The House of the Seven Gables (1940)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The House of the Seven Gables (1940) – J. May

Shades of the gothic horrors that Vincent Price would do with Roger Corman decades later.  It is always great to see Price (and also George Sanders) but this should have been pushed a bit harder over the top into the kind of horror Universal was already known for.  Although I read the novel so long ago, wikipedia tells me that Nathaniel Hawthorne's plot is much corrupted here.

 

The Doctor Takes a Wife (1940)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

The Doctor Takes a Wife (1940) – A. Hall

Screwball comedy starring Loretta Young and Ray Milland (before he moved over to Noir and after his turn in the much funnier Easy Living, 1937).  Young plays a feminist author (a “career woman”, said with disdain by many in the film, one of its many dated aspects) who is mistakenly thought to have married neuroscientist Milland. Both have other lovers – she has her publisher (Reginald Gardiner) and he has a society fixture (Gail Patrick) – but it turns out that pretending to be married suits them both, despite the fact that they hate each other (naturally). Initially, Milland suggests that he is going along with the scheme simply to help Young write her new book on marriage (to make up for the losses that her earlier feminist books are now suffering) but it turns out that he’s been promoted to a professorship by a dean who values marriage. Nevertheless, they are both desperate to head to Reno for a divorce as soon as possible (despite not really being married).  Of course, the plot takes us in a completely different direction.  Not really laugh-out-loud funny and awkwardly old-fashioned in many places but it fills the bill for this genre if you’ve exhausted the many other better entries.

My Favorite Wife (1940)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

My Favorite Wife (1940) – G. Kanin

Reunion of the leads from Leo McCarey’s wonderful The Awful Truth (1937) although this time directed by Garson Kanin.  In the previous screwball comedy, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne agreed to divorce but gradually realised they still loved each other (after they have other partners in tow, of course). Here, playing different characters, Grant remarries after Dunne is apparently lost at sea – when she returns, on the afternoon of the wedding (to Gail Patrick), Grant finds himself wanting to (having to?) get out of his new marriage. That is, until he discovers that Dunne wasn’t shipwrecked alone for seven years but instead had hunky Randolph Scott for company (in his pre-Western days). Of course, Dunne and Grant are really in love and Scott and Patrick are doomed to lose out.  Thus, it’s a similar funny premise and dynamic – but somehow things don’t catch fire as they did in the first film.  Instead, Grant seems to be underplaying a bit too much in contrast to Dunne’s warmer glow; the pace also feels too slow for screwball (although perhaps the laughs are supposed to creep up on you).  At any rate, it’s a notch below the best of the genre.  If you haven’t seen The Awful Truth, by all means watch that first!

  

Johnny Apollo (1940)

☆ ☆ ☆

Johnny Apollo (1940) – H. Hathaway

Rather soapy gangster drama that probably would have been edgier just a few years later (when director Henry Hathaway was making noirs along with everyone else).  Tyrone Power is the son of a corrupt business tycoon (Edward Arnold) who gets sent to the slammer for 5 to 10.  Although Power first denounces his father, after finding it impossible to get work due to the stigma attached to his name, he seeks the services of a shady lawyer (Charley Grapewin) and falls in with a slick gangster (Lloyd Nolan). Dorothy Lamour plays the moll who sees the good in Power (who has renamed himself “Johnny Apollo”) and seeks to help him to help his dad get out of prison.  Unfortunately, dad has renounced son and only when son is also thrown into the clink do things start to turn around.  Although everyone here gives it their level best, there’s something about the plot mechanics that feel more contrived than usual. Still, it’s always fun to return to Hollywood’s heyday.   

