In this final part, the brilliance of Michael Curtiz becomes fully apparent as we look at my top 20 Curtiz films, eight of which I rated the full 5 stars.
You can find Part One, Part Two and Part Three at these links.
ALL ENTRIES CONTAIN SPOILERS
20. DOCTOR X
The first of Michael Curtiz’s Hollywood Horror films, Doctor X enjoys a level of cult renown greater than any of Curtiz’s films up to this point. This is in part thanks to it being a Horror film, with Horror fans often proving most adept at rooting out and celebrating every last example of their treasured and routinely underrated genre. But Doctor X also enjoys an enduring reputation as a well-made and hugely enjoyable example of Pre-Code Horror, with greater levels of grotesquerie than would soon be possible and some slyly bawdy humour punctuating its delightfully corny gags. As an early Horror film shot in two-strip Technicolor, Doctor X is often paired with, and usually overshadowed by, Curtiz’s other two-strip shocker, Mystery of the Wax Museum. Both these films are more often than not ignored in favour of the Universal Horror films that were starting to dominate at the same time. But if Doctor X can’t hope to compare to James Whale’s classic Frankenstein from the previous year, it still shines in its own right as a very different beast.
For the most part, Doctor X could be described as Comedy Horror. Although the premise of a serial killer who murders and partially cannibalises their victims on nights when the moon is full is particularly grisly, Curtiz displays a knowingly tongue-in-cheek approach in his introduction to the titular doctor and his institute of bizarrely suspicious researchers. Even the nominal hero of the piece, Lee Tracy’s snooping reporter, is an unconventional romantic lead. Having been bowled over by his fast-talking performance in Curtiz’s previous film The Strange Love of Molly Louvain, I was delighted to see Tracy again. As with that previous role, Tracy is tasked with delivering the lion’s share of the overt comedic content, but this time he doles out his wisecracks at a more leisurely pace and indulges in plenty of Scooby Doo-esque slapstick. With its numerous shots of ominous hands reaching for Tracy from the shadows before being scared off by sudden distractions, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Doctor X was among the major influences on the creation of Hanna-Barbera’s famous mystery-solving mutt.
Doctor X’s gallery of oddballs is never less than amusing to watch. Though there’s a touch of retrograde ableism in the way amputees and paraplegics are implicitly equated with the strange and grotesque, most of these disabilities are factored into the plot (although the guy with the visual impairment is definitely only there to show off his cool darkened monocle). The actors have fun depicting their various quirks and perversions, with Lionel Atwill providing an effective ringmaster of sorts as Doctor X himself, an apparently more level-headed leader who ultimately tips his hand through the extremity of his often poorly-thought-out tests to unmask the killer. By the time he has everyone handcuffed to chairs and his daughter served up on a sacrificial slab, you have to question the man’s sanity. The daughter is played by Fay Wray, a legendary scream queen given very little to do here. Her romance with Tracy seems to come out of nowhere and is thoroughly unconvincing, although it does lead to a fantastically filthy final gag involving a hand-buzzer.
But it is not the actors who are the real stars of Doctor X so much as the sets and makeup. The former are by Anton Grot, whose legendary art direction has graced silent classics such as The Thief of Bagdad and 1922’s Robin Hood, not to mention Curtiz’s own ambitious Noah’s Ark. Grot has worked with Curtiz on several other projects including The Mad Genius and Alias the Doctor, his visual touch always elevating the projects, but Doctor X really gives him an opportunity to have fun. If you want bubbling, smoking medical flasks galore (and let’s face it, who doesn’t?), you’ll find them adorning Grot’s wonderfully lurid laboratories, made all the more vivid by the sickly two-strip Technicolor. The makeup, meanwhile, is provided by Max Factor and is particularly notable in a climactic scene of almost Cronenbergian grotesquerie in which the murderer (whose identity is entirely unsurprising) applies his experimental “synthetic flesh” while lasciviously whispering that irksome phrase to the repetitive hypnotic buzz of his electrical equipment. Curtiz shoots the scene with a nightmarishly hazy, otherworldly quality and Doctor X finally shifts into the realms of the genuinely horrific. After an hour of lively Halloween larks comparable to the pranked-up trickery of William Castle’s House on Haunted Hill, Doctor X does a wonderful job of upping the stakes at the exact right moment to convert its larksome spook-show into something that crawls under your skin.
It’s easy to see why Doctor X remains so beloved of Horror enthusiasts and also why some may be baffled by its critical reputation as a semi-classic. But anyone willing to suspend disbelief and enjoy some goofball fun will be rewarded by an extraordinarily enjoyable film with a fantastically horrific rug-pull at the end which more than makes up for the predictability of the central mystery by supplementing it with unpredictable levels of flesh-crawling chills. A perfect film for Halloween.
19. DODGE CITY
With the dawn of sound cinema, the Western was a genre that fell out of favour. While plenty of low-budget examples were churned out and enjoyed by audiences, the perception of the genre as throwaway pulp kept Westerns away from the critical podia atop which Cimarron briefly stood. But by 1939 the tide was turning and a glut of bigger budget high profile Westerns, chiefly John Ford’s cornerstone Stagecoach, were beginning to reclaim a greater prestige for the genre. Michael Curtiz’s flashy Technicolor Western Dodge City was among these tide-turners, although it has latterly been more readily categorised alongside the 30s oaters than the classics from the golden age of the Western. While its budget, scope and greater commercial success initially marked it out as a game changer, Dodge City now seems like a transitional film that remains dedicated to exploring the time-honoured action tropes of the genre on a larger canvas. Therein lies its charm, however, for while the deeper psychological explorations of Ford, Hawks and Mann were all thoroughly riveting, Curtiz delivered a wilfully uncomplicated Action/Adventure picture in glorious Technicolor which fulfils the requirements of the 30s Western checklist with unapologetic compliance. The film opens with a race between a steam train and a stagecoach, after which there are stampedes, shootouts, foiled hangings, comedy asides, musical interludes and one of the greatest saloon bar punch-ups ever filmed.
That’s not to say that Dodge City pulls its punches in the name of commerciality. It’s a surprisingly brutal film, with several deaths occurring in the early stages in order to motivate Errol Flynn’s Wade Hatton to assume the role of Sheriff. The tipping point comes with the accidental but horrific killing of a young boy whose father we have already seen murdered. The father was neatly dispatched by gunshot but the kid is dragged to death by horses. It’s pretty grim stuff for such a breezily entertaining film. You can’t undersell the lawlessness of the titular town, the “wide-open Babylon of the American frontier, packed with settlers, thieves and gunmen—the town that knew no ethics but cash and killing”, if the subsequent cleaning up of said Babylon is going to have the required impact. Bruce Talbot is an effectively smooth and disconcertingly cool main villain, although Victor Jory as his henchman Yancy steals the show when it comes to easy-to-hate bad guys. In terms of heroes, Dodge City is stolen by supporting characters too. Flynn was concerned about his suitability for the Western genre and, while the popularity of Dodge City saw him go on to star in many more Westerns, that uncertainty is palpable here. Flynn tends to shine when his confidence matches that of his character, as in his definitive turn in The Adventures of Robin Hood. His performance in Dodge City is more akin to his work in The Charge of the Light Brigade, adequate but stiff and bland. Also in common with that film, leading lady Olivia de Havilland finds herself woefully marginalised, a crime in light of her considerable talents.
If you come to Dodge City excited to see that Flynn/de Havilland dynamic reignited, you might go away disappointed. However, if you think of it as just a Western in which they happen to appear you’ll probably have a good time. In keeping with its titular focus on the destination rather than any particular character, the film wanders around Dodge City latching onto different characters for a time. One of the best stretches doesn’t feature Flynn or de Havilland at all, instead following Alan Hale’s Rusty as he tries to stay sober and keep out of trouble, culminating in that spectacular saloon punch-up. Ann Sheridan, whose role somewhat petered out in Angels with Dirty Faces, finds herself in a similar position here. She has high billing but her role as barroom singer Ruby Gilman (not a teenage kraken in this case!) is mainly used as window dressing and would not figure in a plot synopsis at all. While probably not an ideal situation for Sheridan, this is an example of Dodge City’s effective, sprawling scope that makes it feel so much bigger than it otherwise might have.
While it’s understandable that Dodge City has not attained the same classic status as more tonally ambitious Westerns that followed, as a straight-up good vs. evil Action thriller it deserves better than its mixed reputation too. While it may not have necessarily assuaged Flynn’s doubts about his suitability for cowboy roles, it was further proof that Curtiz could turn his hand to any genre imaginable.
18. KID GALAHAD
Although I’ve never been a fan of boxing, I’ve always really liked boxing movies. There’s something about the sport that feels especially cinematic to me, even if its staging seems more readily comparable with theatre. I guess the key is a film director’s ability to place you in the ring itself rather than give you a ringside seat. But what happens outside of the ring is equally important and having intimate access to the lives of the characters leading up to each bout invests the experience with an emotional dimension that I’ve never been able to find when watching real world boxing (it’s obviously there, I just lack the inclination to search for it). Kid Galahad, Michael Curtiz’s Boxing Drama, is excellent on both counts. Inside the ring we get plenty of gripping action and Curtiz ensures we experience it from the viewpoints of audience members, trainers, managers and the fighters themselves, giving us the complete experience of fight night. Outside the ring however, Curtiz takes things at a leisurely pace, with Seton I. Miller’s enjoyably conversational screenplay allowing us to easily form connections with each of the characters. The plot is fairly inconsequential, combining a familiar underdog rise to stardom tale with the standard romantic complications and a topping of gangster menace. There’s very little here to surprise but plenty to delight anyone looking for an uncomplicated and deftly executed evening’s entertainment.
Though it is well written and beautifully directed, what really pushes Kid Galahad to the outskirts of classic status is its cast. Wayne Morris is endearingly naive as the titular fighter, Jane Bryan has sufficient pep as his love interest and old hand Harry Carey is agreeably unassuming as the ringside assistant, but it’s undoubtedly the three top-billed stars who give Kid Galahad its punch. Edward G. Robinson, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart is a dream headlining trio and all three of them turn in memorable performances. Bogart gets the least screentime in one of his early gangster roles but he is great here, exuding an edge of genuine danger with an understated, brooding intensity. Robinson, as the overbearing promoter Nick, turns in another of his distinctive but basically naturalistic performances, likeable but layered and displaying a deceptive subtlety which may have been the key factor in him never once being Oscar-nominated. But Kid Galahad is decisively stolen by a knockout performance from Bette Davis. Davis was an actor of incredible scope and at this early stage of her career it seemed that Hollywood was still figuring out how to use her. Certainly Curtiz’s previous collaborations with Davis had often misused her but Louise “Fluff” Phillips is one of her finest roles. Davis makes her a kind, sympathetic character whose various trials do not force her into out-of-character outbursts or dramatic declarations. She is honest to a fault, avoiding tedious misunderstandings or deceptions as cheap drivers of narrative. By this stage of her career Davis was becoming associated with the Melodrama and she was one of the finest actors in that genre but those roles often required big teary flourishes and amped-up explosions of emotion. Fluff, meanwhile, is a real, fleshed out human being, displaying how crucial a considered approach was in making Davis one of the most acclaimed stars of her era.
Kid Galahad almost feels like one of those 90s hanging out films in that its characters are such good company that the predictable plot progressions seem secondary to just spending time with them. The simplicity of the story feels like a plus in this regard, with only the tragic finale feeling like a perfunctory concession. This too is saved by Davis, whose closing walk away into an uncertain future draws focus from the underwritten and underperformed moment that preceded it, and ends the film on a powerful and memorably ambiguous note. Curtiz too must be congratulated for his execution of this scene, which demonstrates his innate awareness of how big to play a moment relative to the film in which it is contained. Having recently made Epics like Captain Blood and The Charge of the Light Brigade, it would’ve been easy for a lesser director to apply that same level of pomp to this quiet moment of pathos but Curtiz, like Davis, is attuned to his material and so we get a phenomenal performer subtly portraying a quiet, equivocal disappearance into the night instead of the overly-insistent heartbreak of a defiant march over the horizon. Thanks to the excellence of all involved, Kid Galahad arrives, entertains and leaves with exquisite restraint.
