Tag: Gary Cooper

Saratoga Trunk (1945, Sam Wood)

I cannot, in any conscience, recommend Saratoga Trunk. The list of caveats to work through is a “Choose Your Own Adventure” of racism, ableism, and low-key misogyny (though less of the third, what with the first two). If you’re a Flora Robson completist, you presumably know about the time she was Oscar-nominated for playing Blackface, and so you’ve already made your peace with Trunk. For Gary Cooper completists, there are undoubtedly less shockingly exploitative lousy historical soap melodramas in his filmography.

So then Ingrid Bergman presents the most compelling reason to watch Trunk; she’s in quarter-Blackface (she powders a lot is the film’s excuse) as the illegitimate daughter of a New Orleans blue blood. After her mother “killed” her father–the film skirts around it, presumably for Code reasons (the Code memos must be a sight), but probably Dad killed himself, and Mom found the body. But after the father’s death (after he’d left Bergman’s mother to marry a fellow, white, blue blood), his family paid the mom off, and she took baby Bergman to Paris.

Now Mom has died, and Bergman is back in New Orleans to exact revenge on family matriarch Adrienne D'Ambricourt. In tow, Bergman has family servant Robson and valet Jerry Austin. Austin’s a little person. Trunk plays him for adorable comedy every time. With music. It’s a lot.

Bergman’s got a simple plan—she’s going to blackmail D'Ambricourt, possibly into ruin, as payback for Mama, and then she’s going to marry a rich guy, pass as white, and live a life of luxury. Unfortunately, Bergman almost immediately meets Texan Cooper, and he’s such a tall drink of water in his ten-gallon hat and legs for days, she immediately puts off the marriage pursuit to enjoy some Texas.

The movie initially can’t decide if Cooper’s a mark or an accomplice. Once he and Bergman get canoodling and fading to black together, he’s at least aware Bergman’s a scam artist, and she’s out to fleece D'Ambricourt (deservedly or not). The first act takes a lot of time establishing Cooper as Bergman’s love interest, including having him bond with Robson, which features Robson demanding Cooper respect her.

As a Black woman.

I’ll just give everyone the opportunity to google Flora Robson.

Yikes.

That scene ends with the fastest fade out in the film like the Hays Office told them they could do it because having a white woman say she deserves respect as a Black woman is at least better than a Black woman saying it? Again, the memos must be a treasure trove of racism, misogyny, and misogynoir. But, really, just yikes.

The movie’s first half, with Bergman hanging out in New Orleans with Cooper on her arm (and vice versa), giving the blue bloods heart palpitations, is bad. The second half of the movie (less than half, unfortunately) has Bergman on the prowl in Saratoga, her eyes set on marrying would-be railroad tycoon John Warburton. The Trunk in the title refers to a railroad’s main line.

Bergman and Cooper have to keep their hands off one another long enough for Bergman to marry rich. She’ll get help from busybody Florence Bates and have all sorts of awkward interactions around the grand hotel where they’re staying in Saratoga Springs. Saratoga’s about how New Orleans is crappy, and the most beautiful place on the planet is in upstate New York.

Sure, Jan.

After a brief rally in the late second act—Bates gives Trunk some unproblematic gas, arguably the first player to do so—things fall apart for the finale. The Trunk finally becomes important, only it’s dramatically inert. I’m curious if Edna Ferber’s source novel is a spoof of objectivism or if it’s sincere. The movie doesn’t really have time for it—the capitalist philosophy is Cooper’s story, and the movie does Cooper’s scenes away from Bergman in quick exposition dumps. He’s just around for beefcake. Or the early-to-mid-forties version of Gary Cooper beefcake.

Cooper’s never good, but—when he’s not being racist or ableist to the sympathetic supporting players—he’s likable. Bergman’s either great or terrible. She’s doing high melodrama. I mean, she’s not great, but she’s (problematically) compelling. And they do have lots of chemistry together.

Director Wood and photographer Ernest Haller deserve kudos for the ways they find to squeeze all of Cooper’s limbs into the frames. The movie makes lots of hash about him being so tall, and Wood does his damnedest to make Cooper seem too tall for the screen.

Technically, Trunk’s a solid studio melodrama. Wood’s direction is fine. He likes implying sexy time more than he likes doing action scenes, which is a problem. Max Steiner’s score would be excellent if it weren’t for his comedy themes for when Austin walks, talks, or exists.

Fabulous gowns for Bergman from Leah Rhodes.

Saratoga Trunk is in the “needs to be seen to be believed” camp (or is it “needs to be seen to be believed camp”), but not in a good way. Beware.

This post is part of the 6th Wonderful Ingrid Bergman Blogathon hosted by Virginie of The Wonderful World of Cinema.

