Joan Crawford and Frank 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 Leo G. Carroll), becomes a meeting of the minds and a pact to keep their boozy proprietor alive. She doesn’t want 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 know 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 suggestion. 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.

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

Libeled Lady (1936)

Posted on July 30, 2026 by 4 Star Films

The topical sweet spot of screwball comedy, journalism, and ocean-liner romances makes Libeled Lady feel like a quintessential 1930s movie. Trusted studio director Jack Conway and the stars peg it as prime MGM.

Spencer Tracy is Warren Haggerty, the managing editor of the New York Evening Star. He’s pulled away from the altar because the paper has made a major boo-boo. In his absence, they erroneously published a story about aristocrat Connie Allenbury. Before they can quash the story, her influential father James (Walter B. Connolly) gets a copy and prepares to slam them with a libel suit.

There’s only one man who can save the paper from utter ruin, and so they go tracking down a real firecracker named Bill Chandler (William Powell) all across the country and all over the world. Of course, he’s right under their noses all the time, barely able to pay his hotel bill.

The two men converge on one another, looking to feel each other out because they both have something they need. It makes for great comedy because this situational irony underpins every proceeding action. Likewise, Tracy and Powell taking stabs at each other is one of the great cinematic pleasures in life because they both have a knack for it. Ultimately, Chandler leverages his position and agrees to bail them out for a small fee.

It calls for him to “marry” Haggerty’s girl. The peeved bride-to-be is Jean Harlow, who makes the part something because she’s a girl who can give it as well as she takes it. Gladys is conscripted into their ploy, and it’s the absurdity that such a picture thrives on. Once Chandler has “married” Gladys, he will woo Ms. Allenbury, and then the Evening Star will either retroactively have proof for their baseless story or, better yet, new fodder will be whipped up. The loopier the better, and they make it stick.

Harlow’s character is indignant and also proves her to be one of the great comediennes, schmoozing with her faux husband and hamming it up with the boys. The intertextual relations between Powell and Harlow certainly help matters, because you can read their real relationship into the convoluted pseudo-couplings of the film, all played for comedy.

Bill gets to work meeting the jovial Mr. Allenbury and his far more guarded daughter. As part of the game, he coaches himself on all types of fishing, including anglers because his mark is an avid fisherman; Loy’s quick to pick up that Mr. Chandler is quite the “angler” himself. He even has a fishing instructor sent to their honeymoon suite to learn how to hook curtains and lampshades (if not fish).

Of course, Loy and Powell prove themselves to be another cinematic dream team. My wires probably got crossed somewhere, but to my mind, they’re one of the most prolific screen couples ever. Libeled Lady is another ticklish feather in their cap.

Their excursion out on the stream bed devolves into a wonderfully goofy corralling of a fabled trout as Powell goes splashing and stumbling through the frigid waters. What’s most curious about the moment is how it’s not drummed up with a lot of score, but we just have the sound of the water as Powell struggles hook, line, and sinker like any of us would. He’s an amiable hero, and though it’s funny, it’s a turning point: the moment Loy likes him for real. Perhaps he realizes too that if he tries to be something different, it’s really possible to change (Maybe it’s just a good joke).

But he and Loy have some wonderful moments of more sentimental chemistry. It makes the relationship feel less like the required beats of a plot we know must end badly when he’s caught in a lie. If you’re like me, you like them together, and you have goodwill from the movies they made previously. We want the best for them no matter the screwball antics at the film’s disposal.

These moments are suspended in time. And what’s more, for these isolated instances with Harlow and Tracy out of the frame, they nearly steal away the picture and make it their own like so many others. It’s a credit to the strength of the ensemble that you’re never going to forget their other scene partners completely. They’re too shrewd and incomparable as performers in their own right.

Tracy throws out the middle man, and Conway forgoes any kind of interstitial exposition, allowing the newspaperman to cut straight to the chase with Mrs. Allenbury, reasoning with her to drop the libel suit. The fact he’s cut out all the fancy stratagems shows his genuine desperation. Part of it is Chandler.

Haggerty has the feeling the man he’s hired might have been working on the wrong girl — his girl — though it’s exactly the opposite. He was working so well on the right girl that it affected him, and he found himself changed. He’s falling in love.

The two men have a pointed conversation of innuendo as Myrna Loy looks on without the foggiest notion, or maybe she just doesn’t care. Instantly, the ball is in Tracy’s court; he seems to hold the power because he knows the other man’s secret. He’s caught him in something.

However, soon after, Tracy stands astounded at his news desk as his nemesis waltzes in with his fiancée. They just went dancing, and she’s not going to oust him as they had planned. There’s nothing particularly elegant about the blocking because there doesn’t need to be. This time Harlow’s in the middle of the frame, though favoring her “husband,” and we have quite a different dynamic. This round goes to Powell.

For all his grousing, we begin to feel a little sorry for Tracy. If this keeps up, he’s going to be jobless and girless. A lovely bit of narrative verve and confluence brings them together in one space to have it out as we always imagined they would. We go ping-ponging with every imaginable plot twist one could imagine, and we would expect nothing less for such a screwy story. But the joy is watching everyone end up where they need to be, and the cockeyed journey to get there is just about as fun courtesy of our stars.