17. YANKEE DOODLE DANDY
I’ve never been a patriot. I understand the positive drive behind patriotism to an extent, as a celebration of the things that make a culture and a society great, an acknowledgment of the achievements of a country that aim to make life better for its inhabitants and lead by example. Unfortunately, the patriotism I more often see being demonstrated is closer to simple xenophobic exceptionalism, putting the cart before the horse and using an “our country is the best” mentality as an excuse to deem any criticism inherently treasonous. Countries become like pathetic little clubhouses in this case, with jeering inhabitants excluding everyone who wasn’t in the first iteration of their club (as well as the indigenous clubhousers they ejected from their new HQ in the first place). But unwieldy similes and divisive pejorative digs won’t really do here. Such hastily and easily drawn battle lines only exacerbate the sort of divides that fuel this rampant problem. In light of MAGA and Brexit and the many other contentious political clashes of recent times, it’s easy to understand why contemporary viewers might have a nauseous Pavlovian response to Yankee Doodle Dandy. Draped in the red, white and blue and dealing almost exclusively in fact-fudging sentiment, this is the sort of film you can immediately tell is going to contain blackface before the prologue is even over. And yet its hagiographic untruths and ostentatious flag-waving brio are rarely overtly mean-spirited, seeking to use the work of a songwriter who roused a nation in WWI to inspire the same fervour in a nation immersed in WWII. While there’s an obvious danger in stirring up the vaguely defined pride of what George M. Cohan himself referred to as “that patriotic something that no one can understand”, it’s easier to accept as a tool to unite a nation against fascism.
Yankee Doodle Dandy’s overt and unapologetic patriotism is part of what has made it endure for a certain demographic. Certainly, it was no surprise to see it turn up on both iterations of the AFI Top 100 Movies list or as one of Richard Nixon’s favourite films. For my part, the patriotism of the film is not its major draw. It is a crucial part of the story Yankee Doodle Dandy seeks to tell but it can easily be enjoyed merely as a celebration of how positivity and hope can be a decisively influential thing. You could just as easily spin it in a disturbing light regarding brainwashing and browbeating but one of Yankee Doodle Dandy’s major achievements is creating a sufficiently warm atmosphere that diminishes those cynical inclinations. The film almost dares you not to go along for the ride by immediately foregrounding its cheesiest moment, a maudlin framing device in which James Cagney’s elderly Broadway legend George M. Cohan is summoned to meet with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The President is portrayed by Captain Jack Young, a little-known actor with ten IMDB credits, six of which are for the part of FDR. Although he was hired for his perceived resemblance to the President, Curtiz shoots him from the back, hiding his face in that same myth-making way he had portrayed Abraham Lincoln at the end of Virginia City. FDR’s voice is provided by Art Gilmore, a conspicuous dubbing that makes the scene seem even more awkward. Though they feel much more in keeping with Yankee Doodle Dandy’s corny heart, these taxingly saccharine bookends are quite overbearing and this overstated intro did cause me initial concern. Fortunately, the heightened theatricality is quickly contextualised by the film’s focus on its subject’s stage career as Cohan tells the President his life story. By the time this two hour flashback ends, the Oval Office love-in feels sufficiently earned, if still not completely devoid of cringe.
It is often acknowledged that Yankee Doodle Dandy’s major trump card is its Oscar-winning central performance and it’s hard to disagree with that. Cagney is terrific, portraying Cohan as an egotistical young man whose growing experience as a rising star ultimately makes him into a more astute, caring, if still wily, human being. He absolutely nails the singing and dancing, cavorting like an enlivened rag doll and belting out the witty lyrics in a manner that is said to have been close to Cohan’s own semi-spoken style. Fred Astaire, Cohan’s own preferred choice to play him, turned down the role because his dancing style was far smoother than Cohan’s. Cagney’s joyous hoofing, meanwhile, is said to have approximated Cohan admirably and Cohan himself is said to have commented “My God, what an act to follow!” upon seeing the film. Cagney is so thoroughly likeable in this role that not once do his numerous performances as brutal gangsters come to mind. Some critics have even suggested that the success of Yankee Doodle Dandy hinges entirely on Cagney. For my part, I don’t think this is quite true. There are plenty of other things going for this film. Michael Curtiz directs the hell out of it, for one. His staging of excerpts from Cohan’s plays is extraordinarily effective, managing to present intoxicatingly cinematic musical numbers in a way that they never seem implausible as stage productions. Two excerpts from Little Johnny Jones form a centrepiece of sorts: a lively Yankee Doodle Boy and a moving Give My Regards to Broadway. The sequence set to You’re a Grand Old Flag is perhaps more widely remembered, its avalanche of Stars and Stripes banners being Yankee Doodle Dandy’s most vehemently patriotic image. It’s unusual to see a group of people wielding flags and smiling warmly and from a 21st century point of view it’s easy to imagine that the twisted grimaces and bared teeth you more regularly see beneath such a display probably belong to people who imagine they are replicating this delightful sequence rather that perpetuating a racist nightmare from which the image of the flag is now utterly inextricable.
There are other strong elements that make Yankee Doodle Dandy thoroughly enjoyable. Robert Buckner and Edmund Joseph’s screenplay manages to convert lots of smaller anecdotal occurrences into a flowing representation of a life in the theatre. There are eyebrow-raising moments involving the violent disciplining of children but they are entirely consistent with the era, if still a little hard to enjoy in the folksy fashion they were once taken. The family dynamic is presented with just the right amount of sentiment for this film, which gives it considerably more leeway than the average parameters. Cagney’s real life sister Joan is good as Cohan’s sister Josie, while Walter Huston and Rosemary DeCamp are wonderful as the Cohan parents. In one scene that shows Cohan’s transition from pre-teen to young adult, he relates how he eventually ended up playing his own mother’s father on stage, aided by old age makeup. This is an amusing in-joke, given that DeCamp was actually eleven years Cagney’s junior. As Cohan’s wife Mary (a sort of amalgam of his two wives, the first of whom divorced him on grounds of adultery. That was never going in the film, was it?!), Joan Leslie is also delightfully game and lovably upbeat. The performances are bolstered by the beautiful backdrops against which they are set, courtesy of Art Director Carl Jules Weyl, last seen in the Curtiz canon making The Adventures of Robin Hood look sensational, and soon to be turning his hand to enhancing the perfection of Casablanca. Of course, all these accoutrements probably matter little if you don’t like the songs. Call them cornball if you like but Cohan himself must receive the credit for providing Yankee Doodle Dandy’s incredible array of numbers, ensuring that barely minutes pass without another memorable melody surfacing. Mary’s a Grand Old Name, Like the Wandering Minstrel, Over There… the hits keep on coming. If the details of Cohan’s life are not presented accurately, at the very least we are treated to an inarguable jukebox worth of his songs.
You might think this most patriotic of American movies would hold little appeal for this least patriotic of British viewers but there’s plenty to enjoy in Yankee Doodle Dandy even if it doesn’t inspire you to wrap yourself in the flag. Great musical numbers brilliantly directed, interspersed with a lively but cosily undemanding narrative and topped off with an absolutely superb, multi-faceted lead performance. It helps if you can place yourself in the shoes of a 1942 audience for whom the wartime context would’ve been vital. I’m not saying patriotism didn’t also have its problematic side in the 40s but there have been other presidents since then whom I’d much rather see shot from the back. Now there’s a divisive pejorative dig to exacerbate the divide and fuel the rampant problem. God bless America!
16. BRIGHT LEAF
Though it is largely forgotten now, Bright Leaf is an extremely effective entry in the Epic Melodrama genre with big star names, a strong screenplay, good performances and a familiar but satisfying narrative about revenge, avarice and corruption. Michael Curtiz directs with his usual tight professionalism, cramming a novel’s worth of plot into 110 minutes and punctuating it with memorable flourishes. Based on the novel by Foster Fitz-Simons, Bright Leaf follows the story of rival tobacco tycoons. The film begins with Brant Royle discovering that cigar manufacturer Major Singleton has foreclosed on him and his father to prevent them capitalising on their impeccable bright leaf tobacco crop. We also later learn that Brant’s attraction to Singleton’s daughter made matters personal. Back in town many years later to settle his dead uncle’s estate, Brant encounters his old rival, his abortive love interest and old flame Sonia, the owner of a high class and highly lucrative bordello. Brant also meets John Barton, an inventor who is struggling to get his new cigarette-rolling machine financed despite the fact that it could revolutionise the industry. Recognising the snobbery involved, Brant seizes the opportunity to go into business with Barton, making the formerly aristocratic practice of smoking financially accessible to the masses and exacting revenge on his enemies in the process. But will that initial payback be enough to satisfy Brant’s lust for power and is there a wild card where love is involved?
The story of a wronged man who, in the process of taking down his enemies, begins to acquire their worst attributes himself is an oldie but a goody. Bright Leaf sets us up with clear characters to side with and against and then slowly begins to muddy the waters. By the time of a truly excellent suicide scene around the midway point, things begin to flip and a blurry morality takes hold which only increases the fascination. Mildred Pierce scribe Ranald MacDougall turns in another riveting script filled with punchy exchanges and liberally sprinkled dramatic peaks. Brant Royle is a plum role for Gary Cooper. I usually don’t rate Cooper that highly as an actor but he nails this part with a simmering rage bubbling away underneath his performance from the outset. Excellent support is provided by Lauren Bacall as Sonia and Patricia Neal as Margaret, the two women in Brant’s life. Bacall is affectingly bruised without ever losing her poise and dignity, while Neal is petulant and manipulative, a bored, impish heiress who gets in over her head and then quickly teaches herself to swim. Donald Crisp is excellent and ultimately heartbreaking as the unscrupulous magnate Major Singleton, eschewing the standard big bad corporate man stereotype to create a character of much greater complexity. Jack Carson, a Curtiz regular, also stands out as a medicine show shyster who manages to attach himself to the lucrative business. His character’s progress from first scene to last is perhaps the most satisfying arc and authentically depicts the changes a person goes through over such a time period and in such exceptional circ*mstances.
Having just watched Michael Curtiz’s previous film Young Man with a Horn and condemned it for following a predictable and well-worn plotline, I feel somewhat hypocritical having been so taken with Bright Leaf. It follows, after all, a fairly standard melodramatic rise-and-fall narrative, complete with a tempestuous love triangle and a slide into corruption. Perhaps I just love the Melodrama template more than the Biopic one, although credit should be given to MacDougall who knows how to write this stuff with the sort of wit and eloquence that elevates it above the average soap opera. The excellent cast helps too, as does the fact that this film finishes the way it should, not with a tacked on happy ending. Curtiz, as always, is key to the film’s success, his deft directorial touches clearly visible in that aforementioned suicide scene and some joyous montages of the cigarette machine and its effect on the industry. In a world in which politicians are seeking to create the first smoke-free generation, it’s fascinating to watch a depiction of mass production of cigarettes as a leveller of class barriers. It’s fair to say that Bright Leaf fully earns the “tobacco depictions” warning with which it would now be slapped.
15. I’LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS
By the time he made I’ll See You in My Dreams, Michael Curtiz had got stuck in a glut of repetitive and discouragingly bland Biopics. Curtiz was the man who made the extremely successful and very entertaining Yankee Doodle Dandy in 1942 so of course the studio wanted him to do that again. In 1946 Curtiz made the terrible Cole Porter Biopic Night and Day, then in 1950 the pseudo-Biopic of Bix Beiderbecke in the fictionalised Young Man with a Horn. Between 1951 and 1952, Curtiz made three Biopics in a row. Sandwiched between the traditional and tedious Jim Thorpe – All American and The Story of Will Rogers is where you’ll find I’ll See You in My Dreams, a film I expected to fall in line with the pattern of the films that surrounded it. I was delighted then to discover that I’ll See You in My Dreams is not only a little bit different but also really very good.
