Suddenly Blu-ray delivers great video and solid audio in this excellent Blu-ray release
The tranquility of a small town is marred only by sheriff Tod Shaw's unsuccessful courtship of widow Ellen Benson, a pacifist who can't abide guns and those who use them. But violence descends on Ellen's household willy-nilly when the U.S. President passes through town... and slightly psycho hired assassin John Baron finds the Benson home ideal for an ambush.
For a small film, Suddenly has a lot of baggage. Even after many years, it remains tainted by its
eerie foreshadowing of President Kennedy's assassination nine years following the film's
release—an association made all the more sinister by the oft-repeated (and now disputed)
assertion that Lee Harvey Oswald watched the film shortly before the President was gunned
down in Dallas. Then there's the claim that star Frank Sinatra ordered the film withdrawn from
circulation after Kennedy was killed, an order Sinatra had no power to give, although he did
protest when a TV station aired the film shortly after the 35th President's death. In the Nineties,
the film was the victim of a botched colorization effort that turned Sinatra into Old Brown Eyes,
and the failure to renew the film's copyright caused it to become available through multiple
public domain distributors in inferior versions that were painful to watch.
Sinatra could never have predicted the film's twisted path when he surprised everyone by
choosing an obscure independent production as the follow-up to his Oscar-winning role in
Columbia's big budget From Here to Eternity. But Sinatra had something to prove. After years
of playing song-and-dance men, he had been handed an Oscar for a dramatic role, but he still
wasn't taken seriously as an actor. Too many people thought he'd simply played himself as
Private Maggio in Eternity. Sinatra wanted something so clearly different that there would be no
question he was creating a character. John Baron, the former military man planning to assassinate
the President of the United States (and mighty pleased about it), was about as far from Private
Maggio as any role could be.
Suddenly was shot on a no-frills budget over four weeks in a small town outside of Los Angeles.
The screenplay was the work of Richard Sale, a screenwriter and occasional director, and also a
prolific writer of popular fiction, who understood the art of drawing characters in a few bold
strokes. The director, Lewis Allen, had already begun the transition to TV, where his efficient
craftsmanship would keep him working for the next twenty years on classic shows like Perry
Mason, The Detectives and Bonanza. The result was a spare, tightly wound thriller that would
have simply been a small town film noir classic, if it hadn't experienced the good (or possibly
bad) fortune of being freighted by history with cultural resonance far beyond anything its creators
ever imagined.
Sale's script bookends the story with a pair of contrasting scenes in which motorists asking
directions comment on the peculiarity of a town named "Suddenly". Except for the name, the
town is ordinary and peaceful. The chief concern of the Sheriff, Tod Shaw (Sterling Hayden), a
veteran of World War II, is overcoming the resistance of Ellen Benson (Nancy Gates), a war
widow, to his romantic overtures. Ellen has been a determined pacifist since her husband's death
(presumably in the Korean War, although the conflict is never named), and she won't allow her son Peter or "Pidge" (Kim Charney) to see war
movies or own a cap pistol. Sheriff Tod tells
her she's being unrealistic. "He has to learn that guns aren't always bad, it just depends on who
uses them."
If you're put off by that style of utilitarian dialogue, then Suddenly isn't for you. It sketches the
setting and characters in broad strokes so that it can get on to the real story, which involves a
surprise announcement that the President will stop in town on his way to Los Angeles. The Chief
Executive will be there just long enough to transfer from a train to a motorcade, but dozens of
Secret Service and state police arrive to secure the location. Also arriving are three anonymous
men in a nondescript sedan: John Baron (Sinatra), Benny Conklin (Paul Frees) and Bart Wheeler
(Christopher Dark). Posing as FBI agents, the three appear at the door of the house where Ellen
and Pidge Benson live with Ellen's father, "Pop" (James Gleason). The charade doesn't last for
long, though, and the bulk of Suddenly consists of Baron and his cohorts holding the Benson
family and, eventually, Sheriff Tod hostage while they await the President's arrival. They've
chosen the Benson home, because it overlooks the train station, thereby offering a perfect
vantage for an expert marksman to shoot the arriving President with a high-powered rifle.
It gives away nothing to reveal that we never learn who's behind the assassination plot. Frank
Baron repeatedly brags that he doesn't know who hired him and doesn't care. Suddenly isn't a
political thriller so much as an intimate sitdown with one of those evil characters that you'd
never want to meet outside the movies. "Don't you have any feelings?" asks Ellen at one point.
"No, they were taken outta me by experts", replies Baron. Despite this boast, Baron reveals
flashes of feeling, which are even creepier for being unexpected and inappropriate to the
situation: hilarity when Pidge catches his associates off-guard; rage when the sheriff hits a sore
spot about his past; giddy anticipation as he imagines becoming famous for being the first
presidential assassin to get away with it.
Just as he'd intended, Sinatra provides a character that is the exact opposite of Private Maggio,
but every bit as convincing: cold, remorseless, amoral. As director Lewis Allen follows the star
around the Benson household, he still exudes the famous Sinatra charm, but here it's become
reptilian. When Baron threatens to kill Pidge, he's entirely credible. Sinatra would continue to
show his dramatic range in films like The Man with the Golden Arm, but he would never again
play a full-on villain. It's too bad, because, on the evidence of Suddenly, he was good at it.
