Double Wedding (1937)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Double Wedding (1937) – R. Thorpe

Truly, Myrna Loy and William Powell made a great team, particularly in The Thin Man detective series, but also in a variety of other screwball comedies.  Unfortunately, Double Wedding is not one of their best – it falls strangely flat (over on imDb, a piece of trivia notes that Jean Harlow, girlfriend of Powell and friend of Loy, died of uremic poisoning during the shooting of this film, which had to be halted to allow the stars to mourn).  Nevertheless, you could see how the script could work: Loy plays an uptight businesswoman who is micromanaging her sister’s engagement to a very wooden John Beal; Powell plays a free-spirited wannabe movie director with whom the sister falls in love.  Of course, soon enough you can see the romantic tension between Loy & Powell and in no time he is orchestrating things so that they end up together. However, she never quite figures this out until he is about to marry her sister (Florence Rice).  Some wacky character actors join in the expected fun and confusion. Except, as I said, it is all a bit flat: Loy never quite attains the proper level of comic disdain and Powell seems to overcompensate as a result. The laughs don’t flow freely but you can sort of appreciate that maybe they should have.

 

Thank You, Mr. Moto (1937)

 ☆ ☆ ½

Thank You, Mr. Moto (1937) – N. Foster

Over there on youtube, I found a lot of complete (free) movies; presumably the copyright has lapsed.  As some might recall, I used to watch the mystery movie on Channel 38 (Boston) with my Dad on Saturday nights – Sherlock Holmes (Rathbone, of course), Charlie Chan (I prefer Oland, Dad prefers Toler), and yes, Mr. Moto. Peter Lorre starred as the Japanese detective (clearly a cultural faux pas these days, especially with that make-up) in the 1930s after his work with Hitchcock (e.g., The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1934; Secret Agent, 1936) and prior to his career in noir (e.g., The Maltese Falcon, 1941).  In this second film in the series, Moto is in China, searching for the missing scroll that will help to uncover Genghis Khan’s missing treasure. Interestingly, we don’t quite know whose side Moto is on – the film opens with him in disguise, killing an attacker. Then later, he seems to have killed another baddie who was admittedly about to shoot his friend, the man whose family owns the other six scrolls (that all the baddies are after).  This man (but not his mother) is played by someone with actual Asian heritage at least.  Distractingly, there is also a white couple who are involved as witnesses to all of the goings-on (perhaps they are audience surrogates for a Hollywood that assumes all of its viewers are white).  Perhaps I shouldn't bring a 21st century lens to an 80 year old film but it is hard not to in this case. At any rate, I didn’t find this Mr Moto film (reputedly the best of the series) to be particularly engaging (despite some solid character actors), but I accept that the screen writers didn’t resort to the traditional whodunnit formula. But really what should I expect from a B-movie?  

Nothing Sacred (1937)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Nothing Sacred (1937) – W. Wellman

I’ll admit that I was a little underwhelmed by Nothing Sacred (screenplay by Ben Hecht, directed by William Wellman) although I do see the blackness of the comedy here (despite the technicolor) which focuses on how New York responds to the heart-wrenching story of young Hazel Flagg (Carole Lombard) who has been diagnosed with radium poisoning and is soon to die (but the comedy lies in the fact that it isn’t true and she’s scamming everyone but perhaps rather innocently). Frederic March is the reporter (Wally Cook) who sees the value  (for his career) in the personal interest story for his newspaper and travels to Vermont to pick up Hazel and bring her to the big city for one final trip of a lifetime. The daffy dipsomaniac doctor who made the errant diagnosis is also along for the junket. The tension builds as we wonder how soon everyone will find out that Hazel just isn’t sick and the implications of this for Cook’s job, their budding romance, and, well, the investment of all those kind hearted people who have put forward their public acknowledgment of Hazel’s bravery (and encouraged people to join them). The point is that everyone’s out to make a profit or to boost their own images/egos on the back of Hazel’s sad misfortune – that is, nothing’s sacred.  But alas the film isn’t really very funny (not really screwball either – too slow and not sharp enough for that) apart from some sight gags that wryly go by without comment.  A little bit racist and sexist too.  However, Lombard and March are good as usual, even if the character actors in bit parts aren’t of the calibre found elsewhere. Start with Sturges or Hawks.

