Monthly Archives: September 2022

In Name Only
Directed by John Cromwell
Written by Richard Sherman from a novel by Bessie Breuer
1939/US
RKO Radio Pictures
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Julie Eden: [Last lines] We were both dreaming, darling. But, now, it’s true.

John Cromwell delivers a solid “woman’s picture” with a fabulous cast.

Alec (Cary Grant) and Maida (Kay Francis) Walker have been an unhappily married couple ever since he found out she married him for his money. Kay has his parents conned into believing she is the perfect wife . One day, Cary meets Julie Eden and after that he only has eyes for her. She is a young widow with a little girl and is looking for a commitment.

Unfortunately, Maida could probably forego Alec but not the money and status that comes with him. She tries every low trick in the book to deny Alec his divorce. With Charles Coburn as Cary’s father and Helen Vinson in her usual role of catty troublemaker.

All the principals are in top form and Cromwell avoids overdoing any part of it. The story could have so easily drifted into melodrama.  Worth a watch.

The Hurricane
Directed by John Ford
Written by Dudley Nichols and Oliver H.P. Garrett from a novel by Charles Nordoff and James Norman Hall
1937/US
The Samuel Goldwyn Company
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

DeLaage: My dear doctor, I’m ready to give my wife and my friends anything I own in the world except my sense of honor and duty.
Dr. Kersaint: A sense of honor in the South Seas is about as useful and often as silly as a silk hat in a hurricane.

The best part of this solid John Ford entry is the hurricane. Second best is the stellar cast.

The story takes place in French Polynesia.  Terangi (Jon Hall) is the most well-loved man on his island. He has an idyllic romance with Marama (Dorothy Lamour) which leads to their marriage early in the film.

Jon is first mate on a clipper that sails between the islands. On shore leave in Tahiti, he breaks the jaw of white man who hit him first and was ejecting Polynesians from a saloon. This lands him in jail for a six month term. Due to his many escape attempts he is separated from Dorothy and the daughter he has never seen for eight years. Finally he makes an escape good only to have to fight a killer hurricane. With Raymond Massey as the inflexible governor of the island, Mary Astor as his compassionate wife, John Carradine as a sadistic jailer, Thomas Mitchell as a sympathetic doctor, and C. Aubrey Smith as a saintly priest.

Always good to catch up on my unseen John Ford filmography.  This has a fabulous cast and I enjoyed it greatly.

The film won the Oscar for Best Sound, Recording.  It was nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Mitchell) and Best Music, Score.

Night Must Fall
Directed by Richard Thorpe
Written by John Van Druten from a play by Emlyn Williams
1937/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Olivia Grayne: Well, here we all are perfectly ordinary English people. We woke up this morning thinking, hmmm, here’s another day. We got up, looked at the weather, talked… Here we all are still talking and… all the time…all the time there may be something lying in the woods, hidden under a bush… with two feet showing, perhaps a high heel catching the sunlight with a bird perched on the end of it, and the other, the other stockinged foot with blood that’s dried on the stocking… and somewhere, somewhere there’s a man walking about and talking just like us, and he got up in the morning, and he looked at the world… and he killed her.

This well-acted atmospheric thriller goes directly on to my Best New to Me Films of 2022 list.

Olivia Grayne (Rosalind Russell) is sexually repressed and penniless, but smart.  She lives with her wealthy aunt Mrs. Bramson (Dame May Whitty) who treats her the same way she does all her servants – badly.  One of the servants is engaged to Danny (Robert Montgomery), who works at the local inn.  She asks the old lady to speak to him in an effort to speed up the wedding day.

On the same day the quiet of the English countryside is disturbed by the discovery of a decapitated female murder victim on Mrs. Bramson’s property.

Danny arrives and promptly charms the socks off Mrs. Bramson with his Irish charm and good looks.  He becomes her companion and confidante.  Olivia can’t put her finger on it but knows there is something “off” about him.  She says he seems to be acting all the time.  On the other hand, his animal magnetism is drawing her in.  I’ll stop here except to say the suspense just builds and builds.

Robert Montgomery is a favorite of mine and this has got to be one of his finest performances.  Pre-code he always plays the charming young man who doesn’t get the girl but looks swell in a tuxedo.  This, on the other hand, is quite a nuanced performance requiring him to be charming, humble, and very creepy all at the same time.  Russell and Whitty are fantastic.  Highly recommended.

Three Comrades
Directed by Frank Borzage
Written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and Edward E. Paramore Jr. from a novel by Erich Maria Remarque
1938/US
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Gottfried Lenz: I drink to those who think of home tonight. I drink to the peace they hope to find at home now that peace has come to them at war.

This is a sweet, if sad, look at the lives of three war buddies between Wars and the affection for the same woman that only draws them closer together.

Erich Lohkamp (Robert Taylor), Otto Koster (Franchot Tone), and Gottfried Lenz (Robert Young) served together in the German army during WWI.  They remain close after the war and open an auto repair shop together.  They struggle to survive amid the depression and chaos of Berlin during these years.  The men meet a vivacious woman named Patricia Hollman (Margaret Sullavan) and the four are now inseparable.  It is Erich that she marries. Unfortunately, Patricia has consumption which worsens and forces her to go to a sanitorium they can ill afford.

The stars are all quite charming and this is a very watchable film.

The Whole Town’s Talking
Directed by John Ford
Written by Jo Swerling and Robert Riskin from a story by W.R. Burnett
1935/US
Columbia Pictures
IMDb Page
First viewing/Amazon Prime rental

Arthur Ferguson Jones: My name isn’t Jones it’s Mannion. I mean it isn’t Jannion it’s Mones. Oh, I don’t know. It’s Jones! Jones, that’s what it is!

I can’t believe I waited to see one of Edward G. Robinson’s very best performances for so long.  And the rest of the movie is wonderful as well.

Robinson plays Arthur Ferguson Jones, a meek, humble clerk at an accounting firm. In his off time, he writes love poetry to his secret crush, sassy co-worker Wilhelmina Clark (Jean Arthur). He has not been late to work once in the entire eight years he has worked for the firm.

One fateful morning his alarm clock fails him. Thus begins a very bad day. Public Enemy No. 1 “Killer” Mannion (also Robinson) escapes from jail after taking the lives of a couple of guards. A man hunt is launched and since Jones so closely resembles the killer, he is picked up and grilled to within an inch of his life despite his protests. Wilhelmina, whom he was lunching with at the time of his capture, is also grilled. When it is finally established that Jones’s fingerprints do not match Mannion’s, the cops give him a letter he can show to avoid being picked up again. When the Killer finds out, he figures that Jones’s pass can come in handy. He also starts hiding out in Jones’s apartment and otherwise terrorizing him.

Edward G. Robinson is so wonderful in this film. He gives each character a special flair and even plays Jones pretending to be Mannion at one point. His Mannion is meaner than even his Little Caesar (1931) and his Jones more humble than his character in Scarlet Street (1945). The script is sharp. And while this is not Ford at his auteur best, the story is beautifully told. Some of the scenes in which Robinson converses with himself are unbelievably seamless. It’s not as serious as I make it sound. Sort of a combo between a romcom and a gangster movie, with several inside pokes at each genre. Warmly recommended.

Fan Trailer

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This review catches me up with the movies I have watched.  I intend to mix in some movies I have not seen from later years in the 30’s with my pre-Code viewing until I start up where I left off in 1978 in a month or so.