La Ronde des pantins

When watching "Idiot's Delight", one needs to remember that it was released in 1939, the year WWII began in Europe and before the U.S. entered the conflict. Audiences did not know how long the war would last or that the U.S. would send its troops or that millions would die including so many civilians targeted by Hitler.

The film is adapted by Robert E. Sherwood from his own Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which involves a variety of characters who are forced to wait in a Swiss hotel at the beginning of hostilities until the authorities allow them to cross the borders. The play did not include the portion of the film that precedes the hotel scenes.

With the earlier scenes, which include the relationship between Harry Van (Clark Gable) and Irene Fellara (Norma Shearer), the film lacks the central mystery of the play--is the Russian aristocrat Harry meets in the hotel the same woman (Irene) he met in Omaha, as he believes?

The other hotel guests include a pacifist activist, a German munitions manufacturer, and a honeymooning British couple. The proclamation of war has certain impacts on all their lives. But still, the future is very uncertain. The author "warns" the audience, through dialogue, that history has taught us war should never be trivialized by predictions of a quick resolution.

Despite the dark prospect of impending war, the film is a light-hearted comedy until the ending. The domestic film has a very different ending than the international release. TCM shows both endings, for contrast. The domestic ending seems appropriate, given the date of its release. The international ending seems almost prescient from today's point of view, but to a viewer in 1939, it would feel appropriately solemn.

Shearer's performance needs to be recognized as a parody of Garbo to be appreciated. She must have had fun with the accent and affectation.

The strength or weakness of the ending, including the lack of drama involved in the verification of the Russian woman's identity, might be points of discussion, but I think it could have been stronger.

The play was stagy and stilted to begin with; on screen it was all so much worse. There is virtually no directing, and of the principals, only Gable has a clue what he's doing. Poor Norma Shearer starts out fine as the ingenue, but with no notion of how to play the fake countess, she hams her way desperately through the rest of the picture like a high school thespian. It's embarrassing to watch. Just when you think nothing could be worse, Burgess Meredith bursts in like a misplaced character from another set, jumping around and shouting at the top of his lungs -- a hammy stage actor who seems not even to have been told there are microphones. The voice in your head keeps screaming "Cut! Cut! Cut!" for the missing director, who's evidently out to lunch.

That said, there ARE real merits in this movie. Gable is disarmingly charming as Harry Van. The play itself is an interesting period piece with a warning about fascism BEFORE we knew the worst. And then, there IS a kind of weird, whacky fascination in watching Norma Shearer taken over by that BIG platinum wig, which is almost a character in the play by itself.

Finally, there are two outstandingly memorable moments which for me make this movie well worth watching. Gable's witty, winking, sexy, song-and-dance version of "Puttin' on the Ritz" is something not to be forgotten -- AND, the man CAN sing and dance! The other sheer delight is watching the !GREAT! Laura Hope Crews in her brief but masterful portrayal of the tipsy Madame Zuleika, whose cheesy vaudeville mind reading act gets more hysterical with every furtive sip from her hip flask. I screamed with laughter, and you will, too. Laura Hope Crews should be declared a national treasure.

Robert Sherwood's anti-war play IDIOT'S DELIGHT was one of the great acting vehicles of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontaine. Set in an alpine resort hotel, it is set really in 1937-39, that period when most people felt that another general European War was going to break out soon. And the threat and reality of war spreads until the final minutes when (in the play) Lunt is pounding out "Onward Christian Soldiers" on the piano while bombers are destroying the hotel all around him. In short, the world will probably destroy itself this time. The play was a triumph for it's stars, and won Sherwood the Pulitzer Prize.

It has dated badly, like so many anti-war pieces in the 1930s. The novel THIS GUN FOR HIRE was also anti-war, in that the villain (of the novel) was killing Europe's leading peace advocate statesman to enable a war to break out. When that novel was turned into a superior film in 1942, the plot was changed into the villains as traitors working for Japan (the original novel was set in England, not America). The changes there save THIS GUN FOR HIRE, but no such changes save IDIOT'S DELIGHT.

Let me be honest here - I have seen enough bloodshed in my lifetime to hate war. Most sane people hate war. But occasionally war is necessary. When it was to destroy the Nazis it certainly was (and that was the war that was threatening in 1937 - 39). It may even be necessary against Osama Ben Laden. But there is a genuine fear created from those antagonists. A war over the ownership of some rocky territory is usually not a decent reason to mobilize for large scale bloodshed. There are legitimate reasons to oppose warfare.

