Whiplash

Plot synopsis:
Andrew Neiman is a first-year jazz student at the prestigious Shaffer Conservatory in New York. He has been playing drums from a young age and aspires to become like Buddy Rich. Famed conductor Terence Fletcher discovers Andrew practicing in the music room late one night and eventually invites him into his studio band as the alternate for core drummer Carl Tanner. Fletcher is strict and abusive toward his students, mocking and insulting them; when the band rehearses the Hank Levy piece "Whiplash" and Andrew struggles to keep the tempo, Fletcher hurls a chair at him, slaps him, and berates him in front of the class.
At a jazz competition, Andrew misplaces Carl's sheet music. Since Carl cannot play without it, Andrew steps in, telling Fletcher that he can perform "Whiplash" from memory. After a successful performance, Fletcher promotes him to core drummer. Soon after, Fletcher recruits Ryan Connolly, the core drummer from Andrew's former lower-level class. Andrew believes Connolly is the less talented and experienced drummer, and is infuriated when Fletcher promotes him to core. Determined to impress Fletcher, Andrew practices until his hands bleed and breaks up with his new girlfriend Nicole, believing she will hold him back. He endures a grueling 2 A.M. tryout session with Fletcher and the other two drummers in the class, in which Fletcher kicks furniture and screams at him, eventually earning back his core spot.
On the way to another competition, Andrew's bus breaks down. He rents a car but arrives late, and realizes he left his drumsticks at the rental office. After a dressing-down from Fletcher, Andrew races back to the rental office to retrieve the drumsticks, but his car is broadsided by a semi-trailer. He crawls from the wreckage, runs back to the theater and arrives on stage bloody and injured. When he struggles to play "Caravan" due to his injuries, Fletcher halts the performance to tell Andrew he is "done". Enraged, Andrew attacks Fletcher in front of the audience and is dismissed from Shaffer Conservatory.
At his father's request, Andrew meets with a lawyer representing the parents of Sean Casey, a former student of Fletcher's. Contrary to Fletcher's previous claim that Sean had died in a car accident, the lawyer explains that Sean committed suicide, having suffered anxiety and depression during and after his time as Fletcher's student. Sean's parents want to prevent Fletcher from teaching again. Andrew agrees to testify on the condition of anonymity, and Fletcher is fired from Shaffer Conservatory.
Months later, Andrew has abandoned drumming and is working in a restaurant while applying to different colleges. One evening he discovers Fletcher performing at a jazz club. After the performance, Fletcher invites Andrew to drink with him, seeming more hospitable and friendly than before. He explains that he pushed his students beyond the expected so that they might achieve success and become like Louis Armstrong or Charlie Parker. Andrew accepts Fletcher's invitation to replace the current drummer in his new band at the upcoming JVC Jazz Festival. He invites Nicole to the performance, but she is in a new relationship.
On stage at the jazz festival, moments before the performance is about to start, Fletcher reveals that he knows Andrew testified against him, and leads the band with a piece Andrew does not know. Unable to follow the cues without sheet music, Andrew leaves the stage humiliated. After being consoled by his father, he defiantly returns to the drum kit, begins playing "Caravan", and cues the band to follow his lead. As the piece ends and the lights go down, Andrew continues his own solo. Fletcher is taken aback but begins to guide Andrew. As the solo ends they share a smile and Fletcher cues the finale.

Tags: melodrama

Review:
"Whiplash" was a routine offering from Warner Brothers in the late forties but routine in those days also meant efficient, entertaining and well worth seeing.
It is only when you see films like this one which are sixty years old and in black and white to realise that the equivalent does not exist in cinema any more.
The Warner Brothers rep company was also a very good one: Davis, Crawford and co were, of course, the front runners at this time, but this cast shows how professional and talented the second string actors were in those days.
Dane Clark was never a star but here he gives a highly efficient and convincing performance, carrying the film with ease and confidence.
Alexis Smith (cruelly underestimated and underused until her later years) is excellent as the unhappy heroine, married to sadistic Zachary Scott but in love with Clark.
Scott plays one of his usual villains but always played them with style and panache.
The divine Eve Arden has a few good scenes but is wasted - and Jeffrey Lynn, usually a somewhat pallid and passive actor, is here very good as Smith's drunken brother who finally resolves the story by his actions.
solid film noir with good cast.
Although the main character planed by Dane Clark is the odd combination of artist/boxer, the movie is fairly involving and exciting.
As he gets swept up by bad girl Alexis Smith -- and with bad guy Zachary Scott (one of the best in the business)luring him to destruction -- his story has some unpredictable ups and downs.
