May and June 1945. The War in Europe is over. The enemies have surrendered, high-ranking Nazi officials have killed themselves, prisoners are taken...some, like the rocket scientists, are adopted, their skills being of use to the Allies. But the War in the Pacific is still going, though by June 21, the US scores a victory at Okinawa. It will take some time before the production of war films slows down, and they'll never really go away, not for this war. Still, you can sense that Hollywood saw the end was near, for even considering when things must have filmed before their release dates, only five of the thirteen films below deal with the war, even ephemerally...
Without Love
release: May
dir: Harold S. Bucquet
pr: Lawrence Weingarten
scr: Philip Barry, from the play by Donald Ogden Stewart
cin: Karl Freund
Oh, I hated this movie! Wartime scientist Spencer Tracy rents the basement of very single Katharine Hepburn so he can carry out his government projects, they wed for…convenience? Companionship? National security? I wish any of this were more interesting. Tracy looks like he’d rather be anywhere else.
Zombies on Broadway
release: May 1
dir: Gordon Douglas
pr: Benjamin Stoloff
scr: Lawrence Kimble, adaptation by Robert E. Kent, original story by Robert Faber and Charles Newman
cin: Jack MacKenzie
Bumbling press agents look for zombies on the island property of a mad scientist to put in their show. Dumb as hell setup, but it knows that; gags in the vein of Hold That Ghost and the later Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, but these budget imitators ain’t exactly Bud & Lou. Still, they aren’t bad either, and Bela Lugosi manages to get in a few good lines. Creepy zombie makeup, the dated aspect of it somehow makes it more off-putting, nightmarish.
The Body Snatcher
release: May 10
dir: Robert Wise
pr: Val Lewton
scr: Philip MacDonald and Val Lewton (as Carlos Keith), from a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson
cin: Robert De Grasse
It’s odd to think that Zombies on Broadway makes better use of Bela Lugosi than a Val Lewton horror picture, but I merely state facts. It’s the only off element in this thriller, wherein Henry Daniell takes a rare lead role as a surgeon and medical school teacher who is in a strange transactional relationship with cab driver Boris Karloff, an odious man who robs graves to provide Daniell and his students with cadavers to dissect and study. Things take a sinister turn when murder becomes an option. There’s a stalking sequence done almost entirely in long shot, you see the predator and the prey growing more distant, more silent…one of the most terrifying scenes I’ve seen in a horror film. Sets and cinematography make 19th-century Edinburgh a gloomy, dark place of hidden corners for nefarious deeds. The violence is shocking, the film refusing to play nice even up through the ending. It’s a despairing picture about a talented man who slowly lets his goodness be stripped away, bit by bit, by someone with no principles, no shame. It’s about ethical medical practices and the dangers of bending rules, especially when “in the name of science and the community!” becomes indistinguishable from “for MY name within science and the community!”
The Scarlet Clue
release: May 11
dir: Phil Rosen
pr: James S. Burkett
scr: George Callahan, from characters created by Earl Derr Biggers
cin: William A. Sickner
Charlie Chan investigates murders at a radio station. Apparently received high praise at the time, but other than some choice banter between Mantan Moreland and Ben Carter, I don't know why. Too many bodies to sift through, not much of a solution.
Wonder Man
release: May 25
wins: Best Special Effects (John P. Fulton / Arthur Johns)
nominations: Best Score (Louis Forbes / Ray Heindorf), Best Original Song ("So in Love"), Best Sound (Gordon Sawyer)
dir: H. Bruce Humberstone
pr: Samuel Goldwyn
scr: Don Hartman & Melville Shavelson and Philip Rapp, adaptation by Jack Jevne and Eddie Moran, from a story by Arthur Sheekman
cin: Victor Milner / William E. Snyder
Danny Kaye plays estranged twins; when one is murdered, his ghost visits and occasionally possesses his brother so that he can testify against his killers. Kaye's second feature, and this is more like it, with Kaye playing both the shy nerd and the boisterous showman, sometimes at the same time due to the aforementioned possession, allowing him to truly showcase his comedic skills: physically, vocally, musically. And he gets two love interests, one for each brother, with all the screwball antics that implies, so that's a plus because Danny Kaye is hot.
Flame of Barbary Coast
release: May 28
nominations: Best Score (R. Dale Butts / Morton Scott), Best Sound (Daniel J. Bloomberg)
dir/pr: Joseph Kane
scr: Borden Chase, story by Prescott Chaplin
cin: Robert De Grasse
John Wayne is a naive hayseed who comes to San Francisco and falls for saloon gal Ann Dvorak. Solid flick with a great disaster-movie climax.
