Clark Gable

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.

Hollywood: The Dream Factory (1972)

Hollywood: The Dream Factory (1972)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, September 2020) The more I dig into MGM’s history, the more it becomes even more fascinating. It’s hard to articulate how much of a movie factory the studio was in its heyday, although Hollywood: The Dream Factory does come close. Put together at the time of the infamous 1970 auction where MGM sold a very large chunk of its inventory, the film was also a chronicle of a studio that was a mere shadow of its former glory—As the footage shows, the back lots (also seen in the near-contemporary That’s Entertainment!) are run-down, grown to seed and not far away from its final 1974 sale. (Condos now occupy the space.) Hollywood: The Dream Factory is a mixture of shoddy video showing the 1972 auction and back lots, archival footage showing the studio’s heydays, and many clips from MGM films. Narrated with a wistful flair by Dick Cavett, it’s an excuse to dive in MGM’s back catalogue and explain why it was once an entertainment powerhouse. There’s some truly fascinating archival footage to go along with the narration—at its heights, MGM employed craftsmen in over 250 professions: everything required to create the illusion on movie sets. It was a star factory, betting on hopeful unknowns out of hundreds of applicants, signing them up in exclusive contracts and developing them through training and B-movies in the hope of capturing the next superstars—such as Clark Gable, as described here. Interestingly enough, some of the footage in the film looks comparatively terrible compared to what’s available there days (Singin’ in the Rain, for instance, or the deliberate downgrading of The Band Wagon excerpts in black-and-white to better fit in between other B&W films)—the art of movie restoration has advanced quite a bit since 1972, and we now see films in better shape than ever. Despite the obvious potential for hagiography, the film is not entirely self-congratulatory—probably an artifact of the cynical 1970s and not yet detached enough from the heydays to be nostalgic about it. It’s an incredible documentary for film buffs, although in retrospect, I would have liked to see more footage from the 1970 auction and studio backlot rather than the movies themselves—as The Dream Factory itself points out, the films are immortal and still available, whereas the documentary had a chance to document something very specific in history and I’m not sure it completely did to its fullest extent. Fans of classic films will further note that chunks of Cavett’s quasi-lyrical narration have been used as voiceover for one of TCM’s best promos: Let’s Movie 2017. “Once upon a time, in the place called California, there was an enchanted kingdom…”

Dancing Lady (1933)

Dancing Lady (1933)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, June 2020) While Dancing Lady is technically the first of Fred Astaire’s movie musicals, his fans should keep in mind that it took him a few movies’ worth of scene-stealing appearances before getting his first lead role, and so this film sees him relegated to a climactic showcase number, as himself, dancing with Joan Crawford. Not that he’s the only one making early appearances here that now overshadow the leads of the film—An early iteration of The Three Stooges also shows up, plus later star Nelson Eddy, making this film’s supporting cast far more remarkable than nominal leads Franchot Tone and Clark Gable. (I would add “…and Crawford” except that she looks absolutely spectacular here—although not much of a dancer, especially around Astaire.) As an early Pre-Code musical of the early sound era, Dancing Lady is still quite rough around the edges: even the narrative doesn’t go too far away from its Broadway inspiration by featuring a making of a musical as its narrative foundation. It feels a bit short at 92 minutes, but that’s probably because we’re expecting more Astaire. While Dancing Lady is perfectly watchable, it’s probably more of interest to Astaire fans and cinephiles tracking the evolution of the early musicals… although the Pre-Code attitude does make it more interesting than most.

San Francisco (1936)

San Francisco (1936)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, February 2019) One of my working hypotheses in my Grand Unified Theory of Hollywood is that everything was invented during the 1930s, and we’ve been running variations on a theme ever since. San Francisco is another validation of that statement, as it credibly sets up the template that later disaster movies would follow closely. Set during the 1906 earthquake, San Francisco features no less than Clark Gable as an atheistic saloon owner and gambler. Then popular singer Jeanette MacDonald is the love interest, while Spencer Tracy has an early role as a Catholic priest fit to act as the protagonist’s conscience. Much of the early film is spent showcasing the city as it existed at the turn of the century and setting up the dramatic conflicts that will be settled definitively by the earthquake. For modern viewers, there’s also another kind of suspense: How, exactly, are the filmmakers going to portray the impending disaster on-screen? Is it going to look effective to our modern CGI-jaded eyes? That question is answered convincingly two thirds of the way through with an utterly thrilling sequence in which real-world sets are split apart. It’s a long and still-impressive moment in the movie as characters scream, building crumble and even the era’s limitations in special effects technology can’t quite diminish the importance of the moment. Once the disaster is over, it’s no surprise if our atheistic character had found God and his love interest, affirming San Francisco’s Phoenix-like endurance. The slightly historical nature of the film, looking backwards twenty years, actually gives it an interesting weight that the speculative disaster films of the 1970s can’t quite match. While primitive by today’s SFX standards, I found San Francisco surprisingly enjoyable when it gets on with the show, and prescient as to how it creates a template for an entire subgenre to follow.

Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2018) For a mid-thirties production, Mutiny on the Bounty still manages to impress thanks to expansive filmmaking, a solid story and good character work. While historically dubious (read the Wikipedia entry for the latest thinking regarding the real-life incident, markedly more sympathetic to captain Blight, not to mention the sad aftermath of the mutiny), the story itself does have a certain narrative drive, and the way the film portrays the events manages to be impressive—the shot in which hundreds of Tahitians converge to the water to greet the English visitors is still remarkable today. The heart of the film remains between Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian and Charles Laughton as Captain Blight—both actors hold their own. While creaky by modern standards, much of Mutiny on the Bounty can be watched effortlessly today … and that’s no small achievement for a film pushing eighty.

It Happened One Night (1934)

It Happened One Night (1934)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, February 2018) There’s nothing new under the sun and that’s even truer when it comes to Hollywood movies, but it’s still a shock to see in It Happened One Night a template for the entire subgenre of romantic comedies as they’ve been made for the past eight decades. Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert star as (respectively) a rich spoiler heiress and a suave roguish newspaperman stuck together on a bus ride from Florida to New York. Their initial animosity eventually become something else, which complicates an upcoming high-society wedding. We’ve all seen what happens because the basic structure of the film has been reused time and time again. Frank Capra’s direction is as sure-footed as anything else he’s done (and still rivals many modern directors), while the film’s pre-Code status makes it just a bit franker and just a bit more alluring than the following three decades of movies. It has aged remarkably well—Gable and Colbert have good chemistry, and the script is strong on dialogue and single moments. (Ah, that hitchhiking scene…)  I’m not so fond of the third-act shift away from the bus, but it does lead the film to its climactic finale. As I’m discovering more and more older movies, the nineteen-thirties are earning a special place in my own version of Hollywood history—a decade where the basics of cinema had been mastered to a level still recognizable as competent today, and (for a brief period before the Hays code) increasingly willing to push the envelope of what was permissible on-screen. It Happened One Night still feels fresh and fun—I can see it being a hit with wide audiences even today.

Gone with the Wind (1939)

Gone with the Wind (1939)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, September 2017) What a movie. What a terrific movie. While Gone with the Wind surely ranks way up the list of overexposed films (it’s still the highest-grossing film in history when adjusted for inflation—nearly everyone saw it back then), there’s a reason why it still works nearly eighty years later, even with its three-hour-plus duration, even as it expresses warm feelings toward historically repellent issues. There are a lot of ways to see the movie (as an epic family drama, as a romance, as a historical film) but I found it most effective as a character piece tracking the evolution of a young woman into a hardened life-scarred survivor. Vivien Leigh stars as the legendary Scarlett O’Hara, growing up through civil war and reconstruction from a flighty heiress to the mistress of a domain, a grieving mother and someone who will never be able to live with the love of her life. (It’s significant that Rhett Butler, her counterpart played by Clark Gable, also looms large as an oversized character, but does not significantly evolve during much of the film.)  The lavish production values of the film as still amazing today, whether it’s the vivid colours (wow, those dresses), the burning of Atlanta or, more strikingly, the hideous open-air hospital scenes with what looks like thousands of extras—in high definition, the movie still amazes through its sheer visual density. As a sumptuous historical recreation, Gone with the Wind is an amazing time capsule from the thirties looking back at the eighteen-sixties—just consider that the film is now significantly closer to the American Civil War than to today. Alas, this proximity leads to a few unfortunate consequences—at times, modern viewers will feel some revulsion at the way the film excuses or regrets the Confederacy and the systemic use of slavery as an economic system. This also ties with the representation of black characters in the film—ludicrous today, but groundbreaking at the time (leading to the first-ever Academy Award given to a black actor, Hattie McDaniel). But a film doesn’t last nearly eighty years without reflecting its own era, and Gone With the Wind has endured far better than most movies of its time.