Category: Directed by Michael Curtiz

Doctor X (1932, Michael Curtiz)

Doctor X has pretty much the wrong prescription for everything. After a genuinely creepy first act, which has police autopsy consultant Lionel Atwill telling the cops the only place a monthly serial killer could get a particular scalpel is at Atwill’s school and then giving them a tour and everyone there being in some way familiar with cannibalism, the movie becomes an old dark house picture before going off the rails with its finale reveals. But it’s also a lousy gag comedy, with reporter Lee Tracy bumbling around—a lot of bumbling—and then a weird romance with Tracy unintentionally wooing Atwill’s daughter, Fay Wray. Sometimes it seems like the wooing is intentional, but then it’s the opposite during other scenes.

Robert Warwick plays the police commissioner who’s investigating the case. Atwill takes back to his medical school to introduce all the suspects, but then Warwick disappears from the main plot. It’s a real bummer because, without Warwick, there’s room for so much bad acting. Bad acting and weird decisions from the screenwriters and director Curtiz.

The most annoying weird bit is George Rosener as Atwill’s creepy butler. Roesner spends the first quarter of the movie just looking suspicious—according to a witness, the murderer’s really ugly, and Roesner’s creepy dude fits the bill. For the audience, anyway. See, when Atwill takes all the suspects out to his Long Island house to hook them up to blood pressure monitors and try to get them worked up watching murder reenactments, it’s pretty clear Atwill’s not good at his job and isn’t going to be able to catch the killer. Especially not since, based on the nonsensical resolution (which turns movie-long clues into plot holes), none of his ideas about catching the killer would’ve worked. There’s a lengthy fight scene at the end, and as it drags on, one has time to reflect on how little the bad science makes sense given the reveal.

So it would help if Doctor X had a bunch of good acting to make up for the script.

It does not.

Best is Warwick, then Atwill (after a lackluster first half, he recovers well in the second), then Wray. And Wray’s not particularly good; she’s got a terrible, silly part and no chemistry with Tracy because he’s a pest. But she’s not bad. And there’s a lot of bad. The worst is Preston Foster. He’s atrocious.

Oh, wait, I got sidetracked talking about Roesner. Who’s also got a terrible part because he’s not actually a creepy butler; he’s just a regular dude who no one in the movie knows is a creep. There’s a whole scene where he teases maid Leila Bennett (who’s good, but barely in it), and you think he’s intentionally being mean, but then he’s weirded to Wray later, and she’s okay with it, taking it as concern. Who knows how it’d play if director Curtiz weren’t entirely checked out regarding his cast’s performances.

The color photography from Ray Rennahan is just okay but charming. He’s trying harder than almost everyone else, who’s not trying at all. And why would you with the script? But, still, someone had to realize Tracy shouldn’t be just bumbling for long scenes, all by himself.

It’s not the worst, but it’s still a reasonably comprehensive fail.

Young Man with a Horn (1950, Michael Curtiz)

Young Man with a Horn has a third act problem. It’s got too many of them as it tries to find a way not to end on a down note. As a result, each third act gets more depressing, more dire, and correspondingly adjusts the expected bounce-back. But Horn’s got a bookending device with co-star Hoagy Carmichael; he’s narrating the film, telling everyone about this great jazz trumpet player he knows… played by Kirk Douglas.

At its worst, Horn’s aggressively misogynistic. At its second-worst, it’s passively misogynistic. At its third, it’s just Oscar bait for Douglas; it’s basically fine at that level. Douglas eats through the performance, bringing just as much intensity to his trumpet solos as when he’s listening to love interest Lauren Bacall talk all book smart around him. It’s an intense, measured performance. There’s just too much of it because there’s too much movie.

The film takes fifteen minutes for Douglas to show up, instead opening with Orley Lindgren playing the character as a kid. He’s an orphan, living with a disinterested (but seemingly okay) older sister, Mary Beth Hughes (who’s got maybe a scene and a half); one day, walking around L.A., he happens into a mission where he hears the good word but more importantly… a pianist is accompanying the hymns. Once the needy are sufficiently contrite, they get to eat, leaving the piano open, and Lindgren just starts playing. It turns into the trumpet because the trumpet’s cheapest in the pawnshop, then Lindgren soon happens upon Black jazz trumpeter Juano Hernandez and his band. Hernandez will take Lindgren under his wing and teach him to play, becoming a surrogate father, but the film can’t say it.

