THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS (1970)

A beautifully made film, directed by Vittorio De Sica, that approaches the subject of the Holocaust almost obliquely through the experience of one Jewish family in a town in Italy in the late 30's. As anti-Semitism is becoming not just socially acceptable but creeping into the laws of the land, we see the aristocratic Finzi-Contini family try to ignore what's happening by maintaining their own world inside their large urban estate. When the local tennis club bans Jews, the beautiful Micol (Dominique Sanda) and her handsome but frail brother Alberto (Helmut Berger) invite a group of friends to play (and socialize) in their gardens. Most of the story is told from the point of view of one of those tennis players, Giorgio (Lino Capolicchio), a middle-class university student who has been harboring a crush on the aloof Micol for years. When the school library is declared off-limits to Jewish students, the Finzi-Continis encourage Giorgio to use their private library, and he finds himself growing close to the siblings, especially Micol. Giorgio believes that Micol has romantic feelings for him, but a direct attempt at seduction fails when she tells him that she thinks of him more like a brother (though there is a strong element of "come here/go away" ambiguity in her manner with him). The situation for the Jews keeps getting worse, but the family, who once held some power and influence in the town, keeps thinking that they can ride out this temporary problem, though they do send a younger brother out of the country for schooling. Giorgio's father (Romolo Valli), a member of the ruling Fascist party, also holds to the fatal belief that things can't keep getting worse. The other major character is Malnate (Fabio Testi), a dark hunk of a guy who is not Jewish but is Giorgio's best friend, and who winds up sleeping with Micol, despite her earlier insistence that he is "too hairy" for her tastes. There is a nice irony here in that Testi resembles the stereotype of the dark Jew, and virtually all the major Jewish characters are actually blond and lithe, like the Aryan stereotype (and Testi winds up with a fate as uncertain as any of the Jewish characters when he is conscripted into the Army). Most everyone ignores all signs of the gathering darkness until it's too late. The sickly Alberto dies at home, and Giorgio manages to get out of the country, but most of the rest of the characters are snared in the inevitable roundup of Jews to the camps.

The film, photographed by Ennio Guarnieri, is beautiful to look at, and generally I like the movie quite a bit, but I do agree with the critics who feel that are some problems with the depth of characterization. Some blame the actors, but I think it's more in the writing. We see most of the events of the film through Giorgio's eyes, and he, like the Michael York character in CABARET, is more a passive observer than anything else. The one time he does act decisively, putting the moves on Micol, it's a mistake. Capolicchio, like Michael York, does a good job with a tricky role. Micol is a cold cipher; I never felt like I understood anything she did, but I think Sanda is fine in the part. The biggest problem with the film is Alberto, who is the ultimate passive character--for most of the film, he really does almost nothing. Perhaps he is meant to be a symbol for the passive populace (Jewish and otherwise) who did nothing to stop the terror that would engulf them all, but that would seem to be superfluous symbolism here. Some critics read an incestuous tension between Micol and Alberto, and I can see that, though I think their relationship is more about a general decadence, that of beautiful, powerful people unmoored, with nothing to do and no resources of strength to resist when the times grow dark, only an ability to live in the past; surely it's not an accident that both Micol and Alberto play "Sentimental Journey" on their phonograph. Despite its flaws, this is well worth seeing. There is very little violence in the film, but the brutality of the times is still conveyed effectively. [DVD]

BEYOND THE ROCKS (1922)

This long-lost film, which re-surfaced in 2003, co-stars two of the biggest silent movie stars, Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson. Unfortunately, it's no classic, though it's also not an embarrassment. Swanson is the youngest daughter of an old sea captain; her older sisters are pressuring her into making a good (financially good, that is) marriage to Robert Bolder, a self-made millionaire who is boring, unattractive, and many years too old for her. When Swanson's canoe tips over during an outing, the Earl of Bracondale (Valentino) saves her. There are sparks between the two, but nothing happens. Swanson gets married and while honeymooning in the Alps, has a climbing accident. Guess who just happens to be on the same mountain and comes to her rescue? Yep, Valentino, this time accompanied by his mother (Edythe Chapman) and a young woman Chapman hopes he will marry (Gertrude Astor). This time, the sparks are harder to deny. Valentino follows Swanson to Paris where Bolder is in the process of providing backing for an African expedition. Bolder is tempted to go along to Africa, but Valentino tells him it would be too dangerous. Swanson, torn between Bolder and Valentino, finally decides to break it off with Valentino, but letters that she sends to the two are switched by the jealous Astor, and when Bolder realizes that she loves Valentino but is still planning to stay in her marriage for his sake, he decides to go to Africa after all. Swanson and Valentino run after him and the triangle is resolved in the desert during an attack of marauding bandits. The material strikes me as about average for a romantic melodrama of the time, as does the acting. Neither of the stars do too much of the overacting (or what seems to us like overacting) that is common to early silent films, and Swanson is even a bit too low-key at times. She also seems too strong and earthy to be fully believable in the role of a passive pawn. The location scenes (certainly shot outdoors, but just as certainly not shot in the Alps or Africa) are effective. The score, written for the restoration, is terrible, way too modern-jazzy, but I did like the sound effects that crop up frequently. This is the first Valentino movie I've seen, and I don't know that I need to see any others, though it might be fun to see one of his Sheik movies for the heck of it. [TCM]

CHINA GIRL (1942)

Just as it's difficult for me to put into words why CASABLANCA, on the surface a fairly ordinary WWII thriller, is such a great movie, it's difficult to say why CHINA GIRL isn't. I enjoyed watching it, but for the most part, it leaves the memory quickly despite having a wonderful visual style and an exciting plot not that different from CASABLANCA's. Set mostly in the city of Mandalay in Burma during November 1941, just before the United States officially went to war, the movie begins in a Chinese village where invading Japanese forces have arrested newsreel photographer George Montgomery as a spy. He escapes with some help from fellow prisoner Victor McLaglen (which involves a brief but very grim sequence in a pit of dead bodies) and the two are then spirited to safety by McLaglen's girlfriend, Lynn Bari. At a hotel in Mandalay, Montgomery meets the lovely Gene Tierney, who is selling some valuables to raise money for her father's work with orphans. When he starts flirting with her, he doesn't realize that she's Chinese; when he finds out, he hesitates for a moment but then kisses her roughly, as though he has something to prove. This turns her off at first, and Montgomery turns his attentions to Bari, but Tierney soon comes around to his charms and also lets him know that Bari and McLaglen are spies for the Japanese. The rest of the film covers several plot strands that come together at the end: 1) will Montgomery be able to bribe a pilot friend to let him hop a ride on his plane to get exclusive footage of the embattled Burma Road?; 2) how much of a pain in the ass will McLaglen and Bari be?; and 3) will Montgomery put personal concerns behind him and take the moral high ground in helping Tierney's father? There is a great fisticuffs scene with Montgomery, stripped to the waist, getting knocked around by McLaglen, and a flag-waving, propagandistic finale in which we see Montgomery transformed into a real hero. Also in the cast are Robert Blake, at the tender age of 9 playing a character a lot like Short Round in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, Philip Ahn as Tierney's dignified father, and Sig Ruman as Jarubi, the antiques dealer who may or may not have sinister motives. Performances are solid all around. At times, McLaglen sounds disconcertingly like an evil Cary Grant; Bari almost steals the show as the femme fatale who wavers between good and bad; Montgomery, looking and sounding like fellow B-stalwart James Craig, is very good (and very good looking) but still short of coming off as an A-grade hero like Bogart, Cagney, or Flynn. The best thing about the movie is its look--good use of shadows and lights through blinds, slightly askew camera angles, atmospheric sets. Not a classic, perhaps, but a solid, light-on-its-feet romantic spy thrillers that I'm glad I saw. [FMC]

BEAU IDEAL (1931)

A rather drab desert melodrama that is technically a sequel to the silent BEAU GESTE (better known by classic movie buffs from the 1939 remake), carrying over a couple of major characters from the original story about a group of brothers and their adventures in the Foreign Legion. In this, one of the brothers (John, played by Ralph Forbes who played the same role in the silent film) is accused of insubordination and given 10 years of hard labor in the Legion's penal battalion. Back in England, Forbes' American childhood buddy (Lester Vail) finds out from Forbes' fiancee (Loretta Young) about his predicament. Though (or perhaps because) Vail also loves Young, he decides to join the Legion to find Forbes. He tries to provoke his commander into throwing him into the prisoner detail, but his heart isn't really into being subordinate. Nevertheless, during a long desert march gone wrong, Vail is accused (wrongly) of mutiny and ends up in the penal detail. He is put into a deep underground cell with a handful of other men, one of whom is Forbes, and they all wind up being left to starve when a native uprising leaves everyone above ground dead. Just as Forbes and Vail, the last two left alive, are about to expire, the arrival of an Arabian emir saves them. There is more plot surrounding the central narrative, mostly involving the tricky relationship between Vail and an Arabian princess (Leni Stengel), known as the Angel of Death, and the film ends with Vail leaving Stengel, whom Forbes refers to as a "half-caste dancing girl," to head back to England with Forbes. The movie is fairly well made and moves along at a decent pace. The plot does not unfold in chronological order, which gives the movie an effective and intense opening scene involving the dying Legionnaires in the pit. The main weakness is the acting, very much of the old-fashioned melodramatic declaiming style. Vail is OK, but not memorable, and Young has only a very small role. [DVD]

MY PAST (1931)

Pre-Code romantic melodrama without a lot to recommend it aside from a chance to see the husband/wife team of Ben Lyon and Bebe Daniels together on the screen. She plays an actress who has been engaged in a long-term, on-and-off mistress relationship with middle-aged steel magnate Lewis Stone. While she's in town for a show, they meet up again and during a yacht party, she gets interested in Lyon, Stone's younger business partner. He's all work and no play, even at the party, but the next day, she goes skinny-dipping in the ocean, he jumps in after her, and a torrid affair begins. Lyon is married but eases Daniels' mind by telling her that they have an arrangement and are soon to be separated when she gets back from an overseas trip, but when the wife (Natalie Moorhead) shows up, it turns out that Lyon was exaggerating the separation news. An upset Daniels leaves Lyon and goes back to Stone, who wants to marry her. But wait! Moorhead realizes that there's no heat left in their relationship (and, by the way, she's met someone in Paris) so she suggests a divorce. Lyon, knowing that Stone is serious about Daniels, leaves for an extended European vacation. After some more melodrama involving Daniels almost dying (wasting away from malnutrition, I think), Stone gallantly steps out of the picture, literally delivering Daniels to Lyon and sailing off into the sunset. The principals are all fine, and Joan Blondell is even better in one of her usual brassy blonde supporting parts. There is a funny little moment when Daniels inscribes a copy of "The Maltese Falcon" for Lyon; that was the next movie for both Daniels and the director, Roy Del Ruth. The background music is frequently irritating, sounding like it was being played live just off-camera (which might have been the case). [TCM]

THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS (1956)

This fact-based drama about a World War II espionage operation is more interesting than compelling, and its quasi-documentary style will probably seem almost quaint in the post-James Bond era, but it's worth seeing. In the spring of 1943, the British are planning an invasion of Sicily; the Germans suspect as much and British Intelligence needs to come up with a plan to divert German forces away from the invasion site. Clifton Webb comes up with an ingenious idea: plant false plans on a dead body, indicating that the Allies plan to attack Greece, and have the corpse wash up where it would come to the attention of high-ranking Nazis. We watch Webb and his associates plan out every detail of the plot, called Operation Mincemeat. They find a young man in a hospital freshly dead of pneumonia, get his father's permission to use the body in the service of the war effort (though they can't tell him how his son is being used), and put the corpse in a dry ice container. Next they create an identity, naming him William Martin and planting personal effects on the body including a love letter written by Webb's secretary (Josephine Griffin) in addition to official letters indicating Greece as the invasion spot. The cat-and-mouse game begins when a submarine crew lets the container go in the sea off of Spain. The Germans' attention is indeed drawn by the discovery; after the body is buried and the British consulate asks for the belongings, the orders are returned, seemingly unopened, which could mean the Germans didn't take the bait, but scientific examination shows that the envelope was opened at the German consulate. However, the real suspense is just beginning: the Germans, suspecting something may be up, send a spy (Stephen Boyd) to England to dig up info about Martin, leading to some very tense scenes involving Gloria Grahame, Griffin's roommate, who has just lost a boyfriend in the war and winds up being instrumental to the fate of the plan. Webb is OK though he never feels very military, or even clever enough to mastermind the tricky plot. Most of the other actors (including Robert Flemyng, Cyril Cusack, and Michael Hordern) are very cut-and-dried in manner, appropriate to the "docudrama" feel of the film, but Boyd and Grahame are quite good at generating tension in the last 15 minutes. Apparently, most, if not all, of the last part of the film is fiction, but it really makes the movie work. [FMC]

SKY GIANT (1938)

This is an RKO B-movie version of the kind of aviation male-buddy movie that Warners and MGM did better, so instead of actors like James Cagney or Spencer Tracy, we have fading silent star Richard Dix and B stalwart Chester Morris. The flying footage, like the stars, is passable but not terribly exciting, and the plot is strictly routine. Harry Carey is a crusty old retired army colonel who starts a flight school for commercial pilots and runs it in strict military fashion. Dix, who had been a captain under Carey, is railroaded into working for him and, though there is some tension between the two, there is also respect. Morris is Carey's cocky son, a former diplomat, who comes to the school not knowing that his father is in charge. Of course, Dix and Morris become friendly antagonists, first in the air, and then in competing for the attentions of Joan Fontaine, the cousin of another pilot (Paul Guilfoyle). Fontaine settles on Morris, assuming he'll give up flying, but when he winds up joining Dix and Guilfoyle on a project to map Arctic flight routes, she breaks it off and accepts Dix, on the condition that he make this his last air job. They get a marriage license, but on the test flight, the men crash land over the Yukon. Guilfoyle winds up with two broken legs and wants Dix and Morris to leave him behind. When they refuse, Guilfoyle crawls out at night into the elements to sacrifice himself so Dix and Morris can make it more quickly to safety. In the end, they still have to sort out the romantic triangle, and though there is a traditional resolution, the last shot seems to suggest the uneasy threeway relationship may continue. Fontaine doesn't have a lot to do, but she's lovely (and quite young, only 21, in comparison to Morris's 37 and Dix's 45, though I have to say that neither man looks quite as old as he really was so the triangle isn't too creepy). The pilot school is identified as TWA's, an interesting bit of early product placement, perhaps. [TCM]

BETRAYAL FROM THE EAST (1945)

I don't like Lee Tracy. In fact, I avoid Lee Tracy movies. Part of it, I admit, is the kind of role that he specialized in, the snarky, wisecracking smartass who rubs everyone the wrong way. I think audiences were supposed to like Tracy's characters either because of or in spite of his personality, but I guess he succeeds too well because I can't stand him. I watched this movie because of my interest in WWII propaganda films and found Tracy to be a little toned down here, maybe because of his age (nearing 50). He doesn't hurt the movie, but his relatively low-key performance also doesn't help it much. The film begins with real-life journalist Drew Pearson assuring us that what we are going to see is based on truth (even though the credits call the book the film was based on a novel). The narrative is set in the weeks before America entered the war. There's a short sequence in which an American diplomat (Louis Jean Heydt) and a news bureau chief (Jason Robards Sr.) are both bumped off for knowing too much about a ring of Japanese spies operating along the West Coast, then the story focuses on Tracy, an aging, disgruntled carnival barker who is approached by an old acquaintance (Philip Ahn) to do some work in Panama. It turns out that Ahn, a member of a Japanese spy ring who believes that ex-soldier Tracy still has contacts in Panama, is trying to recruit Tracy to get hold of defense plans for the Panama Canal. A suspicious Tracy contacts Army Intelligence and he becomes a counterspy, who will pass along false information in order to capture the ring. Complicating matters is Nancy Kelly, an aspiring fashion designer who turns out to be an Army spy out to keep an eye on Tracy. When she is killed in a car accident before Tracy's eyes halfway though the movie, it doesn't take a genius to know that she's not really dead and will return soon enough, which she does, having cozied up to a big shot Nazi (Roland Varno) who is in league with Ahn's spies. Most of the good guys wind up sacrificing themselves for the cause, but the big shots in the spy ring also wind up dead. The most startling scene is the torture of Kelly in an overheated steam room. Other cast members include Regis Toomey as a solider who pretends to give Tracy the Canal plans, and Richard Loo (who later played Master Sun on the "Kung Fu" TV show) as the leader of the Japanese spies. The B-production values show through a bit too much at times, and according to sources I've read, the kind of sprawling West Coast spy ring posited in this film simply didn't exist, but that doesn't stop the film from being an acceptable wartime spy thriller. [TCM]

I COVER THE WATERFRONT (1933)

A solid pre-Code melodrama, and a 30's version of an "indie" film made by the small-scale Reliance Pictures. I'm not sure what Claudette Colbert is doing here, given that she was in the middle of becoming a big star at mainstream Paramount, but she's very good, mostly making up for the shortcomings of her leading man, Ben Lyon, who plays the "I" of the title, a reporter who is trying to prove that grizzled old fisherman Ernest Torrence is the brains behind a ring of men who are smuggling desperate Chinese immigrants into the U.S. We know that Torrence is indeed the chief bad guy, and we see him callously dump a tied-up Chinese man overboard when a Coast Guard ship heads over to investigate. When Lyon sees the lovely Colbert skinny-dipping, he thinks she's just another quickie novelty headline, but when he finds out she's Torrence's daughter, he decides to cultivate a friendship with her in order to dig up some incriminating dirt, but then he finds himself falling for her. There's a bizarre seduction scene set in a prison ship museum in which Lyon straps Colbert into an arcane torture device and kisses her. There's also a shark hunting scene that wouldn't seem out of place in JAWS, and another scene with smuggled immigrants tumbling out of a dead shark's belly that is startling. The climactic action plays out well, though the very end feels rushed. Lots of little racy pre-Code touches add pizzazz; in addition to Colbert's dip in the ocean, there's a nudie girl painting in the boat, and Colbert and Lyon talk openly about moving in together. Torrence is very good as the villain, who is nevertheless a caring father. Lyon is the only weak link, and he's not really bad, just out of his league opposite Colbert. [DVD]

NO OTHER WOMAN (1933)

I enjoyed this predictable soap opera for the chance to see two supporting players of the 30's whose careers petered out by the end of the decade: Eric Linden and Gwili Andre. The stars of this undistinguished, melodramatic twaddle are Charles Bickford and Irene Dunne. He is a hard-working but unambitious and uncouth steelworker who is happy bringing home just enough money to live on; she is his wife who runs a boarding house and has dreams of making it big, or more precisely, of her husband making it big. When a boarder (Eric Linden) who likes to mess around with chemistry comes up a new dye formula, Dunne sees its potential and talks Bickford into investing their life savings in a company designed to exploit the new discovery. The one surprise in the plot happens here: I was sure that Bickford would lose his shirt and resent Dunne and Linden, discover they're having an affair, and maybe even plot to kill them, but instead, the company becomes a wild success, and Linden and Dunne remain platonic friends. Bickford winds up buying out a competing company and building a huge industrial complex. In addition to taking on the nice manners of the upper classes, he also takes on their morality and has a torrid affair with big city sexpot Gwili Andre. Dunne catches him and Andre insists that he divorce Dunne to marry her. He tries to, but Dunne fights it, so he bribes a host of family friends and workers to testify that Dunne is an adulteress so he can get his divorce and get custody of their child. The climax is a nasty courtroom battle in which Dunne calls Bickford's bluff in a dramatic fashion.

