It’s a snow job – Davis’s wife is a nagging bitch, Bathsehba’s husband practically begs to be killed on active duty. Michael Rennie and Arlene Dahl are the two sub-stars. I read a book on screenwriting that gave good marks to Phillip Dunne's script but on this evidence it wasn't that good; the main interest comes from seeing them get around the sexual dodginess of the main story.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Radio review - CP#46 – “The Citadel” (1940) **
Based on a famous book, but it’s boring – Orson Welles as a doctor in a mining town who marries a decent woman (Geraldine Fitzgerald – thank goodness it isn’t Helen Hayes), goes off the tracks but gets back on again. In the 1930s there were lots of these sort of films about tormented medicos (eg Green Light, Men in White) - actually they still make them today, only on TV. Fitzgerald had acted with Welles on stage at the Mercury; apparently the two of them had an affair. During the late 30s it seemed she might become a major star, but it never quite happened for her - although she did go on to have a very distinguished career.
Movie review – “Daughter of the Dragon” (1931) **
The third and last of Warner Oland’s turn as Fu Manchu sees him cede top billing to Anna May Wong, who plays his daughter. It refers to the previous two films – he’s still after the descendants of the family he blames for the death of his family (I think Holmes Herbert is playing the role that Neil Hamilton played in the first two films; Bramwell Fletcher is the juvenile lead, Herbert’s son). There’s an unfortunate return of the silly Ass comic relief.
The film is striking in that it has two leads played by genuine Asian actors –Wong and Sessue Hayakawa, who plays a secret agent. We see Fletcher crack on to Wong – Wong says hang on I’m not Caucasian and Fletcher says he prefers girls like her. It was probably a mistake to have Wong not realise her heritage until a fair way in. And this is the third film where the Fu Manchus are motivated by revenge – what happened to world domination? Slack!
Radio review – “The Man Who Couldn’t Lose” (1944) **1/2
Gene Kelly as that Suspense standby –a hen pecked husband with a nagging wife. He wins at lotto which leads to murder, betrayal, etc. A decent episode although I admit I got confused here and there. These eps of Suspense if you don’t listen to every detail you spend the rest of the time trying to catch up.
Radio review – Suspense – “Dead of the Night” (1944) **
Not a version of the famous British horror film but Robert Cummings (in his first performance back from service duty) in a not very good tale of a man whose sister’s abusive husband winds up dead. He helps her dispose of the body - it would have been better had Cummings been an ex boyfriend or something so there was more of a motive for killing. A not very satisfactory conclusion – I hate it went it all turns out happily in an ep of Suspense. A larger synopsis is here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)