dougdoepke
Few actors were better at quiet smoldering than Brando. That talent suits him well as a WWII paraplegic having to make a lifetime adjustment. Human interest prevails over plot as we watch VA hospital paraplegics deal with a future of useless legs. The material could easily have turned sappy and sentimental. Fortunately, both the canny screenplay and calibrated performances keep excesses from bleeding in.Producer Kramer was known for his "message" movies, and this is one of them. Coming when it did, 1950, I'm sure the message—that life is worth living if effort is made—was especially topical, and still is. Brando's Bud is having a particularly rough time, even with what seems a devoted girlfriend (Wright). She wants to marry him, but he's understandably skeptical—can she really make a lifetime adjustment to his dependency. I like the way the problem of potency is handled. In a nicely finessed scene, the doctor (Sloane) explains to Ellen that there are no guarantees given the nature of his injury. Thus we don't know if there will be children should they marry.Of course, Hollywood being Hollywood, the somber themes get comic relief, this time from a wise- cracking Leo (Erdman), who's never short of something to say. Actor Erdman was a specialist in this kind of role, and a particularly fortunate choice. Then too, for a viewer like me, seeing Dragnet's Jack Webb here comes as a revelation after his emotionally frozen Sgt. Friday. Webb shows his chops by running Norm's gamut of emotions in unexpectedly affecting style. And catch that extended opening scene where authoritative Dr. Brock (Sloane) explains the facts of paraplegic life in detail. It's apparently directed at his audience of wheelchair vets, but is really directed at movie audiences, many of whom, I suspect, were dealing with similar post-war realities.I guess my only reservation is with Ellen's sudden turn-around after the marriage. We really haven't been prepared for her abrupt change of heart, and thus it comes across more like a contrivance than a character development. Anyway, the 80-minutes amounts to an auspicious debut for what would soon be the country's most celebrated actor. And if the movie amounts to a message movie, the message is very well done, and remains relevant for our own stressed time.
ferbs54
In the 1972 megahit "The Godfather," Marlon Brando, playing Don Vito Corleone, uttered one of the most quotable movie lines of that decade: "We'll make him an offer he can't refuse." But 22 years earlier, Brando was presented with an unrefuseable offer himself, after being given a chance to read Carl Foreman's script for the upcoming film "The Men." In 1950, the 26-year-old Brando had not yet appeared on screen, but since 1944 had been something of a sensation on Broadway, especially after portraying Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire" in '47. An early member of the Actors Studio as well as being an early practitioner of "The Method," Brando could not pass up the chance to appear in producer Stanley Kramer's film concerning the plight of paraplegic servicemen and their rehabilitation process in a veterans' hospital. The actor apparently dove into his first screen role, spending weeks observing the inmates at the Birmingham Veterans Administration Hospital (in Van Nuys, California; not Alabama, as I initially assumed), where much of the film was later shot; 45 patients of the hospital also appear in the finished film. And, as might be expected, Brando is simply terrific, giving an emotionally complex performance, eliciting the viewer's affection, and clearly demonstrating to the world that a new screen star had arrived.When we first see Brando's Ken, he is an armed infantryman, a lieutenant prowling the deserted streets of an unnamed European town with his squad. A sniper's bullet catches Ken in the lower back, immediately paralyzing him from the waist down. A full year later, the ex-G.I. lies in a vets' hospital, sullen, withdrawn, angry, and completely antisocial. "I was afraid I was gonna die...now I'm afraid I'm gonna live," he thinks to himself. Fortunately for Ken, his doctor, Brock (a hugely ingratiating performance here from Everett Sloane), moves him from his private room to a ward with other men, in the hopes that a little social interaction might do him some good. Though initially surly to his three immediate neighbors--Norm (a goateed Jack Webb, here in one of his earliest roles at age 30, and right before appearing in "Sunset Blvd.," which was released just two weeks after "The Men"), Angel (a muscular Hispanic dude, the nicest guy on the floor, and well played by Arthur Jurado) and wheeler-dealer Leo (Richard Erdman)--Ken soon comes out of his shell, makes friends, and enters into the rehab process in earnest. The reason: his ex-girlfriend, Ellen, who, despite Ken's constant rebuffs, seems eager to enter into matrimony with him. Ellen is played by Teresa Wright, by the way, who, eight years earlier, in "Pride of the Yankees," portraying Lou Gehrig's wife, Eleanor, had similarly cared for a severely disabled man....During the course of "The Men," we get to know many of the inmates of the Birmingham facility and see, in some detail, the rigorous physical rehab regimen that Ken undergoes. The film also spotlights some of the problems that disabled men and their spouses experience, although, given the era, does tend to shy away when the subject of sexual intimacy arises; Brock simply tells Ellen that some paraplegic men are able to have families and some are not. Brock, I might add here, is the kind of