Flickers in Time

Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake
Directed by John Cromwell
Written by Philip Dunne from a novel by Edison Marshall
1942/USA
Twentieth Century Fox
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Eve: You will go! If you stay out of pity, I will throw myself in sea.[/box]

This is an OK costume drama notable for a unique chance to see George Sanders boxing bare-chested.

It is sometime in the 18th Century.  Young Ben (Roddy MacDowall)  is being raised by his humble grandfather to become a blacksmith.  The other children tease him because he has no name.  One day, Sir Arthur Blake (Sanders) comes into the shop, announces that Ben is the illegitimate son of his deceased older brother and the gunsmith’s daughter, and takes Ben away to live with him ostensibly to be educated.  Instead, Ben is made an indentured servant and treated even more cruelly than the rest of the heartless Sir Arthur’s minions.  He grows up to be Tyrone Power.

Sir Arthur’s daughter Isabel (Frances Farmer) lusts after the handsome Benjamin and eventually falls in love with him.  Finally, he can bear his mistreatment no more and attacks Sir Arthur.  Now he is a fugitive.  He escapes as a seaman on a vessel headed on an around the world voyage.  He meets fellow seaman Caleb Green who tells him of a fortune in pearls to be found off the coast of a South Sea Island,  They detour the ship and go AWOL on the island.

 The islanders had previously been visited by Spaniards who abused them and are hostile to the two adventurers.  But when Benjamin shows them the scars on his own back the locals accept them with open arms.  Benjamin is promptly enchanted by the beautiful islander he calls “Eve” (Gene Tierney).  He declares her his bride since no one knows when another ship will arrive to take the pearl hunters back to England.

Their ship does come in and the rest of the story is devoted to Benjamin’s adventures as he seeks to redeem his rightful inheritance courtesy of the treasure trove of pearls he brings with him.  With Elsa Lanchester as a prostitute who helps Benjamin escape.

This is alright but I didn’t find it gripping.  This kind of thing isn’t usually for me though and those who like costume dramas will find this a very polished one.

This was the last film Frances Farmer made before alcoholism and erratic behavior caused her parents to commit her to a series of insane asylums.

Trailer

You Were Never Lovelier
Directed by William Seiter
Written by Michael Fessier, Ernest Pagano, and Delmer Davies from a story by Carlos Olivari and Sixto Pondal Rios
1942/USA
Columbia Pictures Corporation
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Lita Acuña: Just think papa, you’ve been married longer than we’ve lived!

Eduardo Acuña: I consider that a very fortunate coincidence, my dear.[/box]

The plot could not be more inane but the songs and dances are very nice.

The irascible nightclub owner Eduardo Acuña (Adolphe Menjou) has four daughters.  He intends to strictly inforce the family tradition that the girls will marry in order by age. Unfortunately for the two youngest girls, who both have longtime fiances, their older sister Maria (Rita Hayworth) has never met a man who captured her imagination.  Acuña himself starts to send Maria anonymous love letters and boxes of orchids every day to get her in the proper mood.

In the meantime, dancer Robert Davis (Fred Astaire) has gone broke playing the ponies and tries desperately to get an audition with Acuña who takes an instant dislike to him. Robert grabs the orchids one day and delivers them to the house.  When Maria spots him it is love at first sight.  Glad that Maria is in love but disgusted by her choice, Acuña bribes Robert with a job at his club to disillusion the girl.  Needless to say, Acuña is stuck with a son-in-law not of his choosing instead.  With Xavier Cougat and his orchestra.

The film is blessed with a couple of great standards (“I’m Old-Fashioned” and “Dearly Beloved”) and other good songs, fantastic dancing, and beautiful sets and costumes. Musical lovers need no more for an entertaining romp.  Unfortunately, the movie has one of those “idiot” plots that would fall apart like a house of cards if even one of the protagonists acted like a normal human being for five minutes straight.  It’s also the kind of story where love turns on and off on a dime that I find particularly irritating.  I enjoyed the film any way.

You Were Never Lovelier was Oscar-nominated for Best Sound, Recording; Best Music, Original Song (“Dearly Beloved” by Jerome Kern and Johnny Mercer); and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture (Leigh Harline).

