William Wyler (47 page)

In his study of 1950s films, Peter Biskind identifies a group of movies that deal with the “enemy within.” These, he notes, are realistic films that portray aliens inside society, taking their cue from the headlines of the day. The “troublemakers” in these films are communists, “but also gangsters, juvenile delinquents, and minorities.” Biskind discusses various approaches to the threat posed by these “aliens,” including the approach of the pluralists, who rejected force as an answer because “it contradicted the permissive, consensual model of society.” The pluralists believed that, in America, “power was dispersed among the people,” and they rejected force as an instrument of social control because it did not work. “It made things worse, drove dissidents into rebellion, and over the long haul it destabilized society.”
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The Desperate Hours
, with its repudiation of violence, seems to belong in this category. At its climax, as Dan Hilliard faces Griffin with a loaded gun, the criminal taunts him, daring him to shoot. Dan realizes that he cannot do it—he understands that he is not a killer. Ultimately, he triumphs because he is resourceful and summons up the courage to confront a crisis. Instead of shooting his adversary, he slaps Griffin and orders him out of the house. The last line of the play (not included in the film) is spoken by Carson, an FBI agent: “World's full of Hilliards.” It is a valedictory to the ordinary American citizen who is resourceful, ethical, and courageous. Hayes goes even further in his novel: “Magnificence. That was the word. You'd never think of applying it to Dan Hilliard and his wife. But it applied. Maybe you didn't think of it normally because the chips weren't down but when the chips were down—.”
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Wyler does not rely on any character to express these thoughts directly, but presumably, his audience is feeling them. And indeed, it may have been reasonable to expect such a clear-cut recognition of everyman's heroism in 1955, when the film was released, although today's audience is likely to react far more ambivalently.

In the 1950s, the rise of suburbia in America was in full swing. As reflected in
Best Years
, countless soldiers had returned from the war and were trying to reintegrate into American life—often by marrying and starting families. In Kantor's novel, Al Stephenson has a home in the suburbs, while Fred and Peggy aspire to live in a similar place. Fred eventually accepts a job building suburban homes; presumably, he and Peggy will move into such a home someday. That promised future is also depicted by Wyler in
The Desperate Hours
, with Frederic March providing a personal link between the two films.

Wyler's suburbs are marked by a lack of individuality. Many of the houses built after the war were identical, prefabricated structures, and the Hilliards' home looks like all the others on the street. Unlike Hayes, who opens his play in the police station, Wyler begins the film by focusing on a suburban street, the sun down on shining on a tranquil, quiet neighborhood. The placid street scene and the Hilliards' tidy home are no different from the environs of the suburban families presented in countless television dramas of the time. This banal setting quickly establishes Wyler's focus on the peaceful conformity of American life and the sanctity of the nuclear family.

The Hilliards, however, possess a gun—a disturbing image that undercuts the seeming serenity of their surroundings. Dan hides this weapon from his son, Ralphie, but its mere presence indicates that the family anticipates trouble. As both the play and the film make clear, however, they are totally unprepared for the reality of such an event. When a band of escaped convicts suddenly takes up residence in their midst, the utility of the suburban lifestyle and the idealized American nuclear family as barriers against the invasion of “others” is revealed to be a sham. The Hilliards become prisoners in their own home, a place where they expect to exert control; the Griffin gang takes that illusion of safety away from them. Wyler's postwar America, clearly, is faced with dangers from within as well as without.

By immediately focusing on the family, Wyler shows that attempting to shield ourselves from political reality by withdrawing into our own private worlds can have disastrous effects. This danger is dramatically represented when Eleanor Hilliard (Martha Scott) begins to straighten up the house after her family has departed for the day's activities. She is listening to the radio, and when news of the escaped convicts is broadcast, she switches to a music station. Eleanor, apparently, feels safe and secure in her home, the dangers of the outside world easily distanced from her. Within moments, however, that threatening reality will intrude on her peaceable kingdom. Her world and, by extension, the suburban community that embodies it will be shattered by the abrupt entrance of the convicts. Likewise, the typical American family of the 1950s tended to ignore the realities of the HUAC and the dangers of nuclear war, preferring to socialize with friends and neighbors—the insular security of their neighborhoods no more than an illusion. In reality, the Hilliards will find that they are protected by no one in their community. The arrival of Ralphie's teacher, of Cindy's boyfriend, and of Mr. Peterson, the garbage collector, will only bring them more trouble—the last resulting in Peterson's death. The Hilliards will finally learn that they are indeed alone.

