En liberté provisoire

This is a quite unpleasant picture which paints the newspaper industry in a particularly bad light. Joan Blondell plays a character different to the usual bubbly screen persona we're used to. Along with Pat O'Brien, she's a gutter journalist working at a muck-raking scandal rag ruining people's lives without any cares.

If you've seen Mervyn LeRoy's excellent FIVE STAR FINAL made in 1931 this will make you a little depressed. That film was a scathing attack on the disgusting and disreputable practices of the gutter press but six years later it looks like its message was ignored. It's not just the fact that nothing seems to have changed, this picture presents its protagonists as nice, fun-loving regular guys and even tries to inject some elements of comedy. There's no condemnation of these unpleasant people, they don't change, they're the same scumbags at the end as they are at the beginning. The unfunny comedy relief doesn't help - it actually feels quite out of place and a little disrespectful.

After destroying someone's life, Joan Blondell's character does try to make amends but not because she thinks it's the right thing to do, she does this just to make herself feel better about herself. She and Pat O'Brien do put in what feel like authentic performances which does let you engage with them - although you don't really want to.

It's a reasonably well made picture but there's an undercurrent of sourness to this.

If you are a fan of 1930's Warners, you can't miss this one. Joan Blondell is Timothea "Timmy" Blake, ace reporter for editor Pat O'Brian's headline screaming tabloid. The plot races around a "show girl with a past", the improbably cast, sweet-faced Margaret Lindsey accused of poisoning her no-good older husband whom nobody misses. Timmy doesn't buy it, but she helped build the case for indictment. Lindsey is in love with the good doctor John Litel for some reason even though he seems a bit thick. Go figure. It's all wrapped in a furious flurry of patented Warner's can't -wait -to -get -home speed with what must be 14 lbs. of dialogue crammed into an hour- fifteen or so. It's Blondell's movie and she is feisty, sexy, always surprising and has a mean right hook. Pat O'Brian was some kind of master at machine gunning lines out of an immobile face. For a big man who moves slowly, he can sure cut with the greased patter. The WB character roster, always a reason to watch these films, is well-represented by Regis Toomey, Eddie Acuff, and the always amusing Granville Bates. You won't have a chance to breathe.

... even when you figure in that given the decade, the studio, and the stars - Pat O'Brien and Joan Blondell - that you know exactly what kind of film that this is going to be - that being a film with lots of snappy dialogue, akin to the precodes of five years before, but with the rough edges removed to pass the censors.

Timmy Blake (Joan Blondell) is a reporter for the New York Express, a paper run by Bill Morgan (Pat O'Brien), who also is Timmy's boyfriend, and the audience does need to be told that a few times, as these two show zero affection for each other, but do show lots of anger, more like a divorced couple still working together. They are both completely amoral in regards to their profession, in pursuit of a story, regardless of who it hurts.

One night Morgan gets an anonymous note saying that prominent automobile manufacturer Vernon Wade did not die of a heart attack, but instead was murdered by poison. His funeral is planned the next day and he is scheduled to be cremated immediately afterward. Head scratching moment number one - Morgan and Blake go to the town where the funeral is being held and, on the strength of nothing but their fast talking, get the coroner to agree to call off the funeral and perform an autopsy on Wade. The autopsy does turn up that Wade was indeed poisoned using a poison that the Wades did have around the house.

Next is the search for the murderer which, oddly enough, is being headed up by Blake and Morgan rather than the police. The widow is being strangely enigmatic about all of this, and slowly clues arise that point to the widow (Margaret Lindsay) as the murderer. She is arrested and tried for the murder, but this is where things get weird. Suddenly Timmy Blake, ace reporter, grows a heart and a conscience and becomes convinced that the widow is innocent when the clues she dug up were what indicted her in the first place. But for some reason the widow, although she says she is innocent, refuses to assist in her own defense. Complications ensue.

This one was better than I expected precisely because it takes such an odd turn during its last one third, and the mystery is compelling. This was made during the two year period that James Cagney was absent Warner Brothers while they were locked in a contract dispute. And although O'Brien was very good in his role, his seemed like the kind of part that would have gone to Cagney had he been available at the time.

Ace reporter 'Timmy' Blake (Joan Blondell) uses her feminine wiles and any bold-faced lie to get the story before rivals like Snoopy Davis. She is set to marry her editor Bill Morgan (Pat O'Brien) despite having constant arguments with him. Her next assignment is reporting on the death of the rich motor baron Spencer Wade. She comes into town declaring that he was poisoned. Eugene Forde was his doctor. Timmy's reporting starts laying suspicions upon the widow Arline Wade.

I'm not sure that they actually love each other. Do they even like each other? There is a difference between angry banter and loving banter. Pat O'Brien is not doing loving and Joan oscillates. The movie does these big broad screwball comedy bits and some don't come off right. The shattered glass doors always come after their fights and that accentuates something that needs less accents. I don't like this pairing but I do like Timmy being a scheming reporter. Joan Blondell could pull off sassy and scheming with enough appeal. Her oscillations help her in this case. This movie would work much better if only she isn't in a relationship.

Although reporters are barred from the scene, a deadly train wreck doesn't stop enterprising Joan Blondell (as Timothea "Timmy" Blake) from covering the story. Pretending to be a doctor, Ms. Blondell gets the scoop. Her editor and love interest Pat O'Brien (as William "Bill" Morgan) gets an anonymous tip stating that an automobile manufacturer did not die of heart failure, but was poisoned. He assigns Blondell the story and she suspects beautiful widow Margaret Lindsay (as Arline Vivian). We wonder why Blondell is interested in Mr. O'Brien and, even more, why he seems so uninterested in Blondell. The plot unravels between two dubious letters. The main reason to watch is Blondell. She is strong and sexy in this film. And, although second-billed, Blondell is the star.

**** Back in Circulation (9/25/37) Ray Enright ~ Joan Blondell, Pat O'Brien, Margaret Lindsay, John Litel