Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Ladies in Retirement
Directed by Charles Vidor
Written by Garrett Fort and Reginald Denham based on a play by Denham and Edward Percy
1941/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
First viewing/Sony Pictures Home Entertainment DVD

[box] Ellen Creed: Hell is like the kingdom of Heaven. It’s within.[/box]

This is a nice creepy story with some excellent female character performances.

Ellen Creed (Ida Lupino) works as a housekeeper/companion for retired actress Leonora Fisk.  Ellen has been responsible all her life for her two dotty sisters, Emily (Elsa Lanchester) and Louisa.  Emily, in particular, is out of control.  She collects trash to “tidy up the moors” and deposits it all over the house.  She also does not like anyone to tell her what to do.  Louisa is more gentle and sweet in her madness.

Emily gets a letter from London saying that if she does not remove her sisters from the home where they are staying the landlady will call the police.  She asks Leonora to let them visit for a few days but tells her sisters they will stay there always.  Leonora rapidly gets fed up and Emily, supposedly the “sane” one, takes drastic action to protect them.

Then distant relative Albert Feather (Louis Hayward) comes to get bailed out of an embezzling offense.  After seducing the housemaid (Evelyn Keyes), he rapidly figures out a way to wrap Ellen around his little finger.

This thriller had me on the edge of my seat by the end.  Louis Hayward is so deliciously vile that the viewer doesn’t know just what he will resort to.  Ida Lupino is quite understated in comparison.  Elsa Lanchester is, as always, a standout.  Recommended for those in the mood for a rather dark period piece, with a little comedy from the mad sisters.

Ladies in Retirement was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White and for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture.

For clips on TCM go here:  http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/480270/Ladies-In-Retirement-Movie-Clip-My-Treasures.html

The Shanghai Gesture
Directed by Josef von Sternberg
Written by Josef von Sternberg, Jules Furthman, and Geza Herczeg based on a play by John Colton
1941/USA
Arnold Pressburger Films
First viewing/Amazon Prime Instant Video

[box] Poppy: The other places are like kindergardens compared with this. It smells so incredibly evil! I didn’t think such a place existed except in my own imagination. It has a ghastly familiarity like a half-remembered dream. *Anything* could happen here… any moment…[/box]

I thought I had seen Josef von Sternberg’s weirdest film when I saw The Scarlet Empress. And then came The Shanghai Gesture.

The plot is convoluted and I think is missing big chunks due to censorship problems.  The setting is Shanghai.  The opening title makes clear that this is not meant to be contemporary Shanghai or even a real place.

“Mother” Gin Sling (Ona Munson) runs a gamling house and den of (unspecified) iniquity in the foreign section of the City.  City officials have ordered her to shut down to please mogul Sir Guy Charteris (Walter Huston) who wants to do something or other with the land.  Gin Sling’s ears perk up at the name and she begins to scheme how she will defy the order.

Meanwhile, beautiful and elegant young “Poppy Smith” (Gene Tierney) drops into Gin Sling’s with a friend. She tries her hand at gambling and wins, announcing that she will never return.  But, for Poppy, Gin Sling’s is like the Hotel California.  She is unable to free herself from its grip due to her lust for pretty boy wastrel Dr. Omar (Victor Mature), her gambling addiction, and some unstated alcohol or substance abuse problem.  The poised Poppy rapidly racks up a huge debt to “Mother” and degenerates into a slovenly harridan.

We gradually learn that “Mother” has something quite specific against Sir Guy and that “Poppy” has become the key part of a revenge plot.  The entire affair climaxes at
“Mother’s” New Years Eve dinner, to which all her many enemies have been invited.  With a cast of thousands including Maria Ouspenskaya, Albert Basserman, Eric Blore, and Mike Mazurki (as a sinister rickshaw driver!) and Marcel Dalio as a croupier.

The whole thing plays out like a fever dream, including one memorable moment when half-dressed white girls are displayed in hanging baskets and offered for sale to Chinese sailors (just fooling says “Mother”).  The entire picture seems crowded with thousands of extras in every corner of the city streets and the casino, so much so that von Sternberg specifically honors them with a title card.  The art direction and costumes are lavish and bizarre.

The cast of pros in general is pretty good but poor Gene Tierney could have done with several more years of acting lessons.  She looks gorgeous but does not make a convincing degenerate or handle her many, many crying scenes in a believable way.

In short, this is one glorious mess and should be approached with a sense of humor and high camp detectors at the ready.

Clip

Major Barbara
Directed by Gabriel Pascal
Written by George Bernard Shaw
1941/UK
Gabriel Pascal Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] “It is quite useless to declare that all men are born free if you deny that they are born good.”  — Major Barbara, George Bernard Shaw[/box]

Rex Harrison and Wendy Hiller were born to play Shaw.

