From the 1950s: Compulsion

1959 Drama

From 20th Century Fox

Directed by Richard Fleischer

Starring

Orson Welles

Diane Varsi

Dean Stockwell

Bradford Dillman

E. G. Marshall

Martin Milner

Richard Anderson

Robert F. Simon

Edward Binns

The 1924 thrill killing by two wealthy, sociopathic Chicago teens, Leopold and Loeb, fascinated the public for months and it's fascinated Hollywood for years.  The story was famously brought to the screen in 1948 with Hitchcock's Rope (with Farley Granger and John Dall as the killers) and in 2002's Murder by Numbers (with Ryan Gosling and Michael Pitt in the roles).  Both were good films although very loose adaptations of the real story.

While we're illuminating some history, the Leopold-Loeb story was also brought to the screen in 1992 in a film called Swoon.  It may have told a little more truth in that the killers real names were used and some facts about the young men's true relationship was brought more out into the open.

Compulsion, while not an exact reporting of events either, always fascinated me because it is superbly acted, directed and written.

Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman play the friends who kill a 14-year old boy just to prove we can do it.  It was for the adrenaline rush.  They wanted a challenge.  The taste for blood was so intoxicating that immediately afterwards they attempted to run down a drunk but he managed to get out of the way.

Neither the boy nor the murder is seen but the first 45 minutes is devoted to learning about these two killers.  They've been friends since childhood and live just two blocks apart.  They appear to have no other true friends because they see their contemporaries as intellectually inferior.  Stockwell plays Judd (Leopold) and Dillman plays Artie (Loeb).

Dillman is chilling displaying his emotionless demeanor while at the same time concerned with what his mumsy thinks.  He is the extrovert... bossy, sarcastic, punitive, talkative, dismissive to most everything his buddy has to say.  He clearly enjoys all the hoopla.  He even engages with the police, delighting in giving them wrong clues and information.  

Stockwell plays the introverted Judd who made me a bit uncomfortable with his solicitousness toward Artie and the fury he unleashed when others badmouthed him.  Artie treats Judd more like a pesky little brother.  Sometimes he doesn't like Artie bossing him around and in the next breath says he likes it when Artie tells him what to do.

One thing the film does not address is the obvious homosexuality involved in their relationship.  When that gaydar continues to sound the alarm, it cannot be dismissed although 1959 was a little too early for Hollywood to open the closet doors.  Consider this:  Judd constantly looks at Artie in a dreamy manner.  Judd's brother (Richard Anderson) angrily confronts Judd about the strangeness of his friendship with Artie.  When the pair is together enjoying a drink with eight or so friends, Artie cuts himself badly and runs off to take care of it.  Friend Diane Varsi asks Judd if he's not going to go see if Artie's alright.  Why didn't she go?  She's his friend, too.  Another time Judd tells Artie he has plans to do something without him and Artie says you're not ditching me for a girl, are you?

There is another scene (probably made up by the screenwriter) in which Stockwell and Varsi go on an outing.  She tries to get him to open up more as a person and he translates it as a chance to pounce on her.  He's so bad at being a lothario that he starts crying.  I question that this episode really happened and I suspect the Varsi character is pure fiction.

The murderous pair believed they could outwit the police but it likely never even occurred to them, arrogant as they were, that they could make a fatal mistake.  Judd unknowingly left his eyeglasses at the murder scene.  The fact that the glasses are not discovered until the victim's body is turned over on a gurney in the morgue seemed pretty far-fetched.

Enter E. G. Marshall as the state's attorney who will end up prosecuting the case.  I loved his steely needling of the boys as he's trying to pin down their guilt before the trial starts.  His scenes with Stockwell are particularly exciting as two canny participants have a go at one another.  Marshall's clever discovery of how they traced the kid though his glasses was like watching Columbo.  Great stuff. 

Sixty-five minutes into the story comes Orson Welles.  Famed attorney Clarence Darrow handled the real-life defense of Leopold and Loeb and Welles had the hair and makeup folks turn him into Darrow although the character's name is Jonathan Wilk.  The first three-quarters of the film is all Dillman and Stockwell and the last part is not.  The Great One has arrived.  And he would stand before a crowd and pontificate as the character which would enormously please the actor.  He always needed to hold court.  

Darrow/Wilk believed there weren't 12 jurors to be found who would do anything other than send the killers to the electric chair.  There was a bloodlust out there.  So he decided to plead them guilty and would try to convince the judge to convict them to life in prison rather than the death penalty. 

