31 days of October. 31 articles devoted to the screen’s maestro of suspense and the macabre, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). I’ll be jumping back and forth through five decades in this series. More than half of the films I’ve never seen before, but even the ones I have seen were viewed, researched and written about this month.

Synopsis
At an aircraft plant in Glendale, Barry Kane (Robert Cummings) accidentally knocks over a co-worker who gives the name of Fry (Norman Lloyd). Kane glimpses the envelope of a letter the man carries. Moments later, the plant erupts in flames. Kane attempts to fight the blaze with a buddy, but the extinguisher Kane hands him explodes. Questioned by police, he’s notified that no “Fry” works for the plant. Authorities suspect Kane in the sabotage. When no one believes him, he goes on the run to clear his name.

His first stop is the ranch he spotted on the envelope. The ranch’s owner – the devilish Charles Tobin (Otto Kruger) – has the fugitive captured by his ranch hands and handed to the police. Kane escapes by diving off a bridge. He’s given shelter by a blind man, who instructs his fashion model niece Pat (Priscilla Lane) to drive him to a blacksmith to remove his handcuffs. Pat tries to take Kane to the police, but he detains her long enough to convince her of his innocence.

After a traveling circus shields them from arrest, the couple makes their way to a ghost town which Tobin instructed Fry to head to. They discover a clear vantage of the Hoover Dam. While Pat escapes to notify the authorities of the attack, Kane passes himself off as a saboteur to Tobin’s lackeys and is taken to New York, where Tobin and his network of traitors plan to sabotage the christening of a battleship at the Brooklyn naval yard.

Production history 
In the spring of 1941, while director Alfred Hitchcock toyed with idea of remaking of his British film The Lodger, producer Jack Skirball favored another idea that Hitchcock was working on. It followed an American who races cross country to prove his innocence once accused of being a saboteur. Joan Harrison worked with Hitchcock on the early treatments before departing to pursue a solo screenwriting career.

A 21-year-old novelist named Peter Viertel who had no experience writing screenplays was hired to work with Hitchcock and producer John Houseman on a script. Hitchcock was under contract to David O. Selznick, but the producer expressed no desire to make the thriller himself. Houseman sold the package to Universal, which snapped Hitchcock up in a two-picture deal. Dorothy Parker – the celebrated writer and acidic wit – was hired to polish the script.

Hitchcock made overtures to Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck about starring, but Universal was a bargain basement studio of horror movies and Abbott & Costello comedies that couldn’t afford to import high-priced actors. Joel McCrea wasn’t even available, so Hitchcock had to settle on Robert Cummings. This led to Priscilla Lane – a budding starlet at Warner Bros. – being cast opposite him as the female lead.

Shooting commenced in mid-December 1941. While it touched on stateside paranoia that after Pearl Harbor, saboteurs might target American industry, Hitchcock would later criticize the script as being rushed and undisciplined. Released the following spring without stars, Saboteur was a hit with audiences. Critics today acknowledge that despite its flaws, it can be considered Hitchcock’s first truly American film.

Opinion 
The slapdash script is evident in almost any part of the film you click on, with some awkward pacing, a few flat scenes and lines of dialogue so bad they could only be written. But for everything it does poorly, Saboteur also features sequences of visual bravura, white knuckled suspense and finely tuned wit, as well as providing a snapshot of a country wringing its hands over America’s entry into the war.

Robert Cummings and Priscilla Lane (who received top billing) are hardly Fonda and Stanwyck, but for a B-picture, the visual effects are outstanding. From the evocative opening credits, to set pieces atop a bridge, in a crowded movie theater, and most memorably, on the arm of the Statue of Liberty, Hitchcock stocks the film with visual imagination. There’s too much preaching in the dialogue, as well as scenes that are weak sisters to the set pieces, but Saboteur is worth investigation by Hitchcock fan.

Glenn Erickson at DVD Savant writes, “A fairly straightforward patriotic version of The 39 Steps and not to be confused with Hitch’s earlier English Sabotage, Saboteur is a mixed bag of great sequences alternating with some unusually clunky scenes.”

“Hitchcock’s expectedly masterful directorial choices provide the film with brief flashes of electricity … yet such sequences are invariably rendered moot by the overly talky script and general ambiance of pointlessness, ensuring that even the most avid Hitchcock fan will have a tough time embracing the film,” writes David Nusair at Reel Film Reviews.

Barrie Maxwell at DVD Verdict writes, “Cummings and Lane aside, Saboteur is an entertaining film from Alfred Hitchcock. It’s certainly not completely original or deep, but it’s fun to recognize previously used set pieces as well as others that would become more famous ones in future films.”

© Joe Valdez

31 days of October. 31 articles devoted to the screen’s maestro of suspense and the macabre, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). I’ll be jumping back and forth through five decades in this series. More than half of the films I’ve never seen before, but even the ones I have seen were viewed, researched and written about this month.

Synopsis
Johnnie (Cary Grant) meets Lina (Joan Fontaine) on an English train. A cad who can’t keep his mouth shut – or stay out of the papers as the area’s most eligible bachelor – Johnnie takes five and twopence halfpenny off the buttoned down Lina to keep from being thrown out of first class. He later sees her at a fox hunt. The bachelorettes whose company he keeps warn him that she’s not up his alley, but Johnnie is smitten.

Asking her out under the guise of attending church, Johnnie takes Lina on a walk, where he rolls out all his charm, including calling her “Monkeyface” in an effort to get a kiss. Lina’s father, the General (Cedric Hardwicke) does not approve, noting Johnnie was “turned out of some club for cheating at cards.” This only stokes Lina’s rebellious side and after reuniting with Johnnie at a society ball – which he crashes – the couple elopes.

The first sign of trouble surfaces when Johnnie admits to his better half that he’s been broke all his life. Lina meets his only friend in the world, the affable Beaky (Nigel Bruce), and learns that instead of working for a living, her husband spends his time at the track. Two antique chairs her father sends them as a wedding present disappear, but Johnnie’s story about selling them to a collector proves false when Lina comes across the chairs at an antique parlor.

Johnnie placates his wife by getting a job, but when she visits his employer, he notifies Lina that he fired her husband six weeks ago for embezzling £2,000. She’s ready to walk out on him, but news of her father’s death changes her plans. Johnnie hatches a real estate scheme with Beaky that strikes her as odd. Too many mystery novels and too much suspicion about her husband convince Lina that he’s plotting Beaky’s murder, and soon, hers.

