Death of a Salesman (1951 film)

Death of a Salesman is a 1951 American drama film adapted from the 1949 play of the same name by Arthur Miller. It was directed by László Benedek and written for the screen by Stanley Roberts. The film received many honors, including four Golden Globe Awards, the Volpi Cup and five Oscar nominations. Alex North, who wrote the music for the Broadway production, was one of the five Academy Award nominees for the film's musical score.

Plot
Traveling salesman Willy Loman has led a life consisting of 60 years of failure. Loman's wife supports him, but he soon begins to lose his grip on reality and slips between the past and the present, frantically trying to find where he went wrong. Finally exhausted between the emotional rift between him and his son Biff, and the emotional toll from being burnt out with his job, Willy starts his car in the garage and takes his own life. An insurance policy is paid out to the rest of the Loman family, as Willy felt he was worth more dead than alive.

Cast

 * Fredric March as Willy Loman
 * Mildred Dunnock as Linda Loman
 * Kevin McCarthy as Biff Loman
 * Cameron Mitchell as Happy Loman
 * Howard Smith as Charley
 * Royal Beal as Ben
 * Don Keefer as Bernard
 * Jesse White as Stanley
 * Claire Carleton as Miss Francis
 * David Alpert as Howard Wagner

Career of a Salesman
Just before the film was about to be released, Arthur Miller threatened to sue Columbia Studios over the short that was to appear before Death of a Salesman. This short film, Career of a Salesman, showed what the producers believed was a more typical American salesman, and was an attempt to defuse possible accusations that Death of a Salesman was an anti-American film. Eventually, Columbia agreed to remove the 10-minute short from the film's theatrical run.

Miller saw Career of a Salesman as an attack upon his work, proclaiming: "Why the hell did you make the picture if you're so ashamed of it? Why should anybody not get up and walk out of the theater if Death of a Salesman is so outmoded and pointless?" He argued against the portrayal of the salesman profession as "a wonderful profession, that people thrived on it, and there were no problems at all." Eventually, the very attitude that led Columbia to commission the intro film led to the failure of Death of a Salesman: Businessmen and other people in the political climate of the 1950s tried to distance themselves from a film depicting American failure.

Production
Benedek took great care in making the film a close transcription of the play. In many places, the film uses Miller's lines verbatim, sometimes leaving out only small lines of dialogue. However, the playwright claimed that the movie was ruined by the truncation of key scenes. In fact, the playwright had no involvement with or control over the film. Benedek also stressed the dreary, middle class setting of the film, using small rooms and gray shots.

The cast consisted principally of the Broadway cast, with the addition of Kevin McCarthy from the original London cast. However, Fredric March replaced Broadway actor Lee J. Cobb after concerns arose over Cobb's alleged past with leftist politics.

Reception
Though the film won over many film critics and received nominations for many awards, it was a box-office failure. The subject matter, the failure of the American dream, did not appeal to many of the era's moviegoers. Miller hated the adaptation of his play. He also claimed that, although he wrote the play cinematically, Benedek managed to "chop off almost every climax of the play as though with a lawnmower" and portray Loman as a lunatic rather than a victim.

Awards and nominations
New York Times Critics' Pick
 * Top 1,000

Restoration and home media
Death of a Salesman has been released on DVD format by Movies Unlimited. It has also been made available on various streaming platforms, such as Amazon Prime Video.

In 2013, a digital restoration of the film was undertaken by Sony. The digital pictures were digitally restored, frame by frame, at Prasad Corporation to remove dirt, tears, scratches and other artifacts. The restoration was part of the Stanley Kramer 100-year celebration (Kramer would have been 100 years old on September 29, 2013).