Michael Curtiz

Four Daughters (1938)

ByChristian Sauvé 2019-11-212023-03-19 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.

Movie Review

Dive Bomber (1941)

ByChristian Sauvé 2019-11-112023-03-19 Movie Review

(On Cable TV, November 2019) Calling Dive Bomber a pre-WW2 military aviation thriller is underselling it severely—shot in colour in near-documentary style, it’s a showcase for the pre-Pearl Harbor US Navy aviation, and it’s far more colourful than you’d expect from other black-and-white thrillers of the same era. (Especially given the bright peacetime livery of the planes.) It’s also strong in terms of marquee names—Errol Flynn headlines as a military doctor trying to find a way to prevent high-G blackouts, while Fred MacMurray plays a rival officer. Behind the camera, Michael Curtiz handles the demands of a highly technical production with a veteran’s aplomb, although the film’s history is rich in on-set clashes between Curtiz and Flynn: this would end up being the last of the twelve collaborations. As far as the result is concerned, Dive Bomber is remarkable without being all that good from a strictly narrative viewpoint: the script is made to string along the aerial showcases, although the focus on medical research is not necessarily something you’d expect from an airborne military thriller. (Just ignore the omnipresent cigarettes smoked by the doctors.) Flynn and MacMurray probably would have been better in each other’s roles, while Alexis Smith wanders in and out of the film as female lead without much to do. Still, I found Dive Bomber more fascinating than I expected—although I suspect that my fondness for techno-thrillers had a role to play in this.

Movie Review

The Sea Hawk (1940)

ByChristian Sauvé 2019-03-242023-03-18 Movie Review

(On Cable TV, March 2019) If you want to see swashbuckling adventures at their best, you must see an Errol Flynn film and if you want to see Flynn at his best, there aren’t many better choices than The Sea Hawk. Pitting an Elizabethan-era English hero against the might of the Spanish Armada (doubled with a few parallels to the enemy as Nazis, to whip up patriotic fervour along the way), this is not a film that deals in nuances—the heroes are virtuous, the villains are perfidious, the English ruler is just and the love interest quite lovely indeed. It works, though: the spirit of adventure runs high enough to bulldoze through any credibility objections. Take the first boarding sequences, for instance—dodgy tactics and overconfidence by the British, but it’s still a great sequence. Few genre tropes are left unused, even in the spying business back on the home front. Flynn makes a terrific hero, and Brenda Marshall is quite good as well as the beautiful Spanish girl who can’t help but fall for him. Michael Curtiz directs with energy and confidence, all the way to the landmark final sword-fight, which features energetic performances, shadowed cinematography, cut candles, broken furniture and people being thrown through windows. It’s a final sequence that caps a quintessential adventure film with generous period detail and costumes. The Sea Hawk remains quite an experience event today—it’s still at the top of the genre.

Movie Review

Mildred Pierce (1945)

ByChristian Sauvé 2018-05-112019-03-24 Movie Review

(On Cable TV, May 2018) As a family drama that drives steadily toward becoming a crime thriller, Mildred Pierce has something for everyone: family conflict, rags-to-riches development and a plunge into noir as a final act, bringing us back to the opening framing device. Joan Crawford holds the film together as the titular Mildred, a woman who gets over her first marriage by working hard and establishing a chain of restaurants, only to be held back by a spoiled daughter, a loafing second husband and a terrible family tragedy. That Mildred Pierce ends in murder is no spoiler (that’s how it begins), although the killer may surprise you. The black-and-white cinematography is top-notch, and Michael Curtiz’s direction impressively brings together the sunny domesticity of toxic family life with the harder shadows of criminal noir. The intersection between independent-woman drama and murder mystery is unusual, and makes Mildred Pierce stand out even when slotted in the noir tradition.

