1939 - PEACE ON EARTH, 1955 - GOOD WILL TO MEN, a couple of depressing cartoons

A couple of downer cartoons, Peace on Earth and it's remake Good Will to Men are about nothing less than the end of civilization as we know it as the human race annihilates itself in a world war.  With people now extinct, little cartoon animals take over and rebuild the world. 

Peace on Earth is actually very well made.  Apparently the director Hugh Harman felt it wasn't enough to entertain people with cute cartoon animals running around, he had a few big thoughts about the fate of mankind.  This film is reasonably effective but after all this human slaughter watching little bunnies hoping around rebuilding some kind of animal civilization is a little off putting.  It's still worth a look.  When Peace on Earth came out in 1939 the world was about to be plunged into World War II so this film wasn't that far off the mark. A real oddball of a  film.

 

Peace on Earth was obviously influential since it was remade in 1955, in fashionable widescreen called Good Will to Men.  In this version mankind essentially destroys itself with nuclear weapons again leaving more cute little cartoon animals to rebuild the world.

Both these films are set at Christmas time to really drive home the "thou hall not kill" and "peace on earth" stuff to an audience.  However cartoon mice singing Christmas carols at the end of these films is kind of weird.  In general the 1939 version of this story is more visually interesting than the remake,

Peace on Earth runs 9 minutes, Good Will to Men runs 8 minutes   

1939 - MIDNIGHT, a classic 30's comedy

Midnight is usually considered one of the high points of sophisticated 1930's comedy.  The technical credits of this film are impeccable.  Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett in the screenwriter phase of their careers were considered one of Paramount's top writing teams.  The director Mitchell Leisen was at home with comedies.  The cinematographer was Charles Lang Jr., one of Hollywood's best who worked about 50 years amassing an impressive lest of credits.  

 

The cast as is typical with these comedies set in Europe, is a bunch of American actors who don't bother with any of those pesky European accents.  Claudette Colbert who was sort of French played a gold digger who shows up in Paris with no money but is wearing a stunning evening dress.  Don Ameche is the penniless cab drive who falls in love with her.  However Colbert doesn't want to get involved with him since he is poor.  After many plot manipulations she ends up at the mansion of a barely sober John Barrymore playing a rich aristocrat.  After even more plot manipulations Colbert has a shot at marrying a rich French guy named what else, "Jacques."  Ameche shows up to stop her.  Will true love win out in the end?  Well this is a comedy.

 

Midnight has a lot of clever stuff and some funny scenes. How could it not considering all the talent involved.  However the film is kind of dated.  After about 80 years of every type of Hollywood comedy made, the film doesn't really age all that well.  This is an example of an original film being done in by all the subsequent films that followed it which essentially used many of the same plot points.

 

The film is worth a look I guess.  But considering it's high reputation Midnight was a rather disappointing viewing experience.

The running time is 94 minutes.

1939 - THE THREE MUSKETEERS, oddball musical/comedy version of this story

This is a strange but not exactly terrible version of the Alexander Dumas classic novel which has been turned into a film at least nine times.  This version adds some mediocre songs to the story and condenses a lot of the plot, but the story is basically still there, mostly.

Don Ameche the perennial lightweight comedian and actor under contract to 20th Century Fox plays D'Artagnan fairly well.  Ameche is almost unrecognizable with the wig and mustache and does a good job with the sword fighting scenes.  Gloria Stuart who was "old Rose" in Titanic plays the Queen,  Lionel Atwell is De Rochefort, D'Artagnan's nemesis but the biggest change to this story is the inclusion of the comedy team called The Ritz Brothers.

Probably the best way to explain The Ritz Brothers is that they were the poor man's version of the Marx Brothers.  In this film they are the comedy and slapstick relief and are they ever the comedy and slapstick relief.  Not that there is much subtle behavior in slapstick but these guys really went for the goofiness.  They do have one good scene where they perform a dance sequence with pie tins strapped to their bodies.

 

This film was directed by Alan Dwan who was one of the early pioneers of Hollywood starting in the silent era and making the transition to sound films.  The  silent films were probably the high point of his career, he made fairly unexceptional sound films.  Dwan shoots most of the movie, particularly the musical sequences like he was just trying to keep the camera out of the way of The Ritz Brothers.

