Category Archives: 1939

Dark Victory
Directed by Edmund Goulding
Written by Casey Robinson based on the play by George Emerson Brewer Jr. and Bertram Bloch
1939/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Judith: But I haven’t time to be ill.[/box]

The medical melodrama is not one of my favorite genres.  I have to admit that this one is beautifully made and Bette Davis gives it her all.

Judith Traherne (Davis) is a strong-minded socialite who apparently lives with her best friend Ann (Geraldine Fitzgerald).  Her one semi-productive activity is racing horses aided by her able Irish trainer Michael O’Leary (Humphrey Bogart with brogue!).  Judith has been suffering headaches and one day as she is preparing a horse for a steeplechase she gets double vision and crashes through a hurdle.

Much against her will, her family doctor (Henry Travers) takes her to reknowned bachelor brain surgeon Frederick Steele (George Brent).  Steele is preparing to close his practice to devote himself to research but one look at Judy and her symptoms has him hooked.  He operates, only to discover a terminal malignancy.  This is a “Hollywood illness” that will leave the victim vital and beautiful until the day blindness strikes and she dies. Steele, who has fallen in love with Judith, tries to hide her fate from her.  With Ronald Reagan as a drunk in Judith’s set.

This is Bette Davis’s movie.  For most of it, her Judith is a girl in love.  There is a bit of the Davis “diva” especially when she is thwarted but often she is very moving with those expressive eyes of hers.  I never thought I would see Bogart giving a performance like this. To his credit, he is utterly miscast but his brogue is spotty and he almost resorts to histrionics during his love confession scene.  The cinematography by Ernest Haller is a thing of beauty, with rich and interesting shadows revealing the scenes.

Dark Victory was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Original Score (Max Steiner).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tzAa-Dz-aY

Trailer

Goodbye, Mr. Chips
Directed by Sam Wood
Written by R.C. Sherriff, Claudine West, and Eric Maschwitz based on the book by James Hilton
1939/UK
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer British Studios
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Mr. Chipping ‘Mr. Chips’: I thought I heard you saying it was a pity… pity I never had any children. But you’re wrong. I have. Thousands of them. Thousands of them… and all boys.[/box]

How in the heck did this classic miss the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die List?

Told primarily in flashback, the story follows the 60+ year career and life of Charles Chipping (Robert Donat), a Latin teacher at an old and prestigious English boys’ school (think Eton).   The boys walk all over the timid, awkward Chipping and he responds by becoming a heartily disliked disciplinarian.  Then, after he suffers a stinging career setback, a kindly German teacher (Paul Heinreid) takes him on a mountaineering expedition to Austria on holiday.  Purely by chance, he meets Kathy (Greer Garson) and she changes his life.

For those of you who think I am developing a heart of stone, I have to report that I watched almost the entire movie through a veil of tears.  Because I had seen it before,  it didn’t take anything particularly sad to set me off.    There is something about the British stiff upper lip that causes my own lip to start quivering.  This is a beautiful film in every way and Robert Donat’s Best Actor Oscar was richly deserved in a year of great performances.  I can’t imagine why this is not on The List and would encourage everyone to put it near the top of their own personal “to watch” pile.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips was also nominated in the categories of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Screenplay, Best Sound Recording, and Best Film Editing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edCDsaEjEf8

Trailer

Beau Geste
Directed by William Wellman
Written by Robert Carson based on a novel by Percival Christopher Wren
1939/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental

Foreword: “The love of a man for a woman waxes and wanes like the moon, but the love of brother for brother is steadfast as the stars and endures like the word of the prophet.” Arabian proverb

I just loved this mystery/adventure.

Beau (Gary Cooper), Digby (Robert Preston), and John (Ray Milland) Geste are English orphaned brothers living with their kindly Aunt Patricia and their obnoxious cousin Augustus.  We meet them as children led by eldest brother Beau and playing at games of derring-do.  Aunt Patricia introduces them to an officer in the French Foreign Legion and they decide that is what they want to be when they grow up.  We find out that Patricia’s absent husband has been going through the family fortune and the largest remaining asset is the huge and immensely valuable “Blue Water” sapphire.

