Mandalay (Michael Curtiz, 1934)

Kay Francis, Warner Oland, and Ricardo Cortez in Mandalay

 Cast: Kay Francis, Ricardo Cortez, Warner Oland, Lyle Talbot, Ruth Donnelly, Lucien Littlefield, Reginald Owen, Etienne Giardot, David Torrence, Rafaela Ottiano, Halliwell Hobbes, Bodil Rosing, Herman Bing. Screenplay: Paul Hervey Fox, Austin Parker, Charles King. Cinematography: Tony Gaudio. Art direction: Anton Grot. Film editing: Thomas Pratt. Music: Heinz Roemheld.

You get what you might expect from a movie titled Mandalay: Orientalist hooey, with lots of gun-running and opium dealing in sleazy night clubs, with expat Europeans and Americans fleecing tourists with the aide of sinister Eurasians. (There was no other kind of Eurasian in Hollywood movies of the '30s; here they're played by Warner Oland, who made a career of the type before going straight into yellowface as Charlie Chan, and Rafaela Ottiano, who filled the bill whenever Gale Sondergaard was unavailable.) Kay Francis does what she can with a role that doesn't make a lot of sense: She's the Russian-born Tanya Borodoff, who has somehow fallen in love with Tony Evans (Ricardo Cortez), a gun-runner and all-around heel. When he dumps her, she becomes Spot White (no, I don't get the name either), the madam of the sleazy night club in Rangoon run by Nick (Oland). She doesn't want to fall that far from grace, but needs must. When she's threatened with deportation to Russia by the police commissioner (Reginald Owen), she blackmails him by reminding him that they once had a night together when he was drunk, and that she has her garter adorned with his medals to prove it. He gives her the money she needs to leave Rangoon and head for the "cool green hills" near Mandalay. Now calling herself Marjorie Lang, she boards a paddle-wheel steamer upriver, on which she meets an alcoholic doctor (Lyle Talbot) who intends to atone for accidentally killing a patient by working with black fever patients in the jungles. They hit it off and she helps him sober up, but, wouldn't you know it, Tony Evans resurfaces on the very steamer. This sounds like a lot more fun than it is, although Michael Curtiz's professionalism and Tony Gaudio's cinematography gives it some occasional finesse. Francis slinks about nicely -- a woman passenger tells her, "You certainly can wear clothes" -- but she doesn't have the spark she fires in her best roles, perhaps because Cortez and Talbot are such dull leading men. The ending is the sort of thing that would have the heads of the Production Code enforcers exploding, but even that isn't enough for me to recommend sitting through the rest of the movie.

When a Man Loves (Alan Crosland, 1927)

When a Man Loves (Alan Crosland, 1927)

Cast: John Barrymore, Dolores Costello, Warner Oland, Sam De Grasse, Holmes Herbert, Stuart Holmes, Bertram Grassby, Tom Santschi. Screenplay: Bess Meredyth, based on a novel by Abbé Prévost. Cinematography: Byron Haskin. Film editing: Harold McCord. Music: Henry Hadley.

Don Juan (Alan Crosland, 1926)

Estelle Taylor and John Barrymore in Don Juan

Don Jose de Marana/Don Juan de Marana: John Barrymore
Adriana della Varnese: Mary Astor
Lucrezia Borgia: Estelle Taylor
Cesare Borgia: Warner Oland
Count Giano Donati: Montagu Love
Pedrillo: Willard Louis
Mai: Myrna Loy
Marchesia Rinaldo: Hedda Hopper
Marchese Rinaldo: Nigel De Brulier
Donna Isobel: Jane Winton
Leandro: John Roche
Neri: Gustav von Seyffertitz

Director: Alan Crosland
Screenplay: Bess Meredyth; Titles: Walter Anthony, Maude Fulton
Cinematography: Byron Haskin
Art direction: Ben Carré
Film editing: Harold McCord
Music: William Axt, David Mendoza

Alan Crosland's silly action movie Don Juan has two things in its favor. One of them is historical: It was the first film with a synchronized sound track, though it's all music and no dialogue, which would have to wait a year for Crosland's The Jazz Singer. The score is played by no less than the New York Philharmonic. The other is the cast, starting with John Barrymore, first hamming it up in a death scene as Don Juan's father, and then doing some Douglas Fairbanks-style leaping about and sword-fighting as the great seducer. But the female cast is even more interesting, with Mary Astor teamed again with her Beau Brummel (Harry Beaumont, 1924) co-star and former lover Barrymore, as well as some actresses who went on to different sorts of fame. Before she became Hollywood's favorite wife and/or mother, Myrna Loy was often cast as a vamp or a sinister type; here she slinks around as Lucrezia Borgia's lady-in-waiting, spying and tattling and stealing scenes from Estelle Taylor's Lucrezia. And before she became one of Hollywood's two most feared purveyors of gossip -- the other being Louella Parsons -- Hedda Hopper had a long career as a supporting actress; here she's the Marchesia Rinaldo, who kills herself when her husband discovers her affair with Don Juan. As for the rest of the movie, it's predictably junky, "explaining" Don Juan's treatment of women as a product of witnessing as a child his father being murdered by a cast-off lover. This psychological trauma is, I guess, supposed to make us believe that Juan has been cured of his hypersexuality by the love of a pure woman, Astor's Adriana della Varnese, with whom he literally rides off into the sunset at the end of the film.

Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932)

Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express

Shanghai Lily: Marlene Dietrich
Capt. Donald Harvey: Clive Brook
Hui Fei: Anna May Wong
Henry Chang: Warner Oland
Sam Salt: Eugene Pallette
Carmichael: Lawrence Grant
Mrs. Haggerty: Louise Closser Hale
Eric Baum: Gustav von Seyffertitz
Maj. Lenard: Emile Chautard

Director: Josef von Sternberg
Screenplay: Jules Furthman
Based on a story by Harry Hervey
Cinematography: Lee Garmes
Art direction: Hans Dreier
Film editing: Frank Sullivan
Music: W. Franke Harling

There's something claustrophobic about Shanghai Express: Its characters are always enclosed -- in train cabins, in interrogation rooms, even in crowds of other people. Even the titular train gets itself into a tight spot, navigating the narrow passage through the streets of what the film calls "Peking." Which makes it all the better for Lee Garmes's camera, tasked as it is with making the most of Marlene Dietrich's face. Garmes (with director Josef von Sternberg looking over his shoulder) always finds ways to frame that face with veils and feathers and furs, with the actress's own hands, with misted windows, and when nothing else will do, a simple shaft of light caressing those eyelids, cheekbones, and lips. Fortunately, the movie is more than glamorous poses: There's a good deal of snappy dialogue and some wily character acting from the likes of Eugene Pallette, Louise Closser Hale, and -- in a role that seems to have been a kind of audition for his most famous one, Charlie Chan -- Warner Oland. I only wish that a leading man more attractive, or less plummily British, than Clive Brook had been provided for Dietrich. The story is nonsense, of course, and it verges dangerously on colonialist poppycock in its treatment of the Chinese, though even there it pulls back somewhat by turning Anna May Wong's Hui Fei from a stereotypical dragon lady into a genuinely heroic figure. It must also be said that Shanghai Express was made at the right time: A couple of years later, the sexual adventurism of its women would have been taboo under the Production Code and Hui Fei would have been made to pay for murdering her rapist.