Mister Roberts
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The 1955 film Mister Roberts was a highly successful comedy-drama produced within the Hollywood studio system. As such, it is an excellent example of narrative filmmaking within specific prescriptive guidelines. Set during the last days of World War II, the movie was based on the smash Broadway hit of the same name, with several of the prominent stage people involved in the film. A large part of the film's success was due to the outstanding performance of Henry Fonda in the title role, the role he created on Broadway. As this paper will discuss, in this type of conventional filmmaking, the characters and development of the lead character is of the utmost importance. Other elements of the film under consideration will be the historical viewpoint, what made the film a popular Hollywood classic, its genres, and the style of the film. Warner Brothers, the studio that produced Mister Roberts, had a strict code of production efficiency on its directors, technicians, and stars alike (Cook 307). Economy was enforced which resulted in a style of flat, low-key lighting in order to obscure the spareness of the studios economical sets, but also to tight editing, and a fast-paced, disciplined narrative construction (Cook 307). At least three directors were involved in the film, mainly Warner Brothers top director John Ford, and then Mervyn LeRoy who replaced him as well as input from Joshua Logan who had directed the stage play. Because of the studio style, however, the directio
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e Captain cancels the crews nightly movies (in retaliation for the crew putting their cigarettes butts in his beloved Palm Tree Award), Roberts intervenes. He strikes a bargain with the Captain in which the crew will be granted a much desired shore leave in return for Roberts giving up his requests for a transfer. In addition, Roberts cannot tell the crew about the bargain and cannot speak badly of the Captain again. For the good of the crew, Roberts agrees. The result is that the crew turns on him. Since this is a conventional comedy-drama, the audience knows there will be a turnaround and that Roberts will be vindicated in the eyes of his crew.
As Phillips points out, a narrative genre film must have one character who wants something very much, but who faces problems and obstacles in reaching his goal. People are fascinated with characters who have trouble reaching their goals, in part because in such circumstances they learn about human nature or think they learn about how they might handle a similar situation (265). This type of audience identification is one of the ingredients of a popular, successful film.
As a stage play, Mister Roberts was a well-made, conventionally structured comedy-drama, and the film version
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Approximate Word count = 2319
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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