Agnostic socialist Adolphus Cusins (Rex Harrison), a Greek scholar, is a flop at public speaking.  He goes to see how Salvation Army Major Barbara Undershaft (Wendy Hiller) draws in the crowds and promptly falls in love with her.  She takes him home to meet her family, which lives in a palatial mansion thanks to her estranged father’s (Robert Morley) money.  Papa is a munitions manufacturer

Major Barbara is shown slowly converting hard case Bill Walker (Robert Newton). Although the Army is very hard up for cash, she refuses to take even a pound from him until he is saved.  Then Papa shows up at the mission and begins corrupting it with a much bigger offer.  With Deborah Kerr in her very first credited movie role as a Salvation Army worker.

I can’t exactly love this very talky and intellectual film.  Director Pascal worked hard at opening up the stage play but didn’t fully succeed.  Nonetheless, the cast is fabulous and the argument about jobs versus religious cant is interesting.

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A Woman’s Face
Directed by George Cukor
Written by Donald Ogden Stewart and Elliot Paul from a play by Francis de Croisset
1941/USA Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Lars-Erik Barring: You couldn’t be mean. You’re too pretty![/box]

This film was much different than I expected and I truly enjoyed it.

The story is a remake of the 1938 film A Woman’s Face (“En kvinnas ansikte”) with Ingrid Bergman and takes place in contemporary Sweden.  It is told as a number of flashbacks based on witness testimony at Anna’s murder trial.

When she was a child, Anna Holm (Joan Crawford) was caught in a fire started by her drunken father and her face was badly disfigured.  She has lived as a bitter, hard, and ruthless blackmailer who runs a country inn as a front for her operation.  One night, handsome ne’er-do-well Thorsten Barring (Conrad Veidt) comes into her office to ask for credit to cover a meal he has ordered. They recognize each other as kindred spirits and he is the first man who has looked her in the eyes without flinching. They start seeing each other and Anna is in love for the first time.

She meets plastic surgeon Dr. Gusaf Segert (Melvyn Douglas) by chance when she is at his house blackmailing his wife about some incriminating love letters.  He too looks at her without flinching and announces that he can fix her face.  She goes through several painful operations and emerges a beautiful woman.

Barring finally reveals that there is only one four-year-old grandchild standing between him and a large inheritance from his uncle.  The couple hatch a scheme to send Anna as a governess to the county estate of uncle Consul Magnus Barring (Albert Bassermann).  Anna, still madly in love with Barring, is to murder the boy there.  This proves to be easier said than done.  With Marjorie Main as the Consul’s long-time housekeeper and Donald Meek as a criminal associate of Anna’s.

I thought the story was very well told as the plot elements were ever so gradually revealed. I was so engaged that I never saw some probably predictable developments coming.  The snowy setting is beautiful as well.  Joan Crawford is a sometime thing for me but Cukor gets a wonderfully subdued “unglamorous” performance out of her both before and after her surgery. Veidt is suitably charming and villainous.  I’m surprised that this one didn’t get quite a few Oscar nominations but 1941 is turning out to be a year packed with gems. Recommended.

Trailer

They Died with Their Boots On
Directed by Raul Walsh
Written by Wally Kline and Aeneas MacKenzie
1941/USA
Warner Bros
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box]George Armstrong Custer: You may be right about money, Sharp; quite right. But there’s one thing to be said for glory.

Ned Sharp: Yeah? What’s that?

George Armstrong Custer: You can take glory with you when it’s your time to go.[/box]

 Errol Flynn makes a convincing and heroic George Armstrong Custer, Australian accent and all.

This is a liberally fictionalized account of the life of Custer (Flynn) starting with his West Point Days and ending with his death at the famous Battle of the Little Big Horn (“Custer’s Last Stand”).  Custer begins his military career as the flamboyant black sheep of West Point, a star with a saber but a dud at academics and constantly being disciplined for something or other.  On the day he is being graduated early to go off to fight in the Civil War he meets Libby (Olivia de Havilland).  It is reciprocal love at first sight.

Combat does not change Custer’s insubordination in the slightest.  Fortunately, as someone remarks, soldiers who refuse to obey orders wind up either sacked or with a medal and Custer is the kind that earns medals.  He becomes a hero during the Battle of Bull Run.   Custer begins drinking heavily out of boredom after the war and Libby gets him an appointment to the Seventh Cavalry in Lincoln Nebraska.

They Died with Their Boots On clocks in at two hours and twenty minutes but goes by quickly due to liberal amounts of humor in the first half and plenty of action in the second. Flynn is just right as the vainglorious, cocky, but brave Custer.  The relationship with de Havilland is tender and mature.  The supporting cast is superb as I have come to expect from Warner’s.

This was the eight and final pairing of Flynn and de Havilland.  The farewell was the last scene they filmed together.

Clip – Farewell scene

Underground
Directed by Vincent Sherman
Written by Edwin Justus Mayer, Oliver H. P. Garrett and Charles Grayson
1941/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Roan Group DVD

[box] Kurt Franken: I’m not going to let you go on working with those traitors.

