Crawford and Borzage Films: Sadie McKee (1934), Mannequin (1937), Strange Cargo (1940)

Posted on August 3, 2026 by 4 Star Films

I’ve been dipping back into the work of Joan Crawford and director Frank Borzage, so here are some capsule reviews of some of their films:

Sadie McKee (1934) – Dir. Clarence Brown

Sadie returns home to the playful shenanigans of her former compatriot (Franchot Tone). Her mother is the long-time cook of a well-to-do family, and he is the privileged son. But class need not be a dividing line, at least initially.

There are so many wonderful evolving supporting players in Sadie McKee, with Crawford, the effervescent working girl with a chip on her shoulder, remaining the constant focal point.

She leaves behind her mother to chase after her crush (Gene Raymond) even as (Tone) openly criticizes his instability. She doesn’t care. It’s all the more reason to prove him wrong. On her journey, she’s befriended by the worldly-wise Opal (Jean Dixon). Meanwhile, Akim Tamiroff and Leo G. Carroll show up in adroit side parts as a giddy waiter and a stuffy valet. The movie is stuffed full of such roles.

Edward Arnold might actually be the most delightful of the litter as a gregarious millionaire. It’s a far cry from the corrupt business tycoons he was often remembered for, and he proves himself more than game for a little comedy. He and Crawford have a grand ol’ time playing drunk together as Tone looks on with a level of disdain.

Because his boss takes a shine to Crawford, and why not? But surely she only gravitates toward him for his money? It’s a great convenience after a lifetime where she’s had to scrimp and save every day.

Between moments verging on the social strata absurdity of screwball comedy blended with a couple of show tunes like “All I Do Is Dream of You” and “Old Pal,” there’s a lot of good fun to be had to stave off the Depression blues.

To its credit, the story fits the schema of a conniving melodrama about a gold digger, only to break out on its own. If memory serves, Crawford knew how to play such characters. And yet here, despite what circumstances might suggest, she’s a more complex, even sincere individual. She falls into things and can’t help feeling what she does, regardless of what others say, namely Tone.

Crawford forcefully tears through the formalities of the upstairs-downstairs drama. She has the upbringing and the gumption to push through the door to the kitchen. What first looks to be a standoff, even an insurrection from the bottom up (led by the manservant Carroll), becomes a meeting of the minds and a pact to keep their boozy proprietor alive. She vows to keep her job as a wife, so she doesn’t look like the vamp, and the backroom staff want to keep their jobs as well.

The resolution is conventional stuff, but then again, the road to get there is quite charming. An added undercurrent is the real-life relationship between Crawford and Tone at the time. It can’t help but color the entire storyline from front to back.

3.5/5 Stars

Mannequin (1937) – Dir. Frank Borzage

Once again, Joan Crawford is the quintessential working-class hero, doing anything she can to beat the dregs of a life she has. By day, Jessie’s working in a factory. By night, she’s helping her mother with dinner as they dote over a deadbeat Irish father and an ungrateful kid brother (Leo Gorcey). Her only solace comes with escaping to spend time with her boyfriend, Eddie (Alan Curtis).

She wants him to marry her and take her away from the dead-end life in the family’s abode on the Lower East Side. And with some further cajoling, he does, and they prepare for a delirious life together as newlyweds.

If you read the names on the marquee, you know Spencer Tracy must show up eventually, and he does as shipping magnate John L. Hennessey. He’s a self-made man who’s worked hard for every penny he has, and his workers respect him for his candor.

He spies the new husband and wife celebrating their matrimony. Obviously, Crawford is radiant and eye-catching, but he seems genuinely happy for them, having the waiter bring them champagne and his compliments.

Although it’s not quite as good as Tracy and Young in Borzage’s Man’s Castle, there’s still something electric in seeing two stars together at an early juncture in their career ascendancy as studio contractors.

At first, there was something uneven about Curtis being placed onscreen between them, and how are they ever to get together? It becomes apparent in due time. He’s an idea man, always coming up with something new and never following through on any of it. His wife constantly bails him out. But it’s a thankless place to be in, and the promise of marriage continues to sour.

The final scene is an impeccable bit of dramatic irony — embodying the conceit underpinning the whole story. Because Eddie sees how smitten John is with his wife. He’s not above suggesting they get divorced so she can marry the other man and give Eddie a cut of her newfound wealth. It’s a horrible insinuation. Her eyes are finally opened, and she leaves.

The fates develop the story exactly as Eddie might have orchestrated it, but the motives are important. Jessie winds up marrying John because something real blooms between them. He’s deliriously happy until doubt creeps in.

In the end, his business ventures are sunk, but it means nothing to him compared to potentially getting stabbed in the back by Jessie. He doesn’t know what’s going on behind the scenes. And here they reunite in his office for one final time…

He’s got no money, but she doesn’t know that. She vows to leave him nobly so her ex can’t gouge him further. They both have the wrong idea about the other, and somehow it all turns into a right. Love covers a multitude, and so it is here again. It’s romance in the Borzage mode.

3.5/5 Stars

Strange Cargo (1940) – Dir. Frank Borzage

“So God created man in his own image…Look at me. Do I look like a God to you?”

I have to admit I do miss adventure pictures like these. They take place in a vaguely distant place conjured up on the Hollywood movie screen courtesy of a studio lot. It feels like we don’t have a license to make pictures like this anymore for various reasons. Some understandable and a few regrettable.

Right now, Clark Gable is still an MGM stalwart. Joan Crawford really has some feisty barb to her. You have to be tough in an environment like this. I lost track of what number this is in their ongoing onscreen partnership. All you need to know is he’s a prisoner in an island penal colony, and she’s a local dance hall girl trying to pay her way to the mainland. Her animosity and his cocksure attitude are the perfect tinder to set their chemistry ablaze yet again.

You know he’s going to take it upon himself to escape, and she’s going to get caught up in it. Given the amalgamation of all the different genre elements, it’s difficult to categorize Strange Cargo, although it was adapted from the debut novel of author Richard Sale.

Among the contingent of fugitives is the Christ-like Cambreau, who plays almost like a precursor to the remake of Magnificent Obsession with its brand of cinematic mysticism. He rises up as a quietly providential force among the worldly cynics, the bible-thumpers spewing fire and brimstone, and the He-Man self-assurance of Gable.

