What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

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Midnight Mary from 1933 with Loretta Young, Richard Cortez, and Franchot Tone


Some precode movies are just movies made during the precode era, with nothing salacious about them – Midnight Mary is not one of those movies. Produced at prestigious MGM, it has a little more polish than most, but still all the dirt of a Warner Bros. picture under its fingernails.

It opens with a young, beautiful woman, played by the arrestingly beautiful and lithe twenty-year-old Loretta Young, on trial for murder and all but mocking the judge and jury with her nonchalance. With that strong opening, most of the movie is then told through flashbacks.

Young, born into poverty, had none of life's advantages. She was even falsely arrested and sent to a reform school as a teenager. Still, when she gets out, she tries to lead a "respectable" life, but in the Great Depression that's no easy feat.

Eventually, prostitution and gangsters beckon, with one smart, smarmy one, played by Richard Cortez, taking a shine to her. Still, Young tries to break free of him and does...for a while. Young, in time, also meets a handsome, wealthy, and kind society gentleman, played by Franchot Tone.

This sets up a heck of a moral vice for Young. Cortez can only bring her down and she can only bring Tone down, as in that day, a man like Tone did not marry a woman like Young. From a distance, the movie is Young bouncing between the two men as her attempts at independence fail her.

The failure isn't on her, though – it is the times and the sleazy men. Even when she gets an honest job and is doing good work, her boss comes on to her. It's more complicated than that, but in this particular precode world, most men are bad and most women have few options.

Young is ultimately forced to choose between these two men in the most dramatic of fashion, resulting in the trial that opens – and closes – the movie. You might not like the resolution, as it's very Hollywood, but overall, this is no shrinking violet precode.

You'll want to pay close attention in the scene when Young is forced to choose between Tone and Cortez, as she first offers Cortez, in a whisper, something of value that a reasonable viewer would assume are some pretty dramatic sexual favors – again, this is no shy precode.

Cortez himself is in his acting sweet spot here as the oleaginous gangster, and Tone is perfectly cast as the handsome society gentleman. But this is Young’s movie through and through – and the already-old-Hollywood-hand, twenty-year-old actress is more than up to the challenge.

She does it all by conveying so many emotions – optimism, depression, anger, fear, selfishness, and generosity (an incomplete list) – and assuming so many personas that you can only marvel at the twenty-year-old’s talent.

Being an MGM movie, even for 1933, the production quality is high, making it feel less dated and less clunky than many of its peers. Still, the picture rips along at a precode pace, focusing on plot advancement and action, not artistic sensibilities or nuance.

After just seventy-four minutes, Midnight Mary leaves you exhausted but gratified — an amped-up version of real life anchored by a knockout performance from a young actress who would go on to build a six-decade career in a business not known for its longevity.

 

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Jet Storm from 1959 with Richard Attenborough, Sybil Thorndike, Stanley Baker, Virginia Maskell, Mai Zetterling, Hermione Baddeley, and David Kossoff


British filmmakers didn't have the budgets to compete with Hollywood blockbusters in the post-war era, so they focused on having talented actors dramatize engaging stories. Despite often having modest sets and limited special effects, many of these movies have held up well.

Jet Storm, a progenitor of the many airplane disaster movies that followed, is squarely in this mold. With a cast that includes Richard Attenborough, Sybil Thorndike, Stanley Baker, and Mai Zetterling, the talent and story pull this one through some bumpiness.

A luxury flight – it's the era of luxury flights – from England to the US is going well until the captain and passengers learn that a fellow passenger, played by Attenborough, has placed a bomb on board to avenge the hit-and-run killer of his young daughter.

Since the driver was never found, Attenborough did his own sleuthing to find him, but the man – a fellow passenger – used his money and influence to avoid prosecution. So now, Attenborough is going to take down an entire plane of passengers, including himself, to get his revenge.

Attenborough, who has clearly snapped mentally, has some gobbledygook ideology about all mankind being responsible, so he plans to kill as many as he can to "purge the world of sin." It's not a huge leap to see a slant rhyme to the nuclear annihilation fears of the era.

Typical for the genre, the main story is the captain, played by Baker, trying to prevent the bombing, while the cabin crew – here, mainly just a stewardess, played by Virginia Maskell – try to help the captain and keep the passengers calm.

Also aligned to the movie's template, a series of smaller dramas play out in the passengers' lives, as potential divorces, career insecurities, old-age ennui, and other day-to-day or life-changing struggles buffet the well-attired passengers, now potentially facing imminent death.

Some have faith in the captain, while others, as time ticks by, want to take matters into their own hands, with torture on the table – "tell us where the bomb is, or else." A Jewish passenger reminds the "torture him to save us" clique that the Nazis also believed torture was an answer.

Attenborough is very good as the man who snapped – he plays his role almost in a stupor, but he does have brief lucid moments. Baker, as the upright captain, and Maskell, as the young stewardess showing courage and poise, also give notable performances.

