Movie Review: Too Many Husbands (1940)

A one-joke comedy, Too Many Husbands (also known as My Two Husbands) stretches its premise too thin, despite a willing cast.

After her first adventurous husband Bill (Fred MacMurray) is believed drowned at sea, Vicky (Jean Arthur) marries Bill's more staid business partner and best friend Henry (Melvyn Douglas). But Bill is only stranded on a deserted island for a year, and upon his return is shocked to find his wife and best friend have tied the knot. Neither man yields, and both want to claim Vicky as their own.

Although Vicky's father George (Harry Davenport) is horrified at the situation, she enjoys the two men vying for her love and attention, and delays choosing one of them to be her husband, teasing both Bill and Henry to prolong the competition to win her heart.

Bill is a vivacious thrill seeker, Henry represents all-business stability, but during their husband stints both fell into the trap of neglecting Vicky. And so director Wesley Ruggles, working from a Claude Binyon adaptation of a W. Somerset Maugham play, creates a straightforward contrast between two men chasing the heart of the woman who claims to love them both. Too Many Husbands enjoys some witty dialogue and attractive costumes, but overall the humour is at the juvenile level, both men defaulting to a lap dog stance, wagging their tails and barking at each other in their eagerness to do whatever it takes to claim top dog status.

The film occasionally threatens to spark into life. While Jean Arthur is much better than this material, she injects sly undertones to hint at just how much Vicky is going to enjoy this old-fashioned duel. The script goes as far as it can to suggest the benefits of polyamory, and indeed silly humour and childish antics aside, Ruggles steers Vicky towards maintaining the tension of multiple concurrent loves for as long as possible. Meanwhile, on the sidelines, Harry Davenport is a joy as the stoically flustered father.

But MacMurray and Douglas are stuck in thankless, single-tone roles, men reduced to schoolyard boy behaviour to attract the attention of the pretty girl. The film does descend to a ridiculous jump-over-the-furniture contest followed by the drawing of lots, laying bare the shallowness of ideas despite the meager 84 minutes of running time.

Vicky has Too Many Husbands, but the film is well short of clever content.



All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Caine Mutiny (1954)

A study of military men cracking under stress, The Caine Mutiny is a tension-filled character-driven drama on the high seas of World War Two. Humphrey Bogart is excellent in an against-type role as a cowardly captain, a disciplinarian who never gains the respect of his men.

World War Two is raging , and Ensign Willie Keith (Robert Francis) graduates from the naval academy and is assigned to serve on the Caine, a rust-bucket of a minesweeper. Under the command of Captain DeVriess (Tom Tully), the Caine is a loosely run ship, with flagrant disregard for most rules and regulations. Lieutenant Maryk (Van Johnson) is second in command, and the easy-going Lieutenant Keefer (Fred MacMurray) is among the group of senior officers, but he is more interested in writing his book rather than acting as an officer.

As Keith learns about life on a military boat by making mistakes, DeVriess is relieved of command, and replaced by Captain Queeg (Bogart), who immediately sets about instilling discipline and alienating the officers and crew. Queeg's obsession with minute details while ignoring more important matters borders on irresponsible, and behind his back, Keefer starts to call him paranoid. The rest of the officers label Queeg a coward when he refuses to take responsibility for his mistakes and appears to flee a combat engagement. With Keefer's encouragement, Maryk starts to consider whether he should relieve Queeg of command, a situation that comes to a head during a wild typhoon.

Based on Herman Wouk's novel, The Caine Mutiny boasts a powerful cast delivering accomplished performances. In addition to Bogart, Johnson and MacMurray as the three strong personalities on board the Caine, Jose Ferrer makes a strong impression in the final third as Lieutenant Greenwald, the lawyer assigned to argue the mutiny case at a military court martial. Also in the cast is May Wynn (playing a character called May Wynn), Keith's love interest in an example of a sputtering but watchable romance injected into an otherwise male-dominated film. Even minor roles, such as Keith's mother (Katherine Warren), E. G. Marshall as the other court martial lawyer, and the scuzzy crew members (including Lee Marvin) are lively.

