The Seventh Veil (1945)

The Seventh Veil was one of the most successful British movies of all time. In fact, measured by ticket sales, it’s the tenth biggest box-office hit in British history, well ahead of movies like Jaws, Jurassic Park or The Lord of the Rings. This 1945 production is also one of the most respected of all British movies.
I’m now going to enrage fans of British movies (and I am myself a very big fan of British films of the 40s and 50s) by stating that it’s a very bad movie.
As the movie opens we see a woman we will later earn is Francesca Cunningham (Ann Todd) trying to kill herself by jumping off a bridge. After being taken to hospital she refuses to speak and no-one knows why she did it. Psychiatrist Dr Larsen (Herbert Lom) believes he can find the answer. He explains that the human mind is like Salome’s seven veils. He might remove two or three with friends, and five or even six with a lover, but we never remove the seventh veil. But with hypnosis he can persuade her to remove that seventh veil.
He regresses her to her childhood, which we then see in a flashback. At the age of 14 a caning at school causes her to miss out on a piano scholarship, her hands being too swollen to allow her to play. Her dreams of a career as a concert pianist seem to be dashed. Shortly thereafter she is sent to live with her Uncle Nicholas (James Mason) who is now her legal guardian. The shy Francesca and the moody and taciturn Nicholas do not get on. Then Nicholas discovers her passion for music, a passion he shares.
He begin the process of moulding her into a great concert pianist. He turns out to be an inspired teacher. Several years pass and her talent is becoming more and more obvious. Nicholas sends her to the Royal College of Music but tensions remain between Francesca and Nicholas. She falls in love with a fellow student and announces she is going to marry him but Nicholas forbids the marriage. Given that she is only 17 his decision is probably not unreasonable but Francesca is bitterly resentful.

More years pass and she has now achieved her dream. She is an internationally renowned performer but she is increasingly aggrieved over Nicholas’s rigid control of her life and career. She has also over the years developed an obsession over her hands, natural enough for a musician but she takes it to extremes.
She now decides to run off to Italy with an artist. This leads to a confrontation with Nicholas, and she leaves. Again his opposition is not entirely unreasonable - in the 1940s shacking up with an artist would probably have destroyed her career. There is a car accident and she is now convinced that her hands are irreparably damaged and she can never play again. We are now back to the present day and we have the explanation for her suicide attempt, but Dr Larsen realises she has still not dropped that seventh veil. There is still no explanation of her conviction that her hands are ruined since there is in fact absolutely nothing wrong with them. So what lies beneath that seventh veil?

There are quite a few problems with this movie, most notably with the casting.
Francesca goes from being 14 to being presumably just short of 21 at the end (since Nicholas is still her legal guardian). But Ann Todd was 36 at the time! In fact she was the same age as James Mason! And to be honest she looks 36. It makes it difficult to buy the idea that Francesca sees Nicholas as an incredibly intimidating and yet strangely god-like character. She seems much too mature to fall under the spell of a Svengali. A great actress could have overcome this problem and made us believe in the character anyway, but sadly Ann Todd was not a great actress. It’s not just that she’s too old. We need to not only like Francesca, we need to be fascinated by her. We need to care what lies beneath that seventh veil. Frankly, her performance is dull. Francesca also comes across as being rather selfish. For all his faults Nicholas has devoted almost a decade of his life to helping her realise her dreams. He has his own motivations of course but it’s not as if he pushed her into her career. It’s what she always wanted.
The second problem is James Mason. He’s just too good. He completely dominates the movie. He makes Nicholas a complex, enigmatic but oddly sympathetic character, a man who is terribly vulnerable. He’s a control freak but Mason makes him a lot more interesting than Francesca. Of course, while this is a fault if the movie is supposed to be about Francesca, with Francesca being so uninteresting Mason’s performance at least gives us someone to focus on.
The third problem is the script, which actually won an Academy Award. In the 40s film-makers were obsessed with psychiatry and hypnosis. The results are invariably ludicrous, but usually highly entertaining. I personally adore 1940 psychiatry movies, but probably not for the reasons the film-makers hoped! While I generally dislike the idea of judging movies as being so bad they’re good I make an exception with 40s psychiatry movies. They’re always bad and the worse they are the more fun they are. So whether the script is a disaster or a delight depends on your point of view. It’s certainly very silly.
Herbert Lom as Dr Larsen has the unenviable job of trying to make the psychobabble sound convincing, but being Herbert Lom he ends up making the psychiatrist seem slightly sinister. Certainly not what the film-makers would have intended but it does add to the fun. The script adheres to the then amazingly popular theory that if you could just find out why someone was crazy they would then instantaneously and miraculously be cured. A bit like thinking that if you could find out how someone broke their leg the leg would instantly heal itself!
So while it’s a fairly bad movie it’s thoroughly enjoyable, and James Mason and Herbert Lom are always compulsively watchable. The Seventh Veil is recommended as long as you don’t try to take it too seriously. The Odeon Best of British all-regions DVD is not a stellar transfer but it’s perfectly acceptable.