 

This version of The Three Musketeers is a fascinating contrast to the Richard Lester two part super production which also added a lot of humor to the story. Lester's complete version runs 213 minutes compared to this film which is under 80 minutes.

The Three Musketeers has a lot or writers for such a minor film, William A. Drake, Morris M. Musselman, Sam Hellman, Ray Golden and Sid Kulle.  The running time is 73 minutes.

1939 - JESSE JAMES, big sprawling 1930's western

Daryl F Zanuck the head of 20th Century Fox at times personally produced some films.  Jesse James is one of these.  Zanuck's top screenwriter Nunnally Johnson wrote the film and one of the best studio directors, Henry King filmed it.  Jesse James starred Tyrone Power and Henry Fonda, was photographed in Technicolor.  It couldn't miss and didn't, it was a big hit with the audiences.

The film itself, as they say must have involved considerable research to get most of the facts of Jesse James's life wrong.  The outlaw is portrayed at a simple man driven to violence by a cold corporate rail road company bent on taking over the farms of the regular people for the purposes of building their evil train line.

Anyway, the film is entertaining.  A lot of it was shot on location in Missouri and the early 1930's Technicolor is nice to look at. 

The running time is 106 minutes.

1939 - GUNGA DIN, one of Hollywood's best adventure films.

This is director George Steven's really coming into his own as a filmmaker with this adventure film set in India during British rule.  The film has an outstanding cast with Victor McLaglen an actor usually associated with John Ford films playing Sgt MacChesney.  Douglas Fairbanks Jr is Sgt. Thomas Ballantine and Cary Grant is Sgt. Archibald Cutter.  Grant's casting is interesting in that he is actually playing himself for a change, a cockney Archibald Leech (his real name).  

The film was originally supposed to be directed by Howard Hawks but Stevens was brought in because it was felt Hawks was to slow a director, little did they know.  The methodical Stevens took his time, reworked the screenplay adding jokes from his silent film days (Stevens had worked with Laurel and Hardy) and opening up the action.

The result was a one of kind action/adventure film with lots of clever comedy bits added in throughout the film.  Even today the film is still influential.  Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom used the Thuggee murder cult from this film as their chief bad guys and the Star Wars film, The Last Jedi was apparently greatly influenced by Gunga Din as well.  If the film has any issues it's probably the patronizing attitude the film as to the Indian people.

 

 The film was written by Joel Sayre, Fred Guiol, Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht.  The running time is 117 minutes.

1939 - THE FOUR FEATHERS. there will always be an imperalist England

Almost a dry run for Lawrence of Arabia. This large scale and big budget film is impressive for the on location photography and battle scenes filmed in the Sudan in Technicolor.  This is a considerable achievement, the early Technicolor cameras were huge and weren't actually film friendly when it came to moving these monsters around on dollies and cranes.

The is a very old fashioned adventure.  The story was probably a little dated when it was filmed but the basic situation of an ex soldier having to prove he isn't a coward is rather interesting.

The film was directed by Zoltan Korda and produced by his brother Alexander Korda. This family practically invented the British film industry.  The film looks good in another well done Criterion presentation.

 

Written by R. C. Sheriff, Lajos Biro and Arthur Wimperis.

Running time 130 minutes.

1939 - THE STORY OF ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL, the inventor of the telephone.

In yet another Daryl F Zanuck production that combines history with a very big dose of fiction, Don Ameche plays Alexander Graham Bell the inventor of the telephone.

And, guess what he invents in this film....you got it, the telephone.

98 minutes.

1939 - STANLEY AND LIVINGSTONE, a true story made up of fiction

We're in Africa with Spencer Tracey as explorer Henry Stanley and his faithful companion Jeff played by a really out of place actor Walter Brennan who should be hanging around with John
Wayne instead of Tracy.  The two of them are searching for Dr David Livingstone who the world assumes has died somewhere in darkest Africa.

After a lot of adventures involving the native population chasing Stanley and his safari around.  Henry Stanley does indeed run into Livingstone in the middle of nowhere.  You would think this would be the end of the film, but no.  When Stanley returns to England it seems no one will believe him.  This plot development takes up the rest of the film.

