Kentucky (1938)

There's a lot I don't understand about this ridiculous movie. In the first place, it's called Kentucky as if it's an old-school western film like In Old Arizona or something. But this isn't an old western - despite it opening with a shot of a weird map of the North American continent that doesn't have the United States carved out – only the state of Kentucky.

Then this movie begins in 1861 – Kentucky secedes from the Union, but a really terrible Union soldier steals a bunch of horses from a racing stable and kills a man. It's war, but it's awfully stupid. They're racehorses, so it's not like they can really help in the Civil War. Either way, the entire point of this sequence is to set up a family feud, but it's done so by making the Confederacy the good guys and the Union the evil, horse-thieving murderers.

Then all of a sudden it's 1938? Weirdly we jump ahead three-quarters of a century and now this movie is about the same two feuding families except of course the young man from one family and the young woman from the other are going to fall in love. This is now a horseracing melodrama set in 1938. And if you didn't believe Rebecca Schneider when she told us in Performing Remains that the Civil War is still happening, this movie is here to tell you that Rebecca Schneider was correct.

This is a bunch of Old South nonsense dressed up as melodrama. Two more gripes: first, there is only one horserace in this entire film – it takes place in the movie's final 15 minutes. Even the apparently very exciting race that takes place before the final Kentucky Derby race is narrated by an announcer as our main characters don't even watch the race. They're in the saloon, betting on their horse, and they listen to the race instead of enjoying it. We listen too. My second gripe is that Walter Brennan just yells through this whole movie. And he won an acting Oscar for all of this yelling. It's absurd. He's terrible in this movie. Kentucky is a melodrama, sure, and he's an old crotchety grandad in it (despite being in his early forties when they filmed it), but he just yells the whole time. It's so obnoxious. (Apparently, Brennan won because extras were allowed to vote back in the 1930s, and he was very popular with that contingent, since he worked as an extra for so many year.) 

Either way, this movie is dumb.

Carefree

I didn't like Swing Time, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' 1936 pairing (their sixth) and, although I guess I liked Carefree from 1938 a bit more, it has all the same problems. In the first place, it's obsessed with plot, with so much writing that it can't seem to squeeze in musical numbers – there are only four in this film and one of them is in slow motion. I don't understand this, although I suppose Ginger Rogers really must have seen herself as an actress, and she imbues this character with lots of feeling – the character she's created is actually quite sensitive and deep.

But this sort of goes directly against what I understand the point of a movie like this to be. I would like dance numbers and I would like singing. Instead Carefree gives us plot twists. It does have comedy, don't get me wrong. And some of it is actually funny. Hattie McDaniel gets two excellent laughs, and Luella Gear and Jack Carson have some good bits. I'm wondering, now that I think about it, if this change in the way the movie musical is working is related at all to the new and more serious ("integrated") book musicals that were happening at the Princess Theatre. It seems to me like Carefree and Swing Time are trying something – and it might make sense to look at them as part of similar attempts at the Princess.

And although this movie is directed by Mark Sandrich and not George Stevens, Carefree contains the same kind of weird fade-outs that Swing Time has. We stay in a scene just a bit too long and we fade out on this bit of plot in order to further complicate something that isn't the least bit complicated.

Carefree's weirdness is compounded by the basic smarminess of Astaire's character in this film. When we first meet him he's a sexist doctor. And then as the film progresses he hypnotizes the woman who loves him and then betrays his very good friend. When Astaire and Rogers walked down the aisle at the end (because of course they did), I wasn't sure this is what I wanted to happen at all.

I watched this on HBOmax, and I'm going to see another one – Shall We Dance – before it leaves at the end of this month. Maybe I'll like that one.

Holiday (1938)

I honestly had no idea at all that this 1938 Holiday was a remake of the 1930 Holiday, written by Philip Barry and Horace Jackson and directed by Edward H. Griffith. But it's the same movie, just 8 years later. It even has Edward Everett Horton in the same role he played in the original! The script is a little better this time, and I think it resonates more with contemporary politics. And this one, of course, has Cary Grant, who is much much much funnier than Robert Ames. In fact, the whole movie is funnier than the 1930 version, especially Lew Ayres, who plays the brother of the family. He's delightful! But... the 1930 version has Mary Astor where the 1938 version has Doris Nolan (who?), and the original has that brilliant performance by Ann Harding. Katherine Hepburn is fine in that role in 1938, but it is impossible to do what Ann Harding does in the original. Anyway, this is fun. But it doesn't have Ann Harding and I missed her the entire time.

I watched this classic on the Criterion Channel as part of their series of Cary Grant's comedy turns.

Mannequin (1937)

Oh Mannequin is fine as far as it goes. It has a kind of faux feminism going for it that feels good at least. Crawford is pretty great (I think I like her in films from the '20s and '30s), but Tracy feels out of place here, like he doesn't quite know how to play this role. Much more at home in Mannequin is Alan Curtis, who plays his part magnificently, except that the character is such an absolute deadbeat that one really can't help hating him the way the film itself hates him. 

Titling this film Mannequin is sort of odd, really. At one point Crawford takes a job as a mannequin, but it hasn't anything to do with the plot. It's actually a very short sequence.

I watched this and two other Crawford films at the end of this month before they got removed from the Criterion Channel. I am forever doing this, but it's actually kind of hard to find Mannequin, so I had to take the chance when it was presented to me.

White Banners (1938)

Fay Bainter is a revelation in this. The script is melodramatic and a bit overwritten, and the plot is a common one from the 1930s - in which a woman must sacrifice her child in order that he or she can have a better life.

But White Banners is so well told, the narrative is so dependent on concerns other than the family melodrama, and the film is so beautifully cast, with Bainter, Jackie Cooper, and Claude Rains, that Edmund Goulding's film really works very well.

Bainter was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress for this movie in 1939, but she didn't win. Bette Davis won for Jezebel. Bainter is, of course, also in Jezebel, and she won Best Supporting Actress for the same movie. So it all comes out in the wash, I guess. And watching Fay Bainter remains a pleasure.

Mad about Music

I hated this movie, and I loathed the central character, who spends the entirety of the film lying. But then I hate most Deanna Durbin movies. Honestly, I am not sure why I subjected myself to this. Mad about Music would be a total and complete loss if it were not for Herbert Marshall, who is completely charming in this from start to finish.

If I Were King

If I Were King is not great or anything, but it is rather fun.
Basil Rathbone gives a festive performance, and Colman is, as always, both very good looking and quite entertaining. I've been sort of obsessed with Colman lately.