Welles's (and Darrow's) closing speech on the evils of capital punishment has long been lauded but I liked even more his response to Dillman's reaction to the verdict.  The movie ends in the courtroom.  In real life there is more to say.

The acting, as stated earlier, is sensational.  I have never been a particular fan of Welles's acting.  I was more taken in by his directing and writing than his acting.  Like Brando, watching him always reminded me of each of them saying... now watch me, watch me, I'm emoting here.  I saw a lot of bluster and posturing and that horrible mumbling.  Still, there's an imposing strength that is undeniably perfect for the part he is playing.

Making the movie was not a particularly joyous experience and not just because of the subject matter.  Welles, as usual, was a giant pain.  He was difficult to direct, not keen on anyone telling him what to do.  He always had many demands, was not a particularly collaborative actor (or personality), was often late and frequently didn't know his lines.  He was also having tax problems and in fact his salary for this film was confiscated by the feds.  Director Fleischer's take?  He said he acted like a spoiled baby.

If that weren't enough, according to Dillman's autobiography, he and Stockwell didn't get on well at all.  I don't remember if he said why or if he knew, which might indicate he put it more on Stockwell.  Regardless, I find no fault with their acting... both are offering their best game.  I could never forget the haunted look in Stockwell's eyes.  After watching the film again the other day, I had a dream about that look.   

Dillman makes me shiver as he heartily laughs at something and with lightning speed wipes it from his face and replaces it with a look of hate.  Artie was a bully devoid of empathy for anyone, a super spoiled rich kid who was seething with anger and wanting to strike back at the world.  He was a mama's boy and hated being one.  I thought this role should have brought him the success he was seeking as a top leading man but it didn't happen.

Stockwell, who had played the role on Broadway with Roddy McDowall, is compelling as the quiet one with a fire burning deep inside him.  He had other angst-ridden roles which I found to be among his best adult parts such as his next film, Sons and Lovers, and 1962's Long Day's Journey into Night.  And of course there's all those great films he made as a kid. 

I'm not sure why Diane Varsi is in this film except that she was under contract to 20th Century Fox and had made a splash the year before in Peyton Place and they needed her visible for the public.  I found her acting here unexceptional and her role unnecessary.  

Martin Milner had his last good movie role before he jumped onto Route 66.  He plays a newspaper reporter and a classmate of the pair who is responsible for breaking the case since he discovers the eyeglasses.  He is also Varsi's boyfriend.

The remainder of the supporting cast also delivers the goods.  It felt like watching an episode of Perry Mason since so many of them had roles on that series.

I didn't particularly understand the billing here.  Stockwell and Dillman are the stars.  They have the most screen time and the story is about them.  Yet they are billed third and fourth.  Welles, who's hardly in it at all, is first.  Probably negotiated that as part of his contract.  Varsi is second.  What the... heck.

Fleischer's direction is meticulous (despite the interferences by Welles).  He was good with crime stories, such as the 1952 noir, Narrow Margin, and other true-life crime sagas such as 1968's The Boston Strangler or 10 Rillington Place (1971). 

My biggest complaint is that I feel the film would have been even more impactful had we met the boy who was killed.  In real life he was a neighbor and it would have been easy enough to write him in.  We'd have more sympathy for him and as a result we'd be more emotionally involved.  I would go so far as to say I think we should have seen the killing as well... not in any real detail (after all, it's a child being murdered)... but in shadows or something hidden.

As for the real Leopold and Loeb, they both were sentenced to life plus 99 years.  Loeb (the Dillman character), however, was killed 12 years later, at age 30, when he was slashed repeatedly with a razor.  Thirty-three years after being incarcerated Leopold was paroled.  He would live until 1971 to the age of 66 when he died of a heart attack in Puerto Rico.

The real Leopold (L) and Loeb at their trial

Leopold would make some news with respect to this film.  The writer of the book upon which the film is based is Meyer Levin.  At one point Levin visited Leopold in prison and asked him to help with writing a book about the case.  Not only did Leopold decline but he was upset that he was even asked.  So Levin went ahead and wrote the story by himself.

As the film was being prepared, it was agreed at Fox that the character's names would be changed and that there would be nary a mention of Leopold and Loeb.  But apparently someone in the publicity department didn't get the memo and that very mention was plastered on a poster for the film.  Leopold saw it and sued Fox for an invasion of privacy.  A judge concluded he not only did not provide proof of that but that he had written and had published his own autobiography giving further proof of no privacy.

Have a look at a trailer:

Next posting:

A screwball comedy

masquerading as a

Christmas movie