Ball of Fire (1941, Howard Hawks)

Ball of Fire is a rare delight. It’s got an enormous cast of scene-stealers who all work in unison, thanks to Hawks’s direction but also Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder’s screenplay being so well-balanced.

For most of the picture. The third act has two choices, and it chooses poorly but still successfully; I’ll get to it later. First the rundown.

Fire is the story of eight encyclopedia authors who have been living in seclusion for nine years (in New York City). They’ve got three more years (at least) on the encyclopedia, but they’ve found their rhythm. Right up until garbage man Allen Jenkins lets himself into their house—they’re right off Central Park on 83rd, with a ginormous work area on the first floor and their living quarters on the second floor; Jenkins has some questions about a trivia sweepstakes and figured, based on the books he’s seen through the windows, they’d have answers.

However, Jenkins’s slang makes English content expert Gary Cooper realize he’s using twenty-year-old books and nine-years removed personal experience. If he doesn’t go out into the world and listen to some slang, the encyclopedia’s entry will be at best dated, at worst incorrect.

Cooper’s the youngest of the eight authors. The rest are mostly familiar character actors of a certain age: (in alphabetical order) Richard Haydn, Oskar Homolka, Leonid Kinskey, Tully Marshall, Aubrey Mather, S.Z. Sakall, and Henry Travers. All of them are splendid; Homolka and Haydn are probably the best. They’re also the two with the most to do, though Travers gets a bit. Or his smaller part just stands out more because it’s Clarence. Mather, Kinskey, and Marshall probably get the least to do, meaning they deliver punchlines. Haydn gets the most to do because he’s the only one of the men who’s ever been married. They’re all bachelors, all utterly perplexed to do around the ladies, including Cooper, who we discover Doogie Howsered instead of chasing girls.

However, the older men do know Cooper’s at least potentially a hit with the ladies; he’s in charge of flirting with their reluctant benefactor, Mary Field, whose dead father had the encyclopedia project in his will. Field’s only got a little to do, but like everyone else, she’s great. Charles Lane plays her attorney because Ball’s a who’s who of recognizable Classic Hollywood supporting players.

Anyway.

On his expedition to find the newest slang, Cooper finds his way into a nightclub, where Barbara Stanwyck is performing. He finds her vocabulary fascinating and even more enthralling than revealing outfits. Turns out Stanwyck’s a gangster’s moll; in this case, the gangster’s Dana Andrews, who probably gives the film’s most energetic performance. Andrews can’t quite steal the scenes, not opposite such strong actors, but he makes sure to stand out. He’s a hoot, especially once he starts mixing charm with menace.

The D.A. has got the goods on Andrews, but only if Stanwyck can give evidence against him. The case they’ve got Andrews dead to rights on is slightly absurdist, with various sight gags and one-liners, and no one ever just gets the idea to have Stanwyck lie. Though maybe they’ve got a witness placing her somewhere. It’s a very thoughtful, intentionally convoluted setup, with Brackett and Wilder enjoying the excuse to spin great expository yarns.

Andrews’s solution is to have Stanwyck temporarily go on the lamb, with a fantastic Dan Duryea as her bodyguard. Ralph Peters is also there to help, but the movie knows to give Duryea more material. He’s so good.

Luckily, Cooper’s arranging a slang symposium and gives Stanwyck an invite; she figures he won’t mind if she shows up early and needs to crash there for the night. While it turns out Cooper does mind, his seven roommates are ecstatic at the idea of Stanwyck bunking with them for the evening.

An evening turns into a few days, during which Stanwyck teaches the old boys the latest dances while helping Cooper pick up—and study—the latest lingo. Stanwyck’s presence annoys housekeeper Kathleen Howard to no end, and when Howard finally puts her foot down, Stanwyck’s got to take drastic measures. In doing so, she discovers Cooper’s got a crush on her and, unlike his colleagues, still wants to do something about it. So Stanwyck makes it work in her favor while starting to get dreamy-eyed when looking at Cooper.

While Cooper’s got some excellent comedy moments in Ball and he’s earnest in his romantic scenes, he’s still playing an elevated rube. Sure, his character’s in charge of supervising the project, but he’s only the protagonist of the bunch because he’s Gary Cooper. Stanwyck, however, gets to take this trope-ready part and turn it into something incredible. The romance subplot comes from her performance; otherwise, it’s just a cruel joke at Cooper’s expense. The nasty subterfuge thing also never works too much against her character being sympathetic because Stanwyck’s tortured with regret about the plan.

Things perturb to get all the parties together for the finish; only comedic happenstance throws things off course so the second act can end where you’d think they’d be ending the third.

Now for that third act.