MGM was always hailed as the studio with more stars than there are in the heavens. I take this to be attributed mostly to prestige pictures and early Oscar bait. However, Libeled Lady is a reminder that screwball comedies are no less indebted to the studio system. Very rarely have we seen a picture hum with stars of this caliber.

4/5 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

The Seventh Cross (1944)

Posted on August 29, 2025 by 4 Star Films

Fred Zinnemann had one of his first Hollywood successes with the daring Seventh Cross. Since he was Austrian and lost family to the concentration camps, the personal nature of the material is unquestionable. He takes the novel by fellow Austrian emigre Anna Seghers and packs the story full with a wealth of European emigre actors and a few choice Americans as well. What it delivers is a stirring testament to humanity and the joining together of grit and determination in the face of oppressive evil.

I actually don’t mind Spencer Tracy playing the lead in the picture because it has the Hollywood bent of the studio system. Like casting James Stewart as a Hungarian in The Shop Around The Corner, there’s a collective understanding that Tracy’s attributes, as a kind of grounded everyman, are what matter most. It helps make this very specific and personal story a universal story for all men to see themselves in.

He is one of seven prisoners who make a nighttime escape from a Nazi concentration camp. As they all break off from one another and go their separate ways, we know the goal is the active pursuit of survival in a malevolent world. There’s nothing more fundamental, and we walk alongside George Heisler as he searches out any old friends and his former flame, who might be able to help him in his dire need.

Meanwhile, all the other prisoners are mercilessly rounded up and hung up on the crosses erected by the camp commandant; they are meant to be a warning sign to anyone else, but everyone knows the inherent metaphor. They are martyrs to the cause like the thief hung next to Christ. There is hope that they will one day see paradise.

The story utilizes a dead man’s voiceover before Billy Wilder took the device for Sunset Blvd. Here it feels a bit more like a crutch to distill Anna Seghers novel down; he lives as a ghostly subconscious entreating Heisler to remember the address 46 Morganstrasse…

At its best, the movie becomes a lyrical pilgrimage for this character as he’s privy to the kindness, passivity, and utter heartlessness of common people, each in turn. Because at your lowest, when you have nowhere to go and you rely solely on the good graces of others, this is where their true nature becomes evident.

I can see Classic Hollywood films, taking on Nazism, being derided in a modern context for going too soft, especially if you have a preconceived notion of what they might be. Certainly, these artists didn’t know every atrocity that had been perpetrated, but they were not stuck with their heads in the ground. In many cases, they knew far better than the general American public.

There’s immense consequence to everything within the frame, and Zinnemmann brings many searing evils to the screen, both seen and unseen. The aforementioned cross imagery is bleak iconography borrowed from Seghers. There are little boys with Nazi armbands rumbling around town to try and tattle and find fugitives.

One of the runaways, a formerly famed trapeze artist, must flee across the rooftops as locals gawk at the show and the Nazis hunt him down like cornered game. He takes one final curtain call after being mortally wounded and leaps forward in total serenity. It’s his final performance with his last breath. Heisler watches the scene, and before catching the ending, he disappears around the corner grimly.

His former flame Leni (Kaaren Verne) vowed to wait for him, but now she’s married and terrified to see him. The fear in her eyes manifests itself in brusque accusations. He has nothing but fondness for her; he’s requesting food and accommodation, and she will give him nothing. He stuffs a few crusts of bread in his pocket and disappears, feeling totally betrayed.

There’s another particularly unnerving scene. As the dragnet closes around George, he gets a tip about a doctor who might be sympathetic and can bandage him up for a wound. He pays a call on the man. Dr. Lowenstein (Steven Geray) states in accordance with the law that he must tell his patients before working on them that he is Jewish.

There might be other contemporary cinematic depictions of the Nuremberg laws or other anti-Jewish legislation like this, but the mundanity of this institutionalized prejudice is like ice in the veins. It’s right there in the open and in the face of this, the doctor still chooses to do an act of good.

Our hero is graced by another generous soul when he’s put up in a Hofbrau on his perilous road to freedom. By now, his name and likeness are all over the papers; Toni (Signe Hasso) the barmaid, could turn him, and yet she doesn’t. They share the kind of solitary love story that exists suspended in movies or those real-life moments where there is no time to stop and think before two ships pass on in the night.

George Macready even gets one of his first opportunities to play a conflicted, if ultimately sympathetic man caught in the crosshairs of the war and his own personal comforts. It takes all kinds for the sake of the cause.

Hume Cronyn shows up over halfway into the movie, and he is our respite. Paul Roeder might have the first genuine smile in the entire film with his domestic life alongside his wife, Liesel (Jessica Tandy), being a refuge from the hopeless world at large. He treats George well, symbolizing the growing tide toward human decency.

What he also represents is another viewpoint. The movie has the right to paint the Nazis as villains, and yet it does present a German character like Paul, who has been mostly shielded from the horrors.

What he sees is the economic prosperity and the help he’s received as he goes about providing for his wife and caring for his kids. The government has done good by him, and this is what he holds onto. George must help him see the other side and bet on the human proclivity toward good, even if we must forgive how easily Paul gets away from SS interrogation.

