Herzen in Flammen

"Manpower" is a 1941 Warner Brothers film directed by Raoul Walsh. Walsh said that Jack Warner used to call him to his office and say, "You have to direct this film for me." Walsh would ask, "Who's in it?" "Oh, I don't know," Warner would moan. "Some bum."

One wonders if "Manpower" was one of those films, though it would be pretty hard to forget that you had a film with Marlene Dietrich scheduled.

The story is that of a typical love triangle. Hank (Robinson) and Johnny (Raft) are linemen; Hank falls hard for Dietrich, who works at a clip joint. He proposes and though she tells him up front that she doesn't love him, she accepts. Then she finds herself in love with Johnny.

Dietrich is stunningly beautiful though I was distracted by a wig that seemed to overpower her face. And when was the last time you heard her described, as Raft does, as "just a dame?" Hardly.

Dietrich is very good as Fay, who, while she gives it a go with Hank, wants her chance at real happiness. Robinson, who could play pathetic like nobody's business, gives us a pretty pathetic Hank here - injured so that instead of working on the power lines, he's now a manager, unlucky in love and dumpy looking.

For a guy who could play mean as dirt, he portrayed these blustery, insecure men very well. Raft is a very dapper Johnny, a nice contrast to Robinson.

With the exception of an exciting ending, there really isn't anything exceptional about "Manpower" except the cast and the fact that it rains a lot. Definitely worth seeing for the unique casting.

"Manpower", made for Warner Bros. in 1941, is one of the most exciting and pleasurable of all classic action adventures. It's great to see the positive reviews from fellow users; I have been looking forward to it for some time and I finally saw it. What a picture! I'm a huge Raoul Walsh fan and "Manpower" ranks with the director's greatest works - "Me and My Gal", "The Roaring Twenties", "Gentleman Jim", "The Strawberry Blonde", "Objective, Burma", "Pursued", et al. The film is extraordinary for a number of reasons, but the most obvious reason is a top notch cast: Edward G. Robinson, Marlene Dietrich, George Raft, Ward Bond, Alan Hale, Eve Arden, and the lovable Frank McHugh, performing his hilarious shenanigans and slapstick.

The film concerns a group of emergency power repairmen who work on a high voltage power lines during ferocious storms. Throughout "Manpower", Walsh emphasizes group camaraderie and the strong bond of working class Americans. It is also filled with Walsh's trademark boyish gusto and unsophisticated Irish ribaldry, but it somehow lacks the bittersweet nostalgia and wistfulness of "Strawberry Blonde" and "Gentleman Jim".

The same way Walsh's "Strawberry Blonde" is a remake of a charming 1933 Gary Cooper vehicle called "One Sunday Afternoon", "Manpower" is a remake of Howard Hawks'1932 adventure "Tiger Shark", also starring Edward G. Robinson as a tuna fisherman. Here, Robinson plays power lineman who happens to be in love with an ex-con girl, sensitively played by Marlene Dietrich. Robinson's rival is George Raft and their climactic aerial duel amidst jolting electric wires are among the highlights of the film's stunning action scenes.

Everything about MANPOWER is highly improbable, including the casting of EDWARD G. ROBINSON as a lineman in love with the alluring clip-joint hostess MARLENE DIETRICH and the three-way romance that includes GEORGE RAFT as a jealous blue collar onlooker who warns Robinson about the pitfalls of marrying Dietrich.

Raoul Walsh directs it in his customary boisterous style, letting ALAN HALE, FRANK McHUGH, WARD BOND and BARTON MacLANE overdo the rowdy blue collar supporting roles. The comic relief offered by Hale and McHugh is below par this time and becomes tiresome long before the tale reaches a climactic storm scene.

Fans of the star trio will probably overlook these faults and find the film passable viewing, but it's nothing special and easily forgotten. EVE ARDEN gets to sling some one-liners in the kind of role she always played with verve and skill.

Linemen working on electrical wires at the height of a severe thunderstorm is stretching things a bit for the melodramatic climax.

