IMPRISON TRAITOR & CONVICTED FELON TRUMP.
Showing posts with label David Manners. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Manners. Show all posts

Monday, February 11, 2008

The Dark Angel (1935)

“The Dark Angel” (1935) is perhaps one of the first films set during World War I that does not carry themes of the wastefulness of war or the tragedy of the political failings of that war, despite the tragic experiences of the leading men, two soldiers. It does not present the soldiers of that war as dupes or victims of heartless or corrupt governments. It seems to be one of the first films that depicts the soldiers of that period as romantic heroes, and that war as a romantic and noble gesture, albeit a doomed one.

The Lillian Hellmann screenplay tells the story of three friends from childhood, a winsome girl growing up in a genteel English country home, and the two boys who are her playmates. The two boys are cousins, and she has a crush on one of them, leaving the other to quietly nurse his own crush on her.

Years later they grow up to be Merle Oberon; Fredric March as the boy she loves; and Herbert Marshall as the boy who wishes he were Fredric March.

The cinematography is all stock Hollywood images of what the English countryside should be: picnics in a sheep meadow, a breeze playing at the curtains, a roaring fire, mannerly servants, and a sense of noblesse oblige.

Then the Great War breaks out and the two young chaps (played by much older actors) manfully take up their duty as officers. Mr. March is still in his matinee idol period of his career, still exuberantly boyish and occasionally mugging. It is a wonder to consider that in ten years’ time he will be the tired, war-weary middle-aged American sergeant returning to his family in “The Best Years of Our Lives” (1946).

Home on leave, Fredric March and Merle Oberon decide to wed. Herbert Marshall, with his stiff-upper-lip is particularly moving as he congratulates them while stifling his own sense of rejection. A quick wedding is made impossible when the boys are recalled to the frontlines. Merle Oberon accompanies Fredric March on a secret tryst to spend one last night with him at a seaside inn. It is interesting in scenes like these, in films like these, to observe the delicate balance Hollywood struggles to keep when deliberately trying to create an atmosphere of romantic desire and yet maintain an aura of innocence. As the night grows on, and sense of dread increases as they sit in a darkened room hours later, cuddling by a window with distant sounds of cannon fire, we are left to imagine for ourselves whether or not they have consummated their love. The Code of the day decrees that while such an occurrence could be suggested for minor characters even if not graphically shown, nevertheless it could not even be suggested if the happy couple are to remain the film’s hero and heroine. It is an amusing and cowardly bit of fence sitting.

A snide gossip later jokes about Mr. March’s romantic last night with some woman, to a shocked Herbert Marshall, who is appalled that March would take up with another woman while being engaged to Merle Oberon. There is a split between them, doubt, suspicion and resentment grows while we are given the iconic image of English World War officers boarding a fog-enshrouded transport ship in their trench coats. (The trench coat was named for the place where English officers wore their all-weather long coats - the trenches.)

So miffed is Herbert Marshall with what he perceives is his junior officer Fredric March’s swinish behavior, he denies him temporary leave, after which March, spitefully volunteering for a dangerous mission, is lost on the battlefield after a big explosion, and presumed dead.

Marshall blames himself, confesses his guilt to Merle Oberon, who in turn confesses that it was not some trollop that Fredric March chose to amuse himself with his last night on English soil, it was her.

The movie could have ended here with this O. Henry type ending and we could have had a different story, but a further melodrama is added when Fredric March turns up in a hospital, blind.

After his rehabilitation, he chooses not to return home and be an object of pity, but hides out in a country inn where his suicide attempt is aborted by three nosy children who have never seen a blind man before. (Fay Chaldecot plays the engaging little girl with a charming natural quality.) From his encounter with the kids, and subsequent afternoons amusing them by telling them stories, he becomes a successful children’s book author. Not as successful as J. K. Rowling, but enough so that he can buy a little cottage of his own in the country and grow roses.