For being a film with so much grief and oppression — even if it’s fashioned on a Hollywood backlot — the movie does ring even more resolutely with this affirmation of human dignity. Instead of labeling it mere naivety, I prefer to see the optimism as represented by Paul and the little people.

Felix Bressart has the briefest cameo as the local delicatessen owner who brings George sustenance for the long journey ahead. Like his Shylock speech in To Be or Not To Be, he comes to signify the entire picture with his resolute encouragement. He doesn’t know the man, and yet he extends this generous hand; he’s just one of the faithful worker ants who will not let goodness die. Together, they can overcome.

What the film does well is distill these sentiments into individual human interactions we get to observe and imbibe as an audience. So although we are not completely inured to the state of the world, we are not blinded to it either, like Paul.

In 1944, there was still much of the war to be fought and won. Thus, The Seventh Cross does feel like a daring picture and one with immeasurable worth. I’m not sure if it was appreciated in its day, but looking back on it, there is much to admire in its incisive self-awareness.

3.5/5 Stars

A Guy Named Joe (1943)

Posted on August 27, 2025 by 4 Star Films

Although I would probably choose 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, a movie also penned by Dalton Trumbo and featuring Spencer Tracy and Van Johnson, there are numerous reasons to search out A Guy Named Joe.

This was Van Johnson’s first starring role, allowing him to craft a stage presence that would only become more self-assured with time. It nearly got derailed by a gruesome car accident that purportedly left him with a plate in his forehead. And yet out of this came one of the most popular young stars of his day.

Also, Irene Dunne, one of the often unsung comediennes and finest dramatic actresses of the 30s and 40s, gets the opportunity to show her stuff opposite Tracy. I will never miss an opportunity to see her because she’s easy to rate next to other luminaries like Katharine Hepburn and Barbara Stanwyck.

Some well-informed viewers might also be aware that Steven Spielberg transposed the action to the 1980s with his light remake, Always, starring Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, and a cameo by Audrey Hepburn. It’s easy to surmise the later film misses out on the historical context, making A Guy Named Joe about something immediate.

Pete Sandidge (Tracy) is your stereotypical loose cannon, hotshot who’s always receiving the ire of his superior (James Gleason). Nevertheless, the two of them maintain a playful game of cat and mouse because deep down, they both know they’re invested in the same cause.

Pete’s also reunited with his effervescent girlfriend, the alliterative Dorinda Durston (Dunne). She also flies planes, albeit not in combat. All the lovey-dovey grousing and such isn’t new, but between Tracy and Dunne with Ward Bond as the third wheel, it’s inherently watchable. They channel a love-hate relationship: getting sore at each other and making up in a passionate reverie.

Tracy and Dunne aren’t normally associated, and yet watching them together is an immeasurable pleasure because they have a grand capacity for bits of sly humor and shared humanity, elevating the material above mediocre fare.

The movie also boasts some impressive and truly immersive aerial sequences as Pete leads his men on one of their perilous bombing raids against the enemy. This latest mission also signals a shift in the story; a fatal crash occurs, and Pete’s last gasp of heroism means he’s good and dead.

He’ll spend the rest of the movie as a guardian angel, though he’s more like a ghost. So A Guy Named Joe quickly shifts from a purely WWII picture to another film in the cinematic angel canon (It should come as no surprise that producer Everett Riskin also worked on Here Comes Mr. Jordan).

Pete walks through the clouds of the afterlife not with a harp but a decidedly more militaristic objective. There’s a pointed weightiness in casting by making Lionel Barrymore the CO of the heavenly realms. He passes down to the newly deceased his marching orders: He will be serving as an unseen co-pilot to some new recruits.

Again, the movie shifts to focus on Don DeFore and Van Johnson as two problem flyers still wet behind the ears. Johnson plays a wealthy, if diffident, young man named Ted Randall who can barely keep his plane airborne. Tracy shudders at the future of the war in the hands of such callow talent, but he tries to get them up to speed anyway, albeit subconsciously.

These sequences are rather mundane because, unlike other stories in the angel canon, Tracy’s connection to the real world is very thin compared to Claude Rains, Cary Grant, or even Henry Travers in It’s a Wonderful Life.

The movie picks up again when Van Johnson is on the ground and progressing in confidence. We see an early pairing of Johnson and a nearly unrecognizable Esther Williams, perhaps because she’s not robed in Technicolor and a swimsuit. They share a dance, and he extends an act of kindness to a homesick soldier.

Tracy is forced into being an observer in the physical sense, and somehow, the passivity doesn’t suit him. It’s good for a few gags and dress downs of former friends and colleagues who can’t hear him, but it becomes a bit of a gimmick.

And after waving a movie about Tracy and Dunne in front of us, it tries its best to stitch together something between Dunne and Johnson that just feels a bit disjointed and forced.

Still, A Guy Named Joe has these compartmentalized moments of human connection, laughter, and tears, making it more than worthwhile. You get the sense of the war years, the transience that these young men and women felt on so many accounts. Be it the death of friends and comrades, or even the distance of loved ones so far away. Everything spells heightened emotions.

To its credit, I never thought I would see a movie with Irene Dunne breaking ranks to fly a bombing raid solo and drop a payload on a Japanese target. There’s something both ludicrous and oddly progressive about it, never mind how it seems to muddle the collectivist themes the movie seems to be aiming for.

