Pimpernel Smith (1941)

Directed and produced by Leslie Howard

In the months before the opening of the Second World War, the security organs of Nazi Germany are vexed and angered by a shadowy figure whisking some of their most prestigious victims from their grasp. Little can they guess that their opponent is a nondescript university professor (Leslie Howard), and the German minister of propaganda, General von Graum (Francis Sullivan) himself, has set himself the task of ridding the Third Reich of this enemy, and the contest proves to be a showdown between good and evil.

From the title to the premise, the movie is clearly an updated re-make of another excellent Howard movie, The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), based on the novels of Baroness Orczy, about an English aristocrat risking his life to aid victims of French revolutionary terror. But Pimpernel Smith stands on its own, not just for the different situations and the then current enemy, but for its message.

Firstly, to the actors. There is no better Pimpernel, whether Scarlet or Smith, than Howard. He seemed to embody the English spirit of the times, apparently effete but indefatigable when roused to battle and, indeed, he was a leading light of the British propaganda fight during the war, abandoning his Hollywood career – his rôle in Gone With the Wind was notable – to return to his homeland at the start of the conflict.

His performance here is perfectly on-target. Professor Horatio Smith is vague and absent-minded (a different but similar disguise than had The Scarlet Pimpernel’s Sir Percy Blakeney, who pretended to be a supercilious, superficial fop); Howard convinces the audience easily that he could be that and the constantly-thinking and courageous hero Smith really is. Howard was an actor whose expressions, almost identical to each other, could convey a variety of meanings, and he could make them plain to the audience.

Sullivan was an inspired choice as the principal villain. His immense girth is meant undoubtedly to remind one of Herman Göring, who, among other positions, was head of the German Air Force. (Though a Gestapo officer, Graum is shown always in uniform, no doubt for the overwhelming effect; the Gestapo, being a detective police force, did not wear uniform.) Like Göring, Graum seems almost charming at times, but, also like the real Nazi, there is barbarity and brutality beneath. Sullivan shows both sides of his character as well as Howard does his; he also persuasively endows it with something that is almost like light-heartedness at times, which is not out of place.

The other actors are not as necessary for their parts, though they all do a good job. David Tomlinson has a small rôle as one of Smith’s students, and Michael Rennie plays a concentration camp officer. Roland Pertwee takes the part of a diplomatist, Smith’s brother; this Pertwee also co-wrote the movie’s ‘scenario’ and was father to actor Jon and writer Michael Pertwee. Mary Morris is adequate as the female lead.

The story and the script are as important as the hero and villain, and are exemplary. They are what really contrast Pimpernel Smith from The Scarlet Pimpernel. There is a message here: brains, thought, reason, will always triumph over brawn and brute force, though the latter may have the apparent advantage. This is reinforced in the casting of the leads: Sullivan’s physical presence seems to overawe the almost weedy Howard.

Indeed, the script takes the story’s message and shows it at every opportunity. Smith’s intention to those he helps is signaled by a written phrase denoting the unlimited potential of the mind. Perhaps knowing he can’t save a million, Smith assists those whose intellect will benefit mankind – scientists, writers, artists – and states explicitly that progress and civilisation depend on such people. Even Smith’s career – that of an archaeology professor – reflects the importance of the brain.

There is a rather extraordinary short speech given at the movie’s climax in which Smith describes the inevitable destruction of those who embark on destruction themselves. Like a murderer who must continue to kill to cover his initial crime, they must go on from one atrocity to another; there is no turning back, as there is nothing left on which to build a nation. Words such as these show that Pimpernel Smith wanted to say something, and in so doing, the film becomes more than just the tale of a dashing hero coming to the rescue.

The script also provides unexpected humour and irony. Smith had discovered an ancient Greek statue, and he was smitten with the beauty of the woman in marble. Howard had starred in Pygmalion (1938), an adaptation of the Shaw play inspired by the story of a sculptor’s love for his creation. At an embassy ball, a lady tells Smith that people have remarked on her resemblance to the famous statue; Smith responds that he cannot comment, as the statue is nude…

There are other elements, less fundamental but important. The means by which Smith effects his successful adventures are never shown or described. This may seem a cop-out, but in fact give the character a significant mystique. A magician’s trick becomes mundane when explained, and the illusion is ruined. Pimpernel Smith is not a caper film; if it were, such omissions would blight the movie. Smith’s rescues are about the effect, not the cause.

