Classic Films in Focus: THE INVISIBLE WOMAN (1940)

Unlike the earlier invisible man movies, The Invisible Woman (1940) leaps right out of the horror genre and lands in screwball comedy, with the feisty Virginia Bruce leading a cast of particularly eccentric characters on a merry romp through mischief and romance. The tonal shift might disconcert those looking for a true follow-up to James Whale’s 1933 chiller, but The Invisible Woman works surprisingly well as a comedy, and the special effects contribute to the fun, this time with a lot of naughty winks about a naked young lady parading around. Fans of classic comedy will also appreciate the performances of great supporting players like Charles Ruggles, Oskar Homolka, Margaret Hamilton, and Shemp Howard, but the hammy highpoint is John Barrymore as the decidedly theatrical inventor of the invisibility machine.

Virginia Bruce plays disgruntled dress model Kitty Carroll, who agrees to become invisible in order to get revenge on her nasty boss, Mr. Growley (Charles Lane). She disappoints Professor Gibbs (John Barrymore) by running off before he can exhibit her to his sole financial backer, Richard Russell (John Howard), so the pair have to pursue Russell to his remote lodge in order to prove that the machine works. Meanwhile, an exiled gangster named Blackie (Oskar Homolka) sends his thugs after Gibbs and the machine so that the homesick crook can sneak back into the United States.

Bruce spends a lot more time being visible than either Claude Rains or Vincent Price had done in the earlier movies, but she projects enough saucy personality in her voice to carry the invisible sequences. Like most screwball heroines, her protagonist baffles and thwarts the men around her, but Kitty gets to do it while naked and invisible, which makes her especially intriguing to John Howard’s wolfish socialite, Richard, who thinks he has seen everything when it comes to young ladies. Kitty is a fun, bold character, never a victim and always in control of the situation, even when the gangsters kidnap her and Professor Gibbs. If the earlier invisible men found a power that bred madness in their transformation, Kitty finds a power that is liberating and long overdue.

The rest of the cast is full of top-notch talent, with Barrymore stealing scenes for all he’s worth as the loopy, bombastic Professor, who comes off like Frank Morgan’s long lost brother. John Howard, well-known to audiences in 1940 as the star of the Bulldog Drummond movies, is charming as Richard, even if his part mostly consists of reacting to the nuttier characters around him. Veteran comedian Charles Ruggles gets laughs as the long-suffering servant, George, who keeps trying to resign from Richard’s employ but never actually goes, and Margaret Hamilton is very effective as the Professor’s prickly housekeeper, although we don’t see her often enough. Oskar Homolka puts his crazy eyebrows to good use as the gangster boss, while Shemp Howard and Donald McBride clown around amusingly as his utterly inept thugs. All of these players know exactly how to make their characters memorable and interesting to the audience, which helps to explain why such a silly picture is so much fun.

Like The Invisible Man Returns (1940), The Invisible Woman earned an Oscar nomination for Best Special Effects. A. Edward Sutherland, who directed The Invisible Woman, also made the 1928 version of Tillie’s Punctured Romance starring W.C. Fields, but during the silent era Sutherland had been an actor himself. See more of Virginia Bruce in The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and Born to Dance (1936), and catch John Howard in The Philadelphia Story (1940) and The Undying Monster (1942) for more of his roles after the Bulldog Drummond run. John Barrymore gives more comic performances in Twentieth Century (1934) and Midnight (1939), while Charlie Ruggles appears in Ruggles of Red Gap (1935) and Bringing Up Baby (1938). Look for Oskar Homolka in Sabotage (1936), Ball of Fire (1941), and I Remember Mama (1948), the last of which brought him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Classic Films in Focus: NIGHT FLIGHT (1933)

Directed by Clarence Brown, Night Flight (1933) offers another example of the large ensemble MGM drama epitomized by Grand Hotel (1932) and Dinner at Eight (1933), this time set against the first perilous attempts at nocturnal aviation across South America. The cast includes a full roster of top stars, including John and Lionel Barrymore, Helen Hayes, Clark Gable, and Myrna Loy, but the film ends up being less than the sum of its parts. While Night Flight is worth a look by serious fans of its stars, those expecting a production equal to the more famous ensemble pictures will be disappointed. It is, however, a provocative picture for those fascinated by flight, with thrilling aerial photography that is sure to give nightmares to nervous fliers.

John Barrymore stars as Riviere, the iron will behind a venture to deliver overnight mail across the deadly South American continent. With death-defying pilots played by Clark Gable, Robert Montgomery, and William Gargan, Riviere fights both the elements and his own board of directors to get the first batch of mail delivered on schedule. The women in the pilots’ lives question the value of their sacrifice, but the audience knows that the night’s mail includes desperately needed serum to treat an outbreak of polio in Rio de Janeiro.

