Our libraries are under attack today around the country, with some people so outraged over certain books that they are making death threats to librarians. That is the kind of nonsense I think of from the McCarthy era, so I’m shocked this kind of behavior could occur now. Then again, a lot from that era has unfortunately resurfaced in recent years, including everybody accusing each other of being Communists.
1956’s Storm Center stars Bette Davis as a small-town librarian who longs for nothing more than to have a children’s wing added. She is thoroughly dedicated to her job, and even has a moment early on where she knows the exact Dewey Decimal System number for a particular title. To encourage avid young reader Kevin Coughlin, she lets him borrow a rare book, which turns out to be a lapse in judgment.
One day, she’s invited to lunch by the city council, which votes to fund that new wing. Mind you, there are strings attached to this, and that is Davis must remove a book titled The Communist Dream, as there have been complaints about it. Replace that title with any number of LGBT works, and you pretty much have our present situation.
Upon returning to the library, she first hesitates to have it destroyed, and later puts it back on the shelf. Similar to a scenario librarians of today keep encountering, she’s asked what she finds so redeeming about the book that she insists it remain in circulation. Davis says she has read it, and finds it preposterous, but that she doesn’t feel it’s right to deny other the right to read it and come to their own opinions.
She gets fired, largely because of the efforts led by council member Brian Keith, who says things like, “She had 25 years to fill those shelves with poison.” His girlfriend is played by Kim Hunter, and I never stop marveling over how this actress was once the famous Stella in A Streetcar Named Desire AND Zira in the original Planet of the Apes series. Hunter is next in line for the job of head librarian and, whether she is conscious of it or not, she benefits from Davis’s departure.
Davis becomes the town pariah, and even those sympathetic towards her will offer money but not allegiance, as they are worried they will also be branded a Communist. Even Coughlin now feels betrayed. Never before or since has a little kid been so traumatized by the firing of a town librarian. Now this little shit starts spreading lies that will fan the flames of accusations, leading up to a disastrous event.
What is odd is the film, while being clearly on the side of Davis, seems to find a bright side to Coughlin’s change of heart. I have the feeling it was striving to make us feel happy he suddenly has more in common with his father (Joe Mantell), the kind of man who wonders why his kid isn’t into sports and instead always has his nose in a book. Too much learnin’ is dangerous, y’know. As for myself, I didn’t accept the sudden bonding between father and son warranted the pillorying of Davis.
I can identify with this kid as far as his bookishness is concerned, and I really wanted to like him. He has a pretty great line early on when he’s trying to do a series of puzzles in a newspaper ad to try and win a prize: “All I need are 50 words saying how Bristol Soap makes my work day easier.” Alas, he is shrill, whiny and deeply irritating. Even before he becomes the most vocal of the opposition towards her, he was honestly pretty annoying. As said of him when he turns on Davis: “A nice little boy turned into a lunatic”, but he was halfway there already, what with an obsession towards the librarian which verges on the oedipal. Near the end of the runtime, he verbally tears into Davis at the groundbreaking for that new children’s wing. In a moment foretelling a similar bit in Airplane!, she smacks him left and right. It looks like a couple of those blows really connected, and I am a tad embarrassed to admit I found that hilarious.
Needless to say, this is a deadly earnest work, the kind of thing that will have even staunch liberals rolling their eyes at times. At least it is a classy production, with crisp black-and-white photography and good, but not showy, shot compositions. There’s even an opening title sequence composed by Saul Bass.
One weird technical misstep occurs through an odd editing choice, where an accordion player walks into the foreground of a scene in a country club (imagine, there was a time when such a musician conveyed class) and we cut directly to Coughlin suddenly sitting upright in bed and screaming. Oh how I was hoping he would start yelling, “ACCORDIONS! ACCORDIONS! ACCORDIONS!!!”
The film will end with Coughlin burning down the library. That isn’t a spoiler, as it is in the trailer. We will see a montage of books burning and I want to single out a very brief visual from this, the last book we see burning and which is titled The Story of Jesus. It strangely stuck in my craw that the last book was clearly meant to be a substitute for a Bible and I wondered why this substitution occurred. Were they not allowed to show that book being imperiled by flames? You have to admit, seeing a book called The Story of Jesus about to be incinerated doesn’t pack anywhere near as much of a punch.
Storm Center isn’t a bad movie, but is a bit misguided. Also, I fear it won’t convert anybody who isn’t already on board with the film’s message, which makes this all so much preaching to the choir. That’s a shame, because we could really use something like this today, only better. We need something that could lower the temperature of the outrage over libraries, or at least stop the death threats. First, we need politicians such as Keith in this picture to stop using that anger to their political advantage. As Hunter tells him at one point, after the original issue becomes lost amidst the noise: “Whatever was the issue? Do you remember? I got a better job. You got a platform.”
Dir: Daniel Taradash
Starring Bette Davis, Brian Keith, Kim Hunter
Watched on Imprint Australia blu-ray (all region)