1943 - SO PROUDLY WE HAIL, a World War II war film made during World War II

A war film made for the boys and the girls at the home front during World War II.  So Proudly We Hail is based on the actual experiences of some Navy Nurses serving in the Philippines at the start of the war.  The Japanese attack on the US military finally ended in the surrender of the Philippines after General MacArthur was evacuated.

This film while fiction is not above sticking in some love stories for the nurses (as if this situation isn't dramatic enough) to appeal to the female audience.  During the second half of the film the action finally kicks in with some very well done war scenes for the boys which is certainly a break from the lovey dovey stuff you have to endure.

Paramount cast their top female performers, Claudette Colbert as the Lieutenant in charge of the nurses.  Paulette Goddard is the all American gal juggling two Navy captain boyfriends but hooking up with a good old regular marine/former football player.  Finally the smoldering Veronica Lake plays a nurse with a score to settle with the Japanese.

Frankly the romance between Colbert and her fella, George Reeves (TV's first Superman) gets mighty tiresome.  Paulette Goddard has a little better chemistry with the regular marine played by a goofball of an actor named Sonny Tuffs.  As for Veronica Lake, well she has a memorable scene confronting a squadron of Japanese soldiers.

 

This film was a big hit and the idea of telling a war story from the point of view of the nurses was at the very least original.  So Proudly We Hail for all the usual jingoistic wartime stuff, particularity directed towards the Japanese, does give the viewer a little bit of a sense of the attitude of Americans during the war.

The film was written by Allan Scott who wrote a lot of those Astaire/Rogers musicals at RKO.  The running time is 126 minutes.

1943 - GUADALCANAL DIARY, fairly good World War II film

For one of those rah rah World War II fighting films Guadalcanal Diary is a pretty good war film.  It doesn't hit the viewer over the head with the usual amount of government propaganda that the American public was saturated with during World War II.

The film is based on the United States invasion of Guadalcanal in 1942. The mission was to shut down a Japanese airfield that could have threatened Australia and New Zealand.  This film is a little unusual in that it keeps it's focus on a platoon of soldiers instead of the usual military officers barking out orders.  The soldiers are mostly character actors with not a major star in the group.  No Tyrone Power, John Wayne or Clark Gable which does add a little more realism to the story.  Power and Gable were actually serving in the armed forces during the war anyway.

 

Guadalcanal Diary has an interesting cast of actors some who could probably pass for real marines.   William Bendix, Lloyd Nolan, Richard Conte, Anthony Quinn, Preston Foster and Lionel Standler show up playing grunts.  Most of these guys were usually supporting players in "A" pictures or leads in cheapo B movies.  The film is also the debut of Richard Jaeckel a character actor who appeared in around 70 films until 1994 when he retired.

 

Guadalcanal Diary was mostly filmed on location and not on a studio sound stage if you can call filming at Oceanside, California on location I guess.  The film was written by Lamar Trotti and Jerome Cady.  The running time is 93 minutes.

1943 - NORTHERN PURSUIT, ridiculous World War II thriller

Apparently Nazi agents were running all over northern Canada during World War II. Fortunately Erroll Flynn is on the job as an undercover member of the RCMP.  It's hard to know what to make of this film.  During the war the studios were good at putting out films that were essentially propaganda pieces for the country.  Some were even decent like Air Force, The Mortal Storm or The Great Dictator .  But Northern Pursuit needs to be put in the same category as Flynn's other silly propaganda film Desperate Journey, which had Flynn and Ronald Reagan as Allied pilots trapped behind Nazi lines battling their way back to England.  Flynn is the star in this film so he gets no help from Reagan this time.

The plot involves the Nazi's sneaking bomber parts into Canada so they can assemble a bomber and blow up a canal between Canada and the United States, that's determination for you.  Somehow the Nazi's capture Flynn's fiancee played by an actor named Julie Bishop who was one of those second tier performers who never hit the big time.  Since the film is set in snowy Canada we have lots of studio footage of fake snowy sets mixed with actual 2nd unit footage shot in some winter locations.  I can only assume that the actors were roasting under the bright soundstage lights in their winter fur outfits. 

