The Cat and the Fiddle (William K. Howard, 1934)

Ramon Novarro and Jeanette MacDonald in The Cat and the Fiddle

Cast: Ramon Novarro, Jeanette MacDonald, Frank Morgan, Charles Butterworth, Jean Hersholt, Vivienne Segal, Frank Conroy, Henry Armetta, Adrienne D'Ambicourt, Joseph Cawthorn. Screenplay: Bella Spewack, Sam Spewack, based on a play by Otto A. Harbach and Jerome Kern. Cinematography: Charles G. Clarke, Ray Rennahan, Harold Rosson. Art direction: Alexander Toluboff. Film editing: Frank E. Hull. Music: Herbert Stothart, songs by Jerome Kern and Otto A. Harbach.

The Cat and the Fiddle marks a change in Jeanette MacDonald's career: It was her first film for MGM after the classic series of witty, racy movies co-starring Maurice Chevalier at Paramount, and it neatly bridges her way into the more famous but less interesting operetta films she made with Nelson Eddy at MGM. Here her co-star is Ramon Novarro, a charming actor with great comic skills and a nice singing voice, but they don't mesh the way she did with either Chevalier or Eddy; she seems a little too stiff, he a little too boyish. Made before the full introduction of the Production Code, the movie tries for some of the sexiness of the Paramount films made under the aegis of the master of the sly wink, Ernst Lubitsch. The lovers, Novarro's Victor and MacDonald's Shirley, live together without benefit of clergy, a thing impossible under the code. There is fun to be had watching the film: The dialogue -- among the uncredited contributors to the screenplay are Anita Loos and James Kevin McGuinness -- is often smart and funny, the songs are pleasant, and the giddy nonsense of the plot skips along merrily. And at the end there's a nice surprise: The final reel is in Technicolor, giving audiences a first glimpse of MacDonald's red hair. But this is minor MGM musical stuff, even in comparison with the later MacDonald/Eddy movies.

China Seas (Tay Garnett, 1935)

Clark Gable and Jean Harlow in China Seas

Cast: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, Rosalind Russell, Lewis Stone, C. Aubrey Smith, Dudley Digges, Robert Benchley, William Henry, Hattie McDaniel, Liev De Maigret, Lilian Bond, Edward Brophy, Soo Yong, Akim Tamiroff, Ivan Lebedeff. Screenplay: Jules Furthman, James Kevin McGuinness, based on a novel by Crosbie Garstin. Cinematography: Ray June. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: William LeVanway. Music: Herbert Stothart.

China Seas is a pretty good romantic adventure that seems to have been pieced together from better movies. Its romantic triangle of Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, and Rosalind Russell mimics that of Gable, Harlow, and Mary Astor in Red Dust (Victor Fleming, 1932). Harlow and Wallace Beery have a relationship that echoes the one their characters had in Dinner at Eight (George Cukor, 1933). And the byplay between Harlow's character and her maid (Hattie McDaniel, of course) is a lot like the banter between Mae West and her maids in She Done Him Wrong (Lowell Sherman, 1933) and I'm No Angel (Wesley Ruggles, 1933). China Seas has a few standout moments of its own: There's a terrific typhoon sequence involving a runaway steamroller on the deck of the tramp steamer captained by Gable's Alan Gaskell, and Robert Benchley has some funny bits as an alcoholic writer who's usually too drunk to know where he is or to respond to other people with anything more than non sequiturs. There's a kind of uptightness to the movie that reminds us that the Production Code censors were breathing down people's necks, whereas all of those better movies mentioned above were pre-Code. But Gable and Harlow are in fine form. She's Dolly Portland, aka "China Doll," the shady lady (sometimes introduced as "an entertainer") who used to be involved with Capt. Gaskell and has now booked passage on his steamer from Hong Kong to Singapore in an effort to win him back. Russell plays Sybil Barclay, a high-class English lady who also has a past with the captain and nearly does succeed in recapturing him. Russell seems to be trying too hard at the role, slipping into stiff-upper-lip mannerisms and becoming rather arch, so there's no real heat between her character and Gable's. Another old flame of Dolly's, Jamesy McArdle (Beery), is also on board, and he's in cahoots with Malaysian pirates to board the ship and steal the gold it's carrying. Rejected by the captain, who decides to marry Sybil, Dolly joins forces with McArdle, though she doesn't really mean to. You've seen this sort of thing before, so there are no surprises, but relax and be entertained.