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956)

Beyond a Reasonable Doubt was Fritz Lang’s last American film, and it’s one of his most underrated productions. Despite its flaws it’s a complex and interesting film.

According to Lette Eisner (in her book on Lang) by this time Lang was thoroughly bored by the idea of social problem films. That’s an important point to bear in mind since it’s easy to make the mistake of thinking that this movie is a critique of capital punishment. While Lang may well have been against capital punishment that’s not what this movie is about except at a very superficial level. A straightforward anti-capital punishment story would have been too obvious and boring a theme to have interested Lang. There’s little doubt that he accepted this project when it was offered to him because he could see that it had much wider possibilities.



Crusading newspaper proprietor Austin Spencer persuades his friend Tom Garrett (Dana Andrews) to witness an execution. Spencer has been campaigning against capital punishment, and against the very successful District Attorney Roy Thompson (Philip Bourneuf). Garrett had worked for Spencer as a newspaperman and is now a novelist, and engage to Spencer’s daughter Susan (Joan Fontaine)

Spencer has an ingenious plan. If he can get an innocent man arrested and then convicted of a murder and then reveal that it was all a set-up and that the man in entirely innocent then he can not only discredit the concept of capital punishment, he can also wreck Thompson’s chances of becoming governor. Garrett is intrigued by this scheme and agrees to be the innocent man in the phony murder frame-up.



The plan involves planting a trail of false clues, clues that will amount to sufficient circumstantial evidence to ensure Garrett’s conviction. Spencer explains that there’s no actual risk. They will keep records of their activities and more importantly Spencer will take photographs of Garrett planting the false clues, photographs that will include newspaper headlines that will establish unequivocally that they placed the phony clues several days after the murder. Once they present this record to the authorities Garrett can count on an immediate pardon.

All they need now is a suitable murder, one that seems to be baffling the police. And the ideal murder occurs soon afterwards - the slaying of a burlesque dancer. The bogus clues have the desired effect and Tom Garrett is soon behind bars, and is convicted precisely according to the plan. Everything is going very smoothly indeed. And then fate steps in, and suddenly Tom Garrett is sitting on Death Row with apparently very little chance of getting that pardon. There are further dramatic twists but I’m not going to give away any spoilers.



This is a movie about innocence and guilt, truth and lies, appearances and reality. Spencer and Garrett weave a clever but dangerous web of deceit. As does the film itself. If you’re a film-maker making a mystery film you have to lie to the audience, you have to practice the same kinds of deception that Spencer and Garrett use to carry off their scheme. The film-maker has to plant red herrings and present clues in a misleading way in order to maintain suspense. It’s ideal material for Fritz Lang.

There’s moral ambiguity and complexity in abundance. Austin Spencer initially is presented as the noble crusading newspaper owner but his actions are horrifyingly irresponsible and cynical. He risks having his friend sent to the electric chair for a crime he did not commit, he puts his daughter through an appalling ordeal and risks destroying her prospective marriage, he wastes a great deal of police time, he wastes a considerable amount of taxpayers’ money on a totally unnecessary trial and he disrupts an important police investigation in a manner that could easily have led to the real killer (a vicious violent killer) escaping justice and being free to commit further murders. He does all this for the sake of scoring political points and indulging his taste for self-righteous soapbox posturing.



His motives for doing all this are more than questionable. Underneath his annoyingly sanctimonious exterior he clearly enjoys the power that owning a newspaper brings, and he is fairly obviously at least partly motivated by his personal animosity to the DA. It’s difficult not to believe that his enthusiasm for the cause he espouses has quite a bit to do with not wanting the DA to succeed in using his courtroom triumphs as a springboard into the governor’s office.