However, the fact that there can be no catharsis for Tracy and his lost love might be a final lesson about the war years. It is a dream and a desire that cannot be fulfilled. In its wake, Johnson and Dunne must chase after each other instead in a swelling romantic ending without any earthly consequences as Spence disappears into the distance. It’s a pale imitation, but it will have to do.

3/5 Stars

Keeper of The Flame (1942)

Posted on August 25, 2025 by 4 Star Films

Keeper of The Flame strikes me as good ol’ fashioned Hollywood storytelling. It’s conveyed through a fatal opening car crash and a flashing montage of newspapers spelling the death of that great American institution, Robert Forrest. We’re hooked immediately as the story keeps on rolling.

The world itself in the formerly sleepy town has the definitive consciousness of Home Front America, full of interiors and then exterior-looking interiors, all on the studio lot. Moreover, there’s a frantic industry and a general chaos in the face of shortages, bringing out American know-how and good humor in the face of everyday adversity.

Namely, a bevy of journalists and well-wishers descending on the place not fit to handle such an overflow, especially during wartime. A harried Donald Meek monitors the telephone line and does his best to get the flood of people in front of him booked in any vacant rooms still available.

Steven O’Malley (Spencer Tracy) wanders in unannounced and mostly unseen. He pays respects to an old friend who barely recognizes him. It’s the eyes. He gives Janey (Audrey Christie) that quiet congenial Spencer Tracy look, and she asks quizzically if it hurt much when Hitler gave him the boot.

We glean he must have been a war correspondent, either based in a concentration camp or the Berlin press bureau. Their jokes are casual. You know they must do this in their line of work and in 1942, we can hazard a guess they don’t know the full extent of what they’re saying.

Christie has the whip smart repartee of a journalistic working woman a la Rosalind Russell. Since the house is packed, she coyly registers him as her “husband,” though there’s another colleague up for her affections (a young Stephen McNally).

O’Malley has an aspiration to get into the grieving Mrs. Forrest so he might share her husband’s story with the people. Riffing off of It Happened One Night, his pals quip that she’s the Queen of Jericho and he’s no Joshua. The walls of her castle won’t come down for just anybody. Though Tracy always had a certain dogged tenacity about him, and that’s what makes him a compelling, active hero.

Algonquin Round Table alum Donald Ogden Stewart builds out his screenplay in the opening act with all these intriguing nooks and crannies and characters who seem capable of existing of their own accord with intricate backstories.

Howard Da Silva is a guarded vet of the Argonne and de facto groundskeeper of the Forrest estate. A little boy (Darryl Hickman) grieving the wake of this great man from a lamppost; we learn he too has an intimate connection to the deceased.

There’s another relation to Mrs. Forrest who’s equally distrustful of the press and drinks his sorrows away with ginger ale. The dead man’s bespectacled press secretary (Richard Whorf) chooses a different approach: He’s highly elegiac and accommodating because his job requires levels of PR, though there’s plenty he’s not letting on about.

Beyond Christie, a personal favorite is the peculiar old cabbie (Percy Kilbride), laconic and chewing his cud while offering up homespun wisdom. He provides O’Malley transportation to and fro as the journalist pokes around for his story.

We know from a fair distance Keeper of The Flame is a kind of grade-A American propaganda piece, and it finally becomes most explicit when Tracy gives a little soft-spoken speech to Daryll Hickman about not letting the unseen enemy make them slaves and kick them around by putting chains on their minds and tongues.

In its defense, it’s mostly soft-pedaled moralizing because Tracy’s soapbox is small and he has a way of making the serum of slightly hokey words tolerable thanks to his usual candor.

However, the local doctor (Frank Craven) provides one of the most telling remarks after paying a house call to the imposing estate: “Ever since we’ve been falling out of touch with God, we’ve become pushovers for hero fever.” When he speaks of a young woman who was sent away, he surmises, “You don’t fall in love with a god, you just worship him.” He’s a sympathetic fellow and in making his opinion of Forrest quite clear, it’s one of the first dubious signs we have to go on.

These ideas are thematically rich with potential, not to mention controversy. The movie becomes less so with the tinges of forested and thunderous gothic melodrama. Coincidentally, it’s not material I would immediately attribute to George Cukor although the 1940s were replete with such fare.

And it’s true there is a vague Citizen Kane-like bend to the story of a prominent man now dead. Although I also think of Welles’s other great figurehead Harry Lime for casting a shadow over the film, which is not too dissimilar to Hitchcock’s Rebecca, albeit gender swapped. These are mostly uncharitable comparisons and few can argue the point.

Katharine Hepburn might seem uncharacteristic in something so grim and restrained, but she proves her capacity for it. While I always am skeptical of her as a shy wallflower in a picture like Undercurrent, she handles this tormented role with a certain inscrutability. Although I don’t know if even she can manage keeping the story from getting out of hand.

There’s something in it on the tip of my tongue tying into almost John Fordesque mythmaking, whether it be Fort Apache or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Sometimes you print the legend to protect people because the truth is too destructive to reveal. Except Tracy isn’t squeamish about giving the electorate a sober reality check.

