World Film and Television Progress (1938)

•/Of/ of f>ff'Iflg— COtil. Miss Irene Dunne is a talented and versatile actress with a fine sense of comedy and burlesque and a pleasant singing voice; so when it comes to writing a story for her, an especial effort should be made. But Messrs. Towne, Baker, Scott and Fields have between them failed to produce a real plot, and not even the co-operation of Miss Dorothy has saved the day. Somebody, in a moment of inspiration, thought of giving Miss Dunne a drunk scene admittedly, but then that isn't really so very original ; the fact that it is highly entertaining is entirely due to Miss Dunne, who hiccups with more glamour than any one we can ever remember having seen previously. Chief honours must go to Mr. Jerome Kern (lyrics by Miss Dorothy Fields, who evidently pulled her weight), and it is Mr. Kern's music that saves this picture from being, at times, perilously near to boring — and that is a hard thing to say in connection with Miss Dunne. — H. E. Btyth, World Film News A JFarewell to Anns (Frank Borzage — Paramount) (Revival) Gary Cooper, Helen Hayes. As one might have expected there is no very close relation between this film and Mr. Ernest Hemingway's novel, although the main progress of the story is kept intact. But it sometimes provides an ingenious equivalent for Mr. Hemingway's special qualities, and, almost to the end, preserves something of that admirable detachment which allows him to describe the most difficult emotions. Like so many other old films which have recently been revived, it wears remarkably well, and it is interesting to compare Mr. Frank Borzage's restrained and purposeful handling of this story with his fumbling approach to sentiment in the most recent example of his work, Three Comrades. There is sentiment in A Farewell to Arms, but it is sentiment which fulfils its purpose by demonstrating the terrible futility of war. There is no actual climax ; the grim inevitability of catastrophe is inexorably conveyed. The alterations in the plot, many of which have obviously been made in the interests of speed, occasionally bring in a touch of melodrama, and if there are obscurities it is no doubt the censor, rather than the director, who is to blame. Mr. Hemingway's unemphatic irony is only momentarily apparent, but Mr. Borzage could hardly have been expected to discover in the film a medium so readily adaptable to irony, emphatic or unemphatic, as the written word. Mr. Gary Cooper and Miss Helen Hayes are careful not to give to the parts of the soldier and the nurse their own extraneous observations, and they both make a gallant, though unsuccessful attempt to endow their parts with that curious subdued patter which was the medium through which the author controlled the emotions of his characters. The strong physical flavour of the book is curiously absent, but this is not altogether a serious disadvantage. — The Times 174 You ami Me (Fritz Lang — Paramount) Sylvia Sidney, George Raft. I don't think there has ever been another picture like You and Me. This is not an exclamation of unqualified approval, however: I merely mean that You and Me is the weirdest cinematic hash I ever saw. To describe it as simply as possible, it is a naive morality play with impressionistic Teutonic overtones by Fritz Lang and Kurt Weill. The lesson we learn from You and Me is that crime does not pay. This is brought home to us, not by any such relatively indirect means as showing a criminal coming to a bad end, but by a chalk talk (exactly that — a lecture at a blackboard) in which Sylvia Sidney proves to an abashed group of thugs surprised flagrante delicto that the financial return to them from a theft of thirty thousand dollars' worth of goods is one hundred and thirteen dollars and some odd cents. They reform. Parole violation is dealt with at length in You and Me. George Raft and Miss Sidney are both paroled convicts who get into simply awful trouble because they marry. Fritz Lang has whipped up a couple of eerie little episodes dealing in a vague way with crime and punishment, but totally unrelated to the pedestrian plot which keeps Miss Sidney and Mr. Raft so busy. — Russell Maloney, The New Yorker American critics in general slammed this production, but I think it is a fine effort, full of human insight and cinematic quality. Mr. Lang's theme is that crime doesn't pay, " No conception of character at all neither in a moral nor monetary sense. His background is a big store, the proprietor of which takes ex-convicts as assistants, to give them a new start. Two of them marry. The man tells the girl about his past, but she doesn't tell him about hers, and from that poignant situation Mr. Lang spins a narrative of shrewd suspense and keen crisis, heightened here and there with those touches of symbolical sound and imagery in which he excels. A little pretentious at times, perhaps, but the emotions ring true, especially when they are in the care of Vera Gordon, superb actress too infrequently seen in these days. Even Sylvia Sidney forgets her mincing manner, and George Raft acts with a simple directness that wins sympathy from the start. The bunch of ex-convicts are gems of characterisation, especially one who shows a customer how a patent tin-opener works and uses the technique of a safe-breaker to do it! There is a sub-plot to the effect that women marry only rotters or weaklings, but we won't go into that. It may be too true. — G. A. Atkinson, The Sunday Referee Women Are Like That (Stanley Logan — First National) Kay Francis, Pat O'Brien. Women Are Like That discusses the place of feminine intuition in business, the problems of an advertising agency, the claims of home life, the jealousy of husbands, the snare of independence, and this and that aspect of careers for women. Miss Kay Francis and Mr. Pat O'Brien are the principal speakers, and the motion for love is carried nem. con. -C. A. Lejeune. The Sunday Observer All the characters in this film work in an advertising agency, but unfortunately this is no more thana background for their quarrels and love-affairs, and for a story about a husband and wife (Mr. Pat O'Brien and Miss Kay Francis) who are each in turn mortified when the other succeeds in business. There is, in fact, only just enough about their occupation to show what an amusing film this might have been, if it had told us more about advertising and in a more satirical vein. As it is the plot is reasonably neat and the hysteria of the chief characters well described, but perhaps the most amusing incident is an unscrupulous competition between husband and wife for a contract. But even here, and in one or two similar incidents, the ordinary manoeuvres of commercial competition are grossly exaggerated in the interests of entertainment. One has the impression that the story has been worked out by people who know their subject but have been afraid of producing what would surely have been much better entertainment— a documentary film. — The Times