The film was directed by Raoul Walsh who apparently thought the film was nothing more than a "potboiler."  Walsh was a good director and the best thing you can say about this film is that he paced the film so well that the damn thing does move along quickly.  The rumor mill said that William Faulkner worked on uncredited on the screenplay but you'll find no traces of Faulkener's "The Sound and the Fury."  The film also makes a joke about Flynn's real life rape trial.  Flynn was to put it as mildly as possible a real lady killer in his personal life.

The screenplay is credited to  Frank Gruber and Alvah Bessie.  The running time is a quick 93 minutes.

1943 - FLESH AND FANTASY - excellent 1940's anthology film

The actor Charles Boyer and the director Julien Duvivier teamed up to produce this fantasy film for Universal Studios kind of the home for these kind of films.  Duvivier was a French filmmaker who left France during World War II and settled in Hollywood for a while working for the Hollywood studio system.  Duvivier was also a superb director.

The film consists of three stories about a half and hour each and frankly time has worn a bit on the stories themselves.  Shows like The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery have kind of reused this material over and over.

However what hasn't aged in this film are the performances of an excellent cast with actors like Charles Boyer, Edward G. Robinson, Thomas Mitchell, Robert Benchley (playing Robert Benchley as usual). Barbara Stanwyck and Betty Field.  Also to be commended is Duvivier's technique behind the camera who along with his production team put together a film that shows a real command of the film medium, this film is a pleasure to watch.

The writers were Ellis St. Joseph, Oscar Wilde, László Vadnay, Ernest Pascal and Samuel Hoffenstein.  The running time is 94 minutes.

1943 - HANGMEN ALSO DIE, disappointing World War II film noir

This should have been a much better film.  The director Fritz Lang had a lot of control over this project and it would seem right down his alley.  The film is based on a true story.  Reinhard Heydrich was an actual high level Nazi who was assassinated by Czechoslovakian resistence fighters during World War II.  In response to the assassination the Nazis carried out reprisials on the Czech population which numbered approximately 5000 people.

During the making of this film not much was known about the actual facts of Heydrich's death.  Lang and his writers Bertoit Brecht and John Wexley were forced to do a lot of speculation.  This story is about search for Heydrich's killers with a very big dose of 1940's war propaganda thrown in.  Frankly the cast is really not that appealing, Brian Donlevy, Anna Lee and Walter Brennan just don't seem to fit in as Czech citizens.

 

The film is further hampered by a very long story that just seems to go on and on. Apparently Lang and Bertoit Brecht did not get along and I think it shows it in the finished film the film just plods along.  In fact Lang seems to be more interested in the Nazi detective Inspector Gruber who is not unlike the police inspector, Lohmann in The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

 

As it is there are a few scenes that are very exciting and the photography from the legendary James Wong Howe is a stand out. Overall though the film is a major disappointment from Fritz Lang. The running time is a long 134 minutes.

1943 - THE GANG'S ALL HERE - Busby Berkley in color

Busby Berkley the great surrealist when it came to the film musical got a shot at directing this film which had a silly mistaken identity love story for a plot that probably no  one ever cared about.  This film is really all about Berkley and his visual imagination.  Berkley's type of musical staging was becoming outdated by the 1940's but The Gang's All Here allowed Berkley to film the musical numbers with his usual crazy ideas this time with the added bonus of color.

 

Some of the results were truly amazing.  The Carmen Miranda number "The Lady in the Tutti Frutti Hat" were loaded with  sexual innuendo and the final number "The Polka Dot Ballet" in technicolor reached a new level in film surrealism.

 

One must mention the contribution of the lead, Alice Faye.  She was one of 20th Century Fox's biggest stars and had a very pleasing singing voice.  Faye kind of walks through the film frequently with a look of amusement.  She's probably wondering what kind of crazy Berkley stuff she was mixed up in.

The film is a high point in the Hollywood musical and certainly is more than just some "camp classic."

The so called screenplay was by Walter Bullock, Harry Warren and Leo Robin a couple of pros wrote the music and lyrics.  The film runs 103 minutes.

