Catorce horas

I've watched this film a couple of times on the Fox Movie Channel and I really think it's a pretty good little suspense/drama. Richard Basehart plays a man on the edge who decides to try and end it all perched on the ledge of a Manhattan hotel. The first on the scene is traffic cop Paul Douglas who does his best to try and befriend, comfort and hopefully coax the unbalanced man back inside. The performances are all pretty good though some of the dialogue rings a bit hokey at times. I believe this was also Grace Kelly's first film role. Director Henry Hathaway does a pretty good job of wringing out the drama and suspense and gives the film a nice, big city feel using some pretty impressive sets in the foreground and background. All in all, a pretty enjoyable film that I wouldn't mind picking up on DVD, though I don't believe it is currently available.

It's not about homosexuality, as film historian/commentator Foster Hirsch wants to believe. It's a noir Hamlet: "You're gonna jump, you're not gonna jump...!" "To be or not to be" is paraphrased by both Dunnigan and Dr. Strauss (Martin Gabel), but it's one of the reporters who quotes the play directly, "The lady doth protest too much." (Hirsch himself compares the cabby-scenes to a Shakespearean comic sub-plot.) Finally found John Cassavettes: he even has a small speaking part. He's the reporter "announcing" Mrs. Cosick's arrival at the hotel...on the telephone, to his paper. (The receiver obscures the lower part of his face.) Richard Basehart was in his 30's at the time. I read somewhere that Fellini told him, "If you could do '14 Hours,' you can do anything," explaining why RB was chosen to play "Il Matto" in "La Strada" ... a tight-rope walker.

A movie like this presents a real challenge. After all, the producers have got what amounts to a single set, two main characters, and 90 minutes to fill. So to please ticket-buying customers, they better come up with something good. Fortunately, they do. The plot is a literal cliffhanger or maybe skyscraper is more apt--- will a suicidal young Richard Basehart jump from his 20th floor ledge or not. He certainly has audiences on both sides of the screen glued to the suspense, at the same time city police try to convince him it's better to be an unhappy bi-ped than a bird without wings. Good thing that the producers also come up with one of the best young actors of the time--- Basehart, who acts just foggy enough to teeter on a ledge and play Hamlet. Then there's that genial roughneck Paul Douglas as the cop who tries to persuade him that it's really better to be than not-to-be.

Note how ace studio director Hathaway keeps the hotel room bustling so that the static ledge shots don't become boring. Also, note how TV is competing with radio coverage at a time when the tube was just beginning to take off. Then there're the subplots that take the pulse of the city. The cynical cabbies do offer comic relief. But, frankly, I could have done without the young lovers, Paget and Hunter, who appear better suited to a Pepsi commercial, or the Grace Kelly soap opera that comes across as trite and unimaginative. But I guess the producers figured a variety of relief was needed. Also, I can see from the close-ups why Hitchcock liked Barbara Bel Geddes (Virginia). She pulls off the really difficult task of being sweetly wholesome without drowning the part in sugar.

All in all, there's enough skill and craftsmanship in this TCF production to keep even digital- age audiences on the edge of their seat.

Although this film traffics in some of the worst movie clichés (the good-hearted, potato-nosed Irish-American cop; the conventional--and tacked-on--Happy Ending(tm)), it manages to rise above them, thanks to fine acting, a gripping story, and excellent production values. (You feel teleported to the Manhattan of 1951.) The chemistry between Paul Douglas (as Officer Dunnegan) and an incredibly young Richard Basehart (as the suicidal young man) really drives the film. Basehart plays his part with a combination of brittleness and patrician airs that make his character believable. Douglas thankfully doesn't overplay his role; he has to be father-confessor to the young man while attempting to steer him away from thoughts of self-destruction. Some years after seeing this film, I read the non-fiction article that it is based on in an anthology (the article was originally published in The New Yorker as "The Man on the Ledge"). Let us just say that the ending of the article and the film diverge somewhat.

If I were in emotional distress, I would want someone like Paul Douglas to try to help me out. He was one of the best actors in Hollywood during his too-shirt career. Here he is superb as a compassionate traffic cop.

Richard Basehart plays a man threatening to jump from the ledge on a high floor of a hotel. Basehart was another of the best actors of the late 1940 and the fifties. He pulls off an almost totally stationary role very well. This is particularly intriguing given his vibrant, physical performance in "La Strada" a few years after this.

I had never heard of "Fourteen Hours" till it appeared at my neighborhood video store yesterday. Now, it is one of my top noirs. And that is saying a great deal.

Agnes Moorehead, another superb performer of the period, plays Basehart's mother. She engages in the same sorts of hysterics that are so memorable in "Citizen Kane" and particularly in "The Magnificent Ambersons." It's a very fine performance. What a shame that to the degree that she is known at all today, she is primarily known for her (admittedly mildly amusing role in the "Bewitched" series! Robert Keith is just the kind of father (in this role) who might have a confused, possibility suicidal son. Here he plays a mousy businessman. Two decades later, he was to be memorable in a totally different kind of role, in Don Siegel's "The Lineup"! Debra Paget is very appealing in a very small role that gets her fourth billing. Jeffrey Hunter is likable as the man in the crowd outside the hotel who falls for her.

This was Grace Kelly's first film role. She looks gorgeous and seems very poised. Her store, that of an onlooker on her way to divorcing her husband, is extraneous. Yes, it sets up a different kind of relationship to others and to the world from what the Basehart character has. But it is far from integral.

Barbara Bel Geddes is very likable as the girl who loves Basehart. She has a small but very significant role.

The movie is very sad. In a way, it is as if Tennessee Williams had written a very fine script for a thriller. We like many of the characters and are put off by others. But we're deeply moved by what goes on.