Routine boxing melodrama stars Dane Clark as John Garfield wannabe.
Shake together John Garfield's roles as a violinist in Humoresque and a prizefighter in Body and Soul (hits of the previous couple of years), and out comes Dane Clark's character in Whiplash.
But when reclusive vacationer Alexis Smith buys one of his seascapes, she ignites a torch in him that won't sputter out.
It proves a bad career move.He finds Smith singing in a nightclub, only to discover that she's married to Zachary Scott, its owner and a former middleweight champ now confined to a wheelchair.
Scott, sadistic and embittered, lives the fight game vicariously  through the cohort of ex-boxers who keep his wife in place and through new talent he exploits then drops.
Wanting to keep close to Smith (who keeps warning him off), Clark signs up for work on another kind of canvas....In addition to the always welcome Alexis Smith, the movie boasts good supporting work from Eve Arden, a gal pal with a crush on Clark, and from Jeffrey Lynn, as Smith's alcoholic brother, a doctor working in Scott's gym.
Scott himself brings nothing new to the kind of part he found himself typecast in: the effete, insinuating villain.
That leaves Clark, who was plainly being groomed as the second-string Garfield but who never left much of an impression on the movies.The direction, by the undistinguished Lewis Seiler, can only be graded adequate; he keeps things moving along but never tries for anything different or offbeat or striking.
Nonetheless, Whiplash endures as a routine B-movie, with noirish coloration, that reflects the themes and plot-lines of post-war melodrama..
Good, tough noir with an excellent cast.
Watching the film it becomes obvious that it was planned for Joan Crawford so closely does Alexis Smith's character follow the Crawford 40's blueprint.
Dane Clark's tortured painter turned boxer was surely likewise designed with John Garfield in mind as it adheres to his screen persona as well.
For whatever reason those A-listers either passed or were unavailable and the film moved over to the B unit and this cast.
As good as the leads are they were considered up and comers at the time and definitely represented the second string at Warners.
Back to the film it is sharply shot with effective use of the shadowy black and white photography.
Zachary Scott adds another hissable villain to his vast array, Eve Arden pops up from time to time, once in an outfit that looks like she took the cloth off her kitchen table and fashioned it into an ensemble, to add her special brand of spice to the proceedings and many of Warners stock company, Alan Hale, S.Z. Sakall etc.
The thing that surprised me the most about Whiplash is that Warner Brothers actually teamed Alexis Smith and Dane Clark for a film.
Smith had a lot of trouble in her career because she was so tell and trouble finding leading men to appear opposite her.
And Dane Clark was short, James Cagney and Alan Ladd type short.
If you look real carefully he's built up in height somewhat in the scenes where Warner Brothers showed both of them in full figure and those are rare in this film.Clark was Warner Brothers back up for John Garfield and Garfield had left Warner Brothers at this point.
Clark was obviously getting the scripts that Garfield had left or maybe had turned down.In Whiplash Clark is a struggling artist who lives in southern California and a traveling Alexis Smith likes his work and they begin a hot and heavy affair.
He goes east to find her and he does and finds she's married to a wheelchair bound Zachary Scott.
Scott was once a promising fighter and if he can't be champion he wants to manage one.
When Clark knocks out a middleweight contender, Scott is willing to forget the affair with Smith if he'll fight for him.
And Clark proves pretty adept in the ring.Whiplash is the kind of film that would have been far better had the all pervasive Code not been in place.
Scott is incapable and he's a nasty creature and Alexis just isn't getting any.The ending is straight out of one of those Thirties type boxing films and I won't elaborate.
Let's just say what happened no way should have happened.The players are fine and special mention should go to Eve Arden for simply being Eve Arden and Jeffrey Lynn for playing Smith's alcoholic doctor brother who steps up to the plate at the climax.
But Whiplash would have been a better film with a more realistic script and the Code not dictating a lot of pussyfooting around some frank issues..
Florid boxing melodrama from director Lewis Seiler concerns a muscular, moody portrait artist in love with a reluctant band singer from New York City; she's married to a wheelchair-bound boxing manager, and it seems the only way the painter can win her over is by climbing into the ring himself (under the auspices of his new name, "Mike Angelo"!).
Outrageous script was worked on by four writers (Harriet Frank Jr. and Maurice Geraghty adapted Kenneth Earl's story, which was then reworked by Gordon Kahn).
Good for a few laughs, though several of the supporting players are uneasily cast, none more so than Zachary Scott as the invalid villain (he does everything but twist up his mustache at the corners).
