The Fabulous Forties #40: Smash-Up, The Story of a Woman (dir by Stuart Heisler)

Posted on June 9, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 39th film in the Fabulous Forties box set was 1947’s Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman. I have to say it was a little bit strange going from watching the hilarious and life-affirming My Man Godfrey to watching the very serious and rather depressing Smash-Up.

Smash-Up is pure, tear-jerking Hollywood melodrama. When the film starts, Angie Evans (Susan Hayward) is in a hospital, with her face totally covered in bandages. Just by looking at her, we already know that her story is not going to be a happy one.

Flash back time! Angie was a nightclub singer and a pretty good one at that. The audiences loved her and she loved performing but she loved one thing more. (See how overwrought my prose was there? That’s a reflection of Smash-Up’s style.) She loved Ken Conway (Lee Bowman, who may be related to me but probably isn’t). Ken was a singer himself, though he was nowhere near as successful as Angie. However, after Ken and Angie married, Angie put her career on hold while Ken went on to become a huge success.

Angie was already a drinker before she met Ken. Having a few drinks before going out on stage helped to calm her nerves. It helped her to relax and become the performer that the audiences loved. However, once Ken became a star and Angie found herself continually alone in their home, she started to drink because it was the only thing that made her happy. Whenever she started to regret giving up her career, she drank. When she was worried that Ken was having an affair with his secretary (Marsha Hunt), Angie drank. Ken’s best friend and songwriter, Steve (Eddie Albert), could see that Angie was losing control. However, Ken refused to accept that his wife had a drinking problem. Accepting that Angie was drinking to be happy would mean accepting that she wasn’t happy in the first place.

Trapped in the middle of all this was their daughter, Angel (Sharyn Payne). When Ken, finally admitting that his wife could not control her drinking, demanded custody of Angel, Angie was determined to get back her daughter.

But, even though she wanted to, Angie could not stop drinking. Or smoking. And the smoking, the drinking, and the kidnapping did not make for a particularly good combination.

According to Wikipedia, Smash-Up was a failure at the box office and I can actually see why. 1940s American cinema can basically be divided between the earnest, patriotic, and optimistic films that were released during World War II and the dark and pessimistic films that came out after the war ended and the world realized just how evil and dangerous human beings could be. Smash-Up is one of those dark films. It’s not a happy film, nor is it at all subtle. In fact, as much as I love a good melodrama, Smash-Up occasionally seems like a bit much. Absolutely every bad thing that could happen does happen and it’s typical of the approach of Hollywood in the 40s that, for all the trouble Angie suffers as a result of her drinking, the film still has to find an excuse to send her to hospital with her face in bandages. The film is often very empathetic in its treatment of Angie but, in the 1940s, mistakes still had to be punished.

Fortunately, Susan Hayward gives a great performance in the role of Angie, capturing the aching sadness that leads her to drink in the first place. She saves the entire film and, quite justifiably, she received a nomination for best actress for her performance here. She didn’t win but she still made Smash-Up worth seeing.

The Fabulous Forties #27: Sundown (dir by Henry Hathaway)

Posted on May 28, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

You may remember how, back in April, I started on a mission to review all 50 of the films included in Mill Creek’s Fabulous Forties box set. I actually got off to a pretty good start and, by the end of the month, I was about halfway through. Yay me!

However, then the month of May began. And May turned out to be a very, very busy month. As I sit here writing this, it’s been 27 days since I last posted a Fabulous Forties review. That review was …. well, I can’t even remember what it was. After I post this, I’ll click on this link to find out.

However, things have calmed down a bit and now I can go ahead and finish up the Fabulous Forties box set. And that’s a good thing because, between me and you, I am more than ready to move on to the Nifty Fifties box set!

Anyway, without further ado, let’s consider the 27th film in Mill Creek’s Fabulous Forties, 1941’s Sundown!

Sundown was released by United Artists in 1941. It’s a propaganda film, telling the story of British soldiers in North Africa and their attempts to both maintain the peace among the natives and to keep the Axis powers from arming the local rebels. Bruce Cabot is the experienced soldier who knows how things work in Africa. George Sanders is the new commander who is a bit more by-the-book. At first, you think that the film is going to be dominated by the rivalry between Sanders and Cabot but actually it’s not much of a rivalry. For the most part, they get along just fine and I guess that’s to be expected considering that the film was made at a time when the emphasis was on everyone remaining unified against the Nazis.

