1942 - YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, Cagney brillantly plays George M. Cohan

James Cagney usually remembered for gangster roles had been a "song and dance" man in his early days in show business.  He can be seen in the Busby Berkley film Footlight Parade performing with lead footed Ruby Keeler.  Yankee Doodle Dandy is the high point in the dancing part of his career.  This film is very loosely based story on the legendary Broadway performer George M. Cohan with Cohan's best songs integrated into the plot.

Made during World War II, Yankee Doodle Dandy is an extremely patriotic film with the emphasis on extremely.  As much as it spotlights Cagney's musical numbers there is an awful lot of cornball flag waving throughout the film which you kind of have to roll with.  Still Cagney dominates the film with his great performance and that kind of weird stiff dance style he had.

 

The film was directed by ace studio director Michael Curtiz. At his peak Curtiz could make a film in about every film genre be it swashbucklers, horror films, gangster films and in this case musicals.  Curtiz was aided by a superb production crew.  James Wong was a legendary cinematographer especially when working in black and white film.  The film was edited by George Amy.  Editors never get enough credit for pulling a film together.  But above all Michael Curtiz really moved this film along.  Each scene is very well paced.  It's nice to see a filmmaker who actually knows how to make a film.

 

The cast is from the familiar Warner Brother's stock company.  Walter Huston is Cagney's father, Joan Leslie (age 17) plays Cagney's wife, Rosemary DeCamp, George Tobias, S. Z. Sakall (aka Cuddles Sakall) and film director Richard Worfe as Cohen's business partner all show up.  This bunch was in a lot of Warner Brothers films in the 1930's and 40'a.  Yankee Doodle Dandy is certainly a high point in professional Hollywood film making.

The film was written by Robert Busckner and Edmund Joseph, the running time is 126 minutes.    

1935 - THE WALKING DEAD, modest but entertaining horror/crime film

Boris Karloff is a man framed for the murder of a judge.  After being sentenced to death in the electric chair he is brought back to life by sort of mad scientist played by "Santa Claus" himself Edmund Gwenn.  As is the way with a 1930's Karloff film he lumbers around seeking revenge sort of like Frankenstein looking for the people who set him up for murder.  Karloff is a very good lumberer.

This is a Karloff horror film not produced by Universal for a change.  Warner Brothers probably offered Karloff more money than he was getting at Universal to play yet another sort of monster.  One thing you have to say Karloff was very good at playing the sympathetic monster.  You actually feel sorry for the guy by the inevitable climax.

The film was directed by one of Hollywood's greatest studio directors, Michael Curtiz.  If any director knew how to move a story along it was Curtiz, this film races along at top speed.  Curtiz had an amazing career starting in the silent era and finishing in the early 1960's.

 

The Walking Dead was the usual good Warner Brothers production with an interesting mix of Warner's character actors.  Hal Mohr was the cinematographer his chief claim to fame was as the cameraman who filmed the first talking picture, The Jazz Singer.

The film was written by Ewart Adamson, Peter Milne, Robert Andrews and Lillie Hayward.  The running time is a brisk 66 minutes.

1934 - BRITISH AGENT - confused romance/thriller

Leslie Howard is the very British agent working to undermine the Russian Revolution.  He hopes to bring a more sympathetic government into power that will support the British during World War I.  Kay Johnson is a Russian revolutionary who Howard falls in love with.  Unbeknown to Howard, Johnson is a double agent who will betray Howard in order to advance the cause of the Communist Revolution.

This is one confusing mess of a film.  The screenplay is so convoluted it's impossible to tell if this film is pro Russian Revolution or anti Russian Revolution.

Kay Francis the love interest for Leslie Howard playing the Russian agent is an interesting choice.  She might have been a little miscast. Francis was from Oklahoma and she didn't even attempt a European accent.  Future "Joker" villain Caesar Romero from the original Adam West version of Batman is a diplomat working with Howard.  The rest of the cast is made up of  the usual Warner Brothers stock company.

The film was directed by filmmaker pro Michael Curtiz but even he couldn't do much with this confusing mess of story elements and mismatched actors to make it coherent.

The film was written by Laird Houston Doyle and Roland Pertwee, the running time is a short 81 minutes.

