COMPULSION

US, 1959, 103 minutes, Black and white.
Dean Stockwell, Bradford Dillman, Orson Welles, Diane Varsi, E.G. Marshall, Martin Milner, Richard Anderson, Robert Simons.
Directed by Richard Fleischer.

Compulsion is an excellent crime drama. It was considered something of an art film, ahead of its time. It screened in competition in Cannes in 1959 and won the ensemble (**OR Ensemble?) acting award for Orson Welles, Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman. (Dean Stockwell was to be part of an ensemble award for best acting in 1962 for his role in Long Day’s Journey Into Night.)

The film was directed by Richard Fleischer, who had begun directing in small-budget films like The Narrow Margin, moved to bigger-budget films like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea and The Vikings but proved that he was skilful at all kinds of genres. He continued directing into the 1980s. In relation to Compulsion, he also directed The Boston Strangler with Tony Curtis as well as Ten Rillington Place, about the murderer John Christie, with Richard Attenborough.

The screenplay was based on the actual Leopold-Loeb? murders of the 1920s where two rich young men plotted and carried out the killing of a young man. The story was sensational in its time, especially the court case. This is re-enacted here in dramatic fashion with Orson Welles as the leading lawyer. Bradford Dillman and Dean Stockwell work very well as the two killers, especially in the psychological interactions, seeing who was leader, and, as the events unfolded, who really was controlling the situation.

The story was also used by Alfred Hitchcock in his 1948 Rope with John Dahl and Farley Granger as the killers and James Stewart as the lawyer. The story was also filmed in 1992 by Tom Kalin. However, this time the leading characters were called by their real names, Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold Jr. This film was more frank in its presentation of the characters, their homosexual relationship, the cruelty and coldness of their kidnap and murder of a child.

1. The significance of the title?

2. The effect of the black and white photography? The plain direction? The nature of any effects, e.g. superimpositions? The plain photography during the trial? The angle shots and profiles?

3. How credible was this story? The fact that it was true?

4. What basic message did the film have about such events? What did the film have to say about evil and compassion? Was this clear throughout the film?

5. The significance of the prologue and its emotional impact? The robbery and the escape, the driving down of the old drunk? The immediate impressions of evil and cruelty? And then the sudden impact of the credulous? How well did this prepare us for our response to this film and the moral judgments we were asked to make? How did the prologue indicate the hold that each of the two men had on each other? The dependence and the obedience required? This being continual during the film? In their evil acts? In their testimony? During the trial?

6. What kind of person was Jud? Was he in any way sympathetic? How sensitive a person was he? How intelligent? His place in his family? His initial clash with his brother? His relationship with Ruth? His behaviour in the class and his challenging of the professor? His knowledge of the law? His wit enabling him to apply the law? His theory about supermen? His suspicions of emotion? The fact that he could not kill anyone? Dean Stockwell’s performance? His terse manner of speaking? The angles at which he was photographed?

7. How evil a person was Artie? Did his home background explain him? His relation to Mumsie? His jokes, showing off, his lies? How vicious was he? How attractive to Jud? The homosexual relationship?

8. How effective was the limited view the audience had of the behaviour of Jud and Artie? We saw much of them. We did not see everything, especially the murder of the boy. How did this give us some sympathy for the two of them? yet distance us from them and their crime? Did the film intend that the audience partly identify and partly look from the point of view of the public? Was this effective?

9. How attractive a person was Ruth? How much were the audience meant to identify with her? Her attraction to Jud? Her sharing his looking at the birds? The attempted rape sequence? The insight into Jud from this? The insight into Ruth and her compassion for Jud?

10. How important was Sid as a character? Jud’s helping him to get into the lecture room? His work for the paper? As a normal person at the university? This love for Ruth? Were the audience meant to see through his eyes?

11. The importance of Horn in the film? As representing the law? His techniques for getting the truth? His hunches? His taking the boys out to dinner? The accident of the discovery of the truth? How cruel a person was he?
How vindictive? How much was the audience meant to identify with him and his horror at the boys’ behaviour?

12. The importance of the sequences with the press? The fact that the two boys were celebrities? Their family background and money? The importance of rich criminals compared with the poor?

13. Comment on Jud and Artie’s response to their arrest? Jud’s surliness and his trying to fence with Horn? Artie’s showing off and telling lies, dramatising the situation? Their breakdown under stress? Did they fulfil their ideas of supermen in this situation?

14. What were your impressions of Jonathan Wilk? What values did he stand for? Why did he take the case? His attitudes towards capital punishment? His aims to get justice for his clients? His own personal style? Orson Welles’ performance? Audience response to Wilk?

15. Wilk’s stress on psychological factors? The reaction of Horn and others to the use of psychology? How important was this for Wilk’s case? For the truth? His establishing of the psychotic and schizophrenic nature of the boys? Did this explain their cruelty and their actions? The relationship of their psychotic stage and their guilt and responsibility? How important was this for the case?

16. The importance of the sequence where Ruth was in the box? The plea for compassion? Sid’s reaction to this and his later apology? How effective was Wilk’s long speech? In the way it was filmed? In the screenplay? In Orson Welles’ low key performance? What was the gist of his speech? The appeal to compassion? How convincing was this appeal to human reaction? The ambiguity between horror at actions and compassion for human beings? Was it effective propaganda against capital punishment? Why? Its effect on the judge?

17. How horrifying were the reactions of Jud and Artie to their sentences? How did this effect the audiences who had been moved by Wilk’s speech? Jud’s speech about God and his surliness? Wilk’s answer about his uncertainty and leaving the question about God and justice open? How was this a final confrontation on which audience response was to be gauged? How effective was this?

18. The final sequence with the glasses? The dramatic effect of this and its irony?

19. What was the final impact of this film? Entertaining? Interesting and absorbing? Too moralistic? A just and adequate presentation of a criminal issue and the issues involved?