Tag: Sidney Blackmer

Deluge (1933, Felix E. Feist)

If it weren’t for the “fallen woman” third act, Deluge would probably stay afloat at the end. Instead, it flops out in the really protracted finale, which involves a survivor camp deciding on a credit system in an effort to get capitalism back. It’s a real let down considering the second act is all about roving rape gangs and the first act has a giant flood devastating the planet, right after some text explaining what we’re about to watch is fictional because God promised not to flood us again so it can’t possibly happen.

The special effects at the beginning, save the running crowd composite shots, are pretty impressive. There’s maybe one shot they hold too long and the miniature becomes too obvious, but otherwise the effects are good. And they’ve got these great transitions where the foreground crumbles and then the static background turns out to be an effects shot just waiting to get started.

Sadly there are no effects sequences after the opening and it turns out we’re not following the various scientists we’ve met—Edward Van Sloan runs the Astronomical Solar Society (making him head A.S.S.), which actually tracks the epicenter of the earthquake circling the globe on its way east. Samuel S. Hinds is the weather forecaster who opens the movie, having no time for silly questions while the barometer is dropping to alarming lows. Whether they’re good or not, Van Sloan and Hinds at least command attention. Once the story moves on to its eventual protagonists… well, they aren’t good and they aren’t commanding.

The film introduces top billed Peggy Shannon real quick during the pre-disaster sequence. Got to get in a leg shot and the implication of toplessness right away because Deluge is Pre-Code and you don’t want to cheat the audience, apparently. Shannon’s a professional swimmer who gets grounded because of the apocalypse. Then she disappears from a while and the human action becomes Sidney Blackmer, wife Lois Wilson, and their two adorable kids. Right after they’ve said their prayers, Wilson realizes this storm isn’t going away anytime soon so she gets scared. Blackmer then decides it’s time to hide in the nearby quarry. The logistics turn into a very questionable parenting exercise.

Post-flood the happy family is separated. Blackmer is all by himself in a cabin while Wilson and the children end up in a settlement, where she catches the eye of leader Matt Moore. Shannon will also catch the eye of a willful survivor, in her case Fred Kohler, who at the very least isn’t going to let anyone else rape her except him and definitely no one gets to kill her. Turns out the rape gangs tend to kill off their victims too.

Thanks to her professional swimming, Shannon ends up with Blackmer, where they almost immediately shack up before Blackmer decides she’s more than just a warm body and he wants to marry her seeing as how his family is gone. Except Kohler’s on their trail.

Meanwhile, it’s been like a month and Moore has decided no women get to be single in the settlement and Wilson’s either got to take him as her new husband or get out of town. Moore’s the good guy, mind you; he’s doing Wilson a favor.

Frankly, once Deluge starts doing the post-apocalyptic rebuilding thing—simultaneous to it having no more action sequences—it starts going downhill. It’s initially interesting in how it presents all the men, good and bad, as potential rapists and murderers, but the resolution’s at best inert but mostly tedious and predictable. The movie also makes sure to remember to be occasionally racist, though I suppose not as racist as it could be, as it uses the one Black male survivor as a joke instead of a threat.

Also Nobert Brodine’s day-for-night photography is really bad and it’s important for it not to be. Good editing from Rose Loewinger, okay enough direction from Feist—(Ned Mann directed the special effects sequences)—but Deluge’s only ever got so much potential. And it ends up flushing all of it for the unimaginative, unbelievable melodrama finish. Though maybe the real problem is Blackmer’s an abject charm vacuum so it’s hard to believe Shannon or Wilson ever could have a thing for him, last man on Earth or not.

Love Crazy (1941, Jack Conway)

Love Crazy has to be the worst film William Powell and Myrna Loy ever made together. Powell started his career in silents, so it’s possible it’s not his worst film, but I’m pretty sure it’s Loy’s. Love Crazy starts incredibly lazy. It doesn’t bother defining either character–they’re just Powell and Loy playing a couple, Powell’s charming, Loy’s enchanting. They’re playing caricatures, not people–Love Crazy would have been much more amusing if it’d been different actors impersonating Powell and Loy, David Niven and Maggie Smith really should have remade it.

But the script’s weakness doesn’t have much to do with the shallow characters. Like I said, Powell’s charming, Loy’s enchanting, they’re certainly actors one can spend ninety minutes with, even if there’s not much of a story. Love Crazy, unfortunately, has a story–and it’s a bad one. The film’s construction is incompetent. The first forty minutes or so take place over one evening, Powell and Loy’s four-year wedding anniversary. The four-year anniversary, according to Wikipedia, is linen or silk. Neither of these play a part in the film, I just got curious. The tradition–according to the expository dialogue–is for Powell and Loy to walk four miles into the country, get on a boat, then have a late dinner. Powell suggests they do it backwards, which sounds like a diverting enough premise for a picture. But they don’t do any of these backwards activities. Instead, Loy’s mother shows up and the evening goes to pot. While Loy’s off running an errand for her now injured mother–at this point, Love Crazy seems like it could be a mix of The Man Who Came to Dinner and A Midsummer’s Night Dream, told over one evening–Powell all of a sudden decides to skip off with ex-girlfriend Gail Patrick.

Here’s where Love Crazy flushes itself out to sea. Loy thinks Powell’s running around with Patrick, Powell protests his innocence, Loy doesn’t believe him and sets out to divorce him, viewer is supposed to believe Powell–even though the evidence is against him–because he’s William Powell; there must be a reasonable explanation. He and Myrna Loy are movie married after all. What Love Crazy never acknowledges is Powell’s character running out on his ailing mother-in-law (she’s annoying) to hang out with ex-girlfriend Patrick after Loy’s made it clear she doesn’t want him seeing her. It’s such a strange scene where Powell decides to scurry out with Patrick, it’s a ludicrous move just to get something going in the plot. Regardless of Powell’s innocence in terms of fidelity, he’s still a heel who ran out because he was inconvenienced by his mother-in-law. It’s lame.

There’s a lot of slapstick and it’s lame too. A scene where Powell gets his neck stuck in an elevator door implies he might get some brain damage, but it’s never explored. It’d be a far better way for the film to have gone. All of Love Crazy suffers similarly–it always could make a better narrative choice and never does.

Conway’s direction is fine. It’s not his fault. Powell and Loy are both fine. Florence Bates is okay as Loy’s mother. She occasionally overplays the annoying mother-in-law, but not often. She’s usually the good guy compared to Powell. Jack Carson’s good as Loy’s new suitor (a terribly underwritten part, in a film of underwritten parts). Patrick’s bad. Vladimir Sokoloff is awesome in a small role.

It’s a terrible film. I’d never seen it before–Evelyn Prentice instead being the worst Loy and Powell pairing I’d seen–and I wish I never did.