World Film News and Television Progress (Apr 1936-Mar 1937)

THE CHARGE OF THE UGHT BRIGADE. (Michael Curtiz — Warner Brothers.) ErroU Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Patric Knowles, Henry Stephenson, C. Henry Gordon. Children who expect to see history accurately re-enacted should be warned beforehand that they are going to see nothing of the kind. They will, on the other hand, see a great deal of beautifully photographed, brilliantly directed, proudly characterised fiction — full of fine sentiment and fine sword-play, of courage under fire, bitter enmity under provocation, and sand under foot. They will, in the charge of the Six Hundred, see a military manoeuvre more splendidly conceived than any I have witnessed on the screen. The glitter of lowered lances, the scudding thimder of hoof and heavy gun, the rally, the revenge, the silver mutiny of trumpets — all are sufficient to persuade the most ardent pacifist of war's undoubted glamour. — Paul Dehn, The Sunday Referee The hypnotic effect is perfect. You find yourself saying each character's speeches just before he opens his mouth. It all follows and leads as Cruelty to Animals. M.G.M. was compelled to resort to a similar departure in an animal picture last year. — News item from The New York Times. June 15th, 1936 WINTERSET. (Alfred Santell— RKO Radio.) Burgess Meredith, Margo, Eduardo Ciannelli, John Carradine. Just as a picture, Winterset is superb, a great, sombre pleasure. As a picture, the story is more effective than it was as a play, because this is exactly the thing that the movies can do on the grand scale. It's a beautiful piece of work. I think also that you can say that it's a beautiful piece of work in other ways, too. I suppose Winterset belongs to the category of underworld films. The public that wants its underworld films straight may be disappointed. Perhaps this film won't be a smash hit because it's so clearly a quality picture. Personally, if only for a change, I like a quality picture of low life, of killers, thieves, and such folk. The girl, Margo, is very good indeed, and the distraught judge, the various beautifully, as comforting, as secure as logic, as certain as, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. It is as satisfying as Bengal Lancers, as faithful as Under Two Flags. You are willingly hypnotised, and each time the trance is deeper, because you have comfortably given up suspicion, you know the Utany, you know the ritual will never be betrayed. That's the movie in its most essential form ; it's just a punk picture and I like it. — Meyer Levin, Esquire The more vigorous aspects of Warner's The Charge of the Light Brigade will be filmed in Mexico, whither a unit of the Michael Curtiz Company is scheduled to head from Hollywood next Sunday. The major shots of the famous charge have been made within fifty miles of the studio, but because of the anticipated injury and death rate among the animal chargers in the remaining sequences, it was deemed advisable to go to Mexico, where horseflesh is cheap and there is no American Society for the Prevention of 26 racketeers, with their guns and grey fedoras, the cops, the vagrants, the whole wretched crew, make a thorough picture, which you can call, in one of your lyric moods, a kind of popular folk poem of Manhattan underworld life. — John Mosher, The New Yorker Winterset is a quest for truth, the determination of the son of a fearless liberal to prove his father innocent of the murder charge that sent him to his death years before. The cinema rationalises beautifully something that might othenvise have seemed oddly coincidental, the grouping of the central characters — bitter, vengeful Estrella; the hopeful, determined son, Mio, and the mentally over-wrought Judge Gaunt: variously motivated, but each aaxiously seeking out the harried Garth Esdras, identified by witnesses as the driver of the murder car but never brought to testify, in that squalid dead end in the shadow of Brooklyn Bridge. — J. T. M., The New York Times GO WEST, YOUNG MAN. (Henry Hathaway— Paramount.) Mae West, Warren William, Randolph Scott. Go West, Young Man marks the end of Mae West, Young Woman. She plays the part of a movie star vshose car breaks down while she is making a "personal appearance" tour, and so finds herself in a village where she vamps a nice young man. Her hips swing as much as ever — "The Swing's the Thing" she seems to think, still — and she ogles and entices and vamps and seduces. But it is now out of date. Mae West belongs to the year 1935. Filmland has a newqueen now. Her name is Shirley Temple. — Hannen Swaffer, The People It's a little sad about Mae West. She came in with such a glorious swagger. Every line was whiplash, every glance from imder those heavy lids a shaft of lightning. She was such fun. Pretending to represent flaming sex, she actually presented a devastatingly satirical comment on it. But what a strain it has been to sustain that attitude. This time she has taken a successful play. Personal Appearance, which satirises a film star, puffed up with pubUcity and with a vamping complex. There are moments of the old Mae. but not nearly enough. The strain has told on her. She must now make another She Done Him Wrong. Or else . . . — Stephen Watts, The Sunday Express LOVE FROM A STRANGER. (Rowland V. LeeTrafalgar Films.) Ann Harding, Basil Rathbone, Binnie Hale. The story is the sort of straight, unshaded thing that the films do well. A young business girl wins a fortime in a lottery, and is immediately pursued by a fascinating stranger. Foolishly, she marries him. Even more foolishly, she signs her money over to him. At the last minute, in a locked, lonely house, she discovers that he is a homicidal maniac, whose fancy is to murder his wives in a photographic dark room. The last twenty minutes is entirely devoted to the struggle of wits between these two. Ann Harding and Basil Rathbone overplay a little in the final conflict, but I'm not at all sure that it isn't what is wanted for the picture. The whole treatment of the climax is strained, overwrought, and hysterical; on the border-line between laughter and madness. There is one shot, when the wife throws open the last door to escape and finds her husband standing dead-still on the threshold. that hasn't been equalled for horror since Cagney's body fell through the doorway in Public Enemy. — C. A. Lejeune, Tlie Sunday Observer During the showing of Love From a Stranger a woman in the audience screamed! It wasn't just a choked gasp, or a high-pitched indrawn breath — but an honest-to-goodness yell of pure terror. And it was the most spontaneous tribute 1 have ever heard to the sinister personality of Basil Rathbone. It is Mr. Rathbone's film. . . . His study of the boastful maniac — urging on his passions with wild music, declaiming how much of a genius he is, then shaking with wild terror at the thought that the tables have at last been turned, is an amazing piece of acting. My sympathies are entirely with the lady who screamed. — Paul Dehn. The Sunday Referee