Hermione Baddeley as a middle-aged woman losing her nerve and becoming nasty, Thorndike as the older woman with a calm perspective, and David Kossoff playing the aforementioned Jewish doctor deserve kudos as well.

Less deserving of praise are the special effects, in particular, of the exterior shots of the plane in flight, which look like a couple of smart high school kids used some models.

To be fair, some real effort went into the interior set and there are a few realistic scenes related to the plane's challenges. But there is also the problem that the interior of the plane in no way could be the one that matches the plane shown in the exterior shots.

The story is far-fetched, as Attenborough’s central premise is stupid even for an insane man, and he seems to still have some rational faculties. Also, there's a bit too much obvious philosophy – the noted bomb parallel and Nazi torture – shoehorned in.

Jet Storm is a good movie despite its challenges, and the exact thing British cinema excelled at doing back then: employing a talented cast to put over a thoughtful story on a modest budget.

Today, there's little fresh in this story, but that speaks well not poorly of the movie as it helped usher in a popular genre – the airplane disaster picture – that has built out both serious and comedic vectors ever since.

 

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Man's Castle from 1933 with Loretta Young, Spencer Tracy, Marjorie Lambeau, Walter Connolly, Glenda Farrell, and Arthur Hohl


Man's Castle doesn't align with any modern frame of reference. Even by gritty 1930s Depression Era standards, a lot is challenging in this odd romance set in a Hooverville – one of the many shantytowns that sprang up in that period of economic struggle.

Here, after a Depression Era meet-cute, Loretta Young, playing a woman reduced to living on the street, and Spencer Tracy, playing a denizen of a local shantytown, begin living together the same night they meet – but only after a naked midnight swim. It’s a full-force pre-Code.

Young is innocence and sweetness at its outer boundary, and Tracy is hobo cockiness on steroids – so much so, he's redefined hobo into maverick and poverty into freedom: no wants, possessions, cares, or – and this matters – ties to others.

At first, their different outlooks are part of what works, as she coos at him while he pleasantly grumbles, yet they are reasonably happy living in a shack in shantytown. Still, it's clear Young wants something – commitment, companionship, and love – that Tracy's not offering.

The twist here is how passive and philosophical Young is about it: she's so beaten down and desperate not to be alone, that she accepts any abuse he sends her way. She not only offers her love freely – she outright tells him whatever he wants, including leaving her, is fine with her.

She says it not only without rancor but as if his happiness is the only thing that matters. It completely throws Tracy off his game as he tosses out his provocative statement – "I could leave tomorrow –" and her response is, "if that will make you happy, I'll be happy."

The plot, and it's not much of one, is ostensibly whether their relationship will survive the stress of the Depression, but the real plot – the plot of so many romcoms to come – is whether Tracy will realize his freedom means little compared to her love.

There are scenes of his kindness – he buys her a stove she's wanted – and meanness – he is verbally and somewhat physically abusive to her in a way we thankfully denounce completely today.

There are also side stories about a few of the others living in the shantytown, including Walter Connolly playing a flower-raising biblical philosopher, Marjorie Rambeau as a kind alcoholic, and Arthur Hohl as a schemer trying to sabotage Young and Tracy's relationship.

Glenda Farrell pops up, too, playing a successful actress who offers Tracy a life of easy street, traveling the world with her. This is really just a plot device to force Tracy to choose between what he says he wants, freedom to wander the world, and what he really wants, Young.

There's a climax involving the dumbest payroll heist ever attempted in a movie, but the real climax is whether Tracy will stay or go (cue The Clash). This oddball-even-for-a-precode movie only works because of Tracy and Young.

Tracy's character is often outright dislikable and mean, but he has the ability as an actor to let you see that, in some way, he runs deeper and better than his surface actions.

Young, conversely, manages to play obscenely nice without straying for a minute into cloying sentimentality. As the saying goes, that's why they get the big bucks.

As offbeat a precode as Man's Castle is – and it is both (you even see the stars' butts if you look quickly in the skinny-dipping scene) – it is also the most basic romcom plot ever: boy and girl meet; both fall hard; boy denies it; and girl tries to wait him out until the climax.

Columbia Pictures colored outside the lines a bit to capture a side of life in the Depression that Hollywood usually whistled past. Still, the studio also made a movie that, plot-wise, Hallmark continues to make today — because even in the Depression, romance sold.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Did I already mention Mrs. O'Malley and Mr. Malone? Majorie Main as a widowed boarding house owner who wins a radio music contest and is brought to NYC for the awarding of the prize. She gets tangled up with James Whitmore's John J. Malone, stereotypical fast-taking attorney of dubious ethics. On the Chicago to New York train bearing them to the Big Apple murders erupt around some embezzled money. Rapid-fire one-liners, wacky homicide problems, and a genuinely puzzling mystery, lead to near-slapstick shenanigans.

