Tuesday, February 04, 2020

Movie review - "It Had to Happen" (1936) **

Odd melodrama from Fox which feels as thought it was rewritten a lot though I could be wrong. George Raft plays an Italian immigrant who arrives in America with a whatsa-matta-mamma accent and crosses with aristocrat Rosalind Russell and then four years later he's a political boss in the city, accent gone, and he sees her again only now she's married.

Raft does stretch himself in this one, with the accent, and having a few big monologues, notably at the end when he's fighting a charge of blackmail.. The movie kept surprising me - Raft acted like a gang boss but apparently he wasn't a gang boss, and he took four million dollars but it wasn't a bribe, and he falls for ice cool Russell who is married and... they get together at the end! I mean, she's married. And she's ice cold and doesn't seem to like him genuinely more his interest in her.

I kept expecting him to go back to Aline Judge as his secretary who is a lot of fun. The movie would have been more fun if Raft was a proper gangster and Russell was in to rough trade and it all ended tragically but I'm guessing Raft didn't want to play a crook so they softened it. I am thrown that married Russell was allowed to wind up with him at the end.

It's not dramatically satisfying but if you're a fan of Russell and/or Raft there's plenty of both.

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