In this regard, it feels like a daring sort of picture and you wonder if this was the saving grace, making it a draw for audiences beyond the conspicuous nature of the romance and brooding genre elements.

Still, the initial propaganda moments burn off only to come back like a raging conflagration. Hepburn brings them back again and she drops them right in our laps when she mentions fascism as embodied by her late husband. In one sense, it’s an impressive rallying cry and also an utter disappointment given the film’s best parts.

The finale of literal fire and water is all things histrionic and ham-fisted. Hardly the film’s finest achievement. All of this comes with a convenient ending, but I suppose in wartime you give the people what they want — assuming this was it.

Even with the underlying sentiment, Keeper of The Flame still has its moments that feel downright groundbreaking, and better yet, the wit of the supporting characters lives on in the mind’s eye. Alas, this was not meant to be.

Most of all, I regretted characters like Audrey Christie and Percy Kilbride fading away without consideration; I suppose they were sacrificed on the altar of a greater cause. I understand the sentiment and still, it feels like a waste of a stellar set-up for such conventional ends — even if it was for the sake of galvanizing wartime propaganda.

Perhaps this is all the more reason to want more out of the film. This is a good impulse because it means there are more than a few things worthy of praise.

I’ve only one final thought. In many ways the movie presages what Jacqueline Kennedy chose to do in the wake of her husband’s tragic death. More than once in the movie, an allusion is made to Abraham Lincoln, and Jackie made sure her husband had a funeral evoking that of the nation’s first slain president.

Then, at his final resting place in Arlington Cemetery, there burns an eternal flame. She was the keeper of that flame — solidifying his stature for generations of Americans. I won’t get into conjecture about her husband’s legacy, but it does play as an intriguing counterpoint to this film’s central figure.

3.5/5 Stars

CMBA Blogathon: The Last Hurrah (1958)

Posted on May 20, 2024 by 4 Star Films

This is my entry in the Spring CMBA Blogathon Debuts and Last Hurrahs.

In the isolated occasions when I had to debate in high school classes those who did this kind of thing for fun and seemed most destined for politics, were all people I would never want to vote for regardless of affiliation.

Because it seemed like there was a self-selecting bias. The people who wanted, nay desired, this kind of world, were not ones I necessarily respected.

How could a decent person of moral fiber get through and win? The cynical answer is they can’t unless they are propped up by a political apparatus of some kind. However, before I sound too jaded, I still am optimistic there are good people working in government.

No one would confuse John Ford’s The Last Hurrah for a tirade against big government and political machines. This is not a Frank Capra picture. Instead, there’s a certain level of give and take, a nuance, celebrating a style of old-fashioned politics while acknowledging the need for political strategy and networks.

No director brought more of the Irish-American experience to film than John Ford and you see it from his Calvary westerns to his West Point hagiographies, and even a portrait of his homeland like The Quiet Man.

Frank Skeffington (Spencer Tracy) is in the midst of his latest and perhaps final foray campaigning for the mayorship in a New England town. His personal entourage of right-hand men in bowler hats (including Pat O’Brien and James Gleason in his final role) have seen him through everything.

My initial observation is that this is a mature man’s game. The young (including myself) seem like idiots. His son (Arthur Walsh) isn’t registered to vote, doesn’t watch the debates, and is always running off after golf or other frivolous entertainments.

Another local magnate (Basil Rathbone) who opposes Skeffington has a son (O.Z. Whitehead) who makes a fool of himself by unwittingly accepting the position of local fire commissioner. Skeffington has instant leverage against his old adversary. Then, there’s an up-and-coming appointment — a young Catholic war hero and lawyer. More on him in a moment.

Skeffington is not naïve. He knows how to play the game. He’s continually pragmatic, pressing his advantages and the alliances at his disposal and knowing what it takes to win. You don’t maintain the office year after year without knowing the rules of the game. Perhaps Ford casts him with a rose-colored, nostalgic tinge, but at least he has some scruples or at least a sense of who his people and electorate are. Because he’s been knee-deep in the community.

His most obvious opponent is an unknown newcomer named McCluskey, and it becomes apparent he feels like a caricature cutout of John F. Kennedy if the man lacked charisma and intelligence.

Of course, JFK was a famously photogenic figurehead who used Frank Sinatra jingles, his public image, along with a platform to beat out Richard Nixon in 1960 (He also hailed from one of the most influential families of its day thanks in part to his father Joe Kennedy).

Nixon himself practically instigated the political television revolution with the pathos appeal of his Checkers speech in 1952, and thenceforward the televised debate presaged a radical new kind of American politics. The rules changed.

Adam Caulfield (Jeffrey Hunter), Skeffington’s nephew, works as a sportswriter at a local paper. His editor (John Carradine) fights tooth and nail against Skeffington with an obsessive grudge, throwing every iota he has behind McCluskey so he might vanquish his mortal enemy. Adam is far more accommodating and has a congenial relationship with his uncle.

When he pays the seasoned politician a visit, Skeffington calls politics the greatest spectator sport! He invites Adam to cover the events and tells him in confidence that he wants to try and win a campaign race one last time the old-fashioned way; he’s astute enough to know his days are numbered thanks to television and other readymade forms of advertising.

