It Started With Eve

A few months back, I mentioned having recorded a double-feature of Deanna Durbin movies that aired on TCM. One of the movies, It Started With Eve, is one that I had watched many years back but never actually done a review on. So I watched it again in order to be able to do this review on it.

We don't meet Deanna Durbin for several minutes. Instead, we see Jonathan "Johnny" Reynolds, Jr. (Robert Cummings). He's the son of wealthy businessman Jonathan Sr. (Charles Laughton). Except that Dad is on his deathbed, and Junior is returning home to see Dad for what is probably the final time, with some newspaper types keeping a vigil outside the family mansion and wondering whether Johnny is going to make it back in time before Dad dies. Tragically, this means that Dad isn't going to make it to his son's wedding: Johnny has only recently gotten engaged while on the sort of vacation to a place where all the rich people go. With that in mind, Dad tells his son that his dying wish is to meet his son's fiancée, Gloria Pennington.

Johnny dropped the Penningtons off at the hotel, not realizing that Dad would want to meet them; to be fair one can think that bringing the fiancée's family to an occasion like this might be too much for the old man. But it means he has to go back to the hotel room and pick them up, and who knows whether they'll make it back in time before Dad dies? Worse, when Johnny gets to the hotel, he finds that Gloria (Margaret Tallichet) and her mom have gone out late in the evening to get a custom fitting for clothes for the funeral, which again seems like a bit of a plot hole considering that stores would likely not be open at this hour of the evening.

On his way out the lobby, Johnny runs into hat-check girl Anne Terry (Deanna Durbin), who is hoping to get back to her family in Ohio. Johnny, being desperate, offers this woman he's never met before a proposition. Would she be willing to play the part of his fiancée for an hour or two until Dad dies? Johnny will pay her good money, and since Dad will never see her again, is there really any harm in this little white lie? Anne could use the money, and it won't keep her from catching her train, so she decides to accept.

Except that this is a Hollywood movie and we're only ten or fifteen minutes in, so you know fully well that this isn't all that's going to happen and that there are going to be serious complications. Dad does not in fact die. Not only that, but it looks like he's going to start getting better and eventually even make a reasonable recovery. Johnny has to go back to Anne's apartment and bring her back to the house, which she's not particularly excited about at first. And then there's the real Gloria and her mother, who are understandably displeased about not being able to meet their future in-law until Johnny can come up with some sort of explanation as to what's going on. Even worse is that Dad really likes Anne. Finally, as you might guess, as the movie goes on it's going to become more and more apparent that Johnny and Anne are the ones who are right for each other, even if they don't yet realize it.

It Started With Eve is one of those movies that has a premise where you know exactly where it's going to go and that it's going to get to a happy ending, but the fun is seeing how it gets there. And with a cast like Deanna Durbin, Robert Cummings, and Charles Laughton, it's a fairly fun ride getting to the obvious destination. Charles Laughton did not get to play comedy as often in his career as he probably should have been given the chance to do. He's clearly enjoying himself here in the sort of mischievous older father role you could easily see Charles Coburn do, and his enthusiasm really makes the film a lot of fun. Durbin and Cummings are more than adequate. There's a bit of odd miscasting with Guy Kibbee as an Episcopal (I think) bishop; Kibbee just doesn't look the part although it's not as if he does anything wrong with his smallish role.

Ruth's Story

One of the movies that's been in the FXM rotation for the last few months that I hadn't blogged about before is the biblical movie The Story of Ruth. So I recorded it, and since it's got a couple of airings coming up starting with tomorrow (May 17) at 12:45 PM, I made a point of sitting down now to watch it to be able to do a review on it here.

The movie is based in part on the Old Testament book of Ruth (played here by newcomer Elana Eden). I didn't know much of the details of that book of the Bible, and reading through the synopses, it seems that much of the first half of the movie is giving Ruth a backstory that's not in the Bible. Ruth is a young girl in Moab, a non-Jewish civilization, who is being raised to become a priestess and possibly a human sacrifice, something decidedly non-Jewish. Moab has wound up with some conquered Jews in its population, notably Naomi (Peggy Wood) and her sons Mahlon (Tom Tryon) and Chilion. Mahlon has grown up to become a stonemason and, since the Moabite religion worships stone representations of its main god, the king brings in Mahlon to do some work on one of those statues.