It’s longer than it needs to be, especially since they never get the film entirely back on track—they spent too much time at the station to keep the unrelated metaphor going (there’s a lot of car and truck humor, actually). The actual pacing issues aside, the material’s all well-written because it’s Brackett and Wilder, and the cast is, as usual, delightful; it just isn’t where the film had been headed. It’s hectic, with lots of great moments for the actors, but it’s reductive.

The filmmakers seem to know it too. Whenever the distraction starts dragging, one of the cast will have some great moment and reset the timer. The movie’s frittering and knows it. Once they’ve gotten it all together (again), adding four more characters to the mix (at least sixteen characters in play), the ending’s strong and fun. It can’t entirely make up for the lost time but knowingly wasted it well.

Ball of Fire’s mostly a phenomenal comedy. Stanwyck’s great, Cooper’s real good, Andrews, Duryea, Homolka, they’re all real good. Haydn gets a particularly devastating scene all to himself. The only character who doesn’t get a good arc is Howard as the justifiably judgey housekeeper, which hurts the performance.

In addition to all the character actors in major supporting roles, there’s also a young Elisha Cook. It’s just packed with great performances, big and small.

Like I said before, a rare delight.

This post is part of the Caftan Woman Blogathon – Honoring Patricia Nolan-Hall hosted by Patty of Lady Eve’s Reel Life and Jacqueline of Another Old Movie Blog.

City Streets (1931, Rouben Mamoulian)

The first third of City Streets is this awesome bit of experimenting from director Mamoulian as he tries to figure out how to make a sound picture. Lots of great shots and camera setups, usually with too dawdling cuts. William Shea holds everything just a few seconds too long. But the montage imagery itself is fantastic. And Mamoulian carries it over into the narrative a bit too, though he eventually stops with it after sort of peaking.

But even for all Mamoulian’s experimenting, Streets is never experimental. There’s always the script to drag it back to reality. Oliver H.P. Garrett (adapting a Dashiell Hammett original story, with help form Max Marcin) writes some great scenes and some excellent characters… he just doesn’t write the right ones excellent. Or, if he does, at the wrong times. There’s no reason Wynne Gibson, as a jilted mobster’s dame, ought to end up giving the most dynamic female performance in Streets. It’s literally Sylvia Sidney’s movie and she loses it to Gibson for the finale. Gibson’s great, but great because the movie doesn’t give Sidney a presence much less a chance. Possibly because no one realized Gary Cooper doesn’t work without Sidney around. His performance is better, but he doesn’t function right in the plot without her.

Streets is a crime melodrama. Sidney works for her step-father, a truly singular Guy Kibbee as an abject sociopath, who in turn works for crime boss Paul Lukas. Lukas is a classy European guy who seduces the women of his gang and then kills off his romantic rivals and promotes some duplicitous underling. He’s a psychopath, but one in the guise of a sociopath. Lukas is pretty awesome. He’s not as good as Kibbee because no one’s as good as Kibbee, but Lukas is frightening. Of course, Lukas doesn’t meet Sidney through Kibbee, rather through Gary Cooper. Cooper starts the movie a dope of a cowboy who’s found his way to the big city, just waiting until the circus shows up and he can join up. He’s Sidney’s fella. And he wants nothing to do with the bootlegging gangsters.

At least until Sidney’s in a jam and, being a complete moron, Kibbee’s able to talk Cooper into it to help her. Shame the only thing Sidney’s able to hold onto is the knowledge her fella would never get involved with the bootlegging gangsters.

There’s some great romantic scenes between Cooper and Sidney, which occasionally get messed up by the edits, occasionally amplified. The first one is on the beach and is exemplar good sexy until they cut to a two-shot in the studio instead of the location. Then one where the lovers are separated by a screen. Sidney’s amazing in that one. She also gets a few great thinking scenes, one accompanied by a sound flashback (the first in film, according to the IMDb), and then one where she’s got to figure out how to save Cooper.

Because once Lukas gets a look at her, he’s not going to stop at anything to get her.

And Kibbee’s more than happy to go along. And Cooper’s a dope who thinks Lukas is his pal.

There’s a better movie in the story, but maybe not much better. Cooper’s okay. He’s actually better as the plotting gangster than the dopey cowboy stud. Sidney’s excellent, but the material’s not always with her. Kibbee, Gibson, Lukas. William Boyd’s kind of blah as Lukas’s number two. Not bad just blander than he ought to be. Some of it’s the script.

There’s a great montage sequence of Cooper and all the mob guys looking at each other. I wonder how it’d sound with Ennio Morricone.

The film’s most impressive for Mamoulian’s direction. Unfortunately, you could cut together a ten minute reel of all the best directed stuff and be fine. For whatever reason, Mamoulian drops the experimenting in the second half and the melodrama stalls. It even drags, not good for an eighty minute picture. Maybe it needs to be longer….

