John Ford Retrospective - The Brat (1931)

THE BRAT (1931)

Starring:  Sally O'Neil, Alan Dinehart, Frank Albertson, William Collier Sr., Virginia Cherrill, June Collyer, J. Farrell MacDonald, Mary Forbes, Albert Gran, Louise Mackintosh, Margaret Mann

Writers:  S.N. Behrman & Sonya Levien (based on the play by Maude Fulton)

Cinematography:  Joseph H. August

Editor:  Alex Troffey

B&W, 1h 02m.  1.20:1 presentation.

Released on:  August 23, 1931 by Fox Film Corporation.

My experience:  YouTube

I've always been quite partial to fish-out-of-water comedies, of which there were plenty in the 1930s.  In almost all of these, a poor or supposedly "lower class" person gains access to the world of socialites and high rollers, and by the end, through situations comic and otherwise, said person enriches the lives of the shallow folk among whom they've been spending their time, usually making them take off their sheltered goggles and "see the light" as it were.  I'm referring specifically to films like My Man Godfrey (1936), Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936), Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), and Ball Of Fire (1941), to name just a few.  There are also some in which the hoity-toity are forced to spend time with the plebs and have their eyes opened, such as It Happened One Night (1934) and You Can't Take It With You (1938) -- both best picture Oscar winners directed by Frank Capra -- but the point I'm trying to make is that there's just something about the little guy standing up to the big guy and showing them a lesson that just resonates with me.

This being said, you would think that John Ford's career would consist of more class comedies than he has, what with his films being chock full of moments pointing out the hypocrisy of societal leaders, but other than the odd job he took in the late 1920s and early 1930s, there doesn't seem to be many that come to mind.  Perhaps as he got more clout as a director he wanted to go on location more and try new things, and films set largely in one location (or two, as The Brat) is, just didn't interest him.  Regardless, class-conscious comedy, while appearing in many of his movies to some extent, was for the most part relegated to side-stories and background observations.

The Brat is based on a 1917 play by Maude Fulton, who also originated the title role on stage.  The film, is very much set in the 1930s, at first seems to be a bit of a take on Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw (perhaps better known today as the basis for the musical My Fair Lady by Lerner & Loewe, but I digress).  Sally O'Neil plays the titular waif, who we first meet in a night court where she has been brought before a judge (William Collier, Sr.) for eating and running from a diner (this being the Depression, we believe her when she says she hadn't eaten in two days, and hasn't had a job in two months).  One of the judge's friends, author MacMillan Forrester (Alan Dinehart), seemingly takes pity on the young lady, pays her fine and brings her back to his country home.  Mac has an agenda, however, as he is inspired to study the young lady and use his findings in a new novel he's writing.

Upon arriving at the mansion, the Brat is shocked to see the way the other half live, and develops a friendship with Timson, the Forrester butler and the local bishop (Albert Gran), who seems to come and go as he wishes.  She sees the callous way Mac's mother (Mary Forbes) treats his brother Stephen (Frank Albertson), who is obviously considered the black sheep of the family, having taken to alcoholism as his mother is withholding the deed to his late father's ranch.  Most troubling is the presence of Mac's two live-in girlfriends, Angela (Virginia Cherrill) and Jane (June Collyer), who have nothing nice to say about anybody at all and seem to exist just to leech off the family's money.  When the Brat realizes that Mac is just as callous as the rest of his family, her feelings of admiration for him are shattered.  After a knock-down, drag-out catfight between the Brat (whose name we never find out, as Mac never thinks to ask) and Angela, and after bearing witness to Mac's callous behaviour (influencing his mother to sell the ranch so he can buy a yacht), she and Stephen, who is much more suited to her personally, run away from the family to get married and move out west to start life anew.

The Brat, having been based on a Broadway play, is very stagebound, and aside from the opening few minutes Ford doesn't do too much to open it up cinematically, but as a filmed stage play, I did find it amusing in fits and starts.  I think my enjoyment of it was influenced by my love of the fairly specific subgenre it fits into; The Brat isn't quite a screwball comedy (with the exception of perhaps the WWE-style brawl between the two women in gowns), but it does have some very pointed satire and biting witticisms aimed at cutting off the wings of the snobbery of some folks and siding definitively with the hoi polloi.  

One thing I need to mention is that the print available on YouTube is, compared to most things available to stream online, visually quite murky.  This is due to it being a filmed copy of a screening at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.  The only extant copy is a badly damaged nitrate print, hence the difficulty in restoring it for a transfer worthy of release.  What we have is unfortunately the best we will ever get.  Still, all of Ford's sound films are in circulation, and for a film that's over 90 years old, the fact that we still are able to watch it when so many films released in the early 1930s have been lost forever is nothing short of a miracle.

I enjoyed The Brat.  It had some nice comedic moments, and while nothing really stood out (with the exception of the performance of Sally O'Neil, who sadly didn't have a long career due to stage fright), it was a solidly performed stage play, albeit with perhaps too short a running time for all the action packed into it.  It's not much to look at, but if you're willing to sit through some murky visuals, you may get something out of it.  For Ford completists and fans of comedic social satire.

