World Film and Television Progress (1938)

Design for Living (Ernst Lubitsch — Paramount) (Revival) Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Miriam Hopkins, Edward Everett Horton. Noel Coward wrote this comedy about two men and a girl. The polyandric theme was too much for the English censor of stage productions, so we never saw Coward's play here. But when Ben Hecht had broadened it in the writing and Lubitsch had added his subtleties in direction it became permissible in the cinema. This is rather strange, for the inescapable point, rewrite it how you will, is that a girl loves two men who are close friends, walks out on both when the fight starts, marries elsewhere, and in the end they all decide to resume the threesome formation. It is the most tenuous of themes, but Lubitsch and Hecht make it all very amusing. From the audience's point of view it becomes very difficult (and rightly) to take sides because the men are Gary Cooper and Fredric March. The poor (?) girl is Miriam Hopkins. As entertainment to-day I would bracket it with the latest Lubitsch, Bluebeard's Eighth Wife, with extra marks for dialogue. — Stephen Watts, The Sunday Express It is, of course, a sophisticated comedy in which Gary Cooper, Fredric March and Miriam Hopkins, playing the roles of Bohemians, try to solve a sex problem of two boys and one girl by means of "a gentleman's agreement" — with Edward Everett Horton to prove that the solution is not a bad idea when viewed comparatively. The acting is excellent and the dialogue as gay and pointed to-day as it was when it was first made. How much of it is the original Noel Coward and how much was written in during the adaptation I do not know, but I do know that the standard throughout is good enough to be distinguished as Coward's best. Lubitsch, of course, directed it and gave it a delicate flippancy, and a smooth pace with great polish. — Richard Haestier, The Star Critical Summary. Any true estimate of Mr. Noel Coward is obviously a venturesome proceeding at this stage, for Mr. Noel Coward still sharpens his wit on the absurdities and not on the cruelly fallacious. He enters the stately homes of England with a latchkey of his own manufacture, and dusts the characters of yesterday with the cheaply cynical brush of to-day. His wit may sparkle but it seldom illumines, and though the fluidity of the screen glosses over the defects of his imagination and the paucity of his ideas, the natural progression of his talent may well be arrested before it has become valuable. l*rirate Life of Henry VMil (Alexander Korda— London Films) (Revival) Charles Laughton, Robert Donat, Binnie Barnes, Wendy Barrie, Elsa Lanchester. * I always thought that The Private Life of Henry VIII was overpraised. Having seen the film again I withdraw that opinion. It is a far better picture than La Kermesse Heroique. Its humour is broad and vulgar, its settings are beautiful and its script is a piece of excellent writing. It was a firm foundation on which Alexander Korda was to build London Films. In this film you see the screen beginnings of Robert Donat, Binnie Barnes, Merle Oberon, Wendy Barrie, Judy Kelly, Elsa Lanchester, and realise the soundness of Korda's judgment. I was curious to see them all again, but I remained to enjoy a picture as entertaining now as it was five years ago. I had forgotten Ann of Cleves among the sunflowers, and the card game on the royal wedding night, Henry's vigil as Katheryn Howard faced the headsman, and Lady Tree's portrait of the old nurse. I had forgotten, also, the ending, when Charles Laughton, beady-eyed, parchment-faced, nibbles a chicken bone and looking directly at the camera says "Six wives and the best is the worst." — Ian Coster, The Evening Standard The Thirteen (Michael Romm — Russian) I. Novoseltsev, Kuzmina, A. Chistyakov, A. Feit, I. Kutnetsov. In recent years the Russian film has tended to turn away from blatant propaganda and, in this film, its urgent message of co-operative service is expressed in terms which even the pacifist may well applaud. The co-operative service spreads its ideals over all departments of Russian life. Here it is not the fortitude of the proletariat but the calm endurance of the soldier that makes this study in heroism impressive. Across the Central Asian desert come not the invading capitalist but ten men bound for civil life after having guarded their frontier in the uniform of the Red Army. The ten men, who are joined by a geologist, a neighbour commander and his wife, never suggest that they have been chosen for their "photogenic" qualities; yet their faces are arresting in their individual expressions. We know them as men as soon as they appear, and the subsequent development of the plot, which imprisons them in a fort, not through monarchial decree but through their own humanitarian impulse to rid their country of banditry, merciless in its predatory raids, is unfolded with care and precision. The odds are great and the survival of only one man to relate the calm heroism of the defenders is no dramatic overture but a simple testimony to a service which needs no propaganda for recruits. — Anon, World Film News 0Prage (Marc Allegret — French) Charles Boyer, Michele Morgan. Orage is just a study of love, delirious, unhappy love, between a girl and a married man thrown together somewhere in the French countryside. Beautifully played by Michele Morgan and Charles Boyer, it turns out to be one of the season's most haunting pictures. The love scenes give you a guilty sense that you are spying on something secret. The man's bewitched passion for the girl, and, at the same time, his odd tenderness for his wife are delicately and movingly done. From beginning to end there is not one moment of strain ; the thing is as inevitable as the opening and fading of a rose. See it, please. It is one of those rare, personal experiences in the cinema that are altogether too good to miss. — C. A. Lejeune, The Sunday Observer L'hoimne tin •four (Julien Duvivier — French) Maurice Chevalier, Elvire Popesco, Alerme. M. Duvivier, who gave us the brilliant Pipe Le Moko, now gives us Vhomme du Jour, a comparatively slight but intensely Parisian little tale of an electrician who gave a blood-transfusion to a famous actress and so became Front Page News for a couple of days. This, of course, proved fatal for the type of swaggering young man so well played by M. Maurice Chevalier. He lost his job in the hope of becoming an actor, and lost or nearly lost his sweetheart who had been stricken by a similar ambition. I should like to praise this plain, appealing little girl's performance, and still more the brilliantly absurd portrait of a famous actress who looks and behaves like a youngish and ravishing mixture of Bernhardt, Cecile Sorel, and Mistinguette, spouts fervent Racine, and prattles deliriously when she comes out of her anaesthesia of having slept between Shakespeare and Goethe. — James Agate, The Tatler Vhomme du Jour seems to me a minor Duvivier, just a good sketch, hardly more, of what this really great director can do for us. M. Chevalier is the man of the day, a theatre electrician who saves the life of a front-page star and becomes, for his golden hour, the Wonder Hero of the Boulevards. The film has a faint bitter-sweet quality, like a wellmixed gin-and-lime, and pleasant fancies, such as the scene in which M. Chevalier, the electrician, calls on M. Chevalier, the actor, in his dressing-room and sings "Prosper" with him to the voice of M. Chevalier on a gramophone record. I don't think M. Chevalier is quite the subtlest film actor Duvivier has ever handled, and I don't think M. Duvivier is quite at his happiest when dealing with the life of the theatre, but all the common, everyday things are nicely done, and most of the little people, the flower girl, and the boarders, and the Paris workmen are vigorously alive and true. — C. A. Lejeune, The Sunday Observer Critical Summary. Like the present Australian Test team now in England, the French team of directors is getting all the publicity, and no player or director seems capable of letting his side down. M. Julien Duvivier may be said to be the McCa.be of the French team, a stylist who can make his nonchalant hundred or content himself with a modest 28. In "Vhomme du Jour" it is the low score that the spectator sees on the board, but the celluloid runs have been sparklingly compiled. M. Chevalier has returned to the team and the French wickets are less sticky than those of Hollywood. 175