1943 - BACKGROUND TO DANGER, typical World War II movie stuff

There's just not much to say about this piece of World War II propaganda from Warner Brothers studio.  George Raft is a salesman doing business in Turkey during the war.  He gets mixed up with a bunch of Nazis led by British actor Sydney Greenstreet.

 

 When you needed an actor to play a cultivated German bastard studios always hired British actors. Anyway, Raft gets mixed up with the Nazis and a Russian spy played by German actor Peter Lorre and American actor Brenda Marshall playing Lorre's sister of all things.

This is the kind of stuff that Hollywood could pump out during World War II and generally it made money even if the picture itself really wasn't that good.  One of Warner Brothers best directors Raoul Walsh put this film together probably in his sleep in this case.

 

The film has the required amount of shootings, fistfights, car chases and double crossing spy stuff.  Even for a 1940's film it's all kind of tired and boring this time.

The screenplay was by W. R. Burnett, the running time is 80 minutes.

1943 - STAGEDOOR CANTEEN - another rally the homefront revue

If you've seen Hollywood Canteen you've seen this film.  This is I guess the east coast version of that film.

Once again celebrities and stars assembly at a World War 2 nightclub to entertain the troops before they are shipped overseas.  The interest here (if there is any interest) is that these are most Broadway and east coast actors and performers.

The featured list of performers to name a few is as follows:

 Edgar Bergan, Katherine Cornell, Gracie Fields, Katherine Hepburn, George Jessel, Gypsy Rose Lee, Yehudi Menuhin, Ethel Merman, Ethel Waters, and Ed Wynn to name just a few.  As the years roll along most of them are or will be forgotten.

This film is mostly for film history.  Probably most people won't have the remotest idea of what this is all about or why these people were a big deal in the 1940's. 

132 minutes.

1943 - THE OUTLAW an incredible piece of crap western

It's all about pictures  of Jane Russell's large bosom the main reason Howard Hughes sort of  directed The Outlaw.  

Howard Hughes was to produce and Howard Hawks signed up to direct this fantasy on the life of Billy the Kid.  Hughes and Hawks had worked together on the original Scarface so this teaming was not entirely unprecedented.  Hawks got the idea to cast unknown actors to play Billy the Kid and the woman he gets involved with Rio McDonald.  Jack Buetel and Jane Russell who had virtually no acting experience were to be coached by Hawks.  After about two weeks of shooting Hughes fired Hawks or Hawks quit the production.  Then things got kind of weird.

Howard Hughes directing?

Hughes assumed the direction of the film and started shooting and re-shooting the film.  Hughes became obsessed with Russell's breasts and would have pieces of the film looped so he could watch her breasts over and over in the rushes.  The Outlaw was filmed in 1941 finally released in 1943 where it was suppressed for its "lewd" content.  Hughes was able to use the publicity from the 1943 release and release it again in 1946 playing up the fact that it had been held up for general release in 1943 because it was a "naughty" mainstream picture.  The picture made a lot of money in 1946.

The Outlaw is a very bad film.  Jane Russell and Jack Buetel simply cannot act.  The story is basically a tease with a lot of "naughty" stuff happening off screen supposedly.  It's impossible to know what Howard Hawk's original plan for the film was because this film is such a stink bomb.  If anything The Outlaw is a very small and narrow window into the mind of Howard Hughes.

116 minutes, written by Jules Furthman.

1943 - CRAZY HOUSE, from the guys that brought you Hellzapoppin'

Olsen and Johnson are back in another comedy for Universal Pictures.  Edward Cline who had directed W. C. Fields was in charge this time.  The results are disappointing.

For whatever reason the anarchaic spirit of Hellazpoppin' seems to be lost this time.  Olsen and Johnson are still up for any type of gag they can think of but their timing seems way off.  The film is also overloaded with musical numbers and singers, from Alan Jones to Count Basie.  There is also an extremely overbearing performer called Cass Daley who is featured in some very stupid specialty numbers

This Olsen and Johnson production actually has some sort of plot.  Having been kicked out of Universal Studios they set up a film at Miracle Pictures (If it's a good picture it's a Miracle).  The chance to take some major shots at Hollywood never materializes, the musical numbers just keep coming and coming and coming.