Production history 
In the summer of 1940, director Alfred Hitchcock signed a two-picture contract with RKO, offering him a $15,000 bonus if he finished both films in a year. Mr. and Mrs. Smith was the first half of his obligation to the studio. For his second, Hitchcock had settled on Before The Fact, a 1932 novel by Anthony Berkeley Cox (writing under the pseudonym “Francis Iles”) which RKO owned the film rights to.

Scripts commissioned by RKO had been unable to get past the Hays Office, which forbid dramatizations of suicide, or of a murderer who gets away with his crime, two points crucial to the novel. Hitchcock intended to slip past the censors by making a psychological thriller, leaving the guilt of the heroine’s husband a mystery until the end. Cary Grant – who had rejected Mr. and Mrs. Smith for fear of being typecast – was game to play a suspected wife killer.

Hitchcock’s wife Alma Reville and Joan Harrison completed a treatment in November 1940, which playwright Samson Raphaelson was hired to adapt into a screenplay. While the dramatist found the treatment “long winded” and wrote most of the movie himself, Raphaelson didn’t object when the director asked if he would mind sharing writing credit with Reville and Harrison.

Shooting commenced in February 1941, marking the first of four collaborations Hitchcock would share with Cary Grant, the biggest star the director had worked with up to that point. For the female lead, Hitchcock wanted Michèle Morgan, a European star who had fled occupied France. RKO was uncomfortable with Morgan’s accent and relative anonymity. They preferred Joan Fontaine, who Grant reportedly did not get along with during filming.

Hitchcock had intended to end Before The Fact with a dash of the macabre. After Lina discovers her husband intends to poison her, she writes her mother, admitting she’d rather not live without him. She drinks the poisoned milk, but not before asking Johnnie to mail the letter for her. The final shot would have been Johnnie whistling as he drops the incriminating letter in the post. But RKO was adamant that Cary Grant could not be a wife killer.

Reville and Harrison wrote another ending, which was shot and scrapped after test audiences booed it. Hitchcock settled on an ending he and Harrison came up with, one more friendly than fiendish. Test audiences still didn’t care for the title, and RKO changed it to Suspicion, ignoring the director’s objections. In spite of all these compromises, the film became a critical and commercial hit, and has its fans to this day.

Opinion 
Whether you consider this a light thriller or a dark comedy, Suspicion is one of Hitchcock’s most overlooked films, a little gem of subtle wickedness. It lacks the director’s signature “shocking” style, but is loaded with Hitchcock’s wit from start to finish. This first hour offers terrific farce, then detours into a sharply penned black comedy about the fallacies of marriage. I found myself laughing out loud through most of this movie.

A couple with their share of flaws discovers that marriage has not changed who they are. Soon, murder fantasies enter the picture. That story rang true for me in terms of human nature, and is really funny. Grant displays his ability to time comedy, or turn threatening at the drop of a hat, while Fontaine – who won an Academy Award for Best Actress here – keeps up. The ending is anti-climactic, but I like the film better as a black comedy than I would have as a thriller.

Brian Webster at Apollo Movie Guide writes, “The beauty of Suspicion is that it starts off light and charming, just as Johnnie does, and darkens so gradually you won’t even notice what point it shifted from light romance into a psychological thriller.”

“Despite the rather clumsy ending, Suspicion remains solid entertainment, often retold, but never really as good as this,” writes Vince Leo at QWipster’s Movie Reviews.

Lisa Skrzyniarz at Crazy For Cinema writes, “The story tries to be suspenseful, but ultimately it just doesn’t really go anywhere. Perhaps because the two lead characters’ love each other for all the wrong reasons. Their relationship is based on lies, deceit, guilt and betrayal. Certainly topics often covered by Hitchcock, but usually as part of a greater plot. As used here, their actions just seem hackneyed and over-played.”

© Joe Valdez

31 days of October. 31 articles devoted to the screen’s maestro of suspense and the macabre, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). I’ll be jumping back and forth through five decades in this series. More than half of the films I’ve never seen before, but even the ones I have seen were viewed, researched and written about this month.

Synopsis
Following a guilty verdict in her father’s trial for treason in Miami, German American Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman) drowns her despair in booze. Feeling that a man might be what she really needs, she takes one her party guests – the tightlipped Devlin (Cary Grant) – on a drunken drive down the coast. After he sobers her up, Devlin reveals he’s a government agent. He has a job for her in Brazil. Alicia protests that she’s no stool pigeon, but Devlin knows Alicia is more of a patriot than she’ll admit.

Arriving in Rio and waiting for their assignment, Alicia puts her days of wanton drinking and lust behind her. Devlin doesn’t want to believe she’s changed, but falls in love with her regardless. Their romance comes to an end when Devlin’s superiors notify him that Alicia is to seduce Alexander Sebastian (Claude Rains), a friend of her father’s who was instrumental in financing the German war machine. He’s hiding in Brazil now, plotting something.

Outraged that her lover wouldn’t turn down the assignment for her, Alicia throws herself into it. She accepts a marriage proposal, an arrangement that permits Alicia to meet the fugitive scientists working in Sebastian’s house. His mother (Leopoldine Konstantin) doesn’t trust Alicia. She gains Devlin access to a wine cellar, and finds uranium ore hidden in the bottles. Once Sebastian discovers Alicia’s duplicity, he plots to dispose of her, without tipping off his comrades that he married an American agent.

Production history 
While working on Spellbound, director Alfred Hitchcock and screenwriter Ben Hecht began mapping a project loosely based on a 1921 serial by John Taintor Foote appearing in the Saturday Evening Post. It concerned an American theater producer approached by federal agents who want an actress he was once involved with to infiltrate a network of saboteurs. Producer David O. Selznick – whom Hitchcock and Hecht owed a picture to – owned the property.

In August 1944, Hitchcock and Hecht decided to focus the story on scientists loyal to Nazi Germany hiding in South America. Cary Grant would play an American intelligence agent who manipulates the daughter of a traitor – to be played by Ingrid Bergman – into infiltrating the exiled fascists. For their Macguffin, Hitchcock arrived on the idea of an atomic bomb, based on rumors of a secret government program going on in New Mexico.

