Clark Gable

  • A Free Soul (1931)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) There’s a clear Pre-Code deliciousness to the thrilling narrative of A Free Soul that makes it a worthwhile watch, but I suspect that most modern viewers will be more interested in the performances of John Barrymoore and a very young Clark Gable. Barrymore plays an alcoholic defence lawyer who successfully acquits a known mobster (Gable), a success that turns sour when his daughter gets a big crush on the ne’er-do-well despite being already engaged to a law-abiding but dull young man. The melodrama escalates from there, with bits and moments clearly identifying this as a looser, funnier, riskier Pre-Code film. Barrymore got an Academy Award for his performance, while Gable’s roguish charm as the film’s antagonist got him some attention and much bigger roles. Norma Shearer also does rather well as the true protagonist of the film. While A Free Soul is far from being the end-all of Pre-Code films (the pacing issues alone are bothersome), it’s one more example of how vivacious early-1930s Hollywood could be, and why many still think highly of this period of American cinema.

  • The Hucksters (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2022) I’m hardly the first one to make the link, but there’s still something delicious about watching The Hucksters and seeing Clark Gable play Mad Men’s Don Draper more than a decade before the 1960s. Here, Gable is a capable marketing executive who, returning from WW2, starts from the very bottom and works his way up the corporate chain, encountering romance, difficult clients, promotional opportunities, a trip from Radio City to Hollywood, and ultimately a crisis of conscience. (So, well, not like Don Draper.)  Along the way, we get a look at the men of the radio advertising industry at the end of the 1940s, and a bit of sharp satire along the way thanks to the novel from which the film was adapted. While Gable is easily ten years too old for his character, he remains his usual suave scoundrel here, and he’s supported by noteworthy performances from Sydney Greenstreet, Deborah Kerr, Ava Gardner and Adolphe Menjou. Time has been kind to The Hucksters—it was a commercial and critical disappointment upon release in no small part due to inflated expectations and heightened marketing: but twenty-first century viewers are free to approach the film as “just another classical Hollywood film” and be pleasantly surprised at the result.

  • The Easiest Way (1931)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) I don’t particularly care for The Easiest Way as a movie: it’s slow even at 73 minutes, moralistic, light on memorable writing and doesn’t make much of an impression in the end. But there’s certainly something interesting about it in a wider context. For one thing, this Pre-Code drama isn’t as knee-capped as later movies in discussing the appeal for young women to be kept by older richer men. (That’s the titular “easiest way” to make a living.)  Constance Bennett plays a cute girl from a poor family, and for her the moral calculation is easy when an older man (Adolphe Menjou) comes knocking for some, ahem, knee-knocking. Meanwhile, her sister takes the righteous path by marrying a young man with bright career prospects. The fates of both sisters are repeatedly contrasted throughout the film until the very end, where virtue is rewarded and the easiest way is revealed to lead nowhere good. In a blatant way, The Easiest Way is both salacious and moralistic—thrilling audiences with a girl turning to socially-discouraged ways to make a living, while comforting the moralists that she has learned her lesson in the end. It’s hypocritical… and it’s pure Hollywood tradition all up to today’s Lifetime movies showing both the thrill of the illicit, and the retribution that comes afterwards. As I said: The Easiest Way isn’t much of a film by itself (although this being one of Clark Gable’s earliest films may add to the appeal of seeing Bennett and Menjou and Robert Montgomery), but it is a good example of a timeless Hollywood tradition, perhaps slightly more enjoyable than similar films made during the Production Code era by virtue of being able to lean more strongly on its highlighted vice.

  • After Office Hours (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2022) Oftentimes, a film doesn’t have to be good or original to be fun to watch—simply playing with familiar elements is enough if you happen to be in the mood for that specific genre. So it is that After Office Hours isn’t that special by itself, but it does mix many things that make 1930s films so much fun to watch. Here are a few: Clark Gable playing a suave newspaperman with his usual charm; Constance Benette playing a Manhattan socialite; a plot that sees two amateurs turning sleuths; and dialogue from Herman J. Mankiewicz that combines urbane wittiness with smouldering romantic naughtiness (it’s not quite pre-Code, but often feels like it). None of this is particularly special—you can point at other better films with all of those elements. But that doesn’t make After Office Hours any less fun to watch—and at 72 minutes, it really doesn’t overstay its welcome. After all, it’s not as if they’re making new 1930s movies any more—we might as well enjoy those we have.

  • Dance, Fools, Dance (1931)

    Dance, Fools, Dance (1931)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2021) I wouldn’t recommend Dance, Fools, Dance to 1930s cinema newcomers — there are far better choices out there, and this film doesn’t measure up in terms of narrative, style or impact. But for those who are familiar with the period, the film offers a remarkable amount of comfort. It starts with the casting — a young and attractive Joan Crawford playing opposite a young and not-quite-superstar Clark Gable as a gangster. (Before the end of 1931, Crawford and Gable would have an affair and be well on their way to becoming superstars.)  Beyond those two familiar names, the film is built on many conventions of the time — organized crime, the newspaper business, and heirs forced to work because of the Depression — that clearly make this a piece of 1930s cinema. Dance, Fools, Dance doesn’t do much with its Pre-Code freedom compared to racier films of the time, but the reflection of the era still feels relatively raw in its acknowledgement of one-night stands and recognition that Depression was taking place (a topic conspicuously avoided by escapist Hollywood). Crawford is quite good here, and the film flows easily — but it’s best seen by people able to put it in context.

  • Love on the Run (1936)

    Love on the Run (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) Neither Joan Crawford, Clark Gable or Franchot Tone step far away from their established screen personas in Love on the Run, a kind of silly romantic comedy that had its start in the 1930s but certainly didn’t end there. The premise will be dead familiar to anyone who’s ever seen a screen romance: a millionaire (Crawford) wants to get away from the attention she’s getting, while an undercover reporter (Gable) is only too willing to help her… as long as there is a good story in it. The tension created by the lies sustains much of the film, as is the rivalry between reporters Gable and Tone. To contemporary viewers, what makes Love on the Run more than a romantic comedy is the 1930s atmosphere: With hard-nosed print reporters in the lead, colourful characters such as aviator (how exciting!), communication by cablegrams, the allure of a glamorous European getaway, and the menace of international spies, it’s almost more interesting now than it must have been at the time. Still, there isn’t much to the foundations of the story — it’s clearly a derivative of It Happened One Night (back then a box-office and Oscar sensation) and it plays in the same comic space as many films of its era. It’s fun to watch but not overly gripping even if you like the actors involved in it. Still, Love on the Run is perhaps best not appreciated by itself, but as a representative example of a genre — the 1930s Hollywood comedy, light on the screwball and heavy on the romance between marquee names.

  • The Misfits (1961)

    The Misfits (1961)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) To twenty-first century audiences, The Misfits does come with an outsized baggage of expectations: It’s the final film of both Clark Gable (who suffered a heart attack two days after wrapping up shooting, and died shortly thereafter) and Marilyn Monroe (whose next two years would be troubled, all the way to her death from barbiturate overdose), and the film does pair them up, presenting a transgenerational star attraction. The film’s production does make for fascinating reading, what with the script being intended as a gift from playwright/screenwriter Arthur Miller to Monroe in order to showcase her dramatic talents, but then clouded by their dissolving marriage throughout the production. While twenty-first century reviews have been positive, The Misfits’ initial reception, both commercial and critical, was underwhelming — a noted box-office bomb, it also got tepid reviews. Unusually enough, I find myself on the side of the 1961 reviewers — while there’s some meta-dramatic heft in seeing Monroe and Gable sharing screen time for the last time (even despite the significant age difference), the film is a slog to get through. Dramatic but overdone, small-scale and often desolate in its black-and-white cinematography, it’s trivial to the point of meaninglessness. Monroe is serviceable in her dramatic role, which is both not bad and not enough. You can certainly see some end-of-an-era echoes in the films’ themes, what with a cowboy in 1960 America capturing wild horses so that they can be turned to food. Still, The Misfits feels glum and overlong, not quite worthy of the spotlight placed on it by dint of being two icons’ final movie.

  • They Met in Bombay (1941)

    They Met in Bombay (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) There’s a wild genre shift midway through They Met in Bombay, as a jewel-theft caper turns into a military adventure in the early days of WW2’s Asian front. Clark Gable and Rosalind Russel initially play two thieves working independently to steal a well-known diamond from a rich heiress — him pretending to be a detective, her playing an aristocrat. The theft of the diamond only takes a few minutes, after which the double-crosses, escapes and even more dangerous situations start. Both Gable and Russell are very likable—but then again, the film doesn’t have merely a caper in mind. Soon enough, the war catches up to them and they’re forced into even more dangerous deceptions just to stay alive. Peter Lorre inexplicably shows up in overdone makeup as a Chinese ship captain, and then the film is off to a roaring war adventure with accidental heroism being a major driving force. It’s noteworthy that since the United States had not entered the war at the time of the film’s conception, production and release, Gable plays a Canadian who assumes a British officer’s identity, joining up with the Winnipeg Grenadiers (a real-life unit that was destroyed while fighting later in 1941) along the way. The zigs and zags of the plot are surprising if you’re going cold into the film, and they do transform the film into something quite different from what it had been. Considering the highly moralistic nature of the film’s conclusion (in which duty to country in the face of wartime adversity is far more important than the illicit acquisition of material baubles), you can interpret They Met in Bombay as a specific example of a larger-scale transformation of Hollywood films around 1941 or 1942, away from the Depression-escapism capers of the 1930s and into the wartime propaganda of the next few years.

  • Mogambo (1953)

    Mogambo (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) It’s hard not to think about Howard Hawks’ 1962 Hatari in seeing Mogambo. The comparisons are more than superficial: Both are American films from legendary directors (here, John Ford) starring aged screen legends (here, Clark Gable) as strong men living on the African savannah and falling in love with a passing American. Both make the most out of their on-location shooting, both presenting a very familiar safari-based portrayal of Africa. There were other famous African-set studio pictures in the early 1950s (The African Queen, The Snow of Killimajaro and King Solomon’s Mines come to mind) but it’s the later Hatari that comes closest to it. In a role almost custom-made for an actor of his stature, Gable plays the great white hunter, with the amazing backing of a captivating Ava Gardner, and a star-making turn from a young Grace Kelly. It’s almost pointless to say that the film does feel quite racist today, as white protagonists have free rein over the savannah for a gorilla hunt (!)… but there you go. Not quite as technically polished as Hatari, Mogambo nonetheless benefits greatly from its location shooting, interaction with animals and Ford’s eye for capturing widescreen landscapes. The film is not that good, but it’s easy enough to watch in between the love triangle (wobbly but effective) and the nice location footage. Plus, I don’t recall another film in which Gardner shares the screen with a baby elephant and (later) a big cat.

  • Too Hot to Handle (1938)

    Too Hot to Handle (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) Aviation movies were big in the 1930s, and Too Hot to Handle was at least Clark Gable’s second go at the topic after Test Pilot, also reuniting him with Myrna Loy as love interest. Somewhat more lighthearted than the first film, it’s about an unscrupulous newsreel journalist (Gable) faking his way to spectacular footage and having a lively romance with a pilot (Loy). It’s not a bad premise nor a bad execution, but I found myself a bit underwhelmed by the result. Oh, Gable and Loy bring everything they’ve got (which is a lot), the period atmosphere is enjoyable and the adventures keep piling up, alongside a jaundiced look at the news business. But I may have seen just enough similar movies lately to keep me unimpressed — I may have to revisit Too Hot to Handle later on for a better look.

  • Run Silent Run Deep (1958)

    Run Silent Run Deep (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) There were a lot of submarine movies made during the 1940s and 1950s, and it’s perfectly understandable if they tend to blur together. But that’s not the case with Run Silent Run Deep, a superior example of the form that never forgets that the point of submarine movies is people under pressure. The casting already makes the film distinctive: With none other than Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster in the lead roles, the film already feels more substantial. It gets better as both men play to their strengths, Gable as the revenge-obsessed commander fending off Lancaster as the ambitious second-in-command. Infighting is good for drama until everyone turns their guns (or rather torpedoes) to the true enemy in time for a thrilling third act. Rather good special effects help sell the illusion: the explosions are particularly satisfying. Thanks to director Robert Wise, the immersion of WW2 submarine life is convincing, and the film eventually has a tragic heft that helps further separate it from other similar WW2 dramas. There’s a straight line from Run Silent Run Deep to later examples like Crimson Tide, but the point is that it’s a film that just works — it’s engrossing and it doesn’t let up until the end.

  • Test Pilot (1938)

    Test Pilot (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) It’s interesting to note that movies predate aviation by only a few years — the medium was there to chronicle the way humans learned to fly, and even by 1938, aviation was barely in its third decade as more than a research endeavour. For some reason, I have an enduring fascination for aviation movies, especially the heroic age of aviation. That would be reason enough to watch Test Pilot, which is still widely hailed for its mostly realistic treatment of its subject. But then there’s the classic Hollywood touch: The film features no less than Clark Gable, Myrna Loy and Spencer Tracy, in addition to being built as a classic melodramatic blockbuster according to the timeless standards of the genre. (Fittingly, it was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award.)  The result is not exactly the most unpredictable of movies: As our cocky protagonist (Gable) keeps getting into self-inflicted trouble, barely held back by the intervention of his level-headed friend (Tracy) and the love of a good woman (Loy), it’s not astonishing when he ends the picture a changed, more responsible man. Test Pilot may have been directed by Victor Fleming, but the script is recognizably from Howard Hawks. In between, well, we get a good look at the state of late-1930s American aviation, with bullet-shaped barnstormers and a peek at the B-17 bomber about to get good use during WW2. The special effects still come across as credible. The result is about as old-school Hollywood as can be imagined, but not in a bad way: high technology, melodrama, manly men, and a sex symbol… who could ask for more?

