Movie Review: All Through The Night (1942)

A jaunty thriller, All Through The Night mixes laughs with action in a story of a New York gambler tangling with a Nazi terrorist cell.

"Gloves" Donahue (Humphrey Bogart) is prodded by his Ma (Jane Darwell) to investigate the murder of popular cheesecake maker Mr. Miller. Along with his sidekicks Sunshine (William Demarest), Barney (Frank McHugh), and Starchy (Jackie Gleason), Gloves starts to investigate Miller's mysterious customer, the alluring singer Leda Hamilton (Kaaren Verne). Soon another murder is committed, and this time Gloves is falsely implicated, forcing him to delve deeper into the plot to try and clear his name.

Gloves: [Breaking into a building] Personally, I'd feel more comfortable if I had a rod.
Sunshine: Here lies Sunshine under the sod. That's not odd. He had no rod.
Gloves: You know, there are times when I wonder about you.

His pursuit of Hamilton leads him to an auction house used as a front by a Nazi terrorist cell commanded by Ebbing (Conrad Veidt) and assisted by Madame (Judith Anderson) and their enforcer Pepi (Peter Lorre).With the cops on his tail, Gloves has to infiltrate the terrorists before they can launch their latest elaborate bombing plan, all while deciding which side Leda is really on.

Ebbing: You're not afraid to die, are you?
Gloves: I don't mind dying, but I hate to be divided up into small pieces.

Any wartime film that tries to add levity to a raging conflict where the outcome is still in doubt is bravely walking a tightrope above the abyss of bad taste. All Through The Night pulls it off, barely, thanks to a smart script filled with really sharp zingers courtesy of Gloves' collection of dubious friends.

[Sunshine knocks out a Nazi with an ax handle]
Gloves: Very good. Joe DiMaggio couldn't have done better.
Sunshine: I used to bat .320 at reform school.

The central character is good natured and only a bit shady, Gloves apparently a Broadway promoter of some sort but mostly interested in gambling scams. His background gives director Vincent Sherman and co-writers Leonard Spigelgass and Edwin Gilbert license to surround Gloves with wisecracking friends who provide a continuous stream of witty commentary on the evolving mess. A running gag features Barney marrying his girl Annabelle at the start of the evening, but unable to spend any time with the new bride because of the events of the wild night.

Barney: Say, chief, can't I get away just long enough to give my girl a quick hello?
Gloves: No, stick around, will ya?
Starchie: What are you so nervous about? She'll keep!
Barney: That's what you think. I can't take a chance. The fleet's in and she's defense-minded!

On a more serious note, the film makes mention of the Dachau concentration camp, perhaps one of the earliest references in a Hollywood film to the Nazis' worst atrocities. And while the plot contains a large number of holes as the Nazis oscillate between dangerous and dimwitted, Sherman maintains brisk pacing on the cheap, limiting the action to a few sets and several hide-and-seek set-pieces with conventional gunplay and fisticuffs.

Barney: I don't get it. I marry Annabelle and I spend my honeymoon with you.
Sunshine: Well, I can cook.

With Bogart injecting his confident swagger into every scene, this time emboldened by unscrupulous tendencies rather than personally-defined principles, All Through The Night is never less than watchable. Kaaren Verne is more than adequate as the damsel in distress who may or may not be part of the terrorist cell, and Conrad Veidt is as oily as bad guys come. The film features a large gathering of the Warner Bros. company of character actors, with Peter Lorre prominent as the the most cold-hearted plotter.

Leda [speaking to gathered reporters]: Well, I also feel it's about time someone knocked the Axis back on its heels.
Gloves: Excuse me, baby. What she means is, it's about time somebody knocked those heels back on their axis!

Any film that gets away with that line deserves some recognition.

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Movie Review: Affair With A Stranger (1953)

A romantic drama with some touches of humour, Affair With A Stranger is an uneven film, with adequate performances and decent construction but some strange choices and mainly predictable twists and turns.

In Philadelphia, stage star Janet Boothe (Monica Lewis) throws herself all over celebrated playwright Bill Blakeley (Victor Mature), and then she spreads rumours that his marriage to Carolyn (Jean Simmons), who is back home in New York, is in big trouble. As the gossip spreads that they may be divorcing, the story of Bill and Carolyn's romance is recalled by their friends.

Several years prior, Bill was a struggling writer with a gambling addiction and grand dreams of making it big. He meets model Carolyn in Times Square on New Year's Eve, and romance gradually blossoms. They eventually get married and she supports him even as his hopes for success appear to fade and he fritters away any small amounts of cash. One of his plays finally makes it to the stage, but it bombs. When Carolyn gets pregnant Bill is forced into a humiliating job as a waiter, but the couple's fortunes are about to change, with both triumph and tragedy around the corner.

Directed by Roy Rowland, Affair With A Stranger tries hard to be interesting. Bill and Carolyn occasionally threaten to become an engaging couple, the motley crew of friends, neighbours and acquaintances who recall the story in flashback create an animated backdrop, and the struggle for success in the theatre milieu offers possibilities.

