William Wyler

by Gabriel Miller

  Hellman and Wyler became close friends during this period, and their friendship lasted throughout their lives. Describing Wyler as “the greatest American director,” Hellman carefully detailed her praise: “He had a wonderful pictorial sense—he knew how to pack so much into a shot that I felt I could leave certain things unsaid, knowing Willy would show them. We had to become friends, because we were the only two people in the Goldwyn asylum who weren't completely loony.”15 She also commented, “Willy left you alone. He said things like, ‘Don't bother about the shots. Just do the dialogue. Don't tell me where to put the camera.’ And I thought, this is heaven.”16

  By the time Wyler was hired to direct the film, Goldwyn had already cast the three main characters: Miriam Hopkins (Martha), Merle Oberon (Karen), and Joel McCrea (Joe). Wyler chose Bonita Granville to play Mary, and she remembered the experience fondly: “[Wyler] had infinite patience and never once raised his voice. Without putting it into specific terms, I realize now that each day he was teaching me something important—the technique of how to move, how to build to a climax, how important it is to listen to a scene—but most of all he taught me that integrity was absolutely vital to acting.”17

  Wyler was not thrilled with the rest of the cast, however. He would have preferred Leslie Howard for the role of Joe, and McCrea was not pleased that Wyler put him through so many takes. Oberon resented Wyler's attention to Granville and complained to McCrea that the child actress was stealing the picture. Hopkins had a reputation for being a difficult actress with a bad temper.

  These problems with the actors were more than offset by Wyler's introduction to cinematographer Gregg Toland, who would become one of his most important collaborators—they worked together on all of Wyler's films with Goldwyn except Dodsworth. Toland was just as meticulous as Wyler, and as a result, their relationship got off to a rocky start. Wyler recalled, “i was in the habit of saying, ‘Put the camera here with a forty-millimeter lens, move it this way, pan over here, do this.’ Well, he was not used to that…. I considered it part of my job. You don't do that with a man like Gregg Toland.”18

  In Toland, Wyler recognized a kindred spirit. They both valued a style that emphasized depth-of-focus photography, which enabled realism and fluidity in the storytelling. For a special section devoted to Toland in Sequence, Wyler commented on this style: “Because of it, I have been able to stage scenes in depth, keeping two or more people on the screen at the same time during extended dialogue scenes, and eliminating the need for cutting back and forth from one to the other. This makes for greater flow and continuity, intensifies dramatic situations, holds the audience's attention more compellingly and, of course, in addition makes for more exciting composition by adding the illusion of the third dimension, depth, to the two-dimensional screen.” He elaborated: “Most photography in Hollywood is ‘soft’ and diffused, using less light and a larger lens opening. This photography is a handmaiden of the star system, and is designed to make the stars as young, beautiful and glamorous as possible. Toland's style, on the other hand, was an attempt to achieve reality or truthfulness on film.”19

  This is the philosophy André Bazin drew on when formulating his theories of cinematic realism and his assessment of the contributions of Orson Welles and William Wyler. These directors, according to Bazin, followed a tradition established by precursors such as Robert Flaherty and Erich Von Stroheim, who were more interested in “revealing” reality than adding to it. Depth of focus became one of the high points in the evolution of film because it brought the spectator “into a relation with the image closer to that which he enjoys with reality.” it also required a “more active mental attitude on the part of the spectator and a more positive contribution on his part to the action in progress.”20

  Wyler also noted that he and Toland discussed each film “from beginning to end.” Like the direction, the style of the photography varied, depending on the subject. “in These Three,” Wyler explained, “we were dealing with little girl things. What was good was rather simple, attractive photography.”21

