Stanwyck in noir II: Cry Wolf (1947)

When Sandra Marshall (Stanwyck) arrives in Mark Cadwell's estate and claims that she is his recently deceased nephew's widow, he is not very pleased and seems to be hiding something. Perhaps something about the circumstances of her husband's death? Her young sister-in-law on the other hand takes an instant liking to the new arrival whom she sees as friend who might release her from her uncle's oppressive rule.

In theory the above would be a good starting point for any film noir. True, this is not the most imaginative of settings: the stranger who arrives in a house full of secrets is hardly new. And yet the film fails abysmally. While Stanwyck does her best and is convincing as the newcomer exploring the household's secrets, there are three main factors on why the film doesn't hold.

First in the list must be Peter Godfrey, the director. Based on his IMDb credits, I imagine he would be nearly forgotten if it weren't for three films he did with Barbara Stanwyck: "Christmas in Connecticut" in 1945 and "Cry Wolf" and "The Two Mrs Carrolls" in 1947. The last is by far the best, and while I know "Christmas in Connecticut" is a personal favourite of many, it didn't do it for me at all. He seems to have been one of those directors who populated the studio system, doing what they were told to do without any imagination. He simply picks the script and does it by numbers. For a thriller the tension never amounts to much (unlike in "The Two Mrs Carrolls") despite a few attempts in that direction.

The second problem is casting. There are two obvious casting errors. One is Geraldine Brooks who plays the young sister-in-law. She was obviously been groomed by WB for stardom but someone along the way forgot to notice that the girl couldn't act. She is irritating, but in her defence her part is a bit thankless. Then there is Errol Flynn. At this stage you may want to stop reading, as I will discuss some of the plot. His casting is a clear attempt to play him against type. He was getting older, the drinking was clearly leaving traces on his face, and he wanted to prove himself as an actor. Two years later he would do the same in "That Forsyte Woman" (which I haven't seen yet). All that is fine, but it doesn't work; and for two reasons. Flynn's charm on screen depended massively on his ability of not taking himself too serious. But in 1943 he was accused of rape and suddenly saw his life turned upside down. Sadly, despite being cleared, his life and career were never the same again, in particular that infectious presence was gone and with it the ability of engaging with the audience. His range was not very wide and his confidence was probably low and the mix of all this produces a hybrid performance of menacing and dull insecurity. Five years earlier I suspect he would have been menacing because of his spider-like charm. He might have been a deadly villain, had he been allowed him to play one. More important than that, Flynn's casting is an issue because it either highlighted or caused the most serious problem with the film - the script.

Up to this film Flynn had been always the hero. Yet here there is a clear attempt to darken his image and I suspect that someone at WB got cold feet with this. Starting as Stanwyck's antagonist and the film's villain, a twist in the script says otherwise and suddenly there is a forced happy ending with the leading lady. Where Bogart was allowed to go dark, Flynn wasn't. And maybe a better actor would have pulled it off, but as the film stands it's just a curious failure with a good Stanwyck performance.

Errol Flynn's comedies II: Footsteps in the Dark (1941)

After "Four's a Crowd", Errol Flynn's next comedy was Lloyd Bacon's "Footsteps in the Dark", a comedy-mystery where a gentleman leads a double life as a crime writer. Then someone dies and he is convinced that it was murder. By the time the police agrees with him, he is one of the main suspects and he has to clear his name.
By the early 1940s most comedies had a slight less madcap/screwball edge than they had had in the mid-1930s. Humour relies less on the mad antics of a few characters. Still there are a few scenes of chaos (when Flynn tries to persuade his family of his innocence when seen with another woman) and a police detective that is not too far removed from just a few years earlier, but it doesn't feel the same. Towards the end the film becomes less of a comedy a more of a mystery, but if you pay attention you can find the real culprit - this isn't really in Agatha Christie's league. The film's most obvious flaw is that Flynn's character starts knowing much more than the police. When he believes that dead man has been murdered, he knows of a motive (and so does the audience) that no one else does. Knowledge is power, but it doesn't always make good drama.

Errol Flynn is fun to watch and you wonder if he really took himself seriously at this stage of his life, but that never really gets in the way of his performance. On the contrary, he seems to make that a strength. He knew he could never be Sherlock Holmes, but he certainly did take a hint or two from William Powell's Nick Charles. Brenda Marshall was surprisingly good, much better than in "The Sea Hawk". She can be quite funny, in particular in the scene where she and her mother go to see her "rival" at the theatre. The rest of the film cast is top notch. Lucille Watson is hilarious as Flynn's suspicious mother in law; Alan Hale and Allen Jenkins are Flynn's sidekicks (well, Hale is the chief of police) and Ralph Bellamy does something other than his usual "second banana".

Errol Flynn's comedies: The Perfect Specimen (1937) and Four's a Crowd (1938)

Errol Flynn is probably known for his swashbucklers, for his westerns and for his war films. But he isn’t known for his comedies, despite some quite funny turns in some of his adventure films. After watching “The Perfect Specimen” (1937) and “Four’s a Crowd” (1938), both directed by Michael Curtiz, I think that is unfair.

I really can’t think of any actor other than Errol Flynn who could, with a straight face, carry a film with such a title as “The Perfect Specimen”. This applies to both actors from today and yesterday. It is such a ridiculous title that the lead would probably be crash underneath it. Yet Flynn succeeds. He is perfectly credible as physical perfection, and his charm is enough to carry us and entice us with his naivety as he does to Joan Blondell.

Somewhere between a screwball and a romantic comedy, the hero is the heir of a great fortune being groomed by his eccentric grandmother to become “the perfect specimen”, a role model to all his future employees. That is until Joan Blondell comes along, all energy and sexual assurance, and like a knight in shining armour barges in, (literally) destroys the prison and rescues the princess. Only the gender roles are inverted here. Blondell takes control and shows Flynn the world that he has been missing.

Despite being funny, and very often very funny, something disappoints slightly. It just misses being a classic comedy, and because of the near miss it is a bit frustrating. There were some reasons for this. Edward Everett Horton is rather boring, making a pantomime of the pantomime that is his screen persona (the silly, asexual and absent-minded middle aged man, who just possibly is a sissy – and he usually does it well), and May Robson, as the grandmother has a thankless part, which is so obviously built for the laughs that isn’t funny. Plus something else that I will mention below. On the plus side, there is one of the funniest character actors ever (Allen Jenkins) as the truck-driver boxer that Flynn knocks down. There is also great chemistry from both leads. So it is hard not to recommend it.

“Four’s a Crowd” is a love square. It’s also a weaker film. It’s still funny, just not as much as it could/should be. To start Olivia de Havilland, who I think is a wonderful actress has a thankless part of the irritating girl, obviously the second female lead. Her leading man, Patrick Knowles looks pretty and sulky and indecisive. The real joy is watching Rosalind Russell (in a near dress rehearsal for “His Girl Friday”) and Errol Flynn fight and play each other and the other two to get what they want. Flynn is a delight when he plays the unscrupulous cad (again, think of Cary Grant in “His Girl Friday”) but becomes far less interesting when he gains a heart. Russell has her best performance of the 1930s among those I have seen, more interesting that the respectable and dull second fiddle of some of her MGM fare (“China Seas” comes to mind).

But there are two things (other than Flynn) that both films have in common. One is the annoying presence of Hugh Herbert who plays the poet in “The Perfect Specimen” and the justice of peace in “Four’s a Crowd”. If you ever seen a Daffy Duck cartoon from when he was a crazy duck, that’s pretty much the nonsensical material you have here. You may like it, I don’t. It tainted my enjoyment of both films to not a small degree. The second thing is Curtiz, the man for all jobs at Warner during the 1930s and 1940s. Despite having done films in nearly every genre, there are some stylist traits of his that are present in nearly all his films – camera angles and contrasting lighting with shadows and lights. None of it exists here. Is it because they are comedies? Because they are routine jobs and he didn’t have much interest in the material? I don’t know – but as one of my favourite studio directors I was hoping for more of him here.

The Sisters (1938)

"The Sisters" is a few firsts in Bette Davis' filmography. It's her first film with Errol Flynn, her first film with director Anatole Litvak, and more significantly, is her first film after "Jezebel" and its director William Wyler, the man who, in my opinion, made her a great cinema actress. It's also a film where the productions values are the best Warner Bros. was willing to give their rising money maker.

It's also a first for me - it is her first 1938-1946 film which I didn't like. And the main fault lies in the script. I never read the book which the film is based, but I expect is a mamooth melodrama in three volumes (even if it's only 200 pages). It compares the parallel stories of three sisters during the years 1904 to 1908, from US election to US election and catching the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. And here lies one of the problems. Our interest lies solely in the Bette Davis/Errol Flynn story, and the rest is (bad) filler. Particularly bad are both actresses playing the other two sisters (one of them would play Bette's daughter in "The Old Maid") and the parents' reactions to their daughters lives, more appropriated to 1938 than mid 1900s - they seem to take very lightly the elopment of one (despite the fact she married the man in question) and the multiple marriages of another.

Davis and Flynn do their best with the script, but both were able to do so much better, and I think Davis' dislike of Flynn comes from this film rather than "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex". But there is one good thing that came out of the film. The outtake which comes up at around 1:50 in the video below.