Category Archives: Movie Reviews

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.

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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)

That Hamilton Woman (AKA “Lady Hamilton”)
Directed by Alexander Korda
Written by Walter Reisch and R.C. Sherriff
1941/UK
Alexander Korda Films/London Films Productions
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] [Emma has just recounted her story to her cellmate, ending with her learning of Nelson’s death]

The Streetgirl: And then?  What happened after?

Emma: There is no “then”. There is no “after”.[/box]

I like this historical drama about the great love between Horatio Lord Nelson and Lady Emma Hamilton set at the time of England’s last great struggle with a dictator from the Continent.

The story is told in flashback by an impoverished Emma (Vivien Leigh) who is sitting in a jail cell in Calais.  It begins when the beautiful 18-year old Emma Hart is essentially “sold” by her lover to his much older uncle Lord Hamilton (Alan Mowbray), the British Ambassador to the court at Naples and a connoisseur of fine things .  Hamilton educates his prize and grows so enamored of her that he marries her.  She proves to be a valuable asset in his diplomacy, soon forming a close relationship with the Queen.

Her acquaintance with Nelson (Laurence Olivier) begins when she is able to get him troops through her influence at court.  Over the years, as Nelson is becoming a great naval hero, the friendship ripens into a passionate love affair.  Although both parties are married, they carry on their liaison quite openly.  Nelson can get away with almost anything but society decidedly does not approve of Emma.  When her lover is killed at the Battle of Trafalgar, she and their daughter are left penniless.  With Sara Allgood as Emma’s mother and Gladys Cooper as Nelson’s wife.

Alexander Korda, a close friend of Churchill’s, capitalized on the recent marriage of his two leads and Leigh’s fame from Gone With the Wind to frame a patriotic tale of British resistance against a European tyrant.  Olivier makes a couple of speeches warning against appeasement and rallying his troops.  But this is primarily a love story between characters played by two beautiful and gifted actors and the medicine goes down quite easily.

That Hamilton Woman won the Oscar for Best Sound Recording.  It was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Black-and-White Cinematography (Rudolph Maté) and Best Black-and-White Art Direction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDwisHj4XK4

Trailer

The 49th Parallel (AKA “The Invaders”)
Directed by Michael Powell
Written by Emeric Pressburger and Rodney Ackland
1941/UK
Ortus Films
Repeat viewing/Streaming on Amazon Instant Video

[box] Philip Armstrong Scott: Nazis? That explains your arrogance, stupidity, and bad manners.[/box]

The stars took a cut in pay to appear in this exciting, if a bit heavy handed, anti-isolationist propaganda film

A German u-boat enters the Gulf of St. Lawrence and torpedoes a Canadian merchant vessel.  It escapes to the Hudson Bay where it is stalled for lack of sufficient food or fuel. The captain sends a group of six men to a nearby small trading post to plant the Nazi flag and take over it and its supplies.  Just as the men are setting out, the Canadian Air Force sinks the sub.  The men and their leader, fanatical Nazi Lieutenant Hirth (Eric Portman) set out to complete the mission and try to work their way to the neutral United States.  They leave death and destruction everywhere they stop but the “decadent democracy” of Canada proves to be too much for them in the end.  With Laurence Olivier has a French-Canadian trapper at the trading post; Anton Walbrook as the leader of a Christian religious commune; Leslie Howard as an effete student of Native Canadian culture in the woods; and Raymond Massey as a friendly Canadian soldier hitching a ride in a freight car headed across the border.

he pedigree of this film includes just about every important British film artist of the next couple of decades: Powell; Pressburger; editor David Lean; cinematographer Freddie Jones; and composer Ralph Vaughn Williams.  The vignettes are all outstanding but I especially love the majestic scenic photography of Canada whose entire breadth is spanned by the Germans during the course of the film.  Just the opening strains of the music to this gives me goose bumps.  The Germans continually mistake the open-hearted good nature of Canadians for weakness and are just as continually proved wrong.  This testament to the essential strength of democracy and freedom is more effective than the overtly patriotic speeches.  Recommended.

Emeric Pressburger won the Academy Award for Best Original Story.  The 49th Parallel was also nominated for Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Screenplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcZOJ60WQKs

Clip – Anton Walbrook – “We are not your brothers.”

Never Give a Sucker an Even Break
Directed by Edward Cline
Written by John T. Neville and Prescott Chaplin; original story by “Otis Criblecoblis” (W.C. Fields)
1941/USA
Universal Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] His Niece: [Last Lines] My Uncle Bill. But I still love him.[/box]

I don’t know why I continue to watch these things and I don’t have it in me to say a bad word against Fields’s last hurrah.

The Great Man (Fields as himself) has a loving niece (Gloria Jean) who is a singer trying to break into the movies.  Fields shops a fantastical script to a movie studio executive (Franklin Pangborn) with a part for her in it.  We see the script played out.  It’s centerpiece has Fields falling from the veranda (!) of an airplane into a hidden land populated by a mother (Margaret Dumont) and her daughter, who has been raised in the absence of men.

Poor Fields looks tired and ill in this one.  He’s still game though.

