Angels Over Broadway (1940)

“Darling, you understate the case by three bottles and a thousand tears!”

            I always find it interesting when I watch a film where I really like one thing about and do not care for another thing. I will give the example of when I watched The Razor’s Edge with Gene Tierney and Tyrone Power. The story and the characters were not bad I just wished that the acting had been better. Something like that I find interesting because most of the time everything usually clicks together or it usually falls apart together in a film, well, for me anyway. This situation happened again to me when I watched the 1940 film Angels Over Broadway. The dialogue was good but the acting and the story were not the greatest.

            The story, unfortunately, did not catch my attention whatsoever so I will make this summary as short as possible from what I did kind of pay attention to.

            Bill O’Brien (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) picks up people to play poker with a gambler and he gets a cut of anything the gambler wins over three thousand dollars. On a rainy night he walks passed a man coming out of a cab. The man, Charles Engle, gives the cab driver a large bill and tells the driver to keep the change. This action captures Bill’s attention so he follows Engle into the club they are in front of. He next sees Engle give the cigarette girl a fifty dollar bill and also tells her to keep the change. Bill thinks Engle is loaded. In reality Engle is contemplating suicide after he embezzled three thousand dollars from the man he works for and is just going out for one last night. Bill gives the gambler a call saying he has a new player who seems to be from out of town and has a lot of money. Now all he has to do is convince Engle to come play.

            At the club is a young woman named Nina Barona (Rita Hayworth) who is trying to get a chance to speak to anyone who might be able to give her a job in a show and a playwright named Gene Gibbons (Thomas Mitchell) whose latest play is just one in a succession of flops and it totally intoxicated. Nina sits down at Engle’s table because she somehow thinks he has connections with a show. Gene was about to leave the club when he was accidentally given Engle’s jacket and found his suicide note. Gene sits down with Engle talks about life and even says he can try to get him the three thousand dollars by getting back some jewels from his ex-wife that are worth a lot. The crusade to get the jewels fails.

            Bill moves in to get Engle to play a round of poker. The truth comes out but Gene says that Engle can play until he makes the three thousand then he could remove himself from the game by saying he has to do something and will be right back. Bill likes the idea but as the game gets close he is not too sure about it.

            After this I completely lost interest and attention.

            The cast could have been so good together. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. is one of my favorite classic actors. In the films I have seen him in so far he has been great. In this he started off alright and then just fell. He has a bit of a Noir edge to him and was good at it. Rita Hayworth was just starting out at this point so her acting was not that great. I kind of felt bad for her in some scenes because she was so bad. Thomas Mitchell’s character was drunk the whole time. I was not too crazy about his character even though he was a drunk who was trying to be decent.

            Ben Hecht, one of the greatest screenwriters to ever have graced films, wrote and partially directed it as well. His dialogue was so good. It was a very wordy screenplay. I never mind wordy I like dialogue when it is well written and well performed. The problem was the performances. The performances from the actors could not do justice to the dialogue. Rita Hayworth just bombed most of her scenes it was as if she could not keep up with her dialogue the way the character was supposed to. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. seemed like he was trying too hard and hammed up his dialogue. Thomas Mitchell I think was the only one who actually did justice to his dialogue he was very good.

            Angels Over Broadway had the potential to be very good. The screenplay was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Oscars that year. It deserved it definitely especially because Ben Hecht wrote it. The acting just brings this film down unfortunately. As I said at the beginning the contradiction (if that is the correct way to put it) with the good writing and the bad acting is interesting to see. I will only suggest seeing Angels Over Broadway if you are a fan of either Ben Hecht or any of the actors other than that skip it.

 

Out of the Fog (1941)

“The man that collects the money always comes.”

            Out of the Fog was really boring. I think I grew bored with the film like ten minutes into it. The story was not too great and John Garfield or his character was just outrageously annoying. You know what now that I think about it both actor and character were annoying to no end. There were too many aspects of the film that were bothersome to sit through there was really nothing I liked about it.

            The story takes place on the docks of Brooklyn. Jonah Goodwin (Thomas Mitchell) and his friend Olaf Johnson are fishermen. They dream of owning a large boat that is for sale so they can sail down to the Gulf of Mexico and catch all the large fish they can possibly find.

            On the pier a man named Harold Goff (Garfield) sets fire to a boat to convince some of the fishermen to buy protection from him. Harold eventually corners Jonah and Olaf and forces them to buy his protection for five dollars a week. Harold sees Jonah’s daughter Stella (Ida Lupino) in a local restaurant and starts following her around. He hears that she wants more out of life she does not want to stay around the pier and have a typical life with her boyfriend George (Eddie Bracken).

            Stella starts going out with Harold having no idea what he is doing to her father and Olaf. At some point Stella told Harold that her father was giving her one hundred and ninety dollars to go away to Cuba to get away. Harold just hears the money and goes to Jonah and Harold for it. Jonah gets fed up and calls for the police but nothing happens to Harold because he pulls out a contract he forced the men to sign at gun point.

