Edge of Darkness (1943)

Whenever I was doing any sort of search for "Edge of Darkness"—one of the "Anytime Movies" from here—I would have to distinguish it was the 1985 British mini-series...or, eventually, the 2010 film adaptation...or another film done back in the 40's. I was always curious about that wartime propaganda film, and thanks to TCM I finally got to see it a couple weeks back.

Edge of Darkness (Lewis Milestone, 1943) A German reconnaissance plane flies over the occupied town of Trollness, Norway to find the unusual circumstance of a Norwegian flag flying over one of the buildings. The crew radios back to send a squad to find out why the expected Nazi flag of Germany isn't flying.

 

When troops are sent out, they find a town of corpses. They're everywhere—German and Norwegian alike—filling the streets, even going up to the Nazi commandant's office, where he still sits upright in his chair, dead. There has been a massacre and Trollness is deserted, save for one townsman, raving and extolling the Nazi's. He's clearly off his head, so they execute him without a second thought. So much for loyalty.

 

Being Nazi's, they probably wouldn't have spared his life even if they'd known his past. He was Kaspar Torgerson (Charles Dingle), the well-to-do owner of the town's cannery and their strongest supporter in town: as long as the Nazi's were in control and there were no conflicts, no danger of strikes, and the cannery kept running and he was making money, what could be the issue with them? And Torgerson would only be too happy to report one of his neighbors to the Nazi's as a troublemaker (which in the Nazis' view is "every man, woman, and child!"—and here I thought Nazi's discriminated)

The thing is, most of those "troublemakers" are relatives of his. Oh, brother-in-law Dr. Martin Stensgard (Walter Huston) remains neutral—presumably to "do no harm"—and his wife, Anna (Ruth Gordon) is merely passive. It must skip a generation because one of the most ardent members of the underground is their daughter Karen (Ann Sheridan), who, with lover Gunnar Brogge (Errol Flynn), heads the Nazi resistance—there are 150 Nazi occupiers and over 800 villagers, but as the Nazi's say "we have guns and they are afraid to die"—so the villagers  must wait until arms are delivered to them from English submarines—it is, after all, a fishing village and boats are going out all the time.

Not that everybody is on board with the idea: Stensgard's son (John Beal), recently returned from university, is considered a Nazi sympathizer, and the town's priest (Richard Fraser) lectures from the pulpit about violence and God's judgment. And some folks, like the doctor, just don't want to get involved. But, if there is one thing Nazi's are good at, it's they can turn apathetic villagers to angry action. They're just like Frankenstein that way. It's the only thing they are good for.

Fairly soon, the arrogance turns to harassment then to rape and murder and even the most faint-hearted are soon flogging Nazis in the street, which allows the situation to escalate to horrific displays of aggression and violence that doesn't allow for any nuance of philosophy or conscientious objection...like any good piece of propaganda should. Made in 1943, it was a well-oiled agitprop by the studio that jumped on the war wagon first, Warner Bros. So, the performances are resolute and clear-eyed earnestness set against mustache-twisting villainy. Milestone, who'd started out in the silent era and who's All Quiet on the Western Front had won the Best Picture Oscar thirteen years earlier knows how to keep things moving quickly while not hesitating at outright manipulation to get the point across. Finish it off with Roosevelt's "Look to Norway" speech and you have a story that Americans can relate to, two years into the war effort.

Gentleman Jim

Gentleman Jim (Raoul Walsh, 1942) It's all background in this Errol Flynn vehicle, as the audience focuses on Flynn portraying boxer "Gentleman" Jim Corbett as he serves as point-man (chin variety) for the gentrification of the pugilistic sport. As we fade in the first rule  of the fight game is "nobody talks about the fight game." Not in polite society anyway. As it is, floating boxing matches are staged hectically before the police can find out and they regularly end, not with the sound of a bell, but the sound of a gavel in a courtroom. Once "Johnny Law" gets wind of the fight (or hears the sound of one, they're fairly rambunctious affairs), they descend, the crowd scattering as they round up fighters and fans alike. It's all strictly word-of-mouth, grudge matches, really, the only civility being those of the Marquis of Queensbury—and anybody who's seen Wilde knows what a toad he was.

But Corbett brings some civility to the hammering blows, even to the point of impressing heavyweight champion John L. Sullivan (Ward Bond), who goes so far as to meet up with Corbett at a post-match soiree to congratulate him for being the man who took him down. 

