It's a Wonderful World (1939)

Directed by W. S. Van Dyke II; produced by Frank Davis

Private detective Guy Johnson (James Stewart), whose principal assignment is to look after an habitually drunk millionaire (Ernest Truex), finds himself in trouble when his client is framed for the murder of a former girlfriend (Cecillia Callejo). Convicted of conspiracy for trying to hide the fall guy, Johnson goes on the run, chasing a single clue to the true killer’s identity and dubiously aided by poetess Edwina Corday (Claudette Colbert), whom he has kidnapped.

While the plot synopsis and cast of actors suggest the makings of a fun and fast-paced, semi-farcical adventure, It’s a Wonderful World falls surprisingly short of the mark – any mark, really. The original story by Ben Hecht should have been inventive; Hecht’s collaboration on the screenplay with Herman J Mankiewicz should have resulted in line after line of memorable dialogue. The leads should have made one of the best cinematic couples. In fact, none of this occurs.

The most prominent problem in It’s a Wonderful World is the script. Though it does provide an admirable set-up for the adventure, what follows seems a sophomoric attempt to resurrect 1934’s It Happened One Night (also starring Colbert). Instead of realistic interaction and dialogue between two credible characters, we have sight gags such as Johnson disguised in a Boy Scout uniform much too large for him and wearing Coke-bottle glasses. Instead of the leads falling slowly in love, we have Edwina deciding to follow Johnson anywhere, literally over-night.

Added to this is the juxtaposition between the humorous and the serious, certainly not always a bad thing. But here, the shift is almost split second, as between an innocent man’s murder and Johnson hiding himself in theatrical costume and fake accent. My complaint is less with content than with timing.

The characters are at fault, too. Stewart, usually the most likeable of movie performers, plays a money-hungry misogynist whose cynicism and lack of compassion are too much even for someone as un-politically correct as myself. His is, in fact, a quite detestable personality. His sole concern for the welfare of his client – facing execution the very next day – arises from the $100,000 bonus he was promised for getting him out of his murder conviction. And yet when Colbert’s poetess is shocked to realise this, she not only continues to help him, but leaves moments later to do so.

Colbert’s Edwina Corday is not as unappealing as Stewart’s character, though she will surely never be any filmgoer’s favourite. Clever and quick-witted, she nonetheless appears as if the writers were not sure if they should make her genuinely talented or a bit of a fraud. And the speed with which she becomes enamoured of Johnson is unbelievable, to say the least, even for a movie.

There are some bright spots to It’s a Wonderful World. Edgar Kennedy and Nat Pendleton play two of the stupidest policemen in Hollywood history, and take the film repeatedly into farce – but they are amusing. Equally amusing is Guy Kibbee, as Johnson’s partner, a tired old private eye. In terms of story, though, he provides another example of inconsistency: able to decipher a coded telegram sent to him by Johnson, he can’t put two and two together in order to credit his partner with having solved the crime.

It’s a Wonderful World amounts to little more than a curio in the lives of those who made it. The next movies for Stewart and Colbert were Mr Smith Goes to Washington and Drums Along the Mohawk, respectively, so clearly better things were ahead for both. Mankiewicz co-wrote Citizen Kane in 1941 and Hecht’s subsequent screenplays included His Girl Friday. Even director Van Dyke went on to the likes of the snappy I Love You Again. If It’s a Wonderful World is indeed a curio, the curiosity lies in the reasons it is such a failure.

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Shooutout in a One-Dog Town (1974)

Directed by Burt Kennedy; produced by Richard E Lyons

The transportation of $200,000 in cash is violently interrupted when robbers ambush the men escorting the money through the deserts of the Arizona Territory. One of the guards (Michael Ansara) escapes with the cargo to a no-where hamlet, where he entrusts the cash to the local banker (Richard Crenna) and the part-time deputy sheriff (Jack Elam). Those two must then defend the treasure against the determined and repeated assaults of the bandits, killers all.

A television-movie I had seen decades ago, Shootout in a One Dog Town holds up remarkably well, especially for a low-budget work. ‘Low-budget’ may, in fact, be an over-estimate of the funds available for its production: the budget was probably miniscule, and it shows. However, in its writing, acting and action, it rises above its origins.