Movie Review

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

ByChristian Sauvé 2018-04-132019-03-24 Movie Review

(On Cable TV, April 2018) Perhaps the best thing about 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood is how it doesn’t feel like a 1938 film at all. You can credit the colour for that: One of the first big movies shot in Technicolor with decent image detail, it’s visually distinct from other movies of the time and would remain so for nearly two decades as colour took until the early sixties to truly become the standard. As a result, the film does feel as if it’s from the 1950s, something that director Michael Curtiz’s fast narrative pace helps support. The fantastic Errol Flynn plays the lead part with bravado and wit—the sequence in which he first confronts the enemy in their castle could be transposed with few modifications a modern superhero movie. Olivia de Havilland is nearly as striking as Maid Marian, but let’s be honest—this is Flynn’s film. The other reason why The Adventures of Robin Hood still feels so modern is that it has been endlessly re-used in other modern movies. Nearly every take on Robin Hood (notably the 1973 Disney version, 1991 Kevin Costner vehicle and 1993 Mel Brooks parody) has been inspired by this one, often to the point of re-creating scenes. It does make for a film that can be readily re-watched today with a considerable amount of fun, especially for audiences (kids, for instance) where black-and-white could be an obstacle.

Movie Review

Casablanca (1942)

ByChristian Sauvé 2018-01-092019-03-24 Movie Review

(Second or third viewing, On DVD, January 2018) I first saw Casablanca in the mid-nineties, as I was rummaging through my university library’s collection of film classics. I really, really loved it at the time, to the point of writing a Science Fiction parody that has thankfully not escaped my hard drive since then. Casablanca remained my standard for accidental greatness from the Hollywood studio system, the kind of film where magic just happens from competent people just doing their job. (In discussions about classic cinema, I usually oppose Casablanca to Citizen Kane, both of whom I love dearly but the second of which was designed to be a masterpiece while the first just sort of happened.) I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to another viewing now: What if the film wasn’t as good as I remembered? What if it fell flat next to the thousands of movies I had seen since then? I shouldn’t have worried: Casablanca is still as good today as at any time since its original release. It’s a film that grabs you quickly and seldom lets go, whether it’s firing on romantic or thrilling energy. Blending comedy, passion, suspense and political issues (now deliciously historical), Casablanca is one of the original four-quadrant triumphs, seamlessly going from one thing to another along the way from a gripping opening to a memorable conclusion. Humphrey Bogart is impeccable as the protagonist, but the supporting performances are fine across the board, from Claude Rains to Ingrid Bergman to Paul Henreid, all the way to the extras singing The Marseillaise given how (Casablanca histories tell us) that they were nearly all European exiles or refugees. Historically, Casablanca rolled the dice and landed a solid 12, describing a personal tipping point right after the country decided to go beat up Nazi Germany. Still, there is something for everyone in this film—you don’t have to catch the allusions to the date of the events to feel for its heroes at the most basic level. The Paris scenes may feel redundant, but they provide some of the film’s best quotes and movie-star moments. All told, iconic Casablanca remains a triumph of moviemaking, as good as the genre ever gets. I look forward to seeing it another time.

Movie Review

Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

ByChristian Sauvé 2017-12-252018-02-01 Movie Review

(On Cable TV, December 2017) I really wasn’t expecting much from Yankee Doodle Dandy other than checking off a list of classic movies I should see, so imagine my surprise when I started to be honestly engaged in the film. Initially drawn in by the time-capsule aspect of the film (as a 1942 framing device leads us to late 1800s vaudeville, and then the birth of Hollywood musicals), I really started enjoying myself in-between the honestly funny comic routines inspired by state work and the birth of American musical movies. Academy Award-winner James Cagney (looking like a young Anthony Hopkins?) shows some serious skills in giving life to actor/composer/dancer George M. Cohan through some sixty-some years. By the time the film ends, we’ve been given front-row seats to a highly dramatized depiction of the evolution of American entertainment from theatre to movies, as well as a full biography ending with a striking piece of palatable pro-American patriotism both in topic matter and presentation. The re-creation of lavish stage spectacles is striking, many of the tunes are toe-tapping good and the film remains sporadically very funny even now. Add to that some directorial flourishes from Michael Curtiz (most notably a sequence charting the evolution of Cohan’s Broadway shows) and you’ve got the makings of an unexpected great movie that has appreciated in the seventy-five years since its release. I’ve been watching more older movies lately, and Yankee Doodle Dandy is the kind of happy discovery that will keep me going deeper into the archives.