Movie Review: A Guy Named Joe (1943)

A romantic fantasy, A Guy Named Joe explores love, commitment, loss, and death during wartime turbulence.

Pete Sandidge (Spencer Tracy) is a daredevil American bomber pilot stationed in England during World War Two. He maintains a romance with Air Transport Auxiliary pilot Dorinda Durston (Irene Dunne). Although possessive, he never quite commits to her. After Pete and his best buddy Al Yackey (Ward Bond) are reassigned to a Scottish reconnaissance outpost, Dorinda senses Pete's impending demise.

Despite her best efforts to alter destiny, Pete does indeed die heroically while on a mission. In heaven, commanding officer The General (Lionel Barrymore) assigns him to be the guardian angel of rookie pilot Ted Randall (Van Johnson). Pete helps Ted develop into a brash leader, but jealousy bubbles to the surface when Ted meets the still-grieving Dorinda and they start to fall in love.

Combining wistfulness with clever wartime morale-boosting, A Guy Named Joe provides a multi-layered yet cohesively engrossing narrative. Dalton Trumbo's script is consciously lyrical, elevating the premise towards exhortations about the human condition and the nature of death to help make sense of catastrophic losses during a global war. Victor Fleming directs with panache, seamlessly melding the fantasy and romance elements into the pragmatic business of an imperfect war machine at work.

Legacies, carrying on, and letting go are themes underpinning Pete's journey in life and beyond. The influence of the dead on the living is physically represented (but not seen or heard), Fleming and the actors pulling off tricky staging and conscious evasion. For Dorinda, Ted, and Al, living and grieving are uninterrupted, although events, inner thoughts and emotions are occasionally nudged by forces unseen.

But Pete's attachment to Dorinda straddles the divide between his states of being. Helping Ted mature into a confident airman is all fun and games until he falls in love with Dorinda, and now the spectral mentor has to confront his earthly failings. Trumbo presents death as essential for collective progression and a process of individual transition, the departed, just like the living, in need of time and perspective to grasp the enormity of the change.

The cast never wink at the material, allowing the fantasy to take root and enrich the soil. Spencer Tracy sparkles as Pete, thoughtful, self-aware and reckless in life as in death, and on a journey to understand the opportunities, challenges, and audacious passion of loving life without committing to it. Irene Dunne, Ward Bond, and Van Johnson in his breakthrough role surround Pete with romance, friendship and a worthy protégé/rival.

The few scenes of aerial combat were created on the ground with the aid of stock footage and rear projection, and the results are surprisingly decent. But the machines and warfare are ultimately just a good backdrop to a universal story about every Joe's enduring resonance.



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Movie Review: Back Street (1932)

A romantic drama, Back Street is a tender exploration of a woman trapped in an impossible love.

In Cincinnati of the early 1900s, Ray Schmidt (Irene Dunne) is a vivacious young woman. She enjoys the nightlife and the company of men, but worries her fun-loving reputation harms her ability to find true love. She turns down a marriage offer from her cerebral neighbour Kurt Shendler (George Meeker), finding him kind but unexciting. Kurt keeps his marriage proposal open as he embarks on a career in the budding automobile industry.

Ray meets banker Walter Saxel (John Boles) and they immediately fall in love, although he is already engaged to be married to someone else. A twist of fate prevents Ray from potentially altering his marriage plans. They separate but meet again five years later in New York City and the passion immediately reignites. He is now married with two kids, but she agrees to be his mistress. He provides her with an apartment, and she starts life as the other woman, dedicated to a man who loves her deeply but will never leave his family.

An adaptation of the novel by Fannie Hurst, Back Street is clear-headed and unapologetic. The script (co-written by Ben Hecht) succeeds on multiple fronts, the love between Ray and Walter captured as painfully real, allowing the characters to emerge as soulful, flawed but also familiar adults. The high production quality is evident in brisk pacing, agile transitions between sets, and sometimes bustling street scenes. Covering many years and locations, the deep focus on an evolving relationship is ultimately captivating. 

Adopting a non-judgemental stance, director John M. Stahl never looks down on his subject. Instead Ray judges herself and is wracked by self-doubt as she sees herself as others see her, Irene Dunne sparkling in her ability to convey the contradictory emotions inherent in longing for a man who can never be a full partner. And on just the one occasion Ray does suggest to Walter that he upturn his life in her favour.

But the uneasy and sometimes dangerously hollow compromise of being just a hidden part of a wonderful man's life may also suffice. As their long-term reality evolves, Walter is never less than honest and Ray approaches each subsequent step deliberately, the trade-offs never obscured and the implications clearly understood.

By bursting through the wall simplistically defining right and wrong, Back Street arrives at the place where lovers achieve partial fulfilment. As Ray finds out, the thorny benefits of the mistress arrangement carry enough appeal to fill a building. Back streets lack the warm welcome of picturesque boulevards, but they are worth exploring with open-minded courage.



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Movie Review: Love Affair (1939)

A classic romantic drama, Love Story is brilliantly crafted and elegantly delivered with restrained passion.