People like Sherwood and Graham Greene (author of THIS GUN FOR HIRE) happened to have latched onto a conspiracy theory regarding World War I that they just felt was true. Both men felt the real villains in 1914 - 1918 was not the various foolish leaders of the nations involved, nor the generals or admirals, or fighting men. It was the munition manufacturers. This stupid theory was given impetus in the U.S. by a special investigation committee into the sales of munitions in World War I that was conducted by North Dakota isolationist Senator Gerald P. Nye. Given the nickname: "The Merchants of Death" investigation, it suggested that an unholy alliance of gun and war machine factory owners and big bankers like J. P. Morgan and Kuhn Loeb & Co. had pushed the U.S. into war so that their profits could go through the roof. In England a similar view was seen in the career of the notorious arms salesman and industrialist Sir Basil Zaharoff. A man from the Balkans, Zaharoff sold arms to all countries (sometimes enemy countries at the same time) and supposedly pushed the governments into the great bloodbath to increase his profits. As Sir Basil was (erroneously) thought to be Jewish, Greene turned him into the villain of his novel (Sir Marcus, the arms manufacturer). Thinking along similar lines, Sherwood creates his version of Zaharoff as Achille Weber, the Edward Arnold role in the play and film.

No doubt munition stock zoomed during the war (except for the companies in the Central Powers who lost), but Zaharoff did not have that much influence. Suspected for being foreign born, he was not likely to be heeded on life and death matters to Great Britain or any of the other countries he dealt with. His importance was as much as anyone who would have offered to sell some new technology in each country - like Rudolf Diesel, the engine inventor, who tried to sell his engine in England.

Sherwood's Weber dates the play. He should have stuck to the problems of nationalism or of economic warfare. The real causes for war were badly ignored - at least in this film. The whole idea of the plot is that everyone in the resort happens to mirror all the countries in Europe, and when the war breaks up they are forced to return home to fight to the death. Typical is Charles Coburn, as a scientist working on a cancer cure. He ends bitterly returning home, to design war weapons with his knowledge of science. That is actually far more effective to get the anti-war message across.

Gable does a fine job as Harry Van (including his delightful song and dance number - which one wishes he had tried to repeat elsewhere), more concerned with trying to guess the identity of Norma Shearer's Irene than the impending war. Is she that phony he met ten years ago or is she actually a Russian princess? Shearer gives one of her best performances, joining Carole Lombard in THE PRINCESS COMES ACROSS in imitating Garbo (albeit as a Russian, not a Swede). Arnold's role is meaty but small, and he is properly untrustworthy - ditching Irene at the hotel under scurvy circumstances. And Laura Hope Crews as the tipsy Madame Zuleika, in Harry/Gable's first acting job, is wonderful as the world's worst mind reader. I give the film a seven - it is entertaining enough to hold your attention, despite your misgivings.

This is one of my favorite movies. Norma Shearer is incredible in this film. Norma in those Adrian gowns camping it up to the hilt. Who could ask for more? See it if you get the chance. This movie is right up there with the likes of "Red Dust" and "Cain and Mabel".

Clarence Brown's "Idiot's Delight," based on a play by Robert E. Sherwood, is like a can of mixed nuts: a few classy cashews, the rare Brazil nut, and lots of boring peanuts. On the verge of World War II, a motley crew of travelers is stranded at an Alpine hotel in an unnamed country. However, the film is no "Grand Hotel," more a "Chalet of Fools." The highlight is Clark Gable's famous or infamous song-and-dance routine, "Putting on the Ritz," with a bevy of blonde showgirls. Gable's endearingly clumsy dancing is classic and probably best seen as an excerpt in "That's Entertainment." To the amusement of Gable and the audience, Norma Shearer in a blonde wig and a deliberately thick Russian accent camps shamelessly. Obviously enjoying herself, Shearer steals the scenes as a phony playing a phony when Gable is not hoofing.

However, the fun stops there. Burgess Meredith brings the film to a halt every time he appears to rant anti-war propaganda at the other guests. Charles Coburn muddles around with cages of rats and talks about curing cancer, and a pair of innocent newly weds do nothing but occupy screen time. The blonde showgirls that accompany Gable are standard stereotypes from the Southern belle to the perky pixie, and Joseph Schildkraut is the handsome but stern stereotypical military officer. The girls cavort with the soldiers; the young husband must return to defend his country; the bad guys drop bombs. Too many stale peanuts.

After the clichés have played out, the film takes a dark turn that dampens, no, actually drowns, any fun that preceded it, and the finale is absolutely ludicrous. About half way into "Idiot's Delight," Sherwood strives to add "meaning" and "significance" to his work and forgot "entertainment." A stellar cast and a few good scenes are generally wasted in a film whose best bits appear in "That's Entertainment."