THE PURPLE HEART (1944)

A fairly effective WWII propaganda film which fictionalizes the aftermath of an actual event, the Doolittle bombing raid on Tokyo in 1942. Eight fliers who bail out of damaged planes over China are captured by the Japanese and put on trial, against the rules of the Geneva Convention, on charges of murder (for supposedly deliberately bombing schools and hospitals). What the Japanese really want out of the men is information about how they got to Tokyo. They suspect that the Americans came from a carrier, in which case the Japanese Navy will be in trouble for letting it through "impenetrable" waters, but the Japanese also suspect that they could have come from bases in China or Russia. We know that they came from the carrier Hornet, but the men vow not to tell the truth and they keep their vow, despite instances of torture and promises of leniency. In the end, the prosecuting general (Richard Loo) commits hari-kari in the courtroom and the men are marched off to execution, though in reality, four of them managed to survive the war. This is not a traditional war film (no scenes of battle) nor is it really a courtroom drama (at least half of the film takes place in the men's cell, with occasional flashbacks and reveries). Its main purpose does indeed seem to be to serve as homefront propaganda, to remind us about the sacrifices our soliders were called upon to make. In that, it mostly succeeds, though the last shot of the men marching down the prison hallway in step to "Battle Hymn of the Republic" is a bit much. The acting is all fine: Dana Andrews is the stolid but fully human captain, and among the other prisoners are Farley Granger, Richard Conte, Charles Russell, and Don Barry. Benson Fong, who did lots of TV in the 60's and 70's, has a small but juicy part as a Chinese man who is ashamed of his father's betrayal of the pilots. The strangest scene is when the fall of Corregidor is announced in the courtroom; the military men immediately jump to their feet and do an odd ritual dance with their swords. The most over-the-top scene, aside from the ending, is when one of the pilots stares out of the barred window into the clouds and hears his girlfriend recite "How Do I Love Thee?" [FMC]

TITANIC (1943)

Before Leonardo and Kate braved the disaster, even before Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck did the same, there was this German-made film which, while lacking a romantic couple at its center, and lacking even any fully-rounded characters, manages to be interesting from a propaganda viewpoint. In this version, made in the middle of WWII, the tragic tale of the sinking of the biggest ship in the world isn't a story of overarching pride but of English greed. In contrast to the more familiar versions of this story, this film has one main villain: Bruce Ismay, head of the White Star shipping line. His attempt to break speed records from England to New York comes not out of some amorphous desire to get in the history books, but out of a concrete attempt to raise the prices of stock shares in the company. Other American and British capitalists, such as John Jacob Astor, are fellow bad guys with no redeeming qualities. There are a couple of romances, or more precisely, a romance and a half, presented as subplots. The main one involves a member of the ship's band and a young woman who works as a maid on the ship. The half-romance involves a rich Russian countess (Sybille Schmitz) who is being coldly courted, for her money alone, by Ismay, but who discovers during the voyage that she's broke. She runs into Peterson (Hans Nielsen), the only German officer among the seamen (and therefore the only unambiguously good guy in the movie), a man with whom she had some kind of relationship in the past. He is the only crew member to register a complaint about the ship speeding through potentially dangerous drift ice (the point is made that the captain, who technically had the authority to do as he liked, had reservations but ultimately gave in to greedy Ismay's wishes), and his selfless example on board inspires Schmitz to behave in a noble fashion as the ship sinks. As in the James Cameron film, the class split between the rich (upper decks) and the poor (below, in steerage), is highlighted (both using folk dancing). The scenes of the ship sinking are serviceable for the era in which the film was produced, but some of the effects are awfully sloppy--the line between the foreground, with the passengers in lifeboats, and the background, with the ship sinking, is visible and quite shaky. The finale is a brief scene in a courtroom where Ismay is on trial for negligence; despite Peterson's testimony, the responsibility for the disaster is placed on the (dead) captain, leading to a final crawl on screen which states that "the death of 1500 people remains unatoned, an eternal condemnation of England's quest for profit." Supposedly, some of the footage of the sinking was re-used in the 1958 A NIGHT TO REMEMBER. Interesting, if largely uninvolving. [TCM]

UPPERWORLD (1934)

Fairly interesting romantic melodrama, with a predictable plot made palatable by good performances all around. Warren William plays a railroad magnate on the verge of completing an important merger, Mary Astor is his wife, and Dickie Moore is their young son. William, despite his business responsibilities, tries to spend as much time with his family as he can, but he finds Astor slipping away, not to another man, but to her socialite life. Feeling lonely and sorry for himself while out on a joy ride in his motorboat, he rescues a young swimmer (Ginger Rogers) who turns out to be a charming chorus girl. They have an apparently innocent afternoon together and later, when Astor is too busy to join William in an anniversary dinner, he renews his friendship with Rogers when he finds her singing and dancing in a Broadway revue. They drift into a casual affair that ends abruptly when Roger's producer and lover (J. Carroll Naish) tries to blackmail William with love letters he wrote to Rogers. During a confrontation, Naish tries to shoot William, but Rogers leaps in front of him and takes the bullet; William shoots Naish dead and leaves the scene, but circumstances catch up with him and he is tried for murder. The messy headlines derail his merger and threaten to end his marriage, but (Spoiler Alert!!) in a rushed and somewhat implausible finale, William is found innocent by reason of self-defense and the two go off to Europe for a healing second honeymoon.

