The Desperate Hours (1955)

 

Picture: B-     Sound: C     Extras: D     Film: B

 

 

Three convicts escape to the suburbs and terrorize a middle-upper class family in The Desperate Hours, possibly the most underrated of all of director William Wyler’s films.  Based on the book by Joseph Hayes, who adapted it into this screenplay, Humphrey Bogart stars as the leader of the three deadly men who are certain a quiet neighborhood is the best place to avoid police attention.  This leads them to a family home headed by a hard-working father, played by Frederic March.

 

Slowly, they surprise each family member as they arrive and do not intend to leave until they get a large sum of money the mastermind’s girlfriend intends to deliver personally.  Can the family handle the threat and annoyance until then?  That’s only the beginning of the tensions here.

 

This was the next-to-last film Bogart ever made, and even here, he is in fine form playing the down-and-out type that helped put him on the world cinema map.  March was also in the latter part of his career, but is every bit Bogart’s equal in statue and acting skill.  That alone is not the only reason this film holds up so surprisingly well.  This is a very well cast film, the script has it moments, there are a few unintended laughs that are entertaining, the settings are very consistent, and Wyler is in some of the best form of his career.

 

It should be said that this was made late in the Film Noir era, but is not a Film Noir any more than Wyler’s Detective Story (1951), erroneously thought of as such by those who miss what Noir is really about.  Noirs never have an easy good/bad split about the police vs. criminal world.  Desperate Hours subtly acknowledges this by having March question the effectiveness of the police.  He and Gig Young’s characters are not very forthwith about sharing information with them, though they do turn out to be good guys in the end.  The fact their integrity is even questioned is a sign of the times in which it is made, a way for Wyler to sidestep the Noir view, and a factor that helps make this film hold up better than if it oversimplified the issue.

 

Lee Garmes, A.S.C., shot the anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image in the large frame VistaVision process, in black and white.  VistaVision was a format Paramount used to compete against CinemaScope, so they did not have to spend money to rent it from 20^th Century-Fox.  It did not require squeeze lenses, but did require more film stock, using an iron butterfly camera to shoot the film horizontally.  Most of these productions, like Ten Commandments, Lawrence Olivier’s Richard III, White Christmas, John Ford’s The Searchers, Funny Face and several Alfred Hitchcock pictures (To Catch a Thief, Vertigo, Trouble With Harry, Vertigo, 1955 Man Who Knew Too Much, and North By Northwest) were major full-color productions, with budgets to match.  This film was not done on the cheap, but is far from those expensive productions.  The transfer here is not bad, looking like a late analog transfer used for the briefly produced letterboxed LaserDisc.  Paramount had also issued the film in that 12” format in tunnel vision/pan and scan framing.  This is the best the film has been issued on video yet, often offering the depth that can be expected from VistaVision, which is especially nice with the use of real monochrome stocks, i.e. the kind they do not make anymore.  After decades in the business, this is the first time Wyler used anything larger than standard 35mm.  He would do his first color film after this.

 

The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is not as loud and clear as the PCM CD tracks were on either of those LaserDiscs, but is not a wreck either.  Softness, some compression, and other dynamic range limits are this DVD’s low-point, offering average sound, but the picture is so good that it will not be as much of a distraction.  Like most VistaVision films, this was a monophonic release, but Paramount used a system called Perspecta Sound that bounced the mono around to make it sound something like stereo, so you should experiment with you Dolby Pro Logic II, DTS Neo, or Logic 7 function on your receiver, if you have one.

 

There are no extras on the DVD, not even a trailer!

 

If this plot sounds familiar, Deer Hunter director Michael Cimino remade the film under the same title in 1990, with Mickey Rourke and Anthony Hopkins in the Bogart and March roles respectively.  As a matter a fact, unfortunately for Cimino, this was Hopkins last film just before The Silence of the Lambs.  The two films make for very interesting comparisons, with Cimino’s film being a more-than-worthy remake.  However, this original Desperate Hours is nearly 50 years old and is a remarkable piece of filmmaking for its time everyone should see.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo