Director: Richard Thorpe
The Thin Man Goes Home marked a significant shift in the series in its penultimate outing. While the film is often regarded as lacking the charm of its predecessors, it should be applauded for attempting to alter the formula that the previous four entries had relied on. For starters, this entry places Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) in suburbia—a location far removed from the high society social circles that would make up the first few films in the series. It is also a location that allows Powell to bring a certain vulnerability to Nick that had not been seen up to this point. Nick, so desperately afraid of his father, attempts to kick his cocktail habit in order to please him. When he fails almost immediately (due to a comic miscommunication), he resigns himself to afternoons in t-shirts on a hammock until a murder kicks the plot into gear. Seeing Nick “regress” to a childlike state allows Nora more authority than in previous entries—her confidence in dealing with Nick’s parents is met by his anxiousness. If the film’s mystery is as messy as the series produced by this point (the appearance of a character named “Crazy Mary” (Anne Revere) reveals much about the level of thrills the film is dealing with), it is brilliantly tailored to bringing more to Powell’s Nick Charles, who in the previous picture had been treading water in his characterization.
Director: Richard Thorpe
One would be hard-pressed to find a better cast of actresses than the one established in Cry ‘Havoc’, a rather unusual World War II propaganda film starring almost exclusively women. The film takes places almost entirely in a bunker in Bataan in which a group of nine nurses (mostly volunteers) wait out their inevitable confrontation with the Japanese. Margaret Sullavan and Ann Southern share the lion’s share of the screen time, and watching them together shows a nice contrast in two disparate but equally wonderful performers. Both are intentionally unglamorized and carry it through with their physical performances–Sullivan is often sullen and hunched over, traversing her space with a heavy-footed sort of step, while Sothern carries herself with a certain cocksure attitude that reads almost masculine. Providing support are excellent supporting players like Joan Blondell, Fay Bainter, and the underrated Marsha Hunt, who gives a nice performance as the only one of the volunteers with actual medical experience. Being a wartime production, the film stops often for characters to recite speeches about the virtues of freedom and the importance of sacrifice, but the film occasionally balances such overstated moments with nicely accomplished, quiet gestures, such as Sullavan walking through the living space of a fallen soldier and considering his absence in the room.
Director: Richard Thorpe
Dangerous Number begins at the place where many movies end: the altar. When a silk magnate (Robert Young) returns from Japan and discovers that his ex-girlfriend (Ann Sothern) is getting married, he interrupts the proceedings and the two begin their own tumultuous marriage. As with many films of the era, the two bicker endlessly and even get rather mean-spirited–the only thing worse than them being together is them being apart. There’s an ugliness in their quarreling that is provided by Carey Wilson’s cynical screenplay, which understands that some relationships can bring out the worst in people (neither of the characters are particularly likable because they are frankly insufferable when they are together). Sothern is well-fit for the screwball tone, with several scenes calling on her to act hysterical in a way that would completely embarrass all but the finest performers. A plot involving a forgotten husband and the confusion surrounding Daylight Savings Time is rushed and completely ineffective, but at least the performances are enjoyable.
Filed under: Reviews | Tags: 1943, richard thorpe, three hearts for julia
Director: Richard Thorpe
Although the cast and premise of Three Hearts for Julia is bound to excite fans of the remarriage comedy, it is much more likely to be of interest for those interested in the domestic and gender politics of 1940s America than anyone looking for a screwball trifle. Simply put: it’s not particularly witty or humorous at any turn, despite the considerable talents of Ann Sothern (miscast as a rather plain snob) and Melvyn Douglas as her soon-to-be ex-husband. Director Richard Thorpe bafflingly invests a considerable amount of screen time on orchestral performances and seems at odds with what he wants the tone to be–Douglas spends an awful lot of time sulking for a determined romantic lead in an airy comedy. Despite its failings, however, the film is interesting in the way that it addresses marriage during World War II in that it depicts the anxiety that soldiers might have had of their wives becoming independent and eager to leave their marriages. The men in the movie do all they can to control women in rebuttal–whether that be by Douglas literally kidnapping his wife until she loves him again, or by a refugee conductor (Felix Bressart) trying to create order out of his rambunctious all-female orchestra.
Director: Richard Thorpe
Robert Montgomery was nominated for an Academy Award in 1937 for Night Must Fall, an adaptation of the Emlyn Williams play about a suspected murderer who charms his way into an old woman’s house. A delightful Dame May Whitty plays the naive prey, and Rosalind Russell is miscast as her spinster niece who becomes attracted to the predatory stranger against her better judgment. As good as Montgomery is in his scenes with Whitty – it’s far more unsettling to see him as a jovial, flirtatious grandson than the more expected brooding psychotic – he’s not quite enough of a seducer to prompt a believable transition out of Russell, making the quasi-romantic subplot drag the picture down considerably. In adapting the material, writer John Van Druten mistakingly leaves in a number of lengthy soliloquies that overtly speak about the metaphor of the title, and as a result the picture is stagey to the point of alienating. There is one great scene, however, where Whitty is left alone in the house and begins to hear noises outside. Shooting her in long shot – which enhances the sense of isolation and abandonment that she feels – Richard Thorpe allows Witty to methodically work her way towards madness while in the crushing grip of fear.
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