The clash of tonalities is perfectly embodied by the Red Dust energy as Crawford goes trampling through the jungle in her high heels with Gable yanking her along. Then, in another moment, they’re warming themselves by the fire as he reads her some love poetry out of Song of Solomon. Look in her eyes, and it would seem like no one ever shared such affirmations, even if it’s done facetiously.

For such a glamour queen at MGM, Crawford shows a willingness to go unadorned as much as the studio system allowed. It’s easy to gain a new kind of respect for her because it feels like new terrain as she’s left adrift with the rest of the men and identifies with this man fighting for her companionship under the bleak circumstances.

The other difficult balance is indeed the spiritual timbre of the film with the very physical nature of Gable, the generation’s idea of a Greek Adonis with his big, broad shoulders functioning as his temple. In many ways, the movie pits the movie star as this kind of temporal image-god against the transcendent message of this Messianic figure.

Borzage’s Catholic sympathies are overt in this one, and it makes for a fascinating exploration. The fact that it was based on a contemporary piece of fiction seems to suggest an openness to these spiritual, albeit unorthodox themes.

However, in some ways, I was intrigued to read that the Catholic Legion of Decency gave the film a “condemned” rating. It does feel like a potential precursor to the criticisms aimed at Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ. In personalizing the God-Man, they almost made him too human for the audience.

One could see how the church gatekeepers were left queasy by a film that’s hardly a hallowed depiction of conventional saints. However, any complaints about the depiction of lust feel slightly ironic given the inclusion of Song of Songs love poetry directly from the Biblical text. Still, Gable and Crawford are fiery enough to make the remonstrations understandable, given social mores at the time.

3.5/5 Stars

Man’s Castle (1933)

Posted on July 28, 2026 by 4 Star Films

“God chose the foolish things of the world, that He might put to shame those that are wise. And He chose the weak things of the world that he might put to shame those that are strong” – Ira quoting 1 Corinthians 1:27

Man’s Castle has a wonderful set-up for a beautiful gag, although we have to come face to face with the throes of the Depression to truly appreciate it. A man (Spencer Tracy) in a top hat and tails is feeding the pigeons on a park bench. He spies a hesitant young ingenue (Loretta Young) watching nearby. He gives her a smart remark, and she almost cries. She’s soft-hearted and hungry. She just wants to eat the crumbs he’s tossing to the birds.

He’s not a complete curmudgeon and has a change of heart. Blink, and they’re in a fine restaurant. He’s chomping on a cigar, a look of satisfaction on his face, watching her put away a whole plate of food. She may be all skin and bones, but she eats ravenously. This is how we meet Bill and Trina.

But we have yet to mention the punchline. Bill calls on the manager of the establishment casually, then he proceeds to tell the preening man that he’s dead broke…He doesn’t have any money to pay for the food, and yet in a world littered with wealth, what’s one gift of charity? They end up walking out with full bellies without greater implications.

It’s an upside-down world they live in. This is what Frank Borzage gives us. We get down to the humble roots of the temporal world of shantytowns and impoverished working stiffs only for the director to bring his quintessential transcendence to the proceedings. It may come off as high-minded talk for such a meek picture, and yet with Borzage, romanticism can break into any environment within any strata of society.

In such a space, Bill and Trina become an unlikely couple. Bill’s always looking to make a casual buck to maintain his unattached lifestyle. It means light-up signs on his chest, stilt walking, and serving summons to one dancehall starlet, Fay La Rue (Glenda Farrell). The lady is visibly impressed, watching his self-confident shrewdness in getting to her. He’s a man with ingenuity.

Loretta Young has the most voluminous eyes in cinema, and with the fresh-faced garb of youth and what butterfly lighting can do, she fills up the screen with radiance. Trina contents herself with keeping a home for Bill. She takes his demeanor in stride, knowing full well it obscures an affable heart. All she knows is that she’s deliriously happy with their meager slice of paradise.

When you’re dead, you get a hunk of dirt, and while he’s alive, Bill wants to hang on to the hunk of blue up above him in the sky. He could do a lot worse. He is a character of paradox. At his best, he’s like a grown-up kid who hasn’t lost his impishness. He has a buddy in Hollywood lifer Dickie Moore and even finds time to get booted off the stickball team by the local kids.

He’s founded on a gruff, insult-laden shtick, and then he comes right around and pulls out the new stove his girl’s been eyeing. Actions speak in ways belying his words. It’s how he shows his affection. In another scene, he swipes a zinnia when his neighbor (Walter Connally) isn’t looking and drops it in the soup Trina has lovingly prepared.

He makes a whole stink about it, grousing, then half-heartedly belittling while he half-smiles through the other side of his face. He does a little playacting before both Trina and Ira, before slipping the man a dime in the moment. It’s such a wonderful encapsulation of who this man is in a single crystallized moment. Like Whitman said, “I contain multitudes.”

But this is part of what made Borzage such a preeminent filmmaker because his stories can be distilled down to these remarkable moments showing off the acumen of someone well-versed in the syntax of visual storytelling carried over from the silent days. Where the images seem to evoke more than the mere sum of their parts. There is a depth and pregnant meaning to some of the more somber, starry-eyed sequences.

Bill is a kind of begrudging Joseph with Trina, his pure Madonna keeping all these things in her heart. Eventually, they get a common-law marriage presided over by Ira. In the ’30s, it might seem scandalous, but watching it play out is nothing of the sort. There’s not a lot of fanfare, and it means something deeply profound. Bill makes a vow to be with his “Whosit” for life, and whatever he might say to the contrary, there’s a sense he’ll make it stick.

Even when he half-heartedly robs a safe for some quick cash to leave his bride, he’s more concerned with the view outside the window and the wind-up doodad he’s going to take home to his girl. This is what his life revolves around, even as the world can be harsh, disrupting his reverie with a cruel twist of fate.

If you let it, Man’s Castle is the kind of unassuming film with the capacity to break into your own existence and remind you in all humility what it means to live radically in the mundane rythyms of life. It’s not about religious zealots or powerful leaders, but the kind of folk who have much to teach us about what’s actually important. If we look down at them or disregard what they have to teach us, we miss the whole point. Just as seeing this as a little film with a short running time is a grave mistake. This might be one of the biggest, grandest films you have the chance of experiencing.