Flaws exist. The band of students that Smith takes on as helpers, albeit reluctantly, might be seen as liabilities to such ventures, especially the enthusiastic Maxwell (Hugh McDermott). Then again, they had originally been recruited as window-dressing.

A fine adventure film, Pimpernel Smith carries a message that doesn’t overwhelm the plot. Nor does it negate the movie’s entertainment value, which is considerable. There is much to see and hear, and all of it is very good.

Fixed Bayonets! (1951)

Directed by Samuel Fuller; produced by Jules Buck

Left behind as a rear guard for its retreating division, an infantry platoon in the first winter of the Korean War must hold off a huge Chinese force at a critical pass. As casualties take their toll, command of the unit comes increasingly near Corporal Denno (Richard Basehart), an officer-candidate wash-out who didn’t have what it took to lead.

This was the second of Fuller’s Korean war movies, following The Steel Helmet. Though not short on action, it takes plenty of time to examine the psychology of men involved in war, especially the slow, grinding process of attrition. It has some excellent qualities but also a number of flaws.

The acting cannot be faulted. The cast is filled with competent players providing credible performances. Basehart has top-billing as a man who is given authority by default, and wants none of it. Given equal screen-time, however, is a Fuller ‘regular’, Gene Evans, as the tough Sergeant Rock (yes, that’s really the character’s name). Rock is a professional soldier, a veteran of World War Two (whose trail of battlegrounds appears to follow Fuller’s real-life war-record) but one who understands and sympathises with the men in his unit.

The minor characters are well-played by much less known actors (though James Dean, at the time unknown, is in an uncredited role). They are not quite stereotypes but are indefinitely drawn, typical of the era in their bravado and humour. Even so, the writing serves the movie well.

Yet the writing is also partly at fault for the movie’s failings. The screenplay is by the director, and seems to portray Denno’s reluctance to command as coupled with a similar reluctance actually to fight or to kill. The viewer isn’t sure if these are the same problem, related problems or simply the writer not being clear on what he wants to depict. An aversion to command is certainly not identical to an aversion to combat. Indeed, the story does a good job of making it clear that Denno is no coward. But exactly what else he is, is not entirely plain.

I found it strange that there are a number of anomalies related to military matters, as Fuller had himself fought in combat in Tunisia, Sicily and northwestern Europe. With no military experience myself, I could be wrong in my views, but one scene - tense enough cinematically - has a man walking across a minefield while his anxious comrades watch from what appears to be no more than twenty feet away. An anti-personnel mine surely had a killing radius of greater than that.

And again, while the platoon tries to fool the Chinese into thinking that they are facing at least a regiment, the Chinese are able to overlook the American positions. They must have been able to estimate more or less accurately the numbers opposing them. At one point, an officer instructs one of his men to ‘bury the mines’ deep; yet, not only would that help render them ineffective, but the soldier doesn’t follow orders and merely covers them with some snow.

I can’t help receiving from Fixed Bayonets! a feeling of immaturity on the part of Fuller the writer, as opposed to Fuller the film-maker. This may be presumptuous on my part; especially since the subject that seems a victim of amateurism is combat, something Fuller should have known well. The characters in the movie are much better drawn, more realistic, than the over-all depiction of tactics.

In any case, Fixed Bayonets! may be given only a lukewarm recommendation. A good film, it nonetheless is surpassed in quality by many others, not excepting Fuller’s own superb The Big Red One.

 

Crossroads (1942)

Directed by Jack Conway; produced by Edwin Knopf

David Talbot (William Powell) is a rising star of the French Foreign Ministry, whom talk has marked as the next ambassador to Brazil. Newly married to a beautiful woman (Hedy Lamarr), well-to-do and respected, Talbot is shocked to receive a vague demand for blackmail money. He contacts the police and the extortionist is swiftly arrested. Soon, though, it seems that Talbot is the one on trial, as his antecedents are questioned, and it is alleged that he is a fugitive murderer. The man’s once-promising future is in jeopardy as the past - and the present - close in around him.

The setting of the story in 1935 France made for some interest. Aside from it being, originally, a French movie, it is historically apt. In the 1930s, France was rocked by a number of political, social and financial scandals, which played their part in the disastrous level of morale that would greet the German invasion in 1940. What threatens Talbot fits in this context.

It may explain, as well, why Powell, fifty years old when the movie was made, was cast as a civil servant on his way up (a role better suited for a younger man), rather than a politician already near the top. French politicians were, in the year this film was produced, blighted both by the scandals of the ‘30s, and their capitulation to Germany in the first year of the war.

