Contraband (a.k.a. Blackout) (1940)

Directed by Michael Powell; produced by John Corfield

It’s the very early days of the Second World War, and the freighter “Helvig”, from still-neutral Denmark, is brought to an English port by the Royal Navy to be examined for contraband. Its captain, Andersen (Conrad Veidt), is annoyed at the delay, but accedes to the inevitable. What annoys him far more is that the pair of shore-passes the British authorities gave him and his first officer (Hay Petrie) for an evening in London, are stolen by two passengers, the superior Mrs Sorensen (Valerie Hobson) and the obnoxious Mr Pidgeon (Esmond Knight). Sneaking ashore in angry pursuit of the thieves, Andersen finds himself caught up in kidnapping, assault, treason and espionage, as well as romance and an exceedingly fine dinner.

This was the second collaboration between Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger (who wrote the story and screenplay); the first, 1939’s The Spy in Black, also having starred Veidt and Hobson. The Archers’ (as Powell and Pressburger came to be called) Contraband starts off rather slow and, while interesting, does not really become entertaining until about a third of the way along. But it is worth sticking with, as the movie becomes a fun, light adventure drama, with good comic touches.

Veidt would certainly not be cast as a leading man - never mind a romantic hero - these days. Tall, spare and quite unhandsome, his performance is very good. He endows his character initially with a chilly outward persona; we believe it when we see him open up about his life and loves. Hobson, too, manages to make the alteration to her character - really an alteration in what we see of the character - credible. These are two actors pretty much forgotten these days (Veidt, in particular, because of his early death at fifty) but, like many of their contemporaries, often pioneers in cinematic acting, they deserve to be remembered.

The other actors are also good; a number of them recurred in Powell and Pressburger’s movies. Knight first worked with Powell as early as 1931; his rather odious Pidgeon has about five seconds to show a different side as he leaves his club in one scene and manages to convey it. Hay Petrie, another ‘semi-regular’, has a dual role as brothers; he could have been used as strictly comic relief, but there is usually more even to a minor character in an Archers movie. Leo Genn, Torin Thatcher, Peter Bull, Bernard Miles and Milo O’Shea (the last in his film debut) all have small, uncredited bits.

The story could be called a good yarn, the sort popular in the 1930s and deserving of popularity now: the merchant navy officer, an amateur but highly capable, is caught up in intrigue and adventure. The script is excellent; the settings of the story - the examination of shipping for contraband, and England’s war-time black-out - are both interesting and significant. There is fine use of the minutiae for which the Archers were known: note the clever opportunist selling electric torches (flashlights) in the midst of the war-time black-out, or the two creeps waiting in a motor-car for a woman unable to find a taxi, both elements undoubtedly taken from real life.

Small moments change the direction of the story and the attitude of the characters, such as when a brief description of Mrs Sorensen reveals her to be quite different than she depicts, and thus raises Andersen’s interest in her.

There is some good, and unlikely, action, including a brawl involving the staff of a dodgy night-club, a party of drunken but game servicemen and a gang of Danish waiters, the last roused to battle by Andersen’s cry of, “If you’re Danish, you won’t need a reason to fight!”

After a sluggish start, Contraband becomes an enjoyable caper-film, as improbable as a serial from “The Boys’ Own Paper”, but more fun.

The Black Swan (1942)

Directed by Henry King; produced by Robert Bassler

The famous privateer Henry Morgan (Laird Cregar) has been made governor of Jamaica, with a commission to impose peace on the Caribbean in the wake of a treaty between England and Spain. Some of his old comrades are reluctant to give up their piratical ways, so Jamie Waring (Tyrone Power), one of Morgan’s best captains, is given the task of bringing them to heel. Complicating matters is a treacherous nobleman (Edward Ashley) and a beautiful woman (Maureen O’Hara).

Inspired, rather than based, on the book by Rafael Sabatini (a polymath so adept at languages he chose to write in English, which he learned only as an adolescent), the prolific writer of historical fiction, The Black Swan possesses a script by Ben Hecht and Seton I. Miller; the story is a good one. Ample scope is given for sea-battles, sword-play and romance.

The performers are equal to the authors, with popular leading players Power and O’Hara, with excellent support from Cregar and Thomas Mitchell (in an unlikely role as Waring’s first mate). And yet The Black Swan is not quite a satisfying movie. Why not?