Although it’s not mentioned explicitly I can imagine Skeffington admired the political acumen and rhetorical vigor of a great American stalwart like Abraham Lincoln. John Ford of course made a whole film about his early years and rise to prominence before he ever became president.

I mention this only to echo the thoughts of Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death. Our culture shifted drastically from a literary culture where arguments were well-thought-out and expounded upon in debates hours long. And yet in the 1950s and 60s, we see this concurrent shift to a visual, image-based society.

Suddenly we watch campaigns being won and lost by optics, the most beautiful people, or those with the largest media share. It’s a far cry from the past and this is part that’s being memorialized. It’s a strange thing to be reminiscing about a world cataloged most comically in a movie like The Great McGinty, but there is something rather quaint about it compared to the juggernauts of media and consolidated power at work today on a global scale. It dwarfs anything out of the past by sheer scope and reach.

The whole film might easily be encapsulated by a few adjoining sequences. There’s a quiet scene with Anna Lee. Her husband Knocko has passed and left her little to nothing to subsist on. In an act of sheepish compassion at the kitchen table, Tracy offers her a sum of money on behalf of his dead wife. It feels like a pretense he’s made up, and yet here no one sees his kindness aside from the camera.

However, he sticks around for Knocko’s wake, and it becomes an extension of his political campaign. When word gets out, everyone seems to be coming by to pay their respects too, though it feels more like posturing. These moments can be humorous, darkly cynical, and still somehow have glimpses of communal warmth.

Taken on the whole, The Last Hurrah is a grand picture with a lot of cast, story, and ambition. But all that space gives Ford the opportunity to move around in and go to work with his gaze set on humanity. It’s the communal events or moments of ritual where Ford is at his finest: dances, weddings; here it’s a wake and a funeral.

I mentioned Capra before and his pictures, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington in particular, decry the mechanism of the political machine. However, the adapted novel and surely Ford as well had a prescience about them.

He somehow bridges a gap between Capra’s cinema, Sturges’s McGinty, and the emerging landscape. Because Elia Kazan in some ways would depict our certain future with A Face in the Crowd. It offered up a harsh critique focused on a country bumpkin turned charlatan who uses television to captivate the public and wield his newfound influence for political gain.

In such a climate the old guard like Skeffington can no longer exist. Part of this is the march of time. There are aspects of him that feel archaic and ugly with his back parlor dealings. And yet in the same breath, as we look at the vitriol that is shoveled today and the proliferation of social media, it does feel almost quaint. Again, this might be naivete speaking. We so quickly forget the political muckraking of prior centuries because we were not there.

I had to sit with this film, and the longer I was with it the more it moved me. Ford does what he does best by eulogizing someone he deems to be an everyday American hero. The flaws are laid bare and still, he can be lauded as a great man by all those he groused so bitterly with all through the years. On his deathbed, before he is about to be given the last rites, the local Cardinal (Donald Crisp) comes to ask his forgiveness. They have been at odds, bitter rivals, and yet, in the end, there is grace and mutual respect.

It feels like a beautiful testament, like a bygone sentiment we rarely see in politics today. Because Skeffington does signal the end of something — maybe it’s the classical statesman or something else.

Spencer Tracy lying on his deathbed is a picture of blissful contentment, and he has the feisty spirit of an Irishman to the end. The film has all the hallmarks of a swan song, but thankfully he and Ford still had so much to offer us respectively, and in their final years they continued to deliver some of their most rewarding work.

4/5 Stars

Me and My Gal (1932): Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett

Posted on May 23, 2022 by 4 Star Films

Spencer Tracy falls easily into the role of an Irish cop on the beat, Danny Dolan, working in the heart of the pier on the Lower East Side. What stands out immediately is his humanity and good-natured benevolence extended to his neighbors. In a matter of minutes, he’s nabbed himself a banana, rescued a dog, and drummed up a bit of small talk with a pretty cashier (Joan Bennett).

The film itself provides a fairly simple framework. Director Raoul Walsh finds himself sculpting a world out of characterizations and vignettes, not unlike future endeavors like Strawberry Blonde or Gentleman Jim. But it showcases precisely how a couple of weeks of shooting can translate into an enjoyable piece of work.

Dolan falls into company with a detective named Al (Adrian Morris) hanging around the docks and watching out for a big-time gangster named Duke Castanega. However, before they can roll out the welcome wagon, they get accosted and thoroughly distracted by the most persistent drunks in film history (Will Stanton). He’s in a perpetual state of belligerent inebriation only made funnier by the fact he’s probably the scrawniest character in the whole picture.

One of the other scenes bursting with life comes in the wake of the marriage of Kate Riley with her sister Helen (Bennett) by her side. Soon the minister has summed up the proceedings and every man looks to get a smooch from the bride before her nebbish husband can get in edgewise.

Soon the after-party is flowing with beer, belches, drumsticks, and boisterous conversation. Walsh pulls out a trick he would use later in Gentleman Jim where his characters speak to the camera. Actually, they speak over and past it and what it does is intuitive, bringing us into the fold of the movie. So right in this moment, we as an audience are there at the wedding experiencing the frenzy with everyone else.

The chemistry sparks early between Tracy and Bennett, and it slowly grows into a mutual appreciation. He does her a good deed at her sister’s wedding, turning a blind eye and earning points with her blustering father. Later, Danny and Helen trade advice: He straightens his new bowler and she stops chewing gum.