Walsh contrasts the match fighting (which takes up relatively little screen-time) with Corbett's efforts to rise in the ranks of Society, as well as in the ring standings, learning to exploit his victories to promote himself to the hoi polloi as well as fight promoters.  It's the burgeoning of the age of sports figures as superstars, and not thugs, rising above gutter tactics and championing their skills as valuable commodities to the elite, giving the rich a taste of the hard-scrabble competition they've left behind.

It's a natural extension of Flynn's persona as a cavalier, being the winking bad boy who's naughty to all the right people, but especially to the really bad ones—the jaunty trickster with a gleam in his eye, who'll find a way to get ahead...by left hook or by crook, the competent high-wire artist in marked contrast to buddy Walter Lowrie (Jack Carson, one of my favorite character actors), the lovable schlub who plays pilot-fish to Corbett's shark, never able to achieve success, but omnipresent to enjoy it for him.

The Dawn Patrol (1938)

The Dawn Patrol (Edmund Goulding, 1938) Eight years after the pre-Code Howard Hawks hit starring Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., the same studio released this remake, knowing that taking advantage of sound technology to enhance the story, not only in the roar of engines in combat (they even used the same planes from the Hawks version), but also the fellowship of song (a Hawks staple, by the way--I'm very curious to see how the first film got away without it, with no music and no use of the emblematic "Hurrah for the Next Man Who Dies.") This time, it's Errol Flynn as the pilot with the longest shelf-life, reporting to superior Basil Rathbone (who sits and waits, listening for the sound of each plane returning) aided and abetted by Donald Crisp, who does the paper-work, writing the letters home to bereaved families.

Headquarters is a slap-dash dormitory/strategy room with a 24 hour bar (tended by Barry Fitzgerald)/rumpus room, done in late German atrophy and a blackboard containing the names of the squadron on duty and the chalk-dust that is left of the honored dead. It's a rotating complement of young men dealing with the pressure cooker (with heavy seasoning) of combat and the existentialism of transitory bonhomie. Very quickly, rookies become veterans and the dreams of youth evaporate in the shots of whiskey and the oil grime that cakes their faces after every sortee.

They're all brothers in the air, dueling and jousting in the machines they pilot, and when they fall, there's enough honor to salute the plummeting. These pilots are so joined that when a captured German pilot is brought to the barracks, he's welcomed to the party, even though he's just shot down one of their comrades (David Niven) and if someone holds a grudge, well, that's just bad manners, what?

A little odd for a war film,* but an example of Hawksian work ethics—do your job, be a professional, even in war-time. It's just a grudge-match between nations, anyway, and once everyone's on equal footing—in this case, terra firma—you don't hold a grudge against professionals. One has to prove oneself worthy, of course, but the general rule is to keep the war in the skies, keep your chin up and your upper lip stiff.

It's not a Hawks film, understand, just an interpretation of Hawks material.  And Edmund Goulding is quite adept at making the material soar, both in the skies and on the ground. It's a British cast, so the bantering is quite formal with well-defined rules of engagement. Goulding doesn't match Hawks' trademark at-the-shoulders camera compositions, choosing, instead, a more versatile shooting scheme, which are, at times, artful. But, it is one odd war movie, removed from the geopolitics, insular and private. You get the impression that these guys might be doing this, anyway, if it wasn't for the damned turnaround. But, it is remarkably free of jingoism, glorification and other self-serving sentiments. War is a hell of job, even in the first light of mourning.

* Odd, yes, but not without precedent, especially given the odd episode of the Christmas truce during WWI (a variation of which Steven Spielberg used for an episode in his War Horse film). And, in these economic times, there are parallels: I have friends who work in a call center, who oft-times don't see the escorting off the premises of co-workers, while the "new recruits" keep revolving into the ranks to replace them. I've suggested more than once the idea of a tontine for the "last man standing" from the many cliques that form in such situations.

The Sea Hawk

The Sea Hawk (Michael Curtiz, 1940) Back in the day before Captain Phillips or Johnny Depp made them popular for Disney, there was a very romantic notion about the nautical mercenaries who had no loyalties to anything except themselves. But, there were also those who plundered for governments and they were called "privateers."  

