Well-intentioned WWII survivors’ guilt story has too much going for it to simply write-off, but you can’t grade on effort . . . even in Hollywood. Rosalind Russell is the suicidal war widow desperate to find the five men her husband died to save. If just one of them were worth the sacrifice, maybe she could get on with her life. But when she’s knocked out after drifting into traffic, the cops find that list of survivors is the only identification on her. Fortunately, just about everybody in town knows the last guy on the list, newsman Melvyn Douglas, once a first-rate reporter, now an unemployed habitual drinker. Brought in to help identify Russell, he slowly gets her to unburden herself and they pal up by looking for the men on the list. Turns out, these two broken souls have their own guilty secrets to work thru. As post WWII problem pics go, this is a rather lovely and rather original idea. The script may be too on-the-nose (lots to cover in 83"), but the real problem is studio hack Henry Levin’s stiff, unimaginative directing. Drably functional at best, even in the more fantastic anti-realistic segments, he weighs everything down. Well, maybe not young Sid Caesar as a club comic, the most buoyant of survivors. Mercifully, Roz catches on to who Douglas is before he has to go thru a big confession, but the film needs someone with faith & fancy to take off; a Frank Borzage or possibly Leo McCarey. What does take off is Douglas. In his first role after WWII service, he’s the least obvious tippler in Hollywood history. So in touch with this character, merely hanging his head at the bar tells you all you need to know.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Everyone in the film keeps referencing PETER IBBETSON, a now forgotten piece of romantic fatalism where two lovers separated in life, stay together by ‘dreaming true.’ Icky stuff that works if the spirit is willing, as it did on stage and didn’t quite on film. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/03/peter-ibbetson-1935.html
No comments:
Post a Comment