Dunne is fine, but Bickford is colorless, even when he gets a potentially juicy drunk scene early in the film. Linden's character is ill-defined; I thought in the beginning that he was Bickford's kid brother, but he's not. Maybe he winds up gay, or a chemistry geek, or both. A character (Lelia Bennett) who helps out at Dunne's boarding house seems downright mentally handicapped, but there's no clear sign that this is an intended interpretation. The biggest problem in terms of plot is the lawyer, played by J. Carroll Naish; apparently, he was Andre's lover before Bickford came along, and perhaps after as well, though that is not make clear. He's the one who represents Bickford in court, but to no apparent larger purpose. The movie is not quite an hour long, and perhaps some of these plot points were left on the cutting room floor (perhaps by producer David O. Selznick back in his early RKO days). It's not a terrible movie, but it could have been better with sharper writing and someone like Joel McCrea in the male lead. [TCM]

THE FAN (1949)

Oscar Wilde's "Lady Windermere's Fan" is the basis for this amusing comedy of manners. I haven't seen or read the play, and predictably most critics don't like the liberties the movie takes with the original material, but on its own merits, I found this to be a pleasant enough diversion. The frame story, set in post-WWII London, has the ancient Mrs. Erlynne (Madeleine Carroll) claiming to be the owner of a fan being sold at an auction; she contacts her old friend Lord Darlington (George Sanders) so he can prove her identity, but his memory needs some prodding, so the rest of the film is a series of flashbacks to a time when Carroll, a middle-aged "adventuress," as she calls herself, is rebuilding her life (for reasons which remain hidden from us until much later in the film) and attempting to make a place for herself in London high society. She charms a trio of moneyed men (Sanders, John Sutton, and the young and handsome Richard Greene) and sets out to marry the boring but rich Lord Augustus (Hugh Dempster). Lord Windermere (Greene) helps her out socially and financially, and rumors of an affair between the two eventually reach Lady Windermere (Jeanne Crain) thanks to gossipy duchess Martita Hunt. It turns out that Greene has good reasons for helping her out, though the secret is a good one so I won't give it away here. Suffice to say that things climax in a semi-farcical drawing room scene of mistaken identity (and mistaken intentions), and though the movie is a comedy, there is a mood of sad resignation in the way matters ultimately play out. Widean one-liners abound--at least I assume that most of them are drawn from Wilde, even though famed wit Dorothy Parker had a hand in the screenplay. One of my favorites here has Dempster saying, "Sometimes I think I'm married to Mrs. Erlynne, she treats me with such damned indifference!" All the actors are fine, especially Sanders and Hunt, and the relatively lightweight Greene and Crain hold their own nicely. Richard Ney (the soldier son in Mrs. Miniver) and Terry Kilburn (Tiny Tim in the 1938 Christmas Carol) make brief appearances. Wilde purists may quibble (as Noel Coward purists rightfully complain about the bowdlerization of most of his works by Hollywood), but I thought the film was fun. [FMC]

OPEN CITY (1945)

This film by Roberto Rossellini is perhaps the earliest example of Neorealism in film, using a documentary style to tell a fictional story, often about ordinary citizens and sometimes using non-professional actors. Filmed on the streets of Rome not long after the liberation of the city from the Germans, the narrative follows a loosely-knit group of resistance fighters during the height of the war. The stage is set with images of starving people buying food on the black market and breaking into shops. The main character is engineer Manfredi (Marcello Pagliero), who is being chased down by Nazis; he leaves his apartment building and goes to his friend Francesco (Francesco Grandjacquet), who lives next door to his finacee Pina (Anna Magnani), a war widow with one child and another on the way. She fetches the priest Don Pietro (Aldo Fabrizi), who agrees to help Manfredi smuggle money to other resistance fighters. Unfortunately, Manfredi also contacts his lover, Marina (Maria Michi), an aspiring actress (who is also, if I'm reading things correctly, a bisexual and a dope addict) who later, in a fit of anger, informs on Manfredi to icy blond Nazi Ingrid (Giovanna Galetti). On the day of his wedding, Francesco is rounded up by the Gestapo. He eventually escapes, but not before Pina is shot and killed running after him.

Manfredi is captured and tortured by the cruel (and somewhat femme) Major Bergmann (Harry Feist), and it turns out that Manfredi has a secret past: he was an escaped Communist prisoner who had been hiding in plain sight for years. Bergmann is especially anxious to make Manfredi talk because his theory is that the Italians are a slave race and therefore their will should be easy to break, but Manfredi, as most of the captured patriots, is not so easy to crack. A more interesting bad guy is Captain Hartmann (Joop van Hulzen), a self-hating Nazi who thinks that the Germans are sowing death and hatred, and holds out no hope for a bright future for anyone. As you can probably tell, it's not a spoiler to say that almost all the major resistance fighters meet unhappy ends, although the last shot of the film can be interpreted as a hopeful one: a group of children we have seen pulling off minor resistance vandalism throughout the film witness the death of the priest by firing squad, and they walk away, not in resignation but in what seems more like dogged determination to continue their efforts. The acting all around, by pros and amateurs, is solid, with Magnani and Fabrizi standouts. The "realistic" filming style adds immeasurably to the gritty atmosphere of the film, though that style is much more common now. The version I saw on cable clearly wasn't "restored," and there were large chunks of dialogue that went untranslated. This film cries out for a fully loaded Criterion edition. (Sundance)

CARDINAL RICHELIEU (1935)

I end my week of George Arliss films with this somewhat routine period picture that Arliss makes worth catching. I know little about the period or the personalities involved, but that didn't hamper my ability to follow a narrative that was certainly highly fictionalized. In 17th century France, King Louis XIII (Edward Arnold) is butting heads with the feudal lords of France over the consolidation of royal power. Arliss is Richelieu, chief minister of the King's Royal Council (apparently a forerunner to the modern post of Prime Minister), and he gets a good entrance scene: the Queen (Katharine Alexander), certain that Richelieu is far away, locks herself in the King's chamber and tries to convince him that the Cardinal is hungry for power and property and should be dismissed; Richelieu arrives and, despite being barred from the main entrance, uses a secret passageway into the chamber and spoils the Queen's plan. The rest of the film concerns various cat-and-mouse games between the Cardinal and the Queen, the Cardinal and the nobility, the Cardinal and the Pope (who is angry that Richelieu has drafted Protestant soldiers from Sweden to fight against German Catholics), and even the Cardinal and the King. One of the things I ended up liking about the movie is that I was never quite certain who the "good guy" was supposed to be. We are trained by the movies (not to mention by our history) to treat most royals with suspicion, and Arnold plays the king as pompous (though not stupid or evil), but Richelieu, with his army, his lavish personal palace, and the kickbacks he gets from some of the nobles, does not seem to be much more sympathetic. However, Arliss gives a grand performance, especially in a famous scene in which he melodramatically claims the sanctuary of the Church against attackers. There is a light romantic subplot that feels a little out of place involving a ward of the Cardinal's (Maureen O'Sullivan) and one of the angry Lords (Cesar Romero), but it does give Richelieu a more human touch. Douglass Dumbrille plays a chief conspirator, and John Carradine and Arthur Treacher have one-line bits as street agitators. Some fun intrigue between the Cardinal and the King ends the film nicely, but the main reason for seeking this out is to see Arliss. [FMC]

THE WORKING MAN (1933)

Another delightful George Arliss picture, like A SUCCESSFUL CALAMITY, in which he plays a sort of "foxy grandpa" type, a gruff-seeming older man who has charm and prankish energy beneath his facade, who usually winds up teaching some young whippersnappers a lesson. In this one, he's the founder of Reeves Shoes, the country's leading shoe company. He is particularly proud of staying ahead of his chief competitor, Hartland Shoes, run by an old friend of his who married the woman that they both loved. Arliss's company is in such good shape that his nephew (Hardie Albright) tries to talk Arliss into retiring and living out the rest of his days fishing in Maine. When Hartland dies and his company falls into the hands of his fast-living son and daughter (Theodore Newton and Bette Davis), who are on the verge of running the company into bankruptcy, Arliss decides to go undercover and try to save the company, out of a sense of loyalty to Hartland and his kids. He puts in a secret bid to buy the company, works his way in as a trustee, and (rather improbably) is also named a quasi-legal guardian to Newton and Davis. In the beginning they like Arliss because he seems easygoing and harmless, but he quickly lays down the laws, cutting out their hard partying and their unrestrained spending, and soon he has them working hard to turn the company around, despite the machinations of the crooked manager (Gordon Westcott). In fact, Davis decides to do some undercover work of her own and, under an assumed name, gets a job at Reeves Shoes in order to learn some skills she can bring back to Hartland. A romance develops between Davis and Albright, which is threatened when Arliss fires Westcott and he comes to Albright to get a job and recognizes Davis. Being a comedy, there are happy endings all around for all who deserve them, though the climax plays out in a hurry. Arliss is great fun in a role he could probably have done in his sleep. Davis is OK, though Albright as an uptight blond boy, and Newton as a mellow blond boy, are a little too low-energy. Westcott makes a fine and slimy villain, J. Farrell MacDonald has a nice scene or two as Arliss' fishing buddy, and Edward Van Sloan shows up as Arliss's assistant. Quite fun all around. [TCM]

THE MAN WHO PLAYED GOD (1932)

A fine old-fashioned (and here I mean that in the best possible way) melodrama which gave Bette Davis her first substantial lead, with George Arliss, who would become her mentor. He plays a renowned concert pianist at the peak of his career who feels his life is ruined when he goes deaf; it's explained that deafness runs in his family, but it seems to come on all at once when an anarchist's bomb explodes right outside his window while he's playing the "Moonlight Sonata" for a European king (whom the anarchists are chasing--don't ask, it's just a creaky plot device). After months of feeling sorry for himself (and keeping most of his friends at a distance) because the joy of his piano has been taken away from him, he is finally persuaded to learn to read lips. He discovers that, with the help of a pair of binoculars, he can read the lips of passers-by outside his window who stroll through Central Park and he takes to "playing God" with them, secretly sending financial help to people who need it. Davis plays a much younger woman, a close friend of Arliss' who was infatuated with him and proposed to him before his deafness occurred. Though she still loves him and seems more than willing to go through with the planned marriage, she has fallen in love with Donald Cook, a man much closer to her own age. By coincidence (!!!), Davis and Cook discuss their situation in the park. Guess who eavesdrops? Guess who winds up stepping gracefully out of the picture so Davis can be happy? Arliss was 65, playing a 50-year-old, and the makeup to make him look younger than his years is obvious, but aside from that, he is quite fine in a part that calls for some over-the-top emoting from time to time. His best scene is when he rages against God for taking away his life's joy, the ability to hear music. Davis is good, although Ivan Simpson, who plays Arliss' stiff but faithful butler, steals most of his scenes; he is especially good when he saves Arliss from an attempted suicide. Cook is the first of a series of actors throughout the next several years who appear opposite Davis and who wind up wiped off the screen, or at best, come off as mannequins (see also George Brent, Richard Barthelmess, Franchot Tone, and Paul Henried). Louise Closser Hale is fine as Arliss' sister and secretary, as is Violet Heming as another admirer of Arliss'. Hedda Hopper and Ray Milland have small roles. Solid melodrama that is a little dated but nonetheless still worth seeing. [TCM]

A SUCCESSFUL CALAMITY (1932)

