Deception (Irving Rapper, 1946)

Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, and Claude Rains in Deception

Cast: Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, John Abbott, Benson Fong. Screenplay: John Collier, Joseph Than, based on a play by Louis Verneuil. Cinematography: Ernest Haller. Art direction: Anton Grot. Film editing: Alan Crosland Jr. Music: Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

The highlight of Deception is a scene in which Claude Rains, as the imperious composer Alexander Hollenius, invites his ex-mistress Christine (Bette Davis) and her new husband, the cellist Karel Novak (Paul Henreid), to dine with him at a fancy restaurant before Novak is to play Hollenius's new concerto. While Christine and Karel stew, both eager to get the composer's approval so the cellist can make a career break, Hollenius plays the epicure, constantly rethinking the menu and the accompanying wines and keeping the couple from their goal. It's Rains at his best. In fact, he's the chief reason for seeing this somewhat overproduced melodrama, with its sometimes laughable skirting of the Production Code's strictures on sex. Would a worldly European like Novak really be so terribly shocked to find that Christine had been Hollenius's lover? Would Christine really be so determined to conceal the secret that she'd kill for it? Davis pulls out all of her mannerisms -- she disliked the film -- while Henreid struggles to rise above his usual passivity as a leading man overshadowed by his leading lady.

Between Two Worlds (Edward A. Blatt, 1944)

Between Two Worlds (Edward A. Blatt, 1944)

Cast: John Garfield, Paul Henreid, Sydney Greenstreet, Eleanor Parker, Edmund Gwenn, George Tobias, George Coulouris, Faye Emerson, Sara Allgood, Dennis King, Isobel Elsom, Gilbert Emery. Screenplay: Daniel Fuchs, based on a play by Sutton Vane. Cinematography: Carl E. Guthrie. Art direction: Hugh Reticker. Film editing: Rudi Fehr. Music: Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Sutton Vane's old warhorse of a play Outward Bound made its debut on Broadway in 1924 and became a community theater staple for many years after. It's a fantasy about the afterlife, in which passengers on a ship gradually come to realize that they're dead and will be judged by a man known as the Examiner, who will send them to their just deserts. Warner Bros. filmed it in 1930 with Leslie Howard as the cynical newspaperman Tom Prior and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as the suicidal Henry, a role Howard had played on stage. In 1944 the studio decided it was time for a remake that would update the story to the war years: A group of people are desperate to get out of England during the bombing and decide to risk sailing to America. Among them is Henry Bergner, a concert pianist who has been part of the Resistance in France but whose nerves have been shattered so that he can't take it anymore. When he's turned down because he doesn't have an exit permit, he decides to kill himself, so he returns to the flat he shares with his wife, Ann (Eleanor Parker), seals the windows shut, and turns on the gas. But Ann has pursued him to the steamship office, and when she finds out he has just left, she rushes into the street just in time to see a car carrying people who have successfully booked passage -- we have been introduced to them earlier -- blown to bits. She hurries on to the flat and discovers what Henry has done, so she decides to join him in death. Cut to the ship, where she and Henry join the people who have just been blown up. Henry and Ann realize that they're dead, but they're advised by the ship's steward, Scrubby (Edmund Gwenn), not to let the others know just yet. And so it goes, as the passengers gradually awake to the truth of their condition and undergo judgment by the Examiner, who was once an Anglican clergyman. Sydney Greenstreet plays him with his usual affably sinister manner -- in his scenes with Henreid it's a bit like watching Victor Laszlo being judged by Kasper Gutman. The bad people -- an arrogant capitalist played by George Coulouris and a snobbish society dame played by Isobel Elsom -- get dispatched to punishment; the sinful but worthy -- Garfield's raffish journalist and Faye Emerson's conscience-stricken playgirl/actress -- are provided with a measure of redemption. And then there are the suicides, Henry and Ann. It's revealed that their lot is to serve aboard these postmortem ships for eternity, like the steward Scrubby, who had killed himself. Since condoning suicide was taboo, especially under the Catholic-administered Production Code, the script has to provide an out for the attractive, repentant couple, and it does. There's a lot of stiff acting in the movie -- Garfield's is the only really naturalistic performance -- and the dialogue is full of heavy-handed exposition speeches. The capitalist and the socialite never rise above caricature, and there's a sentimental tribute to mother love. This is the first of only three films directed by Edward A. Blatt, and it's easy to see why there weren't more. 

