LIGHTNING STRIKES TWICE (1951)

Long past his M-G-M Golden Boy days (top-grossing silent THE BIG PARADE 26 years back), King Vidor finally changed studios with a 3-pic set at Warners: THE FOUNTAINHEAD/’49, BEYOND THE FOREST/’49, LIGHTNING); losing prestige on each assignment.  All three OTT romantic mellers, all three slightly bonkers (loaded with ‘bad’ laughs), all three supremely entertaining in different ways.  (Post-Warners, Vidor’s RUBY GENTRY/’52 also in this vein.)  LIGHTNING, last @ Warner Bros., reduces him from A+ to B+ level, but still offers top tech and rising acting talent.  If only the story made more sense.  Richard Todd, in hiding after barely beating a murder rap, meets-cute (if darkly) with Ruth Roman’s actress on a health cure break when she takes a wrong turn on her way to Mercedes McCambridge’s unexpectedly closed Texas ‘Dude Ranch.’  Roman the only person in the State of Texas unaware of Todd’s dicey past; McCambridge the jury member who held off on conviction (empaneled in spite of knowing the accused and the victim, his wife!); Todd waiting for BFF Zachary Scott (in a nothing role) to get him an engineering job out of state.  And that’s only half of Margaret Echard’s unlikely coincidence-happy storyline.  You won’t believe a moment, but Vidor ploughs ahead, this born-and-bred Texan managing real atmosphere whenever they let him off the dead soundstage exteriors for some brief location work.  (It’s only upstate California, but Vidor lets his Main Street and local Drug Store setups strikingly show what might have been.)  Vidor never was able to get back to his more personal cinematic ways, ending his career with (of all things) international epics: WAR AND PEACE/’56; SOLOMON AND SHEBA/’59; both behemoths unexpectedly worthwhile.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Roman now largely remembered for her other 1951 film: Hitchcock’s SHADOW OF A DOUBT.  While the underrated Todd, himself a plausible choice for the Robert Walker role in DOUBT, was just off his Hitchcock pic, STAGE FRIGHT/’50.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/07/stage-fright-1950.html  OR:  Check out all the Vidor pics mentioned above by using the Search Box.  (Upper left corner/Main Site Only; iPhone users scroll down to the main site link.)  Note Vidor’s WAR & PEACE is discussed in our posting on the 1966 Russian version.