disinterested_spectator There are a lot of movies featuring a character who is an atheist, but movies in which the atheist is a follower of Friedrich Nietzsche are in a special category. Most such movies are based on the Loeb and Leopold murder, which shocked the nation in 1924. Two men in their late teens, geniuses who had already graduated from college and who came from wealthy families, committed a coldblooded murder of a fourteen-year-old boy. Richard Loeb was primarily interested in committing the perfect crime; Nathan Leopold wanted to prove that they were Nietzschean supermen, whose superior intellect freed them from the moral restraints that ordinary men were expected to adhere to. Now, most scholars would agree that Nietzsche would never have sanctioned such a coldblooded murder, but the fact that some people, like Loeb and Leopold, interpret Nietzsche that way is undeniable.Occasionally, a movie will not refer to Nietzsche directly, but his influence is implied, as in the movie "Strange Cargo" (1945), where the villain is referred to as "superman." And in the movie "The Fountainhead" (1949), one almost gets the sense that each of the major characters feels compelled to announce which version of Nietzsche's philosophy of the will to power he or she represents. But mostly, movies with Nietzschean atheists are based on the Loeb and Leopold case. And of those, the best of the lot is "Compulsion."The names were changed to allow some latitude for the sake of storytelling. Richard Loeb is Arthur "Artie" Straus (Bradford Dillman); Nathan Leopold is Judd Steiner (Dean Stockwell); and Clarence Darrow, the famous lawyer who defended them, is Jonathan Wilk (Orson Welles).One of the great ironies of the story is the way these two geniuses planned their perfect murder for seven months, and yet they made one stupid mistake after another. One of the most damning pieces of evidence was Judd's glasses, which he accidentally dropped where they disposed of the boy's body. It had a special hinge that only three people in the area had purchased, and the other two were easily eliminated as suspects. After Artie and Judd have finally confessed to their crime, Wilk is hired as their lawyer, with much reluctance on the part of their parents, however, because he is an "atheist." Actually, the real Clarence Darrow considered himself an agnostic, as does Wilk in the movie, but one suspects that people who did not like Clarence Darrow preferred the more pejorative term "atheist," refusing to mince words on the subject.Artie and Judd never characterize themselves as either agnostic or atheist, but it would be hard to believe that they were anything but atheists, given their admiration of Nietzsche and their willingness to commit a horrible murder just to prove that they were superior. Regardless of what the final words actually were between Darrow, on the one hand, and Loeb and Leopold, on the other, it was still necessary in 1959 for movie agnostics and atheists to make amends: the agnostic, by indicating that he still regards the existence of God as a genuine possibility; the atheist, by recognizing that he has been wrong in thinking that God does not exist.We see both in the final scene. After the judge rules that Artie and Judd will not be executed for their crime, but will spend the rest of their lives in prison, which was the only outcome Wilk could reasonably hope for, the following dialogue takes place:Artie: "So we sweat through three months of misery just to hear that. I wish they'd have hung us right off the bat."Wilk: "I wasn't expecting you to fall down on your knees and thank God for deliverance."Judd: "God? That sounds rather strange coming from you, Mr. Wilk."Wilk: "A lifetime of doubt and questioning doesn't necessarily mean I've reached any final conclusions."Judd: "Well, I have, and God has nothing to do with it."Wilk: "Are you sure, Judd? In those years to come you might find yourself asking, if it wasn't the hand of God dropped those glasses. And if he didn't, who did?"To that question, Judd hesitates, and then has a look of fear and bewilderment.Now, it is hard to take the suggestion that it was the hand of God who dropped Judd's glasses. I mean, as long as God was going to get involved, why didn't he prevent the little boy from being murdered in the first place? But some people would say that that way of thinking is typical of an atheist like me, who just doesn't understand that God works in mysterious ways. So, even if I think Wilk's suggestion is absurd, most people watching this movie in 1959 would have found it perfectly reasonable.Alternatively, one might go all Freudian and say that Judd had an unconscious desire to be caught. That would seem to be the significance of the last question, "And if he didn't, who did?"Personally, I think it was just an accident. We don't need God or Freud to explain that. But the main thing is that for those in the audience who needed to see the atheist realize that there might actually be a God, Wilk's first hypothesis about the hand of God dropping the glasses would have been the preferred interpretation.