Selznick was not very enthusiastic about the project. The producer preferred Joseph Cotten over the expensive Cary Grant, and felt audiences wouldn’t understand or accept a mass weapon comprised of uranium ore. Selznick sold the package – Hitchcock, Hecht and Ingrid Bergman – to RKO for $800,000. The deal became finalized a few days before Japan surrendered, following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Playwright Clifford Odets took a pass at the script, which Hitchcock rejected in favor of bringing back Ben Hecht. The film Hitchcock and Hecht envisioned would be torrid, politically as well as sexually. Following a year of writing, Notorious commenced shooting in October 1945 on the RKO lot in Beverly Hills. It was the first time Hitchcock served as his own producer, and when released August 1946, the film was greeted by critics and audiences as one of the darkest, most enthralling films of his career.

Opinion 
If this romantic thriller were remade – and it was, as Mission: Impossible II – the focus would be on high tech espionage and spectacle. The beauty of Notorious is how it almost completely ignores what the bad guys are doing to focus on the torrid affair between a double agent and her handler. Ben Hecht’s script is potent with tension and builds terrific suspense by involving us intimately with its characters from the beginning. This may be the best screenplay Hitchcock ever shot.

Notorious features two stars at their finest. Ingrid Bergman plays a lush and tramp who develops utter contempt for Cary Grant, who in turn, plays a right bastard with a mean steak, a man who knows just which words will eviscerate her emotionally. This isn’t a comic strip. By taking his characters into such dark corners, Hecht makes the light at the end all that more satisfying. Claude Rains is outstanding as always, while Hitchcock paints with restraint here, making a thriller that’s character – not gimmick – driven.

Lisa Skryniarz at Crazy For Cinema writes, “Though Notorious has a pretty good plot, in the end, it’s nothing but a love story. Who really cares what the Nazis are doing with uranium? I just want to see Grant and Bergman make love to one another. In this case, you get what you pay for.”

“Notorious is probably my favorite Hitchcock film. It displays not just a dark side of humans when it comes to murder, but darkness when it comes to love … It is a tragic drama that every true film buff should see,” writes Tom Blain at Jackass Critics.

Michael Scrutchin at Flipside Movie Emporium writes, “I’d place Notorious not far behind Vertigo as one of Hitchcock’s best films, and close to Casablanca as one of cinema’s greatest romances. I don’t think I’d be exaggerating to say that it’s as thrilling and suspenseful a romance as you’re likely to see.”

© Joe Valdez

31 days of October. 31 articles devoted to the screen’s maestro of suspense and the macabre, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). I’ll be jumping back and forth through five decades in this series. More than half of the films I’ve never seen before, but even the ones I have seen were viewed, researched and written about this month.

Synopsis
A disheveled looking David Smith (Robert Montgomery) is sequestered in his bedroom, where his wife Ann (Carole Lombard) refuses to talk to him. One of the rules Ann has imposed on their marriage is that when her husband and her fight, neither is allowed leave the bedroom until they make up. After three days of impasse they do just that, but David upsets his wife yet again when he tells her that if he had it to do over again, he wouldn’t marry her.

A chamber of commerce man from Beecham, Idaho – where the Smiths were married – pays David a visit at his law firm office. He explains that the area was annexed by Nevada at the time, and that anyone married there with an Idaho marriage license is not legally married. David is thrilled by the news. He plans to take Ann out to the Italian restaurant where they first dated and recapture the freedom of that time, but doesn’t mention anything to his wife about the legal status of their relationship.

The commerce man drops by Ann’s home to share the news with her personally. She assumes David plans a romantic evening and will propose to her all over again. Neither the suit she digs out of the closet or the Italian restaurant turn out to be quite the same the second time around though. As soon as Ann realizes that her husband has no intention of “marrying” her, she kicks him out of the house.

David’s partner Jeff Custer (Gene Raymond) – a well-meaning square – decides to represent Ann legally and get to know her personally. As badly as she wants to make her husband jealous, Ann fails to spark much chemistry with Custer. David tails Ann to her new job at a department store and gets her fired. He then follows Ann and her new beau on their skiing trip to Lake Placid, where David schemes to win back his tempestuous wife.

Production history 
With Rebecca a critical sensation, and his second Hollywood film – Foreign Correspondent – complete, American studios were vying for the services of director Alfred Hitchcock. Among them was RKO, which had a project that one of the world’s biggest stars – Carole Lombard – had agreed to topline. Her conditions were that it had to be shot in five weeks, and that the studio acquire Hitchcock to direct it.

Producer Harry Edington sent the script to the director in May 1940. A month passed and Hitchcock still hadn’t read it. Titled Mr. and Mrs. by Norman Krasna, it was a screwball comedy. Once Hitchcock did read it, he proposed that the studio scrap it and let his wife Alma Reville write a comedy for Lombard that was original. RKO wasn’t interested. The project became a dark horse for Hitchcock to make his next picture.

Producer David O. Selznick had Hitchcock under contract and rejected most of the offers pouring in. RKO offered Hitchcock $100,000 per film for two pictures, plus a $15,000 bonus if he finished both films in a year. Selznick accepted and by August 1940, Hitchcock was shooting Mr. and Mrs. Smith as a “friendly gesture” to Lombard. Released January 1941, critics were impressed by its hilarity, as well as the versatility of its director. With Lombard on the marquee, it was also a hit at the box office.

Opinion 
Most of Hitchcock’s thrillers are laced with wit and sophistication, and the director’s screwball comedy is no exception; the only difference is that there’s no murder. Mr. and Mrs. Smith isn’t as fast paced as His Girl Friday or as funny as Bringing Up Baby, but it stays relatively amusing throughout. The phrase “screwball comedy” was coined for Carole Lombard, and she is lovely, whipsmart and fun to watch in this.

Robert Montgomery gets the best moments, while Lombard is relegated to a straight role. Gene Raymond acquits himself, but the script doesn’t assemble much of a supporting cast around them. Hitchcock scholars herald this film as proof he could’ve mastered other genres, and they’re correct. Mr. and Mrs. Smith is nicely made, but suffers in comparison to any comedy directed by Howard Hawks or Ernst Lubitsch in the same period.

“Not quite screwy enough to be a screwball comedy, the paper-thin script offers a few battle-of-the-sexes laughs and some witty repartee, but not enough to sustain interest through an hour and a half,” writes Diane Wild at DVD Verdict.

Jeffrey Anderson at Combustible Celluloid writes, “The strangest thing about Mr. and Mrs. Smith is that it’s a good movie, a very good movie, a top-notch screwball comedy, in fact. It’s so crisp and snappy that one might think Howard Hawks or Ernst Lubitsch had made it.”