Several things help I’ll See You in My Dreams stand apart from its contemporaries. The story of Gus Kahn, the lyricist responsible for countless classics from the Great American Songbook including It Had to Be You, Toot, Toot, Tootsie (Goo’Bye!), Makin’ Whoopee and Dream a Little Dream of Me, I’ll See You in My Dreams comes armed with an incredible soundtrack of the most instantly recognisable and infinitely hummable ditties. The songs form such a strong backbone for the movie that it almost veers closer to Jukebox Musical than Biopic, another genre I tend to dislike but of which this is a strong example. Extra layers of charm are applied by the cast, with Doris Day irresistibly buoyant as Kahn’s endlessly supportive, if sometimes manipulative, wife Grace and Danny Thomas boisterously funny and, when he needs to be, quietly moving as Kahn himself. The screenplay was written by former gag writers Jack Rose and Melville Shavelson, which accounts for the constant stream of witty asides and one-liners that pepper every scene in which no-one is singing. Perhaps even more notable than the sparkling dialogue is the story itself. While I don’t know enough about Kahn’s life to vouch for its accuracy, I’ll See You in My Dreams takes great care not to introduce unnecessary melodrama. There’s a hint of the rise and fall narrative but the emphasis is very much on the former, with the latter coming late in the game and proving to be only very temporary. This ensures that I’ll See You in My Dreams remains an upbeat and uplifting experience throughout. There’s even a plot in which a Ziegfeld chorus girl makes a concerted effort to steal Kahn away from Grace, in which Rose, Shavelson and Curtiz make damn sure the audience never thinks it will happen for a second. Having endured endless sensationalist Biopics that want to milk every hint of indiscretion for all its worth, it feels utterly refreshing to watch one that never wants us to feel even mildly at risk of salacious titillation. I’ll See You in My Dreams wants that warm glow to be felt in your belly rather than your pants.
There are a couple of sticking points in I’ll See You in My Dreams with which some may struggle. Famously, this is the film in which Doris Day appears in blackface. It’s a fleeting moment but the scene also contains a couple of key events so it tends to be highlighted more often than a similarly brief and regrettable moment in Yankee Doodle Dandy. Day’s blackface routine accompanies a performance of Toot, Toot, Tootsie, a song associated with Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor, so you can see why the choice was made to represent the song in that way but it’s jarring and unpleasant even with the benefit of context. The other thing likely to put off some viewers is the extremely sentimental ending. I’m a sentimentalist myself but even I could see how desperately the film was trying to manipulate me into an investment in Kleenex at this stage. Still, with its gently realised wholesomeness and sweet natured humour, I’ll See You in My Dreams feels like it has thoroughly earned this finale and I was fully willing to go along with it and let it strongarm me into feeling good. Day and Thomas are both wonderful in the scene, with Day’s copious tears demonstrating what a natural and underrated actor she always was.
Having recently watched quite a few dreary Biopics in my pursuit of completing the Curtiz filmography, I sat down to watch I’ll See You in My Dreams with a heavy heart. The speed and efficiency with which the film lightened that load was impressive and by the end of the first half hour my heart was flying instead. If you’re susceptible to this sort of thing, I’ll See You in My Dreams should leave you smiling and singing well into the following day.
14. THE HANGMAN
Screenwriter Dudley Nichols wrote some of the greatest Westerns ever made, including Stagecoach, Rawhide, The Big Sky and The Tin Star. The Hangman was his penultimate script, released the year before his death and, though it is a comparatively modest production, it bears all the hallmarks of Nichols’ eloquent, character-driven screenplays. The unusual story follows Deputy U.S. Marshal Mac Bovard as he attempts to apprehend the final member of a gang of robbers whose exploits ended in murder. The problem is he has never seen Butterfield, the final man, and rather than risk a wrongful arrest he must seek help in identifying him. Bovard visits Butterfield’s former girlfriend Selah and offers a $500 reward if she accompanies him to a small town where he suspects Butterfield is hiding out. Selah refuses as she is loyal to Butterfield, who showed her great kindness after her husband died, but Bovard leaves her a stagecoach ticket in the belief that everyone has a price. When Selah doesn’t arrive in town for days, Bovard is torn between frustration and admiration, a complex dichotomy which continues to define their complicated relationship when Selah finally does show.
Although it opens with the thunderous sound of horses galloping across the plains, The Hangman is largely defined by a more pared-down aesthetic. The premise itself immediately frustrates the potential for action as Bovard must step lightly, while his enigmatic partnership with Selah is filled with false starts and double crosses. Like 3:10 to Yuma, this is a Western of the mind, concerned primarily with psychological chess moves and complex morality. In this case, the audience becomes torn on for whom exactly they should be rooting, drip-fed information about all the key players until a clearer picture emerges over the course of 87 minutes. There are moments when the action ramps up a little bit but the film’s main strength is in Nichols’ dialogue and Curtiz’s measured pacing that compliments it perfectly. This isn’t a big budget film but it benefits greatly from that, its grainy minimalism befitting the low-key, cerebral material. Some of Curtiz’s collaborators in these later years suggested he had lost his touch with encroaching age but The Hangman is evidence of a smart director who knows when to get out the way and fade into the background. Though Robert Taylor and especially Tina Louise are very good (and Fess Parker, unfortunately, is very bad), the spotlight remains trained on Nichols’ screenplay, artfully adapted from Luke Short’s short story of the same name. Curtiz, meanwhile, keeps a tight grip on the reins and guides a dialogue-heavy Western convincingly through its twisting plot points and into the annals of the hidden gem.
13. FOUR DAUGHTERS
Michael Curtiz’s 1938 output is mostly remembered now for The Adventures of Robin Hood and Angels with Dirty Faces but at the time it was the Melodrama Four Daughters that received the most Oscar nominations, including a Best Picture nod. The film is not especially well remembered today but it is a strong, beautifully written and directed example of what was once known as the “woman’s film.” Although initially conceived as a Bette Davis vehicle, Four Daughters ended up starring the Lane Sisters, a family of musicians and actresses, a deal negotiated by the enterprising Lola Lane whose character here is tellingly described as “the smart sister.” In Four Daughters, the Lane sisters became the Lemp sisters, with only Leota Lane deemed unsuitable and replaced as the fourth sister by Gale Page. Claude Rains is their stuffy but loving father and May Robson their doting Aunt Etta. The Lemp family proved so popular that they turned up in two sequels in 1940 and 1941, with the whole cast also reuniting for 1939’s unrelated Daughters Courageous. The fact that the Melodrama went so out of fashion seems to be to blame for the consignment of these films to latter day obscurity but Four Daughters is still a powerful and effective example of the genre.
Four Daughters begins as a light Comedy about a group of women driving their father to distraction as they find their future husbands. For about 35 minutes we’re in the same bucolic world as Meet Me in St. Louis and On Moonlight Bay, a world of small town whimsy, picket fences and family picnics. But then the arrival of John Garfield as the earthy outsider Mickey upends everyone’s world and we head into much darker territory. Four Daughters never loses its quaint charm but Garfield, in his debut performance, changes the tone and direction of the film dramatically. It is as if a wise guy from one of Warner’s Gangster pics has somehow stumbled onto the wrong soundstage and got stuck in a Melodrama. Garfield made a huge impact right out of the gates, securing a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, but too often Four Daughters is talked about only in terms of his performance. For the dramatic juxtaposition to work, it is essential that the idealistic corn of the Lemp family’s life be well established and this is achieved admirably. Curtiz’s direction is as strong as ever, his experience of directingMelodramas throughout the 30s paying off in this bigger budget production. The cast are all very good, with the Lane sisters and Page proving themselves talented, charming presences. Priscilla, the youngest of the Lanes, gets the bulk of the work as Ann, the sister caught between two suitors, but it remains clear that her sisters are her world and Curtiz never marginalises any of them. Rains and Robson are reliably sweet and likeable as the older generation of Lemps, while Jeffrey Lynn, Frank McHugh and Dick Foran prove to be a delightfully diverse range of suitors, a far cry from the xeroxed handsome stiffs who so often drag down these productions.
Perhaps Four Daughters greatest asset is its screenplay by Lenore J. Coffee and Julius J. Epstein. Coffee had been writing screenplays since the silent era and her female perspective is crucial and keenly felt. Epstein had already worked with Curtiz once, his screenplay for Little Big Shot’s attempt to rival Shirley Temple pictures proving to be better than anyone might’ve reasonably expected. Between them, Coffee and Epstein created an eloquent, witty script that makes the characters deeply human and their relationships realistic. The central symbol of a swinging gate with a creaky hinge is beautifully woven into the film, providing a funny, moving and unexpected final beat. It also provides Curtiz with the opportunity for a quietly virtuoso piece of direction as Ann Lemp mistakes the groan of the gate for a tuning error with her violin, before the full implication of the sound she is hearing hits her. It’s a smart moment in both writing and execution, combining inherent humour with a subtle dramatic flourish. Four Daughters’ other major plot developments may cause some to question whether Curtiz pulled off the tonal juggling act but I think he succeeds admirably. The trick is in establishing just how much Mickey clashes with the world in which he finds himself and Garfield’s portrayal certainly does so. A warm, loving Christmas scene is cleverly tainted by his lingering on the outskirts of the festivities. There are no overexplained awkward moments, we just see Mickey’s psychological struggle through expression and body language, and the drastic turn that his story then takes makes sense if you’ve been concentrating. This melodramatic crescendo is also exceptionally handled by Curtiz, who presents a moment of unimaginable anguish in visual terms before segueing out of it into a suitably restrained but hopeful epilogue that manages to end on a moment of levity without undermining anything that went before. In fact, it enhances it.
For fans of the Melodrama like myself, Four Daughters is an essential piece of filmmaking. It balances several disparate tones exquisitely and provides an intoxicating mixture of sweet escapism and moving drama which fully justifies its multiple Oscar nominations.
12. THE SEA HAWK
The Sea Hawk is one of the most acclaimed of the Michael Curtiz/Errol Flynn Swashbucklers but that doesn’t mean fans of The Adventures of Robin Hood or even Captain Blood should go to it expecting more of the same. I remember the first time I ever saw The Sea Hawk, I had recently seen The Adventures of Robin Hood for the first time and was on a desperate mission to find similar films. With its reputation as a rip-roaring Swashbuckler and with several Robin Hood cast members returning, I thought that The Sea Hawk was a likely candidate to deliver the same lighthearted, colourful and humorous thrills as its Sherwood-based predecessor. But this was not the case and I left The Sea Hawk feeling disappointed. Subsequent viewings without such erroneous expectations did eventually reveal that this was something far more valuable than a carbon copy of Flynn’s previous successes. Combining the seafaring scope of Captain Blood with the fudged historical dramatics of The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, The Sea Hawk moves at a more deliberate pace and serves up much grimmer story beats, with death, enslavement and diabolical deceit driving its surprisingly brutal narrative. The rousing flair of lighter Swashbucklers is still here, mainly in an astonishingly mounted opening sea battle between a Spanish ship and a crew of British privateers, and a climactic swordfight between Flynn and a British traitor. But the time between these swashy staples is not spent twiddling thumbs (although a few moustaches are put through the twiddler). A lot of the first hour is spent in the court of Queen Elizabeth I establishing political context and malevolent machinations. An adventure in the Americas leads to an ambush and a nightmarish trip through some swamps that feels oppressively immersive, after which we get a tense escape from a slave galley which is distinguished by its quiet and slow execution. If The Adventures of Robin Hood barely gave the viewer time to catch their breath, they spend a significant portion of The Sea Hawk holding it in dread anticipation.
As well as a diverse and well-plotted screenplay by Howard Koch and Seton I. Miller, the latter already having proven his expertise on great Curtiz-directed screenplays for Kid Galahad and The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Sea Hawk has a plethora of other things working in its favour. The cast is largely terrific, with Flynn relishing the weightier material, Claude Rains playing an oily villain with his usual measured swagger, Alan Hale providing his by-now obligatory support as Flynn’s burly second-in-command, and Una O’Connor as a loyal lady-in-waiting who does far less shrieking and mugging than this wonderfully game actor was generally tasked with. If the nominal female lead, Brenda Marshall, is prevented from making an impact by the usual marginalised romantic female role, there is ample compensation to be found in Flora Robson’s Queen Elizabeth. Without being saddled with the maudlin mediations on ageing and love that made Bette Davis’s take on the same role feel part-powerful-leader and part-tragic-clown, Robson’s performance here is witty, lively and forceful. She prevents the long stretch The Sea Hawk spends languishing in her court from ever becoming dull and while she is obviously not a part of the big action sequences, Robson still comfortably walks away with the film. She is given the final big speech which draws a pointed parallel between the tyranny of the Spanish threat and the contemporary empire building of Hitler, a reference that would not have gone over audiences heads in 1940. Though it was in development from the moment Captain Blood became a hit in 1935, The Sea Hawk’s retooling as a piece of propaganda was achieved with comparative delicacy, allowing its allegory to become a historical curiosity in a film that still plays as a straightforward Adventure film too.