1935 - CAPTAIN BLOOD, large scale, dated but entertaining swashbuckler

Warner Brothers pulled together this entertaining swashbuckling pirate film with a large budget.  Michael Curtiz directed and one of Warner's best screenwriters Casey Robinson adapted the book the film was based on.  The photography is excellent, the special effects and model work for 1935 were at a very high standard.  The composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold was a master at writing large scale symphonic scores and he provided a very entertaining one for this film.  The film really couldn't miss.

Warner Brothers took a big chance with the cast. Errol Flynn essentially an unknown actor at the time was chosen as the title character.  Olivia de Havilland hadn't even turned twenty yet and was cast as the female lead and love interest for Flynn.  But both of these performers were soon to become mainstays at the studio and were very popular with the movie going public during the 1930's and 40's.

 

Captain Blood is mostly entertaining with lots of colorful characters and interesting locations.  The action never lets up with sword fights and everyone's favorite pirate movie scene two ships blasting at each other with their cannons.  It's true swashbuckling film making. 

 

Probably the worst thing to say about this film is that it is very dated even for a film set in the 1600's.  A lot of the plot has to do with the character Peter Blood being forced into slavery by the King of England, escaping and becoming a pirate fighting against the English.  By the end of the film the screenwriter has had to spend a lot of time juicing the plot to get Captain Blood back fighting on the side of the English and become a true English patriot again.  All fairly ludicrous stuff but that's Hollywood story telling after all.

The film runs 119 minutes.

1933 - THE KEYHOLE, comedy/drama about marriage.

 1930's actress Kaye Johnson was pretty hot stuff for a few years before she became box office poison.  Johnson plays a married woman who falls in love with a private eye played by the rather stiff actor George Brent.  Brent’s been sent to spy on her to make sure she's not cheating on her husband.  Well that's about it for a plot for this film.

Really there isn't much to say about this film.  It has a comedic subplot involving actors Allen Jennings and everyone's favorite 1930's tough broad Glenda Farrell which isn't particularly funny. It does eat up the running time so we don't have to endure much of the Kaye Johnson/George Brent romance.

 

If there is anything that stands out about this film it's the involvement of Michael Curtiz one of the best Hollywood directors of the 1930's and 40's.  Curtiz keeps thing moving along at top speed and occasionally sticks in an interesting camera angle but that's about it.  Curtiz got a lot of the big film projects at Warner Brothers studio but he was a contract director and frequently get stuck directing stuff like this.  Sometimes Curtiz could make these kinds of films interesting but the screenplay was already old stuff even in 1933.

 

The film was written by Robert Presnell Sr,  the running time is a quick 69 minutes.

1939 - DODGE CITY, big budget Western from Warner Brothers

A few reasons to enjoy Dodge City:

• It was filmed in stunning early technicolor the film has a rich saturated look to it.
• Dodge City had a very big budget, the money is definitely up on the screen.
• The film was directed by ace director Michael Curtiz.
• The film has about every actor Warner Brothers had under contract, particularly Alan Hale and Gunn "Big Boy" Williams,who were probably in about every western Warner's produced.
• The film is under 2 hours

• The film has Errol Flynn as the star.  Flynn was an Australian/English actor who had a real star presence. 
• Flynn's costar Olivia De Havilland was a talented actor and also very pretty.
• What western wouldn't be complete without a great villain, character actor Bruce Cabot got the part along with Victor Jory as his chief henchman. 

 

Dodge City a real 1930's film that is still very entertaining.

104 minutes, written by Robert Buckner.

1941 - DIVE BOMBER, is a tribute to the Navy flight surgeon and actually a good movie

Dive Bomber is a highly entertaining war film that came out before World War 2.  It was written by "Spig" Wead who John Wayne played in The Wings of Eagles.  Erroll Flynn is the flight surgeon attempting to solve all the fighter pilot problems of blackouts and you name it.  Fred MacMurray is one of the Navy's top pilots who doesn't like Flynn and can't see the value in his research.  Of course MacMurray comes to see the light as a true Navy bromance is born.