Dane Clark fumes and snarls in the lead, spitting out his lines like a rabid dog; one can't imagine him making a living as a boxer--he'd be more persuasive taking bets in a pool-hall.
I would paint over this canvas as Dane Clark's boxing talents were absent.
Although Dane Clark is a decent actor this film was a time waster, nothing more, nothing less.
Dane Clark plays a former boxer named Michael Gordon - aka Mike Angelo, who achieved some level of success in the boxing ring before quitting to fulfill his dream of becoming an artist instead.
Mike Gordon is a painter of ocean view scenes with beautiful women depicted as mermaids.
He unexpectedly sells one of his paintings to a mysterious women who he chases down to find out what drew her to his less than perfect painting and the mysterious woman named Laurie Durant (Alexis Smith) tells Mike she is a lounge singer and she felt the painting was one of a kind.
After a brief romantic liaison Laurie disappears from her hotel room without telling Mike why she abruptly left without leaving him a phone number or forwarding address.Broken hearted Mike attends a lounge one night and out of the blue the songbird on the stage turns out to be his mystery portrait buyer and lover Laurie Durant.
Mike finds out the reason why Laurie left him so abruptly (which I won't spoil for you) and to win her back he agrees to go back into the ring.
Actor Dane Clark was only 36 years old when he made this film, but for him to be playing a tough ring fighter his body actually appeared to look more like he was closer to age 50.
Between Dane Clark's lack of pugilistic talents and Alexis Smith's less than stellar singing voice I felt this film hit the canvas (the boxing ring canvas and not the painter's canvas) with a resounding "thump!"This is one of those films that attempted to imitate some of the much more classier pugilistic three way romantic love triangle films of the day but just could not go even one (1) round let alone 10 or 15 rounds.
Mike (Dane Clark) is a nice guy who loves to paint.
One day, he meets Laurie and they fall in love.
Not surprisingly, Mike is a mess and spends a lot of time looking for her.
Rex (Zachary Scott) is a rich, menacing sort of guy who seems, at times, like a cat playing with mice.
So, when he offers to train Mike and make him a champion boxer, you know that somehow it's all part of Rex's machinations...and you wonder WHAT he has in mind for his wife and Mike.This film has some wonderful and snappy noir-style dialog.
It also helped that although this was more of a 'second-stringer' sort of movie with the lesser stars at Warner, they all are simply terrific.
My only complaint, and it's a problem in most boxing films, is that the matches are unrealistic...with WAY too many punches being thrown and landed throughout the fights.
Still, a hard-hitting film with lots to recommned it.By the way, I was originally going to give this one an 8.
Too bad this promising noir with a solid cast and a Warner Bros.
Certainly Dane Clark gives his central role as a painter turned boxer (!) his sweaty best.
At the same time, the statuesque Alexis Smith looks like a Greek goddess even if her emoting is on the wispy side, while Eve Arden contributes her usual witty asides.
There are echoes in this storyline of Humoresque's (1946) tough guy Garfield turned concert violinist.
But that film had a coherent screenplay, whereas this one has something to do with love- struck painter Clark getting involved with gangsters (Scott) who turn him into an expert boxer, with a wild card doctor (Lynn) thrown in.
Then too, the narrative fails to make much use of the colorful Zachary Scott, who can make any scene compelling when given the chance.
Anyway, the total adds up to a disappointment given the promising cast amidst noir's golden studio era..
The tragedy of an invalidated boxer and his pathetic efforts not to leave the ring.
The most interesting character here is Zachary Scott as Rex Durant, an ex-boxer in a wheel-chair whose passion for boxing only seems to have grown the worse for his invalidity.
Alexis Smith, beautiful, stylish and impressing as ever, is here a mysterious lady with a secret who gets involved with Dane Clark only to suddenly desert him.
Like in all noirs, there is a fashionable night club, where Alexis Smith sings and where things happen involving hoodlums.
The painter Michael Angelo was a part actually written for John Garfield, but he left before the film could be shot.
Dane Clark is not bad, but he is a bit short for Alexis Smith, who is a bit tall.
The story is good, and all the questinoable pieces fall into place towards the end, when the dyspeptic doctor at last decides to do something about a very troublesome situation involving them all.
We never learn what happened to the hoodlums.In spite of the lack of John Garfield, it's an excellent movie, I found nothing wrong with it, but the eyes of Zachary Scott is what will stick in your mind..
Dane Clark plays a moody painter who falls in love with a woman (Alexis Smith) who buys one of his paintings.
She skips out on him so he follows her to New York, where he discovers she is married to evil cripple Zachary Scott.
