ALICE ADAMS
****
AH, WILDERNESS!
***
USA
From the mind that gave you "Anna Christie" and "The Iceman
Cometh", here is a piece of nostalgic Americana. Some of it is warm;
much of it is warmed-over.
dir: Clarence Brown
cast: Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Aline MacMahon, Eric Linden,
Spring Byington, Cecilia Parker, Mickey Rooney, Charley Grapewin, Helen
Flint
ANNA KARENINA
***½
BORDERTOWN
**½
USA
There's something cathartic about the notion of Paul Muni and Bette Davis
sharing scenes. You can only guess at the kind of fanatic scramble that
would ensue between them to outdo each other's scenery chewing. But this
hypothesis doesn't take into account the fact that two such ferocious egos
could only subsist in their own individual, bloated bubbles. Even in a
single, constricted set they will inevitably fail to take note of - much
less play off of - each other. Muni plays a reformed hoodlum forever
thwarted by his ethnic background. Davis is a dissatisfied trophy bride
who develops an attraction to him. It's one of the more crudely contrived
Warners message pictures.
dir: Archie Mayo
cast: Paul Muni, Bette Davis, Margaret Lindsay, Eugene Pallette,
Robert Barrat, Soledad Jimenez
THE
BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN
***½
USA
A sinister doctor forces Frankenstein to create a mate for his monster.
A campy, witty sequel, far more comic and confident than its
predecessor - though the awkwardness was part of the original's charm.
dir: James Whale
cast: Boris Karloff, Colin Clive, Valerie Hobson, Elsa
Lanchester, Ernest Thesiger, O.P. Heggie, Una O'Connor, E.E.
Clive
CAPTAIN
BLOOD
***
USA
During the reign of King James, a young British doctor is sent into
slavery for treating a wounded rebel.
Flynn gained major stardom playing a righteous cowboy of the high seas
and was destined to forever after play variations on the role, often
opposite the radiant de Havilland and under the helm of Michael Curtiz.
This particular swashbuckler doesn't rank among the best of their
collaborations - it's overlong and choppy - but it's entertaining for the most
part.
dir: Michael Curtiz
cast: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, Lionel
Atwill, Guy Kibbee, Ross Alexander, Henry Stephenson, George Hassell
DAVID COPPERFIELD
****THE DEVIL IS A
WOMAN
****
G-MEN
****
USA
dir: William Keighley
cast: James Cagney, Ann Dvorak, Margaret Lindsay, Robert
Armstrong, Braton MacLane, Lloyd Nolan, William Harrigan, Russell Hopton,
Regis Toomey
THE
GOOD FAIRY
***
USA
Sweet-faced, faintly tomboyish Margaret Sullavan is released from her orphanage to
become an usher in a movie theatre. In due course she inadvertently
seduces the Wizard of Oz, while falling in love with an even-smarmier-than-usual Herbert Marshall. The misunderstandings that ensue are naturally
zany, and also a tad shrill and monotonous. The action takes place in 'Budapest', so
that people can wreak havoc with surnames like Ginglebusher and Sporum and
Schlapkohl.
A young Preston Sturges wrote the script, which seems
laboured in the same way as his late-period misfires, but in a similar
fashion also features some singular highlights: early on, an uncanny
overwrought-movie-within-a-movie parody clearly signals the kind of
brilliant lunatic that could later come up with a Sullivan's Travels or
a Lady Eve.
dir: William Wyler
wr: Preston Sturges
cast: Margaret Sullavan, Herbert Marshall, Frank Morgan, Reginald
Owen, Alan Hale, Beulah Bondi, Eric Blore, Cesar Romero
HANDS
ACROSS THE TABLE
***½
USA
With characteristic pluck Carole Lombard takes on a role that Ginger
Rogers would annex for the remainder of the decade: the hardboiled working
gal looking to seduce a bankroll only to fall in love against her better
judgment. Ralph Bellamy (of course!) is the better judgment and Fred
MacMurray, working overtime to pass for quirky and accidentally dashing,
is true love. It's second-tier screwball and awkwardly paced, but where
future king of women's weepies Mitchell Leisen struggles to deliver on
spark, he compensates with a tender, melancholy Depression-era edge.