Although not granted the privilege of Glorious Technicolor, The Sea Hawk feels like a great big event film anyway. Sol Polito, whose cinematography had increased the magnitude of many previous Curtiz hits including The Adventures of Robin Hood and Dodge City, gets the tone entirely right with his handsome black and white aesthetic. For the harrowing scenes set in the Americas, Polito introduces a sepia tint which uniquely differentiates this otherworldly sequence from the rest of the film. This effective trick is missing in colourised versions of the film, inevitable but unnecessary attempts to upgrade a classic by wrongly assuming that all Swashbucklers are improved by colour. Another key Robin Hood collaborator also returns in composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, whose fantastically grandiose score is another gem. In retrospect, it is often chosen as Korngold’s masterpiece amongst his film scores, imbuing already impressive images of towering sea vessels with a rousing sense of majestic derring do.
The Sea Hawk may take off guard those who are expecting a lighthearted romp but it serves as an essential counterbalance to the fleet-footed swashbuckle of Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood, serving up instead a headier, denser alternative which doesn’t pull its punches in depicting a dangerous and violent world. Ooh, and there’s a monkey in it!
11. FLAMINGO ROAD
It was no surprise to learn that Flamingo Road’s writer Robert Wilder also wrote the novel Written on the Wind, on which Douglas Sirk’s deliciously lurid 1956 Melodrama was based. As Flamingo Road’s plot unfolded and its characters clashed with passionate fury, I was immediately put in mind of Sirk’s film, which itself would help pave the way for the phenomenon of daytime soap operas that eventually saw Flamingo Road itself adapted into an episodic format starring John Beck and Morgan Fairchild. It’s the sort of reference point that may cause more snobbish noses to wrinkle in disapproval but Michael Curtiz’s take on Wilder’s soapy material makes it into a smart and engaging political Noir that makes its thrillingly trashy flourishes all the more effective by exercising a degree of restraint in their setup. The central premise of a newly jobless carnival dancer facing off against a corrupt Sheriff who holds an entire small town in the palm of his hand makes for gripping viewing which is further enhanced by the casting of Joan Crawford and Sydney Greenstreet respectively. Crawford, whose previous collaboration with Curtiz in Mildred Pierce had provided her with perhaps her most iconic role, turns in another studied, quietly charismatic performance as Lane, the carnival dancer who decides enough is enough and effectively strands herself in Boldon City with 3 dollars to her name. It’s easy to imagine a lesser actor playing Lane’s increasingly troubled storyline with histrionic abandon but Crawford and Curtiz recognise the importance of an emotional anchor amidst the excesses of a ripe story. Curtiz therefore leans into the shadowy subtleties of Noir more than the Technicolor excesses of Melodrama and Crawford matches those requirements admirably.
It is Greenstreet who provides the more lurid aspects of Flamingo Road. His character, Sheriff Titus Semple, is irredeemably loathsome and Greenstreet’s deliberately charmless performance makes him a magnificent hate figure. Two films away from retirement and five years from death, Greenstreet does not look in the rudest of health here and, heartless though it may seem to suggest, his disheveled demeanour helps his performance. Sweating, lumbering, slurring his words, Titus Semple is the picture of physical fragility wrapped in the epitome of sad*stic mental rigidity. He is like an immovable object on the edge of a knife. There’s a fantastically cruel piece of dialogue in which Crawford’s Lane recalls an unfortunate event at the carnival and, fixing her gaze on the quietly fuming Semple, declares “You just wouldn’t believe how much trouble it is to dispose of a dead elephant.” In what it tells us about both characters and in its ferociously entertaining severity, the elephant line is testament to the degree to which Robert Wilder had mastered his art. To create really good soap you have to be fearless of the notion of having your mouth washed out.
One of the greatest weapons in the soap writer’s toolbox is the element of surprise and Wilder’s story provides plenty of curveballs. Zachary Scott, previously engaged in another troubled relationship with Crawford in Mildred Pierce, is memorable here as a spineless Deputy who romances Lane. Our expectations of their romantic story are scuppered when he fails to make a stand at a key moment, and suddenly our presumptive leading man becomes something far more interesting as he begins a downwards spiral from which there is seemingly no escape. Wilder also populates the small town with memorable characters, creating a sense of place the importance of which is at least equal to that of individual characters. If Flamingo Road doesn’t quite have the psychological resonance of Mildred Pierce, it thrives on creating a vividly defined compromised community for its boldly sketched characters. There’s an element of the Western here too, with Lane being the mysterious stranger who rides into town and upsets the tyrannical Sheriff. It is to the script’s credit that it focuses strongly on that relationship above the glamorous titillation of its complex romantic machinations.
It’s easy to see why Flamingo Road remains a hidden gem rather than an acknowledged classic. Unlike the smoky smoothness of Mildred Pierce, it goes for broke in its gaudy intensity and hopes the viewer will go along with it. The Noir Curtiz made between those two films, The Unsuspected, had been a sober and rather mechanical affair. Flamingo Road feels like a concerted effort to go in the opposite direction, as suggested by Wilder’s wonderfully ripe source. This trio of very different Noirs is testament to Curtiz’s extraordinary ability as a director to adapt to the demands of the material.
10. THE PROUD REBEL
The Proud Rebel is such a modest, quiet Western that it might be easy to mistake it for underwhelming. In fact, its warmth and meditative pacing make it one of the most noteworthy and captivating films Curtiz had made since he left Warner Bros. Based on a short story by James Edward Grant, the rights to The Proud Rebel were purchased by Samuel Goldwyn who passed them on to his son, Samuel Goldwyn Jr. Goldwyn Jr.’s attachment to and belief in the project led him to supplement its budget by taking out a personal loan in order to make the film the way he had envisaged. The resulting film has beautifully low-key colour cinematography by Ted D. McCord and a fittingly unassuming style that sometimes makes it feel like very high-quality TV. This is no insult, as one of The Proud Rebel’s main assets is its minimalism. With its setting on a remote farm, its family of local bullies, its later-career role for a female Hollywood icon, its prominent part for a young child actor and its starring role for Alan Ladd, comparisons with Shane were almost inevitable. Fans of Shane will likely find something to enjoy here but the films are tonally quite different. Shane has a mythic quality while The Proud Rebel is a very down-to-earth, human story. Its sentimentality is prominent but sincere, with the focus on Ladd’s John Chandler and his relationship with his mute son David, whose trauma induced silence Chandler seeks to cure. The casting of Ladd’s real-life son, whose first name is also used for the character, adds to the emotional charge of their scenes together. It was ultimately the younger Ladd who won the majority of the acclaim, winning a special Golden Globe award for best juvenile performance and being nominated in the Most Promising Newcomer and Best Supporting Actor categories.
The Proud Rebel isn’t entirely without action. There’s a punch-up, a shootout, a fire. There’s a sense of lingering threat hanging over the story throughout. But it is also a film of beautifully languorous pacing, allowing the viewer to inhabit and enjoy the small farm where Chandler and his son end up staying after a trumped up arrest for brawling. The wonderful Olivia de Havilland gives the film’s best performance as Linnett Moore, the tough but caring farmer who pays Chandler’s fine in exchange for him working off the debt on her farm. The fact that there is an early scene in which an elderly judge pesters Linnett about why she isn’t “respectably married” yet clearly foreshadows where this is going and yet the fact that Linnett and Chandler fall in love is not depicted as validation of the judge’s conservative outlook. The relationship develops because it feels right for those involved. de Havilland is subtly superb, bringing an immediate realism to a character who could’ve been played as an exaggeration. There is no fannying around with love/hate tension or doe-eyed declarations. Rather, The Proud Rebel is concerned with the coming together of a family, with David, and Lance the dog, being as much a part of the developing union as Linnett and Chandler. Cynics might suggest this unusual choice was based on the fact that both leads were in their 40s and no-one wanted to see traditional romantic scenes between them, but Ladd and de Havilland are both still patently beautiful, even if they are presented in an unglamorous fashion. The Proud Rebel is merely being true to its themes, tone and characters by sparing us the billing and cooing. The climactic acknowledgment of a family unit, established through image above dialogue, makes for a fantastically moving finale.
The Proud Rebel has fallen into the public domain, which means it can be easily be found on several free streaming services. This should not be taken as a comment on its quality. The Proud Rebel is a film out of step with Golden Age Hollywood convention but its family-friendly story and infectious gentleness make it a minor marvel in the Curtiz canon. It’s easy to imagine The Proud Rebel having been underwhelming if produced sloppily on a lower budget but Goldwyn Jr.’s dedication to quality provided the money to secure a strong cast, an excellent director and handsome colour cinematography, all of which prove to be essential in capitalising upon the sweet screenplay by Joseph Petracca and Lillie Hayward. The film has the nostalgic quality of a live-action Disney film or a 50s TV series but its deep humanism makes it uniquely cinematic in an unconventional sense. And there are moments peppered throughout, like Ladd and de Havilland connecting against the backdrop of a glorious sunset, that imbue this hidden gem with all the magnificence of a widescreen epic.
9. KING CREOLE
I haven’t seen many Elvis Presley films but generally speaking they don’t seem to be held in especially high regard. Obviously, given Elvis’s iconic status, there is still a great deal of interest from fans to sample his cinematic contributions but even amongst enthusiasts there seem to be few defenders of films like Harum Scarum and Stay Away, Joe. Jailhouse Rock (which I have seen and didn’t like) and Viva Las Vegas (which I actually really enjoyed) have their advocates but almost invariably you’ll find that people name King Creole as the King’s best picture. Elvis himself picked out this Michael Curtiz-directed Musical Drama as his proudest screen moment. It’s not hard to see why. King Creole is an excellent film, lacking the star-vehicle cheapness of other films in Presley’s oeuvre by virtue of the fact that it was not conceived as an “Elvis film.” Based on Harold Robbins’ novel A Stone for Danny Fisher, King Creole was altered from the story of an up-and-coming boxer to the rise of an aspiring singer. Elvis would get the chance to play a boxer a few years later in Kid Galahad, itself a remake of a Curtiz film from the 30s, but for now the change was a smart one. It allowed Elvis to play to his musical strengths while honing his acting talents in a role that, it should surprise no-one to hear, was originally intended for James Dean. With its knife-fighting greasers and generational clashes, this is pure Dean country. Curtiz made the wise choice to shoot King Creole in black and white in order to preserve that sense of urban grit.
Given that he was not really an actor, Elvis does fine here. Obviously he is an asset in the musical scenes, most of which are staged as realistic performance moments rather than credibility-straining action-interrupters, but his morose, nervy qualities end up informing the character in a way that is arguably more appropriate than the bruised co*ckiness that Dean might’ve brought to the role. At first there’s a period of adjustment, as Elvis’s sheer heft as an iconic figure tends to overwhelm the character he’s playing. But his investment in the part, as well as strong support from an excellent cast, fine direction by Curtiz and an eventful and gripping screenplay, quickly make King Creole a compelling viewing experience. That screenplay is the work of Herbert Baker and Michael V. Gazzo, the latter a decade and a half away from an Oscar nomination for his cracking performance in The Godfather Part II.
Production of King Creole can’t have been easy. Elvis had to be constantly moved from place to place to avoid his avid army of fans, but there was no avoiding the real army. A month before filming began, Elvis received his draft notice and the filmmakers had to obtain a 60 day deferment for him, citing the substantial losses they would make if their star was unceremoniously removed from production. Fortunately, on a more personal level King Creole was easier. Despite misgivings about working with a mega-famous youth, Curtiz got on very well with Presley, describing him as a “lovely boy.” This was probably largely down to Presley’s nervous obedience, foreshadowing his stint in the military by unquestioningly following Curtiz’s every command, including to lose a stone in weight and shave off his sideburns. The latter proved to be a good idea, differentiating Elvis from his star persona and allowing him to slip into that of Danny Fisher, the slightly unkempt, disillusioned and complex hero of the piece.