Back to Bataan
release: May 31
dir: Edward Dmytryk
pr: Robert Fellows / Theron Warth
scr: Bob Barzman and Richard H. Landau, original story by Æneas MacKenzie and William Gordon
cin: Nicholas Musuraca
In February, Allied forces retook the Bataan Peninsula; this movie is bookended by actual footage of POWs being released from Japanese camps. John Wayne plays an American soldier who, alongside Filipino soldier Anthony Quinn, organizes guerrilla units in Bataan to fight back against the Japanese occupiers. Effectively rousing, it makes you hiss the monstrous actions of the Japanese, and successfully stirs the soul with its depiction of men and women risking their lives for the freedom of their country. There is a bit of disconnect throughout, however. Like when the English-speaking school has the children recite all the gifts America has bestowed upon the country, such as Freedom and Independence; there is a later scene where the Japanese occupiers have the nation celebrate a new Independence Day, granted them by the Japanese. They and we know that the Japanese ceremony is a sham, but isn't America's very presence and insistence on having the children recite another nation's "glorious gifts" equally, uh, sham-ful? It's patronizing throughout, down to Quinn telling Wayne, "You're a better Filipino than me," to no protest. At the same time, that character does take the reins when the Americans leave the islands, and I think the filmmakers were sincere in wanting to make a celebration of Filipino national pride, which would explain the insistent prologue declaring this to be a story of the guerrillas first - you can see that they want to tell a story about a Special Relationship between two nations. I suppose there are natural limitations when you have Americans writing a wartime narrative for Americans about a region that America fought so hard to keep under its thumb. It's a very good movie, well-made and pleasing to watch, but that's what makes it almost insidious.
The Valley of Decision
release: June
nominations: Best Actress (Greer Garson), Best Score (Herbert Stothart)
dir: Tay Garnett
pr: Edwin H. Knopf
scr: John Meehan and Sonya Levien, from the novel by Marcia Davenport
cin: Joseph Ruttenberg
A young woman becomes housemaid to a steel family and falls in love with one of the sons. Greer Garson and Gregory Peck star, with Lionel Barrymore and Donald Crisp as their (respective) feuding fathers. One of those decades-spanning melodramas they loved putting Garson in, and I don't blame them, she's great in them and she rocks the hell out of the period gowns they put her in. This one includes a harrowing strike sequence where all the tempers and betrayals finally come to a head, it's staged brutally. I really liked this one!
The Unseen
release: June 7
nominations: Best Sound (Loren L. Ryder)
dir: Lewis Allen
pr: John Houseman
scr: Hagar Wilde and Raymond Chandler, adaptation by Hagar Wilde and Ken Englund, from the novel Her Heart In Her Throat by Ethel Lina White
cin: John F. Seitz
The team that brought you The Uninvited returns for a new Gail Russell-thriller, one of those in which there’s something wrong with the children. Mysterious nighttime visitors, a father with a secret, a strange house with unexplained illuminations at night, and dead bodies: what has new nanny Gail Russell gotten herself into? Not a very good mystery - one of those “well, if it’s not this it must be that,” with no real twists beyond, but, just like its predecessor, you don’t care: the filmmaking, the performances, the convincing characterizations, they’re what make the movie great!
Captain Eddie
release: June 19
nominations: Best Special Effects (Fred Sersen / Sol Halperin / Roger Heman Sr. / Harry M. Leonard)
dir: Lloyd Bacon
pr: Winfield R. Sheehan
scr: John Tucker Battle
cin: Joseph MacDonald
After crashing into the ocean, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker keeps his crew mostly alive while he has a flashback to his life and career. Based on a true story.
Murder, He Says
release: June 23
dir/pr: George Marshall
scr: Lou Breslow, story by Jack Moffitt
cin: Theodor Sparkuhl
Before Sally and her friends met the Sawyers, before the Fireflys took in road-tripping 20-something’s, there was the Fleagle family, a hillbilly outlaw brood looking for hidden ill-gotten gains and murdering anyone they thought got in the way. The next victim appears to be Fred MacMurray’s census taker, arriving at the dilapidated manse to find out why other census takers keep disappearing in the area. Macabre hilarity ensues, but this is no lazy gags-and-ghouls riff, rather a brilliant screwball upending the conventions of close-knit families and caricaturizing post-Depression suspicions of “the guv’ment.” Unflinching from the homicidal tendencies of its main villains - led by Marjorie Main and Porter Hall - without losing its sense of kooky fun.
Blood on the Sun
release: June 28
wins: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration - Black-and-White (Wiard Ihnen / A. Roland Fields)
dir: Frank Lloyd
pr: William Cagney
scr: Lester Cole, additional scenes by Nathaniel Curtis, story by Garrett Fort, from an idea by Frank Melford
cin: Theodore Sparkuhl
In 1929, journalist James Cagney must secret a Japanese government outline for world domination out of Tokyo - but who can he trust? The Oscar win makes sense, these are great sets. The movie? A bore, to me, made worse by having a Japanese setting without a single Asian actor - was Philip Ann busy? And Sylvia Sidney has a half-Chinese Japanese spy?!?
Tomorrow, GI Joe and a summer Christmas flick.
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