Five affluent a-holes out of ten.

John Ford Retrospective - Seas Beneath (1931)

SEAS BENEATH (1931)

Starring:  George O'Brien, Marion Lessing, Mona Maris, Walter C. Kelly, Warren Hymer, Steve Pendleton, Walter McGrail, Larry Kent, Henry Victor, John Loder

Writer:  Dudley Nichols (based on a story by Cmdr. James Parker, Jr., U.S.N. Ret'd)

Cinematography:  Joseph H. August

Editor:  Frank E. Hull

Music:  Peter Brunelli

B&W, 1h 30m.  1.20:1 presentation.

Released on:  January 30, 1931 by Fox Film Corporation.

My experience:  Ford at Fox DVD box set.

In addition to having a very lengthy and acclaimed film career, John Ford was also a longtime Naval reservist in the United States who saw action in the Battle of Midway during World War II (directing a fantastic documentary about it, which we will get to in the future) and later on, to a lesser extent, in the Korean War.  

At this point in his career, he was not officially affiliated with the United States Navy (he entered the Reserve in October 1934, and entered active duty three months before Pearl Harbor).  Even at this time, his patriotism and interest in the men who sail the seas was well-documented, especially through some of his past films, three of which -- The Blue Eagle (1926), Salute (1929), and Men Without Women (1930) -- were focused on the trials and tribulations of Navy men.  

Two of those films featured George O'Brien, who Ford had discovered back in 1924 and cast in his epic Western The Iron Horse.  O'Brien returns to Ford and the ocean waves in this one, portraying Commander Bob Kingsley, who is in charge of a mystery ship, what we would now call a Q-ship.  These were ships sailing under the flag of a specific country (in this case the United States), who were dressed up to look like harmless merchant trading ships, while carrying hidden ammunition, with the intent of luring U-boats close enough to be blown to smithereens.

Sailing under Commander Kingsley are "Guns" Costello (Walter C. Kelly, the uncle of Grace Kelly), a big lug named Kaufman (Warren Hymer) -- both in comic relief roles -- Chief Joe Cobb (Walter McGrail), Lieutenant "Mac" McGregor (Larry Kent), and Ensign Dick Cabot (Steve Pendleton, credited as Gaylord Pendleton here), a fresh-faced newcomer to the ship.  

While pulling into port in the Canary Islands to load up on fuel and provisions, the men are given shore leave with the express order not to fraternise with women or indulge in alcoholic beverages.  So naturally, they head to the nearest bar to check out the local "wildlife."  Ensign Cabot develops a special fixation on the bar's entertainer, Lolita (Mona Maris), who unbeknownst to him happens to be an agent in the employ of the Germans who his ship is tracking.  Meanwhile, Commander Kingsley, while attempting to discreetly photograph a German ship in the port, comes across Anna Marie (Marion Lessing), who unbeknownst to him happens to be the sister of Baron Ernst von Steuben (Henry Victor), the commander of the U-boat he hopes to destroy.  She also happens to be dating her brother's first mate, Franz Schiller (John Loder), adding another layer of intrigue into the situation.  What will happen when shore leave is cancelled and the men have to return to the ship?

Seas Beneath does not have a great reputation among John Ford films, a rep the master had no inclination to change, as by all accounts he had issues with the leading lady, a starlet from Wisconsin who was apparently forced upon him by a suit at the studio who assumed because she had a German last name she would be able to speak the language.  Let's get this out of the way quickly:  Ford was right about Lessing's acting talents.  She's a horrible actress, and easily the worst thing about this movie.  

That being said, I enjoyed the rest of the film.  The opening ten minutes excel in acclimatising the audience to the cadences and rhythms of life at sea, especially the communications between the ship and the torpedo submarine it has in tow.  There is some great stuntwork, with men crawling all over the topsails, and one man even taking a plunge from atop the ship's full height.  Impressive stuff.  Later on in the film, we see some actors on top of a submarine stay in position as the submarine submerges, and the camera (roughly at chest level to the men) descends underwater.  

In fact, the photography in this film is top-notch.  There are no specifically showy shots that scream out "artistic genius".  Rather, the production was filmed out on the open seas, with the use of full scale ships and submarines.  We get a POV shot of a submarine rising slowly up out of the water, and another lengthy, uninterrupted shot from about a ship, in which the camera is behind a character who watches another ship sink into the ocean.  It brings a quite documentary-like feel to the story.  

Also adding to the realism is the abundant use of German (with very few intertitles).  It's not something I've seen in many Hollywood movies of the era; I'm almost inclined to state that Seas Beneath was 75 years ahead of its time in that regard.  Ford's years of being a silent film director work in his favour here, as he's able to tell a story without dialogue (or in this case, in a foreign tongue without subtitles).  In fact, it's when dialogue appears (specifically from the mouth of Lessing) that the film loses some of its magneticism.

