L'aventure

You have to see the movie to learn what "it" refers to. You will also learn how to lure chickens properly, how to regain your "soul", what San Fran looked like in 1945, how to attract a woman by dating her roommate, how to throw rocks at your lover, how snappy dialogue and lively acting can be much more entertaining than the 90% of the c**p in today's "subtle" acting movies. No "adventure" here in today's terms but quite daring and emotional in its own way.

Gable and Garson make for a poor pairing in this overlong limp love story that goes in circles for over two hours. Gable fresh from war service looks like he's aged considerably and his tired abrasive performance shows it.

Harry Patterson (Gable) has a girl in every port and plans never to get tied down. Wandering into a library with a shipmate friend he meets staid and proper librarian Emily Sears (Garson) who is at first put off by the lug but opposites are known to attract and they ending up running off to Reno and getting hitched. But Harry's no land lubber and the two split up but not before Emily gets knocked-up. An oblivious Harry goes back to sea and his old ways but it just ain't the same.

There is little finesse to be found in Gables performance, just bluster. He does a lot of jabbering and doesn't really connect with anyone in the film. Garson's Emily on the other hand is too delicate and restrained to do a one-eighty. Victor Fleming's direction is loose and uninspired and the production values erratic with some terrible back projection.

"Gable's back and Garson's got'em" went the phrase back then but after seeing this you can keep them.

I'm 65 and I have appreciated Gable's contributions over his career. I did not see Adventure on the silver screen but only this afternoon on TV, and so I cannot think back to how it was received at the time. Our mindsets are different now, anyway, and so I'm now wondering whether anyone else today besides me becomes worn down by his dialog? I'm sorry, but his constant barking finally got to me and I had to turn this one off. What's he doing anyway, schtik? I can imagine his answering even "one lump or two?" in high dudgeon. That just gets tiresome after a while, until such affectation of anger, indignation, resentment or whatever degenerates almost into buffoonery. Not everything has to be expressed frankly, my dear.

Adventure (1945)

Surely the title is a huge pun, or a huge mistake. This is an adventure of a man who is no longer looking for the high seas and wartime survival, but the adventure of love with a woman who is not, at fist his type. It's not as bad as some of the reviews suggest, but there is something steady and normal and incipient about it all.

While featuring Clark Gable in the lead, and with the same director as Gone with the Wind a few years earlier, there is something stiff about it all, even the humor and fun. Greer Garson is the "serious" woman, someone who has to force herself to have fun, and Joan Blondell is the racy one, out for fun above all else. And if Gable seems suited to the crazy woman, he's clearly also set to be tamed by the other.

That's pretty much the adventure, after a few wild scenes from kicking down the door in Chile to getting torpedoed by the Japanese.

Garson can be impressive in her cultured way, but here she is hot and cold, on and off. It's partly her speeches are more words than meaning. There's nothing more boring than people talking about being exciting. If in one scene you'll be laughing as Gable and Garson trap some chickens, in the next you'll be forced to think deep thoughts about true adventure and true meaning—when in fact the meaning was in the chicken scene.

Blondell never quite gets her due in many of her movies because she plays against (or in contrast to) the leading female who is more grand, or more beautiful, or just more star powered than she is. Too bad. She's fun but she also has fabulous screen presence. That, to me, is what matters most (often) in this era.

The movie is too long in parts, and the theme wears thin after while. In the end it's about a sailor's life or the landlubber's, the first filled with freedom, the second with a home and a family. It's 1945, the soldiers are coming home—guess which side wins?

In his first film after World War II service in the Army Air Corps, Clark Gable settled down to a familiar character and one of his most familiar directors. Adventure was the last of five films that Gable did with Victor Fleming which also includes Gone With The Wind. This one never quite measured up to Gone With The Wind though.

Gable was literally met at the airport by Louis B. Mayer and rushed into this film. It was thought at the time that a film with current box office sensation Greer Garson was a can't miss item at the box office. Garson was coming off an Oscar she received in 1942 for Mrs. Miniver the year Gable went away to war.

The results were underwhelming, but seen over 60 years after it was first out show Adventure to be not a bad story at all. Gable fits comfortably into the part of the tough boatswain who loves the rollicking life at sea he leads. No woman is going to be tying him down, not one like prim and proper librarian Greer Garson. He likes them like her roommate Joan Blondell, sassy and out for a good time.

But Greer and her notions of settling down with home and family kind of get under his skin. It's what's led many a man to the altar.

Gable and Garson never worked together again, probably by mutual consent. Neither were each other's types on the screen and in life, but no one has anything to be ashamed of in Adventure.

Best performance in the cast is by Thomas Mitchell as Gable's friend and confidante. Mitchell plays the usual tragicomic alcoholic that he took a patent out on for the screen.

Another in the cast and former vocalist with the Xavier Cugat Orchestra is Lina Romay who is the woman we first see Gable with as the film opens. She would shortly be joining the Bing Crosby show as the featured female singer. That 'dame' who gets $20.00 for some conversation is none other than Barbara Billingsley aka June Cleaver. Who'd have thunk that one?

Though this one didn't set the world on fire, Gable's next two films, Homecoming and The Hucksters rank in my humble opinion as two of his very best. The King was ascending his throne again.