“This effort lacks everything that makes a Hitchcock film entertaining – style, surprise and a wicked sense of humor. If you’re looking for a laugh from the master, give The Trouble With Harry a turn, a true Hitchcock comedy,” writes Lisa Skrzyniarz at Crazy For Cinema.

“You’ll see one of the funniest comedy situations that ever hit the screen.” View the 1941 trailer.

© Joe Valdez

31 days of October. 31 articles devoted to the screen’s maestro of suspense and the macabre, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). I’ll be jumping back and forth through five decades in this series. More than half of the films I’ve never seen before, but even the ones I have seen were viewed, researched and written about this month.

Synopsis
With Europe on the brink of war and no news fit to print coming in over the cables, the editor of the “New York Globe” demands “a good honest crime reporter” get to the bottom of events unraveling overseas. Johnny Jones (Joel McCrea) – close to being fired for assaulting a police officer – is handed the task. Renamed “Huntley Haverstock”, he’s dispatched to London to get news on Van Meer, a Dutch diplomat brokering a last minute peace deal between Germany and England.

The Globe’s lazy London man Stebbins (Robert Benchley) supplies Jones with an invitation to a luncheon being given by the Universal Peace Party. Jones snares a cab to the luncheon with Van Meer (Albert Bassermann). Jones fails to get an interview, but does infuriate Carol Fisher (Laraine Day), headstrong daughter of Stephen Fisher (Herbert Marshall), the head of the Universal Peace Party, when he tells her that the group is made up of “well-meaning amateurs.”

Sent to Amsterdam to cover a peace conference, Jones greets Van Meer, but the diplomat has no idea who he is. Moments later, an assassin shoots Van Meer in the face. Jones gives chase with Carol Fisher and a droll newspaperman named Ffolliott (George Sanders). The assassin disappears near a row of windmills, one of which Jones notices revolving against the wind. He sneaks inside and finds the real Van Meer in custody of foreign agents. They want something he knows. Jones returns with police, but Van Meer has vanished.

Jones escapes the clutches of agents at his hotel and convinces Carol to return to London with him. The pair falls in love. They go to her father for help, but Jones recognizes one of Fisher’s associates as the agent who kidnapped Van Meer. Carol’s father is revealed to be leader of a ring of spies and traitors. Fisher hires a private eye (Edmund Gwenn) to take care of the foreign correspondent before he unravels their plans to sabotage the peace accord.

Production history 
Two weeks into shooting his first Hollywood film – Rebecca – director Alfred Hitchcock was looking for his next project. He realized that producer David O. Selznick, who had brought Hitchcock to America under contract, would be too busy publicizing Gone With The Wind to develop anything for him. The director was given permission to talk to producer Walter Wanger, who suggested that Hitchcock take over a troubled project called Personal History.

A 1935 political memoir by newspaperman Vincent Sheean, Personal History had been optioned by Wanger and was stuck in development purgatory. The producer felt Hitchcock might be able to make something out of it. As long as it was about an American foreign correspondent, Hitchcock was given the green light to do anything he wanted with it. Hitchcock’s wife Alma Reville and screenwriter Joan Harrison began work on a treatment.

In February 1940, Hitchcock requested Charles Bennett – who’d helped write seven of his British pictures – adapt the script. British novelist and screenwriter James Hilton was later brought in to give the dialogue some flavor. American humorist Robert Benchley – whom Hitchcock was so amused by, he cast as Stebbins – was put on the payroll to give the script some comic relief. A young screenwriter under contract to Paramount named Richard Maibaum also served as script doctor.

With production designer William Cameron Menzies – who won an Oscar creating the sets for Gone With The Wind – the budget rose to $1.5 million, twice what Wagner was used to spending. Rebecca hadn’t even been released, but the producer had faith in Hitchcock. The director had fashioned the starring roles for Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, but Cooper’s people were wary of Hitchcock, while Stanwyck was unavailable. Hitchcock settled on Joel McCrea and Laraine Day.

Released August 1940 in the U.S., Foreign Correspondent was hailed for its immediacy. Less than a month later, Germany began its bombing campaign against the UK. Hitchcock’s former ally, producer Michael Balcon, denounced the famous directors he felt were riding out the war in the States. Hitchcock responded, “The manner in which I am helping my country is not Mr. Balcon’s business.” Nevertheless, the film received a chilly reception from critics when it debuted in England.

Opinion 
The film was nominated for six Academy Awards – including Best Picture – but due to an absence of stars, or Hitchcock’s signature shocking style, it rarely figures into discussions of his best work. Foreign Correspondent is the lost gem of Hitchcock’s career, a supremely well made action/comedy/thriller that works flawlessly as both an entertainment vehicle, and as a social document of a culture on the brink of world war.

The set pieces Hitchcock devised are among the most ingenious ever created for a movie. The assassin’s escape through a sea of umbrellas. McCrea sneaking around a windmill. Edmund Gwenn (Santa Claus in Miracle on 34th Street) plotting to kill McCrea by shoving him off the observation tower of Westminster Catholic Cathedral. The climax – involving a clipper plane being shot down over the ocean – is a masterpiece of storyboarding, camerawork, special effects and editing.

Foreign Correspondent is a perfection of everything that makes movies great: strong narrative, three-dimensional characters, comedy (Benchley steals the show), romance, intrigue, action. There’s so much going on that this film demands repeated viewings to absorb it. The final scene – with McCrea broadcasting on the brink of the London Blitz – is a classic. It avoids feeling hokey because of McCrea’s affability, and because of the sincerity and geopolitical foresight of the filmmakers.

Andrew Wickliffe at The Stop Button writes, “Watching early, raw Hitchcock is an exciting experience and Correspondent is one of the two best of these raw films (the other is The Lady Vanishes).”

“‘The Thrill Spectacle of the Year!’ cries the poster for this thriller, and brother, they ain’t just whistlin’ Dixie. A fast-moving tale of international intrigue set against the backdrop of a world on the brink of war, it’s about as far away as you can get from the moody, gothic suspense of Hitchcock’s previous film, Rebecca,” writes Maurice Cobbs at DVD Verdict.

Jeffrey Anderson at Combustible Celluloid writes, “The film includes some of Hitchcock’s finest set-pieces, including a secret hideout inside a windmill, a murder in broad daylight and a plane crash, even if the romantic subplot tends to slow things down a bit.”

© Joe Valdez

31 days of October. 31 articles devoted to the screen’s maestro of suspense and the macabre, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). I’ll be jumping back and forth through five decades in this series. More than half of the films I’ve never seen before, but even the ones I have seen were viewed, researched and written about this month.