King Creole tells the story of Danny Fisher, a nineteen year old student still struggling to graduate from high school in an impoverished New Orleans neighbourhood. After saving Ronnie, the girlfriend of local club owner and gangster Maxie Field, from a group of Maxie’s sleazy friends, Danny finds himself having to perform a song in order to prove to a suspicious Maxie that there is nothing between them by validating her story of only knowing him from his singing. The performance catches the eye of the owner of another local club, the King Creole, who offers Danny a job. After becoming a sensation, Danny finds himself in hot water as Maxie attempts to hire him. Loyal to the King Creole, Danny is drawn into a criminal plot on the pretence of helping his father, who is being bullied at work by an arrogant pharmacist. The ups and downs of King Creole’s plot are familiar (the arrogant pharmacist aside) but the execution is so strong that it is a pleasure to watch throughout. The musical interludes are never less than pleasant and often great, with the title track and the classic Trouble standing out (oddly, the soundtrack’s biggest hit Hard Headed Woman is the one song that is barely heard, with only a snatch of the last few seconds appearing in the film), but it is testament to the dramatic excellence of King Creole that the songs are more sideshows than showstoppers.
There are several big names and recognisable faces among the supporting cast. Walter Matthau makes a brilliant villain, channeling his natural charisma into something more sinister than his later hangdog cynicism, and Vic Morrow is equally excellent as his chief henchman, Shark. Dean Jagger, by this point a Curtiz regular, is sympathetic and sorrowful as Danny’s downtrodden dad. The two leading ladies are tied into the age-old misogyny of the Madonna/whor* complex and it’s amusing that the apparent “good girl” Dolores Hart would soon quit acting to become a Roman Catholic nun, while the “bad girl” Carolyn Jones would become famous to television fans as Morticia Addams! Fortunately, though they play out the standard roles handed to these timeworn types, they are written in a more interesting way than that would imply. Jones’s Ronnie is a fascinating, brilliantly acted tragic figure whose dreams have been destroyed by toxic masculinity, while Hart’s Nellie finds her inclinations challenged by her attraction to Danny. One of King Creole’s most interesting depictions of 50s gender relations plays out between them in the doorway of a squalid hotel room. It’s a powerful moment that throws equal doubt on Danny’s positioning as a traditional hero.
Adding yet another string to his directorial bow, the aging Curtiz proved that, given the right material, he could still create great films at this late stage in his career. Amidst the growing mediocrity of his post-Warner Bros. output, Curtiz built on the excellence of his previous film The Proud Rebel to create a very different but even better follow-up. While his next film, The Man in the Net, would see him stumble once more, it is wonderful to witness the great director still able to churn out gems like King Creole well into his 70s.
8. CAPTAIN BLOOD
Captain Blood was a great success that not only helped to relaunch the popularity of the Swashbuckler but also provided it with its most iconic star of the sound era. Australian actor Errol Flynn had appeared in a brief, wordless role in Curtiz’s The Case of the Curious Bride earlier in 1935 but by Christmas he had top billing and had swung his way into the hearts of cinemagoers everywhere. Warner Bros. took a chance on casting this unknown and they doubled down on that by casting relative newcomer Olivia de Havilland as his leading lady. While Flynn’s instant stardom was a gift to the Swashbuckler genre, de Havilland’s was one of the greatest gifts Golden Age Hollywood ever received. Though she is sidelined from chunks of the action, de Havilland easily establishes herself as the best actor in the whole cast, imbuing her character with a charm and sympathy that is offset by her artfully sketched naive entitlement. Her chemistry with Flynn is strong (leading to seven more film collaborations) and their romance ingeniously progressive as each one ends up literally purchasing the other at some stage of the film, an obstacle that ensures their love is only made possible when full equality is established. Even at the age of 19, de Havilland is such a powerful presence that the standard male-favouring romantic imbalance of the era would seem implausible. Flynn might get the majority of the screentime and justify that with his considerable agility, boyish twinkle and theatrically appealing way with a florid speech, but de Havilland makes at least an equal impact in about half the screentime.
If the arrival of two screen legends at once makes that the obvious starting point when discussing Captain Blood, the film is so Bloody good (!) that it is hard to know where to go from there. Certainly director Michael Curtiz deserves a great deal of credit for making a film shot primarily on studio sound stages feel so expansive and epic. Sure, you can clearly see the false backdrops in scenes set aboard the ship but Curtiz keeps the action moving so engagingly and Anton Grot’s art direction is so beautifully ornate that the suspension of disbelief is a pleasure rather than a chore. Grot had worked several times with Curtiz before, his superb work adorning and enhancing films like Doctor X, Mystery of the Wax Museum and The Mad Genius, not to mention other classics of the era like Gold Diggers of 1933 and Little Caesar. Grot’s sets are crucial to Captain Blood’s impact and while it might be his pirate ship which is most widely remembered, it’s worth noting that the film doesn’t actually set sail for about an hour. The scenes on the Jamaican island of Port Royal that precede the seafaring storyline are almost equally enthralling and this is thanks in large part to how effectively Grot and Curtiz render this tainted paradise with cavernous rooms for its rulers and grotty accommodation for its enslaved rebels. Ernest Haller and Hal Mohr’s attractive black and white cinematography gives it that extra shine.
Captain Blood’s visual magnificence is matched by its verbal dexterity. Based on the novel by Rafael Sabitini, whose work would provide the basis for other cinematic Swashbucklers like Scaramouche and The Sea Hawk, Captain Blood was adapted by screenwriter Casey Robinson who would go on to provide Bette Davis with some of her most famous Melodrama roles including Dark Victory and the impeccable Now, Voyager. Robinson’s melodramatic flair is in evidence in his Captain Blood script, particularly in a terrific face-off between Flynn’s Peter Blood and a corrupt judge in an early trial scene. This powerful and subversively anti-authoritarian exchange sets the tone for the film’s infectiously rebellious dramatic side, while Robinson also displays his knack for jocular humour and rip-roaringly rousing action set-pieces. Delivering Robinson’s lines with aplomb are a gallery of great supporting actors including Guy Kibbee taking a break from buffoonish roles to play Blood’s loyal gunner Hagthorpe, Doctor X himself Lionel Atwill as the obsessive and sad*stic villain Colonel Bishop, and Henry Stephenson who appeared in both Captain Blood and the other seafaring adventure that pipped it to Best Picture glory that year, Mutiny on the Bounty. Aside from the leads, the other standout is Basil Rathbone who would become a staple of the Swashbuckler and would memorably cross swords with Flynn again a few years later in The Adventures of Robin Hood. Rathbone’s role here as French buccaneer Levasseur is comparatively fleeting but he makes his mark, not least by getting to be part of the film’s one big swordfight. Compared with Flynn and Rathbone’s more famous fencing match, this swordfight is a loose and scrappy affair but it proves a thrilling little set-piece nonetheless.
The major showstopper in Captain Blood is the climactic sea battle. Although it borrows some footage from the earlier silent Swashbuckler The Sea Hawk (Curtiz would also borrow that film’s name for his later, otherwise unrelated Flynn collaboration), it is incorporated smoothly enough to be unnoticeable. The whole sequence required one of the largest technical crews ever used on a film at the time, including 2,500 extras. You get to see an entire ship pretty much explode. It’s the biggest undertaking in a Curtiz film since 1928’s Noah’s Ark, a production on which his negligence cost the lives of several extras and directly led to the rewriting of safety protocols. Since then, Curtiz had largely worked on more modest productions, with only the prison break scene from 20,000 Years in Sing Sing and the mine explosions in Black Fury really hinting at something grander. Captain Blood saw him firmly back on an epic canvas with the appropriate runtime and resources to realise his vision. Lifting that vision to even loftier heights is the grandiose score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. With all the sweepingly romantic and preposterously rousing inclinations that a Swashbuckler demands, Korngold imbues the film with a pulse-pounding sense of adventure. Given only three weeks to compose over an hour of symphonic music, Korngold was forced to borrow from the work of Liszt and so refused to be credited as composer, taking a musical arrangement credit instead. This didn’t prevent his score receiving an Oscar nomination, although it was attributed to Leo F. Forbstein as head of the musical department. This nomination was one of three write-in votes that Captain Blood received, with Robinson’s screenplay and Curtiz’s direction also receiving unofficial nominations. Nathan Levinson’s sound was officially recognised by the Academy however, and Captain Blood also became Curtiz’s first Best Picture contender.
In terms of the Swashbuckler genre, Captain Blood was an epochal film, providing it not only with a rejuvenated energy but with two new stars, a composer and a director who would all become forever linked with the clash of swords and the invigorating cry of the adventurer. Even setting aside its historical significance, Captain Blood is just a sensational night at the movies. It set Curtiz on a path towards bigger, more ambitious productions, many of which would share and even surpass its classic status.
7. DAUGHTERS COURAGEOUS
Following the success of the multi-Oscar nominated Melodrama Four Daughters, public demand led to a reunion for the entire cast and the majority of the crew in another film the following year. This was not a direct sequel to Four Daughters (those would come later) but its similarities deliberately invited comparisons, as did the opening credits which billed the Lane Sisters and Gale Page as “The Four Daughters.” Despite being about a different family, Daughters Courageous undoubtedly belongs as part of the Four Daughters series. The Lane Sisters and Page are essentially playing the same roles and their characters are paired with the same men as they were in the previous film. May Robson is still the elderly female presence in the house, although this time she is the housekeeper rather than a relative, and breakout star John Garfield appears again as the outsider with an edge of danger about him. Despite these parallels, Daughters Courageous establishes itself as a tonally different film. It is far less melodramatic, preferring a quietly meditative approach in its examinations of past mistakes and regrets. The return of screenwriter Julius J. Epstein, this time collaborating with his regular writing partner and twin brother Philip, is central to the brilliance of the film and what it loses in the female perspective of his Four Daughters collaborator Lenore J. Coffee is more than made up for in the warm understanding of sibling relationships that Julius and Philip instil in the material. The Epsteins were also writers of great wit and they make their characters smart, funny and eloquent, even more so than in Four Daughters.
The chief difference between Four Daughters and Daughters Courageous is the latter’s introduction of two new cast members, Fay Bainter as the girls’ mother Nancy and Donald Crisp as her fiancé Sam. Their impending nuptials are greeted with excitement by the whole family but the atmosphere of joyous anticipation is interrupted by the arrival of Jim, Nancy’s impulsive ex-husband who abandoned the family twenty years before in order to travel the world. Claude Rains, formerly the lovable curmudgeon of a father in Four Daughters, is exceptional as Jim. While his blustering cuddliness in Four Daughters had been entertaining, Rains relishes the opportunity to sink his teeth into this far more ambiguous role. For a good portion of the runtime, it’s hard to tell whether Jim is being set up as someone for whom we should root for or against, and ultimately it turns out not to be quite that simple either way. Fortunately, his wanderlust at the expense of his responsibilities is not something the film seeks to romanticise as I feared it might. But rather than approaching it with headlong condemnation, Daughters Courageous explores Jim’s motivations and desperation in wanting to retract his actions with laudable nuance. It asks the viewer to put themselves in his place, less as an act of understanding so much as an experiment in vicarious regret. The Epsteins’ script acknowledges that some men are not suited to matrimony and domesticity, paralleling Jim with Garfield’s character as an effective illustration. The notion of such a conclusion in the marriage-obsessed Hays Code era is quite refreshing, although I can’t imagine it having been attempted with a female protagonist. In those days, and sadly these ones too, much more vicious denunciation would await a woman backing away from her domestic responsibilities than a man.
In weighing Daughters Courageous against its more famous predecessor, there were pros and cons to consider. Certainly Garfield makes a considerably smaller impact in this more restrained role, although his adjustments are entirely correct for the changes between the characters. May Robson, so wonderful in Four Daughters, is marginalised here by the removal of that family connection, while Jeffrey Lynn’s co*cky playwright is less convincing than his more charming, if still co*cky, composer. But the additions of Bainter and Crisp are good ones and it’s interesting to see the Lane Sisters and Page given a doting mother this time round. As for those four daughters themselves, they are just as charming and display just as much chemistry as in the former film. If the similarities don’t exactly test their range as actors, they succeed in recreating that magnetism that captivated audiences the first time round. But it is Rains who steals the show with his enigmatic turn in a spellbindingly unpredictable role. He portrays Jim as a deeply flawed, manipulative man with enormous potential to be a good and loving father, the tragedy being that he erased that potential in one selfish swoop. Though his arc is partially redemptive, the film quite rightly concludes that only a certain level of forgiveness is available to him.