Fred Astaire sings “Dearly Beloved”

Saboteur
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Written by Peter Vertiel, Joan Harrison and Dorothy Parker
1942/USA
Frank Lloyd Productions
Repeat viewing/Netflix rental

Charles Tobin: Very pretty speech – youthful, passionate, idealistic. Need I remind you that you are the fugitive from justice, not I. I’m a promient citizen, widely respected. You are an obscure workman wanted for committing an extremely unpopular crime. Now which of us do you think the police will believe?

This is easily Hitchcock’s most political and patriotic movie.  It doesn’t particularly help the suspense.

Barry (Robert Cummings) works at a defense plant.  One day his friend bumps into the unfriendly Fry who drops a lot of letters and a hundred dollar bill.  Barry notes the man’s name so he can return the money.  Soon afterward the three men are together again watching a fire that has broken out.  Barry and his friend decide to try to fight the fire.  Fry hands the friend a fire extinguisher that causes the flames to explode into a huge fire ball, killing the friend.  The extinguisher was filled with gasoline.  Barry becomes the prime suspect in the sabotage.  His case isn’t helped when no employee by the name of Fry is on the payroll of the plant.

Barry flees the police.  He heads for the address on the envelopes he saw drop from Fry’s pocket.  There he meets affable wealthy rancher Charles Tobin (Otto Kruger).  Tobin’s little granddaughter unwittingly reveals another stack of letters that proves Tobin to be a Fifth Columnist.  Tobin turns Barry over to the police but he miraculously escapes.  Now he is on the run from both Tobin’s gang and the police,

Barry is caught in a downpour and takes shelter in the cabin of a sympathetic blind man.  The man’s niece Pat (Priscilla Lane) arrives and spots Barry’s handcuffs.  She is a patriot who wants to turn him over to the police.   But Barry takes her as a kind of hostage and the rest of the film plays out remarkably like the story of The 39 Steps.

My favorite part of this film is Otto Kruger’s perfomance.  He is so deliciously evil!  The final set piece on the Statue of Liberty is memorable.  Aside from being a highly patriotic affair with much speechmaking, it is also interesting that wealth is clearly associated with Nazism by the writers.  Bigger stars or better actors in the leads might have helped this film but the speechifying probably would have dragged it down any way.  Not bad but not a standout in Hitchcock’s cannon.

Trailer

In This Our Life
Directed by John Huston
Written by Howard Koch from a novel by Ellen Glasgow
1942/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Netflix rental

Stanley Timberlake: You’re afraid aren’t you? Afraid of yourself. Afraid of what you might feel if you let yourself go. Why don’t you admit the truth Craig? You’ve never gotten over me and you never will. You’d like to put your arms around me right now, wouldn’t you? You’d like to kiss me, wouldn’t you?

John Huston directs a “woman’s picture?”?  Yes, and it’s not bad.

Stanley (Bette Davis) and Roy (Olivia de Havilland) Timberlake are sisters.  (The origin of their masculine names is never explained).  Stanley is a wild thing famous for careening around in the car her uncle gave her.  Uncle William (Charles Coburn) is a kindred spirit, an amoral rapscallion who robbed the family business from the girls’ father.  As the story begins, Stanley’s latest impulsive move is to run away with her sister’s husband Peter (Dennis Morgan) the night before her planned wedding to fiance Craig (George Brent).

The runaways cause enormous pain of course but Roy is determined to be strong and live her liife and gives Craig the courage to carry on as well.  Roy and Craig, a liberal lawyer, naturally fall in love.  Peter is punished for his sins by marrying Stanley who leads him a miserable existence.  I will not spoil the rest of the story except to say that Stanley gets herself deeper and deeper into hot water.  With Frank Craven as the sisters’ father and Billie Burke cast against type as their invalid, hysterical mother.

I never like Bette Davis better than when she is bad and she is really rotten here.  Olivia De Havilland’s calm lady-like but strong performance is a perfect foil to Davis’s histrionics.  Bette Davis called this the worst movie in the history of the world and both Jack Warner and Hal Wallis begged Huston to tone down her performance but I think it is pretty delicious.  Davis’s make-up gave her a new look that was not a hit with audiences but I thought it made her more attractive than usual.  The story is pretty silly of course but it does present a young black man with aspirations to a career, something unusual at the time.

