Reviews

When a film and its main character are as outrageous as they are here, there is no way they will not be some fun. This one is quite far from perfection - but fun it is, with strong acting by Laughton, Carole Lombard and Bickford, and fairly gripping and well-filmed. In the present case, despite the title and the first billing, and alas for Carole Lombard's admirers - among which the present reviewer can be counted - the central character which is the raison d'être of the film is clearly not hers. Actually the story opens with her, and starts on a strong footing. As an impoverished widow Judith Denning has been reduced to scrape a living by singing in bars of dubious standing. She is as much despised by the narrow-minded white colonial society as she herself despises it. She could not care less about their opinion if it did not add to her troubles by repeatedly obliging her to move from one island to another one. For a woman in a weak position she is quite strong-minded. But this side of her mostly disappears when, rather than staying under the threat to be imminently expelled once more, she lets herself be convinced to marry and follow Horace Prin, the self-made and self-style King of the River in the upland inside. That is a bold and ominous decision, considering the very strange person he obviously is. He has persuaded her that they are somehow alike, outsiders facing and hating the hypocrisy of bourgeois conventions. In any case she probably believes she does not have a lot of other clearly better choices, or anything much to lose. Obviously she is wrong, but if she had not been there would not have been a film - many film stories could not exist without a fair amount of misplaced decisions from their main characters. Anyway she rapidly understands her big mistake when she finds herself in the "palace" of her king and master, a river-houseboat moored deep inside the jungle, among native tribes which are supposedly subdued but not very reassuring on the whole. Wild tribesmen, with a nasty habit of cutting heads when they are unhappy, are not her main problem though. Her cunning and stark-raving mad husband is, who reigns Nero-like, despotically and pervertedly, over a ragtag of runaway jailbirds he has brought and offered asylum to, using them as enslaved deputies to rule his extended lands - he is supposed to be a planter, though it is not very clear how he earns his wealth. Among them is David, an ideally romantic young man whom she learns later to be a traumatized deserter - feeling understandably little sense of loyalty towards her husband and this being a pre-code film, Judith does not have lengthy hesitations before letting herself fall for the handsome David and reciprocally. They have acknowledged each other as soul mates, strayed away from a good upbringing which separates them from Prin and the others - when they talk about native drums, which Judith enjoys, they compare them to Ravel's music... However this cooing does not last long. As could be totally expected from him, highly-jealous Prin retaliates against the seemingly weak-willed David by exiling him farther inland, while he is replaced by newly-arrived he-man Ballister, one who does not let himself be impressed in the least by Prin. This includes trying right away to seduce his wife under his very eyes - to Ballister's credit, he does not hold it agains her that she refuses him flatly. This makes Prin even more incensed and he takes the rash move to offend mortally a tribal chief of the highlands so as to trigger a rebellion which is likely to entail a dire fate for David - who demonstrates unexpected pluck by crossing on foot through the forest the rebels' territory so as to warn them. By that time rebels have also reached the outskirts of the houseboat - such backfiring was not unexpected by Prin, he has foreseen machine-guns to greet them. Judith has found back her strong will and decides to leave with David - that as well Prin has prepared to, he has sabotaged the boat by mostly emptying the tank and prepared a reception committee of murderous tribesmen (of those faithful to him...). Unfortunately for him Ballister has showed unexpected empathy towards the young couple by giving them the only full tank, which reduces to nil possibility of escaping for Prin and himself; and incensed that Prin has gratuitously killed his pet ape and companion Duke (a courtier...), another of his minions, Jakey, has thrown away the machine-guns in the river and replaced them ironically with Duke's corpse. The final scene is one of its most memorable ones. With very limited hope left, if any, to save their skins, Ballister and Prin sit for a poker game which the former has proposed, and Prin discovers from him that his plans for having the young couple killed are failing as well, they hear them escape the ambush. Prin finds himself alone when Ballister is shot by a blowpipe, and starts a bombastic and defiant tirade proclaiming he is still King of the River - he then goes out on the balcony under which tribesmen on a boat are waiting to spear him. Though one thinks about Nero declaring "What an artist dies in me!', the closest reference which comes to the mind is rather Richard III dying on the battlefield of Bosworth, as lonely and defiant as he has ever been - both do not have a public any more, but anyway the only public they ever respected and played for was really themselves... Charles Laughton has a field day playing this over the top character, which is purely evil during most of the film, but has his character explained at the start, and is granted a kind of absurd, half-mock heroic grandeur with his end. It is quite an interesting and sensible choice to close the film on Prin's death - moreover elliptically, the killing itself and his body are not shown -, rather than to feel obliged to show us again Judith and David; yes, they are saved, this is just sort of an appendix to the conclusion which we learn about through Ballister. It more than confirms, if needed, who the actual "hero" of the film was all along. The film could almost have been based on a Conrad story of madness - there is something of Heart of Darkness in it, of course in a quite crude and simplistic Hollywood treatment. Maybe, as another comment suggested, this was just the studio's answer to similar stories with Jean Harlow, or another variation on delirious tales which jungle settings were often inspiring then. All the same, it is well worth seeing, and unlikely to be forgotten.