The final images almost feel like a sculpted piece of marble or an illumination by one of the greats. Bill and Trina are in repose in a cattle car, glowing like saints, lowborn royalty. It’s not so much a gospel movie, even as Borzage is not an overtly Christian filmmaker, and yet the imagery and language of the beatitudes are hard to miss.

It’s an upside-down world where the last will be first. The meek shall inherit the earth, and the passionate forces to save the world can be found in the most common places, be it a manger or a cattle car.

4/5 Stars

Bad Girl (1931)

Posted on July 22, 2026 by 4 Star Films

“Nobody knows if a person’s good or bad except the person themselves, and they won’t tell.”

Pre-Code has garnered a salacious reputation for the titillating nature of its content and themes, which all but fly in the face of what contemporary society perceives to be Classical Hollywood morality as imposed by Joseph Breen and his minions.

Frank Borzage is a director who was held in high regard throughout the ’20s and ’30s as a popular success and a maker of star-crossed, transcendent romances. For whatever reason, he is very rarely canonized as a great filmmaker. That’s a conversation for another day, but given his penchant for heartfelt romance, there’s an initial inclination to see his sensibilities fitting like oil and water with the uninhibited 1930s.

However, this proves far from the truth. Bad Girl is hardly neutered. It’s drenched in this newfound freedom of the 1930s. The opening shot is a bit of ironic trickery as we watch a wedding procession unfold. This is traditional matrimony playing out in front of us until we realize we’re actually in the middle of a high-end establishment, and these women march forward (without Spencer Tracy’s father of the bride to be seen) for the clientele looking on. Everything falls into place.

Girls dress in scanty clothes to pick up men right off the modeling floor. The men try their best lines only to be rebuffed with a foolproof excuse. The girls are streetwise enough to judge their intentions. Always ready and willing to shoot down a pickup line that’s getting too fresh. Still, relations between men and women are stripped down to their bare essentials with an almost primordial sense of mating and love.

Dorothy (Sally Eilers) and Eddie Collins (James Dunn) fit into this testy Depression-era ecosystem. In fact, she’s aghast when she learns there’s a man who won’t give her girlfriend the time of day. Everything she’s learned about men tells her this can’t be true, and so she takes a friendly bet from her pal Edna (Minna Gobell) that says she can’t get a sourpuss on deck to flirt.

She turns on the charm and whips out her ukulele only to meet with a hard-edged cynic (“Listen, sister, if you don’t want a guy to salute you, take down your flag.”). But pretty soon, it becomes apparent that Eddie’s caustic sarcasm and prevailing meanness are a kind of defense mechanism.

Somehow, it’s this very friction leading to sparks, and some kind of mutual inertia develops between them. Here, already, we have entered the solar system of Borzage, as he draws his two improbable lovers together into the throes of romance. Eddie sees her home one evening to her tenement and subsequently leaves her out in the rain, missing their next date because he’s too preoccupied with his work at a radio shop. Dorothy gives him a mouthful. It stings.

The beauty of their courtship is how the acerbic nature is never fully lost, but they shed some of their claws and fangs in isolated moments, only to be vulnerable with one another. Her demonstrative brother all but disowns her for being a harlot. Eddie proposes marriage, effectively making a fight out of popping the question as he does with everything in his life. That’s just his way as he fumbles clumsily at earnestness.

While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend such a belligerent and bickering foundation for marriage, it lends the movie its get-up-and-go as they look to carve out a humble life together. Because even if we don’t want them to fail, there’s a sense that such a tenuous foundation surely will not last. So many Hollywood melodramas have been cast this way to a maudlin effect.

There’s further drama in their young marital life with a baby on the way and Eddie trying to ensure they have ample money and shelter to make ends meet. Even as their context evolves, the prevailing mood is all Borzage. Love conquers all yet again. It’s spectacular and sprinkled with bits of goodness and human decency.

I’m reminded of fathers of various temperaments pacing the floors of the hospital waiting room. Eddie spends nights out boxing to make extra dough, and not knowing where he’s going makes her teary-eyed. His wife feels abandoned on the eve of her due date. Meanwhile, he’s taking a beating, and in the clinch, he confesses to his rival in the ring that he needs to make it a few rounds more. The other man obliges by helping to prop him up.

This is not the obvious reaction in an arena of brutality, nor in a Pre-Code film. But again, it gets its fire from other places and surreptitiously sheds its spikes in the most propitious moments. They somehow ambush you and maintain this paradox of cynical reality with a heart of gold. Obviously, the title Bad Girl is sensationalized because it’s the height of irony in the hands of Borzage. He takes what looks slightly risque on the outside and imbues it with such a wealth of sensitive affection.

He was a filmmaker made in the silent era, and yet he proves himself to be evergreen because Bad Girl could not be anything other than a talkie. It’s a film about communication, even the lack thereof. Because that still counts. People like to talk. Gleeful. Angry. Belligerent. Soppy. And by the end, they’ve fired shots, professed love, shared hopes and dreams, and fallen more in love.

I’m still incredulous that Dorothy and Eddie are together at the end of the picture, but I am willing to accede to their conventional Hollywood ending because all roads seem to lead somewhere else. Given the circumstances, it feels like a greater narrative statement to keep them together. Is it unbelievable? Perhaps, but then again, love is an unbelievable force.

4/5 Stars

Till We Meet Again (1944): Directed by Frank Borzage

Posted on May 18, 2021 by 4 Star Films

This is my entry in the CMBA’s Hidden Classics Blogathon!

The movie is built out of the opening juxtaposition. A youthful nun with an angelic countenance (Barbara Britton) lifts up supplications to her triune God asking for prayers on their behalf — herself and the host of children and other sisters around them.

Their daily discipline is disrupted by a commotion down the road — Nazi soldiers firing after fleeing prisoners. It’s a signifier of tense times, but very real and pertinent ones in a French village plunged deep into Nazi occupation.

One of the girls asks Sister Clothhilde, “What happened outside?” All she can manage in response is that she doesn’t know, nor does she want to know. It suggests the core tenets of her character, maintaining all levels of religious piety, even her own serenity, above all else. She’s cloistered from the outside world.

Because it’s true the convent walls provide a buffer — a peaceful asylum — and for someone like the young sister it’s all she’s ever known and all she’s ever loved. Sister Clothilde is generally content with the amiable life of a nun, taking care of the young children in her dormitory with warmth and diligence. That could be the end of it right there, but as this is a movie, of course, there must be more.

