NOT AS A STRANGER (1955)

After producing over a dozen films for other directors, all with running times ranging from 80 to 120 minutes, Stanley Kramer allowed a self-indulgent 2 hours 15 minutes for his own directing debut, dropping signature social issues & controversies for glossy medical soap opera. He’d make more than a dozen films over the next three decades, never growing much more proficient behind the camera, while here the pulpy nature of the material, and a lack of Krameresque pretentiousness, make the gaucheries less problematic than on later, more ‘prestigious’ work. (Excluding a rip-snorting visual parallel between rutting horses and manly infidelity. Yikes!) Robert Mitchum is the gifted, but cash poor intern who marries dowdy Olivia de Havilland more for money than for love. She, on the other hand, is head over heels, done up in an unbecoming blonde wig (she’s Swedish don’tcha know) which unfortunately comes off gray in b&w. Frank Sinatra makes do as BFF and mediocre doctor and there’s a big impressive cast trying to turn clichés into characters (Broderick Crawford, Charles Bickford, Lee Marvin, Gloria Grahame, Jesse White, Myron McCormick, Lon Chaney), a typical Kramer all-star gambit. He also leaves his mark by getting a rare forgettable job out of lensing great Franz Planer. Modestly involving in its way, there’s a fun moment with wonderful Henry Morgan stuffing herring into his mouth and the first commercial cinema look at a real live beating human heart! Shot, of course, like a porn director moving us into the action. Oh, Stanley!

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Does time stand still in this pic? Early on, Mitchum & de Havilland go to see THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA made the year before in 1954. But there’s at least five years of events still to play out. Have we drifted into the future? Just the sort of SNAFU producer Kramer should have brought to the attention of director Kramer!