The film just can’t figure out how to make all its pieces work; Mamoulian tries a lot of successful things, they just don’t add up. And he seems to get tired of trying, which hurts it.

But City Streets is still an amazing piece of motion picture making.

High Noon (1952, Fred Zinnemann)

High Noon is a film all about courage and cowardice, so it’s appropriate the film starts with the most courageous thing it’s ever going to do and it does a few. It commits to its theme song. Not a piece of music from Dimitri Tiomkin, but a country song (written by Tiomkin, lyrics by Ned Washington, sung by Tex Ritter). It’s about the movie. It’s the story of the movie, sans specifics, from the perspective of the protagonist.

And High Noon uses the song throughout when lead Gary Cooper is walking around alone. Only the character in the song is nothing like the character in the movie so it creates this disconnect. The song lionizes, Cooper humanizes. Fits sort of perfectly in with the Western hero, which the film comments on rather quietly. High Noon is an intentional metaphor for the HUAC witch hunt. It’s all about Cooper needing help from his neighbors and his neighbors chosing their own self-interest, with a lot of excuses.

In those excuses, screenwriter Carl Foreman comes up with a great deal of transcendent material. Noon becomes not just about a person’s cowardice in HUAC, but about a community’s cowardice in general. There’s a lot of little stuff in High Noon–the film’s not even ninety minutes and it often refuses exposition–and there’s the steady theme about how greed and racism fuel self-interest. The racism comes in with Katy Jurado, who plays a Mexican businesswoman. She gets one of the four plot lines. Well, she sort of shares it with Grace Kelly but Jurado gets the better character.

Let me back up.

The film opens with the song and Lee Van Cleef. Van Cleef is by himself, waiting, playing with his gun or something. Just being creepy and ominous. As the song plays, the lyrics soon confirm the ominous. But Van Cleef does it on his own. Along with Zinnemann’s stark composition. The settings aren’t necessarily stark, but Zinnemann and cinematographer Floyd Crosby shoot the film with completely empty skies. It’s bright and unforgiving, intensely examining its characters.

Cooper is marshal in a developing frontier town. Thanks to him, decent women can walk the streets during the day. Not sure about night time. After Van Cleef joins up with two other villainous types–Sheb Wooley and Robert J. Wilke–they ride into town and passed the justice of the peace where Cooper is getting married to Kelly. The song has already let us know what’s going to happen in the movie and introduced at least two characters–Cooper and wife Kelly–so the actual introduction to Cooper and Kelly is… not strange, but startling. It’s a long song. It takes Van Cleef and pals a while to get through the opening titles and into town.

The three bad guys are going to the train station to meet another bad guy. That bad guy is the one who’s going to come after Cooper. He just got out parolled from prison (“up north,” where the bleeding hearts free killers) and so he’s on his way home to kill Cooper. Or so everyone assumes.

And so the good townsfolk put Cooper and Kelly on their wagon and send them out of town. They were leaving anyway. Cooper just resigned as marshal. In addition to being half his age, Kelly’s a Quaker. No more gunfights for Cooper.

Only then Cooper decides he can’t run. So he turns back, confident the good townsfolk will help him. They’re all neighbors and friends.

The first friend to turn Cooper down is judge Otto Kruger, who hightails it. Then there’s Harry Morgan, Thomas Mitchell, and Lon Chaney Jr. They’re all good friends with Cooper, but none of them will help. See, the town doesn’t have enough deputies and the only other active one, Lloyd Bridges, picks that day to finally lose it.

See, Bridges is jealous of Cooper and wishes he could be Cooper but resents Cooper for his envy. Bridges wants to be the next marshal, Cooper thinks he’s too immature. Of course, Bridges has already proven his manhood by shacking up with Jurado, who had a romance with Cooper a year before. Pre-Kelly. Jurado’s aware of Bridges’s personality flaws, but apparently finds him amusing. It’s in Jurado’s performance. She has a patience with Bridges.

So Bridges isn’t going to help Cooper. Bridges has a fantastic character arc in the film. Probably the best. It culminates in a great fist fight where Zinnemann and editor Elmo Williams show off. High Noon’s fist fight is better than its gun fight, because Zinnemann’s got a reason not to glamorize the gun fight but the fist fight is fair game.

The story lines are Cooper, Bridges, Jurado and Kelly, and Van Cleef and friends. Everyone except the bad guys intersect throughout the film, which is fairly real time and has Cooper trying to find people to help him before the bad guy arrives at, well, High Noon.

And there’s the song to accompany Cooper when he’s out alone. Until it’s not there anymore. The film picks just the right time to eighty-six the song and let Cooper’s performance take over. And it’s no different in how it handles Cooper, other than the song being gone. He’d been doing this performance the whole film. The film just decides it’s time to stop talking about Cooper and instead be about him.

