Night at the Crossroads (1932)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Night at the Crossroads (1932) – J. Renoir

Long before the mystery movie became standard fare – and predating film noir by a good decade or so -- Jean Renoir directed this Inspector Maigret mystery (from Georges Simenon). It’s an early sound film but it doesn’t feel stagebound – instead, the camera is out and about in the countryside, or more specifically, a muddy suburb of Paris where a few houses cluster around a dodgy petrol station and garage. We’re introduced to the community gradually – we don’t actually see Maigret (Pierre Renoir, the director’s brother) until the murder/robbery is discovered – but the characters we meet quickly turn on an immigrant couple (from Denmark) as chief suspects (based on xenophobia alone, it seems). But Maigret and his team soon realise that Carl Anderson is probably innocent and Maigret heads out to the suburb to get the lay of the land. Carl’s sister (played by Winna Winifried) hangs all over Maigret and other suspects act suspiciously. And then a strange thing happens – either a reel is missing or Renoir neglected to film some scenes (reports differ). Maigret closes in on the villain(s), there is a car chase, and the case is wrapped up.  Yet Renoir has captured a mood, shooting often at night, and although the mystery turns out not to matter as much, the film showcases Renoir’s talent and fits (between La Chienne, 1931, and Boudu Saved from Drowning, 1932) nicely into his amazing streak of masterpieces and near-masterpieces of the 1930s (topped off by The Grand Illusion, 1937, and The Rules of the Game, 1939). Although not the rare lost treasure I had hoped to discover, still a solid entry in the canon.

 

One Hour With You (1932)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

One Hour With You (1932) – E. Lubitsch/G. Cukor

The innuendo is barely innuendo here in this pre-code musical starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette MacDonald. That’s probably not surprising, given that Ernst Lubitsch is in the director’s chair (although perhaps his famed touch is more subtle later on, once the Hays Code was in place).  Yes, Chevalier and MacDonald sing, although not straight through the film (although the spoken dialogue often comes out in rhyming couplets nevertheless).  They’re married and he’s a doctor who is tempted by his wife’s best friend (Genevieve Tobin) – he plays the innocent, declaring to the camera (in that cheesy French accent) that he did not really have free will.  Of course, MacDonald also has a suitor (Charlie Ruggles) which allows things to end up just so.  They really do love each other after all.  I recall liking Mamoulian’s Love Me Tonight (same year, similar cast) a little more but this certainly isn’t out-of-place in any list of naughty musical comedies.

 

Three on a Match (1932)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Three on a Match (1932) – M. LeRoy

Pre-code drama that shows us three childhood schoolmates (not necessarily friends), first as “types” at grammar school (the bad girl, the good girl, and the popular girl) and then as young adults who have transformed into Joan Blondell, Bette Davis, and Ann Dvorak.  They still fit the same type:  Blondell has been in the reformatory but is now a showgirl; Davis is a hard-working typist; Dvorak is married to a rich lawyer (Warren William), has a young son, and lives in a mansion. But Dvorak’s character yearns to be free from the shackles of marriage and motherhood (this is pre-code, remember) and soon we see her take up with a bad egg (Lyle Talbot), bringing her 3 or 4 year old son into squalor.  Against type, Blondell saves the child.  Alcoholism and drug abuse soon follow for Dvorak and when Talbot gets on the wrong side of the mob due to a gambling debt (led by Edward Arnold with a young Bogart as his henchman), he kidnaps the young boy to try to elicit ransom money.  It’s all pretty bleak, especially the shock ending.  Still, Blondell is her perky self and Dvorak inhabits the wasted girl well (Davis has nothing to do and Bogart gives only a glimpse of his later tough guy persona).  Worth a look, esp. since it clocks in at just over an hour and offers an eye-opening and lurid look at 1932.  The title refers to the famous superstition, of course.