Reportedly he had Ernst Lubitsch mentor him on this one.
dir: Mitchell Leisen
ph: Ted Tetzlaff
cast: Carole Lombard, Fred MacMurray, Ralph Bellamy, Astrid Allwyn,
Ruth Donnelly, Marie Prevost, William Demarest, Joseph R. Tozer
THE INFORMER
***½
LA KERMESSE HEROÏQUE
***½
France
THE LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER
****
MAD LOVE
***
MAN ON THE FLYING
TRAPEZE
***½
USA
W.C. Fields plays a henpecked husband enduring a day of escalating
humiliation. Of course the situations are wacky and improbable, but
because Fields is a master of deadpan, improvised-sounding delivery, there
is a weird and affecting sense of truth to his alter ego's meek suffering.
dir: Clyde Bruckman
cast: W.C. Fields, Mary Brian, Kathleen Howard, Grady
Sutton, Vera Lewis, Lucien Littlefield, Oscar Apfel, Lew Kelly
MARK OF THE VAMPIRE
***
LES MISERABLES
***½
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A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
****
USA
Absolutely the final word in Depression era studio excess kitsch: Ancient
Greece, as rendered through the merry pranksterism of medieval mythology and
Elizabethan backstage shenanigans, is further rendered through a Warner
Bros. prestige department intent on out-prestiging the competition with a set
that is a mash up of every 'Europe'-set Astaire-Rogers frivolity and
Fritz Lang's take on Die Nibelungen. Then you have pint-sized Mickey Rooney -
palpably high on something an overworked child actor should never be
prescribed - as Puck, and a prima ballerina in a representation of dawn
descending upon an enchanted forest, and what looks like a chandelier
strewn through every frame. The entire film is heavy-duty 'magical' and
all in all: Hypnotic.
In a cast of predictably overripe rascals and
over-enunciators, a few manage to muster up some real fire: a radiant
Olivia De Havilland in her screen debut, and an unhinged James Cagney at
the head of a slew of character comics as the amateur troupe of
'mechanicals' (among whom you'll recognise Joe E. Brown, Jack Lemmon's
future suitor, already gaying it up in an early role).
dir: Max Reinhardt, William Dieterle
ph: Hal Mohr
pd: Anton Grot
cast: James Cagney, Mickey Rooney, Victor Jory, Anita
Louise, Dick Powell, Olivia De Havilland, Ross Alexander, Jean
Muir, Joe E. Brown, Hugh Herbert, Frank McHugh, Ian Hunter, Grant
Mitchell, Verree Teasdale, Nina Theilade
MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY
****½
A NIGHT AT THE OPERA
*****
THE RAVEN
***½
USA
At the peak of his powers of enunciation and sinister knuckle formation,
Bela Lugosi plays a Poe fanatic with a secret chamber's worth of
Poe-inspired torture devices. He controls Boris Karloff by paralysing half
his face with hilarious google-eye make-up. By no means is this one of the essential
Universal horrors, but it's wonderfully cheesy and wonderfully eerie.
dir: Lew Landers
ph: Charles Stumar
cast: Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Irene Ware, Lester Matthews,
Samuel S. Hinds, Inez Courtney, Ian Wolfe, Spencer Charters, Maidel
Turner, Arthur Hoyt
ROBERTA
***
USA
In an Art Deco Paris, Randolph Scott romances Irene Dunne (well before she
has developed a sense of humour), while Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are
relegated to sassy interludes. They get together for three numbers -
"I'll Be Hard to Handle", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"
and "I Won't Dance" - which are so joyous and full of life that
they make the central courtship that much more insufferable.
dir: William A. Seiter
cast: Irene Dunne, Randolph Scott, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers,
Helen Westley, Victor Varconi, Claire Dodd, Luis Alberni
RUGGLES OF RED GAP
***½
USA
This repressed-fish-out-of-water comedy's venerable reputation might
lead you to expect something more polished and less dewy-eyed-jingoistic.
That said, Ruggles, the Parisian butler won in a poker game by crass
mid-Westerners, is perhaps the most understated and beguiling of the three
remarkable and remarkably varied characterisations Charles Laughton gave
in 1935. And he isn't even the pick of this terrific ensemble: As a
drunken loon and Ruggles' original master, Roland Young brings an odd
improvisatory deadpan rhythm to each of his scenes that feels decades and
decades ahead of its time.
dir: Leo McCarey
ed: Edward Dmytryk
cast: Charles Laughton, Mary Boland, Charlie Ruggles, ZaSu
Pitts, Roland Young, Leila Hyams, Maude Eburne, Lucien Littlefield,
Leota Lorraine
THE STORY OF
LOUIS PASTEUR
**½
USA
This Warners-backlot history lesson on the man who coined pasteurisation
and created a cure for rabies was among the very first earnest
Oscar-hungry biopics. Paul Muni's own considerable arrogance sparks off
that of the character as written. He won Best Actor for being manically
unpleasant. At least director William Dieterle keeps things mercifully
speedy.
dir: William Dieterle
cast: Paul Muni, Josephine Hutchinson, Anita Louise, Donald Woods,
Fritz Leiber, Henry O'Neill, Porter Hall, Raymond Brown, Akim Tamiroff
SYLVIA SCARLETT
**** A TALE OF TWO
CITIES
***½
THE 39 STEPS
*****
TONI
***½
France
A working-class love quadrangle, shot exclusively on 'real' locations in
the French countryside. The actors are people from the neighbourhood.
Their scruffy, greasy appearance may add to the look of authenticity but
their amateurishness makes it difficult to feel for them. This is where a
master like Jean Renoir can come in and compensate. He knows how to bring
out the poetry in an ordinary-looking landscape. He knows how to frame
his characters against it, to emphasise their earthiness, their relatable
simplicity.
The production's assistant director was Luchino Visconti.
It's arguable that his witnessing of Renoir's insistence towards
naturalism may have shaped his later pioneering role in the Italian
neo-realist movement.
dir: Jean Renoir
ph: Claude Renoir
cast: Charles Blavette, Célia Montalvan, Jenny Hélia, Max Dalban,
Edouard Delmont, Andrex TOP
HAT
****
USA
Maybe Astaire and Rogers' most enjoyable pairing, certainly their most
beloved. They mistake each other's identities in much the same way they
did in the previous year's "The Gay Divorcee" - the way that
highlights both the writers' disinterest and the enchanting gorgeousness
of the dances.
Fred Astaire can appear intolerably slimy and self-satisfied
when trying to be funny and affable. But once he gets to tapping and puts
a smile on Ginger Rogers' prematurely soured face, he's irresistible. Even
his tuneless, half-spoken way of singing cannot get in the way.
This picture includes two of Astaire's most spectacular solos
- "No Strings" and the title song (where he's actually
accompanied by a disappearing and reappearing male chorus); the pair's
charming gazebo interlude "Isn't It a Lovely Day (to Be Caught in the
Rain)"; and the stunning, the evergreen "Cheek to Cheek".
Try as hard as you can to look past the supporting players'
exaggerated mugging. They were carried over from the previous Astaire-Rogers
vehicles, aside from Helen Broderick, who is the most relaxed and
charming.
dir: Mark Sandrich
cast: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edward Everett Horton, Helen
Broderick, Erik Rhodes, Eric Blore, Lucille Ball
TRIUMPH OF THE WILL
****
THE
WHOLE TOWN'S TALKING
***
USA
An efficient, likable if minor entry in several formidable careers. John
Ford directs - adequately - with Edward G. Robinson dependably brilliant
in the dual role of a mild-mannered clerk and a serial killer he
resembles, while the ever adorable Jean Arthur is his wisecracking
colleague and somewhat implausible love interest.
dir: John Ford
cast: Edward G. Robinson, Jean Arthur, Wallace Ford, Arthur
Hohl, Edward Brophy, A.S. Byron, Donald Meek
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