It's a Wonderful World with Claudette Colbert and a rather grumpy and uncouth Jimmy Stewart. He's a PI who has been hired to keep a tycoon sober and out of trouble. When said tycoon is framed for murder, Stewart tries to exonerate him. He crosses paths with Colbert, a poet, who gets hijacked by Stewart on the run from the law. She eventually thrills at the danger of it all. Somewhat strained for comedy, with unacceptable physical "humor" directed at Colbert, and an unappealing Stewart, it's part screw-ball comedy and sort of a whodunnit.

 

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Claudelle Inglish from 1961 with Diane McBain, Arthur Kennedy, Constance Ford, Claude Akins, and Chad Everett


In mid-century cinema, it can feel like Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner had a duopoly on depressing stories about the declining south, but Claudelle Inglish proves that author Erskine Caldwell could also write about the south in an engagingly dreary and cinematic way.

Claudelle Inglish starts out with a poor sharecropper (is there another kind?), played by Arthur Kennedy, his wife, played by Constance Ford, and their teenage daughter, played by Diane McBain, living your basic sharecropper life of just scraping by while working another man's farm.

Kennedy and the very pretty McBain don't really mind, as they seem content with their meager existence that does provide them with life's necessities. Ford is not content at all, though, so when McBain starts dating a poor local boy, momma Ford tries to intervene.

The last piece of the puzzle is the area's wealthy landowner and Kennedy's boss, played by Claude Akins – a heavy set, middle-aged widower who, as the saying goes, takes a shine to young McBain.

Credit to Akins, though, as he doesn't threaten or bully (he throws a few temper tantrums, but still); instead, he approaches Kennedy and offers marriage – with wealth and position for McBain and land for Kennedy – in return for Kennedy's permission to marry his daughter.

Kennedy is agnostic – leaving the decision to his daughter – but Ford is so all in on Akins, she's practically ready to tie McBain to the wedding bed.

After a lifetime of poverty, bitter Ford sees a way out for her daughter – and a weirdly surrogate way for Ford to feel her life wasn't wasted – but McBain is only interested in the poor boy, played by Chad Everett.

You know you're in a smartly written and acted movie when in less than half an hour you care about everyone. McBain is the star, but look for Kennedy's incredibly nuanced performance as the father and husband with a kind heart.

Ford and Akins are pressuring him – Ford's haranguing, Akins dangling easy street in front of him – but Kennedy calmly reminds everyone, including his daughter, that it's her life and her right to choose.

She chooses youth, beauty, love, and poverty with Everett. Akins fumes; Ford is beside herself with rage; Kennedy just continues his hard-working life; and Everett goes off to do his two years in the army engaged to McBain with a heartfelt promise to return and marry her.

McBain is the picture of happiness spending her days writing letters to Everett and waiting for the mailman to bring one from him in return. Then it happens (it's at the end of Act One, so an early spoiler), McBain gets a reverse Dear John letter: Everett has married somebody else.

McBain slowly snaps, providing the core of the story and, for the era, what surely registered as a heavy dose of salacious titillation. McBain's response is to become, in the terminology of the day, the town slut. She sleeps with all the boys and even the older men in return for attention and presents.

Here again, Caldwell's story and McBain's acting elevate this soapy material above its tawdry details, as you can tell McBain is enjoying none of it. This is what makes the drama gripping as you are watching a sincerely nice girl break before your eyes.

McBain's downward spiral sucks everyone in – including Ford, who never stops trying to peddle her daughter to Akins until she takes a more dramatic step. The backwash from all this comes hard and fast in Act Three. The climax, though, is the movie's one glaringly false note.

In an era of on-location shooting, the sets and backlots make this almost feel like a filmed stage play. Yet, shot in black and white, the stark sets – the dreary farm and shack of a house – work in an artsy way that focuses all the attention on the well-drawn characters, starting with McBain.

She is outstanding as the broken-hearted girl who can't find her center again. Ford matches her with a performance as an angry woman who no longer cares about anything except getting her daughter married to a rich man. Oscars wouldn’t have been misallocated.

It’s Kennedy’s performance, though, that ultimately provides the moral ballast to the picture. He does something few characters in stories like this manage to do: find contentment in a very modest life — a trait he passes on to his daughter. It would have worked, too, had Everett not jilted her.

Caldwell set up a smart parallel where one good man and one good woman are wrecked by one bad man and one bad woman. It's honest and powerful because, modern politics aside, that is life, as neither sex has a monopoly on decency or mendacity.

In the middle of the last century, the movie screens in America were populated with stories of the "decaying south." Claudelle Inglish unfairly flies under the radar, maybe because it wasn't written by one of the two lights of southern rot, Faulkner or Williams.

It is also shoehorned in a bit by the still somewhat kicking restrictions of The Motion Picture Production Code, but audiences then and now can see past that.

What they see in Claudelle Inglish is a well-acted, moving tale of a nice young girl whose heart gets broken and never mended. It's not always easy movie watching, but it is real life – and a reminder that sometimes life doesn't offer third acts.