The Devil and Daniel Webster (William Dieterle, 1941)

Walter Huston in The Devil and Daniel Webster

Cast: Walter Huston, Edward Arnold, James Craig, Anne Shirley, Jane Darwell, Simone Simon, Gene Lockhart, John Qualen, H.B. Warner, Frank Conland, Lindy Wade, George Cleveland. Screenplay: Dan Totheroh, based on a story by Stephen Vincent Benet. Cinematography: Joseph H. August. Art direction: Van Nest Polglase, Alfred Herman. Film editing: Robert Wise. Music: Bernard Herrmann.

With its historical figures and rural setting The Devil and Daniel Webster could have sunk into sentimental Americana, but it stays just shy of that with the help of a good screenplay, solid direction, and most of all some fine performances, particularly Walter Huston as Mr. Scratch and Edward Arnold as Webster, a turn away from Arnold's usual fat-cat persona. (Arnold was a replacement for Thomas Mitchell, injured in an on-set accident just after filming started.) Bernard Herrmann's Oscar-winning score, giving a sophisticated twist to old folk tunes like "Pop Goes the Weasel," and Joseph H. August's moody cinematography also help. James Craig gives a solid performance as Jabez Stone, the victim of Scratch's soul-buying, especially in his scenes with Simone Simon as the little devil Belle sent to tempt him. 

Dance, Girl, Dance (Dorothy Arzner, 1940)

Lucille Ball, Maureen O'Hara, and Virginia Field in Dance, Girl, Dance

Cast: Maureen O'Hara, Louis Hayward, Lucille Ball, Virginia Field, Ralph Bellamy, Maria Ouspenskaya, Mary Carlisle, Katharine Alexander, Edward Brophy, Walter Abel. Screenplay: Tess Slesinger, Frank Davis, based on a story by Vicki Baum. Cinematography: Russell Metty. Art direction: Van Nest Polglase, Alfred Herman. Film editing: Robert Wise. Music: Edward Ward.

Dorothy Arzner's film about chorus girls struggling to make lives for themselves in a milieu dominated by males and their gaze earned its place in the National Film Registry by being one of the few movies of the era to take the women's point of view seriously. It has its melodramatic excesses, but it steadily keeps its focus on the characters played by Lucille Ball and Maureen O'Hara instead of yielding time to its male leads, Louis Hayward and Ralph Bellamy. 

The Age of Innocence (Philip Moeller, 1934)

John Boles and Irene Dunne in The Age of Innocence

Countess Ellen Olenska: Irene Dunne
Newland Archer: John Boles
Julius Beaufort: Lionel Atwill
Granny Mingott: Helen Westley
Augusta Welland: Laura Hope Crews
May Welland: Julie Haydon
Howard Welland: Herbert Yost
Mrs. Archer: Theresa Maxwell Conover
Jane Archer: Edith Van Cleve
The Butler: Leonard Carey

Director: Philip Moeller
Screenplay: Sarah Y. Mason, Victor Heerman
Based on a novel by Edith Wharton and a play adapted from it by Margaret Ayer Barnes
Cinematography: James Van Trees
Art direction: Alfred Herman, Van Nest Polglase
Music: Max Steiner

The fine ironic edges of Edith Wharton's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel have been filed down in this first sound version. (There had been a silent film based on the book, directed by Wesley Ruggles, in 1924.) Instead we get a rather soppy melodrama of forbidden love, which suggests that marital vows and family commitments are unbreakable -- an endorsement of old-fashioned values quite in line with the nascent Production Code, introduced in the year of the film's release. The movie opens with a montage of "modern times" replete with jazz and scandals, as if to drive home its message. It's further weakened by the casting of the ladylike Irene Dunne as the scandalous Ellen Olenska. The actress who turned the part down, Katharine Hepburn, might at least have brought a whiff of the unconventional to the role. Dunne tries to give Ellen a spark of life at the start, but after Newland Archer enters the picture and declares his love in spite of his engagement to May Welland, we are presented with Dunne's distant gazes and wistful looks. It doesn't help that John Boles is starchy and vapid as Newland, or that Julie Haydon's May Welland is a sugary ingenue, with no hint of the manipulative until the very end when she plays the pregnancy card. The only real life in the cast is supplied by the supporting players, particularly Laura Hope Crews, eschewing her usual fluttery mannerisms as as May's mother, and Helen Westley, providing some salt and vinegar as Granny Mingott.