This was the last movie to star Fields; his remaining film work had him in supporting roles or cameos, as his health began to decline.

Clip -scene with waitress

Here Comes Mr. Jordan 
Directed by Alexander Hall
Written by Sidney Buichman and Seton I. Miller from the play “Heaven Can Wait” by Harry Seagall
1941/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Messenger 7013: I have an idea, Mr. Jordan, couldn’t we have him reborn?

Joe Pendleton: Nothing doing; I’m not gonna go through *that* again![/box]

This fantasy lacks a little in the internal logic department but is a fun film with nice performances by Robert Montgomery and Claude Rains.

Joe Pendleton (Montgomery) is a professional boxer who is looking at a fight that will give him a chance at the championship.  While flying his plane to the venue in New York, it crashes.  Messenger 7013 (Edward Everett Horton) plucks his soul from his body before the plane hits ground and takes him to a part of the after life that is administered by Mr. Jordan.  Problem is Joe was not meant to die in the crash or, indeed, for the next 50 years. Unfortunately Joe’s trainer (James Gleason) cremates the body before Joe’s soul can be restored to it.   Mr. Jordan scrambles to find Joe a new body.  Joe is pretty fussy as his old one was :”in the pink”.  Finally the two settle on the body of young millionaire Bruce Farnsworth who is about to be murdered by his wife and private secretary.

We see Joe’s body and hear his speech pattern but others see and hear Farnsworth.  Joe retains the memories of his former life and immediately starts training as he has been told by Jordan that he is destined to be champion.  He also becomes attracted to the pretty blonde daughter (Evelyn Keyes) of a bond salesman the real Farnsworth used as the fall guy in a fraud case and gets her father out of jail.  But the championship cannot be Joe’s before a number of comic complications set in.

One doesn’t expect realism from a picture like this one but every time I thought I had figured out the “rules” of the after life they seemed to change on me.  It didn’t mar my enjoyment of the film.  This is a lot of fun and I thought both Montgomery and Rains were terrific.  Here Comes Mr. Jordan won Academy Awards for Best Original Story and and Best Screenplay.  It was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Montgomery), Best Supporting Actor (Gleason), and Best Black-and-White Cinematography.

The story was remade in 1978 as Heaven Can Wait with Warren Beatty as Joe and James Mason as Mr. Jordan.  The 1943 classic Heaven Can Wait directed by Ernst Lubitsch is a different story, dealing more with the netherworld than Jordan’s domain.

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Suspicion
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Samson Raphaelson, Joan Harrison and Alma Reville based on the novel Before the Fact by Frances Iles
1941/USA
RKO Radio Pictures
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Isobel Sedbusk: Imagine a substance in daily use everywhere. Anyone can lay his hands on it, and within a minute after taking, the victim’s beautifully out of the way. Mind you, it’s undetectable after death.

Lina McLaidlaw Aysgarth: Is whatever it is, painful?[/box]

There’s something about this Hitchcock thriller that doesn’t quite work for me but it’s still worth seeing.

“Plain”, sheltered Lina McLaidlaw (Joan Fontaine) meets dashing playboy Johnnie Aysgarth (Cary Grant) on a train and falls hard.  It’s not too long before Johnnie admits his love and they are married, much to the chagrin of Lina’s father.  Turns out he had a point as Johnnie is irresponsible, a big spender and gambler, and adverse to gainful employment.  He keeps hoping that Lina’s parents will bail them out but nothing doing.

Lina starts catching Johnnie in lies and he withholds vital information about their finances from her.  She begins suspecting him of all kinds of things.  He hatches a get-rich-quick real estate scheme to be financed by his friend Binky (Nigel Bruce).  Then Binky winds up dead and Lina’s paranoia about her own safety escalates to an unbearable level. With Dame May Whitty as Lina’s mother and Cedric Hardwicke as her father.

The source material calls for Lina’s suspicions to come true.  But there was no way that could happen with Cary Grant in the lead and the writers were unable to find a satisfying way out of that dilemma.  The suspense is somewhat lacking as well.  Joan Fontaine did quite well as an English woman without putting on a phony accent.  I’m guessing that one of the reasons for her Oscar win was that she was snubbed for Rebecca the previous year, however.  My favorite performance in the movie comes from Nigel Bruce as the jolly Binky.

Joan Fontaine won the Oscar for Best Actress for this part.  Suspicion was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Music, Score (Franz Waxman).

Trailer

The Strawberry Blonde 
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Written by Julius J. Epstein and Philip G. Epstein from a play by James Hagan
1941/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Amazon Instant Video

[box] Biff Grimes: I’ve been around, they can say an awful lot of things about Biff Grimes, but not that he ever gave a cigarette to a girl.[/box]

This light romantic tale is a nostalgic look back at the Gay Nineties and its music.

As the story begins, Biff Grimes (James Cagney) is a struggling dentist desperate to drum up a few patients.  Suddenly he is called on to pull the tooth of one alderman Hugo Barnstead (Jack Carson) who double-crossed him in love and business ten years before.  As he is relishing this unexpected opportunity for revenge, he reflects on his life.