Synopsis
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” narrates the second Mrs. de Winter (Joan Fontaine) as we arrive at the ruins of a once great manor. Moving back in time, our unnamed heroine is in the French Riviera, where she crosses paths with George Fortescu Maximillian de Winter (Laurence Olivier). He’s perched on a cliff and appears to contemplate diving off it. Maxim is in Monte Carlo grieving the death of his wife, Rebecca. Our heroine is a paid companion to her insufferable employer (Florence Bates).

After a whirlwind courtship, the wealthy widower asks our heroine to marry and return with him to his magnificent Cornwall estate, Manderley. The second Mrs. de Winter is genuine, but young and woefully unprepared to assume control of the mansion, with its social schedule and staff. The housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson) intimidates her from the start. Like everyone else our heroine meets, she reveres Rebecca de Winter, whose memory lives in every shadow of the house.

Rebecca apparently drowned at sea, but when her boat and body are recovered off the coast of Manderley, it becomes apparent that foul play was involved. Maxim confides to his new wife that he loathed Rebecca, who was not the ray of light everyone thought she was. He killed her accidentally in rage and scuttled her ship at sea. Rebecca’s unscrupulous cousin (George Sanders) suspects as much and a police inquiry convenes. Our heroine, meanwhile, searches for the truth.

Production history 
Producer David O. Selznick signed director Alfred Hitchcock to a contract that brought him to America in 1938. Selznick had two projects in mind for the English talent. One was based on the disaster aboard the Titanic. The other was a 1938 novel by Daphne du Maurier. The director preferred to sink the Titanic, but in November 1938, Selznick announced that Rebecca would be Hitchcock’s first Hollywood film. Hitchcock’s wife Alma Reville and screenwriter Joan Harrison began work on a screenplay.

Filming on Gone With The Wind was underway, and with the burning of Atlanta preoccupying Selznick, Hitchcock had free reign to craft Rebecca, at least initially. His proposed treatment shocked the producer, departing from the bestselling novel by adding comic elements that did not sit well with Selznick. He was adamant Hitchcock adhere to the book he’d bought the screen rights to.

In July 1939, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Robert Sherwood was hired to polish Harrison’s adaptation. For the male lead, Hitchcock approached Ronald Colman, but the star was apprehensive about playing a wife killer. Selznick proposed William Powell, until Laurence Olivier became the frontrunner. For the second Mrs. de Winter, a 21-year-old starlet named Joan Fontaine emerged as Selznick’s choice. Hitchcock was not won over by her, but was no fan of extensive casting searches either. Fontaine got the part.

Selznick also hired director of photography George Barnes to lend the picture a misty look, contradicting how Hitchcock had lit his British films. Released March 1940, Rebecca was a hit with audiences and a sensation with critics, garnering 11 Academy Award nominations. John Ford won Best Director for The Grapes of Wrath, but Hitchcock’s first two films in Hollywood – Rebecca and Foreign Correspondent – were nominated for Best Picture in the same year.

Opinion 
At 130 minutes, this film is not only long, but long winded. The last half hour feels as if it’s devoted to debate about Rebecca’s mental state and whether she could have killed herself or not. This is not a Hitchcock “shocker”, but is hilariously over the top, as only a David O. Selznick production could be. But like some beautiful soap star throwing herself around a room in a fit of high drama, Rebecca is so over the top as to be lovable. I wanted to hug this movie and tell it everything would be okay.

From a technical standpoint, the art design by Lyle Wheeler and lighting by George Barnes make Rebecca one of the most gorgeous black and white films of Hollywood’s Golden Age, perhaps of all time. Franz Waxman’s musical score is also supremely evocative of gothic mystery. Little in the way of intrigue occurs, but Daphne du Maurier’s source material cleverly mines the insecurities of a woman trying in vain to overcome her predecessor.

Lisa Skrzyniarz at Crazy For Cinema deems Rebecca, “storytelling at it’s best. That being said it does have its hokey moments, but hey, it’s over 60 years old so that’s to be somewhat expected.”

“Overall the movie lacks fire. It starts as a romance, gets a little darker about an hour later, and then things start to shape up by an hour and thirty, but you will probably fall asleep before then,” writes Tom Blain at Jackass Critics.

David Nusair at Reel Film Reviews writes, “Hitchcock – along with cinematographer George Barnes – has infused the film with an unmistakably gothic sensibility, ensuring that Rebecca remains endlessly fascinating in terms of its visceral qualities. The meandering storyline, however, ultimately prevents the film from living up to its reputation as one of Hitchcock’s best.”

“You wish anything, madam?” View Joan Fontaine being given a tour of her predecessor’s bedroom by Judith Anderson, under George Barnes’ beautiful gothic lighting.

© Joe Valdez

31 days of October. 31 articles devoted to the screen’s maestro of suspense and the macabre, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). I’ll be jumping back and forth through five decades in this series. More than half of the films I’ve never seen before, but even the ones I have seen were viewed, researched and written about this month.

Synopsis
In the psychiatric institute of Green Manors, a nymphomaniac is taken for a session with Dr. Constance Petersen (Ingrid Bergman). The icy psychiatrist explains, “Our job is to make you understand why. When you know why you’re doing something that’s bad for you, and when you first start to doing it, then you can begin to cure yourself.” Unable to make progress with the vamp, Constance is visited by an amorous colleague who tells her that what she needs in her life is an emotional experience, both as a doctor, and a woman.

The chief psychiatrist of Green Manors (Leo G. Carroll) is being replaced after 22 years of service. His successor is the young Dr. Anthony Edwardes (Gregory Peck), who Constance becomes smitten with on sight. Edwardes is an expert in the “guilt complex” and author of a bestselling book, but appears on the eccentric side, hearing spooky music when Constance traces lines on the table linen at dinner.

Edwardes spends his first day on the job taking Constance on a picnic. She falls in love with him, but notices that Edwardes suffers a nervous breakdown any time he sees the color white. She discovers that the man is not really Dr. Edwardes at all, but an amnesiac who believes he murdered Edwardes, and has assumed his identity. The man only has a cigarette case engraved with the initials “JB” to guess who he is.

Constance doesn’t believe JB murdered anyone, and when he takes off for New York, she goes after him. With both of them now fugitives from the law, Constance seeks help from her mentor, Dr. Brulov (Michael Chekhov). With JB sleepwalking through the house with a straight razor, Brulov considers him dangerous. Constance wants time to analyze and cure him, and with only snow, black lines and dreams as her clues, begins running out of time.

