Director: George Stevens
Of all the Astaire & Rogers musicals, Swing Time has been the most emphatically embraced by the dance community, with Arlene Croce referring to it as the “miracle of the film series,” and Robert Gottlieb adding, “In no other film in the world is dancing used so persuasively as a simulacrum of adult passion and serious sexual commitment.” Previous installments of the series toyed audiences with the anticipation of the dance partners finally taking the stage, but in Swing Time the dancing serves as the dramatic stakes–Astaire’s Lucky Garnett, doomed to marry the wrong woman, mourns that he will, “never dance again.” Dance numbers in these films aren’t simply–as has often been lazily assumed–a substitution for sexuality, but a sacred ritual of courtship, the most immaculate form of communication (it is no coincidence that Lucky finds himself unable to explain himself with words throughout the picture). Swing Time‘s climactic action involves Astaire losing his orchestra and doomed to wed a woman who doesn’t dance, thereby ensuring that the eventual fulfillment of his romantic promise with Rogers also restores music and dancing to the picture. In utilizing dance as a necessary means of expression, no other film in the Astaire & Rogers cycle creates a better argument for their craft as an art form. Featuring the memorable geometric surrealism of “Bojangles of Harlem” and the duo’s most sumptuous ballroom number in “Never Gonna Dance” (which brilliantly reprises the entire plot of the film), Swing Time is the most seductive and accomplished of the team’s pictures, and it is the best argument for their unusual genius.
Director: George Stevens
Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem was adapted into this story by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, the duo most famous for the hit Broadway play The Front Page. Perhaps the most pleasant surprise of Gunga Din is that they drew inspiration from their own classic screwball comedy hit by again navigating the divide between loyalty to one’s love and one’s duty. Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Cary Grant, and Victor McLaglen are perfectly cast as the trio of British sergeants who, along with the water bearer who shares his name with the film’s title (played by Sam Jaffe), confront a vicious Thuggee cult. Grant’s performance is the most striking in that it’s the most unexpected–he’s far from a typical hero, coming off as brash and crude, a huge departure from his usual comparatively dignified roles (he was originally considered for Fairbanks’ part but was attracted to the challenge of a cockney blowhard). McLaglen steals the picture, though, utilizing his physical gifts as an imposing, brazen hero and subverting them by ultimately playing a comical sentimentalist.
Director: George Stevens
The housing shortage facing Washington D.C. during the second World War is the premise behind The More the Merrier, a sexy screwball comedy from director George Stevens. Joel McCrea and Jean Arthur – in their third on-screen pairing after The Silver Horde and Adventure in Manhattan – are joined with Charles Coburn as a threesome that reluctantly share a small apartment in the capital. The early goings are an endearing comedy of space. Stevens finds mileage in the familiar trope wherein characters who aren’t supposed to discover each other come within inches of bumping heads. While it is all terribly amusing, what really makes the picture special is its unabashed eroticism, perhaps as sexy as any Hollywood film from the 1940s. In an unforgettable scene, McCrea walks Arthur home and on the way begins to paw at her, kissing her neck as she squirms in resistance. Finally she caves in, grabbing McCrea’s head in both of her hands and thrusting her lips onto his. Later, a risqué device is used in which McCrea and Arthur lay on their beds in adjacent rooms that share a wall. Stevens brings the camera to an overhead shot, nearly eliminating the shadow of the barrier and creating the illusion that the couple is in bed together. As an assault against the production code, it is just as blunt as the most daring films of Hitchcock or Sturges with such suggestions. Stevens is more remembered today for his late social problem pictures like Shane and Giant, however The More the Merrier is certainly a compelling argument that the merits of his early work demand a critical reevaluation.
Director: George Stevens
Nominated for seven Academy Awards in 1942, The Talk of the Town paired Cary Grant and Jean Arthur, the co-stars of Howard Hawks’ aviation actioner Only Angels Have Wings, with the delightful Ronald Colman, whose career this picture would revive. Director George Stevens, who had been directing relatively light comedic fare since the early 1930s, would transition in the 40s and especially the 50s into more serious narratives with overt social messages. This picture, then, might be seen as an interesting transition point in that it awkwardly juggles its comedic elements with heavy-handed preaching. The message submitted by Stevens and screenwriters Irwin Shaw and Sidney Buchman, however, is ill-fit for their narrative. Grant and Arthur chastise Colman for his emphasis on logical thinking, suggesting that one needs to be more sensitive and emotionally-driven in order to achieve true morality. To suggest that reason is a dehumanizing moral blight is wrong-headed in itself, but moreso it goes against much of the drama of the picture. Take the climax, for example, in which a blood-thirsty crowd protests outside of the courtroom hearing of the wrongly-convicted Grant. They, appealing fully to their emotions and not submitting to reason, are the most violent, ignorant characters in the movie. As flawed as the anti-intellectual, logically-unsound message is, however, the picture’s true interest can be associated with its overt homosexual undercurrents, not only between Grant and Colman, but especially between Colman and his loyal valet played by Rex Ingram. The most unusual and surprisingly poignant moment of the picture is when Colman shaves his beard – a beard which he had earlier mentioned was grown in order to make him appear more masculine. Stevens shoots Ingram in a close up – this being a movie with very few close-ups so pronounced – shedding a tear, which makes little narrative sense unless you presume that Colman and Ingram have been lovers, and Ingram feels slighted by Colman’s new direction.
For Reel 