Idiot's Delight (Clarence Brown, 1939)

Clark Gable and Norma Shearer in Idiot's Delight

Cast: Clark Gable, Norma Shearer, Edward Arnold, Charles Coburn, Joseph Schildkraut, Burgess Meredith, Laura Hope Crews, Richard "Skeets" Gallagher, Peter Willes, Pat Paterson, William Edmunds, Fritz Feld. Screenplay: Robert E. Sherwood, based on his play. Cinematography: William H. Daniels. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Robert Kern. Music: Herbert Stothart.

To make a critic's obvious joke, Idiot's Delight is sometimes idiotic and rarely delightful. It's mostly a rather ill-advised filming of Robert E. Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1936 play about a world on the brink of war. The world was even further out on that brink by the time the film was made, and two distinct endings were shot. One, for U.S. audiences, is conventionally neutral (as the United States was at the time) about whether a world war was about to happen. The other, to be shown abroad, takes a more pessimistic view. But the whole film is riddled with a confusion of tone. This is the movie in which Clark Gable, playing a vaudevillian, sings and dances to Irving Berlin's "Puttin' on the Ritz" and is carried offstage by a group of chorus girls -- a sequence revived by its inclusion in the 1974 celebration of MGM musical numbers, That's Entertainment. Gable is game throughout the film, especially when he has to play opposite Norma Shearer at her most arch. The original Broadway version starred Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne; Gable and Shearer are not the Lunts.

Susan and God (George Cukor, 1940)

Susan and God (George Cukor, 1940)

Cast: Joan Crawford, Fredric March, Ruth Hussey, John Carroll, Rita Hayworth, Nigel Bruce, Bruce Cabot, Rose Hobart, Rita Quigley, Constance Collier, Richard Crane, Norma Mitchell, Marjorie Main, Aldrich Bowker. Screenplay: Anita Loos, based on a play by Rachel Crothers. Cinematography: Robert H. Planck. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons, Randall Duell. Film editing: William H. Terhune. Music: Herbert Stothart.

I have no hesitation in calling Joan Crawford one of the greatest film actresses of the studio era, and there's a moment in Susan and God that fully justifies my opinion. It comes at the turning point when Crawford's character, Susan Trexel, realizes how much harm her giddy self-absorption has done to her husband and daughter. In only a few seconds, surprise, guilt, and shame cross her face, and without mugging or emoting, Crawford gives each thought and emotion its due. But the moment also reveals how out of place in this sentimental comedy Crawford is: She was made for melodrama, not for frivolity, which is what the role chiefly calls upon her for. Through much of the movie, Crawford seems to be copying Rosalind Russell's performance in The Women, the movie she made with Russell and director George Cukor a year before Susan and God. In The Women, Russell played the nitwit socialite that Crawford is expected to play in Susan and God. But Susan Trexel lies outside of Crawford's established tough-as-nails persona -- which she played on to perfection in The Women -- and the later film suffers from it. It also suffers from a rather scattered script, too stuffed with secondary characters, and from a general confusion about exactly what kind of "god" Susan has found -- apparently a kind of self-help feel-good cult. Cukor keeps things moving nicely, and there are good moments from supporting players like Ruth Hussey and Marjorie Main, but it's easy to see why the film was a flop at the box office.