 

No Man of Her Own (1932)

☆ ☆ ½

No Man of Her Own (1932) – W. Ruggles

Despite the star power of Gable and Lombard (in their only film together, years before their marriage), the movie fizzles out after a promising start.  Gable is a card shark with a team of confederates helping him to swindle rich businessmen (who don’t press charges because they want to stay out of the papers).  The vice squad is onto him, however, so he takes a sojourn out of New York in a small town called Glendale where he meets Lombard’s bored librarian.  She’s a feisty match for him and follows him to the big city after a coin toss leads to their marriage (!!!).  She doesn’t know yet that he’s a crook but soon finds out (the movie doesn’t really build too much suspense here).  The second half is about his abrupt decision to go to South America for a long con, leaving her alone (but not abandoning her).  I think the script probably lets the actors down – or the lack of music highlights the way that the drama drags?  There is a little bit of naughtiness here, because this is “pre-code”, primarily in the form of heavy drinking and actresses in underwear (and both Gable & Lombard taking showers, separately).  Other films of this vintage, including with Gable and Lombard, separately, are far more sparkling than this.

The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) – C. Brabin

A time capsule from Hollywood history when being brazenly racist (in this case, against the Chinese) seems to have been A-OK.  But the film is so outlandish – and the Chinese baddies so unrealistic, that really they may as well have been alien invaders from outer space (perhaps I am thinking of Ming the Merciless?).  Still, it is disheartening to think that American audiences would have thrilled to a battle between the “White Race” and the “Yellow Peril”.  But let’s set that aside if we can and just see the baddies in the film as evil archetypes (who over the course of a century or two might switch their race/culture/subgroup in the popular American imagination but yet still retain their archetypal ways).  Boris Karloff plays Fu Manchu, the evil leader lusting for the power represented by Genghis Khan and his long lost mask and scimitar, and Myrna Loy (!!!) plays his sultry but sadistic daughter – both in bad Asian make-up (Karloff is nearly unrecognisable again).  The plot sees British archaeologists working for the British Museum racing to locate and excavate Genghis Khan’s tomb before Fu Manchu can get there and use Khan’s treasure to whip his followers up into a frenzy to begin a new empire.  The Brits do get there first but then Fu Manchu uses all of his diabolical tricks to abscond with the treasure and subject the heroes to terrible tortures (tying them under giant ringing bells, suspending them over hungry alligators, and subjecting them to slowly closing walls with huge spikes).  I’m sure the audience gasped!  And although the required happy ending is soon served up, one ends with the feeling that the heroes have been a little too bland and faceless and the almost campy over-indulgence of the evil side was the real drawcard of the film (hence the title).

Chandu the Magician (1932)

☆ ☆ ☆

Chandu the Magician (1932) – W. C. Menzies & M. Varnel

Previously a radio serial, the titular magician (who learned his trade from the yogis of the East) is called to Egypt to stop evil Roxor who has stolen the plans for a death ray and plans to use it! Bela Lugosi makes a great diabolical Roxor but Edmund Lowe is just serviceable as Chandu (though not for lack of trying).  The direction by art department stalwart William Cameron Menzies (Things to Come, 1936) and Marcel Varnel keeps things moving with some surprises (secret doors and the like) and only a few dull moments.  Special effects boost the scenes where Chandu uses his magic and the sets are better than average.  There is a love interest (Irene Ware) and also a teenage daughter (June Lang) who gets kidnapped and put up at a slave auction (remember this is “pre-code”).  There are a lot of white people playing Egyptians or Indians and, if there weren’t some on both the good side and the bad side, the racism might be a bit more overt.  But fortunately, everything is played with good humour and the main source of comic relief is a drunken British ex-soldier, now servant (played by character actor Herbert Mundin, also seen in The Adventures of Robin Hood, 1939).  All told, an okay adventure story with elements that elevate it beyond the standard for the usual b-pictures of the day.

Blonde Venus (1932)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Blonde Venus (1932) – J. von Sternberg

Marlene Dietrich is bad again, as she often was for Josef von Sternberg.  This time, however, we see that she starts out good -- in a pre-code skinny-dipping scene where she meets future husband Herbert Marshall.  When Marshall grows ill with radiation poisoning (he is a chemist), she goes back to the stage from whence she came to raise money for his treatment in Europe.  But instead the money comes from millionaire Cary Grant who “occupies” her when Marshall is overseas.  And helps to take care of her son, Jonny, too.  Because yes, not only is Dietrich bad, but she is a bad mother, dragging Jonny all over the USA after Marshall returns early and finds her with Grant (who quickly departs for Europe).  With the police after her, and presumed prostitution the only way to raise any cash during the Depression, Dietrich is soon at the end of the road.  And then she is the jaded emotionless Dietrich dressed in white tails and top hat back in Paris crooning as we knew she would.  Until the ending which rings false (yes, Marshall takes her back).  Sternberg keeps things moving at a good clip but can’t help a bit of a jarring clash between the scenes with young Dickie Moore and the decadence and degradation found elsewhere (including the notorious “Hot Voodoo” number). 

Number 17 (1932)

☆ ☆ ½

Number 17 (1932) – A. Hitchcock

Through the murk of both picture and soundtrack, it is still possible to make out that this is an Alfred Hitchcock film.  Sort of.  The problem is that the Master seems unfocused.  He uses montage as well as he ever did – to create a spoof of “the old dark house” genre, for example – but then he leaves characters standing around in a group talking for what seems like eons.  This may be a result of the transition to sound that meant that actors needed to hover under or around hidden microphones – but Hitch had already demonstrated that he could be clever with sound (e.g., Blackmail, 1929).  Instead, the root cause of the problem is probably the underlying play based on misrepresentation and confusion of identities amongst criminals and detectives involved in the theft of a necklace.  I was confused too. Leon M. Lion is along for cockney comic relief but the major attraction is a finale which sees a bus and train rush pell-mell toward the Thames (I think) with cops on one and robbers on the other until they barrel into a ferry and the denouement begins.  Unfortunately, the whole thing is so clearly a set of models that suspension of disbelief is impossible.  But undoubtedly Hitch didn’t care; fortunately, his best pictures were still ahead of him.

Call Her Savage (1932)

☆ ☆ ½

Call Her Savage (1932) – J. F. Dillon

After a number of sex scandals and high profile court cases knocked her out of the public eye, Clara Bow attempted a comeback with this talkie film.  Referred to as “pre-code” because it was produced before the infamous Hays Code was brought in to mandate decency, happy endings, and good morals (the villain always gets punished in the end).   Here, however, there are numerous transgressions of good taste and acceptable conduct.  For one, Clara doesn’t wear a bra.  Beyond that, there is at least one good cat-fight, some inter-racial romance, a gay bar, and desperate prostitution.  There is also some high melodrama (Clara’s baby dies in a fire).   But none of this seems to change the pace of the movie, which is spoken as though every line was a potential one-liner (with a delay for the laugh, which isn’t warranted in most cases).  So, it just feels a bit odd and unusual, which may have been typical for films in 1932, as sound was just getting established.  A curiosity but no more.

If I Had a Million (1932)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

If I Had a Million (1932) – Multiple Directors

Steel magnate Bennett is ill and near death but can’t stand his bickering relatives or grovelling employees.  So, he decides to give away his millions to six random people, drawn from the telephone book.  Six different writers (including Mankewicz) and directors (including Lubitsch) created sketches to be played by an array of stars (including W. C. Fields, Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton, George Raft, and Charlie Ruggles).  The result is, as you would expect, a mixed bag.  However, there are more hits than misses, particularly Fields and Alison Skipworth buying old cars to crash “road hogs”, Laughton’s raspberry to the boss, and Ruggles’ china smashing hurrah.  A little pathos is thrown in with the comedy for good measure, this being the Depression and all.