Face in the Sky

For fans of Hollywood cinema of the '30s this long-forgotten movie is a pleasant surprise. Face in the Sky is a real charmer, an oddball comedy-drama with whimsical touches starring the unlikely team of Spencer Tracy and Stuart Erwin. Tracy made a number of comedies in his early years at the Fox studio, often playing a fast-talking wise guy teamed with a dimwitted partner. (Watching these films I'm reminded of Abbott & Costello, even though they didn't start making movies until 1940; Tracy comes off like Bud Abbott while his "Costello" might be anyone from Warren Hymer to Jack Oakie.) Here the comic byplay between Spence and Stu is of secondary importance, for the real heart of the matter is Tracy's slow-budding romance with the lovely Marian Nixon. Miss Nixon, who has some of Janet Gaynor's winsome charm, plays a naive country girl rescued from a forced marriage and lured to the big city, where she's threatened by an oily con man on the make, surreal hallucinations, and other frightening urban perils before Tracy manages to rescue her again, once and for all. The plot is right out of a 19th century stage melodrama, but that's okay: the filmmakers were obviously aware of the dated nature of their material and embellished the script with imaginative visual flourishes as well as occasional touches of intentional self-parody. Even so, these satirical elements never undercut the sincerity of the leads' performances.

Tracy & Erwin play a pair of traveling sign painters who roam the country in a beat-up truck, applying their artistic skill to advertising Beauty Magic cosmetics on billboards or any other convenient space. When we first meet them the guys are driving through a rural area, searching for a barn that will provide a canvas large enough to serve their purposes. They wind up at the farm of a mean old miser named Brown. He's raising a pretty young girl named Madge as his "ward" and intends to marry her to his awful son. Tracy plays a brash, self-confident young buck named Joe Buck—a chuckle for latter-day fans of Midnight Cowboy!—who, in addition to painting billboards, is given to spouting high-flown orations about self-betterment and achievement. (Fortunately, Tracy delivers these speeches with just the right mixture of earnestness and comic pomposity.) Madge is deeply impressed, and after the inevitable confrontation with the Brown family she runs away with Joe and his partner Lucky. The film's highlight comes when she and her rescuers visit a small-town carnival. For today's viewers this sequence is a fascinating evocation of an era long gone, beautifully filmed by distinguished cinematographer Lee Garmes and richly atmospheric. The sequence leads to another highlight, when Joe finally lets down his guard and pours out his feelings for Madge. This scene is beautifully played, and displays Spencer Tracy's skill with romantic comedy, his seemingly effortless ability to be both poignant and funny without ever breaking character or seeming to strain for a laugh.

The plot of Face in the Sky takes some surprising twists in the second half. The Browns track down Madge, and, with the help of local law enforcement, bring her back to the farm for a forced wedding. Joe and his partner Lucky go home in defeat to their company's Manhattan headquarters—located in the Empire State Building, no less—and Joe becomes half-heartedly involved with a wealthy Park Avenue playgirl (played by the gorgeous Lila Lee). Eventually Madge makes her way to the city, where the filmmakers indulge in the movie's most memorable, surreal flourish: when the exhausted girl gazes at a series of urban billboards they come to life and speak to her! Madge is brought back to reality when she sees a billboard Joe has painted at the top of a skyscraper to advertise Beauty Magic. It's her own face in the sky, and it leads her to Joe.

I've looked up some of the reviews this movie received when it was first released in January 1933, at the nadir of the Depression, and it appears that the critics of the day weren't very fond of Face in the Sky. Most called it hokey and excessively coy, and one reviewer compared it to an old Mary Pickford one-reeler of the silent days, a put-down implying it was dated and tired. I can understand that this movie might not be to everyone's taste, but my feeling is that time has been kind to it. What looked dated or hokey to the critics of 1933 looks like period charm today, and the Hollywood production sheen they took for granted looks better than ever to our eyes. Plus, even for those who find the whimsy a bit much, the deft performances of Spencer Tracy and Marian Nixon still connect. While it's no masterpiece, Face in the Sky is one of those quirky products of the studio system that's unexpected, entertaining and ripe for re-evaluation.