  As Hellman and Wyler worked on the project and filming progressed, the nation's economy was beginning to turn around; business was expanding, and New Deal programs were working. Radical politics—the exploration of alternatives to a failed capitalist system—was still popular, however, with artists and intellectuals. As part of a group of New York intellectuals working in Hollywood, Hellman was friendly with other writers such as Dorothy Parker, Donald Ogden Stewart, and Ring Lardner Jr., who were politically active and were becoming increasing vocal about the rise of fascist governments in Europe. Around this time, Benito Mussolini annexed Abyssinia, forcing Emperor Haile Selassie to flee, and then formed an alliance with Germany; Adolf Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland and forged alliances with Russia and Japan; and General Francisco Franco initiated a civil war against the elected Popular Front government in Spain. Structuring The Children's Hour (her first play) according to the conventions of melodrama, which presented society as a battleground between good and evil, Hellman trusted that audiences in 1934 would have no difficulty seeing a connection between Mary Tilford and her grandmother and the rise of totalitarian governments in Germany, Spain, and italy. In this play, as well as in subsequent works, Hellman locates her plots in realistic settings and populates them with bold, stark, and compelling characters whose schemes and struggles imply that the war between good and evil is the central dilemma of the times.

  In Hollywood, Hellman and her fellow screenwriters were also up in arms over MGM's shelving of Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, the story of the rise of a dictator in the United States. The studio had bought the rights to the novel when it was still in typescript and hired Sidney Howard, who had adapted Arrowsmith for Goldwyn in 1931 and would go on to adapt Dodsworth for Goldwyn and Wyler in 1936, to prepare a script. The first news releases announced that Will Hays, head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association of America, had stopped the film, fearing international problems and the wrath of the Republican Party, but the Hays office denied banning the film. MGM announced that the project had been shelved because it was too expensive, and Goldwyn maintained that the film was canceled because of casting difficulties. Howard claimed to have seen a lengthy memo from Joseph Breen noting “dangerous material” in the script and suggesting drastic revisions. In any case, the film's cancellation was heartily approved by both Germany and italy; the German Film Chamber called Lewis “a full blooded Communist.” Lewis's biographer, Mark Schorer, concludes that the studio's motive for shelving the film was probably “less political than economic. Not only would this film have been banned in Germany and italy and other foreign markets, but probably all Metro films would henceforth have been kept out of Germany and italy.”22

  It was in this volatile atmosphere that Wyler embarked on his first film with Goldwyn, based on Hellman's controversial play. Wyler, of course, was an interested observer of the situation in Europe, having arrived in the United States just fifteen years earlier. He had established his liberal credentials while filming Counsellor-at-Law, and even the light comedy The Gay Deception offered both a gently satiric portrayal of the wealthy and a warm, affectionate look at the working class. The latter, typical of the decade's screwball comedies, concludes with the marriage of a prince from a fictitious country and a secretary who dared to dream of spending as much as $19 for a hat. Wyler's friendship with Hellman, however, now sharpened and focused his political views and also made him more confident when he insisted on the artistic integrity of his projects and stood up for his own creative ideas.

  The changes Hellman and Wyler made in transferring her play to the screen are substantive; in many ways, they constitute an improvement over the original. While the script was being prepared, a number of titles were suggested or briefly adopted, including “The Lie.” in a memo to Goldwyn, though, Merritt Hulburd indicated that he preferred “A Lie is Told” and also suggested “Word of Honor.”

  Hellman'
s script begins with the delivery of graduation gowns around campus. There are shots of the Glee Club singing and girls calling out to the delivery boy from their windows, complaining that he is late. There is a cut to Karen and Martha's rooms, where we see Martha packing her trunk and Karen tutoring a student. From this cozy dorm scene, the camera moves to the college president delivering a speech to the graduates; then to Martha's aunt, Lily Mortar, telling another parent about the sacrifices she has made for her niece; and finally to Karen and Martha lounging on the campus green and talking about their future.

  Feeling that this section was still too long, Wyler cut it considerably to make the completed film's opening move along quickly. Shots of the graduates standing in two uniform rows with the precision of a military drill immediately evoke a sense of the societal conformity that will be rocked by the ensuing scandal. That image—echoed later in a shot of the jury as the judge renders the verdict in the libel trial—captures the mind-set of fascist societies and deftly implies that America itself might share it. The opening shot is held long enough to accommodate the last words of the president's speech, at which point Wyler cuts to Karen and Martha, separating them from the crowd. They are seen as a unit, isolated from the rest of their classmates, until Martha's Aunt Lily (Catherine Doucet) intrudes. Karen wants to distance herself from Lily, but Martha holds on to her, and they deal with Lily together. In these scenes, the director visually establishes the bond between the two women and the entrance of a third party who causes a disturbance, foreshadowing the fate that awaits them. Although here Lily seems to be a harmless, self-centered actress, she is later revealed to have a cruel and sadistic streak when it comes to her niece, and she will play a significant role in Martha's undoing.

