Proud and Profane, The (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Jan 21, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
George SeatonRelease Date(s)
1956 (November 5, 2024)Studio(s)
Perlberg-Seaton Productions/Paramount Pictures (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)- Film/Program Grade: B-
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
Fred Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity (1953), from James Jones’s bestselling novel, had been one of the biggest hits of the entire 1950s. At a time when Hollywood was shifting over to color and widescreen, this black-and-white, standard format movie, made for around $2 million, earned $30 million, or fifteen times its cost. George Seaton’s The Proud and Profane (1956) very much wants to recapture that magic, even casting one of Eternity’s stars, Deborah Kerr, in one of its two leading roles. Like the earlier film, it dances around various taboo subjects as far as the Production Code would allow: casual sex and adultery, pregnancy out of wedlock, attempted suicide, post-traumatic syndrome disorder, and other issues spurred by an American military at war in the Pacific. Though handsomely produced with decent performances, the film is a something of a confused, unsatisfying mess.
It’s 1943 and war widow Lee Ashley (Kerr) has joined the American Red Cross in Noumea, New Caledonia, to care for and entertain American servicemen. Obvious to her superior, Kate Connors (Thelma Ritter), Lee joined the Red Cross primarily to learn more about the fate of her late husband, a Paramarine killed during the Battle of Bloody Ridge on Guadalcanal. When nurses ask the Red Cross women to help with incoming wounded, the upper-class, sheltered Lee initially is so uncomfortable and ill-suited to the task that she flat-out refuses to attend to the casualties.
Arrogant, autocratic Marine Raider commander Lt. Col. Colin Black (William Holden), who states women in war have but two functions, as “skirts” to have sex with and as “sweethearts” waiting back home, tries picking up Lee, but she resists his cocksure manner and brutish advances until he decides to instead lie to her, feigning empathy he does not possess by pretending he knew Lee’s dead husband. Despite his off-putting manner, he making dates for them without asking, etc., a direct contrast to her soft, sensitive architect husband, Lee unaccountably falls deeply in love with him anyway.
Black’s contempt for weakness is expressed through his stormy relationship with a Navy chaplain, Lt. Junior Grade Holmes (William Redfield), responsible for the death of many Marines when he gathered soldiers to pray while a Japanese soldier, thought dead, tossed a grenade in their midst. Also in the battalion is Pvt. Eddie Wodcik (Dewey Martin), adopted by Kate as a child. Lee’s resemblance to Eddie’s kid sister, who died in a tenement fire, makes the unbalanced Marine overly protective toward her. This does not bode well for Black, since it’s a foregone conclusion that his relationship with Lee will bring her nothing but unhappiness.
The Proud and Profane is admirably adult, if tamely torrid in its sexual melodramatics, and the acting is generally good. George Seaton was always good with actors, but he was generally better directing comedies like Miracle on 34th Street and Teacher’s Pet than straight drama. His previous effort in that field, The Country Girl, was much acclaimed in its day but that film hasn’t aged well at all outside of a couple of the performances. When the drama was combined with action and suspense, as in his later The Counterfeit Traitor and 36 Hours, Seaton’s direction was generally better, but The Proud and Profane, which he also adapted from Lucy Herndon Crockett’s novel Magnificent Bastards, is stubbornly dramatically inert. As my colleague CineSavant rightly points out in his review, every plot twist and bit of characterization is delivered via long-winded speeches rather than allowing the movie audience to discover things about the characters on their own. Further, Seaton’s dialogue is overwritten throughout: Lee, for instance, describes Black as a man “trained to destroy and does so magnificently!”
I also agree with CineSavant that Seaton doesn’t seem to know where to point the camera. A crucial scene near the end takes place at a military cemetery, introduced in tight medium shots at the front gate, where only a dozen or so graves are visible. From there he matter-of-factly cuts to a wider reverse angle, where we see hundreds, maybe thousands of crosses (and a few Stars of David). If you’ve ever been to one of these big, wartime cemeteries, the effect can be overwhelming, yet Seaton rather botches both shots and the cut between them, greatly diminishing its potential impact.
Further, the script is so muddled it wasn’t until that scene I finally understood what Lee’s obsession with her dead husband was all about. I’m not sure if that scene was meant as a surprise, a revelation, or if Seaton’s confused script intended to make this point clear much earlier, or at least hint at its outcome.
One admires actor William Holden for his willingness to play such a magnificent bastard, to forsake his signature sardonic screen persona, but this isn’t much fun for audiences trying to latch onto these leading characters. Lee isn’t much more appealing than Black; she whines and worms her way out of work in several scenes, wallowing in self-pity. Thelma Ritter’s character compensates for this somewhat; rather than providing her usual cynical Brooklynese comedy relief, here’s she’s more of a devoted (but not sentimental) den mother looking after her boys and the women worker under her (including, in an early role, Marion Ross). She has scads of empathy completely lacking in Black but she’s also a tough cookie, ready to ship Lee back home if she doesn’t straighten up, and fast. Ritter is one of the film’s few unqualified assets.
The Proud and Profane was photographed in 8-perf horizontal VistaVision, though in black-and-white, the latter no doubt because From Here to Eternity was monochrome also. Kino’s Blu-ray is derived from a near-perfect 2022 scan by Paramount in 4K, evidenced by a couple of minor but visible horizontal scratches on the negative. I recently switched to a 4K projector, which upscales the already terrific image, so clear that some of the effects shots (mattes, or maybe simply glass shots) dotting the harbor with additional (painted) naval vessels are quite unreal. One also notices that the razor sharpness the format affords varies from shot to shot; a couple of times the cinematographer (John F. Warren, also of The Country Girl) simply gets the actors out-of-focus. Maybe the actors aren’t hitting their marks or the production, much of it on location in the Virgin Islands, was a little rushed. Nevertheless, this is a solid transfer. The DTS-HD Master Audio (2.0 mono) is fine, and optional English subtitles are provided on this Region “A” encoded release.
Legal issues apparently kept the film out of circulation for many decades, and that may account for the lack of a trailer. The lone extra is a pretty good audio commentary by war movie experts Steve Mitchell and Steven Jay Rubin.
The Proud and Profane is worth seeing once, for its stars and supporting actors, all good, its production values, less so for its adult script that never quite gels.
- Stuart Galbraith IV