The Warner Home Video DVD I rented has an excellent commentary.

Trailer

Wake Island
Directed by John Farrow
Written by W. R. Burnett and Frank Butler
1942/USA
Paramount Pictures
First viewing/Universal Studios DVD

Maj. Geoffrey Caton: Boys, the honeymoon’s over. From now on you’re marines.

Why, if  Wake Island is the first “action” WWII movie, does it feel like such a cliche?  Maybe this is where these cliches started?

The film began production before the December 1941 battle for Wake Island was over and is a highly dramatized account of the Marines defense of the U.S. garrison on the island beginning on the day Pearl Harbor was attacked.

The story begins as Major Geoffrey Caton (Brian Donlevy) is arriving to take command of the sleepy outpost.  From the beginning, he clashes with crusty Shad McClosky (Albert Dekker) who is arriving to supervise the civilian construction crew on the island.  At the same time we get the back stories of several of the Marines including cutup “Smacksie” Randall (William Bendix) who is being discharged and shipping home to marry his sweetheart and pilot Lt. Bruce Cameron (Macdonald Carey) whose wife is working at Pearl Harbor.

All the kidding around and squabbling stops when the Japanese attack the island. Although they are vastly outnumbered, the Marines fight on to the last man, inflicting serious damage on the enemy.  With Robert Preston as a Marine private.

Although the film implies that there were no survivors, the garrison surrendered after the first wave of attacks.  The Marines were sent to POW camps in Japan but the construction crew remained on the island as forced labor to build up defenses for the Japanese.  Ninety-nine of these civilians were massacred when the Japanese expected an Allied attack to retake the atoll.  The commander that ordered the murders was later executed as a war criminal.

This was my first viewing but I certainly felt like I had seen this before.  It has all the usual Hollywood combat picture tropes excepting a multi-ethnic platoon which I imagine emerges soon enough.  The combat scenes are good, though

Wake Island was nominated for four Academy Awards:  Best Picture; Best Director; Best Supporting Actor (William Bendix); and Best Writing, Original Screenplay.

In Which We Serve
Directed by Noel Coward and David Lean
Written by Noel Coward
1942/UK
Two Cities Films
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] (last line) Voiceover: God bless our ships… and all who sail in them.[/box]

This has been the best yet in my mini-festival of 1942 British films made to prepare the populace for hard times to come.

In Which We Serve is a tribute to a ship, the HMS Torrin, the men who love her, and the women who love them.  Noel Coward plays the captain of the ship E.V. Kinross, a character closely modeled on his friend Lord Mountbatten.  Cecilia Johnson, in her film debut, plays his wife.

The story begins with the dive bombing of the ship and is told in flashback as some of the survivors cling to a life raft and ponder the past.

We follow the fate of the ship from its construction in the run-up to Britain’s entry into the war through various engagements, its evacuation of soldiers from Dunkirk, and its eventual sinking.  We witness the wives and sweethearts of the sailors saying goodbye repeatedly to their men and displaying their own heroism during the Battle of Britain.

Noel Coward brought in seasoned editor David Lean to direct the action sequences. as his directorial debut.  Coward soon tired of his directing duties leaving Lean at the helm for most of the shooting.  He did a really superb job on a very complicated project.  The acting is uniformly top-notch.

As I mentioned before many of the films of this period seem designed to teach the British how they were expected to deal with adversity – i.e. with a stiff upper lip, good humor, and courage.  There are many touching moments in the story whose pathos was only heightened with the bravery with which the men and women carried on in spite of everything.  Warmly recommended.

The film is apparently in the public domain and is widely available online.

Noel Coward won an honorary award at the 1943 Academy Awards ceremony for “his outstanding production achievement in In Which We Serve“.  The film was nominated for Best Picture and Best Writing, Original Screenplay the following year.

In Which We Serve marked the screen debut of Richard Attenborough who died on August 24, 2014.  May he rest in peace.

Trailer