Flickers in Time

You Only Live Once
Directed by Fritz Lang
Written by Gene Towne and C. Graham Baker
1937/USA
Walter Wanger Productions
Repeat viewing

[box] Joan Graham: Anywhere’s our home. On the road. Out there on a cold star. Anywhere’s our home.[/box]

Fritz Lang continues with the man pursued by an uncaring society theme explored in M and Fury.  While this does not hit the heights achieved by those films, it is very good and Fonda turns in an outstanding early performance.

Joan Graham (Sylvia Sidney) has waited three years for Eddie Taylor (Henry Fonda) to be released from prison.  Eddie is a three-time loser and everyone warns Joan away from him but to no avail.  Eddie emerges with a huge chip on his shoulder, convinced that the world has it in for him.  This is despite the fact that Joan’s boss the Public Defender (Barton MacLaine) got him a job as a truck driver.

Joan’s love is the one good thing Eddie sees in his life and they marry immediately.  But they are thrown out of their honeymoon hotel and Eddie loses his job when he fails to return to his dispatcher on time after a run.  No one has sympathy for an ex-con.  While Eddie is out looking for work, six people are killed in a violent bank holdup and Eddie’s hat is found at the scene.  The rest of the film follows Eddie and Joan’s sad story as he is re-imprisoned and they go on the lam.

I have a couple of nits to pick but basically this is a powerful film.  Fonda is just superb as a hardened criminal with a soft spot for his girl.  He is so excellent as a tough guy that it is hard to understand where his noble persona came from.  The escape through the fog and some of the other shots reflect Lang’s mastery of the expressionist style.  Some have referred to this as an early film noir and it definitely has that flavor.

I think this film suffered particularly from the Production Code.  I read that Lang was forced to tone down the violence and the ending comes out of left field.  It also features a rather ludicrous birth without pregnancy.  This stuff is minor, though.  Recommended.

You Only Live Once is currently available to watch streaming on Netflix Instant and Amazon Prime Instant in the U.S.

Clip – prison escape – SPOILERS

Dead End
Directed by William Wyler
Written by Lillian Hellman based on the play by Sidney Kingsley
1937/USA
The Samuel Goldwyn Company
First viewing

[box] Hugh ‘Baby Face’: [Hugh doesn’t give a street kid money when the kid doesn’t deliver] Nothing for nothing, kid.[/box]

This gritty story of the mean streets of New York has a lot going for it, including some outstanding performances and a carefully rendered setting.

The story takes place near the Hudson River where highrise apartment buildings have sprung up that overlook a squalid tenement. A gang of unruly boys camps out on the back stoop of one of these posh buildings rough housing and annoying all the passers-by. Dave (Joel McCrea) grew up here.  He has been educated as an architect but can only get odd jobs.  He is infatuated with the beautiful Kay (Wendy Barrie) who lives in the apartment building.  Drina (Silvia Sidney) is a striking factory worker who is bringing up her younger brother Tommy in the tenements on her own.  Drina loves Dave.

Into this environment comes fugitive murderer Baby Face Martin (Humphrey Bogart).  Martin has changed his appearance with plastic surgery and has come back to his old stomping grounds after a long absence to see his mother (Marjorie Main) and girl (Claire Trevor).

Tommy joins the gang of kids.  They engage in all kinds of petty mischief but things get serious when they beat and rob a rich kid from the building.  In the meantime, Martin’s reunion with his mother and girl do not go as expected.  Martin’s anger leads him to attempt a desperate crime.

I thought this was really good in all aspects.  While Bogart is still playing a thug, he does so very sensitively.  We can see the pain in his eyes as his mother and girlfriend do not live up to his dream.  The other actors are all fine.  The collective “lead” is really Leo Gorsey, Huntz Hall and the rest of the Dead End Kids.  They give the film much of its life and have the timing down perfectly.  While the plot contains few surprises, this genre has seldom been done better.  Recommended.

Dead End was nominated for four Academy Awards:  Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Claire Trevor), Best Cinematography (Gregg Toland) and Best Art Direction; (Richard Day).  This was the first of seven movies featuring the Dead End Kids.  The group subsequently evolved into the East End Kids and Bowery Boys and made many B comedies.