I think one of the problems is Tyrone Power. It’s not that he isn’t a fine actor. His many rôles demonstrate that he was always more than a matinée idol. In fact, I have found that he is better in heavier drama (such as The Razor’s Edge) than in lighter work, like The Black Swan. As well, his dark, brooding appearance, always giving the impression of something troubling him, lends itself better to the former genre than the latter. A comparison may be made to Errol Flynn, who was cast in two other screen adaptations of Sabatini’s work, The Sea Hawk and Captain Blood. In each of these, there is the typical Flynn devil-may-care attitude to the character, which is missing in Power’s Jamie Waring. In short, Waring is simply not an engaging character.

O’Hara, too, gives a strong but almost unsympathetic performance. (She and Anthony Quinn, who plays a Leech’s first mate, re-united almost fifty years later for Only the Lonely (1991).) More interesting are Cregar’s Morgan and George Sanders as Bobby Leech. The remarkable Laird Cregar, who died at thirty-one but always seemed cast as much older men, gives an excellent performance as the erstwhile privateer. As interpreted by Cregar, Morgan strives to achieve something loftier than mere battle and pillage, to justify society’s new faith in him, but always with an eye to happier days. This is the most intriguing character in the movie.

Sanders is unrecognizable in red curls and a full ginger beard, playing an atypical role as a privateer who was never far from piracy. His Leech is a world away, yet just around the corner, from most of the villains Sanders otherwise portrayed. As the hero’s adversary in The Black Swan, Sanders, too, added to the picture.

Another disadvantage is the script, rather than the story. Though written by two of the best screenwriters in Hollywood, it nonetheless omits much of what could have made the lead characters sympathetic, especially Power’s. The first we see of Jamie Waring, he and Leech are destroying a Spanish colonial town, carrying off gold and women as prizes. Unlike Flynn’s Peter Blood, there is no regret in Waring, no remorse for his misdeeds. Further, we know nothing of his past. At one point, he starts to relate his history but progresses only a few sentences before he is interrupted.

In its favour, The Black Swan has some fine action, though this is slow to work its way to the screen. The 1930s and ‘40s seemed to contrive realistic and exciting film from the combined effects of models and live-action that computer-graphics certainly can’t match. And the inevitable sword-fight between Waring and Leech is conducted so vigorously that their blades can barely be seen.

Even so, The Black Swan, for its high-powered stars, vibrant colour (for which O’Hara’s red hair and green eyes could have been made) and exuberance is missing something that other pirate movies seemed to find almost by default. As entertainment, it can’t quite rise above adequate.

The Uninvited (1944)

Directed by Lewis Allen; produced by Charles Brackett (associate producer)

During their holiday on the north coast of Cornwall, brother and sister Rick and Pam Fitzgerald (Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey) find and fall in love with an old, vacant house. Despite its excellent condition, rumours of ‘disturbances’, which forced out the previous lease-holders, keep the sale price relatively low, and they buy it from the aloof owner, Beech (Donald Crisp). It isn’t long before the Fitzgeralds themselves experience disturbances, and find themselves caught up in a supernatural drama involving scandal, sudden death and Beech’s naïve and conflicted granddaughter, Stella (Gail Russell).

One of the earliest ghost stories to be filmed, The Uninvited is also one of the best. It is not a shocker, and won’t have you jumping from your seat (or trying to hide in it) like The Haunting (1963), or sweating bullets like the entirely earthbound Duel (1971), but The Uninvited is very effective nonetheless. As is often the case with successful films, different elements contribute.

The story is a good one, in that it has some substance to it. There is as much mystery as supernatural to it, as Rick and Pam, aided by the local doctor (Alan Napier), dig into the past, finding reticence and confusion as they investigate what happened at Windward House seventeen years previously.

The tale is adapted from the novel Uneasy Freehold by Dorothy Macardle (I think you’ll agree that the change of title from what may have been thought an essay on real estate to something more foreboding was a good one) and is well-written. Though the climax makes certain the nature of the villainy, there is doubt through much of the movie.

There is a certain light-heartedness that runs through the story, which contrasts with the darkness of possible murder and sinister danger that is also present. That light-heartedness, however, comes not from attempts at comedy-relief (though there is a short episode of that on a small sailboat), but from the characters, specifically Rick Fitzgerald.

He is an easy-going young man who finds humour in everything. This bright and breezy personality is essential to his relationship with Stella; as well, it works, ironically, with the seriousness of the story. Rick attempts more than once to dispel dread - and the possibility of ghosts - with humour. The fact that this humour comes across as awkward at times is due entirely to his realisation that the situation is not a funny one.

Without the talent to bring them to life, these characters would have been two-dimensional, of course. Just a couple of weeks ago, I reviewed Alias Nick Beal, also starring Ray Milland, and wrote then that I couldn’t imagine seeing that actor again without his Nick Beal colouring other performances. I was wrong, which shows what thespian skill can do. Milland is entirely the good-natured Rick Fitzgerald, who would know exactly what to do with the likes of Nick Beal.