George Arliss seems to have had two primary movie modes: serious historical figure and sly old father (and even his serious roles had a bit of the sly dad in them). This is a delightful comedy with Arliss as the second type; it's a lighter-than-air role, a little like the one he played in THE MILLIONAIRE but even fluffier. He's a rich banker who returns from a year-long stint in Europe, anxious to be fussed over by his loving family. The problem is that they seem to have gotten along quite well without him. His wife (Mary Astor) has completely redone his old and comfortable sitting room in blinding art nouveau and she's so booked up with social obligations, she barely has any time to spend with him. His frivolous children (William Janney and Evalyn Knapp) obviously have affection for their dad, but also have little time for him: idle Janney is always on the polo field and Knapp is preoccupied with her upcoming marriage to clueless fussy pinhead Hardie Albright. To simplify his family life, Arliss pretends that the family fortune has come to ruin, hoping that they'll all have to spend time together (inspired by his butler's remark that "the poor don't get to go out very often"). His plan works; not only do they start spending evenings together, but Janney gets a job and Knapp dumps Albright for hunky polo-player Randolph Scott. Only Astor causes concern when she seems to run out on Arliss with her Italian piano prodigy Fortunio Bonanova, but things aren't always what they seem and a happy ending is in store for all. The most amazing thing about this movie is the comic timing, which seems almost contemporary. I think of Arliss even at the top of his game as a somewhat stagy, old-fashioned actor, but he seems quite modern here, while still having the gravity necessary for the role. Astor, as usual, is good, and Grant Mitchell gets to shine as Arliss's butler; in a nice bit, Arliss winds up spending his free time in his butler's room in his old comfy chair, which Mitchell rescued when Astor threw it in the trash. There's a nice subplot involving a double-crossing businessman (David Torrence) to whom Arliss manages to put the screws. Leon Ames has a small role as an assistant to Arliss. Good fun all around. [TCM]

THE HOUSE OF ROTHSCHILD (1934)

One reason to love the current era of classic movies on cable: the chance to see the work of actors who were well known and well liked in their era but whose popularity hasn't extended to the present day. This week, I'm going to devote some blog posts to the films of George Arliss, a British stage actor who had a short but successful film career in the 1930's. His main claim to fame was playing historical figures--he won one of the first Best Actor Oscars back in 1930 for DISRAELI, a movie I haven't been able to see yet. Arliss' films are unlikely to wind up released in DVD boxed sets, like the movies of Bogart or Astaire or Bette Davis, but they do show up occasionally on Turner Classic and Fox Movie Channel. Leonard Maltin says that Arliss is a fine actor "in sore need of rediscovery," and I agree. In the past, I've reviewed THE MILLIONAIRE and THE GREEN GODDESS, both good movies, and this week, I'll review a few more I've been lucky enough to see.

In this historical family story, Arliss plays the dual role of Mayer Rothschild, founder in the 1790's of the famous banking house, and Nathan, his son. Though much of the narrative is concerned with the pervasive anti-Semitism of the time and place, the movie also traffics in some unfortunate Jewish stereotypes which may undercut that theme with today's viewers. In the short, atmospheric opening section of the film, we see Meyer, a coin dealer and money lender living in the Jewish ghetto in Frankfurt, hiding caches of money from the tax collector. He tells his children that, because money lending is one of the only occupations open to Jews, money is the only defense against the combative Gentile society (the Jews are forced to live on one street and are locked in their homes at night). He starts his sons in banking and tells them to spread out to various cities to stop the loss of money transfers through war and banditry. Thirty years later, the story is picked up with Arliss as Nathan, the eldest son, who is established in London and makes important loans to the British and their allies in their wars against Napoleon. After Wellington (C. Aubrey Smith) defeats Napoleon, Arliss suggests loaning money to France to rebuild. His suggestion is approved, but his bid for making the loan is rejected due to the anti-Semitic Count Ledrantz (Boris Karloff, miles away from his Frankenstein monster and quite good as the outwardly civilized villain). Arliss gets his revenge by driving down the price of the bonds, and he finally gets the bid, but Karloff gets his own revenge by inciting a series of pogroms in Prussia. When Napoleon escapes from exile, the advantage goes back to Arliss when the allies need his money again. Despite an offer from Napoleon asking for money in exchange for freedom for the Jews, Arliss goes with the allies and the film ends with the defeats of both Napoleon and Karloff. Despite the historical sweep of the narrative, the film is fairly stagy with lots of talky scenes (we see no war action and never meet Napoleon), though thanks to good acting and pacing, it rarely feels static. There is a more or less unnecessary romantic subplot with Arliss' daughter, Loretta Young, in love with a Gentile soldier (Robert Young). The two Youngs are bland and unwelcome as they take screen time away from Karloff and the wonderful Arliss. Also notable are Helen Westley (as Meyer's wife), Reginald Owen, and Arthur Byron. Arliss' real-life wife Florence plays Nathan's wife, though she doesn't have much to do. The film plays fast and loose with history, but that's a given with Hollywood. Quite enjoyable, and Arliss commands the screen as usual. [FMC]

JOHNNY APOLLO (1940)

A dysfunctional father-son story, disguised as a gangster movie. Tyrone Power is the privileged son of rich businessman Edward Arnold. When Arnold is indicted for embezzlement and sent to jail, Power drops out of his Ivy League college out of embarrassment. Power tells his father off and Arnold disowns him (figuratively, if not literally, by saying he'll never give his son another thought as long as he lives). Power tries to get a job, but finds his family name a disadvantage. A year later, when a big shot gangster (Lloyd Nolan) who went to jail the same time as Arnold gets out ahead of schedule, Power goes to Nolan's shyster lawyer (Charley Grapewin) for help getting Arnold out, but instead Power winds up working for Nolan, under the ridiculous fake name of Johnny Apollo. Power and Arnold start to reconcile, but when Arnold finds out that Power is working for a thug and a shyster, he disowns his son a second time. Dorothy Lamour is a nightclub singer who hangs with the bad guys; she and Power take a shine to each other. Grapewin decides to turn a new leaf and rat on Nolan, making a deal with the cops that will let Power off the hook for any shady activity, but after Nolan kills Grapewin, both he and Power are both sent to prison, of course, the same prison where Arnold is being kept. Lamour pleads with Arnold to take his son back, and the exciting finale involves an attempted escape which goes awry. Unfortunately, a weak happy coda ends the movie on a false note. All the actors are fine, with Lamour showing more depth than she is able to in the "Road" movies that she is remembered for. She even gets a glitzy little musical number, "Dancing for Nickels and Dimes." Grapewin is also able to flesh out his character more than usual, and Lionel Atwill and Marc Lawrence are both fine in smaller roles. Nolan is realistically nasty and charming in turn, and Power manages to come off as more than just a callow spoiled youth (and it doesn't hurt that we get to see Power's physique early on when he's participating in a college rowing meet). Arnold is especially good at making a potentially cardboard character rounder and more sympathetic than he might have been. [FMC]

THE GANG'S ALL HERE (1943)

Perhaps because it's been difficult to see over the last several years, this Technicolor Busby Berkeley musical from 20th Century Fox has gained a spectacular reputation that it can't quite live up to. It's essentially a cross between two musical "subgenres": the musical numbers are revamps of the kinds of numbers that Berkeley choreographed for Warners in the 30's (primarily in the Gold Diggers series), and the narrative framework (built around a stymied showbiz romance usually involving mistaken identity) is taken from the Fox musicals of the 40's which featured players such as Betty Grable and John Payne; the novelty of color does seem to inspire Berkeley to ever higher flights of fancy and makes the song and dance routines worth seeing, but the plotline and acting are just average. The story focuses on soldier James Ellison, in New York on leave, who meets singer Alice Faye at the fancy Club New Yorker. He follows her to the Broadway Canteen, one of those wartime clubs set up just for servicemen. She's not supposed to leave the club with any soldiers, but he arranges a meeting later that night and soon they're in love but are forced to part when Ellison's leave ends. Months later, he returns to Faye a hero, but she finds out that he's been engaged for years to a socialite (Sheila Ryan); how will the triangle be resolved? There is more to the plot, mostly some folderol about the Club New Yorker folks rehearsing a huge new show at the country estate of Ryan's rich family, but it's all secondary to the colorful musical numbers, none of which could ever fit inside a real nightclub, including Carmen Miranda's legendary "Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat," which involves the biggest, most phallic bananas one could imagine. Benny Goodman looks very uncomfortable singing "Minnie's in the Money" directly to the camera, Charlotte Greenwood gets one of her traditional high-kicking dances in, and the final number, "The Polka Dot Polka," is spectacular. Ellison's slicked-back hair makes him unappealing, but Faye is quite lovely, and does a fine job in a fairly thankless role. Edward Everett Horton and Eugene Pallette do variations on their usual roles as fussy sidekick and gravelly-voiced grumbler, and entertainers Phil Baker and Tony DeMarco appear as themselves. A couple of amusing lines: Faye saying to Ellison, "Stop acting like Don Ameche and get me a taxi," and Miranda on seeing off a sailor: "It's nice work if you can get him." The movie is worth seeing for the campily excessive dance sequences, but don't believe the hype. [FMC]

CONFESSIONS OF BOSTON BLACKIE (1941)
BOSTON BLACKIE'S RENDEZVOUS (1945)

In the 1940's, it seems like every detective who had his own movie series (the Falcon, the Saint, the Lone Wolf) was a reformed thief. Boston Blackie (played by Chester Morris) was no different. These are two of the 14 hour-long B-budget programmers in which Morris appeared, and like many second-feature films of the era, they play out like episodes of a TV series. Neither film is really a whodunit because we know that from the start. In CONFESSIONS, the second in the series, Harriet Hilliard (later to be Harriet Nelson of "Ozzie and Harriet" fame) is a woman in desperate need of cash for her sickly brother, so she agrees to auction off a valuable statue of the emperor Augustus through art broker Walter Soderling. However, we know that Soderling has a tidy little side business producing art forgeries in a secret, high security basement room. He and his cronies plan to sell the fake and keep the real one. However, at the auction, which is attended by Hilliard, Morris, and his eccentric millionaire friend Manleder (Lloyd Corrigan), Hilliard notices that the statue is fake. One of the thugs takes a shot at her to shut her up, but the bullet hits and kills Soderling. Morris pulls his gun as well, so the cops arrest him for murder, but their case gets a little shaky when the corpse vanishes (the cronies stuff in into the fake statue through a false back). Morris escapes, Inspector Farraday (Richard Lane) becomes a laughing stock, Hilliard, who was wounded in the shooting, still needs money, and Corrigan buys the fake statue for a lark. The rest of the movie is a fast-paced series of chases, traps, and escapes, as Morris tries to help Hilliard and clear his own name, while the crooks try to get the fake statue back. Everyone winds up trapped in the basement studio for the climax, with some nice fisticuffs, thrilling gunplay, and a potentially deadly fire. There's even room for a comic subplot involving an old flame of Morris's (Joan Woodbury) who tries to extort some money out of him--the best scene in the movie may well be when she goes on a furniture-smashing rampage in his apartment. Morris, one of my favorite 30's leading men who by this time had fallen from Hollywood's A-list, is appropriately light and breezy and the rest of the cast is OK, though distinctly second-string, even George E. Stone as Morris's comic sidekick The Runt (I was wishing for someone like Frank McHugh or Allen Jenkins). Still, a very enjoyable hour balanced out nicely with humor and action.

