THE SEARCHING WIND (1946)

Both Lillian Hellman WWII themed plays were written in the moment, produced & directed on B’way by Herman Shumlin, successfully ran the season and were snapped up by producer Hal Wallis for the movies.  WATCH ON THE RHINE/’43 (anti-fascist leader brings American wife & kids home to D.C. before he is forced into a murder so he can return to his country and the fight); SEARCHING WIND/’46 (mismatched romantic triangle spanning politics, journalism & society across the right/neutral/left political spectrum).  RHINE, made when Wallis was still at Warners, is barely ‘opened up’ for the screen, incompetently megged by original stage director Shumlin, and still works; WIND, now over at Paramount, was significantly revamped by Hellman for a more filmic presentation under vet helmer William Dieterle and doesn’t.  Admittedly, neither play is Hellman at her LITTLE FOXES best, but the melodrama in RHINE still feels all of a piece, and much of the acting (especially from Bette Davis & Paul Lukas) remains staggeringly effective.  Not so much here.  Sylvia Sidney is the left-leaning reporter at Dudley Diggs’ right-leaning newspaper over the decades leading to WWII; Ann Richards is Diggs’ fascist-leaning snob of a daughter, married on the rebound to politically impartial diplomat Robert Young whose love-match with Sidney is habitually undercut by his inability to take a stand.  For Hellman, neutrality’s false equivalency the ultimate political sin.  It’s a far more interesting idea than the relatively simple moral lines drawn in RHINE, but Hellman’s attempt to dramatize it using three people with little to keep them in each other’s lives fails to hold the play together.  (Richards in particular seems less deluded by misplaced passion than deranged.)  Worse, Hellman tries wrapping all their concerns inside the medical crisis of the war-wounded son of Young’s wobbling diplomat and Richard’s shallow, socially blind wife.  Perhaps it worked better on stage where a young Montgomery Clift played the son.  Here, debuting Douglas Dick makes little impression.  And producer Wallis may have noticed the problems, slathering Victor Young’s weirdly inappropriately score over everything like gravy on a blue-plate special.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: As mentioned, the riveting, inexplicable emotional pull of WATCH ON THE RHINE.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/01/watch-on-rhine-1943.html