KNIGHT WITHOUT ARMOR (1937)

Taking second-position to Marlene Dietrich (top-billed even in ‘box-office poison’ days*), Robert Donat is chivalric charm itself as an undercover British agent who worms his way into the nascent Red Army only to fall hard for Dietrich’s Old Guard Countess, helping her to reach ‘the Whites’ (and temporary safety) during the murderously chaotic Civil War days of the Russian Revolution.  But between close calls from mass execution on both sides, and skin-of-their-teeth escapes, the constantly changing political terrain (Red to White/White to Red) find the pair in and out of deathly dangers when not completely losing touch with each other.  Can they survive long enough to reach the border?  Atmospherically designed for romance & adventure, with Jacques Feyder helming a rare English-language pic*, the big, handsome production cost Alexander Korda plenty (did it ever make its money back?).  It's also fabulously shot by Harry Stradling with dappled lighting & a stylized studio look that lets Dietrich’s equally stylized glamor shine without looking out of place.  Especially so when she dresses down for getaways.  Silly stuff in its way, the James Hilton novel has nothing of the restrained stiff-upper-lip emotion Donat would mine two years on in GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS, here its all romantic dash & life-or-death decisions for our leads on the lam.  Stoppered sentimental longing left to John Clements in a brief star-making/scene-stealing turn as a soft-hearted revolutionary playing a deadly game of no-way-out with his life while trying to help these sympathetic lovers.  All handled in two intense, memorable scenes.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Dietrich, who repaired her Hollywood bona fides roughhousing in DESTRY RIDES AGAIN/’39, made some swell films while out-of-favor, including the film that came between KNIGHT and DESTRY, Ernst Lubitsch’s much underrated ANGEL/’37.

DOUBLE-BILL: For a serious/absurd look at this period, Miklós Jancsó’s nihilistic war film CSILLAGOSOK, KATONAK / THE RED AND THE WHITE  (1968).  (see below)

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *Feyder also responsible for insisting that Korda hire composer Miklós Rósza (his first film score) after seeing a ballet in Paris with Rósza’s music.