William Wyler (45 page)

Wyler amends Kingsley's work again by cutting back to the squad room, where he introduces McLeod's partner, Joe Brody (William Bendix). First shown giving sandwiches and coffee to the criminals being arraigned, Brody takes an interest in Arthur because of his navy record. Brody, we learn, lost his son during a naval battle. Wyler moves this sequence up to this early point in the film not only to contrast Brody with McLeod but also to offer a hint of the latter's humanity. If McLeod can be a partner to a man like Brody, he must have redeeming qualities that were not on display during his confrontation with Sims.

Just as in the film version, Kingsley's play introduces McLeod as he is bringing in Arthur. But in the play, his arrival interrupts Sims's meeting with Brody, who is handling the Schneider case until his partner arrives. Sims refers to McLeod as “a law unto himself”—which plants quite a different image in the mind of the audience. A few moments later, reporter Joe Feinson refers to him as “the mortal God—McLeod! Captain Ahab pursuing the gray Leviathan!” This double-barreled indictment immediately characterizes McLeod as a man who is, like Ahab, fueled by a moral indignation that will ultimately lead to his death. Like Melville's maniacal sea captain, McLeod feels that he has the right to play God, to pass judgment and mete out punishment. Kingsley thus clearly sets up his protagonist as a villain. His McLeod may be charismatic, but the audience is immediately put on notice to be wary of him. In Wyler's hands, by contrast, the character is presented as a troubled but sympathetic figure.

This change of emphasis is reinforced in a scene that follows the film's introductory sequence. As McLeod, Brody, and another officer, Dakis, are questioning the burglar Lewis Abbott, Wyler films the entire procedure in a tight four-shot that establishes the camaraderie of the men as they do their job. During the interrogation, McLeod conducts himself in a manner closely matching that of his colleagues. And later, when McLeod beats up Schneider, Wyler—who rarely opens up a play merely for the sake of variety—films the scene in the back of paddy wagon, where the two men are alone, whereas Kingsley's McLeod beats his victim in the precinct room. In the film, McLeod's psychosis is made less of a public spectacle.

Another important change follows when a witness (who has been bribed) fails to identify Schneider in a lineup. A frustrated McLeod walks into another room, followed by Feinson. There, McLeod reveals that his hatred of criminals is rooted in his disgust for his father, who was a criminal himself, and he complains that “the thieves and murderers could have written the penal code themselves.” In the play, he goes on to say, “Your democracy, Yussel, is a Rube Goldberg contraption.” Feinson replies, “That's what's great about it. That's what I love. It's so confused, it's wonderful.”
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The latter exchange is excised from the film, as Wyler again sidesteps Kingsley's tendency to preach. The film version is subtler and more suggestive than the play.

Wyler also makes some strategic changes in the scene in which Mary confesses her past to McLeod in Monaghan's office. When McLeod enters the room, Monaghan has already talked with Mary and Tami Giacopetti, a gangster, about their affair and her loss of a baby. (The play makes it clear that Schneider performed an abortion.) Kingsley has McLeod walk into the office, where he is confronted by Mary, meets Giacopetti, threatens him, and verbally abuses his wife about her past. In Wyler's scene, however, McLeod is framed by all three characters as he enters—the audience is allowed to view all four characters at once. McLeod is introduced to Giacopetti, but he merely nods; there are no threats. Instead of abusing Mary, McLeod is solicitous, leading her to a chair and making sure she is comfortable. Here, Wyler reinforces McLeod's humanity and compassion by placing husband and wife on the same visual plane as he kneels by her chair. When the scene begins, the audience is still sympathetic to McLeod, but when Mary admits that she sought Schneider's services in the past—thus acknowledging her pregnancy and the affair that led to it—the framing shifts. McLeod stands, clenches his fist, threatens Giacopetti, and asks to be alone with his wife. When the couple is framed together, Mary remains in her chair, asking McLeod's forgiveness, but he cannot face her. Instead, he is shown standing in the front of the frame, viewed from a modified low angle, his face expressing hatred and disgust while Mary stays seated in the rear. When he asks her what happened to the baby, he is facing a window covered with wire, his face registering pain. The dialogue about the baby is conveyed in a shot–reverse shot, implying that this is the issue separating them. Then, as he gets up and screams, “Everything I hate…what's left to understand!” we see only Mary's startled reaction—as if the look on McLeod's face is too much for the camera to bear.