Joe Buck (Spencer Tracy) and his assistant (??) Lucky (Stuart Erwin) travel around the countryside painting signs. They convince farmer Nathan Brown (Russell Simpson) to let them paint his barn. There they meet Cinderella-like farmgirl Madge (Marian Nixon), who is overworked and neglected by her brutish stepdad and flirted with by stepdad's son JIm. Nathan is pushing Madge into marrying her stepbrother whom she strongly dislikes - Holy Brady Bunch Batman! She can see her own future in the beat down face of her mother, so when she sees an opportunity to run away from all of this with Joe and Lucky, she takes that chance. Complications ensue.

Actually, Joe is the sign painter, and he considers himself a bit of a wistful artist type. And it must not have been easy to convince people to let you paint advertisements on their property during the Great Depression without getting paid in cash themselves. This is Spencer Tracy doing a variation on the same "hard guy" character he played at Fox in just about every part until he went to MGM in 1935.

This film doesn't know what it wants to be, so the plot meanders all over the place. It starts out being about the artsy wise guy falling in love with the farm girl and rescuing her. Then it is a combination road and carnival movie with no clear explanation as to why the carnival portion is the least bit relevant to the story. Finally it is a "Lost in the Big City During the Depression" tale with some weird stuff about people in billboards coming to life in an almost musical number. Lila Lee's part seems pointless. I have no idea what Lucky's purpose in life is since his character seems exist only to get Joe in trouble and yet Joe keeps him around.

Still it kept my attention because it moved around so much it never was boring. I'd recommend it on its weirdness factor and it being a chance to see Spencer Tracy's early work. Weird factoid - This film about a sign painter who sees himself as an artist was directed by Harry Lachman, an actual post Impressionist painter who was decorated by the French government for his contribution to art.

Spencer Tracy is a sign painter, and Stu Erwin is his assistant. They're somewhere out in the country, doing the side of a barn for Guy Usher back in New York, when they come across Marian Nixon, the oppressed daughter of the farm. Tracy is a guy who can paint and has heard vaguely of some things, which he passes down to Erwin, and the most important thing is that to get ahead, you need to hitch your wagon to a star. Since Miss Nixon isn't one, when Usher calls them back to the city, they go without her.

It's one of those little-guys-on-the-make roles for Tracy, his meat and potatoes when he was at Fox; the best he ever did was for Borzage in MAN'S CASTLE, the most entertaining in ME AND MY GAL. Working from one of those meandering scripts that showed how badly run the writers' department was at Fox in this period, director Harry Lachman seems unable to put more on the screen than the bare minimum. There's no chemistry between Tracy & Nixon, Erwin is present to make sure that Tracy isn't actually talking to himself, and the most human performances are from Usher and Lila Lee as Usher's daughter.

It's good to check another Spencer Tracy off the list, but doing so helps to explain why they vanished, why his contract was let to lapse, and why Mayer wasn't enthusiastic about hiring him at MGM. Seven features and two shorts to go!

Any pre-1935 film with Spencer Tracy is not only rare viewing, but required viewing for true film buffs. This is a somewhat light-hearted story with Tracy as a billboard sign artist, teamed with Stuart Erwin. Mis-adventures ensue when they encounter a young woman forced to wed a hayseed she doesn't love. Somewhat ambitious production value brings the story from the rural hinterlands to a conclusion in New York City. Spencer Tracy gives a solid performance as a hard-on-the-outside soft-on-the-inside artist. Stuart Erwin provides comedy relief as his sidekick. I don't recall this film ever being shown on television, as it's one of those early Fox films that are hard to come by. Recommended, easy viewing for Tracy fans.

It's rare that a "rare" film lives up to its reputation once seen, but this one actually exceeds. It's an offbeat, utterly charming (and extremely well directed and photographed) fairy tale that leaves an actual good feeling in your gut that 99 % of other movies, even good ones, seldom do. Tracy gives a whimsical, almost surreal performance that went a long way for me to justify his reputation -- and this is from a reviewer who generally can't stand his later "serious" MGM hits. Stu Erwin has maybe his funniest role ever, but the real surprise is how appealing lovely Marion Nixon turns out to be. Why she didn't work more is a mystery, although I can see that this particular role, as a sweet, childlike farm girl who buys into Tracy's cloud-high dreams, is tailor made for her particular talents.

In short, I really enjoyed this movie. It holds up to the test of time remarkably well.