The story is told through Keith's eyes. In between interludes where he and May try to decide if they belong with each other, Keith gets to experience the extremes of DeVriess and Queeg, and is finally swept up in the events of the mutiny. Robert Francis delivers an earnest performance, a man trying hard to make a good impression but learning most by stumbling into unexpected missteps. Francis' promising career tragically ended when he died in a small plane crash in 1955, at age 25.

In a relatively small but pivotal role, and only 18 months away from his own demise, Humphrey Bogart is dominant. Bogart sheds his cool, confident persona to portray Queeg as a man damaged by too much combat, focusing on all the wrong things as his world begins to fall apart. Bogart delivers a couple of his all-time career best scenes in The Caine Mutiny, first asking the officers with great humility to help him create a better team, and then in the witness chair trying to hold himself together to testify at the court martial. There is fear, hesitancy, and internal conflict etched on Queeg's face throughout the movie, and Bogart deservedly was nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award.

Beyond Queeg, The Caine Mutiny shines as a study of three other intriguing men, director Edward Dmytryk admirably focusing his movie on the labyrinthine motivations of the officers. Keefer is the classic agent provocateur, insidiously influencing events while avoiding responsibility, traits that he maintains from on-board the Caine to the court martial. MacMurray makes Keefer smooth and dangerously likable, a man who will slither up with a seemingly innocent opinion that will only get others in trouble. Johnson gets a more straightforward role as Maryk, an honest man genuinely wanting to demonstrate loyalty, but troubled by what he sees from Queeg and prodded by what he hears from Keefer.

And late in the film Jose Ferrer brings to life the complex lawyer Greenwald, reluctantly accepting his assignment, executing brilliantly, helping the judges reach the right conclusion, and then delivering his own devastating verdict on the men of the Caine. Greenwald gets to the root of the mutiny, one clear-headed man delving into the true causes of a nasty incident that was triggered long before the typhoon struck the Caine. While it may be easy to identify paranoia in one man, it's more troublesome to reveal gradually building ill-will in the hearts of the seemingly healthy.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Movie Review: The Apartment (1960)

A dramatic comedy about sex, office politics and romance, The Apartment is a seminal movie. While poking fun at a quirky love triangle, the film also explores the imbalance of power between men and women in the corporate world, and the dangers lurking within a culture dominated by men exploiting women as sexual playthings.

In New York City, C.C. "Buddy" Baxter (Jack Lemmon) works as a lowly analyst for a mammoth insurance agency. Buddy is a bachelor and lives in a conveniently located apartment near Central Park. He curries favour with executives at the firm by allowing them to carry on affairs at his apartment, away from the prying eyes of their suburban neighbourhoods. The high demand for his apartment means that Buddy is frequently forced to spend nights away from his own home, but it's a small price to pay: in return for his hospitality, Buddy is on a fast-track to the executive floor.

Personnel Director Jeffrey Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray) gets wind of the convenience of Buddy's apartment, and demands access in return for finalizing Buddy's promotion. Buddy is happy to comply, and from his newly minted position as a junior executive soon starts romantically pursuing Fran (Shirley MacLaine), the pretty elevator operator, not knowing that Fran is Sheldrake's illicit lover. Sheldrake has long been promising Fran he will divorce his wife, but she finally realizes he will never do so. Fran descends into a dangerous depression, and Buddy is left having to nurse her to health while sorting out his feelings and protecting Sheldrake's privacy.

Arriving with the new decade, The Apartment ushered in a new era of openness in confronting and discussing office politics and extra-marital affairs. With feminism just around the corner, The Apartment portrays the workplace as the domain of powerful male executives wantonly engaging in lusty skirt-chasing. Meanwhile, for men like Buddy at the bottom of the corporate ladder, the office is a rock climbing arena where the objective is to climb to the higher floors as quickly as possible, with the ends justifying all the means.

Director (and co-writer) Billy Wilder wraps the sexual and office shenanigans in humour and sorrow and holds them up to the mirror, exposing a society engaged in humiliation and self-deception. Fran gets her bum blatantly pinched by an executive on the way out of the elevator, and Sheldrake's wife and kids are unknowingly living a blatant lie in the supposed utopia of the suburbs.

