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Sunday, April 21, 2019

WHIPSAW (1935)

Well-turned jewel heist pic, taken to unexpected heights by the phenomenal star wattage on display from Myrna Loy, a year after hitting her stride in THE THIN MAN, and Spencer Tracy, still the new guy @ M-G-M after splitting from FOX. Seeing these two in early peak form, and with some sort of electro-magnetic/ chemical charge coursing between them, defines the very essence of M-G-M’s core strength. It opens in London, with Loy causing a fender-bender with rich American Robert Warwick. He’s about to pick up four fabulous matching pearls worth half a mill/she’s looking for his weak point. Instead, two accomplices move in, eventually grabbing the pearls somewhere in the Customs Office after a Trans-Atlantic cruise. But wait!; a second gang is waiting on the dock, ready to grab the pearls from the first gang! Also plenty of reporters & cops. That’s when Tracy shows up, a mug working a con of his own, one he needs Loy to pull off. But something’s fishy about this guy, and Loy knows it. He’s no mug . . . he’s a . . . well, you’ll guess what he is. But the whole four-way sting is so neatly worked out; the by-play for the stars so terrific; and a rain-drenched country pit-stop at the home of an isolated couple with a baby on the way so loaded with legit sentiment that you’ll forgive a bit of awkward plot mechanics in the last act for the satisfied feeling you’ll get. Director Sam Wood, always dependent on his creative team, sets a crackling pace even without a background score, and gets a major assist from lenser James Wong Howe, offering glamor & loads of visual imagination.*

DOUBLE-BILL: *Add art director William Cameron Menzies to Wood & Howe and you get something as imaginatively rich (and downright weird) as KINGS ROW/’42.

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