Hugo and Biff were both infatuated with lovely Virginia Brush (Rita Hayworth), The Strawberry Blonde.  Virginia is a flirtatious and proper maiden of the period.  Her friend Amy (Olivia De Havilland) is a nurse and self-proclaimed woman’s rights advocate who has a yen for Biff.  He, a traditional male, wouldn’t have her because of her forwardness even if he wasn’t  pining for Virginia.  On their double dates with Hugo and Virginia, Biff is inevitably left holding the bag.

On the day Biff is to go on a longed for date with Virginia, he finds out she has married Hugo. Amy helps him cover his shame and he marries her, evidently still not appreciating her properly.  When the couple next run into Hugo and Virginia, Hugo is rich and Virginia urges him to find Biff work.  Hugo complies by making him the front man for a construction business benefitting from city graft.  Needless to say, this does not work out well for Biff. When the couples are brought together again on the day of the tooth-pulling, Biff is at last able to put his life in perspective.   With Alan Hale as Biff’s reprobate father (??!), George Tobias as his friend, and a small bit by Una O’Connor as a maid.

For a very charming musical, the plot has a bit of bite.  If there had been an award for best costumes at the time, it would have deserved a nomination.  Olivia De Havilland is absolutely irresistible in this.

Heinz Roemheld was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture.

Trailer

Buck Privates
Directed by Arthur Lubin
Written by Arthur T. Horman and John Grant
1941/USA
Universal Pictures
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Slicker Smith: Throw your chest out! Go on! Throw your chest out!

Herbie Brown: I’m not through with it yet![/box]

I saw this to see The Andrews Sisters do their thing and they certainly did not disappoint! This is basically a film to promote patriotism and the first Peace Time Draft initiated in October 1940. The story, such as it is,  has Slicker Smith (Bud Abbott) and Herbie Brown (Lou Costello) mistakenly join the Army to the continual dismay of everybody at their boot camp.  There is a subplot about a couple of other draftees and their love triangle with one of the camp hostesses.  There is also much singing and dancing, particularly by The Andrews Sisters.  Shemp Howard plays a cook in one of Costello’s numbers.

This almost makes one want to run out and join up without waiting to be drafted.  The camp certainly looks like a kind of lark complete with lovely camp hostesses.  I wonder did they really exist?  Sounds kind of nasty but was completely innocent.  The girls serve coffee and flirt with the boys.

The Andrews Sisters sing “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy”, “Bounce Me Brother with a Solid Four”. “You’re a Lucky Fellow Mr. Smith”, and “(I’ll Be with You) In Apple Blossom Time”. One can see why they were such a hit in the era.  The movie went forward to gross over $4 million on a shoestring budget, providing the formula for many other Abbott and Costello movies to come.

Hugh Prince and Don Raye received an Academy Award nomination for their song “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B” and Charles Previn was nominated for Best Music, Scoring of a Motion Picture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qafnJ6mRbgk

The Andrews Sisters sing “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B”

Meet John Doe
Directed by Frank Capra
Written by Robert Riskin based on a story by Richard Connell and Robert Presnell Sr.
1941/USA
Frank Capra Productions
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

[box] The Colonel: I don’t read no papers, and I don’t listen to radios either. I know the world’s been shaved by a drunken barber, and I don’t have to read it.[/box]

This was the last film Capra made before he joined the Army Signal Corps and the threat of war is never very far away in what may be the darkest of his comedies.

Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck) is the advice columnist on a paper that is bought up by the mega-rich D.B. Norton (Edward Arnold).  She is fired and fires back by writing a fake letter by “John Doe” detailing his woes and stating that he will jump off the roof of City Hall on Christmas Eve.  The letter creates a great outpouring of sympathy and Ann gets her job back by threatening to reveal the letter as a fake to the rival paper.  She also sees a great series of stories leading up to the “suicide” and persuades her editor to find a man to impersonate John Doe.  The ideal candidate appears in the form of washed-up pitcher Long John Willoughby (Gary Cooper).

Despite many warnings from his friend and mentor the “Colonel” (Walter Brennan) against getting involved with “he-lots”, John signs up for the job with the promise that he will get his pitching arm fixed and hit the road before Christmas Eve.  He sticks around for love of Ann.  But things spiral out of control and John Doe becomes a national sensation after Ann writes him  a speech urging a return to community, love of neighbor, teamwork, etc.  A John Doe Club spontaneously springs up and D.B. Norton, who sees a potential for using the movement for political purposes, starts financing a nationwide organization.  Poor John finds he cannot extricate himself even after he learns that he has created a monster. With Spring Byington as Ann’s mother and James Gleason as her crusty editor.

The story is basically an allegory about the creation of a Fascist cult of personality, albeit with an unwitting personality.  With its themes of suicide, corruption of the media, and manipulation of the common man, it is not a ray of sunshine despite Capra’s comedic flourishes.  It is, however, very powerful largely due to the superb performance by Cooper. His rugged face is perfect for the part.  Stanwyck is also outstanding, as usual, and Edward Arnold made a subtle, yet effective villain.

This is an example of a movie that improved for me on repeat viewing.  The first time I saw it I  didn’t like it much.  This time it made me cry.

Meet John Doe was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9AXjEChjno

Trailer