The Ace Black Movie Blog

Showing posts with label Alan Hale Sr.. Show all posts

Monday, 25 July 2016

Movie Review: Action In The North Atlantic (1943)

A World War Two merchant navy war film, Action In The North Atlantic suppresses most of its propaganda tendencies to deliver a rollicking seaborne adventure.

World War Two is raging and the merchant marines are doing their best to supply the war effort in Europe. Commanding an oil tanker, Captain Steve Jarvis (Raymond Massey) and his first officer and friend Joe Rossi (Humphrey Bogart) tangle with a German U-boat and are sunk, their lifeboat rammed for good measure. Steve's men make it onto a raft and drift for eleven days before being rescued.

Awaiting their next assignment, Steve recuperates with his wife Sarah (Ruth Gordon) while Joe meets and marries lounge singer Pearl O'Neill (Julie Bishop). The two men are then paired up again and placed in charge of the new Liberty class SS Seawitch. They join a large multinational supply convoy on the way to the Soviet port of Murmansk via a stop in Halifax. Despite a navy escort, the journey across the North Atlantic will be perilous.

Most of Action In The North Atlantic is directed by Lloyd Bacon, although a contractual dispute meant that he did not complete the film. Byron Haskin and Raoul Walsh, both uncredited, were brought in to complete the project. At just over two hours, this is an ambitious, visually rich war adventure, and the pace never slows down. While there are a few scenes undoubtedly geared towards rallying the troops and encouraging recruitment, between them the directors create an impressive war film, with a commitment to quick pacing, tension build-up, regular doses of action and plenty of variety.

Action In The North Atlantic spends most of its running time on water, and features an assortment of engagements: stealthy sub attacks, survival in lifeboats and rafts, a battle between a sub wolfpack and a large convoy, a prolonged one-on-one chase across the high seas, and seaplane attacks. Using a combination of stock footage and models the special effects and scenes of wanton destruction on the ocean are excellent. Large ships are torpedoed, set on fire, attacked from the air, and abandoned, while subs are destroyed with depth charges, rammed and sunk.

The enemy is portrayed as committed without being dehumanized. All the scenes featuring German combatants and their commanders are in German with no subtitles, adding a welcome sense of authenticity.

The scenes on dry land are relatively few, and are used to effectively sketch in the backgrounds and love lives of the key characters. The relationship between Captain Jarvis and first officer Rossi underpins the story, and the film avoids any superfluous dramatics, complexities or buddy tendencies, with Raymond Massey and Humphrey Bogart delivering typically dependable performances. Jarvis and Rossi respect each other and work well together towards the same cause, and there isn't much more in their dynamic.

The film invests plenty of time with secondary characters, the seamen who have to unquestioningly obey orders, endure boredom and bad food, question the likelihood of their own survival, and then jump into sudden action within seconds of the alarm sounding. Alan Hale Sr., Sam Levene and Dane Clark are among the grease-stained actors who bring the crew to life while adding some comic relief.

Action In The North Atlantic delivers what it promises, in a quality package brimming with wartime verve.

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Friday, 25 December 2015

Movie Review: Manpower (1941)

A romantic triangle drama set in the rough and tumble world of electric power line crews, Manpower boasts a terrific cast and some gritty locations and cinematography. But the human conflicts at the centre of the film are often contrived and less than convincing.

In California, Hank McHenry (Edward G. Robinson) and Johnny Marshall (George Raft) are best friends on a power line installation and maintenance crew that includes fellow workers Jumbo (Alan Hale) and Omaha (Frank McHugh). Hank likes women but is hopelessly incompetent when it comes to romantically wooing them. When he suffers a serious leg injury and is no longer able to climb the towers, Hank is promoted to foreman.

Pop Duval is a popular member of Hank's crew, but dies in a accident involving iced power lines. Hank is immediately attracted to Pop's troubled daughter Faye (Marlene Dietrich). She has served time in prison for theft, and upon her release has defaulted to life as a trashy hostess at a sleazy clip joint. Johnny doesn't trust Faye's intentions, but Hank is undeterred and ignoring Johnny's advice, proposes marriage. Faye never professed to love Hank but anyway tries to make a go of their marriage, but an injury suffered by Johnny signals the start of trouble ahead.

A rather uneven mix of drama, comedy, romance and conflict, Manpower is good but leaves the impression that it could have been better. Certainly the trio of Robinson, Raft and Dietrich is potent, and the performers generate and maintain an admirable level of intensity and engagement. Director Raoul Walsh is less successful when it comes to the comic relief, with the continuous stream of humour supplied by the numerous sidekick characters sometimes threatening to take over the film.

Primarily this is a dramatic love triangle set in a unique context, and the background of the men as members of a power line maintenance crew provides an undercurrent of danger that is well-exploited by Walsh. Setting aside atrocious worker safety practices, there are some quite effective scenes portraying the men getting on with their work on the high towers in inclement weather conditions including severe rain storms, thick fog (near an airport with planes landing nearby), and grappling with iced wires.

Also good is the smoky, sordid atmosphere at the Midnight Club, the clip joint where Faye washes up after her stint behind bars. The club is filled with desperate women hoping for one last break in life but instead being taken advantage of by both the club's disreputable management and the scuzzy customers. If working on the power lines is dangerous for Hank, Johnny and their men, working at the Midnight Club is just as precarious for Faye and her friends.

The tension that emerges in the relationships between Hank, Faye and Johnny is adequate without properly resonating. Only Robinson as Hank has enough character material to play with, and his naive, generally pleasant but easily combustible personality rings true. George Raft as Johnny has less of an arc and hides behind a cogent if ultimately predictable wise-cracking stoic persona. Faye is almost too easy for Dietrich, as she gets the shortest of scenes to reveal some background but otherwise plays the jaundiced victim of fate with barely any effort. The cast also includes Eve Arden and Ward Bond in small roles.

The film is famous in Hollywood lore for a couple of incidental reasons. Apparently Raft and Robinson came to blows on the set. Some sources attribute the tension between the men to arguments about Dietrich, while others mention Raft resenting Robinson's late addition to the cast, which diminished Raft's profile. Manpower is also known as the film Raft elected to appear in rather than The Maltese Falcon, which proved to be a classic and Humphrey Bogart's biggest career break.

Regardless of the background stories, Manpower is a decent effort. It never fully lights up, but does occasionally sparkle.