State District Attorney Thomas Mitchell sells his soul to the devil to run for governor in this middling effort from director John Farrow on a much overworked story. At its best when Ray Milland’s Lucifer is on screen, appearing out of the blue via simple edits, foggy arrivals or merely stepping into frame unexpectedly, the absence of ghostly special effects helping to make this modern Beelzebub convincing. So too Milland’s surface ease and sly wit. (He might be prepping for his murder-by-proxy role in DIAL M FOR MURDER/’54.) If only the original story & script (Mildred Lord; Jonathan Latimer) weren’t so diffuse. Darryl Hickman is tossed in as a juvenile delinquent needing reform at Mitchell’s Boy’s Club only to largely disappear from the story; Geraldine Wall & Audrey Totter barely register in a Wife vs. Tramp love triangle; Fred Clark promises venom but doesn’t deliver much threat as a graft grabbing power broker; George Macready’s Reverend-with-conscience-to-spare is no Jiminy Cricket; while a quartet of elder politicos function as a weak chorus when Mitchell succumbs to temptation. None of them getting proper character development or story integration. The old tale holds up anyway (it always does), but you’ll see why this particular iteration has been largely forgotten even with Franz Waxman’s stirring Lutheran-themed score. (Waxman on fire at Paramount at the time with well-deserved Oscars for SUNSET BOULEVARD and A PLACE IN THE SUN over the next two years.)
DOUBLE-BILL: So many modern Faust stories to pick from, but Preston Sturges’s THE GREAT MCGINTY/’40 is tough to beat for a fast, unlikely, parallel rise to the governor’s mansion. Squint hard, and it’s a near-Faust story with Brian Donlevy’s McGinty as Faust & Akim Tamiroff as a politico-power broker Devil. OR: From the previous year, Farrow & Milland working better developed material in the THE BIG CLOCK/’48, itself loosely remade as NO WAY OUT/’87.
No comments:
Post a Comment