A Tale of Two Cities (Jack Conway, 1935)

Cast: Ronald Colman, Elizabeth Allan, Edna May Oliver, Reginald Owen, Basil Rathbone, Blanche Yurka, Henry B. Walthall, Donald Woods, Walter Catlett, Fritz Leiber, H.B. Warner, Mitchell Lewis, Claude Gillingwater, Billy Bevan, Isabel Jewell, Lucille La Verne. Screenplay: W.P. Lipscomb, S.N. Behrman, based on a novel by Charles Dickens. Cinematography: Oliver T. Marsh. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons, Fredric Hope, Edwin B. Willis. Film editing: Conrad A. Nervig. Music: Herbert Stothart.

It was the best of movies, it was the worst of movies. The best part is that Ronald Colman is a handsome Sydney Carton, who delivers the familiar closing line at the guillotine -- "It is a far, far better thing I do...." -- with the necessary nobility, and that the cast includes such ever-watchable character actors as Edna May Oliver, Basil Rathbone, Blanche Yurka (an implacable Mme. De Farge), and Lucille La Verne (as The Vengeance, literally but not figuratively toothless). The worst part is that the screenplay leans heavily on the sentimental parts of the novel and Elizabeth Allan is, like most Dickens heroines, a pallid and forgettable Lucie Manette. David O. Selznick produced, but it's not as successful a foray into Dickens as his superb David Copperfield, made the same year and with a better director, George Cukor. 

The Barbarian (Sam Wood, 1933)

Cast: Ramon Novarro, Myrna Loy, Reginald Denny, Louise Closser Hale, C. Aubrey Smith, Edward Arnold, Blanche Friderici, Marcel Corday, Hedda Hopper, Leni Stengel. Screenplay: Anita Loos, Elmer Harris, based on a story by Edgar Selwyn. Cinematography: Harold Rosson. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Tom Held. Music: Herbert Stothart.

Orientalist fiddle-faddle with Ramon Novarro as an Egyptian prince disguised as a translator and tour director wooing a wealthy American tourist played by Myrna Loy. Novarro is dashing and handsome, but not quite a match for Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik (George Melford, 1921), the classic film in this dubious genre. Loy is still emerging from her "exotic" phase, playing the sultry woman of the world -- she's supposedly half Egyptian on her mother's side.

Peg o' My Heart (Robert Z. Leonard, 1933)

Peg o' My Heart (Robert Z. Leonard, 1933)

Cast: Marion Davies, Onslow Stevens, J. Farrell MacDonald, Juliette Compton, Irene Browne, Tyrell Davis, Alan Mowbray, Robert Greig. Screenplay: Frank R. Adams, Frances Marion, based on a play by J. Hartley Manners. Cinematography: George Barnes. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Margaret Booth. Costume design: Adrian. Music: Herbert Stothart.

A Night at the Opera (Sam Wood, 1935)

Watched 10/7/2018

Groucho Marx and Kitty Carlisle in A Night at the Opera

Otis B. Driftwood: Groucho Marx
Fiorello: Chico Marx
Tomasso: Harpo Marx
Rosa Castaldi: Kitty Carlisle
Ricardo Barone: Allan Jones
Herman Gottlieb: Sig Ruman
Mrs. Claypool: Margaret Dumont
Rudolfo Lassparri: Walter Woolf King

Director: Sam Wood
Screenplay: George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, James Kevin McGuinness
Cinematography: Merritt B. Gerstad
Art direction: Cedric Gibbons
Film editing: William LeVanway
Music: Herbert Stothart