Attempting to recapture the brilliance of Four Daughters by deploying the same cast in different roles might’ve sounded like a recipe for diminishing returns but instead Daughters Courageous improves on the original. Elegantly directed once again by Michael Curtiz, the film has a slightly increased runtime which it uses to its advantage in order to explore fascinating themes with a delicate realism instead of a melodramatic thump. I love a good Melodrama but the final act flourishes of Four Daughters are upstaged by the quieter but no less moving conclusions of Daughters Courageous. I was left with an immense feeling of satisfaction and a reluctance to leave this world and these characters. The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’m convinced Daughters Courageous is one of Curtiz’s masterpieces, although to put it in such auteurist terms is to misrepresent what a collaborative triumph this film is. A truly beautiful and underrated picture.
6. THE SEA WOLF
Michael Curtiz’s 1940 was entirely taken up by Errol Flynn Westerns and Adventure films. Curtiz could still turn out cracking, inventive examples of these genres given the right material, but too often he was getting lumbered with second-rate stuff like Virginia City or the dreadful Santa Fe Trail and, despite his continual professionalism, it’s fairly clear to see when Curtiz is bored. 1941 would see the end of his seven year working relationship with Flynn with the release of Dive Bomber but earlier that same year Curtiz directed another film, The Sea Wolf, which amply demonstrated how great a director he was when the screenplay he was given had a bit more substance. The Sea Wolf is a seafaring Adventure but, while there is still plenty of action and suspense, its focus is strongly on character and psychological interplay. Based on a novel by Jack London, cannily and eloquently adapted by future The Hustler and All the King’s Men scribe Robert Rossen, The Sea Wolf tells the story of an infamous seal-hunting ship called The Ghost, on which sailors will only voyage if taken by force. This is due to its cruel, brutal Captain, Wolf Larsen, who abuses, humiliates and physically assaults his crew on a daily basis. The assorted rogues, outcasts and drunks aboard the vessel are joined by George Leach, a tough young volunteer keen to escape trouble back home, as well as escaped convict Ruth Webster and refined writer Humphrey Van Weyden who are fished out of the water after their ferry collides with another vessel. Forced to join the crew and suffer the regular torments meted out by their sad*stic Captain, Van Weyden discovers another side to the brute that leads to a new level of philosophical warfare between them.
There’s a nice Noir edge to The Sea Wolf which Curtiz plays up with a thick, smoggy atmosphere hanging over every scene. Erich Wolfgang Korngold turns in one of his most restrained scores, still showcasing his talent for high drama but without the pomp and pageantry of his Swashbuckler soundtracks. The majority of The Sea Wolf takes place aboard The Ghost but Curtiz’s enigmatic and pacy direction coupled with Korngold’s score make the limited setting thoroughly cinematic. Anton Grot’s sets are the perfect combination of towering and claustrophobic, while Byron Haskin and Nathan Levinson’s special effects bagged the film its only Oscar nomination, I suspect chiefly for a fantastic collision of nautical vessels early in the film, a stunning moment that took me completely off guard. It’s a shame this was the only category in which The Sea Wolf was recognised, given the strength of Rossen’s deftly political screenplay which turns Edward G. Robinson’s Nietzsche-reading Larsen into a clear allegory for another dictator who loomed large in the minds of 40s cinema-goers. The Sea Wolf was rereleased on a double bill with The Sea Hawk in 1947 and it was testament to how quickly times change that its anti-Nazi stance was suddenly viewed as dangerously subversive, given that Larsen is depicted as both the product and victim of a draconian economic system. The scenes astutely examining how a capitalist society creates working class outcasts like George and Ruth were amongst those trimmed out of the film to make it fit into the allotted time for a double feature but Rossen, at the time a member of the American Communist Party, found himself being harassed by HUAC and eventually naming names. Stars Robinson and Garfield would also be hounded by HUAC, while Alexander Knox who plays Van Weyden and Howard da Silva who plays Harrison would both end up blacklisted.
The tragic political context surrounding The Sea Wolf not only makes it retrospectively even more fascinating, it highlights what a thematically rich and adaptable piece of work it is. A hit in 1941, it was controversial by 1947 and perhaps this change in political climate is what caused it to not be fully embraced as the classic it so clearly is. Another factor in this respect was that the 14 minutes that was excised for the rerelease went missing for decades, meaning that a truncated 86 minute version became the standard. Curtiz had made plenty of great films that were that length or shorter but The Sea Wolf’s psychological complexity and cerebral approach really need that extra quarter of an hour in order to breathe. Scenes of the philosophical debates between Larsen and Van Weyden, absolutely crucial to the film’s thematic resonance, were also hacked out. The film still works as a straight Adventure to an extent, with boat crashes, leaps from masts, escape attempts and life or death races against the clock all getting their share of the runtime. But the character details are what makes the film a cut above, in the same way that John Ford’s Stagecoach foregrounded the characters in the titular vehicle.
Perhaps the reason Robinson was once again overlooked for an Oscar nomination is that The Sea Wolf is too effective an ensemble piece to single anyone out. Robinson is magnificently imposing and multilayered as Larsen but he benefits from the general excellence that surrounds him, from Gene Lockheart’s sensitive alcoholic doctor to Barry Fitzgerald’s exquisitely sleazy cook. Knox is perhaps a tad too starchy but his role does call for it and his dignified pomposity highlights the class issues that drive so much of the narrative. As the working class drifter and convicted prostitute who fall for one another, Garfield and Lupino are finally a central couple worth rooting for after so many bland concessions to romance in Curtiz’s then-recent films. Lupino in particular is excellent, a scene in which she tries to manipulate the crew and then lashes out when her ruse is rumbled standing out as one of the acting highlights.
Curtiz was on a major roll by the time of The Sea Wolf. Still maintaining his prolific schedule, since 1938 he’d released at least one major classic per year, sometimes more. Those who decry Curtiz as a mere journeyman not worthy of consideration in the canon are often heard to derisively say that if you make that many films, you’re going to strike gold eventually. While that simply isn’t true, Curtiz was proving such snobs doubly wrong by the amount of clear gems he was churning out in such a short space of time. It’s heartening to see that The Sea Wolf is gradually building up a reputation as one of Curtiz’s finest films. Hot on the heels of The Adventures of Robin Hood, Angels with Dirty Faces, Daughters Courageous, Dodge City and The Sea Hawk, all made over the course of the preceding three years, The Sea Wolf is further evidence for Curtiz to be considered one of the greats.
5. MILDRED PIERCE
Mildred Pierce is one of Michael Curtiz’s most famous and acclaimed films and it tends to appear on most lists of the greatest Noirs ever made. The film’s enduring popularity is interesting given that it is a fairly atypical example of Noir, leaning more heavily into the conventions of what used to be known as the “Woman’s Picture.” The Noir link is firmly established from the outset when the name James M. Cain appears in the credits. Cain, of course, provided the source material for several cornerstones of the genre, including Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, but Mildred Pierce was a different kind of novel, applying Cain’s grimy worldview to a murderless tale of social class, family ties and societal gender roles. In adapting the novel, Ranald MacDougall added a murder as an initiating event for Mildred to tell her story to the police. While some may assume the murder was added to the plot for reasons of salacious sensationalism, it was in fact placed there at the behest of the Hay’s code and its insistence that misdeeds be punished. It’s a classic example of the kind of twisted morality to which such rigidly puritanical censorship can lead. The Bible says Thou Shalt Not Kill but the Hay’s office says you have to.
As it turned out, the addition of the murder worked extremely well and it provides the film with a satisfying structure and climax, not to mention a thrilling opening twenty minutes that contains some of Curtiz’s greatest direction. After that, as we enter the flashback narrative, Mildred Pierce settles down into a more deliberately paced psychological character study and depiction of domestic and financial struggles. Again, initial assumptions that this might be the result of a toning-down of Cain’s novel are incorrect, as it was Cain himself who implored Curtiz not to introduce the sort of hardboiled content associated with the author’s name. Instead, Cain felt Curtiz should emphasise the major theme of “one woman’s struggle against a great social injustice – which is the mother’s necessity to support her children even though husband and community give her not the slightest assistance.” Although Curtiz was never a director with a consistent political viewpoint, the highlighting of this feminist angle makes Mildred Pierce feel like a natural companion to his previous film, the surprisingly progressive Roughly Speaking, even though the two films are very different beasts indeed. Curtiz managed to honour Cain’s wishes admirably, with the Noir leanings of the framing device remaining an implication bubbling below the surface for the majority of the runtime. While some complain of the Woman’s Picture leanings, Cain’s description of his novel, as well as the title, make it clear that this is a woman’s story, so what is the astute filmmaker to make but a woman’s picture?
Mildred Pierce is a woman’s picture in another, more specific sense. The film belongs to Joan Crawford, whose Oscar-winning turn in the titular role is as sensitive and powerful a characteristion as you could hope for. Crawford is committed to making Mildred a realistic central figure, her compromised morality driving an essentially good woman to act in often surprising ways. Crawford is supported by a terrific cast whose performances are pitched just that little bit more exaggerated so that Mildred’s humanity is emphasised by comparative grotesquerie. Two of Crawford’s female costars were also Oscar nominated: Eve Arden as the amusingly cynical restaurateur Ida and Ann Blyth as Mildred’s hideously spoiled daughter Veda. Blyth is particularly excellent, given that her role is the driving force of the narrative and Mildred’s actions, and she holds her own in her numerous intense scenes with Crawford, while never making the unwise move of trying to wrest the film from her. The other performance of note comes from Jack Carson, whose turn as a swell guy in Roughly Speaking was the complete opposite of the sleaze he plays here. The opportunistic, unscrupulous and persistently lascivious Wally Fay is a pleasure to hate and Carson makes him vividly oily and disagreeable, a key factor in the audience not instantly losing sympathy for Mildred as she opens the film by attempting to frame him for murder.
As someone with as much love for Melodrama as I have for Noir, Mildred Pierce comes together wonderfully for me, tossing in elements from both genres and bringing them to a perfectly blended boil. Curtiz’s restraint in telling Mildred’s story the way it needs to be told has been a key factor in the film’s endurance, making it the most unusual of Noirs but sprinkling in that unmistakable flavour of a mouthful of cigarette butts that lingers post-viewing as a vivid confirmation that you’ve been in the same shadowy hinterland where Walter Neff sold his soul for an anklet.
4. THE BREAKING POINT
With so many credits to his name and so many classics among them, Michael Curtiz was bound to have a handful of underrated films worthy of mentioning alongside those big hitters. The Breaking Point has latterly become one of the most lauded of those lesser-known works, with a Criterion re-release rescuing it from comparative oblivion. An excellent, exciting, well written, acted and directed gem, The Breaking Point found itself immediately buried when its star John Garfield was named in the anti-Communist Red Channels report. His subsequent blacklisting would end his career, his marriage and, ultimately, his life when long term heart problems were exacerbated by his harassment at the hands of HUAC. This tragic tale is in keeping with the tone of his penultimate film. The Breaking Point is a taut, grim, intense tale of struggling fishing boat captain Harry Morgan’s descent into hell as his desperation for money forces him to begin associating with shady lawyer Duncan, who views his boat as an opportunity for various immoral deeds. When these errands plunge Harry into a world of death and degradation, he is torn between his moral compass and his duty as provider to his family. Curtiz tells the story with invigorating economy, with the various dramatic developments delivered in a chillingly matter-of-fact way. The sh*t piles up so quickly that there is no time for anguished close-ups or dramatic musical stings. One moment in particular is genuinely shocking but the film barrels forward, treating it like any other occurrence and forcing the audience to process it quickly alongside the shaken Harry.
The Breaking Point is based on Ernest Hemingway’s novel To Have and Have Not, which had been adapted just six years earlier by Howard Hawks. Hawks’s version, though less faithful to the source material, offered the added glamour of Bogart and Bacall and their undeniable chemistry. By contrast, Curtiz’s film is a deliberately unglamorous affair. Its sleazy criminal activities are juxtaposed with domestic scenes that almost feel like a forerunner for Kitchen Sink Drama. This combination of everyday realism and the grimy underworld that is just one bad decision away is one of the elements that makes The Breaking Point so unique. I found myself as riveted by the domestic drama as I was by the brutal action, with the former significantly increasing the stakes of the latter. Pivotal to this was the performance of Phyllis Thaxter as Harry’s wife Lucy. A role with no degree of glamour whatsoever, Thaxter makes Lucy indelibly real and movingly sympathetic, to the point where I was practically begging Harry not to give in to the temptation of Patricia Neal’s flirtatious Leona. Neal is also superb here, saddled with the difficult task of providing the sex appeal in a manner that balances the alluring with the repugnant. She walks this line brilliantly, her brazen coquetry proving an unwanted turn on for Harry and a deliberate turn off for the viewer, in sharp contrast with Bacall’s come-ons that practically broke the fourth wall with their audience-targeting libidinous stirrings. Though the women steal the film, the male cast is good too. Garfield is convincingly torn between being a devoted family man and his dark side which that devotion ultimately unleashes. I was pleased to see Juano Hernández, so wonderful in Curtiz’s previous Young Man with a Horn, return as Harry’s long-time partner Wesley, a small but pivotal role, while Wallace Ford is unforgettably foul as Duncan. You can almost smell the stench of stale sweat and corruption coming off him in a way I’ve not experienced so vividly since M. Emmet Walsh’s performance in the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple.
