My April Movie-Watching

28 Oldies and New DVD Releases, Made Between 1920 and 2008

Frank Morgan was nominated for Oscars in "Tortilla Flat" (1942) and "The Affairs of Cellini" (1934), and is best remembered for playing the "Wizard of Oz" (1939) and the boss of "The Shop Around the Corner" (1940), generally having a mushy center under surface bluster. In James Whale's (1933) melodrama about crimes of passion, "The Kiss Before the Mirror," Morgan was remarkably crafty as a crafty and suave attorney getting his friend (an impressively distraught Paul Lukas) off for shooting his wife (Gloria Stuart) in her lover's bedroom, planning to shoot his own wife (Nancy Carroll) whose lover is barely recognizably Walter Pidgeon. Whale movies, of which the most famous is "Frankenstein" (1931),"Bride of Frankenstein" (1933), and "The Invisible Man" (1935) had strong visuals. On "Kiss" he had the great German expressionist cinematographer Karl Freund to do some complicated mirror shots. The melodrama is tightly wound, taking only 67 minutes even with comic relief from May Boley, Charley Grapewin, and the female lawyer played by Jean Dixon. (4.2 stars)

"La habanera" (1937), Detlef Sierck 's last movie before leaving the thousand-year (Third) Reich to become Douglas Sirk, and the biggest fiction feature hit made in Nazi Germany showcases Swedish singer/actress Zarah Leander as a woman fascinated by a very Spanish (unblack) Puerto Rico, who stays there with the grandest of the island's grandees, Don Pedro de Avila (Ferdinand Marian, who would be the star of the most infamous of Nazi representations of Jews in "Jew Süss" in 1940).

Leander's Astree Sternhjelm is, like an unadulterous Anna Karenina, torn between wanting to be with her son and leaving (albeit a pestilent tropical hell out of "Arrowsmith," complete with noble Nordic physicians). She sings and the anti-American propaganda is relatively subtle. The anticapitalist propaganda is less so. It is certainly a cautionary tale against vacation romances in warmer climes!

Leander, the "new Dietrich" or "new Garbo" for UFA, lacked the charisma of the old ones. She could sing about as well as Dietrich (faint praise!). The visuals of bullfights and waves are good

The movie was shot in the Canary Islands. (3 stars)

I'm surprised that audiences at the time thought that W. C. Fields stole "My Little Chickadee" (1940) from Mae West. His schtick as a sheriff is entertaining, but her turn as a substitute teacher is priceless. "I was always good with figures," she smirks, and the class pays attention. She also entertains by shooting like Annie Oakley at two crucial junctures. Both Fields and West got writing credits—and loathed each other. Both were better at writing one-liners and non sequiturs that led to double takes than at concocting plots, alas. The movie also features the oily Joseph Calleia (Algiers) and a high-strung busybody plated by Margaret Hamilton (the wicked witch of "The Wizard of Oz"). (4+ stars: not a very good movie but one with many delights)