 

 

Kid Galahad (1937)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Kid Galahad (1937) – M. Curtiz

Only after the fact did I realise this was directed by Michael Curtiz (Casablanca, 1942) with a screenplay by Seton I. Miller (responsible, with Curtiz, for a number of Errol Flynn hits, including Robin Hood, 1938).  They are already working with stars here:  Edward G. Robinson is a stubborn (but childish) fight promoter and Bette Davis is his gal.  They are at odds with Humphrey Bogart’s bad gangster who is also in the fight promotion racket.  When Robinson’s fighter double-crosses him (taking a dive for Bogie), he recruits a farm-boy turned bellhop with a wicked right hook (Wayne Morris) to be his next shot at the championship.  When Kid Galahad (Morris) falls in love with Robinson’s sister (Jane Bryan), Robinson loses his cool and Davis is heartbroken (since she fell for the Kid as well).  Having two lesser players feature in the love story does detract from things but I was surprised at how well the story (soapy and clichéd as it may be) flowed.  Perhaps it has just been too long since I returned to the golden age of Hollywood? All the players here have done better work in better films but I enjoyed this anyway.  Strange to see boxing in a film that isn’t noir, though.   

Topper (1937)

☆ ☆ ☆

Topper (1937) – N. Z. McLeod

Cary Grant and Constance Bennett are killed in a car accident and become ghosts.  For their “good deed” (in order to get into heaven, one surmises), they decide to help an uptight old banker and his wife loosen up.  Since it’s the thirties, Grant and Bennett are the party all night types and the film has aspirations of screwballsiness.  However, it never quite takes full flight (although the scene in the Seabreeze Hotel with Eugene Pallette as the house detective very nearly gets off the runway).  Somehow, the gimmick of the ghosts being invisible holds things back (even though it is the origin of some of the funnier bits) – objects floating in the air just aren’t that humorous after the first few times.  But Bennett and Grant are especially good and Roland Young plays the banker as all spluttering reaction shots.  Not bad but not up there with the best comedies of this era.

  

Lost Horizon (1937)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Lost Horizon (1937) – F. Capra

I have owned this on VHS for many years but watching it again now, it seems rather long and drawn out.  The story (from James Hilton) is a good one. The British foreign secretary (Ronald Colman), sick of war and conflict, is lost in the Himalayas when his plane is hijacked and goes down.  There he finds (or is found by) the Lamas of Shangri-La who live in a peaceful idyllic community protected on all sides by mountains.  Somehow there is no stress, no sickness, no strife – humans have everything they need.  Colman and some notable character actors (Thomas Mitchell, Edward Everett Horton) grow to realize that Shangri-La is better than the world outside.  But yet some of the plane crash survivors and even some residents of the valley wish to leave.  Colman helps them but then finds that he can’t face ordinary human society and (we learn in a third person rendering) he does everything he can to make the incredibly arduous journey back to the peaceable theocracy.  Director Frank Capra avoids the big issues and just lets the characters spout some platitudes.  Maybe the film’s heart is in the right place but last night it seemed just too fantastic.

Captains Courageous (1937)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Captains Courageous (1937) – V. Fleming

Freddie Bartholomew is a spoiled little shit and the movie is insufferable for its first 30 or 40 minutes as we see his annoying antics at boarding school.  The point, of course, is to set up the fact that he has been neglected by his father and that he really needs a good whupping by life.  So, when he falls off a cruise ship and is rescued by a fishing boat out of Gloucester, Mass., he is in for some growing up.  Enter Spencer Tracy as a happy-go-lucky fisherman with a really bad faux-Portuguese accent.  Over the course of 3 months at sea, Tracy and Bartholomew form a bond (welcome the father figure-elect).  The scenes at sea (filmed in the studio “tank”) do create a realistic world of their own with no small thanks to Lionel Barrymore and John Carradine.  Naturally, things prove awkward (and almost cringeworthy) when the voyage ends and Bartholomew haltingly returns to his tycoon father (Melvyn Douglas). But maturity has set in and a happy ending (of sorts) can’t be too far off. Ultimately, Kipling’s story could have been made into a successful ripping yarn for boys, but this version makes too many missteps in its retelling (for me) to fully deserve its classic status.