There was probably no harder-working and respected American actor in front of cameras than Richard Crenna. Most widely known now for appearing in the three Rambo films, it was in television that he made his distinguished mark, in several series and a host of quality tv-movies. Here, he enlivens this flick as the dedicated and idealistic bank owner. He works well with Elam, who was even more of a veteran actor than Crenna. Director Kennedy knew Elam from several cinematic projects and, indeed, Elam portrays a familiar character: the ‘reformed drunk’ who now represents the law. Richard Egan, with a quarter-century of film and tv work behind him by this time, plays the almost philosophical villain. Another long-time actor, Arthur O’Connell, has a throw-away role as the hamlet’s doctor (actually a veterinarian), while Dub Taylor looks the same and wears the same bowler, I’m sure, that he’s worn in two dozen westerns.

These then – with Stefanie Powers as the obligatory love-interest – comprise the over-qualified cast who lift Shootout in a One Dog Town above the ordinary. The story is by Larry Cohen, who wrote such tv and cinema stories and scripts as Q (previously reviewed on this blog), Maniac Cop and several episodes of Columbo - wildly diverse in quality; he also created the tv series The Invaders. The story in Shootout in a One Dog Town is simple and straightforward; there is no preamble to the action. The script (by Dick Nelson) is lean, but allows some good dialogue that makes the two leads sympathetic. We are told nothing about Crenna’s past, though, since he is brave and resourceful, and very good with firearms, he might have been a soldier. It is Elam who comes across as more three dimensional. Despite his character’s initial use for comedy, he is revealed to have unexpected depth.

The direction, by yet another veteran (Kennedy directed many westerns including Hannie Caulder, Support Your Local Sheriff! and The War Wagon), is not particularly outstanding, though the action scenes are quite good, and the climax satisfying. A liability is the music, which starts off as little different than that of a routine 1970s cop film and doesn’t get better from there.

But all in all, Shootout in One Dog Town is a surprisingly entertaining film, helped by its fine cast, slender script and short running time. (And it’s a Hanna-Barbera production!)

 

The Long Memory (1953)

Directed by Robert Hamer; produced by Hugh Stewart

Philip Davidson (John Mills) was a young man in love with the pretty Fay Driver (Elizabeth Sellers), whose sailor father, however, was involved with the criminal Boyd (John Chandos). Visiting the Drivers’ boat, Davidson intervened in a fight to prevent Boyd from killing a man, but in the struggle the boat burned and sank, leaving one corpse for the police to find. Davidson survived but was implicated in murder by the Drivers’ refusal to implicate themselves. Twelve years later, the bitter former convict is released to brood and implement his revenge.

A dark crime film with an uplifting message, The Long Memory is propelled by well-devised characters, very good acting, unusual settings and an unpredictable storyline. Mills was excellent in ‘every-man’ roles, and here he epitomises the part, appearing in flashbacks as a youthful, hopeful fellow with a future, and in the present as someone with nothing to live for except retribution. This is interesting because his character in the film is, at first, little else but that goal, and as complications arise, so his character evolves.

Sellers’s part may be seen as simplistic. She quickly forgot – or buried – her complicity in Davidson’s destruction, yet this is entirely realistic. People have the unfortunate ability to submerge memories of unpleasantness they’ve committed; they don’t forget, they just choose not to think about it. Her anguish when she must confront reality is restrained but convincing.

John McCallum plays her husband, an antidote to the cynical, hard-hearted police detectives of movie fiction. He is fair, honourable and even courteous: when he reflexively insults a subordinate for an unavoidable mistake, he quickly apologises.

Eva Bergh plays the love-interest, a woman given a rather more interesting background than many such characters, and represents another loner, another outsider; a counterpart to Davidson.

Other notable players are Geoffrey Keen as a conscientious reporter, Laurence Naismith as his decidedly un-conscientious editor, Harold Lang (an actor and acting teacher who died at only 49) as Boyd’s malevolent lackey, and the incomparable Thora Hird as a thug’s wife.

The Long Memory benefits from the use of locations not often seen in films, in particular London’s docklands (though they were used in the recently reviewed Forbidden Cargo, also starring Elizabeth Sellers) and a desolate strip of Kentish coast, which shows why for centuries it was used for smuggling. The latter location, with its rather disgusting little café and crumbling hulks stuck in the tidal mud, is effective.