Verdi's Il Trovatore is one of my favorite operas, but it only works if it's performed by a cast willing to give it their all. To see what I mean, try to find the live recording from the 1962 Salzburg Festival conducted by Herbert von Karajan and starring Leontyne Price, Franco Corelli, Ettore Bastianini, and Giulietta Simionato. Thrill to Price and Corelli in a duel of high notes, Corelli and Bastianini trying to out-ham each other, and Simonato camping the hell out of Azucena. That's what opera is all about and why it's such a natural target for the Marx Brothers. A Night at the Opera is not my favorite of their films, however. It was made after they left Paramount for MGM, where Irving G. Thalberg seemed determined to file down the team's rough edges, Louis B. Mayer didn't get their jokes, and the direction was assigned to Sam Wood, who earned his surname honestly. So we get an insipid romance between the opera singers played by Kitty Carlisle and Allan Jones, who are allowed to do the "Miserere" scene straight-faced, and one of those gooey musical interludes in which Chico and Harpo are allowed to charm a bunch of kids with their piano and harp playing. For many, the comic highlight of the film is the stateroom scene, in which much of the cast is crammed into a tiny space, but I'm afraid too many viewings have left me cold to it. But I will never grow cold to Groucho, who rises above all inanities. Any moment he's on screen cracking wise is golden. The rest ranges from silver to Wooden.

Random Harvest (Mervyn LeRoy, 1942)

Ronald Colman in Random Harvest

Charles Rainier: Ronald Colman
Paula: Greer Garson
Dr. Jonathan Benet: Philip Dorn
Kitty: Susan Peters
Dr. Sims: Henry Travers
"Biffer": Reginald Owen
Harrison: Bramwell Fletcher
Sam: Rhys Williams
Tobacconist: Una O'Connor
Sheldon: Aubrey Mather
Mrs. Deventer: Margaret Wycherly
Chetwynd: Arthur Margetson
George: Melville Cooper

Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Screenplay: Claudine West, George Froeschel, Arthur Wimperis
Based on a novel by James Hilton
Cinematography: Joseph Ruttenberg
Art direction: Cedric Gibbons
Film editing: Harold F. Kress
Music: Herbert Stothart

It's a good thing that amnesia is as rare an affliction in real life as it is, because it gives the crafters of melodrama free rein to imagine its effects, such as the case of what might be called "double amnesia" that plagues Charles Rainier in Random Harvest. For not only does Rainer forget who he is once, after suffering shell shock in the trenches of World War I, he then forgets what happened to him during that bout of amnesia after being hit by a taxi and brought back to his senses. That is, having once forgotten that he was heir to a lucrative family business, he now forgets that he wandered away from the asylum where he was being treated and fell in love with Paula, a music hall performer who devoted herself to him as he launched a career as a writer named John Smith -- she calls him Smithy. But plucky Paula learns the truth about her Smithy, goes to business school and learns to be a high-powered corporate secretary, and gets herself hired as Charles Rainier's executive secretary -- all without revealing the truth about that lost passage in their lives. Was ever such nonsense taken seriously? Yes, indeed, because it's filmed through MGM's highest-quality gauze, with Ronald Colman at his handsome stoic best and Greer Garson at her plummiest and dewiest, full of trembling self-sacrifice. It was a huge hit, partly because it hit wartime audiences where they lived: separated wives and husbands, uncertain whether they they would be reunited and made whole again. Today, we can look back on Random Harvest with irony, or view it as a product of a particular period of Hollywood history that will never come again. But it's made with such affection for its improbabilities, which are manifold, that I can't help admiring it.

Queen Christina (Rouben Mamoulian, 1933)

Greta Garbo and John Gilbert in Queen Christina

Christina: Greta Garbo
Antonio: John Gilbert
Magnus: Ian Keith
Oxenstierna: Lewis Stone
Ebba: Elizabeth Young
Aage: C. Aubrey Smith
Charles: Reginald Owen
French Ambassador: Georges Renavent
Archbishop: David Torrence
General: Gustav von Seyffertitz
Innkeeper: Ferdinand Meunier

Director: Rouben Mamoulian
Screenplay: H.M. Harwood, Salka Viertel, Margaret P. Levino, S.N. Behrman
Cinematography: William H. Daniels
Production design: Edgar G. Ulmer
Film editing: Blanche Sewell
Costume design: Adrian
Music: Herbert Stothart

