14 heures

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.

Henry Hathaway is the director of Fourteen Hours, which stars Richard Baseheart as Robert Cosick, the young man threatening to jump from a Manhattan skyscraper. Paul Douglas is police officer Charlie Dunnigan who discovers the man and tries to talk him into coming off the ledge. The drama and setting are enhanced by the massive crowd of onlookers who are attracted by the great media circus playing out.

Douglas is supposed to be an older man but in fact was only seven years older than Baseheart, who at 37 played the role of a younger man. Douglas was a highly-competent supporting actor from the fifties who would have gone on to greater roles except for his death in 1959 at age 52. Other supporting actors are Agnes Moorehead as Mrs. Cosick (the mother), Robert Keith (the father), Grace Kelly, Jeffrey Hunter, Martin Gable, Barbara Bel Geddes (the girlfriend) and others. Baseheart was something of a Hollywood idol in his day and died after completing the narration for the opening ceremonies of the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984.

The story captures the skyline of New York, its people and media as the drama gives an air of immediacy to the suspense of whether or not the man will jump from the building. There are a number of close calls as various characters try to persuade the young man to come in off the ledge. It is Saint Patrick's Day and people have gathered in the streets for the parade but find themselves watching the disturbed character high above them. Day becomes night and one couple fall in love during the viewing of the ordeal. We learn about the boy's history, his upbringing, the parents, and the girlfriend.

The media show presents the young man as a sympathetic character with crowds warning him about the police as they move towards him overhead and women calling radio stations with proposals of marriage...a slice of New York at mid-century. The movie is still great entertainment today, if not quite up to the calibre of the movie The Naked City, made three years earlier.

I came across this film while changing channels. What stopped me was seeing such a young Richard Basehart. What kept me was the tense story. Most of it was confined to the building ledge and the room behind it. The background film was extraordinary. I think I've been able to pinpoint within 2 blocks where on Broadway this hotel was supposed to be. Another thing was the cast.

It seemed like they hadn't gone for "stars", just good actors. Ossie Davis, Jeffrey Hunter, Howard Da Silva (before the black- list), and Grace Kelly in her first film. I wish I could see it from the beginning.

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.

Paul Douglas and Richard Basehart carry the movie on their shoulders ;the movie has got the three unities: time,place and(almost) action :I write "almost" because two minor subplots(Grace Kelly's appointment and the Jeffrey Hunters/Debra Paget romance)are mostly filler.

All that remains is excellent:the film continues the tradition of the Freudian movie which thrived in the precedent decade with Hitchcock,Lang ,Tourneur and Siodmak and the actors direction is first class ;Douglas and Basehart hold the audience breathless and there's no lull:considering the limitations there are working under in space and in time,it's a true tour De force ;the interventions are brilliant:Mrs Moorehead is an actress who makes all her scenes count;even the sometimes bland Bel Geddes can play her game well.

Douglas ,when he suggest the suicidal young man go fishing with him,becomes a new father for him,just like Cooper and Tone were new fathers for Cromwell in "lives of a Bengal Lancer";in "souls at sea" there is another father/son relationship.

I have always loved Henry Hathaway's movies,from "Peter Ibbetson" TO "kiss of death" , from" the trail of the lonesome pine" to " true grit" (1969)and from "Niagara" to "legend of the lost" ."14 hours" is to be ranked among his best.