RENDEZVOUS is the ninth Boston Blackie film and, though it has its light moments, it is more intense with a more modern feel. In this one Corrigan gets Morris involved in a search for his nephew (Steve Cochran) who has escaped from an insane asylum and may have homicidal intentions. When Morris meets up with him, Cochran claims that he's not crazy, but that he's about to come into an inheritance and his relatives want him locked up and out of the way. Of course, we can tell from the look in his eyes that he's lying, and sure enough, in short order, Cochran strangles Morris (just enough to knock him out) and goes on a killing spree, using Morris's identity, which naturally gets the police involved. Morris has to stay out of the clutches of the law and protect Sally Brown (Nina Foch), a dance hall girl with whom Cochran is infatuated. Mistaken identities drive the rest of the plot, as Foch thinks Morris is the killer, and thinks the killer, who can be quite rational and charming, is Boston Blackie. The finale, a tense confrontation between Cochran and Foch, is the best scene in the movie. The comic interludes don't mesh with the rest of the film, especially an uncomfortable scene in which Morris and sidekick Stone dress up in blackface as hotel maids. Morris does get to do a magic trick or two--magic was one of Morris's hobbies. The best comic bits belong to Iris Adrian as Foch's roommate, a brassy hat check girl. The very handsome Cochran does a great job as the killer, and is about the only cast member who doesn't seem like he knows he's stuck in a B-movie. These movies aren't classics, but they're fun, and better than much of what passes for thrillers on TV these days. [TV]

THE AFFAIRS OF CELLINI (1934)

This film begins with the trappings of a historical period piece, and indeed the title character really did live in 16th century Italy and was a goldsmith with ties to royalty. But it becomes clear very quickly that this isn't history at all, but an antic bedroom farce in which everyone gets to wear fabulous costumes and prance about on elaborate sets. As such, it works rather well, and the fact that it was released just before the restrictive Production Code went into effect allows it to sneak in some bawdy implications that would have been censored just months later. Fredric March plays goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini, whose scandalous ways have him constantly hiding from the law, or from jealous husbands, or both. The Duke of Florence (Frank Morgan), a member of the powerful Medici family, is after his hide, but March manages to buy some time for two reasons: 1) he is completing a set of gold dishes for the Duke, and 2) the Duchess (Constance Bennett) takes a liking to him. The love triangle is turned into a rectangle by March's young and lovely model (Fay Wray), with whom March has been dallying and to whom Morgan takes a shine. There are many scenes of loving and fighting and escaping, and the highlight of the film is a traditional door-slamming bedroom sequence in which Bennett pushes March out on a balcony so Morgan won't find him, while at the same time, Morgan has pushed Wray out on the same balcony; of course, March and Wray run off together to what March calls his "mountain hideaway," but which is really a smelly old barn. Another complication is Louis Calhern, a member of the court who is out for March's blood, and he becomes a key player in the finale in which a poisoned cup of wine decides the fates of our assorted lovers. The action bogs down just a bit in the middle, though the movie wraps up too quickly. Otherwise, if you're in the mood for a rollicking 30's farce, this will do the trick. Also in the cast are Jessie Ralph as Wray's mother who has a goat-like beard which is good for a couple of jokes, and Vince Barnett as March's dopey sidekick. Lucille Ball has a bit part as a lady in waiting, but I didn't catch her. March, in tights and a goatee, is more handsome and dashing than I've ever seen him; Bennett's not bad at being haughty, but I didn't think she was always able to keep up with the farcical pace. Some viewers really don't like Morgan as the Duke, doing the same befuddled shtick he almost always does so he never disappears into his character, but subtlety of characterization is hardly the point here and I eventually warmed to him. [FMC]

LES DAMES DU BOIS DE BOULOGNE (1945)

An early Robert Bresson film, quite unlike anything else of his that I've seen (DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST, LANCELOT OF THE LAKE). It's a brittle, dark story of romance and revenge that for the most part seems quite contemporary, with a feel of something like DANGEROUS LIASONS. When rich Helene (Maria Casares) hints to her long-time lover Jean (Paul Bernard) that she has gotten bored with their relationship, she is shocked when he says that he has too, and suggests that they part, at least temporarily. Helene, furious, arranges for Jean to get interested in showgirl Agnes (Elina Labourdette), an old acquaintance from the country who has turned to an unsavory lifestyle (dancing for groups of men in her room, and worse, I'm sure!) to keep herself and her mother afloat. Helene arranges for Agnes and her mother to be secluded in a small and drab apartment (I assume so she will not be tempted back to her old profession) and then proceeds to engineer a meeting with Jean, pushing the two together by seeming to be keeping them apart. Jean is unaware of Agnes' background and the two go through a tentative courtship until he becomes obsessed with her and she finally agrees to marry him. At the wedding party, Helene strikes the final blow by telling Jean that Agnes is a whore. He is shocked, Agnes faints, and Helene drives away in triumph, but a fairly unrealistic "happy" ending which feels like it was tacked on drains the story of some of its power. Nevertheless, this is one you shouldn't miss, and the main reason is the performance of Maria Caseres, who is both icy cold and red hot as the vengeful woman on a mission to destroy two lives (three if you count Agnes's mother). The movie's look is stark and dark, though not really in a film noir fashion, although I can imagine this being done as a Hollywood melodrama in the same era with Joan Crawford tossing Zachary Scott to some slutty supporting starlet (Martha Vickers in THE BIG SLEEP, perhaps?). The only problem here is that what we see of Agnes's shady past consists mostly of vigorous dancing, and after she is "saved" by Helene, she reverts to some rural virgin type, so we have to fill in the gaps (as in a Hollywood movie of the same era) to figure out why she is so ashamed of herself. There's a scene in which Agnes dances around the small apartment like Ann Miller in YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU which I guess is supposed to make us think that she is missing her chorus girl/hooker days, but it's an odd scene anyway. Otherwise, I highly recommend this. [DVD]

RAFFLES (1939)

The title of this comic crime adventure refers to A.J. Raffles (David Niven), the creation of British writer E.W. Hornung. This was the fourth film based on his exploits and apparently it's a scene-by-scene remake of the 1930 version with Ronald Colman. Raffles is, to all appearances, a charming high society cricket player, but on the side, he is also a jewel thief known to Scotland Yard and the public as the Amateur Cracksman. It is implied that he's something of a Robin Hood when he sends one stolen necklace to an aging actress he admires so she can turn it in for a sizeable reward, but otherwise we don't get much information about his life, other than that he's widely admired for his athletic ability, and only his butler (E.E. Clive) knows about his double life. Niven meets Olivia de Havilland, the sister of his friend Bunny (Douglas Walton), and they hit it off, so much so that he decides to go straight and returns the last batch of jewels he stole (in a clever ruse involving a cute little stray kitten as a decoy). However, when he attends a country house party to be near de Havilland, he also decides to pull off one last job as a way of helping Walton out of a gambling debt. Unbeknownst to him, there is another burglar (Peter Godfrey) in the house who, with some help from the family maid, has an inside track on getting the jewels. A comedy of errors follows in which Godfrey snatches them, then Niven snatches them from Godfrey, and we're never sure who has what because there is also a fake set floating around. In the end, Niven gallantly gives himself up to the Scotland Yard inspector (Dudley Digges) so he'll have a clean slate to start from when he gets out of jail and marries de Havilland. In the pre-Code 1930 version, Raffles gets away scot free, and the Code-imposed ending does hurt the film's fluffy tone, but generally this works well thanks almost completely to the charming Niven, who is a perfect fit for the role. Dame May Whitty is fun in the small role of the woman who throws the house party. Nothing special, but pleasant enough. [TCM]

TROUBLE FOR TWO (1936)

Based on a trilogy of stories by Robert Louis Stevenson, this minor adventure/romance with a slightly dark edge (which would certainly be exploited more fully if it were made today) doesn't quite live up to its potential but is nevertheless a decent vehicle for its stars, Robert Montgomery and Rosalind Russell. Montgomery is a frivolous playboy prince who is happy that his long-arranged marriage to a foreign princess has been canceled. We learn there are anarchists who have recently been ousted from the country but who may be in hiding and who are after the prince, so the king sends him to London on a vacation with army colonel Frank Morgan. On board, he is captivated by a mysterious lady (Russell) who says she's being pursued and asks for his help in smuggling some secrets off the ship; Montgomery is happy to help, but when they land, he finds that she has vanished and that the secrets are just a bundle of blank sheets of paper. Looking for a little diversion in town, he discovers the existence of a Suicide Club, where people who are tired of living pay stiff fees to be part of a nightly drawing of cards: one person is chosen to be the killer and one is chosen to be killed. The murder then occurs in the next 24 hours. Apparently thinking it would be a nice adventure, Montgomery joins up and sees Russell among the group. Eventually she is chosen to be his executioner and the plot takes a number of twists, some predictable, some not, on the way to a fairly exciting finale. At 75 minutes, it feels a bit rushed by the end; a little more time for the plot to play out would have allowed for better character development. Russell, an actor who was generally only as good as her material, is good here, as is her leading man. Reginald Owen, in a bald head cap and looking like the Scrooge he was for MGM a couple of years later, is fine as the villainous head of the Suicide Club, and Louis Hayward shines in a small but important role which is billed as "Young Man with Cream Tarts." There is a brief but amusing bit involving a dog on trial for murder. [TCM]

SUEZ (1938)

