Reap the Wild Wind (1942)

The weirdest thing about this weird film is that it really wishes it were Gone with the Wind. And that may seem a very odd thing to say about a movie that boasts an underwater battle with a giant squid as well as numerous storms at sea, a ventriloquized lapdog, and a besuited monkey, but here we are. First it's an action film, then it's a very silly romantic comedy, then it's an action film again – obviously written for Errol Flynn – then it becomes a courtroom drama for twenty minutes?? And then the giant squid shows up? This thing is insane. To make weird matters even weirder, John Wayne is not the hero. 

Of course, it is called Reap the Wild Wind, so the film itself knows very well it wants to be Gone with the Wind, and Cecil B. DeMille knows it too. The whole thing is just too stupid for all that. This is not, despite what the poster says, Cecil B. DeMille's greatest. Not even close.

Louise Beavers (who is always lovable) is doing her best Hattie McDaniel. Also Ray Milland is fine, but I kind of hate Paulette Goddard. She is no Vivien Leigh and that is for sure. Susan Hayward and Robert Preston both play smaller parts in this film. Both acquit themselves without embarrassment.

But I think the central trouble with Reap the Wild Wind is that DeMille's characters aren't people. They are so burdened with meaning and symbolism, that even a good actor like Ray Milland is playing a kind of symbol for the South and John Wayne a symbol for "untamed men of the sea" or somesuch business. And Goddard gets to symbolize Florida itself. The whole thing is so overwrought there's just no room for the humanity that might have appeared with these characters under circumstances other than a movie by Cecil B. DeMille.

As far as I can tell, Reap the Wild Wind isn't streaming anywhere. The DVD is hard to come by, and it sat in the very long wait section of my Netflix queue for a long time. But that's how I finally watched it.