But any sense of intriguing drama is let down by a ho-hum narrative. Most of the story's potential is wasted on a romance that labours to offer anything new or unique, leaving the film floundering in search of a purpose and feeling quite a bit longer than the brief 87 minutes. The central relationship features a fundamental disconnect never reconciled by the Richard Flournoy script: Bill is a largely wretched character, and what compels Janet to stick with him is not convincing. He is a liar from their first meeting, a gambling addict and living a life based more on hope than conviction. She holds their couplehood together as he remains a stranger, and it's questionable whether he is worth the effort.

Victor Mature and Jean Simmons deliver reasonable performances given what they have to work with, but they are sometimes betrayed by mismatched moments that fall between the cracks of clunky romantic comedy and ineffective societal drama. A prime example is a scene involving Bill helplessly munching on fried chicken on his first visit to Carolyn's apartment. Rowland seems to go for inelegant laughs while portraying a desperately starving man callously targeting a woman as his literal meal ticket. Elsewhere, the ups and downs of their relationship offer little that is imaginative: she worries, he squanders, they stumble, rinse and repeat.

The spirited supporting cast includes Jane Darwell as a restaurant owner, while a taxi driver (Wally Vernon), a newspaper kiosk merchant (George Cleveland), a big-time theatre producer and his wife (Nicholas Joy and Olive Carey) also take turns recounting parts of Bill and Carolyn's romance in flashback. The result is episodic, but keeps the film reasonably nimble.

Affair With A Stranger hints at a better film that is unfortunately intercepted by an absence of composed crispness.

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The Movies Of Jane Darwell

All movies starring Jane Darwell and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Back Street (1932)

Jesse James (1939)

The Rains Came (1939)

Gone With The Wind (1939)

The Grapes Of Wrath (1940)

All Through The Night (1942)

The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)

My Darling Clementine (1946)

3 Godfathers (1948)

Affair With A Stranger (1953)

The Bigamist (1953)

Mary Poppins (1964)

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Movie Review: The Grapes Of Wrath (1940)

A monumental story of persistence countering pestilence, The Grapes Of Wrath honours working families struggling to survive in the face of economic catastrophe.

It's the 1930s, in the midst of the Great Depression. In Oklahoma, Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) is released from prison after serving time for killing a man during a fight. On the long walk home through dry fields suffering from a horrific drought, Tom meets Jim Casy (John Carradine) a former preacher who has abandoned his faith. The dry fields in Oklahoma are being repossessed, the workers thrown off the land, the farmhouses razed to the ground. Tom and Jim eventually connect with Tom's family, including Ma (Jane Darwell), Pa (Russell Simpson), Uncle John (Frank Darien) and the pregnant Rosasharn (Dorris Bowdon).

With no prospects for work in Oklahoma, the Joad family members pack up all they own onto a single ancient truck and head along Highway 66 to California, which holds the magical promise of work. Along their journey they meet fellow travellers escaping the Oklahoma dust bowl, and they face suspicion, along with some mercy, at various stops along the way. The strain of the trip means that not all the Joads survive, and once in California, instead of work they find an abusive environment were workers are being treated barely better than slaves, and hired guards are quick to unleash violence on the newly arriving economic refugees.

An ode to the working class, The Grapes Of Wrath is a tender salute to the backbone of the economy. John Steinbeck's book is brought to the screen in an expansive adaptation by Nunnally Johnson, the story unfolding as the ultimate unwanted family road trip, an escape from abject despair in search of the faintest hope.

For a family that can only offer the sweat of manual labour, the search for fertile land is the search for life, and the Joads are at the mercy of land owners who can take advantage of the increasing number of desperate workers to drive down wages. It's a grim theme, both a call for workers' dignity and a celebration of their determination, Johnson and director John Ford allowing the film's leftist tendencies to breathe without resorting to indoctrination.

The prevailing mood is one of a prolonged struggle, against nature, against faceless capitalists, against distance, against enforcement authorities quick to deploy brutal tactics, and finally against Californians looking to take advantage of the desperate incoming workers. But the trial of the Joads is sustained by a dogged hope, where the promise of a better future waits just out of reach, behind every curve in the road. Without the hope there is no cross-country trek, and the Joads soldier on after every setback, a testament to the resiliency of the human spirit in the face of piled adversity.

The Grapes Of Wrath is a visual masterpiece. Ford alternates wide open on-the-road scenes that convey the exhaustion of bouncing down dusty highways with intense dramatic episodes, filmed in close-up, to drive home how close to the brink the Joads are. Just as that rickety truck always appears to be one mile away from a total breakdown, Tom is always one move away from again falling afoul of the law, the elder members of the family are frail and struggling to survive the rigours of the trip, and the young Joads are experiencing life-altering uncertainty.

It is left to Ma Joad to hold the centre together, her positive spirit often the only thing standing between her family and disintegration. Jane Darwell received the Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress, and her role grows into the quiet but forceful voice of all workers. Henry Fonda stepped into stardom and was nominated as Best Actor, Tom Joad so much more interesting for being a flawed young man already carrying the burden of a stint in prison, and Fonda imparts the suspicions of a man now not sure how far he can trust anyone in a position of authority.

The small story of one family and a grand socioeconomic commentary, The Grapes Of Wrath is a rich harvest.

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