Then things get weird as Clark decides to become a boxer for Scott.
He decides to box under the name Mike Angelo (get it -- Michaelangelo -- because he's a painter, you see).
Clark is pretty unlikable in a role tailor-made for John Garfield.
Eve Arden is great when she's around, which isn't much.
Portrait of Film Noir.
This haunting film has a great noir premise, and relentlessly builds suspense until it literally comes crashing down in the street.
Dane Clark and Alexis Smith, even though they quickly fall in love, spend most of the movie angry with each other and with the world.
Zachary Scott's gangster character has the his goony hooks into his wife, Smith, as well as her brother, and Clark, her lover.The three of them ultimately bring Scott down; with the brother sacrificed, and Clark nearly killed in the boxing ring.
Despite the gritty tone, rough dialogue, and enough violence for a few films, there's an innocent, civilized world, hinted at with the supporting characters' scenes, that never quite goes away; and that finally replaces the noir atmosphere at the very end.
Scott, though clearly an evil presence, had his humanity blunted by the aftermath of his car accident, which Smith's brother may or may not been responsible for.
The only thing keeping them bound to each other is Scott's emotional blackmail.
His death, though obviously the result of his own murderous intent, is pathetically accidental.Of the main characters, there is just enough goodness to rescue Clark and Smith, but no one else.
***SPOILERS*** Dean Clark as armature painter and professional boxer Michael Gordon aka Mike Angelo does a pretty good imitation of the actor that he very obviously styled himself after, and was in a number of films together with, the great John Garfield in the 1948 film noir boxing movie "Whiplash".
The movie "Whiplash" is very much like Garfield's "Body & Soul" that was released just a year earlier in 1947.Mike gets himself involved with Laurie Durant, Alexis Smith, after she buys one of his paintings that his friend bar owner Sam, S.Z Skall, sold her for $75.00 without his permission.
Mike in fact felt that Lourie was suckered into buying his painting but soon discovered from Laurie that he in fact had talent as a painter, which he felt he didn't, which in turn had him fall heads over heels in love with her.
It was later when Laurie disappeared from sight that Mike tracked her down all the way from California to New York City and found out that she's a nightclub singer and married to big time mobster and former middleweight boxing contender Rex Durant, Zachary Scott.
Durant had lost the use of his legs in a car smash up now wants Mike who proved to him in what a hard puncher he is, by Mike knocking out the fighter he manages Duke Carney played by ex-professional boxer Freddie Steel, to win the middleweight boxing title that his accident preventing Durant from winning in the ring.
At first reluctant to enter the ring Mike dubbed as Mike Angelo "The Battling Artist" by the local sports writers works his way to the top by knocking out a string of worthy opponents to get a title shot at middleweight crown held by the present middleweight champion Duke Carney!
The very person who Mike knocked cold at the start of the movie!
During all this Mike finds out that not only is Laurie married to mobster Rex Durant but that Durant had something over her in the circumstances that lead to him losing his legs.
It was Laurie's doctor brother Arnold Vincent, Jeffery Lynn, who at Laurie's insistence operated on Rex and ended up blotching the operation!***SPOILERS*** Exciting and power packed fight sequence, at the start and end of the movie, with Mike who was suffering from a serious brain concussion slugging it out with Carney in the ring with a drunk and barley conscious Dr. Arnold Vincent trying to prevent or stop the fight before Mike, with a solid punch to the head by Carney, ends up dead from a brain hemorrhage!
It's at the very end of the film that both Rex Durant and his #1 henchman the brutal Mr. Costello, Douglas Kennedy, get exactly what's coming to them not from Mike but from Dr.Arnold Vincent whom they left for dead when he tried to save Mike's life.
In what has to be the most shocking scene in the movie Rex Durant ends up together with his wheelchair smashed to pieces when he loses control of it after the person pushing it, Mr. Costello, gets shot from behind by a dying Arnold Vincent!
That wheelchair scene was far better then the one that's always talked about from the film "Kiss of Death" that made actor Richard Whitmark literally a star overnight!.
I agree with others that the story is not terribly new and that it's a variation on GOLDEN BOY through HUMORESQUE through BODY AND SOUL.
The cast has also done these types of roles before--Alan Hale as the trainer, Alexis Smith as the outspoken, tough-minded, idealized object of the hero's affections, Eve Arden as a wise cracking friend/secretary/whatever, and Zachary Scott as the villain.
But, given these, I have always liked the inventiveness of the writers--the undercurrent of impotence and SPOILER how Zachary Scott's wheelchair leads to his demise.