This year has seen the release of two Blu-ray editions of Suddenly, one by HD Cinema Classics
and this release by Image Entertainment. I don't have the Cinema Classics disc for comparison,
but Image's 1080p, AVC-encoded presentation should render all prior versions obsolete.
Described as "transferred from original 35mm studio fine grain master print", the Blu-ray image
reflects a remarkably clean source, with only an occasional scratch, blotch, hair and, in one
instance, a jump caused by a few missing frames. The clarity of what's there is excellent, with
deep blacks and finely delineated shades of gray. Detail may not quite reach the level that could
be obtained with a transfer from the original camera negative, but it's more than sufficient to
render subtleties of facial expression, costume, decor and the surroundings of the town of
Suddenly (actually Saugus, California). The film's grain structure is visible, but as the packaging
says, it's "fine grain". Indeed, at points the grain is so fine that one might reasonably question
whether some judicious grain removal has been applied. If so, however, the removal has been
done without stripping away any detail or leaving any artifacts. Nor have artifacts been added by
the compressionist.
There seems to be some confusion regarding the correct aspect ratio of Suddenly. Image's
presentation is an unmasked 35mm frame (with rounded corners) that measures 1.38:1. IMDb
lists the film's original presentation at 1.75:1, which seems unlikely, as that ratio was never a
standard in American movie theaters. Suddenly was made in the early years of the film industry's
conversion from Academy ratio to its current twin standards of 1.85:1 and 2.39:1. It's most likely
that Suddenly was shot for the older "square" format but protected for the newer matted shape.
Certainly most of the shots have sufficient extra headroom to allow the film to be matted to
1.85:1 without damaging the narrative. The images "breathe" better, however, at the full
Academy ratio. (Neither of the two commentaries addresses the aspect ratio question.)
Suddenly's original mono audio track has been provided by Image as lossless DTS-HD MA 1.0,
and it sounds quite good. There's little in the way of background noise, no popping or crackling,
and the fidelity is impressive. Voices are clear and expressive. The increasingly foreboding train
whistles in the background punch through at just the right volumes and frequencies. The ominous
score by David Raskin (Two Weeks in Another Town) plays clearly without distortion. The
track's only limitation is that the low end is somewhat lacking.
Commentary by Frank Sinatra, Jr.: Internal references indicate that this commentary
was recorded in the latter half of 2012. Sinatra, Jr. was a year older than Kim Charney,
who played Pidge, during the filming of Suddenly, and he was present during filming.
During one scene, he recalls exactly where he was standing when it was shot. In addition
to a history of the film and its participants that is tinged with personal connection, Sinatra
situates Suddenly within his father's career and seems to take special delight in the most
extreme moments of his performance as a mad dog killer. He also explains the basis for
the persistent rumor that the elder Sinatra had the film withdrawn after President
Kennedy's assassination.
Commentary by Dr. Drew Casper, Professor of American Film at the USC School
of Cinematic Arts: Casper's commentary is more polished than Frank Sinatra, Jr.'s, and
it's denser with academic background and historical context. However, it lacks the
personal touch that Sinatra, Jr. contributes and the intimacy of a shared connection. Some
of the highlights include Casper's extensive overview of Sinatra's film career before
Suddenly and his observations on director Lewis Allen's effective framing.
Short Film by Francis Thompson, N.Y., N.Y.: A Day in New York (1957) (1080p;
1.33:1; 15:14): Francis Thompson is best known as a co-director of the 70mm short film
To Be Alive!, which was shown at the 1964 World's Fair in New York and is credited
with inspiring the IMAX format. (Thompson also co-wrote To Fly!, the first feature from
IMAX specialty producers MacGillivray Freeman Films.) This wordless collage of
images, set to a score by Gene Forrell, captures scenes of 1950s New York refracted
through prismatic lenses of Thompson's own design to convey a sense of restless energy
even in scenes without motion. Power plants, skyscrapers, bridges and commuters leaving
subways are among the representative sights, but they're shown in a way never seen
before.
Image Gallery (1080p): Ten images of marketing materials for Suddenly.
It speaks volumes about the era in which Suddenly was made that so many of the characters find
the notion of killing a U.S. President almost impossible to grasp, especially when the would-be
assassin turns out to be another American. Screenwriter Richard Sale must have expected a
similar reaction from audience members. Under the pretext of having Sheriff Tod Shaw try to
talk Baron out of his plan, Sale deftly worked in a conversation about the three previous
Presidents who died at the hands of assassins (Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley) and a fourth
(FDR) who was a target. The overt point was that all these assassins were caught. The subtext
was that men like Baron were nothing new.
Today, of course, no such dialogue would be necessary. In the years following the release
of Suddenly, events in the U.S. and around the world rapidly expanded the movie audience's
notion of what is possible and conceivable until it exceeded even what John Baron might do.
Today, audiences readily accept political assassination at the highest levels of public life as a
credible plot device, without further need to explain or justify. Some might argue that's not a
good thing, but the argument is moot. Like Pidge, we've seen what we've seen. Highly
recommended, for both the film and the Blu-ray.
Image Entertainment is set to release director Lewis Allen's Suddenly starring Frank Sinatra, Sterling Hayden, and James Gleason. Transferred from the original 35mm studio fine grain master and featuring DTS HD Master Audio 1.0, the 1954 classic shoots its way ...