This film was directed by Michael Curtiz and photographed in stunning technicolor by Bert Glennon and Winton Hoch who both worked with John Ford.  The film looks great.  The flying sequences are particularly vivid.

A fairly impressive achievement considering the subject matter and the technical challenges of shooting with the gigantic technicolor camera during the early 1940's.  The film is also very entertaining.

Written by Frank "Spig" Wead and Robert Buckner, the running time is 133 minutes.

1942 - CASABLANCA, looking a little less this viewing.

Still a lot to enjoy about Casablanca but the film is an extremely slick piece of Hollywood story making during the golden age of studio production when everything was shot on a sound stage where everything could be completely controlled.

Considering this was originally an unproduced stage play, what Warner Brother's studios did with it is pretty amazing.  The is a product of a system that when it wanted to could bring first class artistic talent to a production.

The cinematographer was Arthur Edeson who had filmed The Maltese Falcon, The Invisible Man and Sergent York to name a few films.  Edeson was a guy skilled in black and white photography.  Ingrid Bergman was a beautiful woman but Edeson's photography makes her face glow with soft focus and shadow effects. 

The director was Michael Curtiz, one of the most talented film makers in Hollywood.  Curtiz was a skilled craftsman who understood how to get the most out of a film visually.  By the time Curtiz filmed Casablanca he had a stong understanding of how to tell a story with a camera.

Casablanca is also know for it's impressive cast.  Besides the three leads, the stock company of actors that Warner's assembled for the film was one of the best, Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, Conrad Veidt and most importantly Claude Rains.

So what's the problem here?  Well the World War II propaganda stuff of the love story really date this film.  The viewer has to have a pretty decent understanding of some of the political aspects of that conflict.  References to Vichy France and Marshall Petain will probably go over almost every viewer's head today.  Also, the incessant propaganda that runs through out the film is as major a plot point as is the love story.

102 minutes.

1961 - THE COMMANCHEROS light weight very entertaining John Wayne western

This is a highly polished film.  It was assembled by professionals behind and in front of the camera.  The director was Michael Curtiz shooting his final film with uncredited assistance from the Duke himself. 

The cast is a who's who of old Hollywood pros starting with John Wayne, Stuart Whitman, Lee Marvin, Bruce Cabot, Edgar Buchannan and Nehemiah Perhoff.  Behind the camera is the 2nd unit director Cliff Lyons who had worked on Spartacus, Ben Hur and and How The West Was Won amongst others.  Elmer Bernstein composed the score and the rest of the technical credits are very high.

Nobody is ever going to confuse this film with Solaris, but this is an extremely entertaining western with The Duke in the film the way audiences liked him easy going and not taking himself too seriously.  The Commancheros has none of his right wing political bull crap.

This is the kind of film that people think of when they say "they don't make them like this anymore" although the reality was Hollywood could barely make them like this at all.

105 minutes.

1928 - NOAH'S ARK, silent religious allegory made on a spectacular scale

The story of Noah's Ark is used to illustrate the evil ways of modern man and a lot of stuff gets wrecked in this very impressive Warner Brother's production.

A big film for the studio.  Daryl F. Zanuck who was in charge of the production and the director Michael Curtiz used just about everything they knew about film making when it came to mounting this production.

Noah's Ark appears to have been conceived as an attempt to copy the success of Cecil B. DeMille's 1923 production of The Ten Commandments.  DeMille's film, had used a long prologue to tell the story of Moses and the Israelites escape from Egypt.  The Ten Commandments were used to dramatize the sins being committed in the modern world.

Noah's Ark shows that Zanuck and Curtiz had carefully studied DeMille's film and then attempted to out do it.  Their film opens with a modern story and then travels back into time to show how the story of Noah and the flood correspond to modern life. 

Michael Curtiz one of Hollywood's best directors filmed the story with his usual dazzling technique.  Curtiz used his skill with composition and editing to move the story along at top speed.  Noah's Ark has an amazing flood sequence towards the end of the picture that really pushed the boundaries of special effects.  The flood disaster was apparently a little too exciting, four extras were killed during the filming of this sequence.