This, as you can guess, is how Mahlon meets Ruth. Mahlon starts talking not-so-casually about how the Hebrew conception of God is rather different than what the Moabites believe, and that the Hebrews most certainly don't believe in idols. Ruth seems to like Mahlon, and his talk about religion gets her to thinking, which is a dangerous thing to do since the Hebrew tribes' religion is so different from the Moabites'. Ultimately, when Ruth is supposed to take part in one of the ritual child sacrifices, she's had enough and tries to stop the proceedings, which gets both her and Mahlon in trouble.

At least for Ruth, the king seems to have the hots for her and wants her in the royal household, but for Mahlon it's off to the mines to do some good old-fashions life-shortening slave labor. Ruth, having fallen in love with Mahlon, is a bit dangerous in that she's liable to try to walk out on the king so that she can go free Mahlon. Of course, doing so is going to get her banished from Moab and forcing her to make an escape back to Judea. Never mind that Mahlon gets fatally wounded in the escape attempt. At least he lives long enough to marry Ruth, albeit not long enough to consummate the marriage or impregnate Ruth in a way that would satisfy the Production Code.

So Mahlon dies as his brother did before him, and Naomi is left with two widowed daughters-in-law. Orpah stays behind in Moab while Naomi and Ruth head off to Judea, where they find that life isn't quite so good as it was when they left because the rains haven't been coming as much as they should.

Boaz (Stuart Whitman) is a powerful distant cousin who could help Naomi and Ruth, and even possibly marry Ruth in accordance with Jewish law about the next-of-kin marrying a widow. But there's another man who's an even closer relation to Ruth's late husband, Tob (Jeff Morrow), and he's willing to marry Ruth if only to keep Boaz from marrying her. There's also the issue of Ruth's having been a high priestess back in Moab, and whether that's in violation of any Jewish laws. (It shouldn't be, if the religion believes in sincere conversions, but the question of valid conversions is still a vexing one today, especially in a relatively non-hierarchical religion.)

The Story of Ruth is a surprisingly low-key affair by the standards of the other biblical epics that were being released around this time. It doesn't have the spectacle of movies like King of Kings or Ben-Hur, or the tittilation of something like Joan Collins in Esther and the King. But the modest nature of the movie mostly works, with the exception that the movie runs a bit long. Putting in spectacle helps make a long movie seem not so long, and without that spectacle, a movie like The Story of Ruth really ought to run under two hours instead of the 130 or so minutes we get here.

The other unfortunate thing is that FXM has panned-and-scanned the print down from the Cinemascope ratio (which we get to see for the opening minute and then again briefly at the end) to 16:9. I don't know if there's a full Cinemascope print available.

Take Her, She's Mine

I mentioned yesterday that Designing Woman is airing tomorrow afternoon on TCM. Up against it over on FXM is Take Her, She's Mine, which starts at 1:20 PM Thursday.

James Stewart plays Frank Michaelson, a California lawyer who is in trouble with some board he's on, as the chairman, Ivor (John McGiver) produces a bunch of embarrassing newspaper stories complete with pictures. Frank has a chance to defend himself, which means cue the flashback....

Frank is married to Anne (Audrey Meadows), with two daughters, the elder of whom, Mollie (Sandra Dee) is graduating high school, which means she's of an age to go away to college, and the age where she's noticing boys, the latter of which is far more concerning to Frank because he doesn't want his sweet young virginial daughter to get into trouble.

Good luck with that Frank. Mollie goes to an all-woman's college in the Boston area where Harvard men and others are always nearby. Mollie starts to rebel, singing bad 1960s folk music in a beatnik bar attended by Gilligan (er, Bob Denver), and protesting the injustices of the world. It's the latter that gets her in trouble, and sends Frank off to Boston to find out what exactly is going on. The college students are involved in a sit-in over a banned novel, and Frank winds up being a sort of defense lawyer to them during the sit-in, which gets him arrested and the first headline.

Mollie gets expelled from college for her activities, but is lucky enough to get an art scholarship to study in Paris! This will also give her an opportunity to spend more time with Henri (Philippe Fourquet), whom she met at college and who is of course French. Of course, it's going to mean more trouble for Frank. The heartburn escalates when Mollie says she's in Life magazine, for a radical painting she did.