Production history
Director Alfred Hitchcock had optioned the rights to a little known 1927 novel by Hilary Aidan St. George and John Leslie Palmer called The House of Dr. Edwardes. It was about a patient who assumes control of a mental institution during the absence of the superintendent. Under contract to producer David O. Selznick – who was himself in psychoanalysis – Hitchcock pitched the project as an intense thriller about the perils of psychiatry.

While in England making industrial films for the war effort, Hitchcock hammered out a treatment with collaborator Angus MacPhail. Now titled Spellbound, the story had little to do with the book. Hitchcock was more intrigued with the prospect of creating dream sequences on a scale yet to be attempted in film. Ben Hecht – who’d doctored Foreign Correspondent and Lifeboat – met Hitchcock in New York to write the script.

Hitchcock was certain he could get Ingrid Bergman to star because she was under contract to Selznick. For the male lead, he wanted Cary Grant, who was not under contract to anyone, but turned the role down. Hitchcock settled on Gregory Peck, who’d only appeared in two films, but had been nominated for an Oscar in one of them, The Keys To The Kingdom. Shooting commenced in June 1944.

Once filming wrapped in August, Hitchcock requested Salvador Dali be put on the payroll. The surrealist painter was expensive, and Selznick didn’t understand what Hitchcock wanted him for anyway. He relented, paying Dali $4,000 for ten commissioned paintings or drawings of the dream sequences. Selznick was unsatisfied with the footage Hitchcock shot and ordered it reshot and recut, trimming forty to fifty seconds of Daliesque imagery from the film.

Spellbound was a blockbuster, grossing $7 million at the U.S. box office and receiving six Academy Award nominations, including a Best Picture nomination for Selznick and Best Director nomination for Hitchcock. Critics lavished the film with praise at the time, but in his interview many years later, even Francois Truffaut admitted to Hitchcock he was disappointed in it. “Well, it’s just another manhunt story wrapped in pseudo-psychology,” the director shrugged.

Opinion
From the earnest opening credits crawl written by psychiatric adviser May E. Romm M.D., Spellbound tries to be taken seriously as an intense study of the emotionally troubled mind. The script goes to great trouble to explain psychoanalysis to a 1945 audience, and makes sure everybody in the balcony can follow along. Even if the science wasn’t outdated, the movie explores it all in the most blatant, heavy handed ways possible.

Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck have a screen intelligence that I’ve always admired, but playing opposite each other, they don’t click. Michael Chekhov is terrific as the wizened old mentor, but there’s really no one else who comes along to help the stars out. Our villain doesn’t even appear until the last five minutes. A lack of a clear antagonist hurts the film more than anything.

Three people who elevate Spellbound above a B-picture are Miklós Rózsa, Salvador Dali and Alfred Hitchcock. Rózsa supplies an elegiac, romantic musical score that reminded me why he’s by far my favorite composer of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The Dali imagery is almost blink-and-miss-it, but is unsettling, and the chief reason why this film is discussed today. As for Hitchcock, he understood better than any director that you save your best for last, and sends the viewer off on a high note here, yet again.

“Freudian symbolism and Salvador Dali surrealism uncomfortably coexist in Alfred Hitchcock’s psychobabble classic Spellbound, which despite its pedigree – Hitch, Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman, Notorious screenwriter Ben Hecht – now stands as one of the director’s most laughably dated films,” says Nick Schager at Lessons of Darkness.

Brian Webster at Apollo Movie Guide writes, “Yes, the pat psychoanalytic answers seem all too easy by today’s standards, but that really doesn’t take away from enjoyment of this classic film. It’s an enjoyable multi-layered mystery that features strong performances by Bergman and Peck and a dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali.”

“You get pretty tired of hearing about guilt-complexes and the trauma of childhood by the end, but the love story and mystery are enough to sustain interest. This is definitely one of Hitchcock’s more intelligently written films and maybe that’s it’s flaw. To much talk, not enough danger,” writes Lisa Skrzyniarz at Crazy For Cinema.

“And then a girl came in with hardly anything on and started walking around the gambling room kissing everybody.” View the Salvador Dali designed dream sequence.

© Joe Valdez

31 days of October. 31 articles devoted to the screen’s maestro of suspense and the macabre, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). I’ll be jumping back and forth through five decades in this series. More than half of the films I’ve never seen before, but even the ones I have seen were viewed, researched and written about this month.

Synopsis
A freighter sinks at sea. A lifeboat emerges through the debris carrying Constance Porter (Tallulah Bankhead). She wears a mink coat and appears more troubled by the run in her stocking than the shipwreck. An oil soaked sailor named Kovac (John Hodiak) swims over. He doesn’t have to tell her they were hit by a torpedo, then fired on with artillery. “Those Nazi buzzards in tin fish ain’t enough. They gotta shell us too!”

Sparks (Hume Cronyn), a brainy merchant marine, joins them next. He informs Kovac the radio shack was hit before an SOS was sent. The other survivors are a young nurse named Alice (Mary Anderson) on her way to London, a shipping magnate (Henry Hull), a wounded sailor named Schmidt (William Bendix) who’s changed his name to “Smith”, a black steward (Canada Lee) and a shellshocked Englishwoman (Heather Angel) whose baby has drowned.

The lifeboat also picks up a survivor from the sunken U-boat, Willie (Walter Slezak), who Constance speaks German to. Willie claims to only be a crewman, but Constance tricks him into revealing he was in fact captain. Kovac and Smith want to throw the Jerry overboard, but the others vote to extend him shelter. The shipping magnate assumes the role of skipper. Kovac doesn’t like taking orders and nominates himself for the position.

The survivors hope to reach Bermuda, but without a working compass, are at a loss to know which way to head. Willie makes a suggestion, but Kovac believes the German intends to lead them to an enemy supply ship. With no other alternatives, the survivors trust the enemy. A suicide, an amputation, a storm and a shortage of food and water threaten to undermine the unity of the lifeboat. Willie is then revealed to have his own agenda.

Production history 
The deal that brought director Alfred Hitchcock to Hollywood at the service of David O. Selznick included four years of option clauses, giving the producer a stake in any film Hitchcock was hired to direct. Fox studio head Darryl Zanuck was eager to work with Hitchcock, but the director couldn’t find a project he was interested in making there. After finishing Shadow of a Doubt, Hitchcock was threatened with a twelve week suspension of pay by Selznick unless he agreed to a one-picture deal with Fox.

