4/16/08: Suddenly (1954)It sure is difficult typing away while wearing a barrel held up by suspender straps—but that’s nothing compared to how other citizens were held up yesterday. Fortunately, we can mark
another Tax Day with a film usually found in the $1 bins. There’s a long story to
Suddenly’s public domain status, starting with a rumor about star Frank Sinatra pulling the film from circulation after JFK’s murder. The most popular rumor—perhaps cultivated by Sinatra himself—says that the star was upset to learn that Lee Harvey Oswald had once watched this tale of Presidential assassination.
In truth, television stations just politely lost interest in showing
Suddenly after November of 1963. The movie’s lapse into the public domain then allowed
Suddenly to be rediscovered when lowlife companies were looking to put out video product in the ’80s. It was certainly one of the better films to be found cheap.
Suddenly has added value as a correction to a creepy myth about
film noir. We hate hearing idiots pontificating about the genre as a shadowy world full of moral ambiguity and antiheroes.
Film noir is really about good and evil, and the simple truth that each walks different paths.
Suddenly is
film noir in negative, too, set on a sunny Saturday afternoon. The action takes place in the modest setting of Suddenly, and it’s our kind of town. The local deputy asks if the commotion that day is due to a “uranium strike.” A little boy is playing with a realistic cap gun, and Sheriff Shaw (Sterling Hayden) is asking the kid’s mom (and local widow) Ellen Benson if she wants to join him for church on Sunday.
The sheriff is busy this Saturday, since all the commotion is about a quick visit that the President of the United States is making to Suddenly. Our leader is going to arrive at the town’s train station at 5 pm. Ellen’s house has a perfect view of the train station. This brings in Sinatra as John Baron, posing with his cohorts as FBI agents while securing the house to take down the President.
Baron and his gang set up a rifle while Ellen, her son, and her elderly father (a former Treasury agent) are held hostage. Later on, the hostages will include Sheriff Shaw and a TV repairman. It’s a leisurely count to 5 pm, filled with lots of rampant patriotism. That’s established early on, as the Sheriff asks a Secret Service agent about their tip on the planned assassination. Shaw’s not sure why they trust the word of a dying stoolie. “The stoolie,” explains the agent, “seemed very proud of being an American.”
Things only get more patriotic once Baron reveals his motives. “You stink!” proclaims the 8-year-old. Baron responds by bragging about the Silver Star he earned killing Germans back in the war. It’s like the kid’s questioning his patriotism.
Grandpa’s still outraged: “But you’re an America citizen!” That even gets one of Baron’s partners to have some doubts. “Maybe the old man’s right,” he says. “It’s a terrible thing.”
“Yeah,” muses a smiling Baron. “I never killed a President before.”
That’s pretty much all that
Suddenly entails. The good Americans are outraged, while Baron alternates between ranting about his military service and whining about his bad childhood. Phil Donahue and Michael Moore would have a knife fight over who got to make a documentary about Baron. The rhetoric gets more inspired as Baron gets more unhinged. “They’re stinking traitors,” declares the kid. “They’re Benedict Arnolds.”
“He’s your President, too,” adds the TV repairman, before accusing Baron and his men of being Commies and enemy agents.
“Don’t give me that politics jazz,” responds Baron. “It’s not my racket.”
Suddenly doesn’t take that same attitude. The kid will eventually upgrade his toy gun to a working model, while the TV repairman—dismissed as a yokel—will work with Grandpa to be surprisingly resourceful. Ellen is too womanly to fire a gun at first, but she’ll become liberated in all the right ways.
And, of course, the train heads relentlessly towards Suddenly and Sinatra—who’d just won the Oscar that marked his comeback, so it’s interesting that this was the first role he filmed afterwards. Some critics say that it was Sinatra’s way of assuring Hollywood that he was a good American with appeal to the heartland. They ignore that Sinatra spends the film threatening to kill a little kid. Baron’s simply a great role to play, including a nice scene where the killer lists and dismisses the Presidential assassins of the past. The real Commie enemy agent was yet to come.
Make it your own: Word got out about
Suddenly being a fine film, and the DVD age has seen some pricier repackaging. Alpha Video has a pretty good print on the higher end—with lots of
new and used copies still available for a dollar.