It is strange that so many opinions are depreciating this "small" comedy/drama, which if only because of its very unconventionally sad "unhappy-end" is above the usual standard and very much worth-seeing.

Up to its ending, the film has been a fairly skilful, though simply plotted, romantic comedy. A bittersweet mixture of witty cynicism and real emotions, it is actually not wholly unworthy of the great Lubitsch, who might have enjoyed handling such a story - it has common points with Trouble in Paradise which the master of wits filmed the following year. Which is not to say this film can compare to a Lubitsch one - it doesn't, but extremely few can. Just that it is quite enjoyable and more interesting than it could appear at first. Trevor, a charmingly brilliant crook and blackmailer, lives an easy and more or less settled life in Paris. However it soon appears it is not a really happy one, as in the past he has been forced to abandon his country and friends, his youth ideals, and his hopes for a life more worthy of his own self-esteem. All this, which he had made his best to bury as deep inside himself as feasible, is suddenly brought to the light of a romance with a young rich heiress, Mary - which starts as a natural infatuation with youth, charm and beauty, but evolves into something much more deeply involving for both. It so happens that Mary is really more than a conventional "beautiful lady", which is confirmed when he resigns himself to expose to her what kind of a man he actually is. Far from being appalled and repulsed, she immediately decides that his present and past are irrelevant, as they both know that deep inside he is a very different person and that together they will leave all that behind. Is this just the naivety of a pampered and optimistic gilded youth who has never experienced that life is slightly more complicated? One may be tempted to discard it as credulous - but in this case there are actually good reasons to believe that she is right on all accounts. He, at his core, is a good person, without any deep flaws likely to reappear in a new life. She feels it, knows it. But interestingly, she resorts to a very different if not opposite argument - and thus shows that her good looks might have deceived Trevor and viewers alike into underestimating her : she says that she is glad Trevor has a flawed past, and that she would love him less if he had been like her fiancee a good, uninteresting person with no experience of the hardships and complexities of life. Certainly not the way of thinking of your usual hare-brained heiress in many such films. This is part of what makes the ending so bitter and poignant. Trevor lets himself be convinced - in truth, too easily - by his pathetic former lover Irene that this is all an illusion, that he will not be able to get rid of his past just like that and it will some day catch up with them and wreck their happiness and love. If Trevor has real flaws in this story, they are really a certain lack of courage and trust, in Mary and above all in himself, as well as a possibly misguided sense of honour. After a sleepless night of "tempest in a skull", Trevor finds the only morally noble solution - making himself appear as a complete heel to Mary, so as to break neatly their bond. Which succeeds, though we hope that she will see through his plot - she does not, and who could blame her? Therefore, the expected happy ending, the two lovers honeymooning on a cruiser, is cruelly sacrificed for an extremely downbeat alternative - which involves two diverging boats, united by unhappiness... On one bound back to America Mary, heartbroken and her illusions shattered, is going back to the conventionally dull and most probably not very happy life she had found some hope of escaping;. On another one bound to South Africa, Trevor is in the company of Irene, which he has accepted only by compassion and indifference henceforth to his own future. He is as heartbroken as Mary, and his hopes of redeeming his own life are even more shattered - it seems unlikely he will try again. The swamp is for him, forever. A very melodramatic ending? Possibly, but in a subdued - and very sad - way. It would have been much easier to reward the viewers' expectations of a happy ending. Much more banal as well, less interesting and memorable. And probably less true to real life. In this sense this early talkie is quite modern in its way. Credits remind us that it has been written by Herman Mankiewicz, older brother of Joseph and screenwriter of Citizen Kane. By the way this truly heroic sacrifice, making oneself appear as an unworthy, soulless and loveless egoist, as the only means to force your loved one to leave you for his own good, be it at the cost of your smitten heart and the sacrifice of your whole future happiness as well as redemption, strongly reminded me of another story which I could not put my finger on right away. With a little memory-searching I found out what it was : this is the basic argument at the end of George Cukor's film Camille with Garbo and Taylor, itself adapted from the play La dame aux camélias which also gave us the opera Traviata. What will be sublime tear-jerking melodrama in Camille is here handled rather subtly, without pathos, very low-key - in the following scene Trevor who is forced to leave Paris puts moodily his beloved books away into cases. I find it quite plausible that this melodramatic storyline element has also been used in a number of other plots of films and novels, actually. A few words about the setting and actors. The story takes place in Gay Paree and seems to present it in the usual vein, as a den - or haven/heaven - of debauchery. However by pre-code standards - or Lubitsch's... - it is pretty innocuous, no more hell than heaven. Debauchery does not go much beyond too many colourful cocktails and long nights of revelry and a few mild allusions such as one to postcards (this one originating from two couples of old Americans who seem so boringly respectable that they are unlikely candidates for extreme dissipation). Nightlife places of pleasure are limited to an admittedly dull tourist-oriented high-end restaurant, and the harmless typical bistro of Papa Jules. This is more the sweet idealized Paris of post-code comedies than the wild one of silent and pre-code movies. Overall this one, despite its scandal-oriented characters, is extremely short on risqué situations and dialogues - if it had been shot a few years later, the Hays Code people would probably have found little to object to in it. William Powell is very good in his role, as fluidly refined as ever, but able to convey his deep feelings behind the apparent flippancy of the "man of the world", as the title describes him with a nice double-entendre. Contrary to other opinions on his acting here, I feel that he is not still an actor in development - all his future persona (mannerisms included) is already there - his adaptation to the universe of talking pictures has been remarkably fast, in particular thanks to his rapid elocution. One can say mostly the same of the other actors, especially Guy Kibbee - about Carole Lombard later on. Wynne Gibson is the only one with a whiff of silent movie acting but she conveys rather well and movingly her unlikable and maudlin character. The film as a whole suffers fairly little of the drawbacks of early talkies, static acting and annoying sound-recording - one remnant is the sound of wood boards when Trevor and Mary are romantically walking on a Paris bridge at night. As to Carole Lombard, she is still only a star-in-waiting in a Powell vehicle. As other comments have noted, her hairdo and make-up make it difficult to recognize the radiant face with which she will soon illuminate other more noteworthy films in her career. During two-thirds of the film, Mary's character is not really fleshed out in any substantial way - this is one of the major weaknesses of the script, which makes it harder to understand why Trevor falls deeply for her. However, the well-written scene where Trevor reveals his true self to her completely belies the judgement of many, that Mary is a lightweight and fairly uninteresting role. In the latter part of this dialogue, Mary really takes over Trevor as the strongest character of the two : after his classical confession to her, she reacts in a quite unexpected manner. Not only does she sweep away his unfounded worries with a healthy dose of "let the past be the past", which shows her as much more mature than she appears and he believes. But she also actually welcomes his checkered past and possibly flawed personality, which contrary to her bland money-man fiancee make him a real person, the only kind of person she could really envisage to make her life with, actually. That is a strong statement - and the way Carole Lombard makes it credible announces the qualities of natural acting which will distinguish in her further career, and her later under-estimated capabilities to act serious roles beyond her talent for light-hearted comedy. Hail Carole, one of the greats in this no-sacred-monster register, with Margaret Sullavan and Barbara Stanwyck.