The suburban family is balanced by the criminal family. The Griffins are also a family: Glenn and Hal are brothers. Glenn looks out for his younger brother, and the play implies that they are together because of their familial tie. In the play, Glenn is described as being in his mid-twenties, with “a rather appealing boyish expression,” while Hal is younger, with a “confused, hard but somehow rather sensitive face.” The casting of Bogart (who was already ill with the cancer that would soon kill him) makes Glenn more of a father figure. He is clearly much older than Dewey Martin, who plays Hal, and he looks even older than Fredric March, whose mature status he now clearly parallels. In addition to being one of Bogart's final roles, Glenn Griffin is one of his more unsavory ones. In his first role for Wyler—as Baby Face Martin in
Dead End
—the character's criminality is placed in the social context of the slum environment where he grew up. Here, he is a social misfit who preys on innocent women and children, motivated by simple envy. The play implies that the Griffins grew up in an abusive home, but the social factors are only hinted at, not developed, and Wyler cut Glenn's final moment of hallucinatory reproach to his father, just before his death. Jesse Bard, the deputy sheriff who is in charge of the investigation and has dealt with Glenn Griffin before, labels him a psychopath, unfit for human society.

Wyler moves the film beyond the scope of the play by making the struggle between March and Bogart a battle of authority figures who are mentors to their children (in the film, Hal is Glenn's surrogate child). Hal rejects Glenn at the end, leaving the Hilliards' house and vowing to strike out on his own. But during his time in the house, Hal has been affected by the loving attachment among the family members, and he has even fallen for the older daughter, Cindy. He recognizes that although Glenn helped him escape their father, the life Glenn has provided cannot replace the family life he was deprived of—one of the key ingredients being the female presence that is so clearly lacking in the Griffin brothers' lives. Hal comes to regret his life of crime, but once he is away from the Hilliards, he reverts to his old ways, stealing a car, and soon he is killed.

At the end of the film, the tables are turned, and Hilliard has the gun. When he threatens Glenn and orders him out of the house, the criminal tells him, “You ain't got it in you,” to which Hilliard replies, “I've got in me. You put it there!” What has the suburban American patriarch found within himself? Is it a capacity for brutality, for evil? Has he discovered what Young Charlie learns from her uncle in Alfred Hitchcock's
Shadow of a Doubt
, another parable of a sleepy suburb invaded by evil? Wyler's film, like Hitchcock's, removes the veil of innocence from postwar America's view of itself, suggesting, through the doubling of the two older actors, that we have been harboring “it” all along.

Wyler accentuates the connection between the men in the staging of the final sequence. As Hilliard reenters his home, he and Griffin face each other in profile in a two-shot. Later, in Ralphie's room, when Griffin is holding the boy at gunpoint, Wyler shoots them in a shot–reverse shot, accentuating the distance between them. March's face reflects a rediscovered strength that is somewhat undercut by Wyler's filming him in shadow, while Bogart's reveals a weariness that is accentuated by the stubble on his face. After the “You ain't got it in you” exchange, Wyler significantly amends the end of the play. Holding the gun, Hilliard informs Griffin that his brother is dead, shot full of police bullets, adding, “You put them there.” Then they square off as father figures—one who has just saved his son, the other culpable in the death of his own—as Wyler returns to a shot, uniting them for a moment in the same frame.

This moment is not in the play. There, when Hilliard slaps Griffin and orders him to “Get out of my house,” the gangster reverts to childish whining, as if he is speaking to his father: “You hit me for the last goddamn time…. You ain't ever gonna hit Hal again…. You can sit here 'n' rot in your stinkin' house.” He is still yelling as he runs out of the house: “You ain't gonna beat it into Hal and me. Hal 'n' me's gonna be right on top!” He is shot down by a police officer and dies. In the play, Hayes thus has his gangster figure reenact a scene out of
White Heat
, shot down in a blaze of glory.