And the other story lines. Though the bad guys’ waiting for the train one is pragmatic and Bridges’s masculinity one is truncated (and very nicely echoed through a lot of the rest of the town, definitely in the bar scenes), the one with Kelly and Jurado gets a lot of attention. It’s the film’s main subplot, specifically Jurado. She connects to all the characters, eventually.

Cooper’s great. A lot of his part is reactive and the film never gets too interior–Cooper’s experiencing a lot of fear, anger, and disappointment. He ought to be seething, but he doesn’t get to seethe because he’s got to be the guy in the song. The song haunts him. And hounds him.

Kelly and Jurado are good. While Kelly will break down in front of Cooper, she won’t in front of anyone else. Jurado doesn’t break down in front of anyone. So when they finally get together, Kelly and Jurado are adversarial. Only Foreman’s script has much higher ambition for the characters. It gives Jurado a great arc in the film too. Cooper and Kelly end up with the least impressive character development arcs in the picture. They still have perfectly good arcs, Foreman just concentrated on Jurado and Bridges. Because Cooper and Kelly’s arc is tied and very complicated. She doesn’t just object because he’s outnumbered and she’s a Quaker. There are things going on. With Cooper too. Their arc builds–is surface, is subtext–it even echoes.

Foreman’s script is really, really good throughout and especially on that arc.

Bridges is fantastic. Mitchell, Chaney, Morgan. They’re all good. They’re kind of cameo parts though. Kruger’s fine. He’s a lot better being a weasel than not, however.

High Noon’s great. Zinnemann, Foreman, Cooper, producer Stanley Kramer. They make something singular. And not just because they get away with that song.

This post is part of the 4th Wonderful Grace Kelly Blogathon hosted by Virginie of The Wonderful World of Cinema and Emily of The Flapper Dame.

Along Came Jones (1945, Stuart Heisler)

Along Came Jones gets by on its gimmick and its charm–it’s got a lot of charm, both from the cast and Nunnally Johnson’s screenplay, which is good as director Heisler doesn’t bring any. Jones is a lower budget Western, lots of rear screen projection, lots of boring setups from Heisler. He prefers medium long shots, avoiding close-ups for most of the supporting cast. He also doesn’t have much of a feel for the material.

Gary Cooper plays the titular Jones. He stumbles his way into a mistaken identity story–everyone thinks he’s gunfighter Dan Duryea but he’s actually just a bit of a doofus. Cooper has fun with the role. It’s thinner than it should be since Heisler isn’t doing much directing of the cast. Johnson’s script has something approximating an arc for Cooper but it doesn’t really come off. As the film resolves itself, it gets its pass not for a creative conclusion but for everything leading up to it. Maybe if the film weren’t so breezily paced, the soft ending might hurt it more. But Jones moves along–the middle section is a lot of lengthy action sequences and they’re solid. Johnson knows how to pace the dialogue and the action. Heisler handles that section best, though just as indistinctly as the rest of the picture.

There’s also a love triangle–Cooper gets himself into the mess over Duryea’s girlfriend, played by Loretta Young. It’s mildly successful. Duryea’s got no personality in Jones; he’s okay, but unenthusiastic. Young’s enthusiastic. She and Cooper have enough chemistry they keep bumping against Heisler’s plodding direction. Especially since doofus Cooper is magic with the ladies. It ought to be a lot funnier, but it isn’t. When he’s not pressed for time, Heisler misses the script’s beats.

William Demarest plays Cooper’s suffering sidekick. It’s William Demarest, he does fine. It’s not a particularly good part though. Johnson’s script is more concerned with the pace than the characters. It’s not a bad script, it’s just overly pragmatic, overly confident in its actors to give it more heft than it might deserve. It’s a mildly successful move from Johnson and Cooper (who also produced). Overall though, Jones just seems like a missed opportunity. It’s got a great cast, it could’ve been more than a diverting comedy Western.

Along Came Jones moves well, it’s got a solid supporting cast (especially Don Costello), it’s got Cooper and Young. It’s just a shame it’s not a better made film–Heisler’s mediocre direction, Milton R. Krasner’s strangely boring photography (he doesn’t do anything with the sets) and Thomas Neff’s awkward editing. Heisler doesn’t know how to direct a gun fight. Even if Jones is a comedy, it’s a Western. You need a competent gun fight.

Anyway, it’s cute. It’s cute enough.

2.5/4★★½

CREDITS

Directed by Stuart Heisler; screenplay by Nunnally Johnson, based on a novel by Alan Le May; director of photography, Milton R. Krasner; edited by Thomas Neff; music by Arthur Lange; produced by Gary Cooper; released by RKO Radio Pictures.