Meanwhile, Mr. Marshall and Miss Oberon, who comfort each other after the loss of their friend, get engaged. By this time it is more or less foregone that they will meet with Fredric March again, and Miss Oberon will dump Mr. Marshall for her old love. Poor old Herbert Marshall. His quiet nobility and silent pain is more affecting than all the romantic promises and occasional overacting both by boyish Mr. March and the lovely Miss Oberon.

More Hollywood England is applied with a trowel for good measure: a fox hunt, teatime, the strains of World War I songs, a benign village vicar. All we are missing is a blustering retired “Major” and a Cockney chimney sweep.

“The war did something to me. I’ve changed,” Fredric March tells us, no less a fact for not being very original. What is poignant about the film is that the sense of resentment for the war, the rueful disgust, is not displayed here as it is famously illustrated by films like “All Quiet on the Western Front” (1930), and most other films made from the end of World War I to the early 1930s.

In three years after this film was made, the Nazis would invade Poland and begin World War II. Already the seeds were being sewn in Spain and Ethiopia, and Manchuria and Korea. You can almost sense in this film the new era to come. Even if one were not able to predict the coming war, there was evidently a atmosphere, as evident in this film, of rehabilitation over the former resentment of War I, and even a sense of wistful nostalgia for the romantic past of 20 years ago. Even men who were really were victims of war, like the character played by Frederic March, blinded in battle, would no longer be seen as dupes and victims, but as romantic heroes.

This is also one of the first films which shows a man with a physical impairment not being an object of pity. He is shown here living independently on his own, earning his own living, and still the preference of the woman he loves. Contrast this with the sweet but utterly helpless blind World War I vet played by David Manners in “The Miracle Woman” (1931), who is more dependent on those around him.

Another irony to the film is that Herbert Marshall, whose character is unscathed by the war, actually served in the British armed forces in World War I and lost a leg. His film career, like his previous stage career, was performed, unknown by most audiences of the day, on a prosthetic leg.

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Frankenstein (1931)

Universal’s second blockbuster monster hit of 1931 was “Frankenstein” which made a film star out of Boris Karloff in the way “Dracula” did Bela Lugosi. The physical appearance of the monster, the burning windmill, have all become iconic now.

The film is noted in the opening credits to be taken from a novel by Mrs. Percy B. Shelley, as if she were some society dowager writing short stories for “The Saturday Evening Post.” The audience is not informed that this is a classic of English literature, and it is not treated as such, as both the films “Frankenstein” and “Dracula” were based more on the play adaptations than the original novels.

The film opens with a gentleman master of ceremonies introducing the film, and warning us, “I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It might even horrify you. So, if any of you feel you do not care to subject yourselves to such a strain, well, we warned you.”

Well, now, them’s fighting words and of course not only are we going to stay for the feature, we’re going to take it darned seriously.

Colin Clive plays Dr. Frankenstein, a highly strung scientific genius who lives for his work, at the expense of his friends, his fiancée Elizabeth, played by Mae Clark, and his curmudgeonly father. John Boles plays Victor, who in a role similar to David Manners’ role in “Dracula,” has the less glamorous supporting role as the friend and all around good guy.

Our old friend David Frye appears in this film as well, as Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant, Fritz. Fritz is hunchbacked, subservient, and not overly intelligent. Fritz does a lot less scenery chewing than the crazed Renfield of “Dracula,” but Mr. Frye now seems locked into spending his considerable talent on horror films.

The film begins with Frankenstein and Fritz (sounds like a law firm), robbing a grave. Dr. Frankenstein has cobbled together a body from different body parts, and now needs a brain. The hanged man they find will not do because his neck has been broken, (well, yeah) and so Fritz heads off to the lab of Dr. Frankenstein’s mentor, where there are brains conveniently in jars, to get one.

There are two brains, one labeled “normal” and one “abnormal,” which the lecturer tells his students is the brain of a criminal. One wonders if there is a bit of eugenics of that period involved here. In Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel, the creature is not born evil.