The DA is seemingly set up as the villain of the piece, an ambitious and ruthless man, a man we are led to believe has few scruples. Ironically he turns out to be the most honest (or perhaps the least dishonest is a better way of putting it) of the major characters.



One aspect of this film that is surprisingly often overlooked is the way the press is portrayed. We have here a cynical manipulative newspaper proprietor who wields his power ruthlessly and irresponsibly. The moral depravity of Austin Spencer is truly extraordinary. He clearly believes himself to be a higher level of government than the actual government. Later in the movie we will see his daughter using the power of the press in an attempt to force the criminal justice system to dance to her tune.

By 1956 television was presenting a major threat to Hollywood and this had a particularly serious effect on the cheaper sort of crime film, the B-pictures and the lower-budgeted A-pictures, in fact pictures like this one. Lang didn’t have the budget to include the kinds of visual flourishes you expect in a Lang film and at times it’s a little flat. The casting is also perhaps not quite ideal, apart from Dana Andrews. Tom Garratt is a challenging role for an actor, a man who is practising deception on several levels simultaneously. Dana Andrews is reasonably effective. A more flamboyant actor might have been too obvious.



Douglas Morrow’s screenplay stretches credibility at times but given that it’s an inherently fantastic and implausible concept that’s probably unavoidable. You just have to accept the slightly contrived nature of the script. Given the themes the movie is dealing with a slightly contrived and artificial feel is perhaps more of an asset than a liability.

These are minor quibbles. Overall it’s an intriguing film and much more successful than its indifferent reputation would suggest.

Reap the Wild Wind (1942)

Hollywood may have seen better directors than Cecil B. DeMille but very few have ever equalled him when it comes to pure entertainment and his 1942 production Reap the Wild Wind is a fine example of DeMille at his best.

In the 1840s, before the railroad boom, the prosperity of the United States was dependent on seaborne trade. This trade faced many hazards, few being more deadly than the reefs around Florida’s Key West. Salvage operators made a lucrative but dangerous living retrieving the cargoes of ships wrecked on these reefs.

Few were as brave and as daring as the beautiful Loxi Claiborne (Paulette Goddard). She inherited the family salvage business on the death of her father. The lack of a man to run the business has been no problem - Loxi is as courageous and as determined as any man. But the ships sailing these seas face a far more insidious threat than the reefs - ship-wreckers.

Some salvage operators are not content to wait for a wreck. These land-borne pirates arrange their own wrecks, bribing greedy ships’ captains and officers to drive their own ships onto the rocks. The most notorious of all are the Cutler brothers, King Cutler (Raymond Massey) and Dan Cutler (Robert Preston).

Their most recent victim was the command of Captain Jack Stuart (John Wayne). His first mate Mathias Widgeon was in the pay of King Cutler. Jack Stuart, a brave and honourable seaman, has lost his ship, and possibly his career. He would have lost his life as well had it not been for Loxi Claiborne.

While Jack recuperates he and Loxi get to know each other and love soon blooms between them. Jack fears that the loss of his ship may deprive him of the one thing he wants more than anything else in the world - command of the Southern Cross, a brand-new steamship. Jack knows that steam is the future, and whoever commands the Southern Cross will find himself in line to take over the Deveraux Line when the aged Commodore Deveraux goes to a better world.  

There is another man with ambitions to run the Deveraux Line - their maritime lawyer Steven Tolliver (Ray Milland). Loxi travels to Charleston, determined to use her feminine wiles to save Jack’s career. She flirts with Tolliver but in her mind she dismisses him as a schemer and a milquetoast. It proves to be the most serious error of judgment of her life.

Jack and Steven find themselves in Key West, uneasy allies in the fight against the ship-wreckers. They are very different men. Jack is a rough diamond while Steven is a suave, charming dandy. They have never liked each other and now they are rivals for Loxi’s affections. Jack’s failure to elise that beneath his foppish exterior Steven Tolliver is a brave and honourable man will prove to be a disastrous error of judgment on his part. And King Cutler has plans for the Southern Cross.

There is romance and adventure aplenty here, but there is much more. There is real human drama and complex characterisation. Loxi, Jack Stuart and Steven Tolliver are all complicated people torn by conflicting emotions. They have great strengths and they have real human weaknesses. Even a relatively minor character like Dan Cutler is more than just a stereotype. Faced with such challenging roles all the main players rise to the occasion admirably. 