Hitchcock had an idea to pitch the studio, one he’d been mulling over for a year. It revolved around the survivors of a ship torpedoed by Germany and would take place in the microcosm of their lifeboat at sea. To write the script, Hitchcock wanted Ernest Hemingway. The director dispatched a cable to the author’s winter home in Cuba. Hemingway was otherwise committed and responded to Hitchcock that they would have to work together some other time.

John Steinbeck – who had a working knowledge of the sea – was approached next. Hitchcock provided the author a scenario, which Steinbeck responded to favorably. Within a week, he produced a 100-page novelette. But Steinbeck had elected to occupy the lifeboat with only one person and focus his story on that character’s thoughts. This was not what Hitchcock wanted at all. He turned to MacKinlay Kantor, an American novelist and screenwriter, but Kantor was let go after two weeks.

Next up was Jo Swerling, a former newspaperman who’d written screenplays for John Ford and Frank Capra. Through the late spring and early summer months of 1943, Swerling, Hitchcock, Hitchcock’s wife Alma Reville and producer Kenneth MacGowan wrote a final draft. For the lead, Hitchcock’s choice had always been Tallulah Bankhead, legend of the London stage who at the age of 40, had a checkered career in Hollywood.

Shooting was set for August, but the Office of War Information had read the script and objected to the morals of the various American characters. Zanuck didn’t have an issue with the script’s patriotism, he was worried about the budget. The film ended up costing $2 million, but when the studio head saw a rough cut in November, he was enthusiastic. Lifeboat earned Hitchcock his second Academy Award nomination for Best Director.

Opinion 
If I were a high school history instructor and needed a movie to spurn discussion on the tensions running through America in 1944 – as well as the race and class inequities – Lifeboat would be a pretty good selection. Unfortunately, while there’s forty five minutes here that are all right, there’s at least another forty five minutes dragged down by melodrama, flimsy characters and extremely outdated dialogue.

The concept ranks as one of Hitchcock’s most exciting, examining the primal forces that threaten to fracture the unity of a group dependent on each other for survival. The technical challenges of setting an entire movie around a lifeboat and making it visually appealing are mastered. As for the cast, Hume Cronyn and Mary Anderson have nice chemistry, while Walter Slezak is terrific as the nefarious German willing to sacrifice lives to achieve his objective.

Beyond the anti-German jingoism and racial asides the movie is rife with – Bankhead refers to the steward affectionately as “Charcoal” – the real embarrassment of Lifeboat is that barely any of the behavior exhibited by the characters is believable. I never accepted the way the survivors regard their predicament at all. The execution of the picture lacks intensity, and is not the master of suspense in top form.

Terrence Brady at Dial H For Hitchcock says, “With its confined quarters and drama created without flashback, Lifeboat reads more like a stage play than a motion picture. In the capable hands of Hitchcock though, it is hardly a tale of just words.”

“Viewers will note that Willi, with moments of likeability even as he turns out to be duplicitous, makes a more chilling villain than he would if his intentions were clear from the start,” writes James A. Stewart at DVD Verdict.

Jeffrey Anderson at Combustible Celluloid writes, “Without ever leaving the boat, Hitchcock plays psychological tensions against one another, continually ramping up the stakes as food and water run out.”

© Joe Valdez

31 days of October. 31 articles devoted to the screen’s maestro of suspense and the macabre, Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980). I’ll be jumping back and forth through five decades in this series. More than half of the films I’ve never seen before, but even the ones I have seen were viewed, researched and written about this month.

Synopsis
“Mr. Spencer” (Joseph Cotten) lies in a rented room, smoking a cigar, surrounded by loose cash. His landlady notifies him that two men are looking for him. Mr. Spencer’s icy demeanor turns hot. After eluding the men, he dispatches a telegram to his sister in Santa Rosa, California. He notifies her that he’s coming out to stay with her, closing his message, “And a kiss for little Charlie from her Uncle Charlie.”

In picturesque Santa Rosa, Charlie Newton (Teresa Wright) also lies in bed. She’s a teenager bored by the routine in her life. Charlie lets her overworked mother (Patricia Collinge), oafish father (Henry Travers) and younger sister and brother know that she’s sending a telegram to Uncle Charlie, hoping he can pay a visit and break their monotony. Charlie enters the telegram office and is told that her uncle is already on his way.

Uncle Charlie comes bearing gifts and has everybody in the house eating out of his hand. Young Charlie seems to share an uncanny psychic connection with her charismatic uncle, telling him “I have a feeling that inside you somewhere there’s something no one knows about.” He gives her a warning, “It’s not good to find out too much, Charlie.”

Charlie notices strange things about her uncle. He tears an article out of the newspaper so that no one will read it. Two men posing as pollsters show up at the house, alarming Uncle Charlie when they try to take his photograph. The younger of the men asks young Charlie to show him the town. He reveals himself to be Detective Graham (Macdonald Carey) searching for a wanted man he believes may be Uncle Charlie.

Young Charlie rushes off to the library to scour through the newspapers. She finds the article her uncle was trying to hide. The headline screams WHERE IS THE MERRY WIDOW MURDERER? Her fears are confirmed when an emerald ring Uncle Charlie gave her bears the initials of one of the victims. Not wanting to upset her mother, Charlie looks for a way to get her uncle to leave, but only ends up alerting him that she knows his secret.

Production history 
During production of Saboteur in May 1942, director Alfred Hitchcock was already looking for a project to satisfy the second of a two-picture deal with Universal. Unable to obtain the screen rights to anything that interested him, Hitchcock sought a return to the type of material he felt comfortable doing: a modern day serial killer thriller.

A story editor for David O. Selznick mentioned this to her husband, a pulp novelist named Gordon McDonell. McDonell met with Hitchcock and pitched him a story he was calling Uncle Charlie. It was about a gentleman who arrives in a California town to visit his sister and his teenaged niece, Charlotte. The plucky niece discovers that her namesake Uncle Charlie is in fact a murderer, and when he learns she knows his secret, he plots to make her his next victim.

McDonell was busy writing a novel and only supplied the director a six-page synopsis. Hitchcock’s wife Alma Reville brainstormed ideas with her husband, but the director needed a writer who could bring small town America to life. Hitchcock dispatched a thousand word telegram to Thornton Wilder, the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of Our Town. Wilder confided to a friend that the idea sounded “corny,” but he wanted to leave his mother and sister some money before he left for military service.

