Painfully misguided super-spectacle from Fox, made just as Darryl F. Zanuck’s 20th Century outfit was taking over and leading man Spencer Tracy was taking off. (Spence sobered up and soon landed at M-G-M.) Better known for B-pics, producer Sol M. Wurtzel & director Harry Lachman camouflage an intractable story & unappealing characters with ‘production value,’ including three trips into Dante’s Inferno, first as H. B. Warner’s rundown carny attraction, then spiffed up thru Tracy’s showmanship, and finally as a dreamscape of Dante’s Hell running almost a full reel. It’s a quite a show, but never feels organic or tied to Tracy’s fast-rise from bum to entrepreneur & society crasher as he runs roughshod thru partners, friends, even family, breaking rules of decorum & public safety on his race to the top. Twice causing disaster: on land when his expansion collapses at a benefit and then out at sea when his gambling ship goes up in flames. Oddly for a film made under full Production Code enforcement, he goes largely unpunished for all his misdeeds, reforming just in time to earn a happy finish, reunited with wife Claire Trevor & kid Scotty Beckett. Terrible as it is, and Tracy quite rightly loathed the film, it’s a rather entertaining watch. So much going on!
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Even with visual flair of phantasmagoric sets & Rudolph Maté’s chiseled lensing, along with an early screen appearance for ballroom dancer Rita (Casino) Hayworth, the film remains little scene. Possibly because Tracy spends half a reel in BlackFace as part of a carny job where he gets baseballs thrown at him.
DOUBLE-BILL: Tracy had earned kudos playing another obsessive businessman in THE POWER AND THE GLORY/’33, with William K. Howard directing a much admired Preston Sturges script. The film, vastly over-praised then & now, no doubt helped this disaster get made.
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