Barricade

Entrancing film that has high adventure, light-hearted comedy, and an offbeat romance with an oddball cast of characters. The most notable are the stars: Warner Baxter as the alcoholic down on his luck reporter, Alice Faye as the showgirl running from crime, and the multi-talented Charles Winninger as the noble head of a small American embassy under siege by a large band of Mongolian bandits. Good script, interesting complex characters, and fine performances make for an engrossing movie that has something to please every movie taste.

Barricade finds Alice Faye without any songs as a refugee trying to flee China and without passport. She's in a heap of trouble, I won't say what exactly, and even American extraterritoriality won't help her out.

I mention that because one of the grievances that the Chinese including the bandits who attack the American mission in this story set deep in the Chinese interior was that particular institution whereby American citizens who committed crimes were tried by American courts set up by our consulates. We were far from the only country doing that however.

Anyway the story opens with her on a train for Shanghai trying to use a hokey Russian accent. The accent intrigues Warner Baxter who's pretty plastered.

Bandits however interrupt the journey and the two of them seek refuge in the American consulate presided over by Charles Winninger. He's the best one in the film and I only wish that a better story was given because I liked his character. He's a widower and a proud member of the consular service, appointed in 1900 by William McKinley. He requested a transfer ten years later and that's the last he was heard from. As Assistant Secretary of State Jonathan Hale aptly put it, he's the real forgotten man.

Baxter does all right in a role that someone like Clark Gable would have done in his sleep at MGM. The heroics would have come more natural to Gable than to Baxter as the mission is barricaded and defended against the bandits.

Alice Faye did have one number to sing. Why Alice's song was cut out, God and Zanuck only know. One thing I'm still trying to figure out is when the mission inhabitants take final refuge in the cellar with a trap door, just who was left upstairs to pull the rug over the cellar door?

Barricade had the potential to be a lot better than it was. But sloppy editing and lost faith in the project made 20th Century Fox release a project unfulfilled. Watching Barricade is like eating a badly cooked meal.

This somewhat routine action/romantic comedy from the late 1930's is still entertaining and the action sequences keep the viewer from becoming overly bored with the love scenes between Warner Baxter (Hank Topping!), a news hound on the skids, and Alice Faye (Emmy Jordan), a lady on the run.

The title is allegorical for several reasons including the on-going world dilemma concerning China and Japan, with the Chinese government being threaten from without and within. A curiosity is the partnership at the time between the United States and the Soviet Union with Alice Faye faining to be a Russian married to an American as a ruse to escape China.

The film has one of the cleverest lines of the decade delivered I believe by an uncredited performer, Jonathan Hale, playing the Assistant Secretary of State. When asked about the consulate head, Uncle Sam Cady (played with typical élan by character actor, Charles Winninger), who was appointed by President McKinley and has had a transfer request delayed since 1912, Hale replies, "At least now we've found the forgotten man."

You may be interested to know that BARRICADE was viewed as a failure by the studio and shelved for a year before ALICE FAYE's popularity reached such a high that the studio decided to release the film despite the fact that it was never fully completed. It fared modestly OK at the box-office.

Faye refers to a murder during her nightclub stint in New York City--and this scene was actually in the script and was the way the film was to start. Instead, it is entirely missing and what could have been an exciting sequence (including a complete song number by Faye) was never filmed. However, the rest of the story is pretty much intact and made release of the film possible at a running time of 71 minutes.

A tired looking WARNER BAXTER is too old to be believable as Faye's romantic interest and is merely perfunctory as the broken down reporter. Audiences today would be offended by the depiction of Chinese using fractured English phrases like "Me likey make noisy". Key Luke is one of the Chinese loyalists but plays his role in a low-key, straightforward way. Arthur Treacher is all but invisible and yet gets fourth billing on screen due to editing changes in the story. Originally, Joseph Schildkraut had a role in the film but his part was eventually edited out.

A mishmash of a film that will serve as entertainment only for the most die-hard Alice Faye fans who will get a chance to see her in a dramatic role--albeit a weak one. Charles Winninger is totally wasted as a kindly man running the American consulate.

Despite all the weaknesses, there are a couple of scenes involving narrow escapes that are effectively played and Karl Freund's B&W photography is top notch.

Every Hollywood Oriental must have appeared in this one, including at least two of Charlie Chan's sons. It's one of those fun romantic comedy/adventures where the white folks travel around in exotic lands and wear panama hats. See, "The General Died at Dawn," "China Seas," inter alia. This one mostly involves a reporter who has been drunk for three weeks but who quickly recovers in time to win the girl and the battle, a forgotten American consulate that is turned into a fort, and hordes of Mongolian bandits who like nothing more than to kill innocent people and smash the furniture. You can tell that it's somewhere in China because the stage-bound sets feature lots of moon gates, Oriental prints on the walls, bamboo curtains, and Fu dogs.

Well, this is supposed to be the Chinese/Mongolian border in 1939 and the Japanese are never mentioned, but okay. The Nationalist Chinese Army is on the side of the angels, and I guess that's okay too. Nobody ever claimed that there were not bandit warlords in 1939 China who were not controlled by the Japanese or by the Chinese Nationalists or the Chinese Communists. It wouldn't be surprising to find them still there.

I kind of enjoyed it, although I must say it was a little corny at times and lacked the verve that other examples of the genre often managed to show. I think it would have been a better flick with a villain like the gruff, slimy, duplicitous, hammy Wallace Beery of "China Seas." Warner Baxter seems a little old for the part of an adventurous Byronic free-lance reporter. Alice Faye, with her plump lower lip, is quite nice looking and doesn't cause the viewer much pain. Charles Winninger is a sentimental figure. The Chinese servants play the part that exotic servants usually play, figures of fun until they die to save the Massah.

Speaking of dying, the movie is divided into two halves. The first half is the romantic comedy, which isn't too engaging because the script lacks wit. The comedy seems mechanical (Faye trying to pass herself off as a Russian bride) and the romance is unconvincing. But the movie picks up in its second half, behind those barricaded walls. The besieged hold off all those bandits by the simple expedient of never missing when they shoot, whereas the bandits are the worst shots in the world. Not that there's a lot of blood, or even distress, involved in their deaths. Like Dirty Harry's victims, they don't die shrieking in agony. They simply flop down when shot, like dropped marionettes. (Bang. Flop.) The gunsmoke lingers in the air, which is a nice touch.

A diverting trifle.