”Dragnet” (Dan Aykroyd, Tom Hanks; Tom Mankiewicz, dir. MCA, 1987;
Technicolor; running time: 106 minutes. $89.95). ”Dragnet” (Jack Webb, Ben Alexander; Jack Webb, dir. MCA; 1954; Technicolor; running time: 71 minutes. $24.95)
Jack Webb had a vision. It may not have been a profound vision, or a particularly well-expressed one, but it was, to say the least, definite. And for more than 20 years, he managed to share that peculiar vision with the American public-on radio, on television and in the movies. He called it
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”Dragnet.”
Webb died in 1982, but last summer there was another ”Dragnet”-this one a parody of the old series, starring Dan Aykroyd (who also co-wrote the script) and directed by Tom Mankiewicz. Now that it has released the 1987
”Dragnet” this week, MCA Home Video also is reissuing the 1954 feature film that was the first spinoff from the original television program. Directed by Webb, this ”Dragnet” is an amazing cultural artifact, a film that exudes pure essence of `50s while burrowing so deeply into its maker`s eccentricities that it emerges as something beyond camp.
Born in Santa Monica, Calif., in 1920, Webb worked as a radio announcer after his discharge from the Air Force at the end of World War II.
By 1949, Webb had ”Dragnet” on the air as a radio show; a few years later, as the nascent television industry began to take off, Webb was ready, and ”Dragnet” quickly became one of the highest rated early programs, developing into a national craze. With Webb as Sgt. Joe Friday and former child star Ben Alexander as his portly sidekick, Officer Frank Smith,
”Dragnet” flagrantly displayed a sense of style missing from most of the programs of the time.
Its minimal action, uninflected dialogue, storehouse of stock phrases
(”only the names have been changed,” ”just the facts, ma`am”) and unvarying plot pattern made it seem more like arcane religious ritual than bubbly popular entertainment.
The 1954 theatrical version of ”Dragnet” appears to be the first feature film adapted from a TV show (though, of course, many radio programs had been made into movies in the `30s and `40s); as such, it stands as the opening salvo in what was to be a war between big screen and little screen for the soul of the American audience. The overheated effect in a movie theater must have been truly terrifying; on the home screen, unfortunately, it receeds into more-or-less standard television style-a style, however, that Webb might be credited with inventing.
Still jarring, though, is Webb`s persistent, deliberate flattening of the action. Every scene in the film-it`s the story of Friday and Smith investigating a mob killing-is given the same massive weight, whether it`s a shotgun execution, a gangster being grilled or one of the allegedly ”light” passages devoted to Friday`s tenuous attraction to a female officer.
Webb`s ”Dragnet” is already its own best parody. Which is why Tom Mankiewicz and Dan Aykroyd, in making their comedy ”Dragnet,” were smart to attempt something more than standard sketch satire.
Though the new ”Dragnet,” like any comedy, doesn`t seem nearly as funny in an underpopulated living room as it does in a crowded theater, much of its unexpected warmth is preserved in its video incarnation. Aykroyd`s Webb impression is uncannily accurate without seeming too much like a schtick; it becomes possible to believe in the character in a way this kind of comic attack almost never affords. Like the original, Aykroyd`s Friday generates respect through the sheer cracked intensity of his world view; his partner, a wisecracking yuppie type played by Tom Hanks, eventually capitulates to him, unable to resist what is, in effect, a force of nature. By giving Friday a girl friend-an ”Orange County virgin” played by Alexandra Paul-Mankiewicz and Aykroyd have cracked Webb`s system. What has so long been repressed finally emerges, and the results are irresistibly, unexpectedly moving.