John Wayne, Paulette Goddard, Ray Milland and Robert Preston are all playing somewhat larger-than-life characters but in all cases they manage to combine a certain amount of over-acting with surprising subtleties.

Visually it’s a typical DeMille production. It’s spectacular, filmed in Technicolor and with some impressive underwater scenes. 

This is over-the-top melodrama but it’s intelligent and superbly made melodrama. Highly recommended.

Moontide (1942)

Moontide was the picture that was supposed to launch Jean Gabin as a Hollywood star. Like almost everything else connected with this movie it didn’t work out as intended, but it’s still a fascinating movie.

Filming started on this 20th Century Fox production in November 1941 but it had already encountered numerous obstacles and its troubles were only just beginning. The Production Code Authority had absolutely vetoed the original screenplay. The original writer, Nunnally Johnson, was replaced by John O’Hara. Jean Gabin insisted on major changes to the script. Studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck insisted on further major changes. Soon after shooting began director Fritz Lang walked off the picture. Plans to film on location had to be scrapped. As a result it’s a bit of a mess in some ways but paradoxically many of these problems ended up working in the movie’s favour.



It’s a kind of film noir fairy tale love story. French dock worker Bobo (Gabin) arrives in San Pedro, California. He meets up with his old buddy, Tiny (Thomas Mitchell), who has a job lined up for him. Bobo celebrates his arrival by getting so drunk that when he wakes up next morning he has no memory of the night before. Nor does he have any idea how he ended up on a bait barge in the harbour. The arrival of the Chinese owner of the barge, Henry, clarifies things slightly. Bobo and Henry had ended up drinking together and Henry had offered him a job, selling bait.

Bobo’s initial reaction after this is to move on as quickly as possible, but then fate steps in. A young woman tries to drown herself and he saves her. The woman is Anna (Ida Lupino). Like Bobo she’s an outsider and she has a past although we never actually find out any details of either her past or Bobo’s for that matter. That’s mainly due to problems with Production Code Authority. In the original novel and in the early version of the screenplay Anna is a prostitute and Bobo is a man who has had many lady friends, quite a few of whom had followed Anna’s profession.



All this had to be cut but in some ways that strengthens the film. Enough is left to suggest that both have seen quite a bit of life, and to lead us to suspect that both have had colourful pasts, but the fact that we don’t know the details gives them both an odd kind of innocence. All we really need to know is that both of them are outsiders, homeless strays.

Bobo takes Anna back to the barge to recuperate. He’s a tough guy with a fiery temper but he’s the sort of tough guy who would take in a bird with a broken wing. Like Anna. He has a gentle side to his character and it responds to her immediately. She obviously not used to men showing this type of tenderness, and it doesn’t take her too long to realise that she likes it.



Their blossoming love soon faces some obstacles. Tiny has a weird kind of hold on Bobo and Tiny dislikes Anna. He apparently dislikes any woman that Bobo likes. Tiny more or less lives off Bobo - he arranges jobs for Bobo and then pockets half the paycheques. There has also been a murder - an old and rather unfriendly character named Pop Kelly who happens to have been drinking at the same bar as Bobo on the day Bobo arrived in town. Since Bobo remembers nothing of this night, and since Bobo’s friend Nutsy (Claude Rains) finds Pop Kelly’s cap in the barge, we suspect that either Bobo was involved or someone was trying to frame him. It’s not long before Tiny puts this idea into Anna’s head.

The odds seem stacked against the two ill-starred lovers. They set up housekeeping on the barge and they are soon talking of marriage but Tiny is determined to thwart their plans.

The film’s reticence about the characters’ pasts and the downplaying of Bobo’s violence were the results of demands made by both the Production Code and Darryl F. Zanuck. The influence of the Code on Hollywood films in the 30s and 40s is today almost universally viewed as being pernicious and disastrous, as is the kind of studio interference that Zanuck indulged in. In practice however the results were not always entirely destructive and in this case Zanuck’s instincts were undoubtedly correct. The changes forced on the writers have the effect of making both Bobo and Anna much more sympathetic and also much more vulnerable. They give the two central characters a kind of innocence that makes their outsider status much more poignant. We desperately want them to make it and that gives the movie a much greater emotional impact. We feel that they are ill-equipped to deal with a hostile world.