The ending of the film left me a little perplexed; the film would have been better served stopping after the final logbook report.  Instead, we are treated to an unwanted, trite and forced romantic dialogue that could have been struck from the film without incident.  Still, I must say I was pleasantly surprised with Seas Beneath.  It's got comedy, action, suspense, doesn't try to overshoot its mark, and I found it an unexpected joy to watch.

Seven submersible sailors out of ten.

John Ford Retrospective - Up The River (1930)

UP THE RIVER (1930)

Starring:  Spencer Tracy, Claire Luce, Warren Hymer, Humphrey Bogart, William Collier Sr., Joan Lawes

Writers:  John Ford & William Collier Sr., based on the original story by Maurine Dallas Watkins

Cinematography:  Joseph H. August

Editor:  Frank E. Hull

Music:  James F. Hanley

B&W, 1h 25m (originally 1h 32m).  1.20:1 ratio.

Released on:  October 10, 1930 by Fox Film Corporation.

My experience:  Ford at Fox DVD box set.

John Ford.  Humphrey Bogart.  Spencer Tracy.

Three icons of American cinema, together in one film.  A film made by an all star team like that should have masterpiece written all over it, or at the very least should be a well-known piece of cinema history.

Up The River, however, falls short on both accounts.  This was the feature film debut for both Bogart and Tracy, making them complete unknowns at the time, and this production -- though it had a name director attached -- quickly came and went from theatres and was forgotten.  The remaining extant print comes from a frustratingly choppily edited duplicate, and about eight minutes are missing from the finished product.  Tracy and Bogie, both looking incredibly young (being five and ten years from stardom, respectively) have decent chemistry, and sadly this was the only film they made together.

The film itself is a somewhat amusing character comedy that shows its age, both in the wear and tear visible in the print, and also in its archaic attitudes.  Tracy and Warren Hymer play St. Louis and Dannemora Dan, respectively, two cons whose specialty is escaping from prison -- escaping thanks to St. Louis' brains, and getting recaptured thanks to Dan's lack of wits.  After getting caught once again, they end up in back in prison, palling up to the warden (Robert Emmett O'Connor) and his daughter Jean (Joan Lawes, daughter of the actual warden of Sing Sing), playing tricks on a bully played by an uncredited Ward Bond, and making 40-year-inmate and manager of the prison baseball team Pop (William Collier Sr.) happy by agreeing to join the team.  

Sharing a cell with Pop, they also meet Steve Jordan (Humphrey Bogart), a young man who comes from a well-to-do family who was caught up in some violence while about to leave for a trip to China.  Steve has eyes for Judy Fields, played by Claire Luce -- a Broadway actor who specialized in Shakespearean roles later in her career (no relation to Clare Boothe Luce, the writer of The Women among other plays) -- and pledges his love and devotion to her, promising to wait until she is released before beginning a new life with her.  Problem is her old partner in crime Frosby (Morgan Wallace), who left her high and dry to take the rap, finds out about the situation and takes his business to Steve's hometown, where his mother (Edythe Chapman) and sister Cynthia (Althea Henry) think Jordan has actually been in China.  St. Louis plots another escape in conjunction with Dannemora Dan to thwart Frosby's efforts and make sure the two lovers are united.

For a movie directed by John Ford, starring Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart, with some funny character work by Warren Hymer, and in which the climax of the show involves a game of baseball, I found myself somewhat uninvolved in the proceedings.  The comedy as mentioned can be quite amusing, although some of it falls flat.  It definitely comes from a time when movies, and society in general, were much more innocent, or at least put on the appearance of innocence (in order to lead the average person into a tranquil docility perhaps?  That's another essay for another day).  

From a modern vantage point, the prison seems like a boys club with walls and guards.  Everybody's always joking and yukking it up, having a good time, the warden seems to have no issues with befriending the inmates, and while I'm sure prisons back then had many murderers and generally unsavory characters mixed in amongst their populaces, there doesn't seem to be a Hans Beckert or a Leopold and Loeb anywhere in this film.  There is also a frankly unbelievable scene in which Judy basically gives the game away to Frosby about her plans with Steve.  You know the man is bad news, keep your mouth shut, child!  

There is also a cringingly depressing minstrel show, with two white inmates in blackface performing a routine for the benefit of the prison's wealthy patrons.  What makes watching this even more uncomfortable is that during this scene Ford constantly cuts to a black inmate and an oriental inmate sitting side by side in the front row, hooting and hollering and clapping as if this were the greatest thing since sliced bread.  These two audience members, of course, are never seen before or after said minstrel show.

The ending also left me unsatisfied as, with all the talk about St. Louis being the only one who can bring the baseball team to victory, the film ends before he even throws a pitch.  Maybe they ran out of time with Tracy's schedule (he had a two week filming period due to starring on Broadway concurrently).  Maybe Ford thought the ballgame wasn't that important, in which case why make such a big deal out of it to begin with.  Or perhaps, as sometimes happens in the lesser Ford films, he just didn't know how to end it.  