  

Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) – B. Ingster

Is this the first film noir?  Some think so -- but of course, the genre has no real beginning nor end and was never more than a loose association defined by the common elements.  Certainly, many of the elements are here, including low key (high contrast) lighting, voice-over narration, a horrifying dream sequence, a man or two poked by the fickle finger of fate, and the presence of Elisha Cook, Jr. and Peter Lorre (both of whom also appeared in another film also identified as a harbinger of the genre, The Maltese Falcon, 1941).  Here, Lorre is given top billing (as a result of his starring role in the Mr Moto series), but he has only a few scenes as the titular stranger who ultimately becomes a suspect for the two murders that reporter Mike Ward (played by John McGuire) gets entangled with. But there is quite a lot of action before we ever meet Lorre:  Ward is the star witness at a murder trial but he and his girlfriend come to have doubts about whether the poor shmuck who was convicted (yes, Elisha Cook, Jr.) really did it.  The style (by cinematographer Nicolas Musuraca) is influenced by the German Expressionist movement (though not to the level of Caligari) and Ward seems genuinely haunted (bring on the dream sequence).  But it is all over and done with in about an hour and the ending is unexpectedly upbeat.  The best noirs were yet to come!

Remember the Night (1940)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Remember the Night (1940) – M. Leisen

The last of Preston Sturges’ scripts that he didn’t direct himself -- Mitchell Leisen took the reins, as he did for the funnier Easy Living (1937).  Here, Fred MacMurray works as a prosecutor for the district attorney in New York and Barbara Stanwyck, charged with shoplifting, is his last trial before Christmas.  When he asks the judge for a continuance until after the holidays, he realises that this will leave Stanwyck in prison until the new year and arranges with the bailsbondman to have her released.  Little does he know that she would end up with him as he travels back to Indiana to see his mother (Beulah Bondi).  Of course, they fall in love. But what can be done? She is destined to go to jail and he has his reputation to think of.  Surprisingly, Sturges’ script keeps things relatively calm, peppered with only a few zany character actors; things would get much more screwball during his heyday in the forties (including starring Stanwyck in The Lady Eve, 1941).  Remember the Night also includes some poignant sentimental moments in keeping with the Christmas season (Sturges often managed to stir the emotions even as he split one’s sides).  MacMurray seems impossibly young and Stanwyck remains perpetually cynical/tender – the next time he would star with her, they would kill her husband (Double Indemnity, 1944).  Above average (but surpassed by their later masterpieces).

Black Friday (1940)

☆ ☆ ½

Black Friday (1940) – A. Lubin

Karloff is dapper as the doctor who illegally performs a brain transplant to save his friend, a professor of English literature.  But the picture really belongs to Stanley Ridges who, as the professor who has the brain of a gangster inserted into his head, has to act out these dual personalities.  Of course, Karloff has ulterior motives for the transplant as well – the gangster had hidden $500K just before he was killed (by Bela Lugosi and other former gang members) and Karloff hopes that the professor will remember where it is, with his new brain.  But things take a turn for the worse when the professor essentially becomes the gangster.  Since the film begins with Karloff being walked to the electric chair, you get no points for guessing how this will end.  Solid tale from the Karloff and Lugosi heyday (but the latter has only a bit part this time). 

Christmas in July (1940)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Christmas in July (1940) – P. Sturges

Compact early Preston Sturges effort that actually has nothing wrong with it – it just isn’t a masterpiece like the comedies he would make in the next few years.  Dick Powell (post-musicals, pre-noir) is an earnest but poor guy hoping to win a slogan contest run by a big coffee company offering $25K as a price (with inflation that’s $400K to you and me).  When the guys in his office send him a prank telegram telling him he’s won, things spiral out of control from there (in true Sturges fashion).  Good support from Ellen Drew as his gal, Raymond Walburn as the coffee company boss, and, of course, Sturges regular William Demarest in a bit part.  At just over an hour, you can’t lose. 

The Invisible Woman (1940)

☆ ☆

The Invisible Woman (1940) – A. E. Sutherland

Well, I think it was intended to be a comedy but perhaps the 1940s era humor is lost on me.  Or rather, it just isn’t very funny.  John Barrymore is at his broadest as the goofy scientist who invents an invisibility machine and then tries it on Virginia Bruce, a model who wants to scare her boss.  There are the usual gags about having to be naked while invisible and then there are the other gags about having to be naked while invisible.  Then Shemp shows up with a few other bad guys who steal the invisibility machine for Oskar Homolka who wants to sneak back into the US from Mexico (after fleeing the law).  Thankfully, it is mercifully short.  Somehow I thought I was going to be watching a sequel to the 1933 Claude Rains horror film.  Might work better as the B picture in a double feature for a nickel.