Union Pacific

is sufficiently entertaining to make us put all of that aside. Robert Preston (

The Music Man

) is a colorful good/bad guy, a murderer melodramatically delivered by the love of a good woman. Of course, Joel McCrea's lawman redeems them both. McCrea is as virtuous as Gary Cooper without the noble posing, and as sentimental as James Stewart without the sad-eyed pitch for pathos. We forget that he's basically a hired killer, a "regulator" on the payroll to "shoot trouble." Possessed of a pure heart and unsurpassed in is gun-slinging skill, he's a western natural. (spoiler) He blasts down C.B.'s son-in-law Anthony Quinn with an enviable backwards-facing fast draw, and outfoxes the rest of the bad guys with the help of two unwashed but immensely likeable backup men, Lynne Overman's Leach and Akim Tamiroff's "Fiesta."

True to his conservative roots, DeMille also depicts McCrea as a tough-guy strike buster. A goonish "agitator" at the rail head has stirred the workers up because they haven't been paid, and is proving himself to be a typical Bolshie by breaking their tools. McCrea puts paid to him right away. The scene looks harmless unless one is familiar with the 1930s. Big industry and the government colluded in the illegal suppression of the labor movement, labeling it as Communist agitation and sending in troops with machine guns to put it down.

Finally, DeMille exonerates Barrows, the bad-guy industrialist responsible for many deaths (and the only conflict in the film) by having Leach and Fiesta force him to walk 26 miles of track resetting loose rail spikes. Through this honest sweat-atonement, Barrows somehow redeems himself and is shown hammering the last spike like a pro. Big Business crooks are thus above the law. Clearly, the elitist DeMille saw himself as a worthy Man of the People because he took pains to have himself photographed in masculine pursuits like camping and polo.

The movie has two or three exciting finales — robberies, a train wreck and an Indian battle. Also some typical dumb-Indian humor: The braves react with shock at a cigar-store Indian and raid the goods on a train they've wrecked by fastening ladies' corsets around the necks of their horses, etc.. Yet they're smart enough to overturn a giant water tower to derail the train. The film barely has anything to say about the Indians except the opportunity they afford for action. Both this film and John Ford's

Stagecoach

use the "save the last bullet for the virgin" gag when it looks as if all is lost. It doesn't work quite as well here. Who could shoot Barbara Stanwyck, even if she's passively asking for it?  

Joel McCrea made a lot of westerns but

Union Pacific

is the best one to compare with his farewell masterpiece


Ride the High Country


. That film's impoverished but noble old-time lawman could very well be Jeff Butler thirty years later. The old studio system encouraged typecasting to the point that the films of stars like McCrea could almost represent individual chapters of a bigger story — perhaps Jeff took to preaching for a few years, an effort recorded in Jacques Tourneur's

The Stars in My Crown

. If the timelines and wives aren't consistent, the McCrea character certainly is. We love Peckinpah's retiree-gunman, and seeing him back in his prime in

Union Pacific

is a lift to the spirits.

I'm told that uncountable thousands of Chinese were imported to build this railroad. The way DeMille tells it, I guess they all dressed and talked like Irishmen to avoid problems with discrimination. The film has an enormous cast of notable bit players. Savant only recognized a few of the following: Fuzzy Knight, Lon Chaney Jr., Don Beddoe, Monte Blue, Ward Bond, Iron Eyes Cody, Richard Denning, Will Geer, Noble Johnson, Elmo Lincoln, Nestor Paiva, Jack Pennick, Joe Sawyer and Frank Yaconelli.

The Cecil B. DeMille Collection

packs five separate discs in a folding holder, itself held within a book-like case. These are all Paramount pictures now owned by Universal but all seem to be in fine condition, with sharp pictures and robust sound tracks. The earlier titles have more grain, especially in optical sequences;

Sign of the Cross

and

Cleopatra

were restored by the UCLA Film Archive. For the record, all of the shows appear to be uncut, and

Sign of the Cross

has intermission cards and Entr'acte music. There are no extras on any of the discs.

On a spectrum of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,

Sacrifice of the Cross

rates:

Movie: Excellent

Video: Very Legitimate

Sound: Very Good

Supplements:

Nobody

Four Frightened People

rates:

Movie: Handsome

Video: Very Good

Rugged: Very Sympathetic

Supplements:

None

Cleopatra

rates:

Movie: Very Good

Video: Very Good

Plunge: Very Produce

Supplements:

None

The Crusades

rates:

Movie: Surely Good

Video: Very Meet

Sound: Sheerest Nice

Supplements:

Nobody

Union Pacific

rates:

Large screen: Excellent

Video: Most Good

Sound: Very Elevated

Supplements:

Nil

Packaging:

five discs in folding card and ductile holder in be honest box

Reviewed: May 26, 2006

Footnotes:

1.

This is how the unscrupulous logger in


Come and Get It


becomes fragrant: He builds miles and miles of barely-necessary rail lines into virgin forest. The automatic easement rights hand out him full entitlement to all the land on both sides of the tracks …. a easy harvest of millions.

^Return

2.

And don't answer, "Fred MacMurray."

^Return