The film does have a few decent moments which come mostly at the end when they are previewing their picture for an audience.  Only in these scenes do Olsen and Johnson get to show their madcap vaudeville stuff.  Olsen and Johnson were comedians who appeared to work best without the structure of a formal script.

80 minutes.

1943 - EDGE OF DARKNESS, very poor World War 2 propaganda film

Class "A" talent in a very bad World War 2 film.  Set in Norway, this film is about the Norwegian resistance in a small town during Nazi occupation.  The film was extremely well directed by Lewis Milestone.  Robert Rossen, one of Hollywood's best writers and future director wrote the screenplay.  Errol Flynn and Ann Sheridan two of Warners top stars have the leads and the supporting cast has very good actors like Walter Huston, Judith Anderson and Ruth Gordon.  With all of the talent involved this film is a complete mess.  

Probably the biggest offender is the horrible jingoistic script from Robert Rossen.  The Nazi's are a complete bunch of caricatures, no evil deed is too little for this bunch.  The resistance fighters mouth one freedom fighter cliche after another.  At one point Ann Sheridan is raped by a particularly nasty Nazi and instead of being traumatized by this event she finds time to make a speech about the Norwegian resistance movement.

Edge of Darkness has some impressive camera work and some of Milestone's skillful tracking shots.  The final battle sequence is exciting and extremely well done but can't redeem all of the jingoistic speeches from Errol Flynn, Walter Huston and Ann Sheridan.  Too bad, because they all give pretty good performances.

If you are looking for a well made World War 2 propaganda check out Howard Hawk's Air Force instead.

119 minutes.

1943 - AIR FORCE, Howard Hawk's World War II propaganda epic

Howard Hawks set out to make the propaganda film to end all propaganda films during World War II. He hired Dudley Nichols who was frequently associated with John Ford's films and had William Faulkner to do some unedited rewrites.  The result is a very good propaganda film that in a lot of ways still holds up considering the source and period.

 

 Hawks primarily used Warner's character actors with only John Garfield as the most notable star and even he is billed 9th in the cast.  The plot concerns the crew of the bomber Mary-Ann flying to Pearl Harbor just as the Japanese attack.  This is an actual incident that occurred during the start of the war. From there the film focuses on how the crew works together to take the fight to the Japanese.

For what this film is, it's a very good Hawks film.  Air Force has all of his trademarks, overlapping dialog, good performances especially from John Garfield and John Ridgely and Harry Carey.  Actors like George Tobias and Edward Brophy were always "Johnnie One Notes"  in any film they were in and there was probably nothing Hawks could do about them, but overall the rest of the cast is first rate.

 

 The film also has some pretty good action scenes.  However, the final attack on the Japanese fleet about to invade Australia is ludicrous since it features the Mary-Ann almost single handily blowing up the entire fleet.

This is basically a World War II propaganda film, you have to endure the usual cringing anti Japanese stuff these films are loaded up with.  Still this is a very good Howard Hawks film.

124 minutes

1943 - FIVE GRAVES TO CAIRO, entertaining spy stuff

Billy Wilder and his partner Charles Brackett on their second feature zipped out this very entertaining spy film.  Brackett and Wilder loaded the story up with lots of clever scenes and plot situations.  The film also has that sly sense of humor that this team was known for particularly when it comes to sex.

Five Graves to Cairo has a very good cast with a standout performance from former director Erich von Stroheim as Field Marshall  Rommel.  Wilder was an admirer of von Strohem and you can sure tell, von Stroheim gets all the best lines.  Rommel spends his time in the film ordering up excerpts from the opera Aida or laying in bed swatting flies with a flyswatter, all very amusing stuff.

Five Graves to Cairo also has excellent black and white photography from John F. Seitz one of the masters of the profession.

96  minutes.

1943 - DESTINATION TOKYO, 40's war film is way too long

During World War II a U.S. navy submarine improbably sneaks into Tokyo Bay to radio information back to the Doolittle raid pilots for the first raid on Tokyo.

This is a war film that is over two hours long and is full of propaganda and talk, lots of talk.  Cary Grant is probably the handsomest submarine captain in the history of the Silent Service and the crew is the usual cross section of good old American stereotypes.  In other words this is a typical 40's propaganda piece with not one cliche left unused.