William, Rogers, and Astor all make this worth sitting through. I like the fact that all three characters are presented in ambiguous shades of gray rather than black and white. For example, William's "fall" with Rogers comes off realistically; they're not in love with each other, but they take obvious joy in each other's company--in this year when the Production Code took effect, their relationship is portrayed as technically platonic, but it doesn't take much reading between the lines to assume a physical affair is taking place, and this reading makes more sense plotwise. Astor doesn't come off as a brittle, unfeeling bitch; in fact, she presents an interesting rationale for her behavior, telling William that social success is for women what business success is for men. There are many little gems in the narrative and the dialogue. Andy Devine, as William's chauffer, tells his boss that he hangs around the public library because it's a good place to meet "girls with ideas." Robert Greig, as the butler, notes that when his wife left him, he consoled himself "with a cup of tea and a chambermaid." Rogers gets a full-fledged musical number, the mildly naughty "Shake Your Powder Puff," and there's a delightful moment with Rogers and William singing "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" during an afternoon tete-a-tete. Sidney Toler plays a cop with a (justifiable) grudge against William, and John Qualen has a nice bit as a janitor in Rogers' building. Despite its plotting problems, this is well worth seeing if you're a fan of the era. [TCM]

BLITHE SPIRIT (1945)

A Noel Coward comedy transferred faithfully to the screen, perhaps a bit too faithfully, since it winds up feeling a little stagy and sluggish. Rex Harrison is an author writing a book on spiritualism and he invites a noted but rather ditzy medium (Margaret Rutherford) to a small dinner party to get some material, but during a seance, she actually manages to conjure up the ghost of Harrison's first wife (Kay Hammond) who stays around to haunt him. No one else can see the spirit, so Harrison's current wife (Constance Cummings) is first perplexed and then annoyed at his odd behavior. Hammond eventually attempts to kill Harrison by tampering with his car so he'll have a fatal accident and join her in the afterlife, but instead it's Cummings who ends up dead, so Harrison soon has two bitchy ghosts in the house. Rutherford winds up unable to intervene, and a happy ending looks elusive until another death occurs, providing at least an ending, a funny one if not a particularly happy one for anyone involved. The actors are all fine, especially Rutherford who originated the role of the medium on stage and uses all kinds of upstaging business to shine here. The colors are striking, especially the green used for the ghosts; the movie is not a special effects extravaganza by any means, though the few effects used are fine. At around 100 minutes, the film feels too long, especially in its final section, and perhaps David Lean was not the best director for such breezy material, but it's worth seeing if for no other reason than to see the delightful Rutherford (known today for her Miss Marple movies of the early 60's) ham it up. [VHS]

WE WERE DANCING (1942)

One of Norma Shearer's last movies, and a sad one to come at the end of a solid career. The problem has nothing to do with Shearer, who is fine; the movie is sunk by weak material (an adaptation of two short plays by Noel Coward which do not meld together very well) and bad timing (the high society/screwball trappings were out of date by the beginning of WWII). Shearer plays a Polish countess (without a trace of an accent) living in America and apparently on the verge of becoming down-and-out, or at least as down-and-out as former royalty ever gets in Hollywood movies. Melvyn Douglas is a Viennese "professional guest" (also accent-free) who gets along by being a charming houseguest in the homes of rich people. The two meet cute at a party the night before Shearer's wedding to rich Lee Bowman. The opening of the film is, in fact, quite fun: without knowing anything in the way of context, we see Douglas grab Shearer, a total stranger to him, on a moonlit patio and dance with her. Rather improbably, she is (almost literally) swept off her feet and agrees to run off and marry him that night. The two get by for a time as "guests," but the fact that they are a couple makes them less interesting to the big-city rich and famous and they wind up scraping the bottom of the barrel, accepting invitations from Midwest hoity-toitys (horrors!). After she threatens to leave him, he finally decides they should head to New York to find honest work, but one last house party tempts him, and there he meets up with an old flame, Gail Patrick, with whom he is caught in the closet doing some canoodling. Up to this point, the movie has been light and fun, but from here on in, it's like watching paint dry. In a nutshell, they divorce, he schemes to get her back, and, by golly, he *does*. This would have been much more fun as a Lubitsch pre-Code film (it has touches that bring to mind TROUBLE IN PARADISE), but the director, Robert Z. Leonard, is no Lubitsch. Shearer is an asset, but Douglas isn't charming enough by half; in fact, though Bowman is a rather lightweight actor, I think things would have worked much better if they had switched parts. After the halfway point, my sympathies were with Bowman and never went back to Douglas, so the "happy" ending, with Shearer and Douglas once again dancing off in each other's arms, was not particularly happy for me. Familiar faces in the supporting cast helped me stick with it: Marjorie Main as a judge, Reginald Owen as Bowman's uncle, Alan Mowbray as another professional guest, Connie Gilchrist as one of the Midwestern hostesses, and Florence Bates and Norma Varden in small speaking roles. The "dancing" part of the movie came from one Coward playlet, and the guests plot from another; as separate short episodes, they might have worked, but stuck unnaturally together, they don't. [TCM]

FLYING FORTRESS (1942)