I wonder how much more than two seconds it took to come up with this movie's title as we tag along with a ragtag group of electrical linemen tasked with keeping America's lights on through fair weather and foul (and is there ever a lot of foul, going by what happens here). Heading up the team are best-buddies George Raft and Edward G Robinson with as female interest, an added dollop of Marlene Dietrich on the side, a cast you'd think think screams gangster flick, although to be fair this particular occupation seems a whole lot more dangerous, despite being on the right side of the law.

Anyway, the characterisations, such as they are, are these. Robinson is the hot-headed, girl-chasing pocket rocket while Raft, his best mate and minder is the dapper, level-headed one. With their unruly but largely good-natured colleagues, including most prominently Alan Hale and Frank McHugh as a goofy double act on the side, they're on perpetual call-out when something happens to disrupt the national grid, usually it seems a ferocious storm of biblical proportions. When one of the vets on the team comes a predictable cropper on site, he asks Raft and Robinson to look after his adult daughter, Dietrich, who's just been released from prison and promptly returns to waitressing at a seedy clip-joint where she and the other young women, including Eve Arden are expected to fleece the ever more intoxicated clientele.

Eddie takes to the girl immediately so much so that he soon proposes to her even though she's not attracted to him. George on the other hand finds that the "treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen," caveman-approach works better because soon enough, despite his treating Marlene with suspicion, disdain and even a dose of physical violence, of course it's him she falls for, predicating the triangle which sure enough will break by the film's climax, as the duo fight it out at 50 feet atop live electricity lines with Dietrich looking on from below.

It's all high-flying nonsense of course. The attitudes to women throughout are Neanderthal with any "dame" in a skirt fair game for a manhandling, be they nurses, costumiers or waitresses. The work the guys do too would keep Health and Safety in work for decades, there's such disregard for personal wellbeing, it's no wonder fatalities are commonplace. I also didn't enjoy the puerile antics of Hale and McHugh finding them old-fashioned and unfunny.

Raoul Walsh does his usual breakneck, man's world direction job, which means there's lots of testosterone, bonhomie, and fisticuffs, Raft and Robinson do their best in their exaggerated roles while Dietrich seems to be acting in a different film all together, all cliches of the hard-boiled working girl softened by an even tougher male played out one more time.

I suspect that the movie's heart might have started out in the right place as being masculine, knockabout entertainment but really its outdated treatment of the women in the cast is quite offensive at times and fatally wings a film that I don't think is any anywhere near to being a career highlight for either the distinguished director or his equally distinguished cast.

Is the movie a comedy with melodramatic overtones or a melodrama with comedic overtones. Sometimes it's hard to tell since exaggeration appears the way director Walsh has decided to pitch the material. The storms, the comedic byplay, Robinson's good-hearted working man—all are spread on pretty thickly and much of the time, I'm afraid, to a fault. At times there's almost a frenetic undercurrent as though the audience won't get the point unless it's shoveled on. Contrast Walsh's approach here with his tightly controlled direction of High Sierra (also 1941).

All in all, it's a strange movie. For example, when I think "daughter of the American working class", I don't think of a 40-year old with a German accent, even if she does pop gum in one scene. Just how that queen of continental glamour Marlene Dietrich wound up in a Warner Bros. programmer is puzzling, to say the least, especially when the studio had that supremely soulful blue-collar girl, Ida Lupino, under contract. Too bad that the wooden Dietrich adds to the phoniness of a movie that already has too much.

Of course, there are the thunder and lightning scenes that show what special effects in those days could do with a carefully lit soundstage. The storms are impressive, but they also make you doubt the sanity of anyone clambering around on 1,000 volt power lines. Falling appears to be the least of the hazards. Anyway, the movie's many conflicting parts produce an oddly awkward result, even if the very last shot achieves a kind of baroque poetry. Somehow, I suspect there's an inside story behind the making of this concoction that may be more compelling than the film itself.