Since this is one of Daryl F Zanuck's personal projects. The production values are at a very high standard.  Zanuck also assigned the direction to one of his best directors Henry King.  The film is very watchable.  Zanuck even sent a 2nd unit crew to Africa to catch lots of background footage for authenticity.  The problem with this film is that it is almost entirely false.

A couple of minutes on the Wikipedia page for Henry Stanley is quite a different story, Stanley was an exploiter of the African continent for the Belgium government, a racist and probably a murderer.  This was not the true story that would have played well the movie going audiences at this time.  The best thing to be said about this film is that the cast is interesting.

101 minutes.

1939 - THE RAINS CAME - another impressive film from 20th Century Fox and Darryl F Zanuck

Another well made classic Hollywood film from 20th Century Fox and in particular Darryl F. Zanuck . When Zanuck found a story he felt was good he would bring all of the resources of 20th Century Fox to the production.

Zanuck hired MGM studio director Clarence Brown.  Brown was a film director who brought out the best in actors and knew how to produce quality work within the studio system.  Zanuck put together an excellent cast which included Tyrone Power, Nigel Bruce, Myrna Loy and George Brent.  Zanuck also spent lavishly on the sets and the special effects which still look very good.

The story involves a rather chaste romance between an Englishwoman and an Indian doctor played.  If everyone in the film is for the most part played by Caucasian actors, well that's Hollywood casting in the 1930's I guess.

The fact that a 77 year old film can still hold up and be involving is a tribute to Zanuck's skill as a producer.   Zanuck always knew that when it was all said and done a good story was the most important aspect in putting together an interesting and good drama. 

103 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.

1939 - GONE WITH THE WIND, is half a good film.

I was less impressed with this viewing (which will be my last) of David Selznick's super production.  The story of the making of this film is very well documented and chiefly focuses on Selznick's detailed and obsessive perfectionism throughout the making of the film.

Selznick hired George Cukor to direct the film.  Cukor spent two years preparing the film and filmed for about 3 weeks at which point Selznick fired him.  Victor Fleming who was filming The Wizard of Oz at the time was pulled off of that film and reassigned to Gone With The Wind.  Fleming hated Selznick's guts but stayed through most of the film but finally dropped out supposedly from exhaustion.

Sam Wood wrapped up directing the film.  The production designer William Cameron Menzies appears to have directed pieces of the film in particular the burning of Atlanta sequences.  It's generally thought the Menzies was the person responsible for bringing any consistent look to the film considering all the cooks mixed up in this film.

The chief problem with Gone With The Wind is the script.  After going thorough practically every screenwriter in Hollywood, Selznick hired Ben Hecht to revise it while filming was actually going on.  Hecht only agreed to work on the film for a week and he apparently rewrote the first part which is the best part of the film.  The second half of the film was apparently written by Selznick and it's one disjointed soap opera like scene after another.  The Scarlet O'Hara love stuff where she carries the torch for Ashley Wilkes really makes watching the film a major effort. 

Gone With The Wind is saved by it's extremely impressive cast.  Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland and Leslie Howard are excellent.  However, what really holds this very long film together is Vivian Leigh.  It would be hard to imagine how this film would have been without her in the lead.

238 minutes, screenplay credited to Sidney Howard.

1939 - UNION PACIFIC, is DeMille's very entertaining western.

This is a large scale Western film, from Cecil B. DeMille. The film is long but completely entertaining.  DeMille has loaded Union Pacific up with lots of fights, a soap opera love triangle, and two spectacular train wreck sequences. 

The plot is about the building of the transcontinental railroad, Barbara Stanwyck and actor from Brooklyn is stuck playing and Irish engineer's daughter complete with stereotypical accent.  Joel McCrea who was a capable light comedian plays the railroad troubleshooter who is such a tough guy he wears his guns backwards.  Brian Donlevy frequently played bad guys and he again gets the honors in this film.  Finally, Robert Preston, an actor who struggled in films is the 2nd lead bad guy.  Preston didn't his the big time until he starred in The Music Man on Broadway.

Frequently criticized for his lack of sophistication, Cecil B. DeMille was an extremely good at producing and directing films that were very successful with the public.  DeMille also had a much more impressive visual sense when it came to staging films than he was usually given credit for.  Union Pacific is a well staged and photographed film.