Despite its stellar cast, Night Flight never gets off the ground as a character drama because most of its actors spend their screen time isolated from one another, unable to interact or do much more than look stricken or determined, depending on where they happen to be. Gable is particularly wasted as the pilot Jules Fabian, while Helen Hayes is left to over emote at his photograph as Fabian’s wife. Myrna Loy doesn’t even turn up until very late in the film, and she really only has one scene. Robert Montgomery comes off better as the lucky Pellerin, who lives through his white-knuckled flight to enjoy a few very good scenes on the ground, especially as he marvels at his own survival and his safe return to terra firma. The lion’s share of the screen time belongs to the Barrymore brothers, who do have some very dramatic moments together, although Lionel seems to be using an implacable itch to upstage John every chance he gets. Most of the actors, however, simply don’t get the chance to demonstrate the considerable talents that we know they possess.

Their isolation, troublesome as it is, is intentional, since the story focuses on the lonely lives of the pilots and the women who love them. The Barrymore characters are also profoundly lonely men, so much so that John’s Riviere envies Lionel’s Robineau for having a constant companion in his itch. The movie succeeds at depicting this loneliness most poetically and effectively with its aerial photography and scenes of communal life unfolding on the ground. The pilots, cut off from the people who watch them fly overhead, exist in a phantom zone of darkness, storms, and cloud-wrapped mountain peaks. Their women sit at home and wait, equally alone with their hopes and fears. All around them, humanity goes on, but each of our central characters lives a suspended life, imprisoned in cockpits, offices, and apartments as surely as if they were iron cells. As a philosophical exercise, the theme works very well, but it simply doesn’t make the best use of the cast on offer.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who wrote the original novel on which Night Flight is based, is best remembered today as the author The Little Prince. For more films from director Clarence Brown, try Wife vs. Secretary (1936), National Velvet (1944), and Angels in the Outfield (1951). Aviation movies were popular throughout the 1930s; see Hell’s Angels (1930), The Dawn Patrol (1938), and Only Angels Have Wings (1939) for more examples of the type. Clark Gable also stars as a pilot in Test Pilot (1938), with Myrna Loy and Lionel Barrymore as two of his costars. The Barrymore brothers only made one picture with sister Ethel, Rasputin and the Empress (1932); of the three, Lionel was by far the most prolific, with over 200 film credits to his name. He won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in A Free Soul (1931), but he is best known today as mean Mr. Potter in the Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Be sure to see Grand Hotel (1932) and Dinner at Eight (1933) for more of the brothers’ collaborative work.

Night Flight is currently available for streaming on Warner Archive Instant, and a DVD version is also available on Amazon and from other retailers.

Classic Films in Focus: GRAND HOTEL (1932)

Directed by Edmund Goulding, Grand Hotel (1932) is unique in the annals of Oscar history; it is the only Best Picture winner not even to be nominated for any other awards. Despite the Academy’s odd response to the film, Grand Hotel offers a lot more to the modern viewer than mere Oscar trivia. The ensemble cast includes many of classic Hollywood’s greatest names, and the microcosm of the hotel offers a fascinating study of the human condition as experienced by its guests.

The plot follows the overlapping stories of several guests at the Grand Hotel in Berlin, including an unhappy ballerina (Greta Garbo), an impoverished baron (John Barrymore), a dying middle-class worker (Lionel Barrymore), a desperate industrialist (Wallace Beery), and a pragmatic stenographer (Joan Crawford). In just a few nights, their lives are changed forever, even as life goes on within the hotel and beyond its walls.

Each character plays an important part in the overall story, and each is connected to the others in some way, although the entire cast never assembles in a single scene. This is probably for the best because it becomes almost impossible to know which actor to watch when three or more of them get together in a shot, particularly when the two Barrymore brothers simultaneously interact with both Joan Crawford and Wallace Beery. There’s a tremendous amount of scene-stealing going on, even from Lewis Stone as the jaded doctor who wanders in and out of the picture like a one-man Greek chorus.

Twists of fate abound, particularly where John Barrymore’s Baron and Beery’s General Director Preysing are concerned. Their actions propel them toward an encounter that is as tragic as it is inevitable. The Baron, a rake and a thief, rediscovers his own better nature in the arms of the dancer Grusinskaya (Garbo), while the Director’s pretense of morality rapidly collapses under the strain of a crucial business deal. The other characters are more or less caught between them and their changing fortunes. Doom hangs over them all, and the ending only partly alleviates our sense of it. The wheel turns, and all are carried with it, a point underscored even by the porter (Jean Hersholt) awaiting the birth of his child.

Edmund Goulding also directed The Dawn Patrol (1938), Dark Victory (1939), and The Razor’s Edge (1946). See more of John Barrymore in Dinner at Eight (1933), Twentieth Century (1934), and the hilarious Midnight (1939). Brother Lionel is best remembered today as Mr. Potter in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), but he played much more sympathetic characters in A Family Affair (1937), Captains Courageous (1937), and You Can’t Take It with You (1938). See Joan Crawford’s Oscar-winning performance in Mildred Pierce (1945) and Garbo’s great comedic role in Ninotchka (1939) for more of those iconic leading ladies. Wallace Beery tied Fredric March for Best Actor for his performance in The Champ (1931), but you can also find him playing Long John Silver in the 1934 adaptation of Treasure Island.