Crisp, who is able to change a whole personality with a tone of voice, makes the chilly Commander Beech into a real person, while Cornelia Otis Skinner’s character makes her implied fate credible. (Remarkably, Skinner’s memoirs of her girlhood, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, were made into a movie and released in the same year as The Univited; Skinner, as an adolescent, was portrayed by none other than Gail Russell.)

If there is one criticism to The Uninvited, it is Russell’s performance. Though this was the third motion picture role of her tragic career, her talent was still developing, and doesn’t approach Milland’s or Hussey’s. To compensate, however, she possesses here an innocence and youth that her character demanded, and Russell’s inclusion in the cast is not deeply injurious to the movie.

The direction is first-rate. As mentioned, there are no moments of outright fright, but a number in which the goose-bumps do rise. The cheap thrills in what passes for scary films of today - something leaping from a closet to loud, sudden strains of music - are completely absent, and the worst violence is caused by a squirrel nipping Rick’s finger.

What is found are a number of eerie scenes and images, a successful use of light and shadows, and implication, rather than expression. There are some good depictions of Stella, who comes to stand at the centre of the drama, moments that reinforce the puzzle that surrounds her.

A partnership of direction and production conjures up what many lesser horror stories fail to accomplish: atmosphere, not just of fright, but of situation and place. Though probably filmed on a back-lot, there is an authenticity to the setting. The initial placement of the story is fixed with evocative scenes of the rocky Cornish seashore, and the sets that comprise Windward House itself surely must have been based on a real building, as the exteriors and interiors match, and seem entirely realistic.

The Uninvited combines many stereotypes of the ghost-story - the haunted house, the innocent victim, the mystery from the past - which, of course, were not stereotypes at the time, and provide an almost genteel treatment of what might have been a lurid tale. This is an excellent movie, and should not be missed.

Step By Step (1946)

Directed by Phil Rosen; produced by Sid Rogell

Young Evelyn Smith (Anne Jeffreys) has an important new job that she obtained with the aid of a harmless fib. Former U.S. marine Johnny Christopher (Lawrence Tierney) is back from the war and ready for some fun. Neither thought they would be framed for murder and on the run, while simultaneously trying to track down the real culprits in a spy-ring set up to aid fugitive Nazis. The stage is set for car-chases, gun-play, fist-fights, and a little romance.

Step By Step is a lively, low-budget action adventure which was probably rated at the time as a B-movie but is a cut above that grade, though certainly not on the A-list. Its plot makes one think that the Bowery Boys are going to be bursting through a door any moment, while the dialogue is more reminiscent of lighter Bogart fare, such as All Through the Night.

The performances are pretty good. Jeffreys, despite being only twenty-three, was nearing the end of her time as a leading lady, though her career in entertainment would carry her into her nineties and the twenty-first century. Tierney plays against type here: he’s a tough guy, but light-hearted, carefree and not looking for trouble. In spite of having played the lead role in the bio-pic Dillinger (in which Jeffreys co-starred), his name follows the title in Step By Step, which adds to the impression that the film is a small one. The pair work well together, perhaps due to their previous collaboration.

The other actors are also better than the average ‘B’ cast. The villains include Jason Robards, father of his namesake, the latter better known today than his parent, who in turn became Jason Robards Senior only in retrospect. The elder Robards had a long career on the stage before making his first movie in 1921.

 

He and other players do very well, especially George Cleveland, as a former marine and sea captain who now runs a motel, and takes the young heroes’ innocence on faith.

The plot is straightforward: a gang of former Nazis seek a list of their comrades, now underground and plotting a return. This list was hidden by an American operator and inadvertently picked up by Tierney.

There are alternately silly and smart bits to the script: a U.S. senator, engaged on top-secret counterintelligence work, engages a secretary he doesn’t know because she says that she had worked for a friend of his. The Hardy Boys would be more security-conscious than that. On the other hand, a good clue is found when someone’s shorthand notes are overlooked by the villains.

The direction is snappy; the short running-time (62 minutes) a tribute to it: the number of adventures and escapes the protagonists go through would fill a longer movie, though the pace keeps Step By Step from dragging. There are some good fight-scenes, including one in which Christopher uses his infantry training. The number of films in which soldiers battle like street brawlers has made me wonder what sort of instruction Hollywood thought armies received.

Not ridiculous enough to offend an accepting audience, and fast-paced enough to breeze over boredom, Step By Step is an enjoyable adventure tale with likeable characters, good performances and an adequate script, making for a fun time at the pictures.