            Jonah realizes the only way to get Harold off their back is to kill him. He and Olaf take Harold out into the middle of the harbor where they make like their engine has seized. Harold starts getting upset and nervous because he cannot swim. He stands up and accidentally goes overboard.

            I think the police find Harold’s death was an accident I am not sure because by this time I just zoned out and lost track of what was going on.

            Thomas Mitchell, John Qualen, and Ida Lupino were the only good actors in the whole film. Lupino was not even really that good she was a little too over dramatic but still she was good compared to most of the others. She was barely in the film and she gets top billing. Warners was dumb they knew who drew in the money for the studio. John Garfield as I said was annoying I could not stand him after one minute of him being on the screen.

            Out of the Fog is not a long film, but because it was slow and boring it felt like it took forever. Humphrey Bogart was supposed to have John Garfield’s part but Ida Lupino did not want to work with him again and got her way (at twenty- three years old she had a lot of pull at Warner Bros.). Bogart was upset but I think after the film was released he should thanked her because he would not have been right for the role at all. Out of the Fog is only a film I would recommend seeing if you are a huge fan of Ida Lupino or John Garfield other than them skip it completely. 

Only Angels Have Wings (1939)

“Why do you think they come down to this kind of a place?” 

            I have wanted to see Only Angels Have Wings for a while now. I did not hype it up or really look forward to seeing it I just had to see the film because it stars Cary Grant. I like Jean Arthur now so that was an extra push to finally watch it. Only Angels Have Wings is like sitting through two films at once.

            Bonnie Lee (Arthur) gets off a ship on an island called Baranca. She is a performer who has been traveling looking for work. Apparently the only woman on the ship she has given one the crew a pretty nasty cut under his eye. Two pilots Les and Joe who were talking to the beaten crew member see Bonnie walk off the ship. They start to follow her and she is in no way interested. Les and Joe walk up to Bonnie while she is at a souvenir stand and when they get close she pulls a sword on them! But she sees they are Americans and is happy to hear them speak a language she understands.

            The two guys are happy to see her as well. They fight for her attention asking her if she wants a drink and that they will pay for her dinner. A call for Joe comes over a loudspeaker that his flight is ready. He and Les are part of a group of pilots who fly mail out from the island. It is very dangerous for them to fly out since there is always thick fog and bad weather all the time. Joe goes up but he is forced by Geoff Carter (Grant) the head aviator to come back because of the fog. Joe does not listen to Geoff who tells him not to bring the plane down and he crashes and dies. Bonnie sees the whole thing happen and is really shaken. She cannot understand how everyone else is not sad that their friend whom they have known much longer has died. They tell her it is part of their job. They all begin to drink and have a good time together and even Bonnie forgets about Joe. That night Geoff gets a job and goes off in his plane. Bonnie for some reason likes Geoff even though he does not really like her. She was supposed to get her boat that morning at 4:30 but when Geoff comes back Bonnie is still there and he is not happy. The next ship does not leave for another week.

            A new pilot comes in named Bat Macpherson (Richard Barthelmess) with his wife Judy (Rita Hayworth). Macpherson does not fool Geoff or the other guys for a minute. They figure out he is a man named Killgallen a pilot who had bailed out of his plane but left his mechanic to die. The mechanic happened to be Geoff’s best friend Kid’s (Thomas Mitchell) brother. At first Kid does not realize the new pilot is Macpherson and when he does he almost lays into the guy until Geoff stops him. Geoff later has to ground Kid because his sight is not good.

            Bonnie had once asked Geoff who the woman who broke his heart to give him is opinion on women and love. Turns out he knows Macpherson’s wife Judy pretty well she was the one who broke his heart. She asks him why none of the other guys like her husband and he just says to ask Bat. Macpherson got to keep the job with the group after he successfully got a guy out of a mine and to a hospital.

            The rest of the film I cannot remember and to me it was unimpressive and boring. What got to me was how the film was like watching two different films. It started off with this bubbly woman off a boat and then she turns into this ridiculously melodramatic woman in love with a man who does not love her in the slightest and she does everything to change his mind. Then the whole films turns into this long drawn out melodrama of men dying trying to get mail off the island and Bonnie is almost all but forgotten.     

            The performances were not bad at all from any of the actors. Cary Grant was as always great. His character went from being a bit of a bastard to a happy kind of guy back to a miserable bastard and then happy like a little kid and he made it all look so easy. Jean Arthur is a very good actress but I just hated what her character went through. I hated that she was this spunky lady at the beginning and then went to this crazy in love foolish woman who pull a gun on Geoff. Arthur’s character change was what bothered me most about the film it was just weird how she changed so much for a man who did not want to acknowledge her. Rita Hayworth does not have many scenes but when she comes in you can feel her sexuality and gorgeousness (if that is possible) come off the screen. You can see this is the beginning of Hayworth’s great talent.

            Only Angels Have Wings is not a classic film I would be quick to recommend. Howard Hawks did a fantastic job directing the man knew how to make a great film but this is one of his films I could not get into at all. I felt the plot was drawn out, the characters all over the place, and the story boring after a while. As I said it felt like I was watching two different films in one. Only Angels Have Wings is not a terrible film but it is not one of the best.