Brutally misconceived, disastrously ill-timed, this Barbara Stanwyck romancer, meant as a pivot from her ‘bad girl’ roles @ Warners, fails spectacularly. As an eligible beauty from the best family in town, Stanwyck unexpectedly throws over bland intended Ralph Bellamy when she falls hard for creepy Otto Kruger, the best pal he’s brought back from school in Germany. It’s 1909, and Kruger goes all out to be the good adopted American. But even becoming a citizen doesn’t help once WWI breaks out. Reviled and all but unemployable, he returns to his German roots, taking up arms for the old country. Now, after divorce, and rekindled romance with Bellamy, Babs joins up and is sent overseas where she inevitably winds up meeting Kruger, now spying for the enemy. Will it be love . . . or liebestod! Yikes! Archie Mayo directs, but who approved this wobbly disaster? And why the largely sympathetic tone toward Kruger’s character & motives in a film released half a year after the Nazis took power in 1933? Where’d they show this thing? German-American Bund Rallies?
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: For an empathetic look at some post-WWI Germans, there’s Frank Borzage’s THREE COMRADES/’38, with the only film credit ever given to F. Scott Fitzgerald.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: In a rare exception to the Hollywood norm of incompetence in the kitchen, family cook Ruth Donnelly kneads a mean ball of bread dough. And check out her one-handed throwing technique! Showoff.
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