Once Lindgren ages up into Douglas, it’s conveniently time for Hernandez to amscray so Douglas can make some white friends. The closest Horn ever comes to talking about race is when big-time band leader Jerome Cowan gives Douglas crap for playing music with “those…” but then Douglas interrupts him, and it’s over. Not doing more with it means Hernandez has got a whole lot less to do once he and Douglas reunite when Douglas ditches him in a time of need for awful lady friend Bacall.

Before then, however, Horn introduces its love interest, Doris Day. She’s the singer in his first real band, where he also meets Hoagy Carmichael (who’ll pretty much be white Hernandez, which means he gets to be around a lot more and, you know, narrate the movie). Day thinks Douglas’s brash, talented, and captivating. He likes having a girl share the excitement about music. That section of the film is where director Curtiz and cinematographer Ted D. McCord establish the style and quality it’ll hold for the rest of it. Horn’s gorgeously directed, gorgeously shot. Once Douglas is onscreen, there’s a single tepid-looking sequence—Day and Douglas’s first date on a pier, which is way too obviously soundstage. Otherwise, the film’s phenomenal looking. There are eventually these great location New York City exteriors. Other than the passersby getting too interested in the film cameras, they’re superb. Luckily, the studio stuff is well done; even though it’s unfortunate they didn’t make it all on location, it satisfactorily syncs up. Alan Crosland Jr.’s editing is vital in that department too.

The plot has Douglas meeting, losing, then reuniting with most supporting cast members. Day will go from Los Angeles dance halls to New York theaters, for example. The film uses the career progression to perturb Douglas’s arc—at one point, Carmichael mentions all you need is friends in high places to give you jobs at the right time—and he’ll eventually meet bored rich girl Bacall.

And once they met, he’s smitten and on the road to ruin.

Though the film’s never particularly good about the timeline of their relationship. Given how little the film does with Bacall, most of the time spent on their courtship is a waste. Her arc’s where the film’s aggressively misogynistic. Also, Bacall’s supposed to be playing a lesbian (which she didn’t realize at the time, apparently), which would just make it homophobic too. It’s a really lousy arc, and Bacall seems checked out fairly early.

The passive misogyny is Day, who’s literally just around to talk about Douglas and dote on him. Day does as much as she can with it, but some of her best scenes are the singing numbers, including the one where Curtiz has to force himself to direct a boring singing number. Day gets a thankless part, even if she’s the most interesting character for much of the film.

Carmichael’s fine. He’s really likable, but his part’s pointless. He’s just there because Hernandez can’t be.

Similarly, Hernandez is fine but doesn’t have enough.

Cowan, Nestor Paiva, and Walter Reed are okay as Douglas’s various bosses. Reed’s got the most to work with (Douglas’s stealing Day away from him), but all three are basically cameos.

The film rallies a little bit between the second and third third acts, where they lay into the New City location shooting, and for a minute, it seems like they might bring it all around with the end. They don’t—studio-enforced finale—but they sustain the uptick for a good while.

Young Man with a Horn’s got a great lead performance in search of a great lead role, a solid and underused supporting cast, and some fantastic filmmaking. It’s also got a troubled script and finish.

This post is part of the Sixth Annual Doris Day Blogathon hosted by Michaela of Love Letters to Old Hollywood.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938, Michael Curtiz and William Keighley)

The Adventures of Robin Hood gets by on a lot of charm. Charm and costuming (good and bad). The film opens with title cards setting the scene. Sherwood Forest, evil King’s brother, righteous nobel, beautiful damsel, insidious villain, and Technicolor tights–Claude Rains looking like a Little Lord Fauntleroy grew up and broke bad.

Rains, with sidekicks Basil Rathbone, Melville Cooper, and Montagu Love, isn’t a terrible villain. When there’s first act banter between Rains and Flynn, it seems like Rains is going to be a great one. It’s like Rains is buying into the pomposity of the production. Maybe it’s when Keighley is still directing the film, maybe it’s Curtiz. They didn’t work together; the studio canned Keighley for weak action scenes.

And action scenes are Robin Hood’s weakness. Neither Curtiz or Keighley has much of a handle on them. There’s almost a discomfort around the castle sets, like neither director knows how he wants to shoot the exteriors. There are some decent moments on the outdoor castle and village set, but not many. Robin Hood’s best directorial moments are indoors. Even the problematic ones; one of the directors has some real issues with framing the grandiose castle interiors, like he’s going for something and it just doesn’t translate.

Olivia de Havilland’s condemned Maid Marian, tinily waiting her sentence, is a somewhat effective moment, but it’s not a style the directors use in the rest of the film. Just for inside the castle for a bit in the second half of the film, specifically as the second act winds down. de Havilland’s gowns are always exquisite–quite the opposite of the men in tights–and the shots sort of showcase them, but her performance during her bigger character moments could’ve been shot a lot better.