The Reverend Mother has a rather pointed distaste for the Germans (enduring three wars will do that to even the most generous of spirits), but she and the local Major Krupp maintain their etiquette amid obdurate conflict. He has orders to make a search for runaway prisoners, and she is adamant about not opening her doors. For a time they can play the game easily enough, and Sister Clothilde can remain equally ignorant of the world outside.

However, all of this changes with the appearance of a wanted American pilot carrying vital information for the local underground. He all but appears out of nowhere, happening upon the sister quite by accident. In the darkness and the solitude, there is something strange outlined around them. It’s not menace nor romantic melodrama exactly but a yet to be discovered facet in their relationship.

Milland, terse and paranoid, wants to get to his contact and the sister wants nothing of his world. Ultimately, she has no choice but to become a part of it. There is no one else and so she instantly finds herself giving up her small comforts for a mission of immense peril that, coincidentally, takes her outside the walls she’s grown so accustomed to. She goes from a woman of faith to a full-fledged civilian on the outside, given a new name — that of Louise Dupree — and betrothed in marriage.

If there are all the nuts and bolts of a cloak and dagger thriller, these are never a part of Frank Borzage’s primary agenda. After all, he is a far cry from a Friz Lang or an Alfred Hitchcock. I’m thinking of Ministry of Fear or even Foreign Correspondent in particular. Also, although it’s not as robust as The Mortal Storm, Till We Meet Again becomes both an extension of that world and its themes courtesy of screenwriter Lenore Coffee.

What’s evident is Borzage’s forever visible sense of this kind of high-minded naturalism. Where they can momentarily forget the task at hand, that is getting to a distant airbase and freedom, so they can help return a wayward baby bird back to its mother. Is there a need for such a scene? In a word, no, but in Borzage’s conception, this is the more crucial matter because it denotes something elemental.

Man’s duty is not only to his fellow man but to the creatures on God’s green earth. The director gravitates toward acts of care and goodness as opposed to the needless destruction as represented by the Nazis in their brutish, insensitive clumsiness.

Even as they travel together and “Louise” comes to know John as a most intimate friend, she learns a great deal from his assertions. That God is everywhere: reflected in acts of beauty, nature, the vows of marriage, and the goodness that crops up in any person who lives in this world.

It comes through thanks to Milland gushing affection about the marvelous intricacies of marriage between two human beings in intimate union, babies, jam in the morning newspapers, and tripping over the slippers. To her own astonishment, he speaks the words with a kind of devoted reverence. “You say it like a litany — a kind of prayer.”

But to those who think of Borzage as merely a starry-eyed dreamer, the movie is still compelling when they are forced to evade the Nazis, now trailing them with ill-intent and more precise intel. The sense of dread is immediate, and there are stakes.

In another key scene, after she’s done so much on this treacherous journey, the sister makes one false step. Smoke billows out from a dimly lit room, and she rushes toward it to sound the alarm for John to make his getaway. Instead, out steps an old adversary showing himself from under the shroud of darkness.

She is from thenceforward intimidated and threatened in a way that feels so real you can just imagine have it was used against so many victims before her. She has committed an act of treason, put herself beyond the protection of her church, and acted as an enemy of the German Reich. Under such duress, she has every right to feel hopeless.

Instead, she makes a personal judgment, a double sacrifice out of this transcendental love of hers. It’s not simply romantic love but love wrapped up with ideals and goodness that must be shielded from the Nazis at all cost.

They escape to England with Milland, and she lets him go gladly. But the second sacrifice is the Christ-like one. If I have to spell it out for you then the allusion means nothing nor the cross she holds in her grasp. You have to see it for yourself.

Although it’s sublimely sentimental and swelling with angel’s song, this simply means Till We Meet Again is yet another definitive Borzage picture. It’s somehow fitting he would trace the line of religious iconography all throughout the picture even as a woman learns what her faith means in all walks of life.

Far from trivializing it, her vocation feels richer, bolder, and freer than it ever was before. And yet with Borzage, he’s not so much a champion of religious ardor as he is a believer in the grandeur available in life for those who readily embrace it.

These large, esoteric, unsearchable concepts whether they be spiritual, transcendent, or in other ways ethereal are there for the taking. For a humble movie, Till We Meet Again gets swept up with the same scope. Importantly, it’s kept accessible by the candor of Milland and the vestal warmth of Barbara Britton. Because it is once and for all a litany — a kind of layman’s prayer.

4/5 Stars

Three Comrades (1938) in Body and Soul

Posted on April 15, 2021 by 4 Star Films

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“Germany’s a pretty rough sea if you’re drifting.” – Breuer

“But I’m not alone anymore. There are so many drifters!” – Patricia Hollmann

Erich Maria Remarque is of course most famous for his work All Quiet on The Western Front, which was adapted to great effect for the silver screen by Lewis Milestone in 1930. Three Comrades, another one of his novels, feels very much like an extension of the same themes found in the earlier novel.

We find ourselves at the tail-end of the Great War. Mainland Europe is jaded and bedraggled. One must recall these were the days before Nazism: a force that felt like personified evil. When we look around from trench to no man’s land, it feels like everyone’s equally besmirched, equally implicated in the senseless killing.

So in this regard, it’s not a far stretch of the imagination to think a cohort of three German veterans might be likable to an American audience (especially because they are also Caucasian). However, equally importantly, they are played by three strapping young talents with charm bouncing off them like pinballs. It’s how they’re able to leave the calamitousness of war behind and attempt to discover a new life of humble contentment.

It was the war that instilled them with a certain collective memory, both scarring and then firmly solidifying their friendship in the aftermath. They take the world on like the Three Musketeers: all for one and one for all. Together they happily resolve to become car mechanics, carving out a peaceful existence for themselves, even as their beloved country has succumbed to a kind of mob rule with rampant new ideologies. To each his own.

Erich Lokhamp is the first, played by a dashing, if a bit wooden, Robert Taylor. Though it’s his friends who really seem to bring him alive. Franchot Tone is Otto Koster, always ready to support his friends and speak sense into their lives. His brand of loyalty is finer than gold. The other is Gottfried Lenz (Robert Young) also light-hearted while stricken with the mind of an idealist. Still, he gladly gives up his social conscience for the sake of his friends’ well-being. At least for a time, life is happy.