This is the second movie in which Powell plays an amnesiac. The first, I Love You Again, was a comedy; Crossroads, a drama, isn’t as successful in its genre as the earlier film is in its, but it does well enough. The title, which suggests a self-conscious coming-of-age film from the 1980s, or perhaps the story of a newly divorced single mother moving to a new town, may be ignored. The plot is a decent one, though not as much a mystery as it would like to be. It’s one of those films which provides many questions, then answers them all with an acceptable though mundane and not unexpected solution. As well, the clue that clears the way for the truth is withheld from the audience, though it could have easily been sneaked in to the script early on.

Nonetheless, the story keeps one involved, even if it is not as suspenseful as its writers hoped. What really makes the movie, though, are the actors and their performances. In comparing Crossroads to I Love You Again, it can be seen how well Powell handles both drama and comedy. His character is, in reality, written as an American would be, but Powell effortlessly slips into the role of Frenchman. His stylishness suits any nationality. Lamarr’s role doesn’t demand anything great of her talents, but she convincingly portrays Madame Talbot, her husband’s greatest support.

Basil Rathbone also demonstrates that he can manage opposite parts, villain and hero; he was playing Sherlock Holmes in a movie series at the same time. Claire Trevor puts the viewer in doubt as to her character’s intentions for much of the movie. And Margaret Wycherly, though seeming always to play a variety of matriarch, is also no stranger to switching sides in film roles, and has a good bit here.

Certainly, Crossroads could have been better. But for an entertaining time, and for Powell fans, it’s worth its eighty-three minutes.

Hangover Square (1945)

Directed by John Brahm; produced by Robert Bassler

George Harvey Bone (Laird Cregar) is a young and promising composer in 1903 London. One night, a decision to unwind at a ‘smoking concert’ leads to an infatuation with Netta Longdon (Linda Darnell), a moderately talented singer of dubious morals. His anguished relationship with the woman accentuates his growing problem with black-outs, a series of psychotic breaks, his actions during which he can’t recall, and which are becoming more violent. His determination to have Netta, as well as professional success, push Bone to the edge of sanity.

Hangover Square is derived from the novel of the same name, but with substantial changes to the story and characters. The time period is re-set, Bone is made a musician and, bizarrely, the title is made a real address. In the book, it refers more to a state of mind, and reflects Bone’s alcoholism (with which he is not afflicted in the film), and is a word-play on Hanover Square, a genuine London address. I can’t think of any town or city in the English-speaking world that would willingly possess a location actually called Hangover Square.

In any case, though the story is greatly altered, it is a good one, if not original: Bone’s relationship with Netta has elements of other narratives such as Of Human Bondage, while his murderous black-outs have been used in half a dozen thrillers. But they are well-utilised here, and lead more or less reasonably to their conclusion. Hangover Square is not a horror movie, not even quite a thriller, though it has tension. It is a psychological drama with some affecting scenes. That in which a corpse is disposed of is dreadful and ironic, and the climax is exciting and highly dramatic.

The script is adequate. The characters, especially Bone’s, are well-written and believable. Details are at times incredible. For instance, it is unlikely that a knighted conductor of music (Alan Napier) and a struggling composer would live in the same square, even if the latter inhabits just a modest basement suite, and even more doubtful that a music-hall performer would also live in there. And we don’t learn the motive for the initial murder.

What makes the movie are the actors and the direction, with able assistance from the musical score. Laird Cregar had a remarkable cinematic career – remarkable and regrettably short – appearing in sixteen films (the first two uncredited) in five years. He almost always portrayed men older than himself (in I Wake Up Screaming, he plays a police inspector with fifteen years experience; Cregar was twenty-seven at the time). Tired of taking character and villain roles, he determined to lose pounds to obtain better leading parts, and dropped a great weight in a short time. This resulted in a heart attack which killed him at the age of thirty-one, just months before Hangover Square was released.

Cregar’s performance in Hangover Square may be his best (it’s hard to choose from a selection of excellent acts). He imbues Bone with a decency and frailty that may be seen in most people. It is not without sympathy that the audience sees his descent into degradation and his attempts to salvage both his dignity and his career. This was his second starring role, after 1944’s The Lodger, and could have given him the more central, leading parts for which he died.

Darnell is also very good as the woman who is, as our ancestors might have said, no better than she ought to be. There are flashes of humanity to be viewed at certain moments, but they pass, and there is no clue in the story as to what made her personality the selfish one it is. That this is the case is no fault of the actress.