There’s also Ralph Dawson’s editing.

But the problem is the script more than anything else. Norman Reilly Raine and Seton I. Miller string together some introductions to familiar Robin Hood supporting cast through the first act–while setting up Rains’s villainry–and that first act is pretty much the most Flynn gets to do in the film actingwise. He and de Havilland flirt wonderfully through the rest of the film, but it’s all easy stuff. And then in the second act, de Havilland gets a lot more to do, only to lose it all for the third act. Third act is a mostly even split between Flynn and Rains, along with the deus ex machina sauntering around, but it’s not a return to the first act.

Robin Hood has a lot of (tighted) buts to it. Basil Rathbone’s an effective strong man villain, but he has no character and Rathbone doesn’t bring one to it. He just sweats well during the sword fights. Same goes for the Merry Men. Patric Knowles gets top billing despite having nothing to do. He’s purely functional. At least Eugene Pallette and Alan Hale eventually bicker, though it comes out of nowhere.

The best parts of the supporting cast are this underdeveloped, but frequently utilized, romance between Flynn’s “squire” Herbert Mundin and de Havilland’s lady-in-waiting Una O’Connor. And Melville Cooper’s cowardly Nottingham Sheriff is eventually funny, just because the script doesn’t forget about the joke. Cooper’s character gets a singular consistency and he does well with it.

Shame Rains doesn’t have a similar success.

Beautiful Technicolor cinematography from Tony Gaudio and Sol Polito. Omnipresent and overbearing, but still good in parts, score from Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

The Adventures of Robin Hood ought to be better, even though some of the cast does all right.

2.5/4★★½

CREDITS

Directed by Michael Curtiz and William Keighley; screenplay by Norman Reilly Raine and Seton I. Miller; directors of photography, Tony Gaudio and Sol Polito; edited by Ralph Dawson; music by Erich Wolfgang Korngold; produced by Hal B. Wallis and Henry Blanke; released by Warner Bros.

Starring Errol Flynn (Robin Hood), Olivia de Havilland (Maid Marian), Basil Rathbone (Sir Guy of Gisbourne), Claude Rains (Prince John), Patric Knowles (Will Scarlett), Eugene Pallette (Friar Tuck), Alan Hale (Little John), Melville Cooper (High Sheriff of Nottingham), Una O’Connor (Bess), Herbert Mundin (Much), and Montagu Love (Bishop of the Black Canons).

THIS POST IS PART OF THE SECOND ANNUAL OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND + ERROL FLYNN BLOGATHON HOSTED BY LAURA OF PHYLLIS LOVES CLASSIC MOVIES and CRYSTAL OF IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS OF CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD.

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Angels with Dirty Faces (1938, Michael Curtiz)

Angels with Dirty Faces runs less than ninety minutes, but doesn’t really fill them. The first fifteen minutes of the film are flashbacks, tracking James Cagney’s character from troubled boyhood to juvenile detention to prison. Once the present action starts, Cagney immediately reunites with Pat O’Brien’s now priest, former similarly troubled youth. But Angels doesn’t have a story for O’Brien separate from Cagney and it doesn’t have much of a story for Cagney separate from the Dead End Kids.

For much of the film, Angels uses the Dead End Kids in a reduced capacity, or at least it immediately qualifies the scenes they get to themselves, tying it into Cagney’s recently released gangster storyline. The film’s last act, however, almost entirely removes Cagney and O’Brien. It does remove them separate from the Dead End Kids’s storyline; poor Ann Sheridan, as Cagney’s unlikely love interest, does entirely disappear for the third act.

So while they never have quite enough story to make a full film, even a ninety minute one, screenwriters John Wexley and Warren Duff certainly seem like they should have enough material for one. But since the Dead End Kids are all caricatures, maybe it’s just not possible. Cagney, O’Brien and Sheridan only get slightly better scenes–they’re just better actors. Director Curtiz expects more from them and gets it.

Curtiz directs some great sequences, like the lengthy, thrilling final shootout sequence or anything with Sheridan and Cagney.

Cagney’s fantastic performance almost carries Angels; the structure’s just too wobbly.

2.5/4★★½

CREDITS

Directed by Michael Curtiz; screenplay by John Wexley and Warren Duff, based on a story by Rowland Brown; director of photography, Sol Polito; edited by Owen Marks; music by Max Steiner; released by Warner Bros.