But before there’s any greater stakes, it begins as three lads having a blast taking a stuffy socialite (Lionel Atwill) for a ride as they roar down the thoroughfares in their beloved, hopped-up creation “Baby.” It’s a bit of good fun, but it also introduces the trio to one of the most important people in their subsequent life together: Pat

Margaret Sullavan is at it yet again a husky-voiced, troubled soul and yet overwhelmingly resolute in her pursuit of love and the preservation of those around her. It’s a quality found in all these characters — this self-sacrificial nature that becomes so laudable, if not entirely necessary. She is the one who surmises how lovely it might be to pick when we were born. Perhaps an age of reason and quiet. This sounds like a Borzage picture. Because of course, they must make do with the here and now, where evil still exists in the world (as it does in any era).

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Their favorite hangout belongs to a jolly man named Alfons (Guy Kibbee). Erich takes his new girl there following some awkward interplay over the telephone. Also, his buddies always have a penchant for showing up uninvited to sit in on their evenings. It’s one of the added delights of the pictures because Young and Tone can supply the wisecracks to rib their friend.

I admire Otto and Gottfried even as I relate. They are faithful, they wish the best for their friends, act as encouragers — spurring each other on — and celebrating their victories while taking any setbacks as they always do: together.

This courtship brings with it other complications, namely trying to impress a high society girl of culture no matter how good-natured she might make out. It’s still easy for a man used to the inside of cars, to feel out of place with the social elite, dancing and wearing customary uncomfortable clothing, which also has a habit of coming apart at the seams. He even spins tall tales of rolling down to South America, an exotic land full of monkeys and coffee, just so he might be able to keep up with her.

All of this show proves unnecessary. This is how it works when you are smitten with a rich man’s girl and, more importantly, when she is in love with you. In another line that feels transcendent in the usual manner of Borzage, they aspire to being “lovers on the edge of eternity between day and night.”

A lesser film — or at least one ill-befitting the predilections of Borzage — would probably have made this a fight for the woman’s hand. It’s easy enough to see how this would have pulled the boys’ bond asunder. And yet these characters are more genial, enlightened, and well-intentioned. The story itself strives for something more. Young plays cupid urging his friend toward marriage. Tone’s character knocks out a concerto on their automobile as he tries to hammer away some sense into Pat in favor of his friend.

Propitiously, all this coaxing culminates in the quaintest wedding, which somehow fits all the players to a tee. Borzage captures it such that we feel we are there with them discovering it as it happens, partially spur of the moment, but also imbued with this star-crossed purposefulness. In step with everything else, their honeymoon to the seaside is as gay as can be until it is met with a setback.

It plays into the film that Sullavan always feels emotionally strong and sturdy but often physically frail. Maybe she just exudes this quality between her throaty vocals grasping at words and the obdurance she gained a reputation for. But in Three Comrades, she is bedridden and in critical condition from hemorrhages — still nursing sickness that has clung to her for some time. Erich has little idea, but once again, Otto comes to their aid with his usual expediency. It only serves to bring them together.

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While remaining unnamed throughout the film, there’s little question that the rising Nazi Party is the instigator of public brawls. Dr. Becker (Henry Hull) speaks out on his soapbox about the need for reason in confronting the issues of the times, instead of the prevailing violence. Since it’s not the first scuffle or an isolated event, Gottfried feels compelled to stand up for his beliefs, putting his ideals on the line.

Meanwhile, Erich has a less politically charged fistfight in the streets over a work claim. He gets ganged up on before his comrades, of course, fly to his defense. Just like old times. Pat is placed in a sanitarium on the behest of her doctor (Monty Wooley) just in time for the snows of winter and then Christmas.

The violence continues to escalate, this time dragging Tone into a shootout in the streets with Handel’s “Hallelujah” clamoring in the background. It’s oddly hypnotic even as it spells what feels like the end of the beginning.

If it’s not apparent already where Three Comrades is going, it easily functions as a fitting companion piece to Borzage’s later Mortal Storm because there is this same uncanny prescience about it, although it probably did very little to halt the impending course of history. The unholy mechanisms were already in place.

Every Borzage movie makes the world a little broader and love a little grander to match. In this regard, the meeting of the prose of Erich Maria Remarque and F. Scott Fitzgerald somehow manages to work in the hands of a director.

What sets it apart from a melodrama like Douglas Sirk’s is the slow burn and how the characters take each moment on with their own brand of quiet fortitude. In many ways, love (and camaraderie) are an antidote to the wiles of the world. Our heroes know what’s inevitable and they brave it together — smiling until the end of days — even in the face of tragedy and hardship.

Is it high-minded and idealistic? Most assuredly. But it’s also one of the most blessed hallmarks of Frank Borzage’s filmmaking. This hallmark, more than anything, is why we can easily draw a line in the snow from something like Seventh Heaven or Man’s Castle to Three Comrades and then The Mortal Storm.

One is especially reminded of Margaret Sullavan because one of the pervading attributes of her characters is this all-encompassing dignity to see her to the end. We feel like unsightly sots and indignant peons compared to her eminent calm.

But really, the same might be said about all the players in Three Comrades. It’s a pacifist portrait. Not so much in prognostications of any sort. It has to do with the inner peace inside the characters that radiate out from them, due to their affections for one another. Thus, in a fitting Epilogue, with fighting breaking out in the city, the four inseparable friends walk off solemnly together. If not in body, then certainly in spirit.

4/5 Stars

Little Man, What Now? (1934): Borzage Vs. The Depression

Posted on April 8, 2021 by 4 Star Films

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Little Man, What Now? is a curious title although Carl Laemmle seemed to believe in the tale even giving it a public service announcement to make the point very clearly. This is a story for every man even as it seeks to document the daily problems of the contemporary society.

From the opening vignette, the movie preaches a message of peace, tolerance, and minding one’s own affairs like an upright citizen. If you’re like this jaded viewer, you grow wary of a picture with a self-serving agenda, especially one done poorly. Thankfully, Little Man is about a lot of ideas, including the things that get jumbled up inside a person’s head as they try to make their way through the world. Or rather, when they try and make their way through the world connected with someone else in marriage. This is Frank Borzage, after all, so a romance must be key.

One is reminded instantly we are in the throes of the Depression though this is Germany. It’s true much of the western industrialized world was plagued by stagnation and poverty. Herr Pinneberg (Douglass Montgomery) is a clerk and his tyrannical boss might very well be Ebenezer Scrooge though bald, bearded, and more oafish.