Hawks’s To Have and Have Not, despite keeping the titular reference, removed Hemingway’s themes of economic inequality but Curtiz’s rawer film restores them. The struggles of the Morgans to live a normal day-to-day life motivate The Breaking Point’s narrative and Ranald MacDougall’s incisive screenplay manages to tap into the social hierarchy without overstating its point. Wesley, for instance, is a black man whose race is not overtly mentioned. Yet in the heartbreaking final image, as the wounded Harry is rushed off by medics towards an uncertain fate, it is Wesley’s son who is left completely alone waiting in vain for the return of his murdered father. It’s a striking climactic moment in which the director invites not only the audience but also the surrounding characters to finally focus on its underprivileged white protagonists, before revealing another layer of deprivation to which no-one is paying attention. It’s an incredible, loaded closing image which has haunted me since the moment I saw it. Given the Hay’s Code’s insistence on criminal acts being punished, it’s amazing that The Breaking Point got away with so ambiguous an ending for its lead characters, while the devastating outcome for one innocent little boy further demonstrates the ineffectuality of such a morally prescriptive system of censorship.
The Breaking Point is far from a feelgood film which may scupper its chances with many people of displacing more broadly accessible works in the Curtiz canon. But after much deliberation, I decided the film warranted a place towards the top end of my ranking. I have been thinking about the film all day and am already keen to revisit it, despite (or perhaps, given how expertly it is achieved, because of) its taxing emotional register. This is Curtiz at his most stripped back and viscerally effective and it seems likely that in years to come The Breaking Point will align more with modern tastes and usurp To Have and Have Not’s place in the cinematic canon.
3. ANGELS WITH DIRTY FACES
With their infamous run of early Gangster films, Warner Bros. had made a name for themselves as the gritty Hollywood studio but the arrival of the Hays Production Code made it impossible to make those films in quite the same way. As well as its crusade against anyone satirising the clergy, depicting interracial relationships or showing instances of white slavery (one word can say a whole mouthful, eh?), the self appointed bastion of moral fortitude that was the Hays Office was determined that harsh consequences always be depicted for screen villains. The Warner Gangster films generally ended with the usually fatal comeuppance of their protagonist but there was concern that their deaths were depicted as borderline heroic, romanticised icons bathed in lurid neon as they croaked out eloquent final declarations. That would all need a rethink. All things considered, Angels with Dirty Faces could’ve been abysmal. It feels very much like a Gangster film shaped for the Hays Code era, with a bad-to-the-bone villain and a resolutely good hero flanking a protagonist who seems to have one foot in both camps. But there’s nothing about James Cagney’s Rocky Sullivan that feels like a compromise.
Cagney had been offered Rowland Brown’s scenario for Angels with Dirty Faces during the two years he spent away from Warner Bros. with Grand National Pictures but Grand National could not secure financing. After the studio went bankrupt, Cagney returned to Warners and took Angels with Dirty Faces with him, where a screenplay was developed by John Wexley and Warren Duff and Michael Curtiz was assigned as director. A great cast was assembled that included Cagney, Pat O’Brien, Ann Sheridan, Humphrey Bogart and The Dead End Kids. The latter got their name from having appeared in the Broadway play Dead End, which was subsequently made into a popular film with the Kids retaining their roles. They continued to work under various names for the next couple of decades, including Little Tough Guys, The East Side Kids and The Bowery Boys, but The Dead End Kids is the moniker by which they are best remembered and which is used on their Hollywood Walk of Fame star. The Kids have a fun slapsticky energy but their crucial role is as surrogates for all those impressionable youths about whom the Hays office were ostensibly so concerned. Their characters idolise Cagney‘s Rocky, while O’Brien’s Father Connolly tries to keep them on the straight and narrow. Using street-smart kids instead of big-eyed impressionable poppets ensures Angels with Dirty Faces’ premise never feels overly sentimental. The masterstroke though is in making Rocky and Father Connolly childhood friends whose paths diverged when Rocky took the fall for a crime they committed together. When Rocky returns to the old neighbourhood as an infamous criminal fresh out of prison, his reunion with Connolly confirms a powerful chemistry between them that has survived intervening years and conflicting outlooks. This relationship is the heart of Angels with Dirty Faces, somewhat marginalising the more conventional angle of Ann Sheridan’s old-nemesis-turned-romantic-interest, a red herring that essentially peters out.
Between The Public Enemy, White Heat and The Roaring Twenties, Cagney amassed plenty of iconic gangster roles but Rocky Sullivan is his finest. He was quite rightly nominated for the Best Actor Oscar (and quite wrongly lost to Spencer Tracy in Boys Town) for this role and it remains a powerful and human portrayal even after hearing the barrage of parodic impersonations it launched. Cagney makes Rocky vividly human, a big personality whose adopted criminal lifestyle is offset by his skewed but strong moral code. An act of loyalty to a friend inadvertently sets him on the wrong path but it is another act of loyalty to that same friend that provides the devastating, redemptive denouement that bookends the story so beautifully. As that friend, Pat O’Brien gives a great performance too. Thoroughly convincing as the good-hearted priest who can’t deny his earthier side, it’s a delicate and nuanced portrayal that provides ample believable evidence that these two apparently disparate characters could be natural lifelong friends. A lesser script would’ve ignored the necessity to validate this odd couple pairing but Angels with Dirty Faces makes the crucial relationship abundantly touching and convincing. According to Cagney, there was a lot of improvisation on the set which would account for the inherent warmth that radiates from Cagney and O’Brien’s scenes. The two became lifelong friends in real life.
A lot of Angels with Dirty Faces’ reputation rests on its legendary finale, so beautifully conceived, directed and acted, but its success rests just as heavily on setting up those characters and establishing a connection with the audience. The film’s comparatively leisurely pace and Cagney’s unforgettable, layered performance build towards a terrific third act shootout and that emotional gut-punch, while O’Brien’s desperately moving work in those climactic moments elevates them further. There are some who see the ending as ambiguous, a viewpoint that Cagney himself encouraged, but I’ve only ever read it one way, the way in which those indelible characterisations are leading the viewer. Angels with Dirty Faces is gripping, humane, funny and deeply affecting, making it a cut above its more morally ambivalent predecessors. In insisting on adherence to a rigid moral code based on a binary view of morality, the Hays Office ironically helped to birth one of the most layered, sympathetic bad guys the silver screen has ever known.
2. CASABLANCA
It’s hard to believe in retrospect but when the production team began work on a little film called Casablanca, none of them expected it to really stand out among the roster of releases that year, let alone end up a timeless classic that has become emblematic of the magic of Golden Age Hollywood. The modest intentions of the filmmakers play a big part in making Casablanca the iconic masterpiece that it is. This is not Gone With the Wind, a film designed to be an award-gobbling juggernaut, self-consciously creaking under the weight of its own length and ambition. Casablanca is a snappy 100 minutes that aims primarily to entertain but hits all its targets so incredibly squarely that it is elevated beyond its intentions without ever feeling like it is showing off. It’s a rarity that all elements of a picture come together so completely but Casablanca is the complete package, which explains why it continues to dazzle to this day and why Warner Bros. choose to evoke its memory with a burst of As Time Goes By at the top end of every one of their new releases. That’s essentially a banner that says “Warner Bros.: we made goddamn Casablanca, y’all!”
I have a young son so when I watch TV in the evenings I tend to keep the volume low and have the subtitles on. But sometimes the captions alter the dialogue slightly for the sake of convenience and it became quickly apparent while watching Casablanca that the subtitles had to go because to alter the dialogue of Casablanca whatsoever is detrimental to its magnificence. These were particularly clipped captions, so I found myself hearing sparkling witticisms coming from the characters’ mouths and reading bland summaries underneath them. Good though the storyline of Casablanca is, the magic is in the telling rather than merely moving from plot point to plot point. A large part of this magic is derived from the absolutely exquisite screenplay by Julius and Philip Epstein & Howard Koch. Julius himself later said that the Casablanca screenplay contained “more corn than in the states of Kansas and Iowa combined. But when corn works, there’s nothing better”. I’d be a little kinder than this to Casablanca’s script. It’s style is what I’d call Hollywood-poetic. The language is beautiful without being florid, eloquent without being unrealistic, funny without being showy and deeply romantic without once hinting at nausea. The quotability is ludicrously high: “Here’s looking at you, Kid”, “Round up the usual suspects”, “We’ll always have Paris”, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns, she had to play it again in my crazy hill of beans, Sam.” You know the drill.
I suppose I can imagine how the Epsteins could’ve seen their screenplay as corny, having gone through the process of setting it down on paper and crafting it into a thing of hardbitten, heartbroken poetry. But once it reached the mouths of this particular cast of actors, its legend was cemented forever. Of the 22 speaking parts, only Paul Henreid as the blandly heroic Victor Laszlo fails to impress. As the lesser third point in the central love triangle, Laszlo is a weaker role in terms of witty lines or romantic moments so Henreid’s stiffness isn’t too distracting but you can’t help but wonder if an actor with more charisma might’ve upped the stakes even more. Henreid, described by Ingrid Bergman as a “prima donna”, did not get along with his co-stars and reportedly called Humphrey Bogart a “mediocre actor”. He only took his role when he was promised top billing alongside Bogart and Bergman but that ain’t fooling anyone. Casablanca knows who its real stars are. Witness the build up the screenplay gives to Bogart‘s Rick, setting him up as an unseen, legendary figure in the course of a few concisely effective opening scenes, before introducing him by focusing on his hand as it writes a signature, only then slowly panning up his arm to reveal Bogart in all his iconic glory. Bergman, meanwhile, isn’t so much shot by the camera as consumed by it. It relishes her every moment of screentime and though her simple glamour is never overstated, there is not a moment when we question how this woman could’ve penetrated the tough exterior of someone like Rick and irreparably shattered his insides. Their chemistry in the scenes they play together is palpable. Playful and merry in the Paris flashbacks, simmering and desperate in the heartbreaking aftermath.
If the strong central performances give Casablanca its foundation, the film is made special by its gallery of colourful supporting players and their beautifully drawn smaller moments. It’s a cineaste’s dream to find Claude Rains, Dooley Wilson, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Conrad Veidt and S.Z. Sakall all in the same film. Of these legends, several get mere minutes of screen time but all of them contribute something. I couldn’t imagine Casablanca without Lorre’s weaselly cameo as the shady Ugarte or Veidt’s overbearingly intimidating performance as Major Strasser. As club pianist Sam, Wilson feels like the beating heart of the film, his unforgettable musical interludes including the evergreen As Time Goes By, guaranteed to slay any fan of classic cinema within its first few bars. I love Sakall’s sympathetically avuncular performance as Carl the Waiter too, a performance I often forget about between viewings. It’s testament to the deluge of excellent characters and performances in Casablanca that a memorable creation like this could fall through my memory cracks.
But above all the supporting performances and, for me, even the leading ones, stands Claude Rains as Captain Renault. Amongst all Casablanca’s dream roles, this one is the absolute plum and they went to the finest supporting actor in Hollywood to fill it. Renault is an audacious creation for a 40s film. He begins as a Nazi collaborator and proudly corrupt official, who we then learn extorts sex from female refugees in exchange for transit papers and is involved in implied acts of murderous police brutality. I can only assume that the prudish censors having both eyes squarely trained on ensuring Casablanca didn’t allow a female character to leave her husband for another man is the only thing that allowed the monstrous Renault to walk off into the sunset with Bogart at the film’s conclusion. But the writing and Rains’ extraordinary performance are the things that ensure that, perhaps more troublingly, we are happy that he does. The elliptical manner in which Renault’s worst crimes are portrayed may have been imposed on the writer’s by the production code but it ends up lending the film a smart ambiguity that creates the illusion that the character is not beyond redemption. It doesn’t hurt that Rains gets all the funniest lines or that he is so naturally charismatic that we can’t wait for him to be on screen. Rains has rarely had the chance to display his excellent comic timing as prominently as he does here. Witness the moment when, in the midst of shutting down Rick’s club on charges of illegal gambling, he coolly and graciously accepts his own winnings without missing a beat. Rains is the thing that keeps me coming back to Casablanca more than anything else and Louis Renault is one of cinema’s greatest, most compellingly amoral characters.