  • Night Flight (1933)

    Night Flight (1933)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) The most interesting things about Night Flight are all about the movie than in the movie itself. Taken at face value, it’s a decent-enough adventure film about the heroic age of aviation in South America, featuring efforts by a company led by an American to establish trade routes through the treacherous Andes, especially when life-saving medication is involved. The technical quality of the film is rough by contemporary standards, reflecting Pre-Code era films’ limited ability to portray complex adventure stories. It’s interesting, and the cast (John Barrymore, Clark Gable, Lionel Barrymore, Myrna Loy and Helen Hayes) is amazing enough… but it’s hard to watch it without pining for Only Angel Have Wings, a very similar 1939 film with much better direction, script and production values. It’s when you start digging into the film’s production history that the most fascinating aspects of the film appear: Based on an Antoine de Saint-Exupéry novel, the author did not like the film and, through contractual shenanigans, had MGM take the film out of circulation in 1942… until 2011, when Warner Bros struck a deal with Saint-Exupéry’s estate to have the film shown again. That’s kind of amazing in itself—that a somewhat popular film starring well-known actors could disappear for nearly seventy years and become available once more to twenty-first century cinephiles, while their parents and grandparents would not have been able to see the film. The movie itself may not warrant that much devotion, but as an illustration of how contemporary film buffs have it much better than any previous generation of movie fans, it’s almost unparalleled.

  • Across the Wide Missouri (1951)

    Across the Wide Missouri (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) One of the main reasons why I dislike westerns as a genre is often its treatment of Native American tribes as nothing more than savage enemies. It took a long time for Hollywood to come around to the idea that there was more to them than violent antagonists, and you can feel the shift beginning with Across the Wide Missouri, which tackles a Dances with Wolves kind of plot in 1950s Technicolor. Featuring none other than Clark Gable as a fur trapper who heads to Blackfoot territory with mercenary intention but is gradually seduced by their way of life, taking up a wife and raising a son. The film steadily shifts from a comedy to more serious drama as it goes on, creating some easy sympathy for its characters before moving on to more serious lessons. I’m not going to pretend that it’s a particularly progressive film by twenty-first century standards: in-narrative, the “romance” between our protagonist and his indigenous wife starts off as a kidnapping-for-ransom scheme, and the perspective resolutely remains that of a white man despite a Metis narration. Out-of-narrative, most characters are played by actors of inappropriate ethnicity, meaning Ricardo Montalban as a Blackfoot warrior and María Elena Marqués as a Native American princess. But it’s the thought that counts for a 1951 film, and Across the Wide Missouri does feel far more humanistic than other westerns. The stunning colour cinematography remains an asset, and I was pleased to see the film making some space for French-Canadian trappers, especially one played by Adolphe Menjou (some of his French is fluent, while some of it is borderline incomprehensible, including a rendition of “Alouette” that manages to mangle every single gendered article). I’ll further note that this is not a western film in the cowboy-and-gun sense as much as it’s one of wilderness and fur trappers—I don’t have to ask myself for long why the second sort is far more interesting to me as a French Canadian. In other words, I got quite a lot more enjoyment out of Across the Wide Missouri than I expected—it’s a surprising Western, and one that does much to reconcile me with at least a subset of the genre.

  • Boom Town (1940)

    Boom Town (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) There’s something fun in seeing Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy play frenemies on-screen in Boom Town, each of them bringing their usual persona to the fore in a tale of duelling oil tycoons throughout the years. The story spans more than a decade, and sees them make a large fortune at a time when oil madness was sweeping the United States. Women, business deals and even revenge tie their characters as much as it compels them to competition, and if the film has a narrative backbone, it had to be the character played by Claudette Colbert who becomes a prize for them. (Meanwhile, Hedy Lamarr gets an early good role as the temptress that comes in between the lead trio.) Boom Town gets a while to get going, something that is not at all helped by a cyclical structure that keeps getting back to familiar ground, suggesting an unsatisfactory lack of growth for the characters. Both Gable and Tracy are good at being themselves and playing off each other (this was their third collaboration after San Francisco and Jet Pilot, and perhaps the best) while Lamarr is striking in a limited role, but Colbert is wasted in a role that barely touches upon her comic talents. The result is not bad, but it misses being better than good by a wide margin—not enough development, a repetitive structure and a disappointing ending. I still liked the look at the wild oil fields of the early twentieth century and the character interplay (Gable had worked with his father on such fields, so he had a better than average understanding of how that worked), but Boom Town could have been better.