Jean Gabin did not find favour with American audiences at the time and he made only one more film in Hollywood before returning permanently to France. Gabin could not adapt to the Hollywood system of movie-making. That’s perhaps a pity since his performance is extremely good.

Ida Lupino is even better. This is a more vulnerable Lupino than usual and she gives a marvellously subtle performance. Claude Rains was cast against type as the scruffy but wise Nutsy and his performance is very unselfish - Rains could chew scenery with the best of them but he backs off in this picture allowing Gabin and Lupino to maintain centre stage. The big surprise is Thomas Mitchell as Tiny. Mitchell usually played loveable types but Zanuck insisted he’d be wonderful as the sinister Tiny, and Zanuck was right.



Visually the movie is extraordinary. Charles G. Clarke was nominated for an Oscar for his cinematography and deservedly so. It’s a mix of visual styles - there’s a lot of film noir and quite a bit of German Expressionism but it owes its biggest debt to the French poetic realist films of the 30s. This may have been indirectly due to Jean Gabin. The visual approach is strikingly reminiscent of Marcel Carné’s 1938 French hit Port of Shadows which starred Gabin. It’s impossible to believe that Moontide wasn’t influence by that film. One suspects that with Gabin as the star someone at 20th Century-Fox must have watched Carné’s film and decided that the look of that film would be perfect for this one. There’s also a debt to Salvador Dali, who did the original drawings for Moontide’ s celebrated drunken dream sequence. Zanuck also had a major input and at least one important (and very effective) scene was entirely Zanuck’s idea.

Part of the look of the movie was entirely fortuitous. The outbreak of war on December 7 1941 meant that plans to film on location at San Pedro had to abandoned so the studio recreated the harbour setting on a sound stage. This magnificent set, combined with the fog-shrouded cinematography, gives the movie an incredibly artificial look. It’s as if the four main characters are trapped in a strange fairy tale word of their own, with Bobo as the hero, Anna as a kind of princess of the slums, Tiny as the wicked witch and Nutsy as the fairy godmother. This fairy tale ambience suits the material perfectly and proves to be the best thing about the film.



Fritz Lang was director for the first two-and-a-half weeks of filming (before Archie Mayo took over) and many of the scenes he shot remain in the film, although apparently no-one is now sure which scenes they are. Lang and Gabin clashed repeatedly on set but both wanted the movie to be more doom-laden and pessimistic and disagreed vehemently with Zanuck on the general direction the film should take. Much as I revere Lang and Gabin I think Zanuck understood the material better than they did.

Moontide was not a commercial success, probably because it’s so uncompromisingly non-realistic and really seems like a strange hybrid. It’s a combination of European and American sensibilities, of film noir and romance, of crime movie and fairy tale. Like Charles Laughton’s 1956 masterpiece Night of the Hunter (which resembles Moontide in many ways) it was a movie that contemporary audiences were not prepared for. Although by no means a perfect film it’s a strange and rather wonderful experience which I recommend very highly.

The DVD in the Fox Film Noir series looks sensational and includes some terrific extras.

Bulldog Drummond Escapes (1937)

Bulldog Drummond Escapes was the first of eight Bulldog Drummond movies made by Paramount in the late 30s.

The Bulldog Drummond novels by Herman C. McNeile (“Sapper”) are highly enjoyable thrillers but sadly none of the many adaptations really capture their spirit. The two mid-60s British films are great fun spoofs but turn the hero into a kind of James Bond clone while the Paramount films make him a bit too smooth. In the novels the character is certainly a gentleman, but he’s a tough guy as well and rather edgy with a strong streak of ruthlessness mixed with chivalry and reckless bravery.



Ray Milland payed Drummond in Bulldog Drummond Escapes but in the later films John Howard takes over the role.

Bulldog Drummond Escapes with Captain Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond returning back home to England. On a misty country road he is flagged down by a young woman who then proceeds to steal his car. The lady left her bag in the car and when he has retrieved his car he drives to Greystone Manor to return it. He is informed that the young lady is suffering from a persecution complex but the doctor who is treating her, along with the middle-aged man an his sister who are caring for her, seem to Drummond to be behaving just a little suspiciously.



Drummond immediately senses that adventure may be afoot. And there’s nothing he likes better. His sense of chivalry also helps in convincing him that this unfortunate young woman is a damsel in distress and in need of rescuing. Inspector Nielson of Scotland Yard warns him off the case which naturally makes him even keener.

