FEAR STRIKES OUT

US, 1957, 101 minutes, Black and White.
Anthony Perkins, Karl Malden, Norma Moore.
Directed by Robert Mulligan.

Fear Strikes Out is the first film directed by Robert Mulligan. He was to acquire a fine reputation as a man who brought the human touch to some very sombre themes. Here he explores the pressures of an ambitious parent on a talented sportsman. Anthony Perkins at the beginning of his career shows his skill at neurotic performances. This was the period in which he made Psycho and Green Mansions. Karl Malden draws on his familiar skills as the pressurizing father. The film is quite an interesting sports drama but it would strike a familiar chord with many of its audience in terms of its portrait of family pressures leading even to breakdown. Recommended viewing for discussion about these issues.

1. The importance of the title? How well did it sum up Jim Piersall in his life and his career? The tone of the title?

2. What was the main theme of the film? The emphasis on the emotional response of Jim Piersall to his father, sport, life? How enjoyable was this how interesting, how disturbing? Why? What were the most disturbing features of the film?

3. Comment on the black and white photography, the suitability of the music, the creation of atmosphere, the editing of sequences, especially for Jim's neurosis? The atmosphere of sport, family life, psychology and their intermingling?

4. How well did the film focus on Jim? Audience sympathy for him, his seeming real, the film based on real life? The quality of Anthony Perkins' performance? As normal, as neurotic? The intensity of Karl Malden's performance as the father? How convincing in his relentlessness?

5. Comment on the presentation of the father-son relationship? What emotional response to the playing out of this relationship? where did it go wrong? How much love was there? How much drive and ambition in the father? How much a making up for his own failure? What did it produce in Jim - the sequences as a boy driven to achievement, even to the hurting of his hands? The importance of the skating and his father's heart attack? His father's following him playing the game? The techniques used to show the intensity of his relationship?

6. What was the effect of this on Jim when he had grown up? As a tense person, his nerviness in relationships, trying to please his father, driving himself again, the lack of influence of his mother, his relationship with his wife, the importance of success?

7. How did his neurosis manifest itself in his playing of sport? His relationship with the team, his acting like his father and sounding like him, the importance of training? The impact of the delay in his being chosen? His breaking down?

8. The importance of love in his life? The ordinariness of his relationship? The importance of the marriage? Living with his parents? The coming of his child?

9. How pathetic was his breaking down? The way that this was filmed? The effect on everyone? The effect on his father?

10. How irritating was his father when he was in hospital? His trying to run things? Telling the doctors what to do?

11. The importance of the treatment for Jim? The type of illness? The withdrawal? His unwillingness to see how serious it was? His asserting his love for his father? The importance of his saying he was where he was because of his father and the impact of this?

12. Was he successfully rehabilitated? What future would he have?

13. How strong were the things the film had to say about family, relationships, the quality of life, ambitions and drives, failures and success, pressures and difficulties?