The film features a couple of popular silent stars, George O'Brien and Dolores Costello.  O'Brien was a leading man of the 1920's and had done a lot of work for John Ford, he was sort of an early version of John Wayne.  Dolores Costello a major silent film star of the 1920's, was considered one of the great beauties of the silent screen, the woman certainly knew how to take a close up. 

Noah's Ark is really an impressive film.  Besides the flood sequence there is a spectacular train wreck and a World War I battle scene all filmed with tremendous skill.  Curtiz was a director who knew how to put a film together, there's not a dull moment in the entire picture

100 minutes.

1933 - THE KENNEL MURDER CASE, complex, clever film mystery

A good adaptation of a murder mystery from the 1930's in all its 30's glory. 

The Kennel Murder Case, is a clever murder mystery directed at full speed by Michael Curtiz using just about every camera angle and visual trick he could muster to keep what is basically a drawing room mystery interesting to an audience. 

What the film also has going for it is one of Hollywood's smoothest actors William Powell,  playing the detective Philo Vance.  Most everyone remembers Cary Grant as the epitome of grace and elegance in classic Hollywood films but Powell is certainly right up there with Grant possessing an elegance that has vanished in mainstream entertainment.

An excellent example of a 1930's approach to a murder mystery, an interesting plot, memorable characters and good direction, all mixed together. 

73 minutes.

1940 - SANTA FE TRAIL, very good action but a mess of a plot

Very large scale pre Civil War film that has one of the messiest points of view I have ever seen in a 40's Western.

Southerners and Yankees train together at West Point to become future military leaders, the problem of slavery becomes a hotbed issue among them.  Upon graduation two of the new officers, Jeb Stuart played by Errol Flynn and George Armstrong Custer played by Ronald Reagan, get assigned to the Kansas territories where they get involved with tea party leader abolitionist leader John Brown. As is typical for these kind of films, Flynn and Regan both have the hots for the very pretty Olivia De Havilland playing one of those girl roles she came to despise early in her career.  Reagan competing against Flynn for De Havilland never stood a chance as he was always a 2nd string actor in Hollywood.

Clearly the plan for the film was not to antagonize any Southern audiences, since about every half hour we  get a  speech from Errol Flynn as the southerner Jeb Stuart saying things like, "the south will eventually get rid of slavery in their own way" or "a soldier's job is to not get involved in politics."  Since the real Jeb Stuart ended up fighting for the confederate army and Flynn in real life was from Australia, the whole thing seems pretty suspect.

The bad guy John Brown is a more interesting character than the three leads.  Raymond Massey plays John Brown with a lot of force and compassion for the slave cause certainly more than anyone else in the cast can even pretend to muster up. 

What this film really has going for it is the outstanding direction by one of the greatest studio directors in Hollywood, Michael Curtiz.  Curtiz had a great visual sense and was a master at directing action scenes on an intimate or large scale setting. A fight in an army barracks or a large scale shoot out with the military and John Brown's abolitionists are so excitingly shot that they make up for a lot problems and shortcomings with the film.

The cast, the photography the large scale production values and especially the direction hold this film together.

1935 - THE CASE OF THE CURIOUS BRIDE, Warren William IS Perry Mason

This is a fast moving comedy/mystery directed by Warner Brother's best studio director Michael Curtiz.  The film is known for the odd out of focus dissolves between scenes that run throughout the film and a strange gourmet food motif subplot that almost overshadows the murder mystery.

Ace criminal lawyer Perry Mason is also a master chef and he probably spends the first twenty minutes of the film preparing his dinner.  Perry Mason takes the case of an ex girlfriend/mistress who is accused of murdering her husband.  Mason races around trying to solve the mystery, not so much to keep his client out of the electric chair but to wrap things up before his vacation begins.

 

Warren William plays Perry Mason as a very smooth operator who isn't above bending and breaking the law to beat the police and district attorney.  In fact the level of dishonesty throughout the entire legal system is incredibly cynical.  The criminals have more of an ethical code than the court system.

 

As usual in murder mysteries the fun isn't the murder plot,  it's watching the protagonist figure things out in an entertaining way.   Michael Curtiz was a director who knew how to pace a film, and he races through this plot pausing only long enough for another weird food joke. 

A stylish, entertaining and very strange mystery film.