Celebrated international playboy Michel Marnet (Charles Boyer) meets American aspiring singer Terry McKay (Irene Dunne) on an ocean liner crossing the Atlantic. Despite both being in relationships with other people, they cannot help but fall in love. During a stop at the island of Madeira they visit Michel's elderly grandmother Janou (Maria Ouspenskaya). She reveals that Michel is a talented painter lacking the motivation to dedicate himself to his craft.

On the approach to New York City, Terry and Michel arrange to meet again six months later at the top of the Empire State Building if they succeed in settling their affairs and launching their careers. Both break off their prior relationships, Michel works hard to start painting again and Terry proves herself a successful singer. But on the appointed date and at the agreed-upon time, destiny has a surprise for the seemingly perfect couple.

Directed by Leo McCarey, Love Story has stood the test of time remarkably well. A great deal of credit goes to the idyllic and timeless story of two people finding each other while literally drifting through life, but McCarey makes it all work by tuning down melodrama in favour of pragmatism. The film avoids lingering in one place or overplaying any one moment. For all the romance on display, the story concludes in a brisk 87 minutes, with the power derived from the strength of attraction rather than any sense of inflated sentiment.

Using essentially the same script, McCarey remade his own film as An Affair To Remember in 1957 with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. The remake is glossier, but also loses Boyer's international charm while unnecessarily inflating the running time to nearly two hours.

Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer are perfectly matched, and both bring a mischievous glint to the proceedings. On the confined yet artificially secluded boat, they are adults alone but attached, and afforded the freedom to flirt. The relationship pull is presented with warmth and recognizable realism. The unexpected highlight of the evolving romance occurs during the Madeira interlude with grandmother Janou, one of those serendipitous moments in cinema, transcending the screen to achieve an ethereal quality with Maria Ouspenskaya sprinkling the magic dust.

Back in New York the action moves swiftly as they separate to sort out their emotions and lives, McCarey wisely aware that the strength of the film resides when his couple are in close orbits.

Love Affair reaches a quite magnificent climax, Michel and Terry succumbing to the forces of destiny despite strong side winds. Boyer and Dunne rise to peaks of performance in a final scene where the words being spoken hide the genuine conversation underneath, until Boyer pulls off a shattering moment of realization.

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Movie Review: Life With Father (1947)

A comedy about turbulent family dynamics, Life With Father pokes fun at life within New York's upper crust, and explores the balance of power between men and women.

Clarence Day (William Powell) is a well-respected New York stockbroker, as crusty and set in his ways as he is rich. Married to the resourceful Vinnie (Irene Dunne), they have four red-headed children: Clarence Jr. (Jimmy Lydon), John, Harlan, and Whitney. While Clarence thinks that he runs his household with strict discipline and a tight hold over the family finances, the reality is that Vinnie and the kids successfully navigate around him to do almost as they please.

Clarence hates to have house guests, but that does not stop Vinnie from welcoming cousin Cora (ZaSu Pitts) and blossoming teenager Mary (Elizabeth Taylor) for a visit over a few days. Clarence Jr. is immediately infatuated with Mary, but gets no useful advice from his father on how to nurture the romance. Life in the Day household gets a lot more complicated when it is revealed that Clarence was never baptized. This horrifies Vinnie, but she struggles to get her stiff husband to acknowledge her feelings.

Based on the play by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, Life With Father is a sharply written comedy, delivered by a glimmering cast in top form. William Powell and Irene Dunne demonstrate terrific chemistry as a long-married couple who have learned to keep their household thriving for the benefit of their growing children. While the film generally focuses on ultimately frivolous issues besetting a rich family with no real worries, it is nevertheless a pleasing and playful examination of homefront politics.

Powell is quite funny as Clarence Day, nailing the stuffy mannerisms of a man believing that he is the master of his domain. Powell keeps his nose in the air, his tone haughty with finality, and his attitude imperious. Unfortunately for Clarence, the main theme of Life With Father is his utter lack of actual influence. Vinnie and her children have mastered the art of circumventing him, and Vinnie controls the real levers of power. Irene Dunne has all the subtle tricks of household command and control, including controlling on a strict need-to-know basis the flow of information to Clarence, turning on the faucet of tears when convenient, and befuddling Clarence with financial castles in the air to liberate money from his pocket.

Elizabeth Taylor, at just 15 years old, already bedazzles the screen whenever she is on it, with a combination of coquettish girlishness and irresistible charm. Clarence Jr., who initially claims no interest in girls, falls under Mary's spell the minute she walks through the door. Their relationship shows all the signs of evolving into another asymmetrical arrangement where one partner is love-blinded into miscomprehending where the domination lies.

For a two hour comedy that takes place mostly inside one house, director Michael Curtiz is light on his feet, briskly moving the action through the many rooms in the Day mansion, and maintaining a steady stream of playfulness in the antics of the various family members. A running joke about the household maids ties the film together, while there are excellent comic punctuation marks dispersed throughout, including Clarence's intolerance for house guests, a condition ignored with a smile by Vinnie.

A late appearance by an ugly dog statuette, immediately despised by Clarence, is ingeniously deployed by Vinnie to resolve several lingering bones of contention. Life With Father is all about getting the best out of the family patriarch, despite his best intentions to stand in the way of his own happiness.

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