344 - Jubal, United States, 1956. Dir. Delmer Daves.

Sunday, December 10 2017

344 - Jubal, United States, 1956.  Dir. Delmer Daves.

Othello.

Pinky is Iago.

Shep is Othello.

Mae is Desdemona.

Jubal is Cassio.

But Cassio is the protagonist rather than Othello.

And Mae is a little less faithful than Desdemona.

Otherwise, there is your story.

Set in the American West.  With Old Testament undertones.

And it is filmed in CinemaScope in glorious Technicolor.  In a super-wide 2.55:1 aspect ratio.

In the triumphant landscapes of Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

Has a movie ever looked more beautiful?

There is something special about this director, Delmer Daves.

The Promised Land.

I guess everybody spends their lives looking for a place like that.  I hope you find it.

Jubal is talking to Shem Huktor, the leader of a religious group who has stopped on Shep Horgan's land to rest awhile.  They have sick among them and it is the Lord's day.  They do not travel on the Lord's day.  Shem does not know where the Promised Land is, but he will know it when he sees it.

They do not say it, but one gets the impression these are Mormons on their way to finding Utah.  Something uniquely American.

Jubal laughs when he first hears this, but he stops laughing after getting to know Naomi Hoktor, Shem's daughter.  She helps him realize that searching for the Promised Land is something everybody does.  And needs.

Jubal himself has been running his whole life.  He has never stood still.  In fact the film begins with his running.  And tumbling down the side of a mountain and landing in a snow drift.  To be descovered by the benevolent Shep Horgan.

Jubal tells Naomi a story that he has told no one else before.  That his mother despised him for being a bastard child.  That she tried to kill him when he was a child.  And that she accidentally killed his father instead.  Heavy stuff.

Maybe one day Jubal will stop running.  Maybe one day Jubal will find a home.

Shem is named for one of Noah's three sons.  They were Shem, Ham, and Japheth.  The Hebrew race, Abraham to Jesus and all who came after, came from Shem through Arphaxad.  There is also a tradition that Shem is the same person as Melchizedek of Genesis 14, who blessed Abraham after the battle of the four kings and to whom Abraham initiated the sacrament of tithing.

The name shem means name.  When some say the name of the Lord, Yahweh (YHWH, the tetragrammaton), out of reverence they simply say HaShem, or The Name.

Jubal is also from the Bible.  Genesis 4:21.  Jubal was a son of Lamech.  And the father of all musicians.  Or "the father of all those who play the harp and pipe."  He was a descendant of Cain as opposed to Abel.  The outcast.  The murderer.

Of course Naomi comes from the Bible as well.  The mother-in-law of Ruth.  In search of the Kinsman Redeemer.  The woman to whom the woman says, "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return form following after thee.  For whither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge.  Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God."  Naomi will help Ruth catch Boaz and become a part of the lineage of Jesus, giving birth to Obed, who begat Jesse, who begat David.

But just as Jubal contains these classically Hebraic-American names, so also it contains classic American Western nicknames.  Shep, Pinky, Mae, Sam, Jim, Reb, Jake, and Cookie (Sam and Jim being themselves shortened forms of biblical names, the former Hebrew, the latter Greek).

The casting of this film is fantastic.

Rod Steiger plays the arch-enemy Pinky.  He came out of the Group Theater under Lee Strasberg and originated the role of Marty on television.  Ernest Borgnine plays the large-hearted Shep Horgan.  He just won an Oscar for the role of Marty in the film version the year before.

Noah Beery Jr. plays one of Shep's cowhands, Sam, and Charles Bronson plays another, Reb.  And both of them are alive with the lives of the characters.

The little-known Valerie French plays Mae Horgan, and she plays it beautifully and powerfully.  She is resolute in her seduction, and dangerous.  Felicia Farr makes a good foil as the innocent but thoughtful Naomi.

The delicious .Glenn Ford holds it all together.  He does his acting on the inside.  And allows it to seep out of his eyes. 

Delmer Daves is a director worth knowing.  He is like Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder, and John Huston in that he began as a studio writer and moved into directing.  His first job was as a prop boy, and he spent the 1920s as an actor.  In the 1930s he cranked out screenplays, including some now classics.  He is the writer of The Petrified Forest (1936), Love Affair (1939), and its remake An Affair to Remember (1957).  He directed Cary Grant (Destination Tokyo (1943)), Humphrey Bogart (Dark Passage (1947)), and Jimmy Stewart (Broken Arrow (1950)).  He was a Westerner who made Westerns, a graphic designer who made beautiful compositions, a researcher who did meticulously detailed homework.

Delmer Daves is a director who is going to be rediscovered.  It is possible you have not heard his name before, but there will be a time when he will be listed among the greats.