Le gantelet vert

The Green Glove is a medieval relic, removed during World War II, that Glenn Ford needs to return to its proper resting place. The story isn't particularly interesting, but a fine cast, highlighted by a thoroughly radiant Geraldine Brooks, makes this one worth a look. The film also benefits from French location work and the finale--a pursuit across, up, and over some incredibly steep terrain--is positively Hitchcockian.

Though rather uneven some of the time, "The Green Glove" is still worth seeing for a number of reasons. It has a solid cast headed by Glenn Ford, the story has some interesting moments, and most of all the location filming provides some very nice views besides helping considerably with the atmosphere.

The opening sequence works pretty well in tossing out some mysterious details, and the movie then goes back to tell the story from the beginning. Ford's character is not very likable, but it's hard not to identify with him as he faces a series of threats while he tracks down the valuable artifact upon returning to France after the war. It's interesting to see him meet up with an antagonist played by George Macready, with whom Ford was paired in the earlier, much more memorable "Gilda". Macready's distinctive voice and mannerisms make him an interesting adversary.

Geraldine Brooks is likable as the tour guide who helps Ford in his quest, although her character remains largely one-dimensional. Cedric Hardwicke appears as a village priest, but he is unfortunately never given anything significant to do. Jany Holt makes good use of her scenes as the Countess.

The pace is sometimes inconsistent, with a number of slow stretches and a couple of rather jumpy spots. But the story has enough of interest to make you want to see how it all comes out.

The settings and scenery are probably the main strength of the movie, and without them, it would probably have been pretty plain. The scenery of the mountains and villages of southern France creates a very good atmosphere, and the bell-tower setting is also used well. More than anything else, these aspects lift "The Green Glove" from a fair picture to a decent one that is worth seeing despite a few flaws.

Plenty of points of interest went into The Green Glove – a seasoned cast, locations in France (Paris, the Midi), a dangerous quest for a fabulous artifact. But not much energy was expended on making them interesting. It's easy to lose track of who wants what and who killed whom in this lackluster thriller, and hard to care.

Good cinematographer turned so-so director Rudoph Maté cast one of his favorite subjects, Glenn Ford, as a soldier caught up in the liberation of France. There Ford captures but loses George Macready (his old adversary from Gilda, which Maté photographed). Of vague nationality and dubious loyalties, Macready was trying to abscond with the story's Maltese Falcon – a priceless gauntlet which has reposed in a village church for centuries. Ford takes custody of it but, injured, leaves it behind with the family who rescued him.

When post-war prosperity stateside doesn't catch up with Ford, he returns to France in hopes of retrieving the gauntlet and with it his fortune. From the moment his feet hit French soil (having apparently been under close surveillance for years), Macready's men start following him around; the police grow interested when one of them is found dead in Ford's hotel room. With the effervescent Geraldine Brooks in tow, he sets out by the Blue Train to the Riviera, dodging both the law and Macready's mob. There's an early scene set high up in the Eiffel Tower, and, for the resolution, Maté keeps his camera high, taking us to the sheer precipices of a goat trail and to the bell tower of the burgled church (wanly anticipating Hitchcock in both North by Northwest and Vertigo).

But the film jumps from one thing to another like those mountain goats leaping from crag to crag (fatally losing its footing in one coy, comic scene at a country inn where Ford and Brooks feign being newlyweds with bridal-night jitters). More crucially, the characters stay blandly generic, with no feel for their quirks or insight into their motives (and Sir Cedric Hardwicke is thrown away as a country priest). The Green Glove of the quest is the real McCoy, unlike the Maltese Falcon, which was a fake; in this case, the paste is worth far more than the diamonds.

Occasionally charming foreign adventure/romance with Glenn Ford as a down-on-his-luck American returning to post-war France to retrieve the title treasure he found during the war and becoming entangled with cops, bad guys, and tour guide Geraldine Brooks. Lovely Brooks has a wonderful girl-next-door quality, but the 50s priggishness makes the romance tiresome at times.

The whole affair has a nice Hitchcockian feel, altho Hitch would never have been so priggish--with either with the sex or the violence. Director Rudolph Mate was the cinematographer for Hitch on Foreign Correspondent and other A-list directors in the 40s but had already directed several films himself by the time he did The Green Glove, including the classic DOA in 1950, with Edmund O'Brien.

Still, something is missing. Ford remains a cipher thruout; we don't get the feel of desperation that Hitch (or his leading men) was so good at conveying. Ford was a battle-hardened lieutenant in the war, yet it doesn't seem to help him much against the bad guys. Brooks is clingy, yet coy. A European dame, sexier and more independent, might have been a more interesting choice. (This is one of those stories where the leads have to pretend to be married at one point, thereby forcing them to be titillatingly intimate, right? Wrong: Mate blows it by having them demand separate rooms anyway!) The climax is good, if a bit predictable. But the exciting mountain chase down a goat trail feels a bit like a setting in search of a story, since we know from the opening scene that the story doesn't end there. Overall, it's a good A-picture adventure that could have benefited from a bit of B-picture sex and violence.

The famous Hitchcockian McGuffin that everyone is looking for is a medieval jewel encrusted knight's gauntlet said to have belonged to a warrior saint who defeated the Moors in battle back in the day. The fact that the Moors never got to the French Riviera in and around Monte Carlo is of minor importance. It's an object of veneration and worship to the villagers in that small town that saw battle in the southern invasion of France by Alexander Patch's American army in August of 1944.

Paratrooper Glenn Ford landing in that town finds George MacReady stealing the item during battle. MacReady is a creature of mysterious origins who survives on his wits, resources and whatever he can steal at the moment. To the French he's a spy to the Nazis he's a collaborator which is a nifty arrangement I must say. The Nazis as we know were real big on liberating art treasures from their various conquered countries.

But some allied bombs prevent MacReady from stealing The Green Glove and Ford has it and leaves it with a family in an sealed attache case that belonged MacReady.

After the war, flashing forward seven years, things haven't gone well for Ford in civilian life and he goes back to France with some hope to find that valuable Green Glove and hoping that's his meal ticket. But when he gets there, he finds MacReady as well who's hoping Ford can lead him to The Green Glove.

A few murders later, Ford picking up tour guide Geraldine Brooks to share his fugitive status because MacReady has framed Ford for those murders and it's time for Ford to confront MacReady, The Green Glove and what he really wants from life.

The Green Glove is an independent film released through United Artists that was shot entirely on location in France and Monaco. I'm sure it was a good excuse for a vacation for the English speaking thespians of the film, Ford, Brooks, MacReady, and Cedric Hardwicke who plays the village priest and custodian of The Green Glove who prays for its return.

It would have been nice to have some color, I'm sure part of the reason it was done in black and white was budgetary and part was so that World War II newsreel footage could be incorporated. Still you're talking about some beautiful area of the planet that two years later Alfred Hitchcock would show us in To Catch A Thief. Paramount gave Hitch a much bigger budget than Rudolph Mate had for The Green Glove.

It's not a bad film, in fact it has an exciting chase sequence involving Ford eluding MacReady and his men by taking a rugged mountain trail that is euphemistically called the goat path. Hitchcock couldn't have staged it better. But the cheapness of the production values and a somewhat confused story line prevent The Green Glove from gaining any lasting glory.