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Thursday, February 20, 2020

A MESSAGE TO GARCIA (1936)

Now a forgotten catch phrase (What message?; Who’s Garcia?), this potted historical about an impossible mission during the Spanish-American War to find swamp-bound Cuban patriot General Garcia is misconceived from start to finish. Personally produced by Darryl F. Zanuck just as his Twentieth Century Pictures was absorbing FOX, he’d been okaying big bio-pics since he was at Warners. And many more to come, often as not with Tyrone Power, hosing down the great Chicago fire, digging the Suez Canal, insuring the British Navy, whatever. Thrills & romantic adventure, pegged on a little bit of history. No Tyrone here, instead, bland John Boles taking orders directly from President McKinley to get thru the invading Spanish forces in Cuba to give Garcia a chance to meet up with American troop ships coming to join him and quickly end the war. Wallace Beery gets the best of it playing his usual coarse but likable rogue, an American deserter working both sides of the conflict for fun & profit. But poor Barbara Stanwyck is a lost case from her first line of Berlitz Spanish, daughter of Cuban nobility who joins Boles for love & country on his dangerous search.* Cinematographer Rudoph Maté does what he can, lighting & composing to suggest he’s seen (and admired) Goya’s ‘Third of May’ firing squad execution, but elsewise, director George Marshall, already a 20-yr industry vet, has little feel for suggesting period action or war strategy, with atmosphere that’s strictly Hollywood & Vine. Zanuck must have known it, too, cutting his losses at a mere 77 minutes.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: Beery had more to work with as Pancho Villa in the uneven, but interesting VIVA VILLA!/’34. OR: *See Stanwyck and Boles redeem themselves in next year’s ‘mother-love’ classic, STELLA DALLAS/’37.

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