L'aventure

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?

I was 8 years old when I saw this movie and it impressed me so much. I will never forget 3 things in the movie "Adventure". How to hypnotize a chicken; how the water drains out of the tub in a different direction depending on which side of the equator you live; how Clark Gable was yelling at his newborn baby to breathe.It was such a good romance, even to a young girl and I remember how the friend, Mudgin, was afraid of losing his soul. I am 64 years old now and it is still as fresh in my mind as it was in 1946 in Hartshorne, Oklahoma.

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.

Maybe because STRANGE CARGO, THE HUMAN COMEDY and A GUY NAMED JOE dealt with whimsy and religious fantasy successfully, MGM kept trying with this kind of picture. But HIGH BARBAREE and ADVENTURE (both based on what must have been gassy novels) are dull failures.

I must dissent with the majority view here that ADVENTURE is good and that Clark Gable and Greer Garson are good in it. They are a dismal mismatch as a romantic team and neither is suited to this kind of heavy, 'meaningful' material. In their very different ways, both stars were grounded, practical, sensible, which is not what was needed to bring off this type of romantic fantasy. When they meet and for a long time after, Gable and Garson give too successful an impression of mutual loathing for us to believe later that they have suddenly discovered their great love for each other. Victor Fleming does a very glossy professional job directing this film and both stars get dazzling, dynamically framed closeups and two-shots, but they never seem right for each other. By contrast, in a supporting role, Joan Blondell seems exactly right for Gable, being his female equivalent, having humor and a juicy kind of sensuality.

ADVENTURE is anything but, and the mystical themes never make any sense and are never convincingly connected to the romance. It was a big hit, presumably because people were curious to see these stars together, and to catch Gable's first picture after the war. But this could only have diminished the luster of both of them. And pictures like this must be why Dore Schary was brought into the studio to supplant Louis B. Mayer, who had become lazy and complacent, squandering his two biggest stars on pretentious garbage.

This movie is better with each passing year. It is a semi-noir, pre-"reality" - psychological drama of intense beauty.

Clark Gable stars as a staunchly confirmed sea dog, crew leader (called a bos'n) and womanizer who is totally unprepared to meet Greer Garson's character, who forever changes his vision of what is possible in finding love with a woman. Academy Award winner, and beloved character actor Thomas Mitchell ("Uncle Billy" in "It's A Wonderful Life (1946)") plays his too-sensitive-for-this-world side-kick, who becomes Gable's conscience, but at a price.

The script of this drama is lyrically sublime, subtle and quite deep. The fire between the stars is evident and haunting. True 'soul-mate' love is the overt theme of this movie. Existence, conscience, and facing the pain and limits of life, so that you may truly pass into adulthood, are more themes explored here. I view this film regularly once a year and am always inspired by its deep message and raw powerful performances. This isn't your stock Gable. This is a bittersweet post-war love poem.(Really! E. B. Browning is quoted to great effect!)

Gable's "Harry Patterson" has seen tragedy and loss (as had Gable himself, recently losing the love of his life, wife Carole Lombard). He is made restless in search of "it" which he believes only exists in the danger and perils of sea voyaging. He is sickened by the way shipwrecked people, alive and on edge, once rescued, quickly become bored and lose that passionate awareness of their own lives. He is searching for that life where he stays excited and in the passionate present (probably true of many returning war soldiers in 1945).

In Garson's "Emily Sears" he sees "it" for the first time in a woman's eyes. He is intrigued by her equivalent strength and wit, and simultaneously threatened by the risk of pain in losing her. Their love develops as a series of intense battles. She sees a "caged animal" and for the first time a man she might really respect, even though she feels he needs to be reached through all of his rebellion...and rescued.

His actions are escapist (and make great movie scenes)...but sailing away to forget his new "queen," he finds things have changed and we know, as do the other characters, that it is the end of his former life ...even if he doesn't. "Emily" bravely allows "Harry" to figure it out for himself. She doesn't demand any change in him, instead she sends him off to find "it" and risks being without the man that she loves for the rest of her life. Her majesty the queen of MGM, Greer Garson, has never been lovelier.

Joan Blondel is a juicy, ripe 'tomato'(the returning soldiers must have hooted and hollered!). Lina Romay makes an incredible "girl in distant port" and even sings a bit!

Thomas Mitchell is the stand out support. He plays Mudge, the soul and conscience of the free spirited Gable and perhaps of the whole film. He brilliantly helps unite a lost sailor & seeker with what his heart truly seeks.

Watch this film and let it be poetry... just let it play as you marvel at the writing and the actors' eyes. I predict that this movie is about to be rediscovered in a big way. ( By you?)