While I'm thankful that Up The River still exists on celluloid, and is available to find for those who expend the effort, I have to admit that despite its cinematic pedigree, for me it's a one and done.  It has its moments, but I don't think I'll be returning to this one anytime soon.  Too bad, as it's a small piece of film history featuring the only collaboration between two of the greatest actors of the silver screen.

Five personable prisoners out of ten.

John Ford Retrospective - Born Reckless (1930)

BORN RECKLESS (1930)

Starring:  Edmund Lowe, Catherine Dale Owen, Frank Albertson, Marguerite Churchill, William Harrigan, Lee Tracy, Warren Hymer, Ilka Chase, Ferike Boros, Paul Porcasi, Joe Brown, Ben Bard, Pat Somerset, Eddie Gribbon, Mike Donlin, Paul Page

Writer:  Dudley Nicholas (based on the novel "Louis Berretti" by Donald Henderson Clarke

Cinematography:  George Schneiderman

Editor:  Frank E Hull

B&W, 1h 22m.  1.20:1 ratio.

Released on:  May 11, 1930 by Fox Film Corporation

My experience:  Ford at Fox DVD box set

What a difference a year makes.  On May 8, 1929, John Ford's film The Black Watch was released, and while an entertaining film, the dialogue registers today as very stilted and slow.  Why?  Sound film was in its infancy, and studios were trying to figure out how listening to dialogue would affect an audience.  It was thought that actors needed to enunciate slowly and clearly, and often loudly -- playing to the back row, in theatre parlance -- in order for moviegoers to accept talking pictures.  What filmmakers hadn't counted on was the fact that when the faces were looming large on the screen above, audiences had no problem telling the emotions of characters.

A year later, on May 11, 1930, Born Reckless, also directed by Ford, was released into a world that, like the film industry, was very much in tumult.  America and the world had been plummeted into what would become known as the Great Depression, which would last the better part of ten years.  Hollywood was forging ahead with its new experiments in sound film, and even two-strip Technicolor.  All this is to say, that Born Reckless must have been seen as a new breed of cinema to those curious early 1930 cinema audiences.

The interesting thing for me is that Born Reckless was released in 1930, a year before Little Caesar and The Public Enemy -- which are universally acknowledged to have kicked off the gangster film -- came out.  It is the type of film that seems like it could have been written for James Cagney.  The dialogue is quick and snappy, and full of early 20th century slang.  The pace slows after that, but as in a Baz Luhrmann film, the energy of the first quarter of the film for the most part carries us through the slower parts.

Our protagonist is Luigi "Louis" Berretti (Edmund Lowe), a hoodlum in New York in the late 1910s, just before America entered the war.  He lives at home with his mother (Ferike Boros) and father (Paul Porcasi, an Italian-born actor whose use of the Sicilian dialect is used to comedic effect that probably would have gone over the heads of at least three quarters of US audiences back then), and his sister Rosa (Marguerite Churchill).  He and his gang, including Big Shot (Warren Hymer), Good News Brophy (William Harrigan), Joe Bergman (Ben Bard), Duke (Pat Somerset), and Bugs (Eddie Gribbon), get in trouble for trying to rob a bank, and are called before District Attorney Cardigan (Roy Stewart).  With the help of local reporter Bill O'Brien (Lee Tracy), Louis is able to swing a deal to get sent overseas and serve in the army.

While in training camp he meets Frank Sheldon (Frank Albertson), a rich young man whose uncle Jim (Edwards Davis) and sister Joan (Catherine Dale Owen) are able to visit before they go overseas.  Ward Bond and Jack Pennick appear as scowling sergeants here.  When they do get overseas, the movie gets very Fordian, as the director spends about fifteen minutes indulging in raucous masculine hijinks, including Louis' flirtation with a French waitress (Yola d'Avril).  Upon returning home, sans a few comrades thanks to the unseen Battle of the Argonne, he reconnects with his family, folks from his old neighborhood, and gives his respects to Joan, who is set to marry Dick Milburn (an uncredited Randolph Scott).  He starts a nightclub which soon becomes the hottest spot in town, but being in the same place, his past is never far behind him.  Can he keep his nose clean?

While Lowe is good in the role, Cagney would have been dynamite.  Lowe has charisma for sure, and nails the physical part of the role (could it be Cagney stole some of his Cagney-isms from Edmund Dantes Lowe?).  Like the Count of Monte Cristo he was named for, Lowe is just a little too well put-together and soft-spoken not to mention being a bigger, more lumbering person than the five foot five Cagney, whose movements were informed by both his scrappy childhood growing up in the Bowery and his training as a professional dancer.  It's unfair of me to compare Lowe to James Cagney, I know ... but one can't help but wonder what the Warner Bros. star would have done with such a role.  Warren Hymer is great as Big Shot, bringing a likeability to what is essentially a villainous role.  I was impressed by Marguerite Churchill, who brings a nice intensity to the role of Rosa, Louis' sister.  And Lee Tracy was just fine as the fast-talking, wisecracking reporter Bill O'Brien.  