Under Wyler's direction, Kirk Douglas portrays McLeod as a man who is deeply conflicted, at odds with himself. Like his characterization of Chuck Tatum in
Ace in the Hole
, Douglas's McLeod is aware of his irrational tendencies but seems unable to curb them. The inner turmoil that is so clearly reflected in his facial expressions makes him a more tragic character than Kingsley's unbending moralist, while Wyler's subtle changes of emphasis and direction make his story more poignant and dramatic. When Mary returns to the precinct house to say good-bye, she is dressed in black, like Catherine Sloper on the night she is jilted. The couple is about to reconcile when McLeod suddenly protests that he cannot let go of “the dirty pictures” Mary's confession has put in his brain. Then, standing on his level, confronting him face-to-face, she tells him, “You haven't even a drop of ordinary human forgiveness in your whole nature. You're a cruel and vengeful man. You're everything you've always said you hated in your own father.” And when she exits, declaring that she will never see him again, Mary wears the same hard, determined expression displayed by Catherine when she takes vengeance on the two men who have betrayed her.

The film ends quickly after Mary walks out. When one of the burglars grabs a gun from a policeman, McLeod, who now has nothing to lose, goes after him and is shot. As he is dying, he realizes that he has sacrificed the only person he ever loved, and in a final act of remorse, he tears up Arthur's report and drops the charges. He dies while saying the Catholic prayer of contrition, which is completed by Monaghan in the play; in the film, this is done, more appropriately, by Brody. During this death scene, in which Douglas invests the character with real empathy, Wyler cuts to Arthur and Susan, who are watching. As they leave, they momentarily look back in deep focus, as Wyler's camera pulls back to reveal the entire squad room—McLeod's body lies in the front of the frame, the couple exit in the rear, and Brody stands in the middle. Wyler's composition thus brings together the bad cop, the good cop, and the couple they have both united, with Brody—the intermediary—significantly in the center. Brody seems to have loved his partner, and Arthur, who reminds Brody of his dead son, has been given the second chance his boy was denied. McLeod's final act of grace becomes a moment of contrition for both of them.

The film ends with a dissolve from the precinct to Arthur and Susan, who are swiftly walking, hand in hand, down the street. This ending is reminiscent of the final shot in
The Little Foxes
, where Wyler concludes with an image of Xan and David rather than of Regina. In both cases, he ends on a note of hope by focusing on the young couples—the characters who seem best suited to reject the hardhearted ethics represented by Regina and McLeod. It is interesting to note that Wyler, having offered uncompromisingly dark endings in his two most recent films—
The Heiress
and
Carrie
—chose to give this film a more optimistic turn. In all likelihood, he was thinking of the audience's disappointing reception of those earlier works.
Detective Story
, by contrast, was quite successful at the box office, which put Wyler in a better position to negotiate the terms of his next film,
Roman Holiday
. In addition,
Detective Story
netted Wyler another Best Director nomination from the Motion Picture Academy, as well as nominations for Eleanor Parker for Best Actress, Lee Grant for Best Supporting Actress, and the Robert Wyler–Philip Yordan script for Best Screenplay.

Kingsley told the
New York Times
that he liked the film better than his own Broadway production: “On the whole, I'd say the impact of the film is greater than that of the play…. It is simply that Wyler and Paramount have been able to get wonderful characterizations out of the cast.”
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The acting was indeed excellent—especially that of Douglas, whose complex performance, coupled with some of the script changes and Wyler's dramatic staging of scenes, made the story more effective. The tragic nature of McLeod's downfall, not fully realized in the play, comes closer to fruition here. Both the play and the film indict the HUAC for violating the principles of due process and the constitutional rights of individuals, which are the backbone of the American justice system. Kingsley warns that if those principles are not upheld and protected, chaos and fascism will follow. By making the protagonist more human and by carefully integrating his story with those of the other characters, Wyler brings these points home more effectively.

