Il rifugio

More than one movie was been made about a crook (or crooks in the case of couples) who leaves the city (usually, it's the Big Apple of New York) to go into hiding in a rural area. I've seen a few of them, and all but one that I can recall were comedy mysteries or crime pictures. Well, "Hide-Out" is an early one that stars Robert Montgomery and Maureen O'Sullivan, with a very large supporting cast.

Montgomery plays a sleezy, cocky, Jonathan "Lucky" Wilson. The cockiness fits Montgomery's normal film persona -- a smugginess in his constant quirky smile. It's a good story and film. While Wilson's conversion or change isn't quite believable, the performances by O'Sullivan as Pauline Miller, and those of the rest of her family and other supporting cast boost this film. Mickey Rooney is very good in this early role of his career as Pauline's youngest brother, Wiliam, who can't stand being called "Willie."

Old-time movie buffs and those interested in silver screen history will note and enjoy the roles of some of the great stock actors of mystery comedies. Here, Edward Brophy plays Detective Britt, Douglass Dumbrille plays nightclub owner DeSalle, and the dastardly appearing Henry Gordon plays The Boss, Tony Berrelli. Other comedy supporters are here as well, and do a good job - Herman Bing as Jake and Henry Armetta as Shuman.

Edward Arnold is one of the great supporting actors of Hollywood's golden era who never so much as received a nomination for any awards. Yet he could act in any genre, with a variety of characters and personas, and seem more natural in each role than anyone else. Arnold was superb in some great comedies and dramas. And, he could play mean and bad guys who came across tough as nails. Here he's a good guy, police detective and Lt. Mac MacCarthy who is hot on the trail of Wilson, his boss Berrelli, and the gang.

This is an enjoyable film, but younger modern audiences who have been brought up on fast action and speed in everything may not be able to slow down enough to enjoy it.

Robert Montgomery plays a gangster hiding out on a farm in "Hide-Out," a 1934 film also starring Maureen O'Sullivan, Edward Arnold, Elizabeth Patterson, Whitford Kane, and Mickey Rooney.

With the police after him, Lucky Wilson takes off but ends up shot and unconscious. He is then found by a farmer Miller (Kane) who takes him home.

There, Lucky, now calling himself by his real name, Jonathan, meets a normal American family, including an above-normal looking Pauline (Maureen O'Sullivan), who is the daughter of the house.

Jonathan stretches out his recovery and begins to enjoy the idyllic life of milking cows, feeding chickens, romancing Pauline, and being sort of a big brother to her younger sibling Willie (Mickey Rooney).

This is a sweet film with nothing special to recommend it except the beautiful young O'Sullivan and an amusing performance by Montgomery. In one of the best scenes, he sits at a ringside table and asks a singer out - while she's singing - and she answers him under her breath during short orchestral interludes.

The end seems a little abrupt, but this is a pleasant film. If Mrs. Miller looks familiar, she was Mrs. Trumbull, the neighbor who babysat Little Ricky on "I Love Lucy."

"Sweet" is not a word I've ever used to describe a film, mostly because the films that might merit the word are invariably too sappy to qualify. But "Hide-Out" pulls it off and truly deserves that description.

Much like "Bad Bascomb" (1946) and "Angel and the Badman" (1947) this is the story of an incorrigible criminal who is reformed because of his accidental association with good people. In "Hide-out" they are not reformers and there is no deliberate effort to reform; the character change comes because the positive examples cause him to adopt their values and belief system.

Robert Montgomery plays Lucky Wilson, a charming Broadway playboy who is part of a protection racket specializing in nightclubs. His boss gets a percentage of each club's profits and Lucky insures the payoff is correct by estimating each club's business from their napkin usage (a convenient procedure because they control the laundry the clubs use).

The opening sequence is exceptionally well staged, with Lucky's insatiable appetite for women revealed through a montage of blonde conquests; in the opening minutes he goes from a girlfriend's maid, to the girlfriend, to another girlfriend waiting for him in a car, to a new conquest at the night club he visits. During the brief intervals between conquests he finds time to leer and flirt with every pretty girl who crosses his path.

All these girls are blonds with lots of makeup and with elaborate hairstyles. Their appearances are meant to contrast with the natural appearance of Pauline Miller (Margaret O'Sullivan), the girl with whom he eventually falls in love.

"Hide-Out" is one of those films where the casting is perfect, as you cannot imagine anyone but Montgomery and O'Sullivan being able to pull this out without appearing completely silly. They are nicely assisted by Elizabeth Patterson (as Pauline's mother) and by a very young Mickey Rooney (as Pauline's younger brother Willie). The standing gag is Willie's frustrated attempts to get the family to call him Bill. His scenes with Montgomery are especially good and it is interesting how much natural acting talent he exhibits this early in his career. They go out on a standing gag about the reproductive abilities of the rabbits he has been raising.

A big reason why the film works is the attention paid to the details,. A second viewing will reveal many things you do not even notice the first time around, like Montgomery's continuing discomfort with "nature" when he brushes a rose bush in the front of the house. There are hundreds of these little details, most of them involving the citified Montgomery's fish-out-of-water adjustments to country life.

There was a 1941 remake titled "I'll Wait for You" staring Robert Sterling and Marsha Hunt. Although I love Marsha Hunt the 1934 original is easily the better film.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

This sentimental M-G-M "gangster" film works like a "Tarzan" in reverse: here the seemingly incorrigible hood played by Montgomery, urbane and a touch cynical, finds his cold heart surely melting in the warm embrace of a simple farm family and their soothing workaday life.

In "Tarzan" Maureen O'Sullivan is the "outsider", and although she must adjust to life in the jungle the thrust of that story is that she "domesticates" the "ape man" even as she learns to accept the simpler pleasures of living "close to nature". Here Montgomery is the one out of his element and we find him mystified by the sounds of crickets in the evening--something almost as strange and foreign to him as the unpretentious caring ways of the Miller family. When Mom and Pop and little "don't call me" Willy (played by young Mickey Rooney) conveniently leave the farm for a day, Montgomery and O'Sullivan get to play "farm" (baling the hay, splitting wood) the same way Tarzan and Jane get to play "house" together. In both cases O'Sullivan has "tamed" the wild beast.

"Tarzan" was an adventure film, however--the journey takes place in the great outdoors and nature is a mirror. "Hide-out" is an inner journey, on the other hand--even as he's hauled off to prison Montgomery smiles because he's finally come "home".

Yeah Yeah Yeah, I read about the Cliché's, but thats why I watch movies like these. I want a predictable ending, I want cliché's. I don't want to be emotionally challenged, I want to be entertained. A forgotten concept in todays movies. Occasionally weak acting and improvisation that lends a sense of realism. I like the mix between actual barnyard scenes and studio shots, probably technologically difficult in those times. Overall a very satisfying movie, and you gotta love Mickey Rooney as an ornery boy. I would have liked to see a sequel where the main character gets out of Jail and goes back. Marries the Girl, fixes the milk problem for Pa, and raises a passel of little piglets.