10th
Hot Blood (1956)
A slight premise - arranged marriage produces spontaneous love – that, in the hands of skilled professionals, bears more passion, heart and pump-thumping red-meat vitality than many other more complicated, less predictable romances of the star-crossed sort. It’s all set in a downtown gypsy camp where semi-modern Romani shuck the suits and skirts that walk into their fortuneteller storefront. The action takes place behind the scenes, though. Cornel Wilde’s brother, a Gypsy King, forces him to marry Jane Russell, a Gypsy Minx. “You’ll be king one day, you must have a queen!” The actors playing the unwilling couple clash and sparkle - they push against each other, compete with each other - and it’s all the script can do to keep inventing obstacles to throw between them and “passionately ever after.” Two scenes - both dance numbers - stand out sharply, glowing with the bizarre heat of perfect Technicolor images. The first is the newly wed’s nuptial dance, clapped out and strutted in front of the wedding party (a well costumed, garishly make-up’d gypsy tribe). Russell brings Wilde’s blood up as she dances seductively and he stalks, jungle cats in his feet, around the edges of the floor - he didn’t want marriage, but it’s all that his principles can do to keep him from diving hips-first towards his newly minted, unwanted (so he thinks) bride. He grabs a bolo whip instead, and lashes out at her, taming his own lust by tricking himself that he’s taming her. The second dance number, set amidst an outdoor caravan, has just as much fire. It’s startling how much vitality, how much unchecked life the director, Nick Ray, is able to draw from his actors. They leap through the screen, and register their emotions – anger, lust, jealousy – with their entire form. It’s like watching a whole new species of human, and it may make you hate all those calm, reasonable acting professors who have coached their charges not to “overplay for the camera.” To hell with that. If this sort of stuff is the result, “overplay away,” I say.
[Luther Adler, as Marco the brother and gypsy king, is exceptionally watchable. Standing, it would seem, under five feet tall he still projects, with the barest of efforts, a full voiced masculine command. He walks through the screen and owns it, his every cheek twitch and toe point commanding the audience’s necks and sympathies. He’s not one of those movie champions who’s power and leadership must be taken on faith. His visage on the screen, his voice, his very self, all convey a man not just in charge, but inevitably in charge. Adler might have walked off set straight to any local office tower and demanded a corner office with a view; he seems destined to own the earth. It’s exceptional. An actor like Joe Pesci, also diminutive and fierce, could learn a lot by screening this film and other Adler vehicles: an affection, a tenderness is needed to combat to revulsion and horror that comes from watching any short man “take what’s his” and “seek his advantage”; a quick fist must be tempered with a bone-deep sensuality. The man who can master this balance is the man who can find himself suddenly free from the hell of character acting.]