Dr. Frankenstein’s secret laboratory is a cavernous stone castle full of beakers and electrical coils. He is a brilliant megalomaniac who wants to create life from scratch. Getting married to Elizabeth and creating life the old fashioned way doesn’t seem to appeal to him. As he prepares to complete his experiment during a terrific thunderstorm, his mentor, his fiancée, and John Boles crash the party. Mr. Clive’s exasperated, “Of all times for anybody to come!” is almost comic. We’ve all felt the same way at one time or another about unexpected guests.

In a few moments, the inert body of the monster will be hoisted to the skylight to absorb the electricity of the storm outside, Mr. Clive gets to shriek his classic words, “It’s alive! It’s alive!” and we get soon get a monster on the loose.

We hear the heavy footsteps of the creature, and are introduced to the monster in an extreme, but brief close-up, on his drooping lids, his morose expression, the bolts in the neck. The really high forehead and the really flat head. His sleeves are too short. He obeys simple commands, and cannot speak. There is less horror than sympathy for this creature, whom even his creator calls “it” and not “he.”

When the monster kills Fritz, the completely unstrung Dr. Frankenstein is led back home by the dependable Mr. Boles, while his mentor, Dr. Waldman, prepares to destroy the monster. No such luck, and monster heads for the foggy hills. Waldman was played by Edward Van Sloan, who we last saw as Professor Van Helsing in “Dracula.” He also plays the MC at the beginning of this film.

We see jubilant preparations being made in town for long-awaited wedding of Dr. Frankenstein and Elizabeth, which his curmudgeonly father, played with comic irascibility by Frederick Kerr, has been whining for all along. Curiously, none of the citizens of this German village speaks with a German accent. They all sound like a mix between London’s East End, and somewhere in Missouri.

A poignant scene between the monster and his new friend, a little girl who wants to play with him and hasn’t the sense to run away from very big strangers with flat heads, turns tragic when he accidentally kills her. Horrified by what has happened, the monster runs away, more agitated than before, and wrecks the boudoir of Elizabeth, dressed in her wedding gown. Soon all the people with torches and clubs are after him. Evidently nobody owns a gun. Dr. Frankenstein changes from his formal wedding attire and puts on a pair of Jodhpurs, so you know he means business.

Eventually there is a showdown between creator and creation on the stony heights of an impressive set, and the monster knocks Dr. Frankenstein silly, dragging him to the windmill, where of course, the villagers set fire to it. This film has a bit more graphic horror than “Dracula” in the sense that we see the monster throw the little girl into the lake, and we see him throw Dr. Frankenstein’s limp body from the windmill, and we see the flames encircle him as he shrieks in terror. It is as if Universal is starting to push the envelope a bit.

The film ends with a recovering Dr. Frankenstein supposedly having learned his lesson, but quite tellingly, matinee idol John Boles does not get the girl in this film, as David Manners was allowed to in “Dracula.” Both these men were stars who were relegated to these minor roles probably to jump-start the hoped-for popularity of these films. Both films were financial successes, leading to new stars being created, to the point where the handsome leading men were no longer needed to attract an audience.

One note on Boris Karloff’s work in this film, though he does little more than pantomime and grunt, what Karloff endured to create this character is remarkable. The makeup, devised by Jack P. Pierce, took 3½ hours to apply. The costume weighed nearly 70 pounds, and each shoe weighed about 21 pounds. No wonder his footsteps always sounded heavy.

Monday, October 29, 2007

Dracula (1931)

As we’re heading up to Halloween, this week might be a good time to visit three Universal films that give us the Big Three monsters: Dracula the vampire, the Frankenstein monster, and the werewolf. What Warner Bros. was to gangster movies and musicals were to MGM, monster movies were to Universal.

Two films from 1931, “Frankenstein” and “Dracula” kept the studio afloat in the worst years of the Depression. In an era of escapist films, not everyone was escaping to screwball comedies set in wealthy mansions. Some were heading for the hills, those fog-bound Transylvanian Mountains, and the monsters that became matinee idols.

