marcslope

Theodore Dreiser's "Sister Carrie" gets a very respectable, finely wrought filming from William Wyler, employing the same screenwriters he'd used on "The Heiress," Ruth and Augustus Goetz. Handsome and finely conceived, it traverses from turn-of-the-century Chicago to New York, detailing the tragic romance of Laurence Olivier, a successful restaurateur, and his swift plunge into beggary from pursuing Jennifer Jones, an innocent country girl negotiating the challenges of the big city. He's married, to out-and-out shrew Miriam Hopkins, and she's unsuccessfully pursued by brash businessman Eddie Albert, who's excellent. Olivier didn't enjoy filming and didn't really see the point of the movie, but he gives a stunningly detailed performance. It's mainstream prestige studio filmmaking at its finest, but I do have a problem with it, and that's Jennifer Jones. She overacts, and we never see why these two estimable men would be so besotted with her. One feels the over-management of her spouse, David Selznick, who always wanted to present her as irresistible, and rarely succeeded.

It may be hard to explain Eddie Cantor's appeal to today's moviegoers. In the 1930s he demonstrated a combination of ethnic relatability, physical comedy, song-and-dance dexterity, and out-and-out silliness that contemporary audiences found enormously appealing. This lavish Sam Goldwyn production may be his best shot, a nonstop parade of nonsense, where Eddie's backed by a wonderful cast. The story, about a Brooklyn boy inheriting a fortune and traveling to Egypt to claim it, reeks of all-night screenwriter conferences to wring out every possible joke. But it's so lively and silly, and there's so much besides Eddie to appreciate. Ethel Merman not only gets a lot to sing but demonstrates considerable comic chops, and she's partnered with a funny Warren Hymer. Ann Sothern is pretty and poised, and you don't mind her being partnered with a pallid George Murphy so much. A very young Nicholas Brothers get to do a specialty. Eva Sully, who didn't make a lot of movies, is an Egyptian princess with a Brooklyn twang (another silly joke), sort of Gracie Allen-esque, and she's very funny. The finale, in early three-strip Technicolor, is as fun as it is tasteless. Get past all the non-PC stuff offensive by today's standards (Eddie even dons blackface for a minstrel sequence; the other cast members fortunately don't), and you'll probably have a marvelous time.

Drama, or maybe it's a comedy, I couldn't really tell, has Loretta Young as a down-on-her-luck urbanite with two crook pals, who stumbles on her wealthy absolute lookalike at a speakeasy, where the trio contrive to rob her. From there it's ludicrousness upon ludicrousness, with poor Loretta also being telepathic (she's able to intuit the safe combination out of the other, unconscious Loretta), escapes and coincidences that would never happen, and a finale that reveals why the two Lorettas look so alike... can you guess? Her leading man, Jack Mulhall, is dullsville, and our loyalties are confused; if poor Loretta is engineering a jewel robbery, how on her side can we be? The double exposures involving the two Lorettas are reasonably well faked, and it's over mercifully fast. What this has to do with any road to paradise, I'm stumped.