Starring Gary Cooper (Melody Jones), Loretta Young (Cherry de Longpre), William Demarest (George Fury), Dan Duryea (Monte Jarrad), Frank Sully (Avery de Longpre), Don Costello (Leo Gledhill), Russell Simpson (Pop de Longpre) and Willard Robertson (Luke Packard).

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Meet John Doe (1941, Frank Capra)

There’s something off with Meet John Doe. Director Capra can’t find a tone for the film, but he also can’t find a pace for it. He tries to find the tone, over and over, usually with excellently directed sequences, but he just throws up his hands as far as finding the pace. If Robert Riskin’s script didn’t have strong moments for background characters, it would just be a bunch of great monologues for the actors. But Capra wants to step too far back from it all–John Doe has a wonderful cast and all Capra wants to do is rant about the Illuminati.

At its start, John Doe is simple. Barbara Stanwyck is a reporter. She loses her job. Angry–because John Doe takes place in a time when it seems like the Great Depression isn’t actually going to end, a forlorn attitude permeating throughout the film–she fakes a letter from someone fed up with the state of the world and promising to kill himself. Turns out the letter’s a hit, so Stanywck has to turn up the writer. She hires Gary Cooper. It’s Gary Cooper after all.

There’s a little humor with Cooper and sidekick Walter Brennan getting into a posh hotel and doing nothing. Riskin’s really good at these scenes. Well, then something happens and Cooper quits for a bit then he joins back up for a bit then it turns out the Illuminati have plans for him so he has to make a big decision. Along the way, he falls in love with Stanwyck (it’s Barbara Stanwyck after all), losing Brennan, and falls under the spell of Edward Arnold, the evil Mr. Big running this nameless city’s Illuminati chapter.

The nameless city should’ve been a bigger giveaway for the film’s problems. Capra doesn’t want anything to have personality except the concept.

Only, Riskin’s script has those amazing monologues I mentioned. James Gleason, who plays Stanwyck’s editor and Arnold’s reluctant stooge, gets at least two great scenes. His second one, where he gets wasted and talks about the Great War, is phenomenal. Gleason’s great and all, but that scene is phenomenal. Riskin’s dialogue is great, Capra’s patience is great, everything’s great. It just doesn’t belong in the movie. John Doe’s so lost, having every actor (except Cooper) directly address the camera when talking to Cooper’s character might work better. First person for the audience. Why? Because, while Capra’s interested in shooting the film well, having fantastic performances from his cast, he’s not actually interested in the film. It’s like he’s avoiding the lack of story.

Unfortunately, the rocky pace means no one gives an overall great performance. Brennan disappears, then comes back with nothing to do. He’s good, often really good, but the film doesn’t give him enough time later on. It never establishes who’s supposed to get the most time–even Cooper and Stanwyck manage to disappear from the story. The present action’s a mess. The film goes on for months and months and doesn’t let the characters grow.

It’s too much story. There are a half dozen points throughout the two hour runtime where Riskin and Capra could’ve focused for a far better experience.

Capra’s direction is outstanding. Riskin’s monologues are great. Cooper, Stanwyck, Gleason, Brennan, all great. Arnold’s not, but it’s hard to fault him. He’s got no part. He’s not even a caricature. He’s just “rich bad guy.”

Dimitri Tiomkin’s music has a few missteps, but it’s generally okay. It tends to stumble through the parts where everything else stumbles. Except maybe George Barnes’s photography and Daniel Mandell’s editing, their work is always strong.

Meet John Doe doesn’t work out. I wish it had, but it’s still one heck of a swing.

This post is part of the Remembering Barbara Stanwyck Blogathon hosted by Crystal of In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood.

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936, Frank Capra)

Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is astoundingly (and rightfully) confident. Director Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin don’t shy away from anything in the film–Capra’s more than willing to go with sentimentality, but the film isn’t often sentimental. Even when Jean Arthur’s world-weary reporter breaks down, she doesn’t get sentimental.

Most of the film involves Arthur deceiving Gary Cooper’s titular Mr. Deeds–he’s a small town guy who’s just inherited twenty million dollars–for her story. He becomes infatuated, she starts to regrow her heart. Riskin’s script runs these two subplots parallel to one another, but somehow not concurrent. Deeds maintains three perspectives throughout–Cooper’s, Arthur’s and, in the beginning, Lionel Stander’s.

Stander is sort of Cooper’s sidekick (a rich man’s press agent) but he’s also the first one to come around to Cooper’s way of doing things. Capra and Riskin take the Hollywood norm–the New York newspaper picture–and mix in the social commentary of the Depression, while bringing in a big question of town vs. country values. It’s a very tricky combination and they always do it perfectly; Deeds is a marvel of filmmaking construction. The way Capra uses sound–Cooper and Arthur are romancing in a picturesque New York landmark, the hustle and bustle around them, but the sound just has them. The lovely Joseph Walker photography just adds to it. Lots of quiet moments for Cooper and Arthur, who both give marvelous performances.