His family lives in the adjoining room with a cackling freckle-faced son and his dowdy daughter, who’s not had any luck landing a husband. Her belittling father has tried to up her prospects by hiring three bachelor’s to work for him. She dislikes them all except for Pinneberg. The feelings are not mutual, and he’s already wed. To keep his job, he conveniently keeps this detail a secret. It’s out of necessity. He’s madly in love with his wife.

Margaret Sullavan has a youthful vigor and prevailing spirit of a newlywed about her to be sure, but there’s also something deep and wise layered into her performance. She’s steady as her husband seems to crumble in the face of every change in the winds.

Next to her, Douglass Montgomery at times feels weak-willed and green, almost deserving of the world’s ill-fortunes because he gripes about them so much. And yet it’s difficult to be too harsh with him lest someone puts the mirror (with its three panes) up to my face as well.

We are continually reminded of the world’s many ailings from bigotry to unrest and poverty. Against this, Borzage literally captures them frolicking together in the lap of nature. While they do model a slightly different cross-section of Depression society from say Man’s Castle, they still exhibit the same rapturous affections for their beloved. Throughout the entire film, they remain the deliriously fixated center. What remains to be seen is how the characters and situations around them evolve.

The old man starts feeling positively chummy even as his daughter becomes petty even vindictive criticizing the “other woman” he was seen with. Speaking from experience, it doesn’t matter the age, there is a helplessness, nay, a uselessness that comes with being unemployed, especially when others are counting on you. Hans remains resolute when it matters most. Maintaining his pride and the love of a good wife mean more to him than money.

There’s another wonderfully staged scene between husband and wife as the merry-go-round sends our heroine round and round through the frame as she responds to her husband’s questions about where she’s been. She sheepishly admits she got so hungry she ate all the pieces of salmon from the market and now they have no dinner. Far from being angry, he laughs riotously. This is what love is.

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The movie is melodrama in the way that a life is full of smatterings of drama, cycling through the highs and lows, the devastations and elations, that come with the daily grind. The picture never feels like it’s aiming for a particular peak. Instead, it’s content enough to offer up vignettes because we have a couple to hold onto and root for, even as the scenery, the jobs, and the hardships change. They remain our steadfast point of reference.

Next, they make their way to Berlin, which we come to realize is only one decision out of a whole host they will have to make. They meet Hans’s step-mother at the station, a bubbly absent-minded woman always holding onto her inseparable dog.

However, she’s not so genial when you get to know her, and their desperate financial straits don’t help matters any. Thankfully, they have one friend, a most curious fellow named Jachmann. He’s a close associate with Mrs. Pinneberg. His real title, I couldn’t say.

Alan Hale was always the good-humor man but, in this case, he’s also a man with means. He just might be able to set them up with a home and a job, when he’s not kissing hands and laughing his head off, that is. Certainly, he’s some kind of shyster but a generous one with a heart of gold, especially when beautiful girls and their downtrodden husbands are concerned.

Another impeccable image comes when the couple is crammed in bed together as the mother’s party hits full stride just outside their doors. If we talk about the wage gap between our parent’s generation and us, this image of contrasting social statuses within a single family says as much about the Depression Era. However, it turns out she advertises in the papers because her home is actually a house of ill repute, and it carries with it a local reputation. They must move on.

Hans is a naive idealist and yet he rarely seems ready to make the sacrifices and the allowances his wife is; he’s not really willing to live within his means. Their new home has a Seventh Heaven rooftop, though he fails to see its quaint qualities; it’s close to a barn or better yet a stable.

If it was good enough for the baby at Christmastime, it’s good enough for them in their own humble estate. After all, being a Little Man is only in the eye of the beholder. In the eyes of his devoted wife, there couldn’t be a greater, grander, more important person to fill up her world.

As for the “What Now?” only time will tell. They rightfully state, “We created life so why should we be afraid of it?” What it does supply is this renewing sense of hope in the face of uncertainty. Again, it’s akin to the foremost Borzage pictures. It’s a testament to his convictions that he’s able to remain a romantic during the dog days of the Depression, and he keeps us believing in the power of love even within these dire straits.

3.5/5 Stars

Review: Moonrise (1948)

Posted on February 27, 2018 by 4 Star Films

It’s like being in a long dark tunnel…the way you look and act and talk. ~ Gail Russel as Gilly

From its very foreboding outset, there’s no question that Frank Borzage’s Moonrise could be characterized as film-noir. Everything suggests as much from the scoring to the stylized imagery and even the subject matter. We have hangings, brawls, fistfights, and murder all under 5 minutes of celluloid. But equally important, the film delves into the psychological depths of despair and more than any of Borzage’s films it seems invested in the mental well-being of its characters.

Dan’s personal narrative is brought to us early on. His father was hung for some inexplicable reason. The kids in school brutally tease him about the ignominious shame of his family which he has no control over and all throughout his life thereafter he carries a chip on his shoulder. We don’t quite understand him but at least we begin to empathize. We meet Dan (Dane Clark) again as an adult at a local dance.

That’s where the next chapter in his story begins as he tries to bridle his anger and keep the reins firmly in check. It doesn’t always work so well for him. After all, he is the man with a constant death wish driving cars on wet roads like it’s the Indy 500. He is the man who is prone to strong-arm tactics. He is the man who trusts no one to be his friend and expects very little from others. But he does have one thing going for him.

Her name is Gilly (Gail Russell), she’s the local schoolteacher, and if nothing else her very presence humanizes him. She formerly ran with the local hotshot (Lloyd Bridges) but she has found some quiet decency in Dan and if she sees it, maybe we can see more in him as well. In some ways, he’s still a little boy and she reads him like one of her students with thinly veiled observations. His frumpy Aunt Jessie pins him as a good boy but that doesn’t make up for the absence of his parents or the anger that he still harbors from boyhood.

But a small town setting and a purported crime prove to be an ever-intriguing synthesis of Americana and the ugly underbelly which if it doesn’t rear its head through gossip alone, then murder certainly fits the bill in a pinch. It’s summed up by dances, carnivals, and coon hunts with an undeniable undercurrent of darkness.

As far as I can tell Charles F. Haas had few other feature scripts to his name but his work in Moonrise offers up some interesting figures full of witticism and unique voices that help to differentiate each from the diverse pack.