The Apartment does suffer from a slowish middle third. Fran's anguish and recuperation takes a long time to play out, and the film loses both its comic thrust and dramatic focus as she wallows in prolonged misery. MacLaine's performance, convincingly portraying a woman furious at being too easily seduced by the false promise of a rich man, helps The Apartment pull through the soft mud of destroyed illusions.

Jack Lemmon never wavers from his amiable everyman persona, Buddy tolerating the inconvenience of frequent interruptions to his private life in return for a fast ride up to privilege. He only begins to care about himself when he falls for Fran, and even then he puts her needs and the privacy of Sheldrake ahead of his own desire. Buddy is a career-defining role for Lemmon, the kind-hearted man with a smile ambling through life, doing favours for others and rolling with the punches until he recognizes the need to make a stand.

Joseph LaShelle's black and white cinematography captures a high-energy office environment and contrasts it with Buddy's lonely apartment. The cavernous office floor where Buddy works along with countless other insurance analysts, uninterrupted ceiling neon panels extending as far as the eye can see, is a perfect image for a bustling crowd of humanity in the service of soaring corporate interests, with precious little value attached to the individual.

The Apartment offers satire, laughs, and pathos, but also encouragement for men like Buddy to decline the old games and women like Fran to consider riding the elevator instead of operating it.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.
  

Movie Review: Double Indemnity (1944)

A taut film noir, Double Indemnity is a classic tale of lust-fuelled murder. Director Billy Wilder assembles the pieces with slick expertise, and with the help of a terrific cast delivers the story of a deliciously doomed evil plot.

From the moment top insurance agent Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) lays eyes on Mrs. Phyllis Dietrichson (Barbara Stanwyck), he is overcome by a desire to be with her. The trouble is, Phyllis is married to Mr. Dietrichson, an inattentive husband frequently away on business. Phyllis has rich tastes and craves constant emotional attention, and she seduces Walter into cooking up a plot to murder her husband and make a lot of money. They forge a life insurance policy that pays $100,000 if Mr. Dietrichson dies accidentally, and then proceed to kill him and elaborately make it appear as though he did indeed die by tragically falling from a moving train.

Just when it seems that all has gone according to plan, Walter is confronted by the sharp investigative instincts of his boss Barton Keyes (Edward G. Robinson), who leaves no stone unturned to ensure that the insurance payment is legitimate. Also causing unexpected complications are Lola (Jean Heather), Phyllis' daughter in law, and her shady boyfriend Nino (Byron Barr). Walter begins to realize that smart as he is, he may have been as much of a victim as Mr. Dietrichson.

With two of the sharpest noir minds in the business behind the story, Double Indemnity was bound to bask in the glory of a nefarious sex-and-money plot gone bad. James M. Cain wrote the book, and Raymond Chandler co-wrote the script with Wilder. The movie crackles with edgy dialogue, sophisticated glances, and high intellects being upstaged by their own uncontrolled libidos.

Wilder directs with an energetic economy that keeps the tension building as the story of greed unfolds. The events are recounted in flashback as a confession by Walter, and Double Indemnity starts with him already shot and bleeding badly. Walter's astounding lack of judgement becomes the central theme of the film, and MacMurray is perfect as the man who had a stellar reputation and the full trust of his employer, and threw it all away. Wilder uses shadows, contrasts and particularly blinds to enhance the downward spiral of Walter's drama, with every frame masterfully assembled.

Crucially, despite his career success Walter does not have a woman in his life, and Phyllis is so sexually overpowering that Walter succumbs with barely a second thought. Wilder extracts from Stanwyck a performance charged with doe-eyed seductiveness, a woman with a dark past who always gets her way, and plans about five moves ahead of her men in the chess game of financial short cuts.

Edward G. Robinson enjoys portraying Barton Keys as the only character with the depth of thinking to match wits with Phyllis. Always craving a cigar but never finding a lighter, Barton relies on instinct and his acute physical reaction to deception to reassemble the truth from the mess of lies that surround him, and gets close enough to the real story to rattle the cage of the co-conspirators and disrupt their road to riches.

Double Indemnity pays out handsomely on a policy of hard-boiled noir entertainment.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.