Classic Films in Focus: SON OF FURY (1942)

Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney give Son of Fury (1942) plenty of sex appeal to go along with its adventurous story of 18th-century greed and revenge, and the sight of those two in extended scenes of Polynesian undress justifies the movie’s existence all by itself. Luckily, Son of Fury has plenty of other attractions for classic movie fans, including a fantastic cast of supporting players and excellent direction from John Cromwell. While not exactly a swashbuckler, this film adaptation of the novel by Edison Marshall offers one memorable thrill after another, with Power fighting, swimming, dancing, and romancing his way from the streets of Bristol and London to the shores of the South Pacific.

Power plays Benjamin Blake, whose supposed illegitimacy keeps him from inheriting his dead father’s estate. Ben’s uncle, Sir Arthur (George Sanders), treats him like a servant and hopes to prevent him from ever establishing a claim to the family wealth, but Ben has supporters in his aunt (Kay Johnson) and his beautiful cousin, Isabel (Frances Farmer), with whom Ben falls in love. After an altercation with Sir Arthur, Ben goes on the run, eventually finding riches and romance on a tropical island, where Eve (Gene Tierney) becomes his lover. Ben, however, feels compelled to return to England, confront his uncle, and claim Isabel as his bride, even though London holds many dangers for him as a wanted man.

Power gives a great performance as the hot-headed Benjamin Blake, who nurses his simmering resentment against his uncle for years. “Flesh and blood can stand no more,” he declares after Sir Arthur punishes him for courting Isabel with a vicious whipping, although he suffers violence at other hands, as well. The intensity of the character suits the star perfectly, and he looks equally good in the English period costumes and the Polynesian loincloth. The island costume puts quite a bit of Power’s physique on display, especially when he goes diving for pearls, and his matinee idol look is matched by Tierney as the native beauty who playfully joins him in the water. Her ignorance of English and Western customs might be laid on a little thick, but Tierney is so stunning that it hardly matters what language her character speaks. We’re on her side the moment we first see her, hoping that Ben will forget all about England and the sophisticated but spoiled Isabel.

The supporting cast elevates the whole production to an almost delirious height, with Sanders especially notable as the smoothly heartless Sir Arthur. He and Power have a series of riveting fight scenes that bookend Ben’s Polynesian adventures, and Sanders of course has the cultured manner and physical presence to pull off the role. John Carradine gives one of his characteristically brilliant performances as Caleb, the sailor who befriends Ben and takes him along to the remote Pacific island, while Harry Davenport is genuinely moving as Ben’s beloved grandfather. Dudley Digges steals his scenes as Bartholomew Pratt, the London man of the world whom Ben employs against his uncle; Digges has an ideal face for an 18th-century character, and his first scene is a highlight of the film. Even Roddy McDowall makes a brief but critical appearance as young Ben, setting the stage for Power’s adult interpretation of the character. Tierney and Frances Farmer supply the picture’s female beauty, but Kay Johnson, who was married to John Cromwell at the time, is wonderful as Ben’s aunt Helena, and Elsa Lanchester takes over the movie for her one long scene as a sympathetic barmaid who helps Ben evade the law.

The only thing that might have improved Son of Fury is color, which would have brought the Pacific Island scenes a lusher look, but as a whole the movie works beautifully. See more of Power’s tremendous energy in The Mark of Zorro (1940), Blood and Sand (1941), and The Black Swan (1942). Gene Tierney also stars with Power in The Razor’s Edge (1946), but she is best remembered today for Heaven Can Wait (1943), Laura (1944), and Leave Her to Heaven (1945). George Sanders won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for All About Eve (1950), while John Carradine gained lasting fame for roles in Captains Courageous (1937), Stagecoach (1939), and The Grapes of Wrath (1940). For other films directed by John Cromwell, try Of Human Bondage (1934), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), and The Enchanted Cottage (1945).