Ian (Flash Review)Based on a true story from 1924, two young and cocky men thought they were so smart that they were above the law. And that they could commit whatever crime they felt and make a game of outsmarting the police and detectives. They felt it would be a unique intellectual experience to act out a crime. They do, now will they get away with it? Will their intellectual minds get the high and rush they are looking for? How will they outsmart everyone? Interesting story with good dialog and character development. Orson Welles plays a great character as well as directs this picture. This is a lesser known and solid Welles film.

classicsoncall I had no prior knowledge of the Leopold-Loeb murder case when I watched the picture, so as in many cases involving my movie viewing pastime, I managed to learn something new today. I thought this was quite the compelling story, involving a pair of young delinquents who plan to commit the perfect crime. Judd Steiner (Dean Stockwell) is particularly cerebral in his approach, desiring to perform a totally non-emotional, well executed crime, something brilliant that would confound the authorities in it's execution. His partner Artie Strauss (Bradford Dillman) isn't as clinical in his approach, and takes particular delight in 'commanding' Judd to do his bidding. Artie was more of a monster of the two, taking special delight in explaining to Judd what a 'Judas' goat was, as he watches one lead a herd of sheep to slaughter. Artie was a creepy guy.It becomes clear fairly early in the story that their murder/kidnapping plot falls apart as soon as Judd discovers he must have dropped his pair of glasses at the location where their victim was disposed of. In true best friend fashion, Artie signals he'd throw Judd over in a minute when he dismisses his culpability by stating "So what, they're not my glasses". District Attorney Horn (E.G. Marshall) nails down the evidence against them in preparation for trial, going for the death penalty all the way.What raises the level of the film in my estimation is the defense outlined by the young men's attorney, Jonathan Wilke. Orson Welles' impassioned summation speech disavowing the death penalty is one of the best orations I've ever heard in a movie, and is worth viewing all by itself. It results in no small comfort for the youthful criminals however, they both wind up with concurrent life sentences for kidnapping and murder.As the movie progressed, it became more and more apparent to me that the theme of 'the perfect crime' held some resonance to a Hitchcock film that came out a decade earlier titled "Rope". That picture too it turns out, had some basis in the Leopold-Loeb case, and whether it was an intentional homage or not, there was a line in this picture that caught my attention when uttered by newspaper man Sid Brooks (Martin Milner), commenting to his fiancée Ruth (Diane Varsi) after he learns that Judd had assaulted her - "I hope he hangs till the rope rots".

kittyvista Orson Welles was known for pushing the envelope, and the movie Compulsion is no exception to this. Produced in the 1950s, the movie is the only representation made of the Leopold and Loeb case that correctly infers the relationship between the two protagonists was more than just friendly; in fact, Leopold and Loeb were gay lovers. It showed remarkable attention to detail as well, in that the dynamic between the two could have been written by an FBI criminal profiler whose expertise is in the pathology of sociopath pairings.Dean Stockwell does become the character the audience loves to hate - he drips of arrogance covered by a veneer of superficial charm. Dillman's character tends to be more pathetic in nature, but still not enough that the audience would see him as a "victim."E. G. Marshall is true to form as the district attorney intent on bringing these two to justice, and Orson Welles plays the atheistic and fairly cynical attorney hired to defend the pair. The touch of black humor in the end is when he states that if he believed in a God, he would say that Divine intervention was responsible for Sid Brooks finding the incriminating glasses (they had been partially buried in the sand) and for the police being able to trace them to Steiner.The movie is well worth viewing, especially for anyone who enjoys "true crime" stories - you'll get a charge comparing the real story to the way it is presented.