Weak propaganda film with a cliched storyline: rich playboy wrecks people's lives but redeems himself by becoming a war hero. Like other films of its era which were shot before the U.S. officially entered the war, the hero has to get into the fighting through a back door, in this case, via the Royal Canadian Air Force. The playboy, Richard Greene, is an plane enthusiast, and the film begins with a drunken Greene, flying a small plane with his hired pilot in the back seat, causing an accident which kills a passenger. The pilot, who has the clever nickname "Sky" (Donald Stewart), is legally considered at fault since the flight was his responsibility, and he loses his license. His reporter sister, Carla Lehmann, decides to get the goods on Greene and begins dating him under false pretenses, then actually falls in love with him, but is rejected when Greene learns her real identity. Next, in a rather unmotivated move, Greene joins up to ferry American B-17's (the Fortresses of the title) over to England for the war effort. Stewart happens to be his boss and when they wind up overseas, who should they run into but Lehmann, who is still in love with Greene. After experiencing an air raid and feeling helpless, the two men join the RCAF and the film climaxes with a bombing raid over Berlin in which Greene rather improbably saves the day by climbing out on the wing of the plane to extinguish a fire.

Actually, the film had potential, but editing has made hash out of the plotline and characters; Halliwell lists the film with a running time of 108 minutes in Great Britain, but here it was trimmed to 68 (to serve as a second feature, no doubt) so important plot details and character motivations have vanished. Greene, most famous as the TV Robin Hood of the late 50's, is handsome and does the B-movie hero thing fairly well; the other supporting players are just adequate, including Betty Stockfeld as a titled "Lady" slumming amongst the hoi polloi to do her thing for the war and providing some romance for sidekick Stewart. Basil Radford, a delightful supporting actor in films like THE LADY VANISHES and NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH, has little to do in a small role but still manages to outshine everyone else. The flag-waving finale, with the words of Churchill intoned over newsreel footage, ignores the outcomes of the characters. There is some impressive footage of bombing raids, but it's mixed with some truly wretched special effects. The British cut of this film might be worth seeing, but the current print is of interest only for die-hard buffs of the era. [TCM]

KEPT HUSBANDS (1931)

A fairly average pre-Code romantic drama; the main reason for watching this is Joel McCrea, the primary "kept husband" of the title. He's a working class guy and former college football star currently in the employ of steel magnate Robert McQuade. When McCrea heroically saves some fellow workers from a potentially fatal accident, the boss asks him to dinner where he attracts the attention of McQuade's daughter, Dorothy Mackaill, who bets her father that she can rope him into marriage in four weeks, and she does, though she takes the unorthdox step (for the era) of proposing to him. He then becomes a "kept" husband, as Mackaill intends to have them essentially live comfortably off of her family. She keeps him in Europe on their honeymoon for weeks, with a promise from her father that he will give McCrea a raise and also give her a secret allowance that will let her live in the manner to which she has become accustomed. McCrea becomes a vice-president with essentially no duties, leaving him free to learn how play bridge during his office hours (in a funny scene with his equally bored secretary). Soon, however, McCrea gets a chance to work on a real project and he goes at it gung-ho, much to the irritation of his wife who is tempted to stray into an affair with a dissipated pal. McCrea decides to leave her, and to resign as "kept vice-president," but McCrea's mom (Mary Carr), a salt-of-the-earth type, advises him that all husbands are kept one way or another, whether by money or love; she pushes him to try again and the two finally reconcile, this time with McCrea re-proposing to her, getting to set things right symbolically by the rigid gender codes of the time. The incredibly young and comely McCrea seems completely natural, but next to him Mackaill is too mannered and brittle; she might have come off as an early feminist, but instead she's just a spoiled "rich bitch" whom we know will be "humanized" in the end, and our sympathies go to McCrea, no matter how we feel about the gender issues under consideration. Ned Sparks lends some nice comic relief as a former work buddy of McCrea's who lives in Carr's house, although here a little of him goes a long way. Freeman Wood has a very small role as a passive kept husband who is presented a couple of times in the background as a warning of what McCrea might heading for. McCrea fans will love this one, but others can take a pass. [TCM]

GUADALCANAL DIARY (1943)

One of the best of the early WWII films, perhaps partly because it's centered on an actual event, the first major ground offensive by American troops. The film is based on a book by a journalist who was with the first group of Marines who invaded Guadalcanal, a small island in the Solomon Island chain, and though I haven't read the book, the film does stay true to the journalistic form, with voice-over narration and an episodic nature. We begin observing the group of new troops on a ship somewhere in the South Pacific, waiting for action. It became a cliche for movie troops to be a varied bunch of stereotypes, and this is most likely one of the movies responsible for the development of that cliche, but the types are worn lightly and rarely feel overdone (despite the fact that the very first line of dialogue involves a Jewish man singing "Rock of Ages" at a Sunday morning service). Ostensibly, the main character of the film is the stolid Irish chaplain (Preston Foster), but William Bendix, as the pug from Brooklyn (nicknamed "Brooklyn"), gets the most screen time. Others we get to know include the relatively seasoned sergeant Lloyd Nolan, intellectual Richard Conte, Latino Anthony Quinn, and baby-faced teenager Richard Jaeckel--the narrating reporter (Reed Hadley) is only seen occasionally. The opening 20 minutes sets up a nice, casual intimacy among the men, who don't mind napping on each other's shoulders or jitterbugging with each other. Their landing on the island, which has a Japanese-built airstrip that the Americans would dearly love to occupy, is easy as there is virtually no resistance, but when a large group of men attempt to invade a beach at the mouth of the Matanikau River, they are slaughtered with only one soldier, Quinn, able to swim back to safety. He can only watch as the Japanese soldiers brutally bayonet the American corpses littering the beach. Jaeckel, despite being warned, tries to steal a sword from a dead Japanese only to wind up getting wounded by a nearby sniper; the payoff occurs later when the lad uses a similar trick on the enemy. The battle scenes are well done, though not nearly as graphic as they would be in later movies, and in general, the conditions have clearly been sanitized for the homefront viewers; for example, there is very little hint of the malaria that ravaged the men in real life. Still, we do get a strong sense of how the men change over the course of their ordeal, especially at the end when the weary Marines greet their Army replacements. Crusty old Lionel Stander, who I think was a crusty old man even in his youth, has a small role. Not the most realistic war picture, but definitely recommended. [DVD]