Now, Voyager (Irving Rapper, 1942)

Paul Henreid, Bette Davis, and John Loder in Now, Voyager

Charlotte Vale: Bette Davis
Jerry Durrance: Paul Henreid
Dr. Jaquith: Claude Rains
Mrs. Vale: Gladys Cooper
June Vale: Bonita Granville
Eliot Livingston: John Loder
Lisa Vale: Ilka Chase
Deb McIntyre: Lee Patrick
Mr. Thompson: Franklin Pangborn
Dora Pickford: Mary Wickes
Tina Durrance: Janis Wilson

Director: Irving Rapper
Screenplay: Casey Robinson
Based on a novel by Olive Higgins Prouty
Cinematography: Sol Polito
Art direction: Robert M. Haas
Film editing: Warren Low
Music: Max Steiner

"A campy tearjerker," "kitsch," "a schlock classic" -- that's pretty much what you have to call Now, Voyager if you're a critic trying to prove your tough-mindedness, like Pauline Kael or the unidentified New York Times reviewer who dismissed it as "lachrymose." But there are at least two moments in the movie that bring it into focus as something more than just a routine weepie, or rather that suggest that even a routine weepie has a point to make. One is the scene in which Charlotte Vale and Eliot Livingston break off their engagement in an off-handed, all-in-a-day's-work manner. Eliot is, after all, as square as John Loder's jaw, and not at all the mate for a woman who has just discovered who she is. Of course, the breakup kills Charlotte's mother, but that consequence is long past due. The other key moment for me is in the long final scene between Charlotte and Jerry Durrance. She has more or less adopted Tina, the daughter that Jerry's never-seen wife doesn't want. But when Jerry tells her that he's taking Tina away, there's one of the more magnificent Bette Davis moments from a career full of them. His reason, you see, is that by devoting herself to Tina, Charlotte is apparently depriving herself of the opportunity to catch a man. For a brief moment we see Charlotte incredulous at the reason, followed by another moment of something like, "Lord, what fools men are." Jerry drops several notches in Charlotte's esteem at the moment, which leads into the film's most famous line, in which she dismisses Jerry's egocentric wishful thinking: "Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars." Charlotte Vale emerges from the film as one of the more admirable, level-headed women ever seen on a movie screen.

Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942)

Humphrey Bogart, Madeleine Lebeau, and Leonid Kinskey in Casablanca

Rick Blaine: Humphrey Bogart
Ilsa Lund: Ingrid Bergman
Victor Laszlo: Paul Henreid
Capt. Louis Renault: Claude Rains
Maj. Heinrich Strasser: Conrad Veidt
Signor Ferrari: Sydney Greenstreet
Ugarte: Peter Lorre
Carl: S.Z. Sakall
Yvonne: Madeleine Lebeau
Sam: Dooley Wilson
Emil: Marcel Dalio
Annina Brandel: Joy Page
Berger: John Qualen
Sascha: Leonid Kinskey
Pickpocket: Curt Bois

Director: Michael Curtiz
Screenplay: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch
Based on a play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison
Cinematography: Arthur Edeson
Art direction: Carl Jules Weyl
Film editing: Owen Marks
Music: Max Steiner

A few weeks ago, Madeleine Lebeau, the last surviving member of the cast of Casablanca, died at the age of 92. Lebeau played Yvonne, the Frenchwoman with whom Rick Blaine has been having an affair. When he breaks off their relationship coldly, she comes to his cafe on the arm of a German officer to spite him, but when the crowd starts singing the "Marseillaise" to drown out the Germans' singing of "Die Wacht am Rhein," Yvonne, tears streaming down her face, joins in. It's one of the many character vignettes that make Casablanca so entertaining. The film is filled with characters who have nothing at all to do with the main plot: the choice Rick has to make whether to renew his old affair with Ilsa Lund or let her leave Casablanca with her husband, Victor Laszlo. But if the movie simply focused on that love triangle, would it be the classic that it appears today to be? What makes Casablanca such an enduring film, I think, is the texture of its screenplay, which won Oscars for Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch. And that texture is provided by several dozen character players, to whom somehow the screenwriters managed to give abundant time. The result is such memorable bits as the one in which the waiter, Carl, sits down at a table with an elderly couple, the Leuchtags (Ilka Grüning and Ludwig Stössel), who have just received the visas they need to immigrate to the United States. Carl speaks German to them at first, but the Leuchtags insist that they should speak English so they will fit in when they reach America. Then Herr Leuchtag turns to his wife and asks what time it is:

Liebchen -- sweetness -- what watch?
Ten watch.
Such much? 

Carl assures them, "You will get along beautiful in America." Has there ever been a movie more quotable? It is, of course, a great movie, largely because everyone took the time to weave such moments into its fabric. I don't claim perfection for it: The subservience of Sam to Rick, whom he calls "Mr. Rick" or "Boss," smacks of the racial attitudes of the era, and I wince when Ilsa refers to Sam as "the boy." (Dooley Wilson was in his 50s when the film was made.) James Agee, who was not as impressed with Casablanca as many of his contemporaries were, "snickered at" some of the expository dialogue, such as Ilsa's plea, "Oh, Victor, please don't go to the underground meeting tonight." But it continues to cast a spell that few other films have ever equaled.