One of their lighter moments on the beat involves the aforementioned drunk in yet another altercation. This time they must defuse a confrontation involving a man who was slapped in the face with a fish. It doesn’t fall into the realm of high-brow comedy, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be delightful.

For Me and My Gal — like many films from bygone eras — also has standalone details we can look at from our current station in history and truly appreciate. A radio salesman pulls out all the tricks to get the Rileys to bite on his best merchandise. The budding couple eat vanilla ice cream together in the kitchen, and a cup of java is two bits.

Even better is the linguistic education. Sporting the new bowler, one asks the other “Well, how do I look?” They say “Jake” with a playful flick of the brim and a superlative adjective is born. Likewise, the weighty insult getting hurled around on all sides is “beezock.” Look it up.

In fact, nothing’s sacred. They take a few minutes to razz a contemporary moving picture where they say one thing out loud, and then a minute later express what they really think. The way they amuse themselves with this gag feels like unusual territory for the era as we hear their inner thoughts playing against their spoken words (in a prodding nod to the movie Strange Interlude).

As he tugs her down and she plops on the couch next to him, they are such a wonderful portrait of romance so perfectly in sync. In these self-reflexive sequences, I couldn’t help but find my mind drifting to Joan Bennett and Spencer Tracy. They both had long and illustrious careers, and almost 20 years later they would play opposite one another in a starkly different picture: Father of the Bride.

For now, they are young and in love. Bursting with all sorts of sass and equally romantic elan. Take the scene later on when he charges into her hash house aiming to marry her, and she’s clattering around behind the counter giving him her glib repartee. It’s the way romance is supposed to play out and around all the cliché beats of wanted gangsters and what-have-you, these are the other elements of the movie that feel singular and almost transcendent.

These are the little “pieces of time” Jimmy Stewart said actors can give an audience. When they reach over the counter to kiss, the embrace sends both their feet shooting up in the air like a pair of cinderellas. Tracy’s a terribly genial chap, but he works all the better with an able sparring partner. Bennett has a whipsmart, blistering independence about her, and she’s also constantly at the defense of her cowering sister.

Kate’s one weakness is the man she’s trying to forget, an escaped gangster named Duke (Walsh’s brother George). We know where the picture is going after a prison escape, the sheltering of a fugitive in an attic, and a brazen bank robbery. Only one logical resolution remains. There’s the obligatory confrontation and Tracy becomes a hero. Why dwell on any of this? We’ve seen it umpteen times before (and after).

Walsh seems to have a great deal more fun in the final minutes. Now there is a second wedding in process, and it’s yet another excuse for mayhem. We sit there trying to take it all in as Tracy and Bennett get whisked around, swamped by people, trading kisses. How lovely it is to be a part of this contingent living vicariously off their energy.

Spencer Tracy always makes the toils of an actor feel effortless and Bennett does a swell job to counter him. People don’t talk much about their onscreen partnership, but it’s pleasantly appealing. In the back of our minds, we know with content in our hearts Me and My Gal was just the beginning. More people should seek it out.

3.5/5 Stars

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944): WWII Written by Dalton Trumbo

Posted on November 17, 2020 by 4 Star Films

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“One-hundred and thirty-one days after December 7, 1941, a handful of young men, who had never dreamed of glory, struck the first blow at the heart of Japan. This is their true story we tell here.”

It’s easy enough to lump Air Force and Destination Tokyo with this subsequent film because we have the impediment of years between us. We have yet another cast rallied around a star; this time it’s Spencer Tracy leading the charge, as the pragmatic James Doolittle, on a highly confidential mission that would be known to future generations as the Doolittle Raids.

In the contemporary moment, if they had enough time and/or money an audience would possibly have a much easier time differentiating because each picture took on a slightly unique facet of the war. Air Force is all but a flying fortress in the days leading up to and directly following Pearl Harbor. Destination Tokyo is about the recon needed for the Doolittle Raid. 30 Seconds Over Tokyo is a bit like the triumphant exclamation point or at least the start of one.

The work wasn’t done for the Allies but it was a sign of forward progress. And with the benefit of hindsight, we can fill in the open-ended conclusion. We know V-J Day eventually happened only a year later. Consequently, it was also deemed one of the more accurate war pictures as far as military details go.

Much of Tracy’s time is spent as a no-nonsense observer of what is going on. The rest of his performance feels like it’s made up of monologues and yet, as is normally the case, he’s so candid and earnest when he delivers them. He quickly draws the moviegoer in just as he does with all the crew members under his command. It’s the magic he has over a rapt audience to the point you believe every word he says.

Otherwise, Lt. Ted Lawson (Van Johnson) is pretty much our lead. I know he’s not much of an emoter, but he might as well be our stand-in for the American G.I. For the time being, he is surrounded by a bevy of compatriots including Robert Walker, Don DeFore, and Robert Mitchum, among others. They all raise their hands when it comes to volunteering for a top-secret mission.

There’s an electricity in the air as they prepare for news of their assignment even as they are warned that they will be pushed to the limit of their capabilities and then some. The utmost secrecy is maintained and their training is commenced in earnest. The work is hard and they play hard after.

