THE GLASS WALL
US, 1953, 79 minutes, Black and white.
Vittorio Gassman, Gloria Grahame.
Directed by Maxwell Shane.
The Glass Wall is a brief B-budget Columbia thriller of the early '50s. Written and directed by Maxwell Shane, a director of many similar films who later worked in television. Vittorio Gassman was making an international name for himself in the early 1950s. He has been a screen presence, especially in Italian films of the '60s and '70s, but has appeared in many international films including Sharky's machine, Quintet, A Wedding. Gloria Grahame won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1952 for The Bad and the Beautiful. The clarinet player is played by Jerry Paris, who later made a successful career as a director of comedies for cinema and television. The theme of migrants and their rights has been relevant in the decades after World War Two. The film is melodramatic but
makes its point quite effectively.
1. The impact of the film as drama, human document? Its message about migrants and their rights? The American setting - and the jolt to the American conscience?
2. Production values: B-budget, cast. New York settings, black and white photography, score? Effectiveness of the film in its length?
3. The post-World War Two migrant situation? European migrants and the experience of the war, concentration camps? Helping American soldiers? Legal procedures, stowaways? America as the traditional land of opportunity for European migrants? Questions of law and justice? Their effect on the individuals? Moral obligation for the United States?
4. The character sketch of Peter: his stowing away, being caught, his pleading to the officials, their scepticism about his story in helping Tom, his dilemma? His escape and his ingenious means of getting away? Wandering the New York streets? Searching for Tom, Times Square? The background of his experience during the war and audience sympathy for him? The encounter with the girl, her stealing the coat? Returning to her flat, his illness and wound, helping her with the money, the landlady and her boorish son, his clashing with him? Police reports? Walking the streets? The dangers? His wandering into places - the burlesque house, sitting in the taxi, his experience of the Hungarians and leaving? Wandering to the United Nations building? His hope in the united Nations? The chase? His contemplation of suicide? An effective characterisation?
5. The heroine - her story, factory work, moving to New York, stealing the coat, money for the rent, the advances of the landlady's son? Her helping Peter? Walking with him? Helping the police to find him? Persuading him to live?
6. Tommy and the war story, clarinet-playing, his girlfriend and her push, his discovery about Peter, finding the paper and listening to the man in the washroom, playing but wanting to go and help, discussions with the officials, helping in the chase?
7. The sketch of the officials and their administration of the law, some sceptical, some sympathetic? Contact with the police? Helping to save Peter?
8. The girl from the burlesque, the Hungarian background, her sympathetic mother, the young man of the family and his mother slapping him? The point about the self-centredness of previous migrants?
9. The landlady and her boorish son? The selfishness of Tommy's girlfriend? The film's comment on people's uncaring attitudes?
10. The style of the chase melodrama and its effectiveness for this kind of human emotional drama about moral issues and principles?