The film itself gives a fine representation of a New York neighborhood, and very much captures the vibe of the period (in fact, one might say that the pre-World War I scenes are a little too modern from a historical point of view, but that was the norm in Hollywood at that time).  The backlot set is very much like that which would be seen in countless gangster films over the next decade or so, from The Public Enemy all the way through to 1939's The Roaring Twenties (my personal favourite gangster film of the era).  The scenes overseas in France run a little too long, however.  They don't add character, as we already know who these people are; the film would be little over an hour without these scenes, though, so perhaps they were added to prop up the runtime?

Regardless, when we return to America after the wartime interlude, the pace of the film quickens.  In a series of episodes we see a decade pass over the course of perhaps ten minutes.  The climax of the film involves the kidnapping of a child of the well-to-do, and I had assumed it was a take on the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, but upon researching it later I realized that the Lindbergh kidnapping didn't happen until 1932, two years later.  Ford, who while indulging his buffoonish tendencies during the sequences in France, has heretofore kept his cinematic prowess fairly restrained, lets out the stopper during the last reel of the film.  Louis' approach of the criminal compound on Long Island is blanketed with some great smoke machine work, which gives the film something of a film noirish tinge about fifteen years before the term was coined.  This mood continues when, upon returning to his nightclub for a showdown with Big Shot, the swinging doors are suddenly covered with his profile in shadow, seconds before he enters the frame.  There is also a shockingly abrupt dolly pullback between those same swinging doors after shots are fired, which serves the dual purpose of enhancing the shock caused by the loud gunshots and put the viewer on edge, while at the same time quickly pulling away from any actual violence being shown on film.  While the Hays Code wouldn't go into effect for another four years, censorship was still very much a thing in 1930, albeit left in the hands of government censors of the states and provinces.  The movement also makes us crane our necks in anticipation of who exactly won the duel.

Born Reckless is not a perfect film, but it is a surprisingly good early gangster film.  There had been others in the past (Fritz Lang's epic four and a half hour saga, Dr. Mabuse der Spieler, Von Sternberg's 1927 masterpiece Underworld) and would be countless more going forward, but in terms of sound films out of Hollywood, I was surprised, pleasantly so, to discover that this early prototype of a soon to be ubiquitous genre can still very much hold its own.

Seven and a half generous gangsters out of ten.

John Ford Retrospective - Men Without Women (1930)

MEN WITHOUT WOMEN (1930)

Starring:  Kenneth MacKenna, Frank Albertson, J. Farrell MacDonald, Warren Hymer, Paul Page, Walter McGrail, Stuart Erwin, George LeGuere, Charles K. Gerrard, Ben Hendricks Jr, Harry Tenbrook, Warner Richmond

Writer:  Dudley Nicholas (based on a story by John Ford & James Kevin McGuinness)

Cinematography:  Joseph H. August

Editor:  Walter Thompson

Music:  Carli Elinor

B&W, 1h 17m.  1.37:1 ratio.

Released on:  January 31, 1930 by Fox Film Corporation.

My experience:  YouTube Movies & Shows

Apparently there was a John Ford Universe 78 years before the term cinematic universe entered the mainstream.  Remember Salute, the last Ford film I reviewed?  Remember Midshipman Albert Edward Price (played by Frank Albertson), the jokey roommate of Paul Randall?  Well, he shows up in this movie, and he's an ensign now.  He shows up in Shanghai to accept his first post on US submarine S13.  Also on board the sub are Chief Torpedoman Burke (Kenneth MacKenna), Jenkins the radioman (Stuart Erwin), and the usual gang of plebs and roster-fillers, such as the elder statesman of the sub, Costello (J. Farrell MacDonald), Kaufman (Warren Hymer), Handsome (Paul Page), Murphy (Ben Hendricks Jr), Joe Cobb (Walter McGrail), Curly Pollock (George LeGuere), and Dutch Winkler (Harry Tenbrook).  Soon after it leaves port, it collides with another ship in a storm (filmed in a rare mis-step for John Ford with obvious miniatures).  Soon, it is up to a British ship led by Commander Weymouth (Charles K. Gerrard) and Lieutenant Commander Briddwell (Warner Richmond) to try to save them before their oxygen runs out.  Not all make it.  Oh -- and one of the crewmen of S13 is not who he claims to be.

This is a fascinating film for many reasons, not the least of which is that it's an amalgamation of different styles of film.  While it was filmed and released as a sound film, only portions of the recorded dialogue remain, as the only extant copy is of the international sound version.  For those unfamiliar with such a term, let me explain.  In the days of silent cinema, films were easy to send to other countries for international presentation; all that was needed was to exchange the English intertitles with those in the language of whichever country happened to buy the print.  