George Sanders appears as a ‘Scotland Yard doctor’ – a psychiatrist -  working with Cregar for the third time. (I reviewed their movie The Black Swan not long ago); his brother Tom Conway also played the part of a psychiatrist, in Cat People, reviewed immediately prior to this film. (Alan Napier, Sir Henry Chapman in Hangover Square, was also in Cat People. One wonders just how small the cinematic world of the 1940s was.) Sanders gets to be rather more heroic than in most of his roles.

The direction is impressive. There are large-scale shots that give the feeling of expansiveness to what otherwise could be a stage-drama, and the concert scene features a sequence in which the view starts with the concert’s audience, moves across them, around the musicians and back to Bone at the piano; this must have been one of the earliest uses of a swinging boom-camera. And the climax is one to remember.

Finally, the musical score by Bernard Herrmann must be mentioned. It sets the mood at the very beginning with its heavy discordance, but is later incorporated into the movie as the concerto on which Bone has been labouring. The concert scene is lengthier than most musical pieces in movies (reflecting the real length of many such works) but is not boring, thanks to the direction and the music itself. That the score is a motif for Bone’s psychological condition is important, and profitably brings what is often a background element of cinema to the fore.

Hangover Square did not go where I thought it would and, due to a number of its components, is an improbably successful blend of human drama, crime story and classical tragedy.

Cat People (1942)

Directed by Jacques Tourneur; produced by Val Lewton

Barge-designer Oliver Reed (Kent Smith), passing time at his city’s zoo, meets young Irena Dubrovna (Simone Simon), a fashion-designer sketching a panther. They strike up a romance, hesitantly on Irena’s part, that quickly leads to marriage. What Reed doesn’t know is that Irena fears an ancestral curse: that she will transform into a large, predatory cat when she and he become intimate. Reed must confront Irena’s beliefs, and hope they are nothing more than superstition.

Cat People seems to be a movie better known for its reputation than for being seen. It certainly has much to recommend it, but also much that detracts from those recommendations. Two of the problems are the lead actors. Smith’s performance is average at best, while Simon, though she manages to convey a waif-like innocence half the time and a rather menacing coyness the other half, both elements needed and effective, her acting seems almost affectatious.

Better work is given by Jane Randolph, as Reed’s friend, and Tom Conway (George Sanders’s look-a-like brother) as Dr Judd, a psychiatrist with dubious ethics.

The characters brought to life by the actors reflect the performances. Reed has to be one of the dimmest bulbs to darken a storyline. He seems lost much of the time as to what to do, or even as to what is occurring; at other times, he is insensitively dismissive. Irena is an appealing girl, but nonetheless does not involve the audience in her plight, and her actions leave viewers wondering if they should sympathise with, or condemn, her actions. Alice Moore (Randolph’s character), on the other hand, is smart, sophisticated and loyal, and Judd is, despite his moral lapses, certainly interesting.

Acting and characters are not the only element of Cat People to have a dual aspect. The script, by DeWitt Bodeen, is similar. The story is an intriguing one, but isn’t developed enough. The background is indefinite. We are told that when Serbia was occupied by the Mamelukes (Turks? The Mamelukes never made it to Europe), Irena’s village turned from God to worship Satan. After “King John” liberated Serbia, he destroyed the village for its wickedness, though some of its inhabitants fled, and these took with them the curse Irena fears.

But is it a curse, or a symptom of their dark religion? If a curse, who placed it upon them, and why that particular affliction? There are clues that it might be hereditary: Irena’s father was reported as killed in the woods (by her cat-creature mother?) before she was born. As well, the final scene leaves some doubt as to the course the curse’s effects take, since the transformation to and from cat seems to be arbitrary at the end.

The direction is very good in parts but, again, sometimes works against itself. The use of light and shadows, the ambivalence of images, is often attributed to Val Lewton, a first-time producer here, who became a great influence in Hollywood, though he died young and most of his work was low-budget. But credit for what is good in Cat People must go, in at least equal parts, to director Tourneur.

There are some excellent scenes in the film, in particular the two instances when Alice is stalked. Vague images are well utilised, as is silence, punctuated by footfalls or screams that are all the more startling for coming amid the quiet.

Yet, later in the film, there is a more obvious threat to Reed and Alice, and, though effective elements of the supernatural appear to be included, the danger is tangible. This is not only less effective than earlier scenes, but works against their implications.

Cat People has come to be seen as influential in its genre, and certainly contains a number of enjoyable elements. It could not be considered a wasted time at the movies. But in its uneven acting, writing and directing, it leaves the viewer thinking it could have been much more.