The next time we see them they are adults and as close as ever.  John has fallen in love with his cousin Isobel (the very young Susan Hayward).    Patricia learns that her husband is coming home to sell the sapphire.  The brothers ask to see it for one last time.  While she is displaying it, all the lights go out and the stone vanishes.  A little later Beau confesses to his brothers that he stole it and sets out to join the Foreign Legion.  Shortly thereafter, Digby says Beau confessed to spare him and sets out after him.  The brothers are not to be separated and John soon follows despite his love for Isobel.

The Foreign Legion proves to be much less romantic than the boys imagined.  They are all assigned to training under the sadistic Sargeant Markoff (Brian Donleavy) whose idea of “breaking” a man to be a soldier includes anything up to killing him.  Then a man overhears the brothers discussing the Blue Water Diamond and is convinced Beau has it in his possession. He tells Markoff who begins to plot to get it from him.  The first part of the plan includes separating Beau and John from Digby and putting them under Markoff’s command at a desert fortress.  The rest of the movie includes a mutiny by the Legionnaires and an attack on the fort by the Tauregs.  I won’t give anything else away.

The whole movie captured my imagination from the intriguing mystery behind the jewel theft to the exotic desert scenes to the stirring battle.  The acting is all first-rate but I though Brian Donleavy was the standout.  He makes an unforgettable villain.  It was also fun to spot a familiar face playing Beau Geste as a child.  I had to wait for the credits to verify that this was Donald O’Connor!  William A. Wellman certainly knows how to direct action. Recommended.

Beau Geste was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Supporting Actor (Donlevy) and Best Art Direction.

Trailer

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Directed by Alfred L. Werker
Written by Edwin Blum and William A. Drake based on the play “Sherlock Holmes” by William Gillette
1939/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp.
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Sherlock Holmes: You’ve a magnificent brain, Moriarty. I admire it. I admire it so much I’d like to present it pickled in alcohol to the London Medical Society.[/box]

This is the second in the Rathbone-Bruce series of Sherlock Holmes films and the last the two made before the franchise moved to Universal Pictures..  I liked it a bit more than The Hound of the Baskervilles, despite Watson’s increased dithering.

Criminal genius Professor Moriarty devises a plan to divert Holmes while he commits the Crime of the Century and almost succeeds.  With George Zucco as Moriarty, Ida Lupino as a damsel in distress, and Henry Stephenson as Chief Constable of the Tower of London.

Zucco and Lupino as well as snappier dialogue and suspenseful music help this mystery improve on the first in the series..  Watson is played as a buffoon, but for some reason I find Nigel Bruce so endearing I don’t care much.    And we get to hear Rathbone sing! Standard stuff but fairly entertaining.

Clip – opening scene – Holmes and Moriarty

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmJVXHLjVhk

Holmes disguised as a music hall entertainer singing “I Do Love to Be Beside the Seaside” (sorry about video quality)

Young Mr. Lincoln
Directed by John Ford
Written by Lamar Trotti
1939/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Corporation
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Abe Lincoln: By jing, that’s all there is to it; Right and Wrong.[/box]

The grandeur of Ford’s vision of antebellum America is marred by the trite screenplay to my mind.

This highly fictionalized account of Lincoln’s(Henry Fonda)  career as a young lawyer and aspiring politician focuses, after some preliminaries, on his (fictional) defense of two brothers accused of murdering a town bully who harassed one’s wife.  The story manages to fit in Ann Rutledge, Mary Todd and Stephen Douglas.  Thankfully, Ford was able to forestall the studio’s wish to include a chance encounter between Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth.  With Alice Brady as the mother of the accused, Donald Meek as the prosecutor, and Ward Bond as an “eye witness”.

I thought Ford captured the texture of frontier life in 1830’s Illinois really well and there are some awesome river vistas in this.  Henry Fonda makes a convincing Lincoln in the first of his seven films with Ford.  While the film has many merits, it suffers from great-man syndrome and some fairly trite dialogue as far as I am concerned.

Young Mr. Lincoln was Oscar-nominated for its Original Story.

Clip – Lincoln judges a pie contest