This is a decent example of what passed for a historical epic in Hollywood before GONE WITH THE WIND changed the rules. It's a fictional biography of Ferdinand de Lesseps, engineer and builder of the Suez Canal (and who later was in on the beginnings of the Panama Canal, though that's not covered here). The film starts in 1850 in Paris with Tyrone Power as de Lesseps, the son of diplomat Henry Stephenson, leading a carefree life playing exhibition tennis and romancing Loretta Young, who herself is being admired from afar by Louis Napoleon (Leon Ames), the president of France (though because he is related to the tyrannical Bonaparte, the fear that Ames might shut down the government and claim himself Emperor becomes a plot point). When Power is called to Egypt by his father, he asks Young to marry him but she won't commit. Once in Egypt, he meets the somewhat tomboyish Annabella while she's skinny dipping; soon she has fallen in love with him, though he seems to think of her more as a little sister. After a storm, while admiring a rainbow, Power has the idea to build a canal that would connect the Red and Mediterranean Seas, and the rest of the film details his long struggle to bring the project to fruition, mostly involving jumping a number of political hurdles involving the French, the British, and the Arabs. At one point, Power finagles Ames into backing his plan by agreeing to get the Assembly to disband temporarily, but when Ames double-crosses Power and begins arresting the Assembly members, all of Power's friends think that Power has betrayed them for the Canal. The building of the Canal takes years, slowed by political reversals and deliberate sabotage, but the main set piece of the film is a spectacular dust storm in which Annabella sacrifices her life to save Power by tying him to a post as the wind blows virtually everything else away. After this sequence, the film rushes to an end with the eventual completion of the canal and a ceremony in which Power is given a medal by Young, now the wife of Ames. Apparently little of this is accurate, but the story is entertaining enough and Power makes a good leading man. J. Edward Bromberg plays an Arabian prince, Nigel Bruce does his usual befuddled persona as a pompous admirer of Young's, and other standouts of the large supporting cast include Joseph Schildkraut, Sig Ruman, and George Zucco. [FMC]

THE CARDINAL (1963)

A big Hollywood epic which always looks wonderful but occasionally gets bogged down by overstuffed narrative and underwritten characters. Tom Tryon plays the title character; the film opens and closes with a middle-aged Tryon being made Cardinal in Rome just before the outbreak of WWII, with the rest of the movie consisting of chronologically-ordered flashbacks through his life. We see him in his first parish in his hometown of Boston until his cardinal (John Huston), thinking that Tryon is too ambitious, reassigns him to a rural town to work under ailing pastor Burgess Meredith. After proving his mettle, Tryon is hired as a secretary by Huston and eventually the two go to Rome where Huston wrangles a Vatican appointment for Tryon. However, Tryon is undergoing a crisis of faith and decides instead to take a leave of absence. After the intermission, we catch up with him as a teacher in Vienna who is briefly tempted by Romy Schneider, but instead his priestly calling is reinforced. He gets a Vatican job, travels back to the U.S. to help a black pastor (Ossie Davis) fight the Ku Klux Klan, then upon his return to Vienna, he tries to motivate the local cardinal (Josef Meinrad) to stand up against the Nazis. The episodic nature of the story isn't automatically a bad thing, but the real problem is that the episodes are underdeveloped and we rarely see evidence of how Tryon learns his various lessons. The midpoint crisis is especially murky, as is its resolution. His earliest and most concrete crisis, and the one that sticks with him the longest, involves his sister (Carol Lynley) who wants to marry her Jewish boyfriend (John Saxon). At first, Saxon agrees to convert to Catholicism, but then backs out. Lynley confesses (literally, in the confessional) to Tryon that she's slept with her boyfriend and after Tryon refuses to give her the advice she wants to hear, Saxon goes to war and Lynley winds up doing an vaudeville tango act with a slimy guy who gets her pregnant and offers to pay for an abortion. She chooses to have the child, but complications lead to her doctor suggesting she have a partial-birth abortion to save her own life. Tryon won't give his permission for the procedure, so Lynley dies (though the baby grows up to be raised by her parents--and when we see her briefly as a grown-up, she's played by Lynley). This becomes a sore point for Tryon, who feels responsible for her death, and this seems to be the reason for his crisis of faith, but it's never that clear.

Tryon's performance is often knocked as too wooden, but I think the problem is more in the writing. Like Tyrone Power in THE RAZOR'S EDGE, Tryon is mostly a passive center in the whirlwind of personal events and history surrounding him. Though he's on screen almost constantly, we never really feel like we know him. We also rarely see him use his priestly skills, so the reasons for his rapid rise through the church hierarchy are beyond us. Meredith gets praise from the critics, but he has very little to do but lie in bed and die--for a while, I thought Tryon might borrow a trick from Bing Crosby in GOING MY WAY and cure Burgess with a glass of whiskey and an Irish lullaby. Supporting standouts include Murray Hamilton as a Klan member who has a change of heart, Raf Vallone as a Vatican good guy, Cecil Kellaway as Tryon's first monsignor, and Maggie McNamera and Bill Hayes as Tryon's other siblings. Poor Robert Morse has a ridiculous vaudeville number thrown in for no clear purpose. The movie is beautifully shot by Leon Shamroy and the location settings are used effectively. The last half of the movie, particularly the Nazi segment, does have some power and momentum, but at three hours, it's not a movie for an impatient audience. [DVD]

BORN YESTERDAY (1950)

I've seen most of the Hollywood movies that have entered the canon of Classic Movies, but this is one that other classic movie buffs are always surprised to learn I haven't seen. I didn't actively avoid it, but I never felt compelled to search it out, despite it being the main claim to fame for Judy Holliday, who has become a near-legend largely on the basis of this one film (and her untimely death of cancer at 43 after having starring roles in only seven movies). As Billie Dawn, the mistress of a rich but crude businessman (Broderick Crawford, who plays the role as though he was a gangster who accidentally wound up with in a legitimate business), Holliday epitomized the indelible "dumb blonde" stereotype that permeates popular culture--she certainly got there before Marilyn Monroe, and Jean Hagen is practically channeling Holliday in SINGIN' IN THE RAIN. Crawford is in Washington to do some under-the-counter wheeling and dealing; both he and Holliday are loud, obnoxious, and on the dumb side, but Crawford only sees those faults in Holliday, so he hires a reporter (William Holden) to "make a lady" out of her. Holden embarks on a mission to refine and educate Holliday and ends up showing her that she deserves better than Crawford; along the way he falls in love with her. She catches on quickly and reciprocates Holden's affections, and the two end up giving a bit of an education to Crawford. The film is based on a hit play and it does feel stagy, with very little of the action taking place outside of Crawford's hotel suite except for a couple of brief shots of Holden squiring Holliday around Washington tourist attractions. The acting all around is good, and I was especially impressed with Howard St. John as Crawford's lawyer, who doesn't like Crawford or the underhanded deals he gets involved in, but realizes it's too late for him to get out of his profession. The plot makes an interesting and explicit parallel between political and personal fascism, but it could stand some more development. Holden and Holliday, though both fine in their roles, don't really have a lot of chemistry as a romantic pair, and I can't imagine their characters staying together much past the final fadeout. [TCM]

TARNISHED ANGEL (1938)

Intermittently interesting B-melodrama which on the surface resembles Barbara Stanwyck's earlier THE MIRACLE WOMAN. The plot of this one actually has more potential, but the low budget and limited resources of the actors don't allow it to come to fruition. Sally Eilers stars as a chorus girl working as a hostess in a gambling club; we see her scamming boozing businessman Cecil Kellaway so he'll keep buying drinks and spending money at the tables. She also seems to be involved with the gangsterish club owner (Robert Gleckler), though the extent of her involvement is unclear. Lee Bowman is the rich man she left at the altar (we find out later that she did it at the request of Bowman's father); he's taken to drinking to forget the hurt. Ann Miller is Eilers' buddy, a singer at the club; Paul Guilfoyle, a bouncer, is Miller's boyfriend. When the club gets raided, Eilers, Miller, and Guilfoyle look for other jobs but are blacklisted by the law (Jonathan Hale is the obsessed cop who seems to spend all his time dogging them from city to city; rejected suitor Bowman also follows her around). The trio wind up partaking of free coffee and donuts at a Salvation Army-style storefront, and Eilers gets the bright idea of becoming a faith-healing evangelist, using planted fake cripples in the audience to cure. She's very successful and when Hale threatens to blow their cover, she admits to her sordid past, which gets her more publicity and makes her even more successful. Eilers gets on the good side of rich widow Alma Kruger who wants her to take over the running of a children's charity hospital, and Eilers is suddenly torn between doing good and keeping up the scam. The finale involves a attempted theft of Kruger's jewels, and a real cripple who finds himself cured by Eilers, making her question her entire situation. Eilers, who played mostly supporting roles in the mid-1930's, is good here, particularly when she adopts her husky-voiced evangelist persona. Miller and Guilfoyle provide strong support, but Bowman is saddled with a nothing role and he can't do much with it. Miller, in the days before she became an MGM musicals regular, gets one song and dance number, "It's the Doctor's Orders," which is unmemorable except when it rhymes "coma" with "diploma." [TCM]

CHANGE OF HEART (1934)

This is only the second film I've seen that co-stars Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor (DELICIOUS, from two years earlier being the other). They were a very popular movie team in the early sound era, but I cannot fathom what their appeal was. They're both moderately attractive, but they're both also rather wooden. By the mid-30's, Farrell was getting a bit long in the tooth to be playing a callow youth (he was 33 here, and looks 33 although he's playing a college graduate at the start of the film) and their appeal to audiences may have been wearing thin as this was their last movie together. The plot focuses on four friends just out of college (Farrell, Gaynor, Ginger Rogers, and James Dunn) who head off to New York City to find their dreams. The city kicks their asses at first, though they slowly find their career paths, and as they do, their romantic paths criss-cross--Farrell thinks he loves the saucy Rogers; she loves Dunn, sort of, but will take Farrell whom Gaynor pines after. Rogers leaves the band of friends to go gold digging among the Fifth Avenue playboys, driving Farrell to poverty and illness, but Gaynor sticks by him and nurses him back to health. The two agree that they're in love and plan to wed, but Rogers soon returns to threaten their future happiness. There is virtually no suspense regarding who will wind up with whom, and the only real pleasures to be had waiting for the inevitable ending are in the supporting performances, not just of Rogers and Dunn, but also of Beryl Mercer as the head of a salvage store where Gaynor finds employment while wating for a job in journalism, and Gustav von Seyffertitz, playing against type as a nice guy doctor. Watch closely for Jane Darwell, Mischa Auer, and Shirley Temple (who, unless I missed something, has no dialogue and only appears on screen for a moment). [FMC]

William Lundigan Double Feature:
I'D CLIMB THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN (1951)
DOWN AMONG THE SHELTERING PALMS (1953)