  In the next scene, back in their dorm room, Karen suggests that Martha join her in converting her grandmother's farmhouse into a school. Here, the action is presented in either two-shots or shot-reverse shots. Rollyson describes this scene as “a kind of proposal,” although he rejects the notion of any sexual attraction between the two women.23 Both John Baxter and Bernard F. Dick, however, suggest that Wyler is able to subvert the Breen office's ultimatum by having Hopkins act as if her character, Martha, is in love with Karen.24 But the film does not support this theory, especially when Wyler shoots most of the “proposal” as a shot-reverse shot that isolates the two friends in separate frames rather than presenting them together. What is indisputable is that the film focuses on Karen and Martha rather than on Mary Tilford.

  The opening sequence is thus indicative of the predominant style of These Three, which proceeds in a fluid, elegant, and compact manner, much like The Gay Deception. Wyler's first collaboration with Gregg Toland is not distinguished by the deep-focus compositions they would later employ, although there are hints of that technique in some scenes. Instead, in this early work, Wyler points Toland's camera work toward suggestive compositions to bring out the film's themes. Wyler makes strides in framing his characters more effectively in relation to each other, thus eliminating some cutting back and forth, but this film utilizes more cuts and close-ups than his other Goldwyn films.

  The preamble material, including the introduction of the young man who will complete the central trio, takes up roughly one-third of the film. (The play's opening scene, in which Peggy [the film's Helen] reads from The Merchant of Venice, does not occur until half an hour into the film.) After leaving college, Karen and Martha arrive in Lancet, where they find the farmhouse in ruins. While looking the place over, Karen peers through a broken window and sees a mouse—this is Wyler's first use of a shot framed by a window, a motif that will become a metaphor of entrapment. Discouraged by the condition of the house, the two young women consider abandoning their plans when suddenly the sound and then the spectacle of shingles being thrown off the roof attract their attention. This interruption is followed by the appearance of a man in beekeeper's gear and a swarm of bees around his head; he is Joe Cardin, a neighbor and a doctor at the local hospital. He climbs down, introduces himself, and offers to share his lunch. Karen and Martha are hesitant at first but then warm up to him. Their conversation as they sit in the yard is genial and friendly, and Wyler films it with minimal cutting, including all three in the frame to indicate that those two have now become “these three.”

  The scene's outdoor setting, like Karen and Martha's taxi ride to the farm, is presented as idyllic. Throughout much of the film, Wyler invests the natural world with a beauty and grace that is conspicuously missing from the formalized social structure that dominates. Like much of Wyler's work, These Three is primarily an indoor film, and as such, it introduces Wyler's preoccupation with images of constriction and claustrophobia. This emphasis makes the outdoor scenes in the film all the more startling.

  The idyllic mood is further developed as Joe delivers some lumber to the house, which the three are now repairing. Joe drives while Karen lies on her back on the logs, gazing up at the trees and sky as Alfred Newman's romantic music, first heard during the taxi ride, is reprised. (Joe will soon propose to Karen under a tree.) The drive is interrupted by their meeting with Mrs. Tilford (Alma Kruger) and Mary (Granville), who are being chauffeured home. As Joe greets Mrs. Tilford, whom he knows, the shot is framed through her car window—as is her introduction to Karen. Here again, by confining the characters in a tight, constricting frame, Wyler foreshadows the threat Mrs. Tilford and Mary pose to Joe and Karen's romance and to the bucolic time they are sharing. The introduction of Mary is also significant: Wyler's shot lines up Karen (whose head is in the foreground), Mrs. Tilford, and Mary, who is seated beside her grandmother but slightly out of focus. Mrs. Tilford remarks that she knew Karen's grandmother and would like to enroll Mary in the new school. When Mary erupts in a temper tantrum, the scene concludes with inside-outside shots that frame first Mrs. Tilford, then Karen and Joe in the car's window. Karen's excitement at the prospect of obtaining her first pupil is reinforced when Joe tells her that the community follows Mrs. Tilford “like lambs,” but the phrase offers an ominous suggestion, reinforced by the window framing, of how easily Mrs. Tilford will later be able to destroy Karen and Joe. As the lovers drive away, Wyler's camera pulls back to emphasize the natural setting as it envelops Joe's car.