Captain Geoffrey Thorpe (Errol Flynn) is the captain of The Albatross, part of the Sea Hawks, a private fleet of Queen Elizabeth I (Flora Robson), taking "reparations" from the Spanish fleet of King Phillip II (Montagu Love—my new favorite actor name), who has plans to (dare I say it?) rule the World.

Well, not if Thorpe (rather loosely based on Sir Francis Drake in the Howard Koch-Seton I. Miller screenplay that has nothing to do with the Rafael Sabatini novel) can fire across their bow. On a diplomatic mission to see the Queen, the ship carrying Don José Alvarez de Cordoba (Claude Rains) and his daughter Doña Maria (Brenda Marshall) is intercepted, fired upon and boarded by Thorpe and his all-too-eager crew. Once there, they see that the oarsmen for the Spanish are former English sailors, who are then freed and taken back to home and family. Don José is allowed to keep his meeting with the Queen, but all puffed up and protesting about it, and he and the Queen's adviser, Lord Wolfingham (Henry Darnell) demand that Thorpe be arrested and thrown in the dungeon, or the brig, or the tower, or whatever gray-bar hotel they had in 16th century England. The Queen puts on a stern public face, but is only too happy to let Thorpe command his ship to the isthmus of Panama to commandeer supplies from South America to the Spanish Armada.

But, the Queen's court has divided loyalties and Wolfingham is working with Don José to intercept Thorpe's plans, and the crew, once on land, and in a tinctured yellow setting, is trapped by Spanish forces and imprisoned as oarsmen on an enemy ship on its way back to Europe. Can Thorpe and his men escape their fate and warn the Queen about the oncoming attack by the Spanish Armada?

What do you think?

It's a grand epic, and director Curtiz, accustomed to filling the film-frame with detail, has a lot of scenery to use. The ships are big and impressive sets (especially when there are two next to each other), and the sea battles, some shots culled from Captain Blood (which is why this one is black and white and not Technicolor), are rousingly busy affairs starting with the chases, the cannon lobs, the swinging from ship to ship, then the sword-fights. They're frenetic and fun, the stuff of our pre-Johnny Depp cultural memories, and blood-shed is kept to a minimum. Curtiz and his designers also make the film feel a bit more gritty than one associates with a Hollywood studio film of the type (except of course in the Queen's court where everything is vast, spotless, and polished to the point of reflection). But compare Curtiz's slave galley to the one Charlton Heston occupied in Ben-Hur, and although the effort displayed by the rowers in the latter seem more strenuous, the conditions in the former are far more depressing. And Curtiz keeps it moving, no dawdling over the ironic dialogue or key sequences, as there's another just around the cut to get to. The cherry on top is one of Erich Wolfgang Korngold's greatest film-scores, which in itself has an awful lot of swash-buckling just in the playing.  

Try to see the longer version, though. For awhile, The Sea Hawk had its final scene plucked—The Queen's speech before the attack of the Spanish Armada, which may be the strangest speech a Queen has even been given: 

And now, my loyal subjects, a grave duty confronts us all: To prepare our nation for a war that none of us wants, least of all your queen. We have tried by all means in our power to avert this war. We have no quarrel with the people of Spain or of any other country; but when the ruthless ambition of a man threatens to engulf the world, it becomes the solemn obligation of all free men to affirm that the earth belongs not to any one man, but to all men, and that freedom is the deed and title to the soil on which we exist. Firm in this faith, we shall now make ready to meet the great armada that Philip sends against us. To this end, I pledge you ships - ships worthy of our seamen - a mighty fleet, hewn out of the forests of England; a navy foremost in the world - not only in our time, but for generations to come. 

"The earth belongs not to any one man, but to all men , and that freedom is the deed and title to the soil on which we exist." What do you  mean "we," Queen E? Fact is, Elizabeth didn't say this.* But, as this film was released in 1940, it serves as its own little shot across the bow to another "one man" who wanted the map, not to be of Spain, but of the Third Reich—Herr Hitler. The film, when first released, had that bit of rallying to it, in the days before The Blitz. After the war, prints had that speech removed as unnecessary (and probably anachronistic, and not in a Queen's spirit.   

"...vast, spotless and polished to the point of reflection."

* She ACTUALLY said this: "My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourself to armed multitudes for fear of treachery; but I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people ... I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm."  "My" realm.  See that?  "My".