Like a number of actors who never quite made it to the first rank of movie stars, William Lundigan is someone who I think was much better in supporting roles or as a B-movie lead. I prefer him in 40's films such as SUNDAY PUNCH or SANTA FE TRAIL (also the later INFERNO), but in the early 50's, Fox starred him in a handful of A-movies, two of which I'm writing up today. I'D CLIMB THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN is based on an autobiographical novel from 1910 about the life of a "circuit rider's" wife, that is, the wife of a minister who travels around a circuit of churches in a geographic area, in this case, the hills of Northern Georgia. Susan Hayward is the city girl who marries Lundigan, the country preacher. While the two actors make a believable and appealing match, it's never explained how they happened to pair up in the first place. Hayward quickly gets the hang of hill country life and the rest of the episodic film follows the various joys and sorrows of the pair and their flock. Gene Lockhart is a storekeeper whose daughter (Barbara Bates, Phoebe from the last scene of ALL ABOUT EVE) is dating mildly wild youth Rory Calhoun; Lockhart's not happy about it, but since Lundigan likes the boy, we know that by the end of the film, Dad will come around. Alexander Knox plays an outcast atheist who won't allow his kids to attend church, but a Christmas charity event opens his mind a bit. There are tragedies along the way: a boy drowns during a Sunday school picnic, one character loses a baby, and during a flu epidemic which takes several lives, Hayward has a crisis of faith and almost goes back to the big city. Lynn Bari has a small role as a big city gal who sets her cap for Lundigan by getting him to give her one-on-one bible lessons, until Hayward breaks it up and sends Bari packing. Veteran character actress Ruth Donnelly appears as a neighbor. Some of the lovely exterior scenes were shot on location in Georgia. Lundigan gives a solid and believable performance. [FMC]

DOWN AMONG THE SHELTERING PALMS doesn't fare as well; it comes off as a second-rate mix of elements of South Pacific and Teahouse of the August Moon. In the months after WWII, a group of GIs stationed in the Pacific are anxious to get home, but instead find themselves put in charge of occupying tiny Midi Island. The staggering number of attractive native women ("50 Dorothy Lamours!" yells one soldier when he arrives) puts the men in a good mood at first, but after strict non-fraternization rules come down, frustration sets in. Lundigan is the captain in charge, David Wayne is his sidekick, and Jane Greer is the lovely daughter of a missionary, who is given an office job and arouses the pent-up passions of the men. Early in the movie, Greer sings for the entertainment of the men, but later, it's startling when Lundigan and Wayne burst out in song in the middle of a conversation. There are a few other songs here and there, but the movie doesn't commit to being a musical. Mitzi Gaynor, a native woman who is given to Lundigan as a gift (by native chief Billy Gilbert) gets a couple of numbers, and Gloria DeHaven, as a conniving reporter, sings "All of Me." Gene Lockhart is fine as the missionary, famous talk show host Jack Paar has a small role as a GI, and Alvin Greenman (Alfred the janitor in Miracle on 34th Street) has a nice comic turn as a secretary. George Nader, who would briefly be a Hollywood glamour boy in the late 50's, and Lyle Talbot are credited with small roles, but I didn't notice either one, though I did see Lee Marvin in a one-line bit. Lundigan seems at sea here, like he's uncomfortable in the part, and though it's not a terrible movie, there's no real reason to search this one out. [FMC]

INFERNO (1953)

If there was a genre called "desert noir," this melodrama would be its crowning gem. As it is, many reviewers call this one of the best 3-D movies ever made. Unfortunately, I've only seen it in "flat" format, but it's still a good solid thriller. The movie begins smack in the middle of the action, with very little backstory presented: millionaire Robert Ryan has been left to die in the desert, with a broken leg and almost no food, by his wife, Rhonda Fleming, and her lover, William Lundigan. The first half of the film cuts back and forth between Ryan, as he hobbles through the desert looking for help, and the two lovers who bide their time as their plan to lead the police astray works for a while. Because Ryan, who is apparently an unlikable son-of-a-bitch, has a habit of vanishing for days at a time, no one misses him for several days; by the time his business partners get worried and Fleming misdirects the searchers, the two assume that Ryan will be long dead. However, the hubby proves to be quite resourceful, able to splint his leg, dig for water, and hunt small animals for food; these scenes are exciting at first, but get to be a bit tiring, as least partly because virtually all of Ryan's dialogue is delivered as voiceover interior monologue and lacks immediacy. The illicit lovers stay apart until the rains come, when they assume that any tracks they've left will be obliterated, then they fuck like bunnies (or so we are to assume given their hungry embrace as the storm arrives). Soon, Lundigan flies out to the scene of the crime, doesn't see a corpse, and realizes that Ryan may still be alive, leading to the tense finale with all three stuck in the desert and a doozy of a fistfight between Ryan and Lundigan in a burning cabin. Unlike in some 3-D films, the gimmicky technique isn't terribly obvious until the end, when a lit lantern is thrown at the camera, and the cabin's flaming ceiling collapses right in the viewer's face. Ryan is his usual rugged self; Fleming, whom I've not seen much of, is quite good as the sexy femme fatale; the blandly handsome Lundigan does a nice job in the thankless role of the vacant lover whom you know from the beginning will probably not get out of the triangle alive. The even more handsome Carl Betz, best known as Donna Reed's husband on her early 60s sitcom, has a small role as a sheriff, and Henry Hull plays a grizzled old prospector who plays an important role near the end. I would have liked a bit more background on all three characters; as it is, we have no idea whether the lovers planned Ryan's injury, or improvised and took advantage of an unplanned accident. We also never see evidence of Ryan's unpleasant personality, which I guess helps get us on his side fairly quickly. I had never heard of this film before I ran across its description on our onscreen cable guide, and given my anti-50s bias, I almost skipped it, but I'm glad I didn't. Now if Fox would put it out on DVD, in 3-D, with the cool glasses... [FMC]

SUNDAY PUNCH (1942)

Likeable second-feature starring my latest B-movie fave William Lundigan (see APACHE TRAIL). Set in Brooklyn ("the melting plot of the world," according to the opening narration), the predictable story centers on the denizens of a boarding house that caters strictly to boxers in training, and therefore, according to the rules set down by J. Carroll Naish, no dames allowed!--except for Ma (Connie Gilchrist) who runs the house and looks after the boys. The trouble starts when Gilchrist lets her visiting niece (Jean Rogers) sneak into the place; she's a chorus girl who hasn't had any real breaks yet and when Gilchrist decides the girl is getting a bit jaded, she insists that Rogers stay with her for a while. The boxers come to accept her, and one (Lundigan), who is considering entering medical school, falls for her. However, the young Swedish janitor (Dan Dailey) is also enamored of Rogers, and when it's discovered that the untutored Daily has some raw boxing talent (a "Sunday punch," which apparently is a wild knockout swing), he is taken up by aging manager Guy Kibbee. Dailey and Lundigan become relatively friendly rivals in and out of the ring, but when Rogers' career takes off, the rivalry heats up, leading to a climactic bout with Rogers in the audience. She's rooting for Dailey because she thinks that if Lundigan loses, he would go back to school and maybe settle down with her. There are few surprises in the storyline, but the colorful characters are engaging, as are the actors playing them. The two leading men are both quirkily handsome, and do OK in the ring, though both seem a little too lightweight to be playing scrappy boxers. Sam Levene is amusing as the chief trainer, and Leo Gorcey and Rags Ragland make for colorful support. Rogers is the weak link; she looks fine but is not convincing as a world-weary would-be gold digger. Dane Clark and Ava Gardner, in their pre-star days, have bit parts. I quite enjoyed this sweet-natured comedy. [TCM]

GAMBLING ON THE HIGH SEAS (1940)

Apparently, this is a remake of a 30's Bette Davis vehicle called SPECIAL AGENT which I have not seen. Taken on its own, it's a typically well-produced Warners B-movie, but not quite as enjoyable as others of its ilk; it stumbles in attempting to cram at least 90 minutes worth of plot into a movie that's only 54 minutes long, so while the narrative moves along at a fast clip, it winds up consisting mostly of short dialogue-heavy scenes of exposition with virtually no action until the last ten minutes. Because of a crackdown on gambling, mobster Gilbert Roland takes his operations to the sea on the SS Sylvania, just beyond the three-mile limit. When one of Roland's associates is caught embezzling, he winds up dead, triggering a desperate attempt by the law to get Roland any way they can. Although the gambling ship is beyond their grasp, if they can prove that the games are rigged, they can get him behind bars. Enterprising reporter Wayne Morris, who has a relatively friendly relationship with Roland, agrees to help the cops, and he gets his own help from Roland's secretary, Jane Wyman. He snaps pictures of the rigged games, but the case collapses when Roland's hired goons kidnap Wyman so she can't testify. Naturally, the good guys win out in the end. I like Wyman in her early spunky blond roles, and Morris always makes a solid, handsome B-movie hero, but the two don't get much of a chance to develop chemistry because so much focus is on the heavy plotting at the expense of characterization. Way too much information is conveyed through close-ups of newspaper headlines; this would be a good movie to show beginning writing students since it falters by telling rather than showing. Still, the hour passes quickly and Morris, Wyman, and Roland are all fine; Wyman even survives having to deliver the old cliche, "It looks like curtains!" Also in the cast are John Litel as the D.A., Roger Pryor as one of Roland's doomed associates, and George Reeves in a one-line part as a reporter calling in a scoop. [TCM]

BACK PAY (1930)

It's taken for granted today that the coming of sound films ruined many an actor's career. John Gilbert is the most notable example, though it has been argued in retrospect that the quality of his voice and his acting didn't have as much to do with his decline as a general desire on his studio's part to make a clean sweep of their starring slate. This movie, however, certainly serves as evidence that some actors were indeed unable to make the jump from silent style to sound style. Corrine Griffith made over 50 movies between 1916 and 1928, but her career faltered in sound movies; she only made a handful of them before retiring in 1932, and this was her next-to-last one. Her voice is OK (though unfortunately she is given one song at the very beginning of the film, and she performs it like it's sheer torture for her), but she gives a wooden and unappealing performance. She plays a small-town girl who, though still in love with her beau (unambitious department store accountant Grant Withers), is itching for something bigger, in part to get away from her frowzy, piggish relatives. When obnoxious salesman Hallam Cooley offers to take her off to the big city, she goes with him and soon moves through a string of men until she winds up comfortably kept by businessman Montagu Love. Years later, during a quick visit to her hometown, she runs into Withers again and they have a chat during which it becomes clear that there is still a spark between them. He goes off to war, gets gassed and goes blind, and returns home. Griffith, knowing Withers only has a few weeks to live, gets permission from her terribly understanding sugar daddy to marry him and take care of him during his last days. When he dies, he does it like Ali McGraw in LOVE STORY, looking quite healthy, as the Armistice is celebrated in the streets outside his window. Though the movie is bearable, it feels awfully long for its 55-minute running time. Griffith is only part of the problem; the narrative is not fleshed out very well. The most interesting scene in the movie juxtaposes Griffith and Love at a high society party with Withers suffering on the battlefield. The title comes from a line of hers at the party: "If the wages of sin is death, I've got a lot of back pay coming." The problem is that the movie never really shows her "sinning" or its consequences on her; she never looks dissolute or miserable, and when she marries Withers, it seems more like a slightly unpleasant job than a real sacrifice. No attempt is made at any kind of period atmosphere, so when WWI rolls around, it's startlingly out of the blue. Louise Beavers is quite chipper in a small role as Griffith's maid. [TCM]