Everything about Mr. Deeds is fantastic. It’s an exceptional motion picture.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Produced and directed by Frank Capra; screenplay by Robert Riskin, based on a story by Clarence Budington Kelland; director of photography, Joseph Walker; edited by Gene Havlick; released by Columbia Pictures.

Starring Gary Cooper (Longfellow Deeds), Jean Arthur (Babe Bennett), Lionel Stander (Cornelius Cobb), Douglass Dumbrille (John Cedar), Raymond Walburn (Walter), Ruth Donnelly (Mabel Dawson), George Bancroft (MacWade), Walter Catlett (Morrow), John Wray (Farmer) and H.B. Warner (Judge May).

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Garden of Evil (1954, Henry Hathaway)

For a while it seems like the third act of Garden of Evil will make up for the rest of the film’s problems. Or at least give it somewhere to excel. Sadly, director Hathaway and screenwriter Frank Fention inexplicably tack on a terrible coda–tying into the title no less–and effectively wash away any advances they’ve made for the film.

There are lots and lots of problems. Hathaway’s CinemaScope composition is poor (except the finish), even though Milton R. Krasner and Jorge Stahl Jr. shoot the film beautifully. It should have been Academy Ratio and black and white. But those technical choices don’t really make any difference when it comes to the actors.

Cameron Mitchell’s expectedly lame–he’s lame from his first line–but Susan Hayward’s pretty weak too. It seems like she should do well as a jaded woman forced to confront herself and persevere. But she doesn’t. Maybe because Fenton’s plotting doesn’t allow her character to grow naturally. There’s a really good moment towards the end, but she’s otherwise constantly scowling and calling it a performance.

Worse, Gary Cooper’s disinterested. He’s not bad as clearly bored. Garden should have been about his friendship with Richard Widmark–and does start with that emphasis… but it all gets confused.

Widmark’s amazing. Even when the script goes silly on him, he delivers it beautifully.

Great music from Bernard Herrmann, wonderful locations and a somehow not bad script from Fenton make Garden pass, but its defects don’t let it pass well.

2/4★★

CREDITS

Directed by Henry Hathaway; screenplay by Frank Fenton, based on a story by Fred Freiberger and William Tunberg; directors of photography, Milton R. Krasner and Jorge Stahl Jr.; edited by James B. Clark; music by Bernard Herrmann; produced by Charles Brackett; released by 20th Century Fox.

Starring Gary Cooper (Hooker), Susan Hayward (Leah Fuller), Richard Widmark (Fiske), Hugh Marlowe (John Fuller), Cameron Mitchell (Daly), Víctor Manuel Mendoza (Vicente) and Rita Moreno (Vicente’s girl).

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Design for Living (1933, Ernst Lubitsch)

From the first third of Design for Living, it’s impossible to think it might not be absolutely fantastic throughout. Eventually it does hit a dry period and it’s impossible to think it’s going to pull out of it. Then it does and it’s impossible to think… well, you get the idea. I don’t know why I wasn’t fully trusting of Lubitsch, but during that dry spell, I really did think he’d lost control of the film.

The problem he–and the characters–needs to work out is a familiar one, the love triangle, but here with the added complication of the two male legs being best friends. I’m not sure how much of the solution Lubitsch got from Noel Coward’s source play (Ben Hecht’s adaptation only retained one line of dialogue and I can’t find any information on the plotting), but Lubitsch’s resolution is perfect. The film’s already over its bumpy period and it’s already assured he’s going to end it well, but the way he does is even better than expected.

The bumpy period–which probably only lasts fifteen minutes, at most, of the film’s ninety minute running time–is distinct because of what it lacks. The film opens with Miriam Hopkins sitting down across from Gary Cooper and Fredric March. The opening minutes are silent, followed by a minute of Cooper and Hopkins speaking French, then it’s the trio full steam. They all play perfectly off each other, so when the film’s without them–when it’s just March or just Cooper–it doesn’t work right. Hopkins works great with both of them, but they don’t work quite so well when they aren’t together. In fact, there’s a whole scene emphasizing that point.

Seeing Cooper and March–two leading men–sharing a film like this one, complimenting each other so well, it’s hard to believe they never reunited. The film only spends thirty seconds establishing the friendship–silently no less–between the two. While March went on to do a lot of comedies, Cooper only did them in his (relatively) early career, at least playing up his abilities as a physical comedian. Both of them are superb; hearing them fire Hecht’s dialogue back and forth is joyous.