THE CONSPIRATORS (1944)

A CASABLANCA knockoff that's not bad, but would be a whole lot better if it wasn't always reminding us that it supposed to be a CASABLANCA knockoff. Paul Henreid is a Dutch resistance fighter known as the Flying Dutchman on his way out of Europe to England, spending an enforced 2-day layover in neutral Lisbon (not nearly as exotic as Vichy Casablanca) where he is supposed to meet up with a local underground figure. Hedy Lamarr, also in the resistance, witnesses a man she has just passed information to get shot in an alleyway, so she ducks into the Cafe Imperoli (way fancier and not nearly as fun as Rick's) and runs into Henreid. After this, the events happen fast and furiously, with lots of sound and fury but not signifying much. Sydney Greenstreet, the head of the local underground group, suspects that one of his associates is a double agent. Is it Peter Lorre, the only one with more than a couple lines of dialogue? And what's going on with Lamarr's "secret" husband (Victor Francen), a German diplomat?; he may be a Nazi but he also managed to get Lamarr out of Dachau and might be a closet member of the Resistance. Some elements that seem designed to conjure up CASABLANCA include a deadly dust-up in the streets over identity papers, a song sung in a club that affects the listeners (not patriotically but sentimentally), and a roulette game called in French. The pace of the movie never flags, but the lack of chemistry and relative listlessness of the leading duo, particularly when compared to Bogart and Bergman, cause much of the film to feel flat. The finale at a seaside casino is filled with action but is awfully convoluted. Most of the pleasures here are in the noir-inflected cinematography and the supporting players. Greenstreet effortlessly steals every scene he's in, and it's nice to see him as a good guy; Francen does a fine job keeping us in the dark about his ultimate sympathies, and Joseph Calleia does an OK turn as a Claude Rains-ish cop. Steven Geray and Kurt Katch, as the other underground members, don't have many lines, but add atmosphere as they skulk in the shadows. Supposedly Marcel Dalio, the croupier from CASABLANCA, is also the croupier here, but I didn't notice him. [TCM]

TOO MANY GIRLS (1940)

A glossy college musical from RKO which, while not up to the standards of the studio's Astaire/Rogers films, and definitely no GOOD NEWS, is still watchable and fun. The movie never quite lives up to its opening minutes, a clever pre-credit shot of a bunch of football players singing a song about hating the spring because they're "Heroes in the Fall." The story proper begins at a little country inn called the Hunted Stag (there's a nice gag about a visitor looking for the Stunted Hag) where a bunch of Princeton football players working part-time during the off-season are recruited by a rich businessman as guardians for his wild daughter (Lucille Ball) who is going to Pottawattamie College in New Mexico. They enroll as students and are supposed to surreptitiously keep an eye on her so she doesn't misbehave (though even by 40's standards, she's hardly a loose cannon, joining up with a sorority whose members wear caps identifying them as girls who don't kiss boys). The father makes the football players sign an "Anti-Romantic Clause" but of course, the rest of the thin plot is all about romantic complications (and football games). Richard Carlson is quite charismatic as the boy who falls for Ball; Desi Arnaz pairs up with Ann Miller (playing a Latina) and they do some nice dancing; Eddie Bracken moons over Francis Langford. Tall vaudeville dancer Hal LeRoy is the fourth player and gets to do a nice tap number. The cast also includes Douglas Walton as an older Noel Coward-type writer who has a rather improbable flirtation with Ball, and Grady Sutton and Van Johnson (in his film debut) have small roles. The most memorable song from the Rodgers and Hart score is "I Didn't Know What Time It Was," sung first by Ball (dubbed by someone else) and Carlson, and later in a burlesque fashion by Bracken to Arnaz. The plot and setting are reminiscent of the Gershwin musical GIRL CRAZY, a play from the 20's which was made into a movie in the 30's with Wheeler and Woolsey and in the 40's with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland; the music here can't hope to match that of the other show, but this is overall more fun. [TCM]

ARMY SURGEON (1942)

It is difficult to find anything in the usual reference sources (Halliwell, Maltin, etc.) about this B-grade propaganda movie, and the cable on-screen guide only gave it one star, so it was a pleasant surprise to find that it's as good as, and maybe a little bit better than, the average wartime programmer. Filmed during the first half of 1942, the film begins (in a pre-credit sequence, quite rare in movies back then) with references to our then-current involvement in WWII, and sets itself up as an explicit lesson in the importance of military medical units, but the bulk of the story takes place during WWI. Jane Wyatt is a doctor who has "reduced" herself to the status of nurse in order to serve near the front lines with the military in 1917. She works for brain doc James Ellison and proves that she is made of strong stuff during some marathon surgery. Ellison wants to move his base of operations to the front lines but can't convince the brass to let him go until Wyatt makes the case, behind his back, to their commanding officer. Things get tough for the unit, and even tougher for Ellison who, as he begins to develop feelings for Wyatt, has to deal with an old flame of hers, pilot Kent Taylor, who shows up and tries to rekindle the spark. To add insult to injury, Ellison discovers that Wyatt was responsible for their move to the front and his male pride is hurt. Eventually, during a heavy bombardment by the Germans, the three of them are trapped along with several severely wounded soldiers when the hillside they are dug into collapses and traps them with little air and even less food. Taylor and Ellison work together and save the day, and of course because Ellison is more handsome and charming than Taylor, he gets the girl. The movie's framework has Wyatt (in effective middle-age make-up) in 1942, telling her story to some young sailors aboard a ship in the Pacific. At 63 minutes, the movie is well paced and the performers are all fine. The good if small supporting cast includes Walter Reed as a buddy of Ellison's who is killed during a stretcher run, James Burke as a comic relief soldier, and Lee Bonnell as a delirious patient. There are two very effective uses of long panning shots by cinematographer Russell Metty (who later won an Oscar for SPARTACUS), one during a Christmas scene in the ward as the men sing "Silent Night" and the other showing the wounded men gasping for air after the ward has been buried. No masterpiece, perhaps, but behind that nondescript title, there is an unjustly forgotten piece of B-movie wartime propaganda. [TCM]

THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY (1964)

Interesting black comedy in which both main stars (James Garner and Julie Andrews) play against type; they do a fine job, but that might be one reason why the movie wasn't a big hit in its day. Another reason is that its anti-war tone (more on that later) may have been out of place in a mainstream movie in '64. Had it been made just three or four years later, the public reaction might have been different. Set just before D-Day in England, the movie stars Garner as an American naval officer and admitted coward who has gotten a snug assignment as a "dog-robber"; basically, as an aide to an admiral, his main job is to make his boss's life run smoothly, both on- and off-duty. This primarily means procuring food and drink (and women) for social function--and while he's at it, getting women for his fellow officers as well. Julie Andrews is a British war widow who is called on to serve as his driver. Garner's glad-handing ways don't work too well with her; the first time he gives her a little flirtatious smack on the bum, she smacks him in the face. But soon he gets serious about her and she finds herself returning the romantic interest. As someone who has lost several family members to war, she warms to this man whom she knows will do everything in his power *not* to be a hero. Garner's boss, Melvyn Douglas, a recent widower himself and in the throes of a long, slow mental breakdown, proposes that a special camera crew be sent along on the D-Day invasion on a public relations mission: to capture on film the first Navy man to die in the battle. It has to be a Navy man so that the role of the Navy doesn't get diminished in the post-war shakeout. No one takes the admiral's suggestion too seriously, but the project rolls along on its own steam until Garner, despite his best-laid plans, does in fact wind up the first sailor on Omaha Beach. True to his cowardly nature, he tries to run back toward the ship, but his gung-ho buddy, James Coburn, shoots at him and forces him back to the beach where it appears that he is indeed killed by enemy fire. Just as the planned PR campaign gets going (with a blurry picture of the running Garner on the covers of all the news magazines), Garner turns up alive at a hospital. He decides to expose Douglas' crazy motives, but Andrews talks him into taking a different way out, one that gives their relationship a happy ending, but is also cynical about the issues of war and glory that have been raised.

Much of the film feels like a slightly more realistic version of DR. STRANGELOVE (the crazy officer, the moral confusion about war), but the romantic elements soften the story's bite. Still, I think it was quite brave to set a movie which questions the valor of war during the one modern war that everyone seems to agree was The Good War. Theoretically, the movie's satire isn't aimed at feeding anti-war sentiments; as Garner and Andrews point out more than once, yes, war is sometimes necessary, but we should quit holding it up as valorous and noble. The screenplay, by renowned writer Paddy Chayefsky (who also wrote the wonderfully bitter and prescient NETWORK), is quite talky but generally effective, particularly one scene in which Garner, in the service of truth-telling, destroys the illusions of Andrew's "dotty" mother, played wonderfully by Joyce Grenfall, who herself has been damaged by the valorization of war. Also with Keenan Wynn and Steve Franken (as two drunken sailors who wind up being Garner's camera crew), William Windom, Douglas Henderson, Liz Fraser, and Judy Carne as one of Coburn's one-night stands. Coburn overplays his part, but most everything else about this movie is just right. [DVD]

BACK TO BATAAN (1945)

I seem to going through a WWII movie phase lately, so expect lots of war movie reviews over for the next few weeks. The title of this film, one of John Wayne's earlier war movies, isn't quite accurate. The episodic narrative begins just after the fall of Bataan and focuses on the native Filipino guerrilla forces who aided the Allies in retaking the Philippines from the Japanese. Wayne is a colonel in charge of a loose group of Filipino resistance fighters; his chief associate, Anthony Quinn, is the grandson of a legendary Filipino hero (an actual historical figure) who has to deal with hearing his former girlfriend (Fely Franquelli) broadcasting over the radio as a Tokyo Rose-type commentator taunting the Allies. (It turns out that she is actually a double agent, sending out important information to the Allies about Japanese movements.) The central event of the movie is the fall of the small village of Balintawak to the brutal Japanese forces. Beulah Bondi plays a strict but brave schoolteacher from the town who joins Wayne's band; Vladimir Sokoloff is the principal who won't bring down the American flag at the school and, in a very effective scene, is hung by the Japanese in the schoolyard, by the flag rope with the flag draping his dead body. Quinn is captured and winds up in the Bataan death march, though Wayne gets him out and sends him, disguised as a monk, on a mission to Manila. There he meets up with Franquelli and works with her to achieve an ambush against the Japanese during a ceremony at Balintawak celebrating the "liberation" of the Philippines by the Japanese.

The action scenes are fairly well done, though a sentimental side plot about a young student of Bondi's who is tortured and sacrifices himself to save the guerrillas doesn't come off too well. The subplot with Franquelli is interesting, and it's the kind of melodramatic sidebar story that would vanish from WWII films in the 50's, when the focus moved away from thriller elements and propaganda concerns and more toward the grittier details of planning and fighting. Lawrence Tierney, who later gained a reputation as a tough noir villain (see BORN TO KILL) has a small role as a Navy officer; also in the cast are traditional WWII-era bad guys Richard Loo and Philip Ahn. The movie has a false opening of sorts, about the Allies raiding a prison camp at Luzon (the plotline is not part of the film proper); footage of some of the actual soldiers who were liberated is shown at the beginning and end of the movie, apparently as a way of making it timely. [TCM]

DOWN IN SAN DIEGO (1941)

A strictly routine B-movie second feature, but one that is packed with action, humor, and charm, and a dollop of pre-wartime propaganda. It's perhaps best described as the Hardy Boys meet the Bowery Boys, and that should tell you whether or not you are likely to enjoy it--and it's actually a lot more like a Hardy Boys book than any actual Hardy Boys adaptations ever were. When Dan Dailey (looking impossibly young) heads off to San Diego to join the Marines, he worries about leaving his kid sister (Bonita Granville) all alone in Los Angeles. However, she has what would be called today a strong support network, including Ray McDonald (a gawky but cute kid who is sweet on Granville) and Leo Gorcey (sounding every bit the Brooklyn hood he played with the Bowery Boys). The night before Dailey leaves, some thugs he used to work for frame him for a murder, blackmailing him into doing some Nazi spy business in San Diego. The kids find out and head out after Dailey to help him. Following one tip, about a dog that is missing part of an ear, they all get jobs and immediately are on the trail of the spy ring, which operates out of the back of a barber shop (the spies' password is to ask for a "shortwave" treatment). The shenanigans, alternately amusing and dangerous, culminate in a wild waterside chase involving a stolen experimental Navy boat and a clutch of Nazis who might resort to murder to get hold of the boat. The kids are all as good as the script requires, and of particular note is Stanley Clements as a San Diego newsboy who is recruited by the gang to help out; he went on to appear in over fifty films, most notably as the head delinquent who gets won over by Father Bing Crosby in GOING MY WAY. McDonald is quite charming; I don't know why his movie career never took off, though he did continue in the business as a dancer on stage and in nightclubs. Rudolph Anders, who played many a Nazi throughout the war (THE MORTAL STORM, DESPERATE JOURNEY), is effective as the chief villain and there are some familiar faces in small roles (Henry O'Neill, Joe Sawyer, Ludwig Stossel, Connie Gilchrist). One minor problem is that between the city street sets and the stew of accents (Brooklyn, the South), this movie's L.A. seems much more like New York. Still, this is one of my very favorite B-movies and I recommend it wholeheartedly. [TCM]

THE RAINS CAME (1939)

I imagine that this film along with the earlier IN OLD CHICAGO and SAN FRANCISCO were among the first examples of the disaster film genre. At the genre's peak in the 70's (and in the occasional example made since then), the disaster was pretty much the be-all and end-all of the movie, but back then it was a catalyst for further plot and character development. In the beginning of these films, we get to know the characters and their situations; a large-scale disaster hits and the narrative grinds to a halt so we can see what the special effects department has come up with; in the aftermath, we see how the characters prove their mettle, how they change (or fail to), and who must sacrifice himself or herself for the greater good (or to achieve personal redemption). In the province of Ranchipur in India, British sexpot Myrna Loy, bored witless by her stodgy old Lord of a husband (Nigel Bruce), meets up with an ex-lover (George Brent), but soon falls for his friend, Indian doctor Tyrone Power, a selfless and well-respected man in the community. Brent is busy fending off frisky young Brenda Joyce, as well as trying to make sure that Power doesn't get in over his head with Loy. Torrential rains, an earthquake, a broken dam, and rampaging malaria make life miserable for all and force the characters to make decisions that will affect their futures. It's a fairly predictable turn when Loy's character makes the biggest sacrifice and winds up like Bette Davis did in the previous year's JEZEBEL. Power, under dusky makeup, looks splendid and acts quite well, as do all the leads, even the sometimes leaden Brent. The large and wonderful supporting cast includes Henry Travers and Jane Darwell as missionaries, H.B. Warner as a Maharajah, Joseph Schildkraut, Laura Hope Crews, Mary Nash, and in a small but memorable role (as all of hers were) Maria Ouspenskaya as the Maharani who is particularly concerned that Power will be tempted away from the village by Loy. Though the sets and effects look fairly stagy today, they are still effective, especially the flooded streets of the town. Someday I'll see the 50's remake (RAINS OF RANCHIPUR) but I doubt it will measure up this original. [FMC]

CRASH DIVE (1943)

Despite the title, and despite being released well after the U.S. entered the war, this is really a throwback to the pre-WWII pseudo-wartime action movies that were actually romantic triangles in disguise. Tyrone Power is a Navy lieutenant who is pulled away from the P.T. boats he loves to serve as second-in-command on a submarine stationed at New London, Connecticut. He and his commander, Dana Andrews, quickly become buddies and they and their crew acquit themselves well after running into a Nazi ship (disguised as a Swedish freighter), but back home, trouble brews when Power flirts with a pretty schoolteacher (Anne Baxter), not realizing she's Andrews' longtime girlfriend. After a comic misadventure in Washington, D.C., Baxter falls for Power, and Andrews finds out what's going on just as the men ship out on a dangerous mission to raid a Nazi island base. Tensions on the sub are high until the raid, when, of course, the men re-bond in order to kick some Nazi ass. Despite the corny set-up, this is an above-average film of its type, due in part to good use of Technicolor (which still looks great after all these years) and also due to the script and acting. Power and Baxter are lovely and have chemistry, and Andrews does what has to be done in a relatively thankless role; since Power is far better looking, and first-billed, you know that he'll end up with Baxter. The Washington shenanigans are fun and verge on screwball comedy, and the climactic raid sequence is, despite looking very stagy, exciting. The only other major subplot involves old-timer James Gleason, who is trying to keep his heart condition a secret, and the black cook, Ben Carter, who knows Gleason's secret and keeps an eye on him. Harry Morgan (later Col. Potter on TV's MASH) is seen briefly on the sub, and Dane May Whitty has a small role as Power's grandmother. Parts of this were shot at the real New London sub base. Quite fun and worth seeing, as long as you know you're not getting a gritty, realistic war story. [FMC]

ROCKABYE (1932)

George Cukor directed this one fairly early in his career and pulled off a total bomb--thank goodness he improved enough to deliver classics like THE WOMEN and THE PHILADELPHIA STORY later. To be fair, he's not the only problem here; his leading lady, Constance Bennett, never feels fully invested in creating a character, and the melodramatic story of thwarted mother love was a bit creaky even back then, though the specifics of the plot have potential. Bennett is a Broadway actress who has to testify in a court case involving a former lover (Walter Pidgeon) and it comes out that she is trying to adopt a baby that is, it is strongly implied, the product of their illicit union. The publicity surrounding the case causes the adoption officials to deny her custody of the child, which leaves Bennett heartbroken. She goes to Europe to recover and returns after several months to appear in a new play called "Rockabye" that mirrors her own situation. Her agent, Paul Lukas, who has harbored an unrequited love for Bennett for years, urges her not to take the part, but she does, and she also falls in love with the handsome playwright (Joel McCrea), who is in the middle of a divorce. Things go well for Bennett for a time; Lukas arranges for her to spend regular time with her "daughter," and she and McCrea become a hot item with marriage in their future. However, on the very night that Bennett's play opens (and is a hit), McCrea finds out that his soon-to-be ex-wife is having a baby. McCrea's mother comes to Bennett and asks her to let him return to his wife. Will she do the right thing? What pleasures there are here come from some of the actors, mostly McCrea, Lukas, and Jobyna Howland as Bennett's blowsy mother. Sterling Holloway, later the voice of Winnie the Pooh in the Disney cartoons, has a brief scene as a kid who begs a pianist to play "Poor Butterfly," which leads into a song by Bennett. There is a wonderful pre-Code scene from early in Bennett and McCrea's relationship showing breakfast burning on the stove while the two go at it, presumably on the kitchen floor, and she wakes up the next morning in a bed full of balloons. Except for that single scene, the direction is pedestrian at best, and there are many moments of ragged editing and awkwardly inserted shots that detract from the flow of the film. [TCM]

STAR OF MIDNIGHT (1935)

More William Powell from TCM's birthday salute. This seems clearly to have been an attempt to create more "Thin Man" magic, here between William Powell and Ginger Rogers, and in fact the two do work up some star chemistry, though they don't quite spark like Powell and Loy did. Powell is a lawyer who admits he enjoys detective work more than being in the courtroom; he agrees to help old friend Rogers get some incriminating letters back from a gangster (Paul Kelly). This plotline winds up being a red herring: it turns out the letters aren't hers (she's just helping out a friend in trouble) and Rogers starts throwing herself at Powell, who treats her more like a kid sister than a romantic interest. The real story involves the mysterious musical star named Mary Smith, who always wears a mask in public. A man who is in the audience of her show "Midnight" (Leslie Fenton) recognizes Mary as his missing girlfriend Alice, and calls out her name, which unnerves her and apparently causes her to bolt from the theater during intermission, never to return. Fenton hires Powell to help find her and Rogers tags along. A reporter who was present at the show claims to know something about the case, but is shot and killed in Powell's apartment (and Powell is wounded). Fenton, who was hiding in another room, vanishes and is immediately the police's number one suspect, but there are other suspects as well, including Ralph Morgan, a lawyer who is also searching for Alice; his wife (Vivien Oakland); the producer of "Midnight" (Frank Reicher), and even Powell's butler (Gene Lockhart). After some Thin Man-like scrapes, there is a fairly ingenious finale in which Powell telephones all the suspects and sets up a nice little trap for the guilty party.

The solution to the mystery feels like something arrived at rather randomly by the writers, but it doesn't matter because the pleasures of this film are mostly in the characters and performances. Kelly's gangster is a threatening figure at first, but becomes somewhat more likeable and less one-dimensional than the average movie thug. Gene Lockhart is quite good as the butler in a change-of-pace role here (though this early in his sound film career, I guess he really didn't have a "pace" yet). Perhaps best of all is J. Farrell MacDonald as the police inspector; instead of being an adversary to Powell, he is more an admiring onlooker, slyly enjoying watching Powell work around the police, and fully collaborating with him in the climax. At times, the comic pacing is a bit too slow, but it always recovers, and there is a very amusing bit with a toilet that plays "Pop Goes the Weasel" when it is occupied. I'm guessing the movie didn't do well enough to justify a sequel or two, but it's certainly fun to watch. [TCM]

FASHIONS OF 1934 (1934)

Given the title and the fact that this came from Warner Brothers in the pre-Code era, I was expecting an elaborate, vaguely risque musical with peppy fashion models standing in for the peppy chorus girls of the "Gold Diggers" series. Seeing the names of William Powell, Bette Davis, Frank McHugh, and Busby Berkeley in the opening credits was also encouraging. However, the film itself was a huge letdown. Powell is a con-man whose latest front, an investment company, has just gone under. He and sidekick McHugh meet up with unemployed dress designer Davis and they decide to go into business in Paris bootlegging the latest fashion designs and selling them to American companies. After they're caught, they discover that one of the biggest of the French designers (Reginald Owen) gets his best ideas by copying clothing sketches out of old books, so they do the same thing and go into business for themselves (backed partly by American ostrich-feather salesman Hugh Herbert). When Powell finds out that Owen's current mistress, a Russian countess, is actually an ex-girl friend of his pulling her own con job, he gets her to get Owen to help back them, and they put on a stage-show revue to highlight their fashions (most of which involve lots of ostrich feathers). After the show, there are more snags and cons before Owen buys Powell's shop and Powell and Davis head off into the sunset.

The high point here is definitely the Berkeley number, "Spin a Little Web of Dreams," which features semi-nude girls as human harps. Unfortunately, that is all Berkeley is given to do, though there is also a more traditional fashion show sequence which stops the action briefly. Powell seems to be trying hard, but he's just not up to his usual deadpan frothiness. Davis is hardly trying at all; her part might as well have been done by some second- or third-string Warners contract player. McHugh is reliably strong and Verree Teasdale shines in the limited role of the mistress (a part very much like Norma Shearer played in IDIOT'S DELIGHT); Philip Reed is a handsome songwriter who briefly flirts with Davis; other supporting players of note include Henry O'Neill, Gordon Westcott, Jane Darwell, and Arthur Treacher (as, what else, a butler). There are a few bawdy lines of dialogue, such as a patron asking Powell, "You handle lingerie, don't you?" to which he replies, "Yes, I take care of that personally." I realize that some of my problems with this film are due to unrealistic expectations, but it's still hard to recommend this one except to fans of the actors involved. [TCM]

VOGUES OF 1938 (1937)

This is an odd little mishmash: part musical revue, part romantic comedy, with both taking a back seat to the Technicolor fashion show which seems to be the movie's reason for existing. Warner Baxter plays the head of a ritzy fashion house; his wife (the wonderful ice queen Helen Vinson) is desperate for Baxter to back a Broadway show in which she wants to star, but she doesn't know that the company is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Enter Joan Bennett, a socialite from a family whose finances are also in bad shape; her family pressures her to marry the rich and older Alan Mowbray, but she leaves him at the altar and winds up taking a job as a model for Baxter. Bennett sets her cap for Baxter, though being a Code-friendly faithful husband, he stays cool until the end, when Vinson's show flops and she, angry that he won't sink any more money into the show, gets a Reno divorce. There are other promising subplots that don't pan out. One involves a rival designer (Mischa Auer) who marries one of Baxter's assistants, hoping to get a corporate spy in the family. Another centers on Baxter's second-in-command (Alma Kruger), who, in a set-up used to better effect in 1935's ROBERTA, gets sick on a European tour; her eventual death proves to be a wake-up call for Baxter to finally take control of his business and his life. In the end, Baxter uses the sets from the failed musical to produce an eye-popping fashion show that saves his career.

Every time the plot and characters get interesting, the movie stops for a musical number or a fashion show. I'm not a fashion connoisseur, so I can't say much about the dresses except to note how colorful and creative they are. The numbers are OK, though only one song, the Oscar-nominated "That Old Feeling" really stands out. One number had some unintentional (I assume) humor, as it extols the virtues of strolling models as "ladies of the evening, ladies of the night." There is also a striking number set at the Cotton Club in Harlem. Baxter is good, even better than he was as the beleaguered director in 42ND STREET, and Bennett (looking and sounding just like Myrna Loy) and Vinson are both fine. Jerome Cowan has a small role as the director of the flop that Baxter backs, and Penny Singleton (later Blondie in the movies) appears briefly doing her squeaky-voiced thing. Enjoyable, if not a classic, and the print shown on Turner Classic was restored and in great shape. [TCM]