Sylvia Helmuth: Take me back and I’ll do anything you want me to do.[/box]

I enjoyed this Hollywood propaganda exposée of Nazism.

By day Kurt Franken (Jeffrey Lynn) is an official in the Nazi Government, by night he is the voice of Illegal Radio urging the German people to resistance.  One day, his soldier brother Eric (Phillip Dorr) comes home from the war missing an arm.  Eric is a stalwart party member.  He is also looking for a girlfriend.  He spot’s Sylvia’s address in Kurt’s wallet and begins a dogged pursuit of her.  Sylvia is also a secret member of the resistance.  She is eventually arrested for receiving radio equipment and Eric tries to prove her innocence. When he finds out she is guilty, he has some hard decisions to make.

This is fairly exciting and not too preachy.  It is the most graphic Hollywood condemnation of Nazi brutality I have run across yet.  Of course it is nothing compared to the real thing.

For an article about real-life German resistance to the Nazis go here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widerstand

To see the trailer on TCM go here: http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/140815/Underground-Original-Trailer-.html

The Great Lie
Directed by Edmund Goulding
Written by Lenore J. Coffee based on a novel by Polan Banks
1941/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Sandra Kovac: Whoever heard of an ounce of brandy?[/box]

This is a competently made “woman’s picture” raised above the ordinary by the lively performance of Mary Astor.

After a night of drinking, Pete Van Allen (George Brent) marries renowned concert pianist Sandra Kovak (Astor). He seems to regret this move in the morning.  While she is sleeping, his lawyer informs him they are not really married since her divorce is not final. They will have to properly tie the knot next Tuesday.  Pete heads off to the Maryland farm of the “womanly” Maggie (Bette Davis), with whom he has had an on-again-off-again relationship for the past several years.  After a tearful meeting, Pete decides to propose again to Sandra on condition that the marriage take place on Tuesday.  Sandra has an important concert scheduled in another city on that date.  She chooses the concert over her man and loses him to Maggie, who marries him right away.

Maggie is magically able to change Pete’s drinking ways and get him flying again for America’s defense build up.  Naturally, he goes on his first mission five days after their marriage and his plane turns up lost with all aboard assumed dead.  Sandra turns up pregnant from their marriage night and Maggie volunteers to hide her away and take charge of the baby as a reminder of Pete after its birth.

Maggie’s efforts at getting Sandra to obey the doctor’s orders re cutting down on her smoking and drinking and follow a proper diet in their secluded Arizona cabin cause the two to fly at each other’s throats during the pregnancy.  After giving birth, Sandra takes off on  a concert tour to Australia and Maggie returns with Pete Jr.  to the farm.

Predictably enough, George is found living with some Indians deep in the Amazon.  Maggie is content to let George believe the baby is theirs.  But all bets are off when Sandra returns to the States and confronts the doting mother with her lie.   With Hattie McDaniel at her Gone with the Wind best as Maggie’s loyal retainer.

Astor is fabulous as the free-wheeling artiste in this picture and the two actresses obviously had a lot of fun fighting over the bemused Brent.  The plot doesn’t bear much scrutiny but the fun was contagious and I ended up enjoying this a lot.

Mary Astor won a well-deserved Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in The Great Lie.

Trailer

El gendarme desconocido (“The Unknown Policeman”)
Directed by Miguel M. Delgado
Written by Miguel M. Delgado, José F. Elizondo, and Jaime Salvador
1941/Mexico
Posa Films
First viewing/Mill Creek Entertainment DVD

Among the things that endeared Cantinflas to his public was his comic use of language in his films. His character would strike up a normal conversation and then complicate it to the point where no one understood what they were talking about. This manner of talking became known as Cantinflada, and it became common parlance for Spanish speakers to say “¡estás cantinfleando!” (loosely translated as you’re pulling a “Cantinflas!” or you’re “Cantinflassing!”) whenever someone became hard to understand in conversation. The Real Academia Española officially included the verb, cantinflear, cantinflas and cantinflada in its dictionary in 1992.

This was my introduction to the famous Mexican comic.  I don’t think his humor translates too well.

A laybaout (Catinflas) accidentally traps some notorious bank robbers and is rewarded by being made Agente 777 on the police force.  He gets into one scrape after another driving his chief nuts.  But when the King of Diamonds is coming to town the Commandante insists that 777 is the only man to impersonate the man at a posh hotel.  The illiterate agent is a fish out of water and gets involved in even more mishaps but his luck holds out in the end.

I wanted to see the man Chaplin once called the world’s best comedian and this is said to be one of his best films.  Cantinflas was not annoying to me like some others but I didn’t get any laughs out of this either.  So many of the gags are based on his inane and pointless stories and I think the subtitles did not capture the humor.

Clip (no subtitles)