THE ADVENTURES OF MARCO POLO (1938)

I'm on the fence about Gary Cooper. Generally, I think he's fine, but rarely do I find him to better than that. For me, he's at his best in lively adventure films, and he's pretty much the best thing about this adventure movie, which I assume is an almost totally fictional version of the life of the title explorer. In 13th century Venice, Marco (Cooper) is sent by his father to China to meet with warlord and emperor Kublai Kahn (George Barbier) in hopes of establishing safe trade routes. Along the way, he is introduced to pasta, which old sage H.B. Warner calls "spaghet," and fireworks. Once there, he ingratiates himself with Kahn and falls for his daughter, the Princess Kukachin (Sigrid Gurie), much to the dismay of the slimy Ahmed (Basil Rathbone), who makes a point of showing Polo his torture room filled with hungry vultures kept chained to the wall until they're needed. Polo is sent by Kahn to be a spy in the camp of rebel leader Kaidu (Alan Hale) where he gets romantically entangled with Kaidu's wife (Binnie Barnes), an entanglement which Kaidu encourages as it keeps her occupied while he has his own affairs. Ultimately, Kahn is defeated in his attempt to invade Japan and on his return to court, discovers that Ahmed has engineered a coup which assures him the princess's hand. Not to worry, though, because Polo has gotten Kaidu and his army to carry off a revolt against Ahmed. Along the way, Polo is inspired to put the children's fireworks he'd seen earlier to good use as an explosive and Ahmed winds up falling to his death in his own torture room, in a pit of hungry panthers. Parts of this have the feel of a good light-hearted boy's adventure movie, and the role of hero fits Cooper well, but the supporting cast leaves something to be desired. Rathbone and Hale are fine, but Ernest Truex doesn't have the chops to play Polo's oafish sidekick, Gurie is an uninspiring heroine, and Barbier does not make a particularly powerful Kahn--despite his heavy make-up, I kept thinking of his persona as the bumbling doctor in THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER. Robert Grieg is a chamberlain with extraordinarily long fingernails, and Lana Turner has a small role as Barnes's handmaiden. [TCM]

MY REPUTATION (1946)

A so-so soap opera with all concerned operating at about half-speed. Barbara Stanwyck, in a role that might have suited Bette Davis better, plays a woman with two sons who was recently widowed (although the movie is set in 1942, her husband's death is not war-related). Her meddling mother (Lucile Watson) who herself has more or less remained in mourning for years after the death of her own husband, is upset that Stanwyck wants to doff her black clothes so quickly. Stanwyck is clearly interested in having a romantic life again, though not with oafish family friend Jerome Cowan, who comes on to her in the car. Her buddy Eve Arden takes her on a skiing trip and, when she has a minor accident on the slopes, George Brent comes swooping in to help her. He's a homefront Army major on vacation and eventually the two hit it off; even though she's not quite ready to commit to a relationship, they do begin dating, which starts the winds of scandal brewing among her friends. When he is called up for overseas duty on New Year's Eve, she decides on the spur of the moment to go off to New York to spend his last couple of days with him (implying an intimate overnight stay), and this causes her sons to run away. Things are resolved with the unexpectedly compassionate help of Watson, though a 21st century audience might not be happy with the Production Code outcome. Stanwyck is OK, coming off best in her teary moments; Brent is as wooden as usual, though he has just enough surface charm so that we can believe that Stanwyck might fall for him, particularly over the slimy Cowan and the safe but boring lawyer, Warner Anderson. Bobby Cooper and Scotty Beckett are fine as the kids, and John Ridgely has a small role as Arden's husband. My favorite performances are from the two "dragon ladies" in the cast: Watson as the opinionated mother (who has a great Christmas Eve scene as she sneaks into Stanwyck's kitchen and discovers to her dismay that Brent has been accepted into the family circle) and, in a much smaller role, Cecil Cunningham as a gossipy friend. Sadly, Arden doesn't have nearly enough to do except to stand solidly by Stanwyck. [TCM]

APARTMENT FOR PEGGY (1948)

A charming domestic comedy involving two alumni from MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET: the director, George Seaton, and the star, Edmumd Gwenn. The humor is leavened a bit with some dark shades, which gives the movie a distinctive edge. It uses the post-WWII GI college boom and simultaneous housing shortage as plot points, which may confuse current viewers a bit. Gwenn plays a college professor who is contemplating suicide because he's being forced into retirement. On a chilly winter afternoon while feeding birds on a park bench, he meets up with chatty young Jeanne Crain, wife of GI student William Holden, who tells Gwenn how desperate they are for housing, especially with a baby on the way. Gwenn agrees to put in a good word for her with college administrator Gene Lockhart, and Lockhart decides to place the couple in Gwenn's attic, which Crain re-makes into a cozy little apartment. Of course, Gwenn is a bit cold about the whole thing at first, but eventually he warms to them, agreeing to teach an informal class for the GI wives who don't want to feel left behind by their husbands, and even giving up the idea of killing himself. There are complications: Crain suffers a miscarriage; Holden decides he doesn't want to wait for a degree and drops out to take a job at a used car dealership; Gwenn tries to talk him into coming back to school, and when he thinks he's failed, he returns to his suicidal ways, but all things are put right in the end. Much of the charm of the film is in its details: Crain is forever making up statistics to argue her side of any point; Gwenn cusses by reeling off the names of the books of the Bible; in the one moment that made me laugh out loud, Gwenn tells a bad joke to his class of housewives and Lockhart gives the camera a wonderful split-second reaction. I loved the use of the beautiful Irish song, "I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls" in a couple of scenes. [FMC]

SON OF INDIA (1931)

Like DAYBREAK (see below), another Jacques Feyder romantic drama with Ramon Novarro as an exotic romancer. In this one, set in India, he's Karim, a young man traveling to Bombay with his father, an entourage, and some valuable jewels. Novarro sees a holy man meditating at the edge of a cliff and, thinking he's in danger of falling, grabs him to save his life. The holy man explains he was not in danger, but he still expesses gratitude to the lad, tells him that gratitude is the highest command, and says that their paths will cross again. Sure enough, when a gang of bandits ambush the travelers, the holy man reappears and saves Novarro's life by hiding him. Unfortunately, Novarro's father is killed, and the bandits get everything except one incredibly valuable diamond. Once in Bombay, the grimy and destitute Novarro tries to sell the gem, only to have the jewel dealer try to cheat him out of it by claiming that Novarro stole the diamond from him. A British man (Conrad Nagel) who witnessed the transaction shows up just in the nick of time and Novarro is freed. Remembering the words of the holy man, he declares himself forever in Nagel's debt. The story skips ahead many years as Novarro, now the wealthiest merchant in India, meets up with visiting Brit Madge Evans at a polo game. They are smitten with each other and, despite the protestations of her guardian (Marjorie Rambeau), she sneaks off with him on an illicit jungle trip. The aunt calls her brother in to deal with the situation, and of course he turns out to be Nagel, the man to whom Novarro remains in debt. Unlike DAYBREAK, the ending to this one is not so happy, though the sad outcome is redeemed somewhat by the return of the holy man who tells Novarro that earthly passions destroy love and the two are better off separated. Once again, Novarro makes an interesting "exotic other" romantic lead, and Feyder directs rather blandly. Also with C. Aubrey Smith and, in a tiny bit, Ray Milland. [TCM]

DAYBREAK (1931)

A romantic melodrama based on a novel by Arthur Schnitzler, who also wrote the novel on which Stanley Kubrick's EYES WIDE SHUT was based. The film begins with a young Austrian soldier being encouraged by his commander, C. Aubrey Smith, to commit suicide because he cannot meet a "debt of honor." He does indeed kill himself, in a rather startling scene showing his hand hanging limply out of a bathtub with a large puddle of blood forming beneath it. We then see Smith dealing more charitably with his nephew, the handsome and callow soldier Ramon Novarro (see right); Smith agrees to pay off the boy's debts but pressures him to marry the respectable but boring Karen Morley. At his engagement party, Novarro and his buddies sneak off to a fancy club (which seems to be the most sophisticated brothel in existence) and he meets the lovely but quiet Helen Chandler, a music teacher who is at the party only to deliver a manuscript to Jean Hersholt, an overbearing cad who tries to take advantage of Chandler. Novarro saves her from his attentions and the two go out for a romantic night on the town, ending at her place. The next morning, he leaves money for her and she suddenly realizes he has made a whore out of her. In anger, she goes back to the rich Hersholt and lets him have his way with her. When Novarro meets up with her some time later, she is an experienced mistress but is clearly unhappy with her position. At the gaming tables trying to win enough money to pay a debt, Novarro gambles with Hersholt and loses to him, but leaves with Chandler. Again, they spend the night and this time, she leaves *him* some money. Of course, he won't accept it and goes back to his barracks prepared to kill himself as the honorable way out. Will his uncle let him off the hook? And if he does, will Chandler take him back? Much of the story is indeed light in tone, but still the all-around happy ending rings false, especially the ludicrous finale with Novarro, having left the army, kissing the blissful Chandler who has returned to her Marian-the-librarian piano-teacher career. The casual sexual relationships are all treated openly in this pre-Code film, and there's a strange scene involving Novarro's manservant prancing about in Novarro's underwear. Chandler is convincing as the delicate innocent who grows up in a hurry; Novarro is equally good in his early scenes but his change is not played as effectively. Directed rather plainly by Jacques Feyder, known for his later French classic CARNIVAL IN FLANDERS. [TCM]