Fourteen Hours (1951, directed by Henry Hathaway, 3.8 stars) is another Fox noir that is not even arguably a noir. It is urban enough, taking place on the ledge and a room on 15th floor of a NYC hotel (on St. Patrick's Day), and there is ample grounds for interpreting underlying motivation, but it takes place almost entirely by daylight, has an ordinary traffic cop (played by Paul Douglas) as its hero--and has a hero! It does not take place in the "underworld," and rather than having any femme fatale has two unseamy women, Grace Kelly in a small part in her film debut, and Barbara Bel Geddes and the fiancée of the man on the ledge (Robert, played with raw nerves by Richard Basehart).

It was to see Basehart's performance that I wanted to see the movie. A threat to self rather that to others (in contrast to his psychopathic turns in He Walked By Night and The House on Telegraph Hill), his malaise is blamed on Mom (Agnes Moorhead), who is also blamed for driving off the well-intentioned, ineffectual Pop (Robert Keith), who offers to take Robert to the Polo Fields for the Giants game he failed to take him to years before.

There is a crowd eager for a fatal spectacle (as in Billy Wilder's "The Big Carnival" (aka "Ace in the Hole") which was made in the same year, whatever that says about the zeitgeist!) .

Knowing 1950s American neo-Freudianism, it is not too difficult to figure out which forbidden subject involved an absent father, a dominating mother, and a suicidal turn away from a loving young woman for whom Robert fears he could not make a good husband (and broke up). Psychiatrists and other authorities (police higher-ups) are ineffectual, though a plain-spoken regular guy can quell at least one of the hysterics. (The noir world is rife with hysterics and ineffectual policeman, but short on good citizens whose goodness is not a facade for deceit and crime!)

For no particular reason (within the plot, the reason is entirely Fox trying to build some of its human properties into stars), the movie includes a romance developing between two spectators, Debra Paget and Jeffrey Hunter. Plus Ossie Davis, in his second screen role, plays one of the cabbies who form a betting pool on how long it will take the guy to jump. (Since the street in front of the hotel is not blocked, I don't understand why the taxis can't move...) The betting pool is a cynical noir touch, as is Mom's eagerness to talk to reporters, but there are way too many happy endings for this to take place in the universe of noir.

That "14 Hours" won an Oscar for set decoration is one of the many mysteries of Oscar history. The only set is a very ordinary hotel room. To me, the picture belongs to the performers, especially Douglas and Basehart.

The story was inspired by a 1938 incident of prolonged negotiations between a man who perched on a 17th floor ledge of the Hotel Gotham for 14 hours and a policeman who was the only person he was willing to talk to. (The end was different: can you spell H-O-L-L-Y-W-O-O-D?)

The photography gives the film a documentary look (belying the pop-Freudian melodrama). The Fox Noirs (most of them not noirs by my criteria) are outstanding in having interesting commentary tracks. The one here is by film historian Foster Hirsch, who has less to say than Freddie Muller on other Fox Noir commentary tracks, less willingness to provide a personal perspective, and who frequently falls silent on the commentary track. There is also an interactive pressbook on the disc and multiple trailers of films in the series. And the print and/or the transfer was quite good.

Having begun by rejecting the claim that the movie is a noir, I failed to mention that the start of the movie is particularly good. The movie does not last 14 hours, but does devolve into pop-psych melodrama.

How would I categorize it? A social problem picture (like "Rebel Without a Cause" and "Blue Denim" or "Gentleman's Agreement") with some interest in showing crowd psychopathology (foreshadowing tv coverage of the O.J. and JoBeth Ramsey cases of more recent memory).

---

Though Basehart and Bel Geddes had long careers (she died a year ago), I feel that they coulda/shoulda been used more. Bel Geddes was excellent in "Vertigo," in a role similar to the one she played in "Fourteen House," as the daughter in George Stevens's "I Remember Mama," as the victim of a Howard Hughes-like wacko in Max Ophuls's "Caught," and as the stable home anchor for Richard Widmark in Elia Kazan's "Panic in the Street" (a film in which Paul Douglas was outstanding as the New Orleans chief of police). She's probably most remembered as "Miss Ellie" in the long-running tv soap opera "Dallas." Similarly, Basehart is best remembered as Admiral Nelson in the tv "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea," rather than for his superlative performances in Fellini's "La Strada" or in "He Walked by Night." Douglas died in 1959 at the age of 52. In addition to his outstanding turn in "Panic in the Street," he was memorable in "The Big Lift" (which I seem to like more than most people) with Montgomery Clift and in "The Solid Gold Cadillac" as straight man to the exuberant Judy Holliday (who also died young). (I don't much care for Douglas's performance in Lang's "They Clash by Night" or Basehart's Ivan in Richard Brooks's adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov.)

In contrast to these actors, director Henry Hathaway made many good movies, though he didn't received much acclaim and hasn't received critical attention as a major auteur. His only Oscar nomination was for "The Lives of a Bengal Lancer" in 1935. I think that "Down to the Sea in Ships" is an unknown gem. His noirs or near-noirs of the late-1940s (The Dark Corner, Kiss of Death, Call Northside 777, The House on 92nd Street) are getting renewed attention in the Fox Noir series. He also directed John Wayne in Wayne's two best western comedies "North to Alaska" and True Grit. (I also liked "Nevada Smith" with Steve McQueen in the title role.) He helmsed two gripping WWII dramas (lacking in historical accuracy), "A Wing and a Prayer" (1944) and "The Desert Fox" (1951).

© 2006, Stephen O. Murray



Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD