I saw "Flesh and Fantasy" at the Music Box Theater in Chicago as part of its annual Noir City festival. TCM's Eddie Muller was there to introduce it, and he lauded praise on Julien Duvivier's anthology film and got me excited to watch it as only TCM hosts can. It's always a bummer to be at a festival, watching a rare film that the crowd is pumped for, introduced by someone who loves it, only to find that the film is a disappointment. That's how I felt.
I didn't know it was an anthology film going in, so that's one strike against it off the bat. I just don't like this storytelling format. But also, I was seeing it as part of a noir festival, and this movie doesn't feel at all like a film noir. It's got the noir look here and there, but none of the noir themes, character types, or conventions. It's just a mildly creepy series of stories about fate and fortune, and how much man is prey to the whims of the universe vs. His own volition. It's got a dynamite cast -- Edward G. Robinson, Barbara Stanwyck, Charles Boyer, May Whitty, Thomas Mitchell. But because everyone's only in one of the stories, you get very little of any one actor.
The film screened as a double feature with "Destiny," which was supposed to be the fourth story in this anthology but was cut from the film for being too weird. The studio hired a different creative team to take the 30 minute excerpt and fluff it out to a 60 minute feature, and I have to admit that I liked that stitched together Frankenstein's monster of a movie more than the main event.
Grade: C.
I didn't know it was an anthology film going in, so that's one strike against it off the bat. I just don't like this storytelling format. But also, I was seeing it as part of a noir festival, and this movie doesn't feel at all like a film noir. It's got the noir look here and there, but none of the noir themes, character types, or conventions. It's just a mildly creepy series of stories about fate and fortune, and how much man is prey to the whims of the universe vs. His own volition. It's got a dynamite cast -- Edward G. Robinson, Barbara Stanwyck, Charles Boyer, May Whitty, Thomas Mitchell. But because everyone's only in one of the stories, you get very little of any one actor.
The film screened as a double feature with "Destiny," which was supposed to be the fourth story in this anthology but was cut from the film for being too weird. The studio hired a different creative team to take the 30 minute excerpt and fluff it out to a 60 minute feature, and I have to admit that I liked that stitched together Frankenstein's monster of a movie more than the main event.
Grade: C.