The script is good, though the story poses a few questions. We are never told why Davidson, upon his release from prison, goes to seek solitude in a beached wreck. He seems to know precisely where he is going when he travels there. Perhaps he has a nautical past, considering his love for a sailor’s daughter, though this has no evidence for it. Nor do we know how a certain individual was aware of where Davidson was living; it could be assumed that he discovered it the way Keen’s reporter did, but, again, this is conjecture. These are small problems, and don’t affect the film’s over-all quality.

The Long Memory is a very good entry in the revenge/film noir category of movies. If the retribution exacted by Davidson is not what many American viewers, raised on the blood and thunder of modern revenge pictures, expect, it is nonetheless satisfying, and quite British, really.

Treasure Island (1950)

Directed by Byron Haskin; produced by Perce Pearce

Several sinister visitors to a lonely West Country inn reveal the existence of a map to a hoard of pirate treasure. As a result, young Jim Hawkins (Bobby Driscoll) finds himself swept up in an adventure with sea-voyages, marooned hermits, mutinies, cutlasses and cannon-fire, and a treacherous, one-legged pirate named Long John Silver (Robert Newton).

There are a few books that epitomise their subjects: for pirates, it’s Treasure Island. Even fewer are the movies that can translate the spirit of the book to the big screen. This version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous novel succeeds in every respect.

One cannot write of 1950’s Treasure Island without writing of Newton’s performance as Silver. It has given to the world more than seventy years’ worth of stereotyped pirate behaviour, especially in the well-known ‘arrr’, Newton’s common utterance in his role. It should be explained, though, that this was no more than an exaggerated Dorsetshire accent; Newton, a Dorset man, gave Silver the dialect of his own youth; ‘arr’ is just the long, drawn out ‘A’-sound. It may be heard in such instances as when Silver addresses the boy; he calls him ‘Arkins’. The ‘arrr’ itself is ‘aye’ (“yes”). If Newton had been born in Yorkshire, perhaps ‘pirates’ these days would be talking like farmers from All Creatures Great and Small.

But Newton’s performance is more than just a few quotes. I have read reviews that call his work in Treasure Island over-acting, or hammy. I think this overlooks Silver’s character. He was himself almost always acting. When first met, he pretends to be respectable, a law-abiding tavern-keeper; he pretends to be friends to a ship’s first-mate; he pretends to be loyal to the squire who hires him; he pretends to honour his promise to his own cohorts. Acting has been one way Silver has survived in the bloody and – literally – cut-throat world he inhabits.

When he casts off his mask, though still grinning and uttering coy turns of phrase, he conveys a true menace; that’s the other way he has survived. This is to Newton’s credit. He makes it credible that a man who can barely pull himself from a sitting position is feared by everyone who meets him. (For a colder, much more urbane character by Newton, see Obsession, reviewed on this blog in January of last year)

Added to Newton’s performance is the fine work of young Driscoll. Having done an excellent job in The Window (reviewed in November, 2020), he does as well here, though the role is less demanding. He and Newton have fine chemistry in Treasure Island, as they must: the relationship between the two characters is fundamental both to the story’s events and to the movie’s success. Jim Hawkins brings out the little good in Silver’s personality, and we see that the pirate would have made an absolutely horrendous father – but probably a loving one.

Mention has been made in reviews of Driscoll’s lack of any kind of English accent. He certainly doesn’t bother trying West Country speech. This, I believe, may have been more a reflection of the director’s or producer’s intentions, than of Driscoll’s talent. Trying to sell to 1950s Americans a movie in which all the characters are foreigners – even English – and even when the movie is Treasure Island, might have been seen as difficult. Making Jim Hawkins a more or less modern American boy could have been seen as a solution. In the event, it does the film no harm.

As for the rest, everything works. The supporting cast includes John Gregson, as Redruth, at the start of his relatively short career; John Laurie, in a small bit as Blind Pew, and Geoffrey Keen, several times the ‘Minister’ in James Bond films, as a particularly sinister Israel Hands.

The atmosphere, the action and the setting should appeal to young and old. The pirates act and talk like pirates, perhaps because Treasure Island set the standard for such; there is sword-play, belaying pins, a jolly roger, buried treasure. The direction is good, though not remarkable; it seems, though, to be like music on a soundtrack: influential but not intrusive. The colour is that 1950s Technicolor that might seem too colourful to modern audiences, but, vivid and bright, is just right for a vibrant adventure film.

There have been other cinematic (and television) versions of Stevenson’s book, and there will be more, but a viewer would be hard-pressed to find one more enjoyable and more memorable than this one.