Classic Films in Focus: THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE (1945)

Few romantic movies could be more tenderly affecting than John Cromwell's sentimental drama, The Enchanted Cottage (1945), which stars Dorothy McGuire and Robert Young as imperfect people who find an unlikely love affair awaiting them in a small seaside house. This might, in fact, be the perfect classic film for Valentine's Day, especially for those who want love to come to everyone, not just the beautiful and the fair. This sweet story, with moving performances from Herbert Marshall and Mildred Natwick as well as the leading couple, is exactly the sort of thing to watch with the love of your life, or at least with a pint of ice cream and a box of tissues at hand.

Robert Young stars as Oliver Bradford, whose original wedding plans fall apart after he's maimed and scarred in the war. Hoping to hide from his former fiancee (Hillary Brooke) and his flighty mother (Spring Byington), Oliver takes up residence in the little cottage where he had intended to spend his honeymoon. There he encounters Laura Pennington (Dorothy McGuire), a plain, kindly girl who doesn't seem to mind his injured looks. Oliver marries Laura without any real romantic feelings about her, but something magical happens to the pair after their wedding day.

It's true that The Enchanted Cottage treads lightly where the protagonists' appearances are concerned, but the story suggests their flaws more than it actually shows them. Without makeup and carefully styled hair, in ill-fitting everyday clothes, Dorothy McGuire simply looks like a normal person instead of a movie star, but the transformation scenes still work to great effect. Robert Young's injury makeup includes some scarring around one side of his face, which he accentuates with a useless arm, but he's much easier to look at than, say, The Phantom of the Opera (1925) or The Man Who Laughs (1928), and probably even less scarred than Joan Crawford in A Woman's Face (1941). Both McGuire and Young work hard to sell their characters' self-images as flawed, McGuire with timidity and sadness, and Young with bitterness and despair. We are meant to feel for and with them, and the film succeeds in making that happen.

The love story is presented with a brief frame tale featuring Herbert Marshall as the blind composer, Major John Hillgrove, who befriends both Oliver and Laura and functions as a sort of perfect witness to their early sufferings and eventual happiness. Hillgrove sympathizes with Oliver's despair over his war wounds, having been blinded in the previous war, and it's worth noting that the actor had a special understanding of the role, as he had in fact lost a leg in World War I. Marshall is so good with his artificial leg that you can spend the whole movie fruitlessly looking for any sign of it, but his personal history lends additional pathos to the scene in which the two injured men speak of their feelings and reveal the individual costs of war. Mildred Natwick provides another counterpoint to the young lovers as the widowed owner of the cottage; her relationship with Laura is subtle but effective, and she has several brief but moving scenes that ought to go straight to the heart of any sensitive viewer.

The Enchanted Cottage earned an Oscar nomination for Best Musical Score, and music plays an essential part in the story. The composer, Roy Webb, would collect seven Oscar nominations in all but never win, which is a shame when one considers that his other work includes Cat People (1942), Notorious (1946), and Out of the Past (1947). For more of Dorothy McGuire, see The Spiral Staircase (1945) and Gentleman's Agreement (1947). You'll find Robert Young in The Canterville Ghost (1944) and Crossfire (1947), although he's best remembered today for his later television roles on Father Knows Best and Marcus Welby, MD. See Herbert Marshall in Trouble in Paradise (1932), Foreign Correspondent (1940), and The Letter (1940), and catch Mildred Natwick in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), The Quiet Man (1952), and The Court Jester (1955). Spring Byington plays much less irritating mothers in You Can't Take It with You (1938) and The Blue Bird (1940), but I also enjoy her crazed housekeeper performance in Dragonwyck (1946).

The Enchanted Cottage is available on DVD from Warner Archive, but you cannot currently rent it on Netflix.

Classic Films in Focus: OF HUMAN BONDAGE (1934)

Based on the novel by W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage (1934) is the film that made Bette Davis a star, and it's easy enough to see why. Her portrayal of the morally bankrupt Mildred Rogers dominates the picture, despite the fact that Leslie Howard's character is technically the protagonist. Few young actresses would be so willing to inhabit such a thoroughly unlikable persona, but Mildred is a true Bette Davis part, a difficult character whose descent is marked by radical physical transformation over the course of the film. Dark and unyielding in its depiction of the depths