A year later, with the Production Code in full enforcement, this would have been a very different movie, though probably not a better one. It certainly wouldn't have shown Christina and Antonio sharing a room, not to mention a bed, in an inn. It probably wouldn't have suggested so strongly that before Antonio became her lover, Christina had a thing going with Countess Ebba, and almost certainly wouldn't have had Christina kiss Ebba on the mouth. Unfortunately, those little touches of mild naughtiness are pretty much all Queen Christina has going for it, especially if you're looking for some faint resemblance to historical fact. But maybe Garbo is enough. She certainly gives this pseudo-historical melodrama more commitment than it deserves. It was her fourth film with Gilbert, their only talkie, and their last. At least it dispels the myth that Gilbert failed to make the move into sound films because of his voice, which is perfectly fine -- the real reason was alcoholism, which made him unemployable and destroyed his health. The number of uncredited hands that worked on the screenplay, including Ben Hecht, Ernest Vajda, Claudine West, and director Rouben Mamoulian, suggests that it became a problem no one ever quite solved. Today, it is mostly remembered for the final shot of Garbo alone at the prow of a ship that is taking her away from Sweden. The story has it that Mamoulian directed her to empty her mind and think of nothing during the long closeup, to allow audiences to project their own emotions on her character.

Marie Antoinette (W.S. Van Dyke, 1938)

Robert Morley and Norma Shearer in Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette: Norma Shearer
Count Axel de Fersen: Tyrone Power
King Louis XV: John Barrymore
King Louis XVI: Robert Morley
Princesse de Lamballe: Anita Louise
Duke d'Orléans; Joseph Schildkraut
Mme du Barry: Gladys George
Count de Mercey: Henry Stephenson

Director: W.S. Van Dyke
Screenplay: Claudine West, Donald Ogden Stewart, Ernest Vajda
Cinematography: William H. Daniels
Art direction: Cedric Gibbons
Film editing: Robert Kern
Costume design: Adrian, Gile Steele
Music: Herbert Stothart

Hollywood historical hokum, W.S. Van Dyke's Marie Antoinette was a vehicle for Norma Shearer that had been planned for her by her husband, Irving G. Thalberg, who died in 1936. MGM stuck with it because as Thalberg's heir, Shearer had control of a large chunk of stock. It also gave her a part that ran the gamut from the fresh and bubbly teenage Austrian archduchess thrilled at the arranged marriage to the future Louis XVI, to the drab, worn figure riding in a tumbril to the guillotine. Considering that it takes place in one of the most interesting periods in history, it could have been a true epic if screenwriters Claudine West, Donald Ogden Stewart, and Ernest Vajda (with uncredited help from several other hands, including F. Scott Fitzgerald) hadn't been pressured to turn it into a love story between Marie and the Swedish Count Axel Fersen. But the portrayal of their affair was stifled by the Production Code's squeamishness about sex, and the long period in which Marie and Louis fail to consummate their marriage lurks unexplained in the background. MGM threw lots of money at the film to compensate: Shearer sashays around in Adrian gowns with panniers out to here, with wigs up to there, and on sets designed and decorated by Cedric Gibbons and Henry Grace that make the real Versailles look puny. The problem is that nothing like a genuine human emotion appears on the screen, and the perceived necessity of glamorizing the aristocrats turns the French Revolution on its head. The cast of thousands includes John Barrymore as Louis XV, Gladys George as Madame du Barry, and Joseph Schildkraut (with what looks like Jean Harlow's eyebrows and Joan Crawford's lipstick) as the foppish Duke of Orléans. The best performance in the movie comes from Morley, who took the role after the first choice, Charles Laughton, proved unavailable; Morley earned a supporting actor Oscar nomination for his film debut. With the exception of The Women (George Cukor, 1939), in which she is upstaged by her old rival Joan Crawford, this is Shearer's last film of consequence. When she turned 40 in 1942, she retired from the movies and lived in increasing seclusion until her death, 41 years later. It says something about Shearer's status in Hollywood that Greta Garbo, who retired at about the same time, and who also sought to be left alone, was the more legendary figure and was more ardently pursued by gossips and paparazzi.