Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Port of Shadows (“Le quai des brumes”)
Directed by Michel Carné
Written by Jacques Prevert from the novel by Pierre Dumarchais
1938/France
Ciné-Alliance
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Le peintre: A tree. But when I paint one, it sets everyone on edge. It’s because there’s someone or something hidden behind that tree. I can’t help painting what’s hidden behind things. To me a swimmer is already a drowned man..[/box]

I was surprised how little I remembered about this really excellent film.

Jean (Jean Gabin) is a French army deserter who has also apparently committed some crime of passion.  He arrives in Le Havre seeking a way to escape.  Nelly (Michele Morgan) is a seventeen-year-old running away from her jealous, lecherous godfather (Michel Simon) and a past affair with Maurice.  Lucien (the fantastic Pierre Brasseur) is a cowardly gangster in search of Maurice and some papers.  Fate is not kind to any of these people.

The docks of Le Havre are permeated by fog and cruel destiny.  1938 seems to have been a very good year for French proto-noirs.  No one could be more doomed than our hero and, while our heroine is sincere, she is nonetheless fatal.  The acting is excellent.  I seem to admire Michel Simon more with every performance I see.  The Jacques Prevert (Children of Paradise) dialogue is haunting as is the score.  This is a dark and sad film but very beautiful.   I highly recommend it.

Re-release trailer

A Slight Case of Murder
Directed by Lloyd Bacon
Written by Earl Baldwin and Joseph Schrank from a play by Damon Runyan and Howard Lindsay
1938/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing

[box] Nora Marco: Why isn’t he in B-E-D?

Douglas Fairbanks Rosenbloom: Because I want more to E-A-T, you old C-O-W.[/box]

Edward G. Robinson is always a pleasure to watch but I didn’t get any laughs out of this gangster comedy.

When Prohibition ends, Remy Marco (Robinson) decides to become a legitimate brewer and employ his gang members as salesmen.  Only problem is he has never tasted his own beer and his men are afraid to tell him it is wretched.  After four years, Remy is half a million dollars in debt and the bank is ready to foreclose.  He leaves for his summer house in Saratoga, after stopping at the orphanage where he grew up to take the worst boy he can find for the summer.

When he gets to Saratoga, Remy discovers that a gang has robbed all the bookmakers for the race track of $500,000.  When he gets to the house, four dead robbers are in one of the bedrooms.  In the meantime, his daughter has become engaged to a very rich state trooper whose father comes to check the family out.  Hijinx ensue.  With Margaret Hamilton in a very small role as the matron of the orphanage.

This tries to be madcap but was a miss in my opinion.

Trailer

Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett from a play by Albert Savoir
1938/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing

[box] Nicole de Loiselle: I wish someone would tell you what I really think of you.[/box]

Any film that combines Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, and this cast has to be entertaining.

Michael (Gary Cooper) is a decisive multi-millionaire.  He meets Nicole (Claudette Colbert) in a Paris department store while trying to purchase only the top of some pajamas.  Nicole buys the bottoms and, without further ado, Michael decides she will be his wife.

Nicole’s father (Edward Everett Horton) is broke and Michael funnels some money his way by buying an allegedly antique bathtub from him.  At first, Nicole resists Michael’s advances but eventually she falls in love with him.  At their engagement party, she discovers that he has been married seven times before.  He explains that his wives have made out fine as he signs a prenuptial agreement with each one guaranteeing $50,000 per year for life,  Nicole holds out for $100,000 per year and hatches a plot to ensure their divorce.  With David Niven as Nicole’s friend.

This is good fun even if parts of the story don’t hang together too well.  Cooper is very good in a part reminiscent of Mr. Deeds.  The dialogue sings.

Trailer

Marie Antoinette
Directed by W.S. Van Dyke
Written by Claudine West, Donald Ogden Stewart, and Ernest Vajda based in part on the book by Stefan Zweig
1938/USA
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
First viewing

[box] Marie: I cannot wear a crown upon my heart.[/box]

I am not big on 2 1/2 hour-plus costume dramas … especially if Norma Shearer is going to play a teenager in any part of them.

Marie (Shearer) is thrilled when her mother, the Empress of Austria, arranges with Louis XV (John Barrymore) for her to wed the Dauphin (Robert Morley).  Her enthusiasm wanes when she discovers on her wedding night that the future Louis XVI is a socially inept fellow who has no interest in her or in producing heirs to the throne.

After a couple of years of boredom, the scheming Duke d’Orleans (Joseph Schildkraut) convinces Marie to enter the social whirl of decadent court life in Paris.  At one of her soirees, Marie meets and falls in love with the Swedish Count Fersen (Tyrone Power). They scarcely consummate their passion when Louis XV orders Marie’s exile for failure to produce an heir and for insulting his mistress Madame du Barry (Gladys George).

Marie is saved by the bell when Louis XV dies.  She and the Count agree that they cannot continue their affair and Marie, who has formed a close friendship with the Dauphin, becomes Queen.  INTERMISSION.

Marie and Louis produce a couple of children.  They have great compassion for the poor of France but Count d’Orleans conspires to frame Marie for the purchase of a priceless necklace while the people are starving.  Marie and Louis are eventually imprisoned.  Count Festen comes to Marie’s aid, but to no avail.

This film is not without its good points.  Robert Morley, in his film debut, is fantastic as Louis XV1 and Joseph Schildkraut is suitably evil in his role and looks great in wig and powder.  The production is lavish and all aspects from costume design to art direction to score are first-rate.

That said, this film is way too long for its story and the story itself is trite.  I don’t know whether there actually was a Count Fersen or not, but his story line felt very contrived.  I like Norma Shearer’s pre-Code work as sophisticated ladies.  I find her pretty dreadful whenever she attempts to play naive virgins or lovelorn romantic  heroines.  She spends most of her time doing the later here.

Marie Antoinette was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Actress (Norma Shearer), Best Supporting Actor (Robert Morley), Best Art Direction, and Best Original Score. This was Irving Thalberg’s last project while head of production at MGM and Shearer, his widow, stuck with it through completion in 1938.

Trailer

Pygmalion
Directed by Anthony Asquith
Written by George Bernard Shaw
1938/UK
Gabriel Pascal Productions
Repeat viewing

Prof. Henry Higgins: Yes, you squashed cabbage leaf, you disgrace to the noble architecture of these columns, you incarnate insult to the English language, I could pass you off as the Queen of Sheba!

This may be the best adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s play.  I love this film!

Professor Henry Higgins (Leslie Howard) bets that he can pass Cockney flower seller Eliza Doolittle (Wendy Hiller) off as a duchess with six months of training in phonetics. With Wilfred Larson as Alfred P. Doolittle and Esme Percy as Count Aristid Kaparthy.

Leslie Howard makes a splendid Henry Higgins but the real revelation is Wendy Hiller in her second film.  With Hiller, Eliza is keeping her Cockney soul under check at al times whereas Audrey Hepburn always seems to me as a born princess struggling to escape her flower girl disguise.  The other performances are of a very high standard.  Asquith does an excellent job of opening up the story so it does not seem unnecessarily stagey.  I had a smile on my face throughout.  Very warmly recommended.

George Bernard Shaw and the adaptors of his play won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay, making Shaw the only Nobel Prize winner to also have an Oscar.  Shaw said “It’s an insult for them to offer me any honour, as if they had never heard of me before – and it’s very likely they never have. They might as well send some honour to George for being King of England.”  Pygmalion also received nominations in the categories of Best Picture, Best Actor (Howard) and Best Actress (Hiller).

“Trailer” – Professor Higgins makes Eliza an offer she can’t refuse