  After the proposal scene, the indoor world takes over. The idyll is officially broken in the next scene by the arrival of Lily Mortar, who volunteers her services at the school. As Lily approaches the house (her image framed by a window), Martha's horrified reaction is shared by the audience and the camera. Then, as Lily is speaking to Martha, Wyler employs a modified deep-focus shot to show Karen and Joe descending the staircase, slightly out of focus. Wyler holds this shot for just a moment before cutting to a shot of Karen with Joe behind her, as Lily looks up at them from the foot of the stairs. In this triangular shot, Joe's raised position indicates that he has displaced Lily in Karen and Martha's life.

  Over the course of his career, Wyler would become a master at expressing repressed emotional states through visual indexes such as the staircase, used here as an important thematic signpost. Numerous key emotional confrontations in Wyler's films take place on staircases, which he uses to make the characters seem either more or less dominant, depending on the perspective. He utilizes them to great effect in his next Hellman adaptation, The Little Foxes.

  After Lily's arrival, the school officially opens. Thereafter, the film follows the basic plot of the play, with some modifications in dialogue to accommodate the substitution of an apparent love triangle for the play's lesbian relationship. The character of Mary in The Children's Hour is an iago-like villain who loves to read Théophile Gautier's novel Mademoiselle de Maupin, about a transvestite heroine, from which she supposedly learns enough about aberrant sex to make her lie believable. In the film, she becomes bent on revenge after being exposed as a liar in three separate instances: for cheating on a Latin translation, for claiming to have picked a bouquet of flowers for Lily when in fact she had retrieved them from the g
arbage, and for faking a heart attack. So when Joe inadvertently spends the night in Martha's room, Mary exaggerates this innocent incident into a scandalous lie, which provokes her grandmother to exert her influence to have all the girls removed from the school.

  The scene depicting Joe's overnight stay in Martha's room is one of Wyler's most elegant and effective sequences. Following his proposal to Karen and her acceptance as they stand under a tree—the outdoor setting underscoring the romantic quality of their attachment—Wyler's camera next moves to Martha alone in her room, where she is preparing to paint a table. When Joe arrives at the school, looking for Karen, Wyler frames him in the door and then double-frames him through a pane of glass from an interior door, again foreshadowing his entanglement in the scandal that will soon ensue. Joe calls out for Karen, but Martha, standing at the top of the stairs, tells him to quiet down (so as not to wake the sleeping girls). Here, the staircase becomes a place where Martha faces her own emotions, the space between her and Joe signifying an unbridgeable emotional gulf. Joe enters her room, and the divide is accentuated as he lies down on the couch and Martha resumes painting the table. As she talks about her childhood, which she spent following her aunt Lily from show to show, Wyler moves his camera away from Joe and toward Martha, pausing for a medium close-up of her face, framed by the table legs, as she concludes, “I was so alone.”

  While she is talking, Joe falls asleep, and Martha looks longingly at him. She then goes to sit in a chair, with the fireplace lit significantly behind her. Martha watches Joe as Wyler's camera pans slowly to the right, revealing the snow outside the window—thus visually evoking the fire and ice that are emblematic of these two characters’ relationship. Next, there is a dissolve as the camera reverses direction. Time has passed, but Martha is still watching Joe, who wakes abruptly and knocks over a glass of milk. A quick cut shows Mary being awakened by the sound; she then sneaks into the hallway and witnesses Joe's departure, as Martha begins to pick up the pieces of broken glass. The noise also wakens Lily, who enters the room and reminds Martha that Joe and Karen will be marrying in the spring. Depressed over losing both her friend and Joe, Martha starts to cry, as Mary continues to spy from the shadows. The cut to Mary deepens the connection between her malevolence and the fate of the three principals. Wyler's layered mise-en-scène and strategic editing thus manage to convey Martha's loneliness, her feelings of abandonment, and Mary's evil intentions more effectively than Hellman had been able to do in the play.