Union Pacific is a very good piece of commercial enterainment, from a master commercial filmmaker.

135 minutes

1939 - THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, Rathbone & Bruce

Going down the road once again with Arthur Conan Doyle's story of the devil dog from hell.  This is the version that introduced Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Holmes and Watson.

Rathbone's got the drill down as mister know it all Sherlock Holmes.  Nigel Bruce hadn't descended into parody playing Dr Watson as the befuddled sidekick to Holmes.  These guys are British and cool.

A real 1930's film, shot on a sound stage with the fog machines running overtime.  This version of The Hound of the Baskervilles is more like a conventional 1930's murder mystery with everyone sitting around in a room while Holmes explains who did what to whom.

A nice short version of the classic story, Rathbone and Bruce are the whole show.  You gotta love how they snuck that final line past the censors.

80 minutes.

1939 - THE MIKADO, faithful film version of the Gilbert and Sullivan opera

This is the film version of Gilbert and Sullivan's most famous opera.  Arthur Sullivan's music and W.S. Gilbert's are very clever and impressive.  The comedy is clever and very witty. 

The film is photographed in beautiful technicolor and has lavish sets and colorful costumes.

The problem is that after about 30 minutes enough is enough.  What played on the stage in the late 1800's is exhausting to watch, the relentless artificially of The Mikado finally wears the viewer down.

Tbe film was unsurprisingly not a success.

91 minutes.

1939 - DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK, big technicolor epic is kind of boring.

During the Revolutionary War, the British use the Indians to attack the settlers in the Mohawk valley in this Daryl F. Zanuck technicolor production which was directed by John Ford.

This was the year Ford directed three films, Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath and Drums Along the Mohawk, which is probably the least remembered of these three. 

This was John Ford's first film in technicolor and it had extensive on location filming in Utah.  Ford had lots of problems with the weather and apparently the big production sapped his enthusiasm for the film.  It kind of shows in the finished product.  

Drums Along the Mohawk is enjoyable as a big budget old fashioned technicolor Hollywood film, but that's about it.

103 minutes

1939 - STAGECOACH, a few notes on the Criterion release

Criterion has probably done as good a job of restoring Stagecoach that can possibly be done with it.  The film was popular with audiences and critics when it was released but nobody thought to take care of the negative of the film.  There's still some visible wear and tear on the image but this is the best I have ever seen it.

John Ford benefited from having top behind the camera talent.  The producer Walter Wanger financed the film after every major studio turned Ford down.  This is actually kind of amazing considering Ford was considered one of the most important directors working in Hollywood in the 1930's.  He and the writer Dudley Nichols had considerable success with The Informer, which was an artistic high point in American film. 

This was John Wayne's second shot at a major film career.  The Big Trail, one of the first 70 mm films failed to make him a star.  Wayne and Ford were close friends but had a prickly relationship at times.   Ford would freeze Wayne out of his life for months and years at a time over some perceived petty slight. 

John Wayne introduced the cowboy/stuntman Yakima Canutt to Ford.  Wayne had worked with Canutt on a lot of those poverty row westerns (the ones you see in Target selling for $10.00 for a set of 10).  Canutt was responsible for the film's impressive stunts during the Indian fight at the end of the film.  Yakima Canutt went on to work on films like Ben Hur, Where Eagles Dare, El Cid, and Spartacus
staging the action scenes in these films, usually the best parts of those films.

In a lot of ways, the real star of Stagecoach is the character actor Thomas Mitchell, playing the alcoholic doctor.  Mitchell is in almost every scene and has much of the little comedy bits that Ford liked to stick in his films.  John Ford was known for verbally abusing actors while filming, he apparently met his match in Thomas Mitchell who gave as good as he got from Ford. At one point during the filming, Mitchell stuck it to Ford by ridiculing Mary of Scotland, one Ford's few flops.

John Ford hadn't made a western since Three Bad Men, and contrary to popular belief, he wasn't the first person to shot in Monument Valley.  Ford only filmed for about 10 days in Monument Valley.  A lot of Stagecoach was actually shot in southern California, which included the famous Indian attack at the end.

Still, when all is said and done, Stagecoach turned out remarkably well and certainly has earned its title as a classic American film.