Starring James Cagney (Rocky Sullivan), Pat O’Brien (Jerry Connolly), Humphrey Bogart (James Frazier), Ann Sheridan (Laury Ferguson), George Bancroft (Mac Keefer), Billy Halop (Soapy), Bobby Jordan (Swing), Leo Gorcey (Bim), Gabriel Dell (Pasty), Huntz Hall (Crab) and Bernard Punsly (Hunky).


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THIS POST IS PART OF THE LUCK OF THE IRISH BLOG O'THON HOSTED BY THE METZINGER SISTERS OF SILVER SCENES.

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Sons of Liberty (1939, Michael Curtiz)

Despite Michael Curtiz directing and Claude Rains starring–Curtiz does better than Rains–Sons of Liberty is a rather tepid little short.

Rains plays a Jewish proto-American (circa 1776) who sacrifices all for the United States. He even dies penniless because he won’t sign a document on the Sabbath. Of course, Liberty never says the word “Jewish.” I was shocked when someone identified a rabbi by title.

The short also has a lot of problems establishing characters. Gale Sondergaard shows up as Rains’s wife–she’s not very good either. She shows up after Rains has supposedly been in jail for a year. I understand they’re playing fast and loose with history–I didn’t look up the real story because I wouldn’t want it ruined–but Curtiz and writer Crane Wilbur ignore even the most basic narrative requirements.

While it’s interesting as a historical document, but Liberty is a flop.

1/3Not Recommended

CREDITS

Directed by Michael Curtiz; written by Crane Wilbur; directors of photography, Sol Polito and Ray Rennahan; edited by Thomas Pratt; music by Howard Jackson; produced by Gordon Hollingshead; released by Warner Bros.

Starring Claude Rains (Haym Salomon), Gale Sondergaard (Rachel Salomon), Donald Crisp (Alexander McDougall), Montagu Love (George Washington), Henry O’Neill (Member of Continental Congress) and James Stephenson (Colonel Tillman).

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Casablanca (1942, Michael Curtiz)

Every time I watch Casablanca–and I think it’s been a while since the last time, over ten years ago, when I saw it at Radio City–I marvel at the pacing. The film runs an hour and forty minutes and it doesn’t even seem like any time has passed until Bergman is in Bogart’s apartment. I think that scene brings in the temporal aspect not because of the scene’s weight, but because Paul Henreid’s had an off-screen activity. We see everything in Casablanca–with the exception of the pre-opening incident (the murder of the German couriers)–and once we aren’t seeing everything, it becomes clear the film’s a narrative with an eventual ending. The beauty of the film is how the script sets it up to never imply a conclusion–certainly not one so quickly (as Bogart says to Bergman, he didn’t expect her so soon)–as the present action takes place over two and a half days.

The film’s opening, with the narrated introduction, followed by the daily life in Casablanca, gradually introducing Bogart, exquisitely conditions the viewer. For most of the running time, the film portrays Bogart as a cynic, hardly a heroic protagonist (he’s not even as consistently funny as Claude Rains). Watching Bogart bicker with Dooley Wilson over his drinking or lash out at Bergman, it’s a raw human desperation not often seen in films of this period. Curtiz’s frequent, patient close-ups–most often of Bergman thinking–contribute to the film’s sensitivity.

The viewer doesn’t even have all the necessary information until forty-five minutes into the film–and even then there’s the question of whether Bergman’s history with Paul Henreid is essential–after Bogart and Wilson’s bickering, after the flashback to Paris. The flashback must only take five minutes, but it always seems to take so much longer. It really does resonate, since up until that point, we’ve only seen Bogart on the one night.

The script does such an amazing job setting up the characters and their potential for empathy (especially with Sydney Greenstreet), with Nazi Conrad Veidt and Peter Lorre the only irredeemable characters. And even then, Lorre’s questionable. There’s a great ambiguity to the film in how it deals with its characters and their morality. Only Henreid and Wilson–as well as the supporting cast in Bogart’s nightclub–are scrupulous. The film doesn’t even make an issue of Bogart growing into a noble mold–there’s no implication he’s going to continue doing the right thing.

The other thing I always think about is the film’s ability to juggle being well-written and narratively solid with being constantly entertaining. Curtiz frequently brings a comedic timing to the action–for instance, with Bogart pulling the pistol on Rains at the end. The film establishes, right away, a dire setting (my wife, watching for the first time, gasped as the French police shot the fleeing man without his papers in the first scene). Everyone’s desperate, everyone’s unhappy, everyone’s in a lot of trouble… but there’s so much humor. Bogart and Lorre’s opening conversation lightens the mood, but never breaks the setting.

Rains is responsible for a lot of the levity. His police prefect is just perfect. Every scene he’s in produces a smile at the least.