Wyler's closing scene, in contrast, avoids such mock heroism. In a Wyleresque gesture, Hilliard does not slap Griffin but pushes him down the stairs. The film's Glenn Griffin then exits the Hilliard home with his hands up. But when he sees a light shining in his face, he throws his empty gun at it and, in a moment that combines resignation and bravado, is shot down in a volley of machine-gun fire. Wyler's Griffin is weary, but still proud. The excessive machine-gun fire is a testament to his audacity, but it seems a bit much for a man who has nothing left.

Wyler's coda also differs from the play, which ends with the FBI agent Carson praising the Hilliards as a counterpoint to Bard's “disgust with the human race.” Wyler's ending is mostly devoid of dialogue, as the camera focuses first on photographers taking shots of the dead Griffin and then on Eleanor Hilliard, who watches from across the neighbor's lawn until she sees her husband exit the house. Wyler unites them in a long shot and then, in a scene reminiscent of the reunion of Fredric March and Myrna Loy in
Best Years
, she runs toward him. Here, the couple falls short of an embrace, but the children then run to their father—first Ralphie, then Cindy. The film concludes with the family walking arm in arm into their ravaged, bullet-riddled home. Wyler chooses not to sing the praises of the family's heroism, though he celebrates their decency and integrity. The restrained ending indicates that the Hilliard family may be intact and resilient, but their encounter with the “enemy” has clearly changed them. Wyler is warning that, like the Hilliards, America must turn outward; it must face the world and engage with it. We isolate ourselves at our peril, he seems to say.

The film was not as successful as Wyler or the studio had hoped. Whereas the play won a Tony Award for Best Play, the film did not resonate with either the public or the critics. Although it did return its investment, it was not the smash hit the studio had clearly wished for and predicted. Wyler blamed the lukewarm reaction on “not enough violence.” He went on, “I tried to make it on a more intellectual level, and the picture was a disappointment. The people want violence. To try to eliminate that is absolutely ridiculous.”
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Wyler is more specific in his production notes, which outline his aims but also contain the seeds of the film's undoing: “The audience wishes to see—longs to see—the hero or heroine accomplish certain ends. The villains are very clearly defined. They're bad, and the audience wishes to see them get their comeuppance. Everything is based on a single threat to sympathetic people.” This bare analysis explains the basic, emotional thrust of the material, but Wyler actually aimed higher, seeking to create some uncertainty in the audience: “Any ambivalence creates tension, almost unbearable tension.”
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This extra layer of heightened tension was the “Wyler touch”—which separated the film from the novel and the play yet undoubtedly contributed to its disappointing performance at the box office, because it complicated the film's portrayal of good and evil.

In casting Bogart and thus making Glenn an older man who cares deeply for his brother, and in having Hal learn that his life has been ruined by a series of bad choices, Wyler creates some sympathy for the villains. And just as his Griffin gang is not “clearly defined,” Wyler's Hilliards are not entirely likable, either. Michael Anderegg perceptively observes that the Hilliards have “few of the saving graces” of the Minivers.
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No doubt affected by his own precarious political situation, Wyler chastens the Hilliards for their smug self-righteousness and complacent attitudes. If such even-handedness left the audiences of 1955 uncomfortable, Wyler's less than enthusiastic attitude toward the American nuclear family and his evident sympathy for the underdog make the film more interesting today.

The film also failed to resonate because, despite Vista-Vision, it looked too much like a television show. This result was truly ironic, for Wyler's intention was to critique the stereotypical treatment of the American family that was characteristic of 1950s television. By going outside the home too often, Wyler also failed to exploit, as he did so well in
Detective Story
and
The Heiress
, the spatial restrictions of the home that could have made it seem more of a trap. The long takes that served him so well in adaptations such as
The Little Foxes
were not the best visual strategy to exploit “the unbearable tension” he wanted to create. Instead, those extended perspectives merely dissipated the film's emotional energy.