Corsario

This film is available on Alpha Video in a decent print and is most noteworthy as the final film of Roland West's career. He made three sound films, all with Chester Morris in the lead. This is also the least popular and in some ways the least artistic of the three. An additional behind-the-scenes interest of this film, is that Thelma Todd is the female lead, billed as "Alison Loyd" in an obvious attempt to distinguish her as a dramatic actress. She is fine in the film, but has a rather skimpy part.

The plot involves a young man who has just graduated from college who begins to work on Wall Street after being teased by Todd's character and clashes with his boss, who is her father. To prove his point and to get revenge, he becomes a modern day pirate, stealing liquor from illegal shipments at sea. Chester Morris is excellent in the role of John Hawkes, the young man.

Some great sharp camera angles and one very dark, sinister scene involving "Fish Face" and a female, Sophie, do not entirely make up for the fact that this film does not advance the techniques of film-making as ALIBI and THE BAT WHISPERS did. West's combination of editing with sound effects and music in ALIBI were a revelation in early 1929. And with THE BAT WHISPERS, he took miniature work to a new level in sound films with his 'bat's eye' camera moves through the cities and towns. CORSAIR seems rather routine in comparison.

That is not to say this is not a good little gangster film. Fred Kohler is solid as the bootlegger, Big John, and Ned Sparks along with Mayo Methot are great in support. The editing is crisp and the overall film has the dark touches you would expect from Roland West. It still holds up as one of the more effective gangster films of the early 1930s.

Corsair (from 1931) is a real moldie-oldie, that, in spite of its obvious age and creakiness, still manages to be fairly entertaining, in the long run.

This 83-year-old Comedy/Romance/Adventure story tells the roundabout tale of how dashing, college, football hero, Johnny Hawkes, meets cheeky, spoilt, heiress, Alison Corning.

Before long Hawkes finds himself captain of the Corsair (a sleek, high-speed gunboat).

Imminent danger lurks everywhere once Hawkes and his crew begin dealing with ruthless, modern-day pirates involved in big-time liquor smuggling.

With its story set mainly in the West Indies, Corsair (at 72 minutes) certainly had its fair share of high-seas action, violence and double-crosses.

This fast-paced story starred blond beauty, Thelma Todd (murdered at 29) and early-talkies heart-throb, Chester Morris (suicide at 69).

The early moments of Corsair offer a big buildup for our first look at Alison Loyd: we can hear her conversation with dance partner Frank McHugh, but our only view is of the back of her head. A moment later she is introduced to football hero Chester Morris, and again, she speaks unseen….until finally, in close up, her big smile flashes onto the screen. –Of course, it's Thelma Todd's smile. This big introduction apparently aims at establishing Todd as a mysterious and glamorous figure; presumably, this is why Todd is billed as "Alison Loyd" for the first and (I think) only time—to differentiate her "new" persona from the light comic actress Thelma Todd had been (and would continue to be, thank heavens!).

Unfortunately, the plot and dialog of Corsair offer Todd/Loyd little else to do besides smile and act alternately spoiled and silly. Her character is a major motivator to the actions of other characters—but she really does little and develops less herself. Which is too bad! Director Roland West didn't do Thelma justice by setting her up as a dangerous female and then giving her practically no depth, surprises or even decent lines to speak.

Chester Morris comes off better as a football hero turned banker turned pirate. Fired from his broker job for being unwilling to steal a little old lady's savings, he sets out to prove the boss banker wrong in his assertion that Morris doesn't have the nerve to be successful. Nerve? Morris sets up a booze pirating operation that is daring, dangerous and profitable…and sells the banker liquor by the boatload.

The middle section of the movie builds tension around Morris's organization and the danger he faces as his victims—a gang of smugglers themselves—eventually catch on to his operation and hatch plans to capture and wipe him out. Indeed, it turns into a pretty good adventure movie once it gets rolling.

Frank McHugh adds liveliness in his role as Morris's right hand man. Fred Kohler is appropriately menacing as "Big John" the smuggler. Morris, a solid lead, gives an excellent performance as a man who chooses and sticks to his own unique code of conduct.

The scenes between Morris and Todd ought to be the highlights of a film like this….but it's just the opposite. They speak so slowly…how do you make Chester Morris and Thelma Todd into slow talkers? –It's not just a function of the movie being an early talkie, either; there's a deliberateness to these scenes apparently meant to be serious and dramatic—and instead, all it does is drag.

As an adventure, it's not bad. But darn, in the "dramatic" sections, this is a movie in bad need of some zippy dialog.

After being told that he hasn't the right stuff for making it on Wall Street, former All American Football player Chester Morris goes in for a different kind of piracy. He decides to become a real pirate and beat the man who told him he was no good on the street Emmet Corrigan at his own game.

Which in addition to Wall Street stock manipulations is bootlegging. Corrigan's role is eerily like that of Joseph P. Kennedy. Only this Wall Street pirate and bootlegger has a daughter played by Thelma Todd a rather spoiled young lady used to getting exactly what she wants.

Todd's the main problem, she gives a spiritless and perfunctory performance, so atypical of her. She has absolutely no chemistry. As for Morris he gets a bit too self righteous.

On the plus side when the hijacking of bootleggers like Fred Kohler gets going Corsair gets a bit of life pumped into it. Frank McHugh plays a part he would repeat over and over at Warner Brothers as the hero's best friend and sets the mold here. Kohler is one nasty customer as the bootlegger Morris robs.

Corsair is an interesting, but in some stages rather lifeless film.

Ex-football player Chester Morris, egged on by rich girl Thelma Todd, tries bootlegging and piracy as a career. Will he continue to triumph over the villainous gangsters whose cargoes he hijacks, with friends Ned Sparks and Frank McHugh, or will Big John get his revenge on the crew of the CORSAIR?

This isn't a great work of art, and no new ground is broken. But once the plot gets rolling (it takes about a reel), this is a darn good action flick with a nice straightforward leading-man performance out of Morris, a surprisingly sympathetic turn out of Ned Sparks, and much of the fluid, frequently beautiful camera work and staging that is characteristic of director Roland West. Mayo Methot probably gets the best acting scene, and, in this case, is helped by her director, who has the sense to let the scene play out with simple lighting and staging. The director, indeed, helps himself by downplaying some of the camera showiness on films like Alibi and The Bat, and by improving, significantly, his direction of actors and his pacing of the story.

We do not have a perfect film here. Thelma Todd is around to look pretty, but she had not found her dramatic acting chops at the time this movie was shot. Also, the ending of the movie is utterly wrong and too drawn out. But in its middle reels, this movie is as spry and well-paced as a typical Warners movie, and suggests that Morris could have had a much better movie career with more films like this. Worth seeing -- particularly if you think 1931 movies are all people standing around and declaiming while the camera stays put.