Charles Laughton’s Hollywood debut*, a reasonably effective marital drama most of the way which unexpectedly builds real suspense in a thriller-diller last act. And with Gary Cooper, Tallulah Bankhead & (briefly) Cary Grant in the other leads, you shouldn’t have trouble holding on for its action-packed finale. Fabulously shot by Charles Lang, and occasionally very well directed by Marion Gering, it opens with Laughton’s submarine captain murderously jealous without cause over his wife’s friendship with second-in-command Cary Grant. But his jealous rage takes a pathological turn when Grant replacement Gary Cooper meets Bankhead and, without knowing who she is, gives plenty of cause in a desert overnighter. There’s frisson a’plenty just watching Coop’s minimalist approach standing up to Laughton’s maximalism, here justified by incipient insanity. But the root of his jealousy is plainly stated in a gaze at Cooper in his devastating prime, ‘Must be a happy thing to look as you do,’ he says in wonder & abasement. (Ah, Charles, we ALL feel that way!) Tallulah is very good here, yet you’ll see why Paramount was about to drop her after a couple of years. She’s all but impossible to light & photograph; even in good angles, something of a death mask about her. It all ends with the three heading off to sea with sub & crew, Laughton hoping to sabotage the works and send them all down with the ship. Really exciting stuff here. Where has it been hiding?
DOUBLE--BILL: *Paramount had already lent Laughton to Universal for James Whale’s peculiar comic horror pic THE OLD, DARK HOUSE/’32 but they held its release back till DEVIL came out.
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