Victor McLaglen

  • Pacific Liner (1939)

    Pacific Liner (1939)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) One of the things I like best about Classic Hollywood films is their depictions of things that, “thanks” to technology or economics, don’t exist anymore. A robust passenger train system with overnight berths. Bygone Manhattan elites enthusiastically indulging in their matrimonial shenanigans. Automats. Steam liners crossing the oceans. Much of this usually comes with a big, big dose of romanticism: I suspect that liner cruises from New York to Europe were seldom as charming as depicted. Pacific Liner is a welcome antidote to the romance of the high seas — much of it takes place in the boiler room of a luxury cruiser crossing the Pacific and dealing with a cholera outbreak. There’s a welcome shift of perspective away from the carefree lives of the passengers to the rough-and-gruff working men working below decks, especially as the epidemic rages on and working conditions become dangerous. (To say that this film has exceptional relevance in the middle of a COVID-19 pandemic in which minimum-salary workers are most exposed is understating things quite a bit.)  Victor McLaglen provides the film’s standout performance as a loud and tough engineer. Pacific Liner is a short 76-minute thriller, perhaps a bit too quick (one wonders if the upper decks could have provided a poignant counterpoint) but definitely refreshing. Amazingly enough, it’s significantly under-seen — but everyone who sees it will appreciate the unusual perspective it brings to familiar tropes and the no-nonsense pacing.

  • The Informer (1935)

    The Informer (1935)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2018) An early Oscar favourite, The Informer is director John Ford’s look at 1922 Dublin, gripped in the fractious Irish War of Independence. Our protagonist is a flawed character who sees, in informing about a friend, a way to get tickets to America for him and his girlfriend. Things don’t turn out as planned. As befits such a sombre tale, the atmosphere of the film is fog-shrouded, bridging the transition between German expressionism and American film noir. Victor McLaglen plays our flawed hero, someone whose imperfections prevent him from doing the right or the best thing—he was given an Academy Award for the role. While some of the material feels overly blunt, there is still something very confident in the use of split-screen optical effect for storytelling purposes, giving us a glimpse in the characters’ inner thoughts. You can seek The Informer because it’s a John Ford movie, or because it’s an Academy Award Best Picture nominee, but it’s surprisingly engaging at time, and a counterpoint to the belief that early Hollywood played nicely with its characters and film endings.