I can’t consider the brilliance of Casablanca without mentioning Michael Curtiz. Despite having directed one of the defining films of the Golden Age, Curtiz is regularly devalued by those who see his status as a journeyman director as confirmation of a lack of talent comparable with that of their preferred auteurs. Though I undoubtedly enjoy the convenience auteur theory brings to the easy categorisation of films under their director’s headline, I also think it tends to minimise the contributions of the thousands of contributors in what is undoubtedly a collaborative medium. But Curtiz is one of those rare directors who is often excluded from the conversation when his films are discussed, or else minimised with that idiotic assertion that if you direct enough films you’ll eventually hit gold. Curtiz was incredibly prolific but even at the rate of five or six films a year I still don’t think just anyone would eventually make Casablanca. I doubt the average novice director could bumble their way into directing even a film as good as King Creole. At some point we have to give the man some credit! The main issue with considering Curtiz in conjunction with auteur theory seems to be a perceived lack of a personal style, but watch enough of his films back to back and you’ll notice the consistency of his classical professionalism. He has a good eye for aesthetically pleasing compositions but he never once feels like he’s putting the audience’s opinion of his expertise above the audience’s desire for entertainment. Curtiz can keep a steady hand on proceedings while also getting out of the way, so while you might not have necessarily guessed that he directed Casablanca, when you find out it makes complete sense. Given the large cast and throngs of extras Curtiz had to deal with, while also ensuring that the mechanics of a potentially complex plot remained easy to follow and entertaining to watch, I think he deserves our applause, as well as the Best Director Oscar he won.
It’s fitting that we should end our discussion of Casablanca with that final scene, perhaps the most iconic in cinema history. It’s tempting to see it purely in romantic terms but it is so much more than a sentimental flourish. In fact, it acknowledges that, however strong the love of two people is, there are some things that are more important, which is not a sentiment you’re likely to find in cheaper films that fetishise romance at the expense of a deeper understanding of the complexity of love. Still, anyone who has had their heart broken or had to say a painful goodbye should feel more than a small stirring during this finale. If some may have an issue with the way Rick makes the decision for Ilsa, it’s worth remembering that she specifically asks him to do the thinking for both of them in an earlier scene which, while it could be seen as problematic in itself, I’ve always seen as an acknowledgement that Ilsa has made the same decision already but just needs that extra push to go through with it. If there’s a patronising air to the line “Someday you’ll understand that” from Rick, it’s lost amongst such beautiful surrounding dialogue that it’s easy to chalk up to its era without too much disruption. The rest of the dialogue is quotable line after quotable line and Curtiz, Bogart and Bergman all capture this intimate moment to perfection. Ingeniously, Renault is also a crucial part of the scene, at first on the sidelines and then foregrounded with his own famous quote and an act of sacrifice that rounds off the film with a glorious moment of tender jocularity. It’s unthinkable that there was once an intended coda to Casablanca and fortunately David O. Selznick recognised what a terrible mistake it would’ve been to change the ending one iota. As it is, Casablanca sticks the landing like no other film before or since. Even in the face of inevitable parodies, it has retained its power to move, thrill and amuse in equal measure. Hearing that final line and swell of music is one of the most rousing cinematic experiences, every single time.
1. THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD
I have always loved the story of Robin Hood since I was a child. However, few filmic attempts to capture the essence of what struck a chord with me about this legend have been particularly successful. While I loved the Disney animated version as a child (and still do, incidentally), my favourite Robin Hood related offerings were invariably parodies like Tony Robinson’s brilliant children’s TV series Maid Marian and her Merry Men or Chuck Jones’ classic animated shorts Robin Hood Daffy and Rabbit Hood. However, these were spoofs, albeit affectionate, of the tale I loved so. What I craved was a full-scale recreation of the jocular, boisterous, colourful epic that filled my mind every time I read the stories of Nottingham’s noble bandit. When I first discovered Michael Curtiz’s The Adventures of Robin Hood all my dreams came true at once. With its beautiful outdoor settings, breathtaking cavalcade of action set-pieces, exceptionally rousing score and relentlessly infectious joviality, The Adventures of Robin Hood transported me to another world away from the problems of everyday life like no other film ever had. It’s quite simply cinematic magic, all filmed in Glorious Technicolor which floods my brain with serotonin and paints a smile on my face as bright as the vivid greens and reds of its own celluloid images.
It would likely be impossible to recapture what makes The Adventures of Robin Hood so wonderful in a modern day production, which explains why so many attempts have discarded the key components of what makes it such a ripping yarn and ended up with a dark, brooding bore instead. The high levels of storybook camp which characterise the whole legend just don’t sit comfortably with 21st century aesthetics and no current stars of the day would seem comfortable in the full Lincoln Green outfit and tights that my vision of the true Robin Hood story demands be in place. Yet in 1938 everything was perfect for such a yarn. The three-strip Technicolor process, relatively new at the time, was absolutely ideal for this materiel, its bold, garish attractiveness capturing the luminous joy of the tales on which the film is based. The script was able to be boldly theatrical without seeming ludicrous and the ornate sets created a real sense of pageantry on which the magic of Robin Hood absolutely hinges.
And then, of course, there is the cast. Could there ever be a more perfect man for the role of Robin Hood than Errol Flynn? His easy charm, winning smile and agile frame all make him ideal but it is his utter willingness to immerse himself in this potentially ludicrous role which makes it work so brilliantly. Flynn is unselfconscious in the extreme, seemingly loving every opportunity to prance around in tights, brandish his bow, smirk out a cheeky put-down and throw back his head in exaggerated, bellowing laughter. He’s like a schoolboy relishing being centre of attention in his school play, which taps into an essential characteristic of the boyish Robin which was so noticeably missing in so many later portrayals. The fact that The Adventures of Robin Hood was initially conceived as a vehicle for James Cagney is almost unthinkable now. While Flynn had yet to impress quite as much outside of the Swashbuckler, he seemed to understand the underlying rhythms and emotions of the genre better than any other leading man. He really is excellent here, whether he’s swinging from ropes, brandishing a sword or romancing a woman. The scene in which he is baffled and saddened by Marian’s question about what he gets in return for helping the poor is acted with such authentic, halting incredulity that I felt it to my core.
But just as crucial to the success of The Adventures of Robin Hood is the leading lady. Olivia de Havilland is a perfect Marian and she makes the speed with which she falls for Robin, a man she openly despises to begin with, utterly convincing. More impressive still, de Havilland manages to make herself more beautiful as her character becomes more appealing. At the outset, as she fawns over Prince John and closes her mind to the wrongdoing that surrounds her, she is almost repulsive at times. As she melts and acknowledges her own naivety however, de Havilland unleashes her allure through her performance until she is as utterly captivating as any Maid Marian should be. Marian’s journey from toadying enabler to woke heroine is testament to the superb writing of Seton I. Miller and Norman Reilly Raine. I’ve been so caught up in the stunning visuals, music and action on my many previous viewings of The Adventures of Robin Hood that I’ve missed what a strikingly witty and intelligent screenplay it has. In the case of Marian, Miller and Raine make her a study in ingrained attitudes, with the normalised bigotry and self-interest by which she has always been surrounded poisoning her mind. Fortunately, this Marian is credited with the intelligence to respond appropriately on finally being exposed to the poverty and misery from which she has always been sheltered, and she becomes a symbol of hope in an age in which so many people enter a debate with the intention of defending and preserving an existing opinion, even if that means denying the evidence right in front of them.
Robin Hood may be an Adventure story at heart but it has progressive political underpinnings (you just have to pretend that holy crusade that King Richard went on was totally cool and not questionable at all) and Miller and Raine choose to accentuate that. They also wisely opt to keep the emphasis on action with set-piece after set-piece keeping viewers enthralled. The film opens with a very brief set-up (including a nice symbolic spilling of wine) and then we are thrown immediately into the first big action sequence as Robin single handedly escapes from the castle banquet he has co*ckily gatecrashed. It is instantly apparent from this heart-stopping sequence that we are in for a treat and Curtiz (who was brought in to replace original director William Keighley when it became apparent he wasn’t an action director) keeps the thrills coming, some of them small scale (the duel on the bridge with Little John) and others large (the archery tournament). When any major exposition is required, a written caption ensures we get all the necessary information without having to slow down the pace. By the film’s finale (a legendary sword fight between Flynn and Basil Rathbone which is every bit as wonderful as you’ve probably heard), only the most demanding of moviegoers could complain they had not been entertained at some point in the movie.
With a strong villain also being so crucial to any production of this story, the presence of the ever-reliable Basil Rathbone is further cause for celebration. Rathbone seems to instinctively know how to play the role of Sir Guy of Gisbourne and he looks tremendously handsome in the period costume. Eschewing the element of camp that runs through most of the other performances, Rathbone’s Guy is a threatening, frustrated presence who quietly longs for Marian and nurses a furious hatred of Robin. Even when other characters take centre stage you can see Rathbone quietly acting at the edge of the frame, his blood boiling that little bit hotter with each scene until the spectacular sword-fight at the climax of the film allows him to unleash his fury. Rathbone is just one of a fantastic trio of villains, with Claude Rains serving up a deliciously effete, preening Prince John and Melville Cooper providing comic relief as a bumbling, cowardly Sheriff of Nottingham. On the heroic side of things, Flynn and de Havilland receive able support from the likes of Eugene Palette, whose hulking frame and unmistakably booming voice make him the ideal Friar Tuck, Alan Hale, who played Little John on three separate occasions between 1922 and 1950, and the wonderful comic duo of Herbert Mundin and Una O’Connor as Much the miller’s son and Marian’s lady-in-waiting Bess, the film’s other great love story.
Of its four Oscar nominations, The Adventures of Robin Hood won three: Art Direction, Editing and Original Score. While the so-called technical categories are often marginalised in awards discussions, a glorious piece of cinematic pageantry like The Adventures of Robin Hood is apt to demonstrate how pivotal these things are to a film. So the sets of Carl Jules Weyl, from the cavernous castle to the beautiful forest, set the epic tone from the very first scene. Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s instantly recognisable symphonic score sets that same tone even earlier, blaring over the opening credits so that we’re suitably primed for adventure from the very outset. Korngold’s style was only suited to specific kinds of film but if you had a Swashbuckler that needed scoring then Korngold was guaranteed to increase its effectiveness tenfold. He’d already paired successfully with Curtiz on Captain Blood but his work on The Adventures of Robin Hood is definitive, one of the great scores of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Ralph Dawson’s editing, meanwhile, is as crucial in maintaining that furious pace as Curtiz’s direction. Every part of this production, from Milo Anderson’s costumes to C.A. Riggs’ sound, which captures that astonishing swoosh and twang of every arrow fired, plays a crucial part here and I can’t really do everyone justice without completely reproducing the IMDB Full Cast and Crew section, although I feel I should at least give a special mention to the large group of stunt performers who, by all accounts, had a field day on this film. If there’s a dangling rope, it will be swung from, if there’s a sword lying around it will soon taste the like of its own kind, walls will be scaled, trees leapt from and water splashed into. What an unadulterated delight!
The Adventures of Robin Hood will always be enshrined in my personal history as the film that started my love affair with the Swashbuckler. I’ve seen and adored dozens of films from this genre but the problem with starting with the definitive example is you can never quite find another film that exactly replicates that same magic. That said, this isn’t a genre specific complaint in the case of The Adventures of Robin Hood. This is one of my favourite films of all time in any genre and if I want that Robin Hood feeling, I have to go directly to this specific film. That’s not a problem though. I’ve been back time and again and I’ll return in future. Probably in the not too distant future. Having waxed lyrical about it for eight paragraphs, I could quite happily go and watch it again right now.
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