John Garfield

The Sea Wolf (1941)

The Sea Wolf (1941)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2020) Let’s see: A Jack London maritime adventure novel brought to the big screen by director Michael Curtiz, and starring no less than Edward G. Robinson as a sadistic sea captain, John Garfield as a hero protagonist and a beautiful Ida Lupino as the love interest? Oh yes, there’s ample reason to have a look at the 1941 adaptation of The Sea Wolf. Reportedly the best of the numerous film version of the novel, this one does get a crucial element right: Robinson as the antagonist, a formidable presence for an equally fearsome character. Lupino is certainly an asset as well, but the film’s execution through a foggy studio set means that the atmosphere of the seagoing ship is appropriately claustrophobic and oppressive. The plot goes a bit further than an already-interesting adventure story to become a small-scale illustration of the dangers of fascism, which adds quite a bit to the result. Good special effects (for the time) and tons of atmosphere complete the portrait. While it has the clunkiness of the technical means available to studio-bound 1940s filmmakers, The Sea Wolf is nonetheless a good adaptation and a fair adventure story in its own right.

Humoresque (1946)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, October 2020) I’m not a big Joan Crawford fan, but she’s the single best element of Humoresque, a dour and dark romantic drama that rests on her performance as a damaged woman dragging a young and inexperienced violinist (John Garfield, fine but no more) in her self-destructive spiral. In many ways, this is an old-fashioned weepie, with characters fated to bad ends through their own flaws. There are not a lot of opportunities for levity or jokes here (placing supporting actor Oscar Levant at a disadvantage, as his later roles would demonstrate), reinforcing the all-orchestral swell of melodramatic intensity that goes with the ending. There’s a little more to it than just a melodrama in how the film delves, especially in the first half, in the universe of classical music performance. This enables the film to spend a lot of time featuring good music (and for Levant to play a bit of piano), lending additional respectability to the result. Humoresque is not exactly a good movie, but Crawford is compelling here as a woman who knows she can’t be redeemed, and if the result is overlong, it’s not to be dismissed easily.

Four Daughters (1938)

Four Daughters (1938)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, November 2019) It’s an exaggeration (perhaps blasphemy) to call out similarities between Four Daughters and Little Women, but both offer middle-American small-town drama involving sisters living in a house with a single parent (here: Claude Rains as the patriarch of a musical family), with suitors popping up and a story that plays over many years. Everything else is different, but from the 2010s all we see are stories with a similar feel. What’s distinctive here is that three of the four sisters were real-life sisters as well—the Lane sisters, who went on to play as a family in other films. But the highlight here is John Garfield as the young beau who sends the daughters aflutter, through some less successful suitors who come and go. Directed by Michael Curtiz, the film was regarded well enough to warrant an Academy Award nomination for best picture—but while it’s still reasonably good, it does feel a bit like a self-imposed ordeal if you’re trying to complete the Best Picture nominees marathon. There’s nothing wrong with Four Daughters—but if your mind wanders to find comparisons with Little Women, it may be because it’s not engaging enough by itself.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

(On Cable TV, July 2019) As others have said, noir is a style more than a narrative genre, and as such it can allow itself multiple deviations from reality that would be unforgivable in another kind of movie. Does The Postman Always Rings Twice make sense? Only barely—even the most forgiving of audiences will probably cry out in disbelief a few times, whether we want to talk about narrative, romantic or even legal incoherencies. But this is mid-1940s noir, and believability takes a distant back step to the atmosphere of two lovers plotting murder and then trying to get away with it. Adapted from a novel by crime-fiction legend James M. Cain, it doesn’t take long for the film to revel in the particularities of that kind of fiction, with all the darkly humorous complications, twisted characters, fatal ironies and (in)convenient contrivances. It does help that the film is spearheaded by capable actors, starting with one of Lana Turner’s best individual performances (as others have said, the problem with being a star is that you’re often appreciated for a body … of work—not always a single role) and John Garfield as a blandly likable drifter who finds reason to stick around. For more contemporary viewers, there’s also a young Hume Cronyn turning in a memorable performance as a devious defence lawyer. At times, it does feel as if the third act runs far too long after what would have been a climax in another movie, but it ultimately turns out that the script has quite a bit more on its mind for the real end of the film—and even gives meaning to the title. The Postman Always Rings Twice all amounts to a classic noir with the qualities and issue of its genre, but no less of a pure pleasure to watch.