So Frank goes off to France, where he finds that Mollie and Henri are really in love, but that there's also a problem in that Henri's parents aren't so certain they want the marriage to go forward. Also in Paris, Frank meets Mr. Pope-Jones (Robert Morley), a British expat who has adult children of his own and who tells Frank to forget about trying to reform Mollie. Pope-Jones also gets Frank into some more trouble at a big arts party....

Take Her, She's Mine is one of the earlier of what I'd call the "generation gap" movies, having been released just before the shooting of President Kennedy really changed America, a fact that's evidenced by the beatnik club which I always though was really a think from the end of the 1950s. It's also gentler and not trying to pander as hard as many of the later generation gap movies.

But it's still not without its problems, as not all that much really happens and poor James Stewart gets embarrassed by all those antics he has to go through. Audrey Meadows is underused, and Morley's know-it-all Brit is just irritating. One thing the movie has going for it is the epilogue, although of course you have to wait until the end of the movie to get there. I'm glad I watched this, but it's not the first James Stewart movie I'd recommend to be people by a long shot.

Take Her, She's Mine is available on DVD both as a standalone and as part of a three-film collection of Stewart's movies at Fox.

Time for the full-length post on Désirée

At the beginning of the month, I mentioned that the movie Désirée showed up on FXM, but that I didn't have the time to do a full-length post on it for various reasons. It's going to be on FXM again, tomorrow at 10:50 AM and then again at 8:00 AM Thanksgiving, so now's the time to do that full-length post.

Jean Simmons plays Désirée Clary, a young woman living with her family and working at the family's millinery in Marseilles, France in 1794. If you know your history, you'll recognize the date as toward the end of the French Revolution. So who should show up in the Clarys' milieu but Napoleon Bonaparte (Marlon Brando), together with his brother Joseph (Cameron Mitchell)? Napoleon has plans of going to Paris to do great things, and gets more or less betrothed to Désirée in Marseilles. Désirée has a sister Julie (Elizabeth Sellars) who gets engaged to Joseph.

Napoleon does go to Paris, and some time passes. Sadly, Désirée receives no word from Napoleon. So she rather impulsively goes to Paris in order to look for Napoleon. She finds that he's at a party, but it's one of those swanky invitation-only things held by high society, and not only does Désirée not have an invitation; who's going to let her in anyway. Thankfully for her, one of the guests, General Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte (Michael Rennie), shows up without a companion. He's so taken by Désirée's beauty and her ardent desire to get into the party that he makes her his guest.

Désirée, of course, is going to find that Napoleon has met Josephine (Merle Oberon), who is of much higher upbringing than the Clarys and so better for Napoleon to have politically. In theory he still could have loved Désirée -- and in some ways he still does. But he needs a marriage that can help him obtain his ultimate desire, which is power. Josephine can provide that; Désirée can't.

Désirée settles by marrying Bernadotte, and it turns into a marriage of love, which is more than can be said for Napoleon and Josephine. Napoleon also has the problem that Josephine is barren, and he needs an heir once he's crowned himself emperor. But Désirée already has children by Bernadotte, so she's out of the question.

Political events become more heated as Napoleon is trying to take over all of Europe. He's installed his brother Joseph on the throne of Spain, and then it turns out that Sweden needs a new monarch as well. So they call on Bernadotte, offering to make him King because their current royal house has no heirs. He accepts despite Désirée knowing no Swedish.

She's unhappy in Sweden with the austere court life and her lack of Swedish, so she eventually decides to return to France, just in time for Napoleon's disastrous 1812 campaign. This leaves her effectively a prisoner in France under house arrest. And after that comes Waterloo and Napoleon's refusal to abdicate. The other powers all think Désirée is the only one who can get Napoleon to go to St. Helena....

Désirée is a nice enough Hollywood look at history, with the House of Bernadotte being one of the parts of the Napoleonic era not to get much mention in any other Hollywood movie. I don't have much idea how inaccurate the movie is, of course. Still, it's nice to look at, and the main actors all do reasonably well. The one big problem is with the print FXM is running, which was letterboxed and pillarboxed. So if you've got a smaller TV screen, this one is going to look pretty darn tiny. It also doesn't seem to be on DVD, which is a shame.