One of the crowd is a goofy down-home caricature portrayed by John R. Reilly. He can be found pounding away to the rhythms of “Chattanooga Choo Choo” in the barracks, intent on any merriment he can muster during off-hours. Meanwhile, the crew of the self-proclaimed Ruptured Duck becomes proficient in their new skill set.

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In his free time, Lawson (Johnson) looks to get all the time in with his beaming wife as possible. Though Phyliss Thaxter glows with utter radiance in every scene, it does feel a bit overly twee at times.

Since a group of the fellas have their brides with them, they get together to dance, finding solidarity in songs like “Deep in The Heart of Texas” and a Hollywood mainstay, “Auld Lange Syne.” It’s especially effective for wringing out every last drop of emotion. Wives tearfully cling to their husbands for the last time, knowing that they will soon be separated for who knows how long.

Sure enough, the men get their assignment after coming aboard an aircraft carrier. They will be paying a visit to Tokyo by air and the anticipation sets in even as the flyers all look a bit like fish out of water (on the water). Regardless, it becomes a perfect excuse to play up the camaraderie between the army and the navy away from the football field. They’ve got a job to do, and they’ll do it together.

Robert Mitchum and Van Johnson share a most curious conversation lounging on the prow of the boat, staring off into the darkness. One can only imagine it is screenwriter Dalton Trumbo speaking — not in propaganda but humanity.

First, Johnson offers up how his mom had a Jap gardener once who seemed like a nice fellow. Mitchum says he doesn’t like ’em, but he doesn’t hate ’em either. They agree you get mixed up sometimes. Where are they going with this meandering interchange?

The answer: Trumbo’s brand of what might be most precisely termed “American progressivism.” Some rationale must be proposed for what is at hand and so he does his best. Though it foregoes demonizing the enemy, it takes an alternative path with the same conclusion. It’s the most rational progression. Drop a bomb on them or they’ll be dropping a bomb on Ellen or loved ones like her. It’s highly practical even as it remains problematic.

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Still, the gears are turning. They have their final briefing with Doolittle and agree to meet in Chungking for the biggest party they’ve ever seen. In reality, the moment of truth really does feel like little more than thirty seconds. When they hit the mainland a flurry of Japanese Zeroes fly over, only to pass them by without notice, moving on with their normal patrol. It’s a lucky break.

They end up dropping their loads on the designated targets with efficiency. It’s the aftermath where things get a bit dicier, not so much due to the enemy but weather conditions. The Ruptured Duck is forced to bail out, sustaining injuries, and rescued by Chinese locals under bleak conditions.

Though poorly resourced and kept on the run by impending Japanese, the Chinese are held aloft as loyal Allies ready to aid in this joint cause against the Japanese. It becomes so intriguing how they become such sympathetic figures. Two close-ups come to mind. The Chinese characters are not kept at arm’s length. We are given a chance to study their faces. It’s maybe not a lot, but it’s something. The juxtaposition between the Chinese station versus the Japanese is made supremely obvious.

So while Thirty 30 Over Tokyo has understandably been lauded for a certain level of historical accuracy, there is still a necessity to parse through its stances as a cultural artifact. Like any film, it is a product of its times and a tribute to the minds behind it, whether Mervyn LeRoy or Dalton Trumbo. Each man no doubt had his own agenda, be it bugetary or ideological.

To that point, the picture is framed by a corny romantic crescendo that’s difficult to take seriously. Otherwise, it an intermittently rewarding portrait of a specific time in WWII history. It’s difficult to remake a movie such as this without losing some of its inherent credibility.

3.5/5 Stars

Classic Movie Beginner’s Guide: Katharine Hepburn

Posted on December 7, 2019 by 4 Star Films

I’m back at it again with a new Beginner’s Guide where we take a famous person and make their lengthy career manageable by picking 4 films to watch in order to get your feet wet. Here’s a jumping-off point for Katharine Hepburn.

I make a point of not quantifying actors by how many awards they’ve won. Still, she did win 4 Oscars! There’s little else to say. She was a gem.

Little Women (1933)

I’m partial to this film because Hepburn exudes all the attributes of Jo March for me. The cast is a fine array of young talent and if you have any attachment to Louisa May Alcott’s material, it’s hard not to appreciate the antiquated candor of this one.

Philadelphia Story (1940)

It’s almost old-hat to mention Katharine Hepburn was considered “Box Office Poison” at this time in her career (after “failures” like Bringing Up Baby and Holiday). So, of course, I mention it. But Philadelphia Story reestablished her and to this day remains one of her finest vehicles. With director George Cukor, James Stewart, Cary Grant, and Ruth Hussey, what could go wrong?

The African Queen (1951)

Bogart and Hepburn. It’s about as indelible a pair as you can get onscreen. They hardly disappoint in this character piece by John Huston setting the two seafarers off on a conflict-filled adventure through the swamps aboard the titular vessel. As a side note, it’s rather reminiscent of Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison featuring two other luminaries.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

It’s as much an ending as a beginning. Hepburn was well-known for her on and off-screen romances with Spencer Tracy who was deathly ill. This film would be his last and capped off a partnership that included the likes of Woman of The Year and Adam’s Rib (On second thought, go watch this!). There’s so much history there and they work wonders together one final time.