His pal Algy Longworth is axiouusly awaiting the birth of his first child but Hugh ropes him in anyway. Hugh finds a letter that confirms his suspicions. He still lacks hard evidence but he feels he needs to act even if it puts him (temporarily) on the wrong side of the law.



The movie suffers a little from the problem that afflicts so many American B-movies of that era - too much emphasis on jokiness and not enough on suspense. Algy is played purely as a comic relief character which becomes just a little irritating. Of course if you haven’t read the books this might not worry you so much, but if you have read them you’ll find yourself wishing they’d been more faithful to the tone of the source material. Not that the books are overly serious - they’re essentially just adventure yarns (and very good ones) but without the quite unnecessary comic relief.

Ray Milland is an actor whose work I enjoy enormously. While he’s a lot more polished than McNeile’s original creation he’s charming enough to get away with it. The support cast is adequate enough.



Bulldog Drummond Escapes is reasonable lightweight entertainment and it’s worth a look.

My copy comes from one of the MiIl Creek public domain boxed sets. DVD picture quality is awful but watchable and the sound quality is absolutely deplorable. The best thing that can be said about it is that the dialogue is at least understandable.

Dancing Lady (1933)

MGM’s 1933 musical Dancing Lady can be seen as an attempt by the studio to do something in the style of Warner Brothers’ 1932 hit 42nd Street. MGM couldn’t capture the hardboiled atmosphere that made 42nd Street so distinctive and they didn’t have Busby Berkeley but they did have plenty of money and they did have two great stars in Joan Crawford and Clark Gable. The result is lightweight but a lot of fun.

Its main claim to fame though is probably that it launched the film career of Fred Astaire. It’s an often overlooked fact that Fred Astaire’s first dancing partner in the movies was not Ginger Rogers but was in fact Joan Crawford.



Even back in 1933 the plot was already hackneyed. Burlesque artiste Janie Barlow (Joan Crawford) will do just about anything to get her break as a dancer. Her opportunity comes when she meets rich dissolute playboy Tod Newton (Franchot Tone). He pulls strings to get her an audition with renowned Broadway producer Patch Gallagher (Clark Gable). Gallagher is tired of having wealthy backers trying to get their girlfriends into his show and tells his assistant to give her the brush-off but the assistant finally persuades him to take a look at her. He can see at once that she has potential, so now she’s got a job in the chorus line.

Tod isn’t really interested in furthering her theatrical career. He’s more interested in getting her into the bedroom than onto the stage, but she’s so single-minded about dancing that he figures that getting her into the chorus line will keep her interested and then when she realises how tough Broadway is she’ll be more inclined to accept her attentions. At last that’s his initial plan, but he soon realises that actually he wants to marry her.



While Janie is kept busy fending off Tod’s attentions Patch has had second thoughts about his new find. He’s decided that she really is something social, that she just might have what it takes to become a star, and that he should take a big chance and put her into the lead role. She’ll be dancing opposite a well-established Broadway star named Fred Astaire. Naturally things aren’t going to work out that smoothly or that simply, the show faces cancellation and Janie faces the even more unpleasant fate of marriage to Tod, that being the only alternative she’s left with.

Of course it can’t end that way and somehow Patch will find a way to save the show, and Janie will get her chance.



The unoriginality of the plot doesn’t matter in the least in a movie like this. What does matter is the charisma of the leads and the quality of the musical numbers. In both those respects Dancing Lady is on firm ground. They may not have had Busby Berkeley but the music is good and the production numbers are spectacular. At times surreal and even verging on the bizarre, but impressive nonetheless.

Crawford and Gable are both terrific and as always they have tremendous chemistry. As a dancer Crawford might not have been Ginger Rogers but she was still a pretty good hoofer. Her dance duets with Astaire are not as elaborate as the ones he would later do with Rogers but Crawford acquits herself extremely well.



There’s a strong and rather varied supporting cast. Franchot Tone is reasonably good as the smooth but somewhat sleazy Tod. Astaire only appears in the dance routines. Robert Benchley is amusing as a slightly scatter-brained gossip columnist. There’s also the first movie appearance of Nelson Eddy. Plus there’s comic relief courtesy of the Three Stooges, a very strange touch that works better than you’d expect.

Robert Z. Leonard is one of those often overlooked directors. He was no auteur but he was a capable craftsman who could handle just about any genre, the kind of director who was the backbone of Hollywood in the days of the studio system. He does his usual competent job here.



