The Ace Black Movie Blog

Showing posts with label Ward Bond. Show all posts

Saturday, 21 September 2024

Movie Review: China Doll (1958)

Genre: Wartime Dramatic Romance

Director: Frank Borzage

Starring: Victor Mature, Li Li Hua, Ward Bond, Stuart Whitman

Running Time: 99 minutes

Synopsis: The setting is western China in 1943, during World War Two. Captain Cliff Brandon (Victor Mature) leads a US air cargo crew resupplying Allied forces. Cynical and gruff, Cliff inadvertently buys the housekeeping services of Shu-Jen (Li Li Hua), a local young woman from a poor but proud family. Father Cairns (Ward Bond) runs the local mission and helps Cliff understand his obligations, while errand boy Ellington provides translation. Initially dismissive and not interested in having Shu-Jen around, Cliff gradually starts to appreciate her commitment to servitude, and falls in love.

What Works Well: Director Frank Borzage steers the unlikely cross-cultural romance towards a few poignant moments with obvious affection for his subjects. Cliff's weariness reflects the rigours of war, and he crew's interactions with ambulance service nurses contain crass commentary about wartime romance as a short term contract with financial benefits.

What Does Not Work As Well: Victor Mature's performance is often boorishly superficial, and apart from Ward Bond, most of the secondary acting is theatrically wooden. The Chinese characters are treated as submissive and differential, and Cliff falls in love with a woman because she is fully dedicated to his domestic comfort although he cannot actually communicate with her. The action scenes (mostly in the third act) are a mishmash of archival footage and clumsy set-bound antics.

Key Quote:

Cliff (talking to Father Cairns about Shu-Jen): With her it's different...all she wants to do is give.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Tuesday, 4 May 2021

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.

All Ace Black Movie Blog reviews are here.

Wednesday, 3 June 2020

Movie Review: Tobacco Road (1941)

A comedy with some dramatic elements about abject poverty, Tobacco Road never gets the balance right and is a mostly ghastly exercise in overacting.

It's the early 1930s, and the South is in the midst of the Great Depression. Elderly farmer Jeeter Lester (Charley Grapewin), his wife Ada (Elizabeth Patterson), daughter Ellie May (Gene Tierney) and son Dude (William Tracy) are squatting on the estate of Jeeter's now deceased former boss. Dirt poor and lazy, Jeeter barely scrapes together a living, and has no hesitation stealing from his son-in-law Lov Bensey (Ward Bond).

Jeeter is given a few days notice to come up with $100 in annual rent or else move off the land. Prospects look grim until neighbour Sister Bessie Rice (Marjorie Rambeau), a devout lover of religious singing, decides to marry the much younger Dude. Bessie has some insurance money squirreled away, but quickly spends it all on a new car. This does not stop Lester from scheming to fleece his new daughter-in-law.

An adaptation of a popular play from the era, Tobacco Road is an uncomfortably bumpy cinematic experience. The intent of the Nunnally Johnson script must have been to elicit sympathy for the plight of the poor through a mixture of humour and poignancy. But unfortunately director John Ford never sets the right tone. All the characters are portrayed as dimwits deserving their fate, and Jeeter's antics of joyfully taking advantage of family members erode any sense of empathy.

Humour derived from abject stupidity is always fraught with peril, and Tobacco Road often misses the target by astounding margins. Dude, an insanely intolerable and constantly shrieking moron, proceeds to wreck a brand new car within a few hours. Bensey plays a whiny victim while describing the stream of physical abuse he doles out to his wife Pearl (never seen).

Bessie is occasionally funny as she breaks into song at every opportunity, and Ford does frame a few magnificent landscapes in gloomy black and white, and at least wraps up the misery in 84 minutes. But with Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews (in a small role as the son of Jeeter's former boss) wasted, Tobacco Road is more spit than chew.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Sunday, 21 January 2018

Movie Review: Tall In The Saddle (1944)

A robust western, Tall In The Saddle rises marginally above the routine thanks to numerous plot points and a rich cast of characters.

A mysterious stranger known only as Rocklin (John Wayne) arrives in the dusty town of Santa Inez only to discover that Red Cardell, the ranch owner who offered him employment, has just been killed. Rocklin finds himself unwelcome, with the elderly and caustic Miss Elizabeth Martin (Elisabeth Risdon), who stands to take control of the Cardell ranch, particularly unfriendly. But Martin's niece Clara (Audrey Long) makes a connection with Rocklin and appears to need help.

