The Whip Hand, 1951, Design and Direction by William Cameron Menzies

The recent series of films by Menzies on Turner Classic Movies has been useful in the never-ending discussion of how a film is made and who is responsible for its artistry (or lack thereof).  Menzies was originally a graphic designer who then became a production designer and director of films.  James Curtis, in his recent excellent book William Cameron Menzies (Pantheon, 2015), has a detailed analysis of how The Whip Hand was made, starting out as a film about Nazis who were then changed, by studio owner Howard Hughes, to Communists! The cinematographer is Nicholas Musuraca, best known for his beautiful work on Out of the Past (1947), Jacques Tourneur's definitive film noir.  Menzies did not have much money to work with but directed an intense and impressive film, shot mostly in close-ups and at night.  The film has rather a nightmarish quality, rather like that of "The Twilight Zone," as a man comes to fish in a small Wisconsin town that turns out to devoid of both fish and people, the sinister small town being used by Communists to plan germ warfare.  Menzies has been often accused of using his actors primarily as graphic elements, but then the same thing has been said of Von Sternberg, both directors producing gorgeous films that don't necessarily makes sense.  This matters more to some people than to others.

Menzies worked on many different films and is probably more effective on films where directors were less interested in visual style; Gone With the Wind, 1939,which had several directors work on it, owes its look mostly to Menzies.  His best films, however, were with good directors who worked in harmony with Menzies's design, particularly Alfred Hitchcock (Foreign Correspondent, 1940) and Anthony Mann (Reign of Terror, 1949). The TCM film series and Curtis's book cause one to think more about the collaborative nature of filmmaking.  Whether or not a film is the vision primarily of the director it helps if he or she has intelligent collaborators:  screenwriters, cinematographers, composers, production designers.