La llama revivida

"The Key" starts off promisingly with atmospheric photography as British troops track down a Sein Fein leader. Apparently Warner Bros thought this wasn't enough, so halfway through the film a love triangle is introduced between William Powell, Edna Best and Colin Clive. All it succeeds in doing is derailing the film into very familiar territory. Seeing Colin Clive making dead bodies with a gun rather than bringing them back to life in a lab sparks some interest but other than that he spends his time looking glum (did he ever smile?). William Powell begins the film with an accent and a "right-ho, pip, pip" clipped speech that vanishes by the third reel and he and Edna Best (in her first U.S. film) have absolutely no chemistry. Director Curtiz does well until the highpoint of the love story where he pulls the camera out the window into the fog and goes into a flashback that looks like it belongs on a 1890 stage. Add to this a criminally underused Donald Crisp and a hokey ending and you have one missed opportunity.

William Powell is inexplicably cast as Captain Bill Tennant. I say inexplicably because he is supposed to be a British officer, but sounds just like an American--which he is. They could have gotten around this by saying he was a Canadian but didn't. So, at the outset, the film has a big deficit in regard to casting.

Tennant is a bit of a rogue. Although he's a good soldier and always seems to land on his feet, he has a long history of sleeping with the wrong women--often married women. Because of this history, it's very surprising that he is friends with Captain Andy Kerr (Colin Clive)--who is a rather dull married man. Kerr also is clueless as to how big a scoundrel Tennant is, as in the past, Tennant had a relationship with Norah--who is now Andy's wife. Not surprisingly, Norah and Tennant soon pick up where they left off.

When Andy learns the truth, he does something crazy--he just wanders into the streets of Dublin--a terrible place to walk about if you are a British soldier during the Troubles in Ireland (i.e., during the height of the violence in Ireland in the early 20th century). Not surprisingly, he's taken prisoner by Irish nationalists and will be executed if a member of Sinn Féin is hung. What is Tennant to do? After all, Andy's predicament is his fault.

I think with better casting as well as a less sappy love story this film would have played a lot better. I did like how the film took a rather neutral view of the Irish problems and the look of Ireland in the film was quite nice.

If The Key looks like The Informer you'd definitely be right. Michael Curtiz's film looks a lot like it although John Ford created better atmosphere telling his story in his Oscar winning film. Then again this was a different type of story, a story of the Irish Rebellion told from the British point of view.

William Powell who's served just about everywhere in the British Empire as a career army man is now arrived in Ireland in 1920. He's billeted with an old friend Colin Clive in the same area. But Clive is now married to Edna Best who has history with Powell before she met and married Clive.

The big concern for the army is to get a man named Peadar Conlan who is a kind of composite character between Michael Collins and Eamon DeValera. Get him and the rebellion will be over. He's played by Donald Crisp and Crisp when he's on screen he's stealing the scenes from the stars. So is J.M. Kerrigan who is one shifty character, a bit more polish than the guy he played in The Informer and in The General Died At Dawn, but definitely not one to turn your back on.

The romantic triangle intersects with the politics of the Rebellion in ways not anticipated by the leads. In the end one lead makes a big sacrifice for the other.

The Key was William Powell's last film in his stint with Warner Brothers before moving on to MGM and his years in The Thin Man series with Myrna Loy. According to the Citadel Film series book about him he thought this was one of the better films he did at that studio and I'm inclined to agree.

I thought The Key was excellent. Interesting story, strong dialogue and good performances. To my mind this is one of Michael Curtiz' best films. It's not just a matter of creating atmosphere. In shooting the street scenes and club scenes Curtiz fills the frame with movement. This film really has the feel of life in the city. With the help of cinematographer Ernest Haller and art director Robert Haas, Curtiz makes the tension of the situation palpable. There are some weak moments, but my only real complaint is that William Powell could be stronger. He's fine at the beginning when he's just playing the breezy adventurer. But as we see that the character is more complex, Powell needs to do more to show the conflict within. Instead he keeps it mostly on the surface. On the other hand, a lot of the actors in small roles are marvelous. Over all, this is a really solid movie.

... although I enjoy to some degree just about everything William Powell was ever in. He saves this from being a 4 or 5 star movie for me. Edna Best was a well respected actress of the stage, but she just did not impress on screen. The story is about a British intelligence officer (Colin Clive) and his wife (Edna Best) who is stuck on some old boyfriend (William Powell as another British officer and stuckee). To complicate matters, Powell and Clive are best friends from before either of them knew Edna, and now Clive and Edna are billeted in the apartment just below Powell.

The setting is weird for a Depression era Warner's film. In terrain usually traversed by Paramount or MGM, here is WB in the middle of a period piece romance/drama involving the Irish rebellion and the sinn fein.

The art design and attention to detail is very good here, with the actors even having the - by American standards - rather weird British means of saluting down pat. Michael Curtiz' direction is impressive, and he tries to make the film more interesting with some of his famous genius with the camera, but he just can't save this script or Best's shrill performance or lack of chemistry with either one of the leading men. I would expect the leading men to be more likely to chuck it all and go off together than to have either one of them win Best's final affection or want it in the first place.

Maybe the irony in all of this is that "The Key" was William Powell's final film at Warner Brothers, who was not that happy with the roles he was getting there. And what is the first film he does after arriving at MGM? The equally sappy "Manhattan Melodrama" in which we are expected to believe that Mickey Rooney grows up to be Clark Gable! Oh well, after this rough patch there are much better things ahead in film for William Powell.