What’s so frustrating about not knowing how Hecht’s adaptation works is in terms of discussing the scene structure. If I didn’t know the film came from a play, had I missed the opening titles, I might have guessed it. The scenes have a lot of dialogue and a lack of mobility–even if it’s a multi-room setting, the action takes place in the same areas. But then there are other touches–Lubitsch communicating the passage of time with an advertisement on a bus, for example–which are entirely filmic.

The handling of Edward Everett Horton’s character, a ludicrous suitor for Hopkins, is also rather filmic. Horton manages the film’s second most difficult performance (Hopkins having the first, having to convey her conflicted feelings for both Cooper and March in a constantly fresh way); Horton has to both be believable and absurd. The film makes a few drastic changes to the character to keep him in line for the narrative to work and Horton negotiates them well. He’s an amusing, antagonistic buffoon.

The film’s such a success, I’m a little surprised I hadn’t heard of it before. Between the performances–the pairing of Cooper and March and Hopkins in general–Lubitsch’s sublime direction (that opening is masterful), and Hecht’s script… Design for Living should be much better known.

4/4★★★★

CREDITS

Produced and directed by Ernst Lubitsch; screenplay by Ben Hecht, based on the play by Noel Coward; director of photography, Victor Milner; edited by Frances Marsh; music by John Leipold; released by Paramount Pictures.

Starring Fredric March (Tom Chambers), Gary Cooper (George Curtis), Miriam Hopkins (Gilda Farrell), Edward Everett Horton (Max Plunkett), Franklin Pangborn (Mr. Douglas), Isabel Jewell (Plunkett’s Stenographer), Jane Darwell (Curtis’s Housekeeper) and Wyndham Standing (Max’s Butler).

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Beau Geste (1939, William A. Wellman)

Beau Geste is a colonial adventure, European soldiers under siege in the Arabian desert. There’s some imagination to the telling, but not at all enough. The strangest thing about the film is the title–Gary Cooper plays Beau Geste, who in some ways is the least of the film’s characters. I think Cooper must get the littlest screen time of the main actors and the film often feels absent of his presence.

The problem stems from the structure. Geste opens with the discovery of a mystery–a desert fort, all the soldiers dead, but a peculiar confession in one of the men’s hands and two shots fired by a ghost. It’s all very Arthur Conan Doyle, except the viewer has to wait almost two hours to discover the solution (well, not really… just the entire solution… from the first flashback, the general answer is clear). After the first scene, the action goes back fifteen years to that revealing flashback. Then there’s a second mystery–this one of great importance–hinted at. It’s not a real mystery because the viewer is deceived into thinking he or she has seen all the relevant action. But it’s of great importance in the end and to a character’s entire motivation. Without it, the film makes little sense–and at the end, there’s a big finger snapping, “of course” moment. It’s a lousy moment, of course, and ruins the film’s already bad denouement.

When the film does get back to the present day and starts toward unraveling the mystery of the first scene, it starts kind of well. The scenes with Cooper, Robert Preston and Ray Milland as wealthy brothers in English luxury are fine. Cooper and Preston have a decent moment together and Milland’s appealing enough romancing Susan Hayward. Both Hayward and G.P. Huntley are useless in any narrative sense, but whatever, the film’s at least trying to be interesting in these scenes.

It lasts only a few minutes, unfortunately. Then there’s another big mystery (tying in to the first scene’s mystery) and it’s off to the Foreign Legion. I always thought Beau Geste was a big adventure story, but the film’s mostly just the three brothers (until Preston goes off to a different fort) and their vicious sergeant, poorly played by Brian Donlevy. It isn’t really Donlevy’s fault–his character has absolutely no depth. He’s a standard movie bad guy, absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever (not even after Cooper observes one about him). The film plays him as pure nefariousness and most of the film’s running time suffers from it. Beau Geste is a mutiny thriller.

William A. Wellman does a mediocre job directing the film, which really hurts it. He has some grandiose scale at the beginning, but losses it immediately in the flashback and never gets it back. The film’s beautifully photographed by Theodor Sparkuhl and Archie Stout, but Thomas Scott’s editing is the pits. Every time Wellman’s action scenes start to look good, there’s a distracting jump-cut. Cooper shoots at the left of the screen and his target gets hit from a bullet moving left to right. The sets are nice too.

Preston has some good moments (Milland gets stuck with a lot of weak moments) and Cooper’s fine when he’s around; the film doesn’t really have any standout performances. J. Carrol Naish is bad as Donlevy’s stooge–probably giving the film’s worst performance–and the less said about the cowboy legionnaires the better. Harold Huber does have a nice small role, however.

Another big problem with Beau Geste is how familiar it all seems… like the source novel was nothing but a creative plagiarism of The Four Feathers. But not having read the novel, it’s impossible to say what went wrong–the adaptation or the story itself. Beau Geste is a monotonous chore to get through, especially as the ending rolls downhill for the last seven or ten minutes.