96 minutes.

1939 - THE SPY IN BLACK, Powell meets Pressburger, in this very good spy thriller

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger worked together for this first time on this British spy thriller, The Spy In Black, which is about as quirky as anything they ever did.  For a film made during World War II, the focus wasn't on the British but the German U-Boat captain played by Conrad Veidt. 

Veidt's is ordered to become a spy for German intelligence service, he ends up in Scotland working with another German agent played by Valerie Hobson.  Hobson worked with David Lean on a couple of films and somehow ended up in Hollywood in The Bride of Frankenstein, of all things.

Veidt is very good in this film , he is usually remembered as the Nazi swine Major Heinrich Strasser in Casablanca and Jafar from The Thief of Bagdad.  Veidt's performance is so impressive you end up having more empathy for him then the British.
 

The film ends with an exciting sea chase as Veidt attempts to escape from the British navy on a tugboat.

The Spy In Black is as impressive as any of Hitchock's British thrillers.

1939 - NINOTCHKA, Garbo laughs as they said

Hollywood's greatest director of sophisticated 1930's comedies directs one of Hollywood's most unusual and mysterious stars.  This is a comedy about Communism and Soviet Russia made with the usual high gloss MGM look. 

Greta Garbo the dour Swedish actor who probably would have been right at home in an Ingmar Bergman film, is carefully directed by Ernest Lubitsch.  The fact that this less than humorous woman is likable at all is a tribute to Lubitsch's talent with actors.  Fortunately Ninotchka has Melvyn Douglas as the male lead and he has a light comedy touch which saves the film and Garbo who seems very comfortable around him.

The screenplay is by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett among others so the audience gets the usual bunch of cynical jokes about politics and the human condition along with the famous Lubitsch touch, little visual jokes that move the plot forward.

Lubitsch directs Garbo

 

For a film that is 70 years old, Ninotchka looks very good, Lubitsch was a perfectionist when it came to film comedy this is filmmaking at a high technical and artistic standard.

Running time, 110 minutes.

1939 - THE CAT AND THE CANARY, Bob Hope becomes a star

The third remake of the "murderer is on the prow in the scary house after the reading of the will" story. Paramount teamed Bob Hope with Paulette Goddard and added lots of humor to cover up the creakiness and melodrama of the original play. The film mixed comedy and scares in a professional approach that a major studio could bring to make an entertaining film out of dated material.

The director Elliot Nugent, was a Broadway playwright/actor/director who knew how to modulate and pace the performances of the actors to serve this material. By this film, Hope had perfected his cowardly smart ass personality, and his comments on the action throughout the film added to the fun. Paulette Goddard was very likable as the heroine being chased by a mysterious killer, and she did a good job of playing the "straight man" for Hope's comedy shtick. 

 

Bob Hope isn't much remembered anymore, except as some weird golf playing Republican who appeared in some lame comedy specials on television in the 1960's. The TV specials usually involved him delivering a tired standup routine and then performing in some skits with an actress usually 20 years younger than him, it was all pretty embarrassing stuff. But in the 1940's, Hope was a very funny guy with killer comedic timing and the grace of a professional entertainer who had spent years acquiring the ability to deliver jokes through endless performances on stage, in movies and on the radio. Hope had an amazing physical and verbal dexterity with a joke or routine that is not really seen today. 

One of Hope's most famous accomplishments were his USO tours during World War II. He performed for servicemen over 150 times from 1942 to 1944 throughout the Pacific Theater of Operation. At times his USO show got very close to the actual fighting. He died at the age of 100 after a career which ranged from vaudeville to television. 

 

Paulette Goddard was discovered by Charlie Chaplin and apparently had a long relationship with him, she starred in two of his films, Modern Times and The Great Dictator. She signed a contract with Paramount in the 1930's and went on to appear in some goofy films for Cecil B. DeMille. She did another horror/comedy with Hope, called The Ghost Breakers which was another big hit for the two of them. Her career petered out in the 1950's and incredibly enough she married Erich Maria Remarque, the author of "All Quiet on the Western Front". She died a very rich woman leaving 20 million dollars to New York University to fund an institute for European studies.

Written by Walter de Leon and Lynn Starling, the running time is 72 minutes.