<p> The Oscar-nominated James Franco plays the acting game shrewdly. The daytime soap opera star (“General Hospital) has headlined big Hollywood pictures (<em>Rise of the Planet of the Apes</em>) as well as smaller projects (<em>Milk</em>). With <em>The Broken Tower,</em> he makes his directorial debut. He also stars as the film's subject, Hart Crane (1899-1932), an important American modernist poet from the era of William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound. Addled by alcohol and leading a homosexual life in an intolerant time, Crane flung himself silently into eternity by jumping overboard on the Gulf of Mexico. He was 32. </p> <p>Franco's performance is powerful, but he directs like a film student splurging with mom's credit card on his thesis project. He's unnecessarily arty as well as occasionally artful. Shooting in black and white was a fine strategy, but why is the scene when Crane wanders through a Paris cathedral suffused with color when the palette of his reality is otherwise left to the imagination? The choice is as hard to figure as Franco's interest in displaying the back of his own head and the pointedly blurry focus and deliberately choppy editing of some sequences. </p> <p>Although this elliptical film is not an easy introduction for anyone unfamiliar with Crane's life and work, the poet's own words are convincing. <em>The Broken Tower's</em> strongest moments show Crane reciting his verse, whose asphalt-edged, ecstatic visions of modernity position him as forerunner to everyone from Allen Ginsberg to Jim Carroll. <em>The Broken Tower </em>is out on DVD. </p>
