Three Faces East

A year or so ago, when TCM had a festival of B movies, one of the selections was a 1940 movie called British Intelligence, based on a World War I-era play called Three Faces East. The play was made into a silent film, and then again at the beginning of the sound era with the same title as the play Three Faces East, so when TCM ran the 1930 version, I recorded it and recently got around to watching it.

The movie opens up on the Western Front during World War I. In Belgium, a man named Valdar (Erich von Stroheim) is getting a medal from the Belgian Army. At about the same time as this, we're transferred behind the German lines. They've captured a nurse to be a POW, but it turns out that despite her being British, she's really working as a double agent, with the code name Z-1 (Constance Bennett). Being in field hospitals enables her to gather intelligence, and eventually she's able to convince her "captors" of her identity as Z-1.

The Germans have an idea for her. One of their former POWs was a man named Robert Chamblerain, son of one of the Lords of the Admiralty, Sir Winston Chamberlain (the original William Holden, not the one who worked with von Stroheim on Sunset Blvd.). Robert is dead, and the Germans will send Z-1, taking on the name Frances Hawtree, to visit the Chamberlains under the ruse that, as a field hospital nurse, she too was taken POW and became the lover of Robert before she died. Of course, her real job is to get inside the Chamberlain house and gather intelligence which she'll pass on to the unseen Blecher.

Surprisingly, Frances' ruse works, although that's in part because the Germans collected a bunch of Robert's personal effects for Frances to bring to London to give to the Chamberlains. Still, a bunch of the military types are suspicious of anybody and everybody. Heck, they're even suspicious of Valdar whom they know has German ancestry even though he's Belgian. (There's still a small German-speaking minority in Belgium, in the southeast along the German and Luxembourg borders.) They're right to be suspicious, since Frances' contact between herself and Blecher turns out to be Valdar.

So we now have the British military on one side, and a known nest of German spies under the same roof as the British. This being a movie from 1930, and since we know that the English won the war, we can assume that the Germans are not going to win this skirmish in the war. And if you saw the remake British Intelligence you'll know that too. But how this happens is something you'll have to see.

This version of Three Faces East is pretty well done, at least within the context of the early sound technology of the era and the story's provenance as a stage play. There are better movies out there, but the studios were in need of material in 1930, so an adapted stage play like Three Faces East adequately fit the bill.

Friends and Lovers

Er, not quite

Another of the movies that had been sitting on my DVR for quite some time was the short early talkie Friends and Lovers. With it being an RKO movie and with the two male leads, I'm surprised that it doesn't seem to have wound up in any Warner Archive collection.

One of the male leads is Adolphe Menjou, who plays Capt. Roberts, who we are led to believe is an officer in the British Army. Now, Menjou was a very good and often elegant actor, but one thing he most definitely was not is British. He's in London on leave or something, where he's been carrying on an affair with the equally un-British Alva Sangrito (Lili Damita, later wife to Errol Flynn). Alva is married to Victor (Erich von Stroheim), who "finds out" about the affair one night. Except that as we learn it's really a scam on the part of Victor and Alva. She has affairs, and then, when she gets caught, gets the other man to cut a big check so as to avoid any scandal. Nice work if you can get it.

So Capt. Roberts goes back to India, which at the time the movie was made was still a British colony, together with his manservant McNellis (Hugh Herbert, who is even less British than Menjou). One of the officers serving under Capt. Roberts is an actual Brit, Lt. Nichols (Laurence Olivier, who I don't think I knew had made a Hollywood movie this early in his career). Nichols talks about the woman he loves, and Roberts realizes the woman in question is Alva! Roberts knows now that Alva is bad news, but Nichols is thinking with his other head, and Roberts' comments about this sort of woman threatens to derail the two officers' friendship.

Meanwhile, back in England, Alva and Victor get into a heated argument, which has the looks of turning into a case of domestic violence, although I don't believe that term was used in the 1930s. Just when Alva really seems to be in danger, one of the servants shoots Victor dead! This being a pre-Code, we don't hear anything about the servant going to prison or Alva getting in any legal trouble. Alva sends a letter off to India, which one guesses explains what happened, but Roberts and Nichols decide to burn the letter without reading it, in order to save their friendship.

Some time later, Roberts and Nichols are both on leave again in England, where they're invited to a party at one of those country houses that populated movies of the 1930s set on either side of the Atlantic. Who should show up as one of the guests but widowed Alva? And, needless to say, it tests the friendship between Roberts and Nichols again.

Friends and Lovers is one of those movies where the whole is less than the sum of its parts. There are some scenes and performances (von Stroheim especially) that are a lot of fun, and the idea is certainly interesting enough, but the way the script resolves it just doesn't feel realistic. Maybe values being different in the 1930s and in England, it might have been something more likely to happen, but I'm not so sure. Other people speak very poorly of Damita's acting, although I didn't have as much of an issue as some did.

All in all, Friends and Lovers is one of those movies that probably should have made its way to one of those old four-film TCM box sets, but never did. It's not the sort of movie I'd pay standalone prices for, however.

The Great Flamarion

Recently, I took out my Mill Creek ultra-cheap set of public domain "crime" movies, 50 movies in the set, to watch another movie. This time, it was The Great Flamarion.