The bullied mute Henry Morgan is at one time befriended and also berated by Dan. Rex Ingram proves to be a landmark African-American actor for the era, full of a quiet strength and wisdom. As local keeper of the bloodhounds, he addresses his canines as Mr. Dog surmising that everyone is entitled to a certain amount of dignity. Just as importantly, he rightfully asserts that man is a communal being (Man oughta have a woman. Man oughta live with other folks).

The Local Soda Jerk has the jive talk down pat and Lloyd Bridges and Harry Carey Jr. fill in for a couple relatively minor spots. Of course, Ethel Barrymore is in the coveted keynote cameo as Daniel’s sagely Grandma. But aside from Ingram’s significant turn, Alyn Joslyn is one of the more entertaining characters as the sheriff who waxes philosophical. One of townsfolk even notes as much that he should have been a preacher man instead of a lawman.

Cinematically speaking, Moonrise proves that the finest places to meet your best gal seem to be darkened interiors and if nothing else it’s a feast for the eyes and a treat for the audience. And it’s true that with its quaint country backwoods and swamps, Borzage’s picture shares some of its world with Joseph L. Lewis’s Gun Crazy (1950). But for Borzage, in particular, this feels very much like a departure which is by no means a bad thing. Here the love story is still present but it seems to ultimately have a different functionality altogether from many of the director’s most remembered entries.

3.5/5 Stars

Man’s Castle (1933)

Posted on February 24, 2018 by 4 Star Films

“Blessed are the poor in spirit for their’s is the kingdom of heaven”

With Frank Borzage taking on both WWI and WWII in his career it only makes sense that he would take on the event that in many ways bridged them — The Great Depression.

It’s fairly early on in the story where the local resident Ira (Walter Connolly), a minister by day and a night watchman by night cites the Sermon on the Mount and later references 1 Corinthians 1:27. The moral being: Blessed are the poor in spirit and God chooses the lowly things of this world and the despised things to nullify the things that are strong.

If nothing else a character such as Ira is one of the lovable figures in this fairly dank and dreary tale but his words breathe an inherent worth into the masses of everyday individuals slogging their way through the Depression. In many ways, this film is a eulogy to those very people, the downtrodden, the poor, the heavy-laden folks.

But sometimes those same folks seem to come in all shapes and size making it nearly impossible to get a line on them. We first meet Bill (Spencer Tracy) a veteran fast-talking Artful Dodger-type who works the streets of New York in his top hat and tails. In this very first sequence, he’s in the middle of a seemingly frivolous activity offering breadcrumbs to the pigeons.

He catches the young gal (Loretta Young) next to him giving him the eye and calls her out. Although she might not look it, she’s destitute, going without food on two days now so he begrudgingly agrees to treat her to some fine dining. Of course, when the time to pay the check comes so comes the big reveal. Bill is just about as broke as Trina and they get thrown out (at least with full bellies).

For the rest of the film they hold up together in a shantytown in the local Hooverville where the existence is sparse but Trina exists as a happy homemaker whose indefatigable spirit never seems to dampen. Bill spends his days drifting finding bits and pieces of work here and there and in the evenings he comes home to his gal. Any other circumstances and their lives would seem fairly normal.

He playing the breadwinner. She playing his devoted spouse. Except he gets the bread by serving a summons to a local stage performer and stilt walking in his free moments, among other things. But he scrapes together enough to get Trina a new stove for their hovel. The fact that they remain unmarried is invariably inconsequential and Trina’s not looking to tie down her man — she’s far too understanding and open-minded for such thoughts.

And although partially unbelievable its integral in how Tracy’s protagonist reveals his true character. Yes, he is a man with restless feet constantly playing the curmudgeon — disdaining the “ball and chain.” However, there’s an old adage that would be apt in describing him. His bark is worse than his bite.

There’s no conceivable way that two individuals such as this should remain together and even in the film there are moments when their symbiotic relationship seems to be splitting at the seams.

Tracy is brusque and surprisingly stink-eyed but as is his custom he comes around and has the audience on his side for the very fact that Loretta Young is so devoted to him. On her part, the sprightly and ever-effervescent Young at the ripe young age of 20 might be skinny but she holds her own and is crucial to making this love story something of substance.

Borzage once more dissects a romance that’s, in this case, one of the most unlikely pairings but Bill ceaselessly subverts our expectations. He’s not such a bad cad after all and Trina makes him be better than he has any right to be.

In this specific instance, the two lovers get their happy ending clutching each other closely in a pile of hay aboard a freight train. The destination nor the future seems to matter because the underlining factor is they have each other. You’ll be hard-pressed to find many affluent people in this picture and this is an important distinction to make. This is not a screwball comedy. On the contrary, center stage is given to members of society who are usually marginalized and it comes off exceedingly well thanks to Tracy and Young.

3.5/5 Stars

Note: It’s most likely that the cut you will see is the 1938 reissued version following the installation of the Hays Codes. I’m not actually sure if an original print is still available or if it’s considered lost.

7th Heaven (1927)

Posted on February 23, 2018 by 4 Star Films

Seventh_Heaven_1927 7th Heaven is one of those films that revels in classical storytelling where the drama is rich and deep; the score hits all the crescendos and fills them in with the sweetest of notes that are both beautiful and moving. The love scenes are rapturous in a way that makes us hold romance in a higher esteem than we did previously and the horrors of war abhorrently brutalize the world like never before. These are the kind of themes as old as storytelling itself.

Director Frank Borzage would play with these same themes time and time again. I say this with every film of his but it’s so inevitably true. There’s no denying it in any frame within his work. It’s just there and yet in Seventh Heaven, he delivers bar-none his greatest, most extraordinary outcome of his entire career, which must only be seen to be believed.

There has never been such an angelic, more serene and innocent face than Janet Gaynor’s or at least you’d be hard-pressed to find one. I became acquainted with her in F.W. Murnau’s masterful parable of love, Sunrise (1927), but here she is equally demure, reflecting all the many qualities of the most ingenuous of beings.

In this particular scenario, her life is horrible, lived out in utter poverty in France and what’s worse, she is abused and whipped by her tyrannical sister. For a silent film, it feels fairly graphic, and there’s little restraint in showing the sister’s uninhibited rage.

But Diane does find herself a savior or rather he finds her. His name is Chico a sewer worker who is promoted to being a street cleaner. Despite his lowly beginnings, his aspirations are high, constantly geared towards the stars, and he really is a strapping even remarkable fellow, if not simply for the fact that he believes in himself.