After five productive weeks working with Hitchcock in Los Angeles, Wilder had to report to Uncle Sam. To rewrite the script with a lighter touch, Hitchcock hired Sally Benson, a short story writer known for her wit and familiarity with adolescent girls. But the dry humored director was so grateful that “Mr. Thornton Wilder” had agreed to write a serial killer movie for him, he would acknowledge it in the film’s opening credits.

Early story treatments described the heroine as “a Joan Fontaine type.” Hitchcock wanted Olivia de Havilland for the part. The star wasn’t available, so the director’s next choice became Teresa Wright, a 24-year-old contract player who’d been nominated for an Oscar in her screen debut, The Little Foxes. In July 1942 – three months after reading McDonell’s synopsis – Hitchcock was shooting in Santa Rosa.

Opinion 
The film has terrific qualities. The underlying theme of evil hiding in plain sight has power to it; David Lynch had to have been inspired by this when he wrote Blue Velvet. Joseph Cotten is both dapper and remorseless as Uncle Charlie, one of Hitchcock’s greatest villains. The visual sheen of the black and white film is striking.

Shadow of a Doubt has moments of clever play between the two Charlies, but they’re fleeting. Almost everything about the script is obvious. It feels more like a stage play than a movie, with the playwright broadcasting his themes loud and clear so the folks in the cheap seats can follow along. Teresa Wright is over the top as well, and while the finale is rousing, most of the movie is melodramatic, as opposed to suspenseful or unsettling.

Ben Delbanco at Jiminy Critic says, “Shadow of a Doubt is not flashy … It is however, a very suspenseful look at the duality of good and evil, which is played up in the fact that the number two is seen repeatedly.”

“I’d only seen Shadow of a Doubt once before … and for the majority of the film, I was upset, remembering it being much better than it unfolded. But once the end came around and especially the neat coda, I had bought into it entirely,” writes Andrew Wickliffe at The Stop Button.

Terrence Brady at Dial H For Hitchcock says, “Murder is one of the key ingredients in almost all Hitchcock films and Shadow Of a Doubt handles it in a taut, complex manner that ingeniously mixes Capraesque domestic comedy with the harsh realities of horror.”

© Joe Valdez

In England, 1685, open rebellion has greeted the ascension of the unpopular King James to the throne. Dr. Peter Blood (Errol Flynn, in his debut as a leading man) is summoned in the night to attend to the wounds of a rebel fighter. A war veteran and former seaman in the Dutch navy, Peter has “had adventure enough in six years to last me six lives” and prefers practicing medicine to fighting.

Swept up by authorities, Peter is imprisoned for three months before being found guilty of treason. He asserts his innocence, maintaining that his duty was to the man’s wounds, not his politics. “Your sacred duty, rogue, is to your king!” growls the judge, who condemns him to hang. Peter and his fellow prisoners are spared when the King realizes he can turn a profit selling them as slaves.

Shipped to Port Royal, Jamaica for sale, Peter turns his barbed tongue on brutal plantation owner Colonel Bishop (Lionel Atwill). The colonel wants nothing to do with the insolent rogue, preferring to see him shipped to the mines, but his regal daughter Arabella (Olivia de Havilland) likes what she sees and bids for him herself.

Peter is taken off work detail and put to use doctoring the foot of Port Royal’s governor. He uses the appointment to secure a vessel and plot an escape with his fellow slaves. Unexpectedly, a Spanish galleon attacks the town. Peter leads the men in commandeering the ship, repelling the Spaniards. But Peter is torn between his freedom, and his love for Arabella. He sails to his freedom.

Forging the men into a crew, Peter becomes Captain Blood, a menace on the high seas. After pillaging treasure, he settles on the island of Tortuga, “Where easy money consorted with easy virtue.” He accepts an ill-advised partnership with a hard-fighting, hard-gaming French rascal, Captain Levasseur (Basil Rathbone). When Levasseur captures Arabella, the men go from partners to enemies.

In 1934, the Legion of Decency had been formed in an attempt to monitor morality in the movies. The studios discovered that by returning to the genre of costume epic – made popular by Douglas Fairbanks in the 1920s – they could avoid censorship issues. Treasure Island became a hit for MGM, and Warner Brothers scored with an adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo.

Warner Brothers acquired a novel by Raphael Sabatine called Captain Blood, which had been filmed already in 1924. It was envisioned as a vehicle for Robert Donat, but he turned it down. Clark Gable, Ronald Colman and George Brent were considered, as was a 25-year-old contract player from England named Errol Flynn. The studio not only took a chance on Flynn, but 18-year-old Olivia de Havilland, a contract performer who had yet to be cast as a leading lady.

Directed by Michael Curtiz and adapted by Casey Robinson, Captain Blood not only features two of the best starring debuts in Hollywood history, but is without question the greatest pirate movie ever made. Shot almost entirely on soundstages, featuring miniature ships, it clearly lacks the production value of Waterworld or Pirates of the Caribbean, but it has something those high seas spectacles lack. Elegance.

Casey Robinson’s screenplay features terrific historical context and depth. In pirate movies, we typically meet our hero already on the high seas, acting “piratey,” and the stories immediately surrender any type of character development to cartoon buffoonery. Errol Flynn is introduced as an urbane man, a thinking man, and we witness how injustice and imprisonment drive him after pirate’s booty.

No real derring-do even occurs the first hour. The script builds camaraderie between the men, explores the 17th century British colonial empire, and develops the relationship between Flynn and de Havilland. The pair have a natural chemistry that is unmatched in motion pictures, even by Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher in the Star Wars trilogy. To illustrate how good, this became their first of eight pictures together, something that would be inconceivable today.

Michael Curtiz brings a fantastic energy, imagination and visual sheen to the movie, and a huge debt to the picture’s box office success is a sweeping orchestral score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold. Basil Rathbone has a small role, but demonstrates why he was at the time, the best swordsman in Hollywood, in a standout duel against Flynn, shot on the rocks of Three Arch Bay in Laguna Beach, California.

Captain Blood was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture. 1935 was the last year that Academy members were permitted to write in candidates overlooked in the official ballots, and Curtiz, Robinson and Korngold were all write-in nominees, demonstrating how big an impression the film made on their peers. Flynn & de Havilland shot to overnight stardom, but what struck me is how much fun the flick is, even 75 years after it was made.