The advent of sound technology presented a problem to filmmakers.  All of a sudden films with dialogue were limited to audiences familiar with the language in which they were filmed.  So in the late 1920s and early 1930s producers and studios usually went one of two routes.  One, they filmed simultaneously (usually at night on the same sets as the main production) with different casts and often a different director (well-known examples of these include the 1931 Spanish version of Dracula, the 1930 German version of Anna Christie -- which kept Garbo as its star but replaced the rest of the cast -- and the English and French versions of Fritz Lang's 1931 masterpiece, M).  The other way to distribute films to other countries was to produce an international sound version, which is what we have here.  In such an edit, the dialogue is removed for the most part and replaced with intertitles in the language of choice, while music and sound effects were generally kept.  To modern eyes and ears, this appears quite jarring, and if a viewer were unaware of the history behind the international sound version of any given production, said film would seem to be quite the train wreck.  Even armed with such knowledge, it does take a while to get comfortable and attune to the rhythm of the piece.

History lesson over!

As mentioned before, this was quite a surprise, especially coming off of Salute, and especially because the first ten or fifteen minutes, with the sailors carousing around bars in Shanghai, are generally unfocused and seem to have no point.   Bear with it, because this portion of the movie builds the characters and personalities.  In many war movies, the characters are either stock stereotypes or interchangeable; in Men Without Women, they are all a piece of the whole, and the film would be lesser without any of them.  The title, by the way, references the fact that the majority of the film is set on a submarine, and the cast (with the exception of some ladies of the night in Shanghai) are all men.  

John Ford is known for his epic westerns, his vast landscapes and painterly images.  What a shock it was, then, to watch this intense, claustrophobic film set in basically one room for more than half the picture.  The tension is palpable, and there are some great insert shots, especially of a wooden boat that a crewman carves which has a callback later in the film.  This is not a perfect film, and aside from the military connection and the first fifteen minutes (which scream John Ford), it could easily have been filmed by Alfred Hitchcock, such is the harrowing tension at times.  Trivia note:  apparently John Wayne appears in the film as an extra, but I couldn't place him.

Seven suffering submariners out of ten.

John Ford Retrospective - Salute (1929)

SALUTE (1929)

Starring:  George O'Brien, Helen Chandler, Joyce Compton, William Janney, Stepin Fetchit, Frank Albertson, David Butler, Lumsden Hare, Clifford Dempsey, Ward Bond, John Wayne (uncredited)

Writer:  James Kevin McGuinness (based on the story by Tristram Tupper & John Stone)

Cinematography:  Joseph H. August

Editor:  Alex Troffey

B&W, 1h 24m.  1.20:1 ratio.

Released on:  September 1, 1929 by Fox Film Corporation

My experience:  Internet Archive

It's a tad frustrating going through this period in John Ford's filmography, as there are some flashes of brilliance in certain films (Four Sons, The Black Watch), and yet others can't seem to hit their mark.  This is true especially for ostensible comedies (The Blue Eagle, Riley the Cop).  I don't know if Ford was in the doghouse at this time, or whether the masculine, very American bonding sport that is college football held a sort of attraction for him, but this is definitely not the sort of film you would expect to see John Ford making.  It's like watching Steven Spielberg make a movie about video gamers.  On second thought, hmmmm ....

Our protagonist is Paul Randall (William Janney), a young man who descends from a long line of military and sporting heroes.  His father, Rear Admiral John Randall (Lumsden Hare) and uncle Major General Somers (Clifford Dempsey) are at or near the top of their respective divisions, and his brother John Randall (George O'Brien) is a star football player at West Point (for the uninitiated, Annapolis is the Navy training college and West Point holds the same place in the Army).  Family friend Marian Wilson (Joyce Compton) tends to play each brother off the other, adding to the friendly rivalry between the two siblings.  

Attended by his family's butler/servant/racist stereotype Smoke Screen (Stepin Fetchit), Paul heads to Annapolis and immediately befriends one Albert Edward Price (Frank Albertson) and begins a slow flirtation with local lass Nancy Wayne (Helen Chandler, whose claim to fame would be playing Mina Harker in the 1931 Dracula).  He gets into trouble with upperclassman Harold (Ward Bond) and his two sidekicks (John Wayne & Ben Hall).  This was Wayne's first speaking role -- though uncredited -- in a Ford film.  He would have many more in the future, especially after his star-making turn in Stagecoach ten years later.  Some hijinks at a dance ensue, and the undersized Paul tries out for the football team (the coach is played by David Butler, a one time silent film stalwart who became a serviceable musical comedy director in Hollywood's golden age; this was one of his last roles before transitioning).  Will he be able to get into the game, and make a name for himself in sport?  Have you ever seen a film?

That's pretty much it, as there's not much of a story, more a series of vignettes.  Paul is shy and hesitant, his brother John is a confident go-getter.  A young but recognizable John Wayne is ordered by a visibly younger and near-unrecognizable Ward Bond to throw a pie at Paul.  Stepin Fetchit rambles around muttering gibberish while being patronized.  Ward Bond is the comedic highlight of the movie during the dance scene, which takes up almost a quarter of the 84-minute film ("My sister Susan).  Character actor Lee Tracy shows up in his first role (uncredited) as a football announcer.  And the last 15-20 minutes are devoted to a football game in which you can't tell either team apart, and Paul pulls a Rudy nineteen years before Daniel Ruettiger was even born.