doctor we all wish we had--one who is at once deeply caring, patient, understanding, and tough when necessary--and Sloane is just perfect in the part. Besides the fine players already named, "The Men" features an uncredited De Forest Kelley as a doctor, a good 16 years pre-Dr. "Bones" McCoy, whose only line in the film (concerning Ken) is "He's got a lot of pain," as well as John "Perry White" Hamilton as Ken and Ellen's wedlock priest, here just a few years before "The Adventures of Superman." The picture sports any number of wonderful scenes, among them: the men's and staff's reaction when Angel suffers a very serious reversal (a truly upsetting sequence); Ellen discussing her marriage plans with her disapproving parents; Ken and Ellen entering a nightclub and being at the receiving end of multiple stares; Brock revealing something of his own past to Ken, in the hopes that the young man will learn to embrace his future life; and, most especially, Ken and Ellen returning home after their wedding, with the reality of her future hitting Ellen forcefully, with unfortunate results. Throughout, director Fred Zinnemann's work is sensitive and involving (what a decade Zinnemann would have, with such films as "High Noon," "From Here to Eternity" and "The Nun's Story"!), and Dimitri Tiomkin's score perfectly matches both the darker moments (particularly in the film's earlier scenes, when Ken lies in his shadowy private room) as well as the more upbeat. But towering above all--despite the fact that he naturally remains either supine or sitting in a wheelchair for the bulk of the picture--is Brando, who easily steals his first film (hardly the only time he would do so, of course!). Running the gamut from grief and hopeless withdrawal, to hope and determination, back to grief and anger, and ultimately on to a tentative acceptance and happiness, it is a marvelous performance for the first-timer...and yes, he even gets to give us the first of his many on-screen temper tantrums, destroying several windows after his disastrous wedding night. Just watch how wonderful Brando is, as Ellen seriously discusses marriage plans; we can see the dawning realization that he just MIGHT have a stab at happiness clearly written on his face. Plainly exhibiting the three H's that can guarantee an actor's success (handsome, hunky, and a helluva performer), it is no wonder that Brando's star was immediately on the rise. His initial, early screen promise here was soon to be fully realized in the following year's screen adaptation of "Streetcar," in which Brando surely gave a performance for the ages, but those viewers who are curious to see where it all began should be more than impressed with Marlon's tyro work in "The Men"....
secondtake
The Men (1950)Well, you do have to see a movie like this partly to see Marlon Brando before his stellar rise to fame (ultra-fame) in "On the Waterfront" (1954) and "Streetcar Named Desire" (the next year, 1951). This is his first role, and he's already the famous, complex, simultaneously macho and tender Brando. He plays Ken, and he is bedridden because he can't walk.Around him are a host of actors, amateur and professional, who are all unable to walk, probably permanently, from war injuries. This is a story of adjusting to being in a wheelchair, getting others to accept you like this, and ultimately getting to accept it yourself. It's an emotional more than a physical battle, and a powerful one.The doctor in charge is in some ways the main character, or the most present, throughout, and he's strong if somewhat uncomplicated in his portrayal of a devoted, tireless medical worker. He's played by Everett Sloan, who has just come off a bizarre but terrific role as a rich lawyer with difficulty walking in "Lady from Shanghai" (a Welles movie--and Welles gave Sloan his entrance into Hollywood in "Citizen Kane").The woman who is both lovingly sympathetic and also scared in her uncertainty as Ken's girlfriend and wife. She's kind of perfect, turning into that somewhat disconnected 1950s housewife before our eyes (influenced surely by her officious if kindly parents, a kind of 1930s Republican do good but also look out for yourself first attitude). It's a perfect fit, set up by the screenwriter and worked by with surprising believability by the young director, Fred Zinnemann ("From Here to Eternity") with Stanley Kramer producing. These two men were among the most socially conscious in a post-war Hollywood that had many directors trying to make a difference in their films (Kazan and Lumet would be two others). And "The Men" is certainly about showing a problem with realism and optimism at the same time. It's a kind of parallel to the film noir films which made dramatic fictions out of many returning servicemen. This was closer to the reality for many.Is it a great film? For some small reasons, no, as much as Brando is convincing in his role. For one thing, it's just too clear what the motivation of the director and producer is, so the movie movies forward without clear dramatic tension (even though you don't quite know the outcome). For another, the acting is generally very good without being wrenching (and the subject is frankly wrenching). It feels a little like we're being given a lesson, a good lesson, but still a bit like schoolwork made vivid on the screen. This will be apparently right from the first scene where a room full of wives and girlfriends ask questions (frank and important questions) of the doctor, who wisely and frankly answers them.Good stuff, great stuff, and as a film experience, incomplete stuff.