Both Bogart and Bergman are fantastic, with Bogart’s performance setting a mold for all reluctant heroes to follow (I noticed a music cue John Williams borrowed in Empire Strikes Back, with Han Solo being a direct descendant of Rick Blaine). Bergman’s got a harder job–though, is this film the first where Bogart had to cry–since Curtiz loves giving her those pensive close-ups.

Wilson’s great, as is Henreid. Henreid’s actually got the hardest job, since he’s got to convince the viewer he’s this Utopian do-gooder, whose rhetoric and ideals are infectious. And he does.

I can’t think of a single complaint (I want more Wilson, but I understand he’s got to go into background as Henreid becomes more relevant to the narrative). I just miss seeing it on a seventy foot screen.

Private Detective 62 (1933, Michael Curtiz)

Private Detective 62 is not much of a mystery. Except perhaps the title, which has nothing to do with the film so far as I could tell. Instead, it’s an interesting drama taking place at a detective agency. William Powell plays a diplomatic agent who gets busted by the French while on assignment and gets fired, so he has to find a job. Five minutes later–and a lot of looking in a nice montage–and he’s a private detective. Except the agency owner oscillates between dumb and evil, making things interesting for Powell, who’s trying to run a helpful detective agency… not one trapping wives in precarious situations to help their husbands divorce.

It’s no surprise Powell’s good–the story moves around quite a bit in the first act, giving him more to do than be a moral detective–or Michael Curtiz. Curtiz doesn’t have many jaw-dropping sequences in this one (he had such sequences in the early 1930s, including one in a Philo Vance starring Powell), but he does an excellent job throughout. Unfortunately, Curtiz’s excitement behind the camera isn’t matched by the screenplay, which is disinterested in itself.

Arthur Hohl is pretty good as the villain, James Bell is better as his stooge. Margaret Lindsay is a fine romantic interest for Powell, even if her character gets stupid at times and it’s absolutely unbelievable she ever would.

The film’s not particularly involving–at one point I realized I didn’t even care if Lindsay and Powell got together at the end–but Powell’s performance carries it and it’s really well made by Curtiz.

It’s also very interesting as a social document–the film deals both with the Depression (one prospective employer tells Powell he should have stayed in Europe) and Prohibition. Very interesting to see how people talked about the issues contemporaneously–has got to be the first time I’ve used that word.

The location shooting–not sure if it was on the lot, IMDb reveals no information–is excellent as well. On the technical side, however, there may have been some significant editing defects.

But still… a fine way to spend sixty-seven minutes.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Directed by Michael Curtiz; screenplay by Rian James, based on a story by Raoul Whitfield; director of photography, Tony Gaudio; edited by Harold McLernon; released by Warner Bros.

Starring William Powell (Don Free), Margaret Lindsay (Janet Reynolds), Ruth Donnelly (Amy Moran), Gordon Westcott (Tony Bandor), Arthur Hohl (Dan Hogan), Natalie Moorhead (Mrs. Helen Burns), James Bell (Whitey) and Hobart Cavanaugh (Harcourt S. Burns).

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Mission to Moscow (1943, Michael Curtiz)

Mission to Moscow is straight propaganda. There’s a lot of Hollywood propaganda in the early 1940s, even the late 1930s, but usually, with those films, there’s at least the pretense of dramatic storytelling. There’s a love story attached, maybe a love triangle, something. There’s nothing attached to Mission to Moscow. It’s essentially a long advertisement for the Soviet Union. Most amusing, I suppose, is when Stalin himself shows up. The film’s from 1943, so nobody knew about him yet.

Walter Huston plays the ambassador to Russia and his story sort of guides the film. It follows him, but the way he moves is for the exposition, not for the character. There isn’t a single conflict for his character in the entire film. Huston’s fantastic, of course, but he’s better at the beginning. For most of the film he looks concerned or he gives speeches, but at the beginning there’s still some dramatic excitement. There are a number of other good performances, particularly Oskar Homolka.

As long as Mission to Moscow is, it’s competently told–writing this screenplay later got Howard Koch blacklisted–and there are a number of nice segments. The film ought to be famous as Michael Curtiz’s follow-up to Casablanca (but isn’t) and it’s probably his strongest directorial effort. There’s one particular scene, at a formal reception, which is beautifully constructed. The camera moves from each country’s representatives, both establishing their political situation as well as the particularities of the characters. It’s too bad this scene–as well as an excellent trial scene–are surrounded by such boring material.

The film plays on Turner Classic Movies from time to time and I read Warner Bros. is considering a DVD release (though I don’t know as part of what collection–no one knows Huston or Curtiz anymore).