Condemned!
Directed by Wesley Ruggles
Written by Sidney Howard from a book by Blair Niles
1929/US
The Samuel Goldwyn Company
IMDb page
First viewing/Amazon Instant
Jean Vidal: Did you or did you not give my wife a monkey?
A decent action/adventure for the sound era.
Jean Vidal (Dudley Digges), the sadistic and gross warden of Devils Island, made a loveless marriage with the pious, timid, and much younger Madame Vidal (Ann Harding). She throws herself into her housework to take her mind off Jean and her extreme homesickness. Jean thinks household chores beneath the dignity of a warden’s wife and insists on hiring a prisoner to help her. He thinks he has found the perfect candidate in Michel Oman (Ronald Colman), a gentleman thief recently sent to the island.
Michel and the Mme. form a close emotional attachment and the pair soon become the talk of the town despite the chaste nature of their relations. This makes Jean a laughing stock and he is determined to get to the bottom of the stories. His treatment of both lovers ends only in their declaring themselves and plots for Michel to escape. The second act of the movie is devoted to the escape through the fever-torn jungles of Guyana. With Louis Wolford as Michel’s tough convict buddy.
This drags at times but is entertaining mostly due to Colman’s debonaire performance. I like Ann Harding but I thought she overdid it a bit in this one. She certainly looked lovely.
Colman received an Oscar nod for Best Actor.
Montage of clips from Colman’s films – what an actor! what a face!