What strikes one immediately is the very slow pace of “Dracula,” which actually was deliberate. It adds to the creepiness of the film and allows lead actor Bela Lugosi to enunciate carefully his heavily-accented English. With his Brylcreemed black hair, his dapper evening clothes and his polished manners, Mr. Lugosi gives us a vampire whose charm will make us swoon as much as his lethal bite. Another standout in the film is David Frye, who plays Renfield, the property agent who secures the Count’s lease on a new residence in England, and who is promptly bitten by Dracula to become his crazed vampire-in-training servant. His horrifically creepy “I’m going to get you” laugh is one of the scariest parts of the film.

David Manners, a handsome and likable leading man of the day has a relatively thankless supporting role as a normal average good guy who tries to comfort the damsel in distress, though the real hero is Edward Van Sloan as Professor Van Helsing, vampire slayer.

We begin the film with Gypsies warning Renfield not to proceed on his journey to Dracula’s castle. Our first meeting with Dracula is when he impersonates his own coachman, and meets Renfield on a rugged mountain pass, waiting for him. His catatonic stare seems to glow in the dark, with the help of pin spots from the lighting man. The sets are dark, rugged and evocative, and show how effortlessly a painted backdrop can blend in with a manufactured foreground in black and white photography. This is not so easily accomplished in color films, with the results of fake backdrops looking nothing but fake.

There are bats and rats and bugs all over Dracula’s castle, a couple of critters that look like armadillos. Central casting must have sent them over. Mr. Lugosi’s immortal first line is, “I am Dracula,” and “I bid you welcome.” We hear the sound of howling wolves, and the soundtrack is especially effective in this film, with the heavy grinding sound of rolling wagon wheels. Mr. Lugosi has a rich, beautiful speaking voice, meant for sound film. His Dracula is courtly and well-mannered.

Just why Dracula wants to head off to England is not made clear, but the sea voyage where all the crew arrives in port dead with only the now mad Renfield on board is terrific. Dracula slumbers in his coffin below, and the authorities grab the laughing Renfield and chuck him in an insane asylum, where some of the staff with overdone cockney accents provides a bit of comedy relief.

Dracula strolls the foggy streets of London and bites a Cockney flower girl on the neck. If he had done that to Eliza Doolittle, “My Fair Lady” might have been an entirely different show.

An interesting note is that when Dracula does bite people, turning them into vampires, starting with Renfield and then proceeding on to several others, it is always done under a chaste fade-to-black shot. Renfield pricking his finger accidentally early in the film is the only blood we will see. There is a difference between telling a creepy story to your audience and just plain grossing them out, and that fine line has been lost.

When London suddenly discovers a rash of people turning into vampires, Professor Van Helsing gives us the line that is intended to make the story believable, “The superstition of yesterday can become the scientific reality of today.” We have seen this happen too many times to ignore the possibility that young Mina, who unlike Dracula’s other victims, still retains her polished finishing school diction and exemplary personal hygiene, could become a vampire herself any minute now unless somebody saves her.

It’s clearly not going to be the well-intentioned Mr. Manners, and this is one of the few times when an elderly man is the hero of the day over the younger handsome fellow. Professor Van Helsing warns, “The strength of the vampire is that people will not believe in him.”

There are no real elaborate special effects in this film; it is all told with a suggestion of atmosphere. A little fog goes a long way. There is a clever scene where Van Helsing determines the charming Count is a vampire when Mr. Mannners lifts the lid of a cigarette case on a table, in which there is a mirror in the lid, and Van Helsing, and we ourselves, see that Dracula casts no reflection, and that Mina appears to be talking to herself.

The cellar of the English abbey where Van Helsing, Mr. Manners, and Dracula have a final showdown looks exactly like the cellar of Dracula’s castle back in Transylvania. When Van Helsing drives the stake into the sleeping Dracula’s heart, the camera shifts to a shot of Manners comforting Mina, no longer a vampire when the spell is broken. We heard Dracula’s groans and the sound of the pounding of the stake, which is probably more effective than watching it. In this film, as in the other films we’ll look at this week, the horror is really more suggestive than graphic. What we imagine is sometimes more creepy than what we see.

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