He employs the technique of deep focus to make these thematic points as well. This device is particularly revealing in the confrontation between Mr. Pritchett and Arthur. As Pritchett beseeches his employee to explain why he stole from him, Wyler keeps McLeod in the frame; his back is to the others, though still centered, as he talks on the phone. Susan enters the frame to the right of McLeod, her expression drawing the attention of the audience, which is still listening to the dialogue between Pritchett and Arthur and wondering about McLeod's intentions. Then, as she moves to the center of the frame and offers to repay Pritchett, Susan displaces McLeod, who is still in the frame and distracted by her presence. When McLeod turns his attention back to Arthur, he seems to take over the frame, though in the distance, Wyler lets us see another officer who is whispering something into Monaghan's partly opened door. (They need to get McLeod out of the office so they can get Mary in.) Wyler thus keeps the audience engaged in multiple levels of action without cutting or leaving the precinct room. Although
Detective Story
remains, to some degree, essentially a filmed play, Wyler effectively uses space to articulate his themes and sharpen the plot's dramatic focus. In spite of its rather prosaic location and straightforward story line, this film represents one of Wyler's virtuoso performances in the art of transferring theater to the screen and using the camera to improve on the original.

In 1951 the HUAC reopened its hearings, and a second wave of fear gripped Hollywood. Wyler's close friend Lillian Hellman was called before the committee, where she invoked her Fifth Amendment rights. Michael Wilson, who wrote the script for
Friendly Persuasion
for Capra, was also called; he eventually left the country to circumvent the blacklist.

A schism also developed within the Screen Directors' Guild (SDG) over the anticommunist investigations. In the fall of 1950 the guild's board passed a bylaw requiring a loyalty oath by its members. This move was instigated by Cecil B. DeMille, who also proposed that directors keep lists of suspicious personnel—particularly writers and actors—working on their films and share those lists with the SDG. Joseph Mankiewicz, president of the guild, had been out of the country during these discussions and was determined to reopen the issue of loyalty oaths. But when he announced a membership meeting, DeMille moved to block it and initiated a movement to recall Mankiewicz from office. DeMille tried to isolate the “foreigners” in the guild—Wyler, Billy Wilder, and Fred Zinnemann—by accentuating the exotic pronunciations of their names. (He referred to Wyler as “Vyler.”) Wyler told Axel Madsen, “At one time, DeMille said something to the effect that some of us were traitors and not good Americans. I remember getting up and saying that if anybody doubts my loyalty to my country, I'll punch his nose ‘and I don't care how old he is,' looking directly at DeMille as I said it.”
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The members voted to repudiate DeMille and his faction, forcing them to resign.

Considering the political climate, it is not surprising that Wyler looked forward to leaving the country in 1952, headed for Italy to film his next project,
Roman Holiday
. This movie would also be a change of pace—after a series of dark and mostly claustrophobic films, it would allow Wyler to return to comedy for the first time since helming
The Good Fairy
and
The Gay Deception
in 1935. (
The Gay Deception
is a Cinderella story featuring a small-town stenographer who wins a lottery prize and uses her windfall to enjoy the high society life at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. There, she meets a bellhop, a European prince in disguise who is working at the Waldorf to learn the hotel business. After a series of complications, they fall in love and live happily ever after.)

Roman Holiday
, a reverse Cinderella tale, is the story of a princess (Audrey Hepburn) from an unnamed country who is in Rome on a goodwill visit. Bored and frustrated by diplomatic protocol and round-the-clock schedules, she escapes her hotel room to explore the city. There, she sheds her role as a princess—cutting her hair, wearing informal clothes, and reveling in the freedom her position has denied her. She enjoys these simple pleasures in the company of Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck), an American newspaperman, who discovers her asleep on a park bench, takes her back to his apartment, and then shows her the sights. He soon discovers who his guest really is and plans to write an exclusive story about her. Eventually, however, the princess decides to return to her royal obligations and tells Joe, “At midnight I will turn into a pumpkin and ride away in my glass slipper.” Joe, behaving like a gentleman and an idealized American, does not write his story.