Other townsfolk have their plans disrupted by Rocklin's presence. Judge Robert Carvey (Ward Bond) is at the centre of land transactions, Harolday (Don Douglas) owns the ranch adjacent to Cardell, and Harolday's strong-willed step-daughter Arly (Ella Raines) and her brother Clint (Russell Wade) have their own agendas. Rocklin has to sort out a myriad of conflicts to uncover what is going on and his own place in the turmoil.

Directed by Edwin L. Marin, Tall In The Saddle features an assured John Wayne in a quintessential western about the tall no-nonsense stranger wading into a heap of trouble. The film delivers all that the genre demands, and a bit more thanks to a busy number of characters and disputes waiting to be unveiled.

After a slowish start to introduce all the characters, the small community of Santa Inez certainly proves to be a fidgety place. Rocklin finds himself embroiled in the unsolved murder of his would-be employer, on-going cattle rustling, allegations of fixed poker games, a multi-faceted land-grab plot, and the unwelcome release of a convicted man. Two women immediately compete for his attention, Clara the damsel in distress and Arly the tough-as-nails cowgirl.

By the time the credits roll after a somewhat rushed ending, most but not all the scattered plot points are tidied up with satisfactory rough and tumble frontier energy.

Lean, tall and handsome, Wayne is a confident presence, and Marin provides him with an elegant sequence to establish dominance. Rocklin quietly takes leave of a poker table argument, goes up to his room, comes back down with his gun belt, and resolves the issue through aura alone. Ward Bond contributes his typical dependable support, while Ella Raines and Audrey Long provide the necessary eyelid flutters. George "Gabby" Hayes is given the usual amount of gratuitous screen time as the talkative wagon driver.

Thanks to star power and overactive mischief, Tall In The Saddle transcends its workmanlike ethos.

All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Saturday, 13 January 2018

Movie Review: Operation Pacific (1951)

A World War Two submarine action film with a touch of romance, Operation Pacific ticks all the boxes but does not shine in any of them.

In World War Two, the American submarine Thunderfish is tasked with tracking down and sinking Japanese enemy vessels in the Pacific Ocean. Captain "Pop" Perry (Ward Bond) and his Executive Officer "Duke" Gifford (John Wayne) are friends and smoothly command the sub. After rescuing civilians from a Japanese held island, Thunderfish returns to Pearl Harbor where Duke hopes to win back the love of his ex-wife Lieutenant Navy Nurse Mary Stuart (Patricia Neal). However, she is now in a romantic relationship with Pop's younger brother Lieutenant Bob Perry (Philip Carey).

Back at sea Thunderfish tangles with more enemy ships, but is hampered by faulty torpedoes. Pop and Duke have to lead their men into a difficult encounter with a heavily armed Japanese freighter, and the outcome further complicates the tense relationship between Duke and Bob. But the Thunderfish's biggest challenge still lies ahead.

Written and directed by George Waggner, Operation Pacific is inspired by true incidents that occurred in the Pacific theatre during World War Two. The film is committed to an investment in a close-to-realistic portrayal of submarine warfare operations, and the scenes at sea carry the requisite edge as men in confined surroundings dispatch death in the form of torpedoes and in return anticipate the juddering thuds of depth charges. The subplot about malfunctioning torpedoes introduces an unusual but welcome dose of engineering pragmatism in a war movie.

But in terms of characters and narrative engagement, the film sails in firmly bland territory. The Duke character is fully subsumed by John Wayne to the extent of sharing the actors' nickname. And Wayne treats the submarine as his horse as he rides tall in command, fearless in every decision and never harboring any doubt that he will win the war and win the girl.

The absence of depth exposes the film to the silliness of a romantic triangle where Mary Stuart clearly shares no affection with Bob and whether consciously or not is using him to win back Duke. Wayne and Patricia Neal do click as an on-screen couple (despite apparent off-screen apathy), but Duke's damn-the-torpedoes approach strips the film of subtlety both at sea and on land.

Waggner does alternate between action and romance at regular intervals and avoids lingering for too long in any one place. The film clocks in at under two hours, and Waggner finds a good ending in a large scale naval battle with plenty of opportunities for heroism and sacrifice. The love and war stories finally merge on the high seas, Wayne presented an efficient opportunity to dominate both arenas. And wet or dry, it's pointless to expect anything other than a comprehensive Duke triumph.