The episode is mainly, like other ones such as The Return of Dr. Thackeray, about the story of a young man with problems to become the same strong man figure as the man who has raised him.

Its secondary theme is about a Iago - named just Gault here... - who tries and almost manages to reach his vile ends by using the complexes of the young man to instill in him envious resentment and a suicidal urge to defy the older man. This is quite a bright scenario, and credibly developed. It takes all the wiles of Paladin to open the eyes of the young man unmask the scoundrel and, more importantly, his punch to avoid the senseless bloodshed plotted by Gault.

What's not to be loved in a story introducing John Carradine as a mankind love-oozing Mexican padre who is the father superior of a monastery of Franciscan monks, reminding of his slightly Christlike role in Grapes of Wrath?

Well, mostly everything else actually - a not very convincing triangular confrontation between an avaricious farmer, the monks who want to recover their beloved statue of San Sebastian, and a self-styled Mexican avenger outlaw by the name of Sancho Fernandez who claims asylum in the monastery and triggers its siege by the farmer. The solution of Paladin to end the standoff is ingenuous, though not fully unexpected - once again, like in High Wire, he demonstrates his skills as a prestidigitator.

Above par episode, which follows the lines of a classic Western movie.

Its originality is to imagine that a top-notch Italian tailor has been been seized late in life by gold fever - his mine being called The Grail... It enables the story to straddle two almost opposite worlds, the refined San Francisco society, and the rough mining town where the gun rules. Actually, nobody straddles these two worlds more than Paladin himself... The world of the tailor shop is chiefly there, at the beginning and the end, for the sake of contrast : it suggests how inexperienced the heiress to the mine with the striking good looks is likely to be in the other world, as her cheated and now strangely deceased father has been before her. Paladin is there not only to protect her but to open her beautiful credulous eyes. When he tries, however, to convince her of the duplicity of the foreman, Bryan, in his presence, he strangely does not use all the proofs he has in his sleeves - namely, that he saw with his own eyes a number of miners "high-grade" - conceal ore, while Bryan was conveniently looking away from the practice with obviously inefficient controls. Why does not he mention that to Angela? Obviously, for the interest of the show, because if she was convinced then, it would forestall the final showdown in the mine. More sensibly, Paladin guesses that whatever his proofs Angela will keep doubts, the only way to dispel them being to oblige Bryan to throw the mask and show his true murdering self.