Patterns, Written by Rod Serling

     I was wrong about Russian intentions towards Ukraine.  It could be that Putin seeks to secure Donetsk and Luhansk from Ukrainian forces backed by NATO nations.  Dirty war is upon Ukraine it looks like.  Was it Putin's intention to say, "Back off, NATO."  Will Ukrainian forces, bristling with new shipments of arms from the United States and Canada, to name just two, attack the annexed regions?  Will Biden's and Trudeau's favored Nazis go apeshit on Russian troops and separatists?  Is this all a very dangerous and stupid game played by the worst people on the planet?
     I leave it to the reader to decide.
     I saw a movie called Patterns (1956), written by Rod Serling, starring Ed Begley Sr., Van Heflin, Beatrice Straight (who won an Oscar for her small role in Network).  Everett Sloane plays Walter Ramsey, a workaholic CEO of a New York corporation.  He's exactly the type one would expect to berate employees in front of other employees.  He never apologizes.  "You don't get anywhere by being nice!"
     Begley (Bill Briggs) is on the way out, his job replacement Van Heflin (Fred Staples) is super-competent, well-liked, but he likes Bill Briggs and hates to ruin him).  To live in this rarefied world of capitalist enterprise on the fortieth floor of a Manhattan skyscraper is to achieve a pinnacle of prestige and success if one is willing to chew through the weak, pushing them aside.
     Briggs is old-fashioned, misses cues from his boss, isn't cutting the mustard anymore.  Used to be great.  Ramsey pushes him and pushes, trying to get Briggs to retire.  Briggs has a heart attack after a vicious berating in a meeting by Ramsey, dies in the hospital.  Staples hates Ramsey, says it to his face.  Ramsey doesn't care, wants Fred to work with him.  Liking or disliking a coworker is irrelevant, don't you know that, Fred?
     Ramsey seems to have no friends or even a missus.  He has his job and his commute.  He's a function in a machine.  His job is to increase the wealth of shareholders.  He's basically a fancy abacus man with a foul temper when aroused to anger and contempt.  Then his barking voice sounds like a neighbor's dog on a cold winter night when its caretakers have gone hunting and left the animal outside, something I've heard.
     Fred ends up cooperating with the odious man but "on my terms," reserving the right to belt him in the jaw, though Ramsey reserves the same right.  
     Bill's funeral isn't dealt with, but we're assured by Ramsey that Bill's now orphaned teenage son will be "taken care of."  Ramsey, when he assures Fred of this, doesn't even realize he's being glib.
     Beatrice Straight (Nancy Staples) as Fred's wife, watches her husband becoming more and more enraged at the insensitivities of Ramsey.  She likes the upgrade in their living situation since Fred got the job, but before Bill dies, she's amenable to following her husband's lead until he insists they leave it all behind, and tonight!  
     No, she says, refusing.  Not tonight.  We're going home to calm down and sleep on it.
     Her wisdom prevails.  Is it good for Fred's soul he went back to work for that concentration camp guard of a boss?  We trust he'll be a good fit for the company, will get into screaming matches with Ramsey, but still, the movie put a question mark in my mind about Fred's next few years.
     I don't question the professionalism of the film's production.  Fielder Cook's first feature film as a director (he directed five other feature films and a lot of television), Patterns looks good, moves smoothly from scene to scene, some of them tense, some more light-hearted but throughout is a shade of menace, a sense of an axe about to drop on Bill Briggs.  Ed Begley is great, his everyman look, just an ordinary gent, lending relatable tragedy to a man who wants to feel useful but has been targeted for termination in the shittiest way possible: the slow firing, with privileges and opportunities cut, trimmed, erased until the worker has nothing to work for, so he resigns, humiliated.
     Van Heflin's character is Mr. Conscience, but also the Tempted One.  It's not far off that in the end he succumbs to the Devil, Ramsey (his name's first syllable is a horned beast) running the show, and maybe Bill Briggs was an earlier version of Fred?

Vic Neptune
     

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