You can already tell this is public domain considering the production company listed at the start of the credits is in a different typeface from the rest of the credits and badly edited in, to boot. But that's no big deal since I expect it from these cheap sets. Going through the credits, there was a screen listing "William Wilder" as the producer -- I actually had to back up and check to make certain it wasn't that Billy Wilder with a writing credit, maybe from something left over from his days before he became a director. But it turns out that the person is question is actually W. Lee. Wilder, a producer/director from the second half of the 1940s who was in fact the older brother of Billy Wilder. More promising is when we get to the director, a young Anthony Mann years before he started making those great westerns with James Stewart.

In any case, on to the story. Although the movie was released in 1945, we're told that it's 1936 in Mexico City. There's a vaudeville-like performance going on at a music-hall type place, surprisingly enough in English. But suddenly we hear what sounds like a gunshot, which understandably causes chaos. Backstage, Connie (Mary Beth Hughes), the wife of Eddie (Steve Barclay), is found dead with the gun right there. The fairly obvious suspect is Eddie, since the two had supposedly had an argument not long before the shooting.

However, two strange things happen. First is that the authorities determine that Connie was not shot to death; in fact she was strangled. And yet the gun did go off. That accounts for the second strange thing. After some time has passed, one of the stagehands is cleaning the stage, when suddenly he hears a loud thump just behind the curtain. He looks, and sees... The Great Flamarion (Erich von Stroheim). Flamarion is a nother performer in the show, and as he's dying, he starts relating the story of how he wound up here....

Go back some time to the vaudeville circuit. Flamarion was still Flamarion, doing his act, which was a trick shot act. No big deal, except that his act was a double, with Flamarion shooting things out from Connie, and other things just to the side of Connie. Technically, it's a triple, since the one time we see the act it starts with Connie having a tryst with Al (Dan Duryea), who is her husband in the "real life" context of the movie but the other man in the play-within-a-pay. Flamarion walks in on this and that when the shooting begins.

Now, when you see the name Dan Duryea in the credits, you should know that there's a character that's up to no good. In this case, it's a man who likes to drink and spend, to the point of selling off some of Connie's jewelry, which she's clearly unhappy about. He probably sees other women too, although that's not made explicit. In any case, Connie has been thinking about getting a divorce or otherwise breaking up the act, although the latter might be unfair to Flamarion. So she starts getting Flamarion to believe that perhaps she's really interested in him. Then, she starts putting the suggestion in Flamarion's mind that perhaps he could have an "accident" that kills Al.

The Great Flamarion is a B movie all the way, with a short running time and obviously low-budget sets and a storyline that had probably been done dozens of times already, even if this time it has the gloss of using a character created by Vicki Baum, better known for Grand Hotel. But it's a pretty darn stylish B movie, thanks in part to the direction of Mann, and pretty good turns by Hughes and von Stroheim.

If there were a good print available anywhere, The Great Flamarion is the sort of film that would be interesting for Eddie Muller to present on Noir Alley. As it is, however, you're going to have to find the many public domain copies.

The Lost Squadron

Some time back I DVRed The Lost Squadron on TCM, and only now got around to watching it. It's another of the movies available on DVD courtesy of the Warner Archive, so now's the time to do the blog post on the movie.

The movie starts on the morning of November 11, 1918, a few hours before the end of World War I. Four men: Gibby (Richard Dix), Woody (Robert Armstrong), Red (Joel McCrea) and Fritz (Hugh Herbert) are American flyers who went off to France to fight in the war and became friends as a result. The war ends, and the four vow to remain friends forever, going home to pick up the lives they left behind when they joined up for the war effort.

Yeah, right. Each of them gets home and finds that life is going to be vastly different for them. Gibby had a girlfriend in Follette (Mary Astor) who is an aspiring actress; she took a different boyfriend while Gibby was away. Woody had a business he left behind, and the partner embezzled all the money, leaving Woody flat broke. Red could have his old job back, but with the economic downturn, the boss has to fire somebody else to bring back Red, in this case a man whose wife gave birth not too long ago. Red isn't about to let that happen.

Not having any economic prospects, Red, Gibby, and Fritz decide to become hobos, hopping a freight train that will eventually take them to Los Angeles. Silent films are the big thing, the movie being set in the early 1920s, and our three friends stop by the premiere of director Arthur von Furst's (Erich von Stroheim) latest aviation picture. Whom should they meet but Woody, who has made it in Hollywood as a stunt pilot!

Woody vows to do what he can to get the other three guys jobs in the movie industry, as there's always a place for a good stunt pilot. Woody also introduces them to his sister, nicknamed "The Pest" (Dorothy Jordan). Gibby and Red both eventually fall in love with The Pest.

Woody is able to get the others jobs on the crew of von Furst's new movie, and who should be playing the female lead in the new picture but Follette! Not only that, but she's now Mrs. von Furst. Unfortunately, the director is a hard taskmaster, and uses planes that aren't in the best of condition. Making things more worrying for everybody is that Woody drinks, so they all wonder whether he can do his stunts.

Gibby, on meeting Follette, finds that she still holds a flame for him, something which is bound to enrage von Furst when he finds out. And when he does, he decides he's going to sabotage Gibby's plane. Only, Woody gets in that plane to do the stunt....

The Lost Squadron is a well-made movie, but I can't help but think at the same time that it's not necessarily going to be for everybody. That's partly because it's an early talkie, and not nearly as polished as later movies, which I think is a bit of a problem in the stunts. Something felt off that I couldn't quite put my finger on. I also feel like this particular love triangle (or the multiple triangles) came across a bit old-fashioned by modern sensibilities, more so than in other 1930s movies.

That's not to say that The Lost Squadron is a bad movie. It's just that there's other stuff from that era that I'd recommend first.