Trailer

Heidi
Directed by Allan Dwan
Written by Walter Ferris and Julien Josephson based on the book by Johanna Spyri
1937/USA
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Repeat viewing

[box] Heidi: I am not her child! She’s a bad lady! She tried to sell me to gypsies! Please. Please, let the Grandfather take me home. He didn’t mean to do anything bad. I’ll work hard and pay back for everything he broke. So will Swanli and Bearli.[/box]

I loved the book as a girl and was pleased to find it when I cleaned out my parents’ house. Although Shirley Temple didn’t fit the image I had of Heidi in my head, I have a soft spot for this movie.  The story of an orphan who warms the heart of her hermit grandfather was made for little Shirley but she plays it blessedly straight in this one.

The orphan Heidi (Temple) is literally dumped at the mountain cabin of her grandfather when her aunt tires of caring for her.  The Grandfather (Jean Herscholt) is none too pleased to see her as he disowned her father for marrying her mother and has not spoken to anyone since.  But Heidi’s sweet nature gets through to the old man and he eventually warms up to the local villagers as well.

Then Heidi’s aunt shows up and steals Heidi away to serve as the companion of the crippled rich girl Klara in the big city.  Klara’s nanny Frau Rottenmeier hates Heidi on sight and treats her badly.  But Klara loves the girl and Frau Rottenmeier can’t get rid of Heidi. When Klara’s father returns from his travels, he falls in love with Heidi as well.  Heidi’s only wish is to go home to the Grandfather.  But events cause Frau Rottenmeier’s jealousy to get the better of her, threatening to separate Heidi from her home forever.

It had been years and years since I had seen this film.  I had forgotten how superb Jean Herscholt was in his role.  Shirley has a regrettable, but clearly mandatory, song and dance routine at the beginning but after that the film is a straight drama.  I thought she acquitted herself rather well in the acting department.

Trailer

The Prisoner of Zenda
Directed by John Cromwell
Written by John Balderston, Edward E. Rose et al based on the novel by Anthony Hope
1937/USA
Selznick International Pictures
First viewing

[box] Rudolph Rassendyll: But I’ve reformed.

Princess Flavia: Almost beyond recognition. You seem to be an entirely different person.[/box]

Before I get started, I have to confess that my viewing conditions for this film were far from ideal.  My rental DVD became unplayable about three-quarters of the way in.  I then resorted to watching the remainder of the film on YouTube in parts.  After I was about 10 minutes from the end I discovered that one or more scenes were missing from the YouTube footage, including the climactic sword fight!  Since I am not going to watch this again for purposes of this exercise, I will go ahead and review it.  What I saw was an entertaining adventure with an accomplished cast, though it does break down into soppy romantic melodrama at the very end.

Major Rudolf Rassendyll (Ronald Colman) is an Englishman taking a fishing holiday in a Ruritanian Eastern European country.  There he meets up with his distant relation and double Prince Rudolf (also Colman) on the eve of the latter’s coronation.  The Prince is accompanied by his stalwarts Colonel Zapt (C. Aubrey Smith) and Fritz von Tarlenheim (David Niven).  Prince Rudolf is drugged by his evil illegitimate brother Michael (Raymond Massey) who wants to seize the throne.  His friends convince Rassendyll to be crowned in the Prince’s place.

In the meantime, Michael has been plotting with his cohort in crime Rupert of Hentzau (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.)  Michael plans to rule as Regent and then marry the Prince’s fiancée Princess Flavia (Madeleine Carroll), who is next in line for the throne.  This makes Michael’s girlfriend (Mary Astor) extremely jealous.  Rassendyll is crowned.  He and Flavia fall madly in love at the coronation.

The rest of the story traces the twists and turns of the intrigue as Michael continues to pursue the throne after the coronation.

With a cast like this, the movie has to be fun, right?  I thoroughly enjoyed it despite my many trials.  Madeleine Carroll plays a very different sort of character than her usual and has never been more meltingly lovely.  The men, despite looking very similar with their dark mustaches, are all at the top of their game.  I could have lived without so many love scenes.  Recommended.

The Prisoner of Zenda was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Art Direction (Lyle R. Newman) and Best Score (Alfred Newman – the first of his 44 nominations).  It was listed in the National Film Registry in 1991.    This was the fourth adaptation of the novel and the first sound version. The story was remade in 1952 with Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr and as a spoof in 1979 starring Peter Sellers.

Re-release trailer