This movie was released on September 1, 1929.  In less than two months, Black Friday would send the world spiralling into the Great Depression.  Thus, Salute occupies an interesting place in history, not necessarily film history but American cultural history.  It is set between the interwar years, in which the United States, after playing a key factor in helping the Allies win the Great War, had retreated into a very isolationist foreign policy.  The American military, therefore, was very much an afterthought in the minds of the general public, who were much more focused on having fun after the horrors of the previous decade.  When you think of the 1920s you think jazz, flappers, the Charleston, college spirit, sporting events, and odd novelty fads like playing the ukelele and flagpole sitting.  Even though Prohibition was in effect, the alcohol and good times were flowing, and speculation in the stock markets was running rampant, as people borrowed on credit with money they didn't actually own in order to finance their pleasures and dreams.  This would all come crashing down, of course, but at the point in time where Salute sits, it was a very "sky's the limit," optimistic time.  There's an innocence and unbridled joy that flows through the film, a pervading attitude that gives it a somewhat old-fashioned charm, which through the lens of history is tinged with a melancholy for what would soon follow.

Ford uses newsreel footage of parades and games (potentially ten minutes out of the runtime was borrowed by the master to tell his story), and it's impressive seeing the crowds of people turning out in the stands, and the amount of marching bands on the field.  Also pretty cool was seeing the cheerleaders of the time, who were actually spirit squads comprised of men to pep up the audiences at a game (the football cheerleading squads as we know them today were actually only introduced during the 1940s, when the majority of American men were overseas in World War II). 

Where there is good, there is often bad, and the most egregious portion of this film is Stepin Fetchit.  I get that his character is supposed to fill the role played by the Fool in Shakespeare's King Lear, i.e. a seemingly stupid person who actually knows more than the other characters do, but it's cringingly embarrassing to watch his performance nowadays.  There are a few things from classic Hollywood movies that are outdated now, but most classic movie fans are able to put themselves back in time and accept the conventions for what they are.  Not so for racial "humour" such as this.  Lincoln Perry (Stepin Fetchit's real name) made a career for himself playing this type of character, and eventually became a millionaire doing so.  It's just a shame that the culture and prevailing attitudes of the time encouraged this type of portrayal of non-whites in films for a very long time.

A less passionate gripe I have is with the way John Ford chose to end the football game.  I understand that, being pretty much the Michael Bay of his time (although better respected by film critics!), he didn't want to upset any portion of the American military, and thus chose to end the game in a tie between the Army and Navy.  As a viewer, however, we have been following Paul's story (George O'Brien, while top billed, is really only a supporting character in the film; his lead credit is due to the fact that he was the only major movie star in the cast at the time).  Thus, the ending of the game was a bit of a letdown, as the viewer has been preconditioned to cheer for the underdog Paul and his Navy teammates.  Also, is Helen Chandler the only woman on campus?  Not quite sure if she's the daughter of the dean or some higher-ranked official (we may have been told, but the explanation flew right past me if we were), but outside of the dance, or whenever Joyce Compton decides to show up, she's literally the only person onscreen without a Y chromosome.  Just found it odd, that's all.

Salute is intermittently entertaining.  While it's amusing to see a young John Wayne and Ward Bond throw pies at young recruits and make wisecracks like the kids they portray, and the atmosphere of the film leaves a strong impression, cinematically it could have been directed by anybody, and the vignette-style type of storytelling is a whole lot of episodic claptrap that ultimately leads to nothing of any consequence.  As a historical capture, it's quite interesting, but as a film, this falls short of the goal line.

Four pigskin punters out of ten.

John Ford Retrospective - The Black Watch (1929)

THE BLACK WATCH (1929)

Starring:  Victor McLaglen, Myrna Loy, David Torrence, David Rollins, Cyril Chadwick, Lumsden Hare, Roy D'Arcy, David Percy, Mitchell Lewis, Claude King, Walter Long

Writer:  John Stone (based on the novel "King of the Khyber Rifles" by Talbot Mundy); dialogue by James Kevin McGuinness

Cinematography:  Joseph H August

Editor:  Alex Troffey

Music:  William Kernell

B&W, 1h 33m.  1.20:1 ratio.  

Released on:  May 8, 1929 by Fox Film Corporation.

My experience:  YouTube

I'm currently reading "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens, and upon watching this, John Ford's first talkie, I can only say that it is a tale of two movies -- in more ways than one.

Visually it's astounding, especially considering he was working within the parameters of early sound technologies.  For many films of the 1929-1931 era, the clunky, noisy cameras put great restraint on the formerly burgeoning cinematic techniques of the late silent period.  The Black Watch, however, is a visual delight, and is, at least to me, the type of movie that pops to mind when imagining a summer escape from reality in Depression era America (although to be honest, this movie was released about a half year before the markets crashed in late October 1929).