The film was written and directed by first time director Delmar Daves, who went on to have a good career directing westerns however Destination Tokyo is not a western.

Warner Brothers must have been pretty high on the script.  Cary Grant was one of the few freelance actors in Hollywood during the 40's so there was nothing cheap about his salary.  The film has high production values although the submarine sets are so big it looks like the crew is on some sort of underwater Carnival Cruise liner.

On the plus side, the sea battles are pretty decent, with cool models and miniatures zipping around in a studio tank.  Cary Grant gives a good restrained performance although he's still Cary Grant in a sailor suit. 

Still the propaganda aspects of the story and the long running time make Destination Tokyo mighty slow going.

135 minutes.

1943 - REPORT FROM THE ALEUTIANS, documentary about the Army Air Force is fascinating stuff

During World War II, the United States military takes part in raids on the island of Kiska from their base on Adak island in the Aleutians.  John Huston films and narrates the daily routine of these soldiers.

This is absorbing stuff filmed in color.  The Aleutian islands look like no place anyone wants to be.  Cold and probably blowing constantly, the soldiers all look pretty miserable.  The military was engaged in bombing the island of Kiska which was held by the Japanese for a while.  The Japanese eventually left Kiska which turned out to have absolutely no military value for either side. 

Report From the Aleutians focuses on the repetition and weariness of military life in a remote region of the war.  Towards the end of the film, the Army Air Corp participates in a bombing raid over Kiska, even that is boring.  The flight is an hour out and an hour back, lots of tedium probably followed by sheer terror for about 5 or 10 minutes during the actual bombing run. 

That John Huston was able to put together an interesting film out of what is essentially soldiers standing around freezing their butts off in Alaska is a tribute to his skill as a filmmaker and story teller. 

47 minutes, written by an uncredited John Huston.

1943 - LE CORBEAU, Clouzot's study of gossip in a small town is a masterpiece

A series of poison pen letters begin circulating full of half truths and mostly focusing on a doctor working in a small town show the true nature of the people living there.  This is the time to use the word masterpiece for this film by Henri-Georges Clouzot.

It's almost impossible to find a bad scene or misjudged minute in this attack on conservative small town life and values.   In one of the most gripping scenes in the film, a poison pen letter is passed among the attendees at the funeral of a man who has committed suicide after receiving one of the letters.  It doesn't get much darker than this folks.

Clouzot is a master filmmaker, frequently called the french version of Alfred Hitchcock, he makes Hitchcock look like a director of cheap bubblegum entertainments.

You think that people are all good or all bad. You think that good means light and bad means night? But where does night end and light begin? Where is the borderline? Do you even know which side you belong on?

– Dr Vorzet, Le Corbeau

92 minutes.

1943 - MUNCHAUSEN a forgotten version of the Baron's legendary life

A very expensive film about Baron Munchausen made in 1943 at UFA studios while Nazi Germany was going to hell in a hand basket. The production history behind this film is almost as interesting as the film. Written by Erich Kastner a Jewish writer working in the German film industry. The lead actor Hans Albers not much of a fan of the Third Reich, apparently had to do a careful dance around the Nazis to keep from being associated with them.

 

 

The film can easily stand up to the Terry Gilliam version of the Munchausen legend. It was an elaborate expensive color production with good 1940's special effects and an interesting soft look to the color photography. The production and costumes are on a large scale. Munchausen also has some remarkably risque stuff for a 1940's film.

Instead of just concentrating on the Baron's adventures and tall tales, the film attempts to put them in some sort of context to the human experience. The Baron goes from one wild adventure to another but not without some personal cost. The Baron's closest friends are affected by his adventures and not entirely for the best. Some even die because of their involvement with him. By the end of the film the Baron has become a pretty melancholy guy about his remarkable life.

For a large scale fantasy film, Munchausen has an unusual amount of attention devoted to it's character's motivations. Terry Gilliam's film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen was made 40 years later and had lots of wild scenes using all of the modern film tricks of 1988 but that movie came off pretty cold to the audience. This version is well worth watching.

 119 minutes.