There’s not a huge amount of pre-code sex and sin here, but there is some. Janie does after all start her career as a strip-tease artiste, and there are a few risque moments scattered through the film.

This is not perhaps one of the great musicals of the 30s but it’s thoroughly enjoyable and it features Gable and Crawford at their most charming and likeable. Definitely recommended.

The Letter (1940)

The Letter, directed by William Wyler for Warner Brothers in 1940, contains what may well be Bette Davis’s finest performance. And it’s a great film.

It’s hard to go wrong when adapting a Somerset Maugham story for the screen. For some reason his stories just work perfectly as movies.

The setting is a rubber plantation in Malaya, some time during the 1930s (the war is never mentioned so it’s clearly some time before 1939).



The famous opening sequence is one of the best you’re ever going to see, with Bette Davis emptying a revolver into a man. We have no idea who he is or why she shot him, or why she kept on shooting him after long after he was obviously dead.

The District Officer and her lawyer are sent for and Leslie Crosbie (Davis) tell her story. The man she shot was Peter Hammond, another planter. He had made unwanted advances to her, there had been a struggle, she had grabbed her husband’s revolver and being so upset she hadn’t realised that she had just kept on pulling the trigger. Everyone is very sympathetic. Her husband Robert (Herbert Marshall) arrives shortly afterwards and he is very sympathetic as well. Clearly she had had no choice.



Of course the District Officer has no choice but to arrest her and she will have to stand trial for murder in Singapore but no-one has the slightest doubt she will be acquitted. Until her lawyer, Howard Joyce (James Stephenson), receives information that a letter exists. A Very compromising letter. A letter written by Leslie to the deceased, begging him to come to her while her husband was away. Apart from being very damaging in itself, suggesting n intimate relationship between her and Hammond and casting extreme doubt on her story of being suddenly attacked for no reason, its existence also flatly contradicts the statement she made that she had had no contact of any kind with Hammond for many weeks and that he was no more than a casual acquaintance.

The existence of the letter makes it more than likely that Leslie will be convicted and hanged. Howard Joyce is an honourable man but against his better judgment he is persuaded to try to buy the letter. At the very least this could end his career and he might well face criminal charges for attempting to pervert the course of justice.



The letter is in the hands of Hammond’s widow, a Eurasian woman. She insists she will not sell the letter unless Leslie comes to her personally and at their meeting her hatred for Leslie is all too apparent. But she sells the letter.

It would seem that Leslie is now out of the woods but the killing has had consequences for everyone concerned, for Leslie, for her husband and for Howard Joyce. It may well end by destroying all their lives.

William Wyler was renowned for being a perfectionist who was capable of forcing an actor to do take after take after take and as a result many actors hated working for him. Bette Davis was one of the few who appreciated that Wyler’s methods worked and he got extraordinary performances from her. In a role which could easily have become histrionic and excessively mannered Davis turns in a subtle and controlled performance.



Herbert Marshall and James Stephenson are also superb. While Leslie dominates the film both Robert and Howard Joyce are complex characters thrown into emotional turmoil and not always entirely certain of their own motivations. They are in fact more complex than the self-centred and selfish Leslie.

The visual style certainly has affinities with film noir, although film noir would not truly arrive on the scene for another year or two. The use of shadows and moonlight and in particular the use of light broken up by slatted blinds suggest that The Letter might well have been a major influence on the noir style.

The movie deals indirectly with the effects of colonialism, especially the effects on the representatives of the colonial power. Boredom, despair, alcoholism and adultery are obviously the major ingredients in life in colonial Malaya.



The temptation to give this movie a feminist reading and to treat Leslie as some kind of victim is a temptation that should be strongly resisted. She is a complete monster, thoroughly evil and manipulative. One can’t help suspecting that the signs of remorse she displays have nothing to do with genuine remorse but are merely signs of self-pity and of her frustration that she has been found out and that her elaborate lacework of lies has come unravelled. Leslie’s favourite hobby is lacework and to me the symbolism is clear enough - she constructs intricate patterns of lies and manipulations rather like a spider spinning a web of deception.

Apart from the visual elements there are some thematic similarities to film noir. I suppose you could it tropical noir. It’s a superbly crafted film and fully justifies Wyler’s methodical and perfectionist approach. A great movie.