Though his most telling trait is his anger toward the Bon Dieu — The Good Lord — or in our common terms, God. As he sees it, he gave the Almighty a chance and look what it got him. Absolutely zilch. That’s why he’s an atheist. God owes him 10 francs.

However, in an individual moment of integrity, he speaks up on Diane’s behalf, taking some of her burden upon himself and claiming to be her husband. The act of charity is not lost on her. She’s grateful but now he’s in a bind. If the detectives call on him and find him unmarried, it’s the hoosegow for him. But being the generally sympathetic spirit that she is, Diane follows him back to his home and agrees to stand-in as his wife for a time. He, in turn, is grateful.

Soon he shares a little bit of his rooftop heaven with her along with some faux-marital bliss where they begin to truly enjoy each other’s company. In this mutually beneficial relationship, they find more than mere altruism. It’s in these interludes where true romance begins to bud between them.

It’s in this heaven above the chaos of the world where they begin to fall in love — it’s a reverie that picks them up and carries them away on clouds of peace, comfort, and contentment. Never before have we seen Diane so at ease and never before have we seen Chico so overjoyed.

But once more war tears apart the hearts of those in love. It’s most overtly reflected in the two scores that battle for supremacy. The passionate love theme playing over their embraces full of kisses and then the shrill call-to-arms playing down on the streets as men march off to battle. It’s the melodious juxtaposed with the harsh. That which is mellifluous clashing with these markers of chaos. Chico is finally called into battle but he is not going to leave his love without making a promise even if it’s in words alone.

Marriage once more is cast in this spiritual light ordained by God and some people would agree that it most certainly is but Borzage seems to take it nearly a step further in that it becomes its own religion — once more this rapturous experience to be undertaken as a form of worship. It’s accentuated by the fact that every day without fail at precisely 11 o’clock they both talk to each other, communing together, rather like a prayer, managing to keep them together wherever they might be from the trenches to the munition factory. Their universal union remains forever intact.

The war sequences are utter chaos for the sheer mass of humanity that is mobilized with dust whirling around, cars zooming down the road, and guns pointed in all directions. It’s a fairly impressive showing of cinematic tumult.

But the film’s ending is a sheer miracle of bright-eyed brilliance — a moment of resurrection that’s so powerful — only felt in a few other films so evocatively. Dreyer’s Ordet (1955) being one of the few examples that comes to mind although presently more titles elude me.

Seventh Heaven ends on yet another spiritual note much as it began. In these final moments, the epiphany is not only a miraculous apotheosis of sorts but the stirring realization that in this narrative the Bon Dieu was always working dynamically in Chico’s life — just not in the ways that he was expecting.

Every time he questioned God’s Will he was met with some sort of answer. One could bring into question if this is, in fact, a “Christian” film but it brings in a multitude of religious themes and readily positions itself as another impassioned depiction of love of the highest order as revealed by Frank Borzage.

4.5/5 Stars

A Farewell to Arms (1932)

Posted on February 22, 2018 by 4 Star Films

394px-Poster_-_A_Farewell_to_Arms_(1932)_01 Again, I must confess that I have not read yet another revered American Classic. I have not read A Farewell to Arms…But from the admittedly minor things I know about Hemingway’s prose and general tone, this film adaptation is certainly not a perfectly faithful translation of its source material. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

However, I do know at least a little something about Frank Borzage a filmmaker that time has been less kind to, though he contributed some quality pictures during the silent era and during the ensuing generation of talkies — even a couple of reputed classics. And yet watching A Farewell to Arms you can see his philosophies working themselves into the story line — the very themes that he would repeat again and again in many of his movies.

It soon becomes apparent that Borzage’s film is not about a war at all though WWI is a major plot point. He would examine an analogous idea with The Mortal Storm. Its his predilection not to focus so much on the carnage or alienation of war and more so on the effects that such a cataclysmic event has on the lives of those thrust into the middle of it. So his narrative borrows from Hemingway but hinges on this idea of lovers battling against the wiles of the world through the sheer euphoria of their romantic fling and yet it proves to be more than transient.

There’s without question a verisimilitude and a candor to the portrayals of Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes as said lovers — an ambulance driver and a nurse. Two seemingly unextraordinary individuals who nevertheless become extraordinary in each other’s arms. They will go to such great lengths to remain together despite the obstacles hindering them on every side. Perhaps it’s heightened by the times but still, there is this general belief in what they do on the part of the audience — that they can actually fall in love and will do whatever it takes to stay together.

Even if it’s not wholly plausible, they lend that needed credence to the parts. Their emotions feel genuine even as their romance gets crippled by the very circumstances they find themselves in. Where years are sped up into days and marriage must be forged in the most humble of moments. There’s no time or space for a normal life with a normal love affair even if that’s what both parties desire. It cannot be so.

Gary Cooper exudes a gentle tenderness in the majority of his scenes and he manages to be as vulnerable as we’ve ever seen him in the part because this romance tears him apart. Helen Hayes is an actress that I, unfortunately, know very little about but she strikes me as a beauty like Claudette Colbert and yet I find an easier time liking her and by some form of transference, the same goes for the character that she plays. It’s also crucial to note the splendorous black & white cinematography of Charles Lang which paints the contours of this love affair with expressionistic shades while never quite allowing us to forget the war at hand.

Though we can compare Borzage’s film with the original novel it seems equally compelling to juxtapose this cinematic adaptation of A Farewell to Arms with Joseph von Sternberg’s romance, Morocco, of only two years prior also starring Gary Cooper and Adolphe Menjou with von Sternberg’s muse Marlene Dietrich. Hayes doesn’t have the same gravitas or allure of Dietrich but that actually serves her better in this film with what Borzage is trying to accomplish.

Because this story is a tragedy as much as it is a romance of faithful devotion. Whereas von Sternberg seems most interested in the locality and the depictions of his stars — allowing them to have looser morals, you could make the argument that Borzage film holds a greater stake in its thematics and what such a romance can represent in such a turbulent world. The Great War is only an unfortunate backdrop to play the action against and it’s unfortunate because love is a rapturous thing. But it’s the many evils of the world that tear it asunder. The kind of troubles that force two people to bid each other a tearful adieu even if it’s the last thing they want in the world.

3.5/5 Stars