On the auditory side of things, however, it's painfully clear that we're watching an early talkie.  Things would improve over the next couple of years, and by 1932 things would be more natural, but in early 1929, when The Black Watch was released, dialogue was delivered very slowly and enunciated very clearly, as it wasn't assumed that audiences would easily be able to follow along.  Dialogue never overlapped, and there were pauses of as much as two or three seconds between when one character would end their speech and the next would begin.  Seen at a distance of 94 years, it seems incredibly archaic and prevents one from fully immersing themselves in the film.  At the time, however, it was all perfectly normal and just another growing pain of a quickly advancing new medium that, forty years earlier, had not even existed.

The plot is somewhat complex, at least for a film of that era.  Our protagonist is one Donald Gordon King, a British Army captain of the Scottish Black Watch regiment, who is assigned by the Field Marshal (David Torrence) to go undercover in India due to his having been raised in the Raj and speaking the multiple languages of the area.  Problem is, this is quite literally the beginning of World War I, and because this is a secret mission, to the rest of the regiment this looks like King bailing on the brotherhood in order to escape the war.  The colonel of the Black Watch (Lumsden Hare) and his assistant, Maj. Twynes (Cyril Chadwick) turn their backs on King, who is only defended by his younger brother, Malcolm (David Rollins).

Upon arriving in the Raj, King is assigned by the General in India (Claude King) to the Khyber Rifles, where he will work with Mohammed Khan (Mitchell Lewis) to infiltrate the inner circle of Yasmani (Myrna Loy), who is gathering quite a following and seems likely to set the natives rising in revolt (you don't say) against the tyranny of the British Empire.  Yasmani's sidekick Rewa Ghunga (Roy D'Arcy) and the leader of the "hillmen," Harrim Bey (Walter Long) are set against this.  A supposedly drunken King assaults and supposedly murders a fellow officer, and somehow escapes from jail to join up with Yasmani's crew (with Mohammed Khan and selected members of the Khyber Rifles in tow) to rescue King's old friend MacGregor (Ford's brother Francis) and other British soldiers who have been captured by them.  All hell breaks loose, the "good guys" win, and King gets to rejoin the Black Watch with his pride and dignity intact.

I've already mentioned the dichotomy between image and sound in this film.  Another thing that sticks in the craw, at least to modern eyes, is the usage -- very prevalent at the time, and not to change for the next fifty years or so -- of obviously Caucasian actors to play characters who are anything but.  Whitewashing, in other words.  And while the performances of the actors in the roles -- Mitchell Lewis is simultaneously amusing and fearsome, Roy D'Arcy plays sinister and deceitful very well -- are fine enough, it's always a bit strange seeing these white British and American actors play ethnic roles.  Mohammed Khan greeting King by calling him Kingsahib is also kind of cringey.  

Ten minutes into the film, we are witness to a horrific performance by some street singers in London.  I have a thought that this was John Ford's way of pulling one over on the new sound audiences.  You want sound in your films, he asks.  Be careful what you wish for!  The film, for all its faults, is not without humor.  The stiff upper lip nonchalance of the British military is lampooned in lines such as, when a character apparently fractures his skull in a fall.  "Awful mess" is the hilariously subdued reply.  And Mitchell Lewis as Mohamed Khan, as mentioned before, is one of the more amusing parts of the film.  He prays, "For all the violence I have displayed towards my fellow man, may Allah forgive me," and promptly assaults somebody else.

There is one performance that grates on me, that of David Rollins.  In Riley the Cop he impressed with his boyishly handsome good looks, but in The Black Watch he opens his mouth to speak and ... well, it's obvious why some people's careers ended with the talkies.  Myrna Loy is another story.  From a visual standpoint one can understand why there's a cult of personality around her character; she's lit fantastically and wears the most lusciously shimmering sheer gowns.  It's hard to believe this is the same person who ten years later was known as America's favorite housewife, but yes -- Myrna Adele Williams from Radersburg, Montana had quite a career in the late 1920s and early 1930s being typecast as a sultry exotic beauty.  Soundwise it's a different story -- her.  lines.  are.  delivered.  so.  so.  soooooooooo.  slowly -- and damn near puts you to sleep.  

For me, the best parts of the film are when King is in India.  The bookend scenes at the Black Watch regiment I found quite stagy and boring, and Ford overindulges in sentimentality here, especially when the troops march off to war in France and leave King behind, a scene that lasts over eight minutes that could have been done in one and a half, or better yet, not at all, as we don't really get to know any of these people.  For this very reason, the one scene from World War I (set in a forest, apparently, not the trenches) is a bit awkward, and seems shoehorned in there.  

Viewed from a lens of 94 years in the future, there is a lot in The Black Watch that makes it a difficult watch.  While I can't recommend it to everyone, if you are able to place yourself into the mindset of someone from the late 1920s, it's quite entertaining and visually stunning, despite its faults.

Five and a half ornate occupiers out of ten.