Speaking of the Axis powers, they’re always in hovering in the shadows of the film but it’s rare that we actually see any enemy soldiers. Perhaps this is because the film was made at a time when the United States was technically neutral. Joseph Calleia plays a prisoner of war who has rejected fascism and instead just wants to sing opera and cook for Sanders and Cabot. Calleia’s character is specifically identified as being an Italian. If not for that (and the fact that the film was made in 1941), it would be just as easy to assume that Sanders and Cabot were fighting the French or maybe the Russians.

There’s an enemy agent in one of the tribes and it’s up to Sanders and Cabot to figure out who. Helping them out is the local big game hunter, played by Harry Carey. And, on top of that, there’s also a mysterious native woman played by Gene Tierney. Gene Tierney is totally miscast but that adds to this film’s odd charm.

And, for modern viewers, it definitely is an odd charm. I watched Sundown twice and I’m still not sure exactly what happened in the film. Sundown is one of those films that doesn’t so much have a plot as it just has a lot of scenes that kind of tell a story, assuming that you have the patience and concentration to figure out how they all link together. Between Cabot’s roguish smile, Sanders’s stiff upper lip performance, Calleia’s enjoyable overacting, and Gene Tierney’s otherworldly beauty, Sundown is unexpectedly dream-like. The film even features a sudden sermon in which a clergyman (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) exhorts everyone to fight. The clergyman is never seen again.

Sundown was a strange movie, one that I often found myself struggling to follow. It was also apparently a box office bomb, though it did receive 3 Oscar nominations. One of those nominations was for Charles Lang’s cinematography and it was definitely deserved. Even the version I saw (which suffered from a typically poor Mill Creek transfer) was still impressive to look at.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Nominee: Sergeant York (dir by Howard Hawks)

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1941 film Sergeant York was the American Sniper of its day. A biopic of Alvin York, one of the most decorated American soldiers of World War I, Sergeant York was not only a huge box office hit but it was a film that celebrated American patriotism in the type of unabashed fashion that you would never see in a film made today. Though Sergeant York went into production at a time when the United States was officially pursuing a policy of international neutrality, it was released shortly before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and, whether intentionally or not, Sergeant York served as a strong recruiting tool. According to Wikipedia (and we all know that Wikipedia is never wrong), there were reports of young men going straight from the movie to the nearest military recruitment office.

Clocking in at nearly two and a half hours (and running at least 40 minutes too long), Sergeant York is two films in one. The second half of the film deals with the military career of Alvin York (Gary Cooper), a plain-spoken and honest Tennessee farmer who, because of his strong religious beliefs, unsuccessfully attempts to register as a conscientious objector. Forced into the Army, York is, at first, dismissed as a simple-minded hillbilly. (His fellow soldiers are amused to discover that York doesn’t know what a subway is.) However, to the shock of his commanding officers, he proves himself to be an expert marksman. As he explains it, being from the country means that he’s been shooting a rifle his entire life.

On the basis of his skills as a marksman, York is given a promotion but he still says that he refuses to kill. It’s not until his superior officer reminds him of the sacrifices that past Americans have made that York starts to reconsider his position. Then, a gust of wind opens York’s bible to a verse about giving unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and York realizes that he can go to war and, if need be, he can kill.

And it’s a good thing that he can! Because World War I is heating up and York may be the only guy around with the strength and confidence to single-handedly defeat and capture over 170 German soldiers.

The army section of Sergeant York is predictable but well-done. As you’d expect from a film directed by Howard Hawks, a lot of emphasis is put on how the soldiers work together. York is portrayed not as being super human but instead as just an honest man who is exceptionally good at his job. There’s nothing surprising about the second half of Sergeant York but Hawks keeps the action moving and Cooper gives a good performance.

To be honest, I preferred the first half of the film, which examined York’s life before he joined the Army. When we first meet Alvin York, he drinks too much, he fights too much, and he’s totally irresponsible. It’s not until he falls in love with Gracie Williams (Joan Leslie) that York starts to change his ways. The scenes of York in the backwoods of Tennessee had a lively feel to them and it was enjoyable to see Cooper play a somewhat disreputable character. Cooper seemed to be having fun playing a ne’er-do-well and, in the scenes before York finds God, his bad behavior was a lot of fun to watch.

Considering its success at the box office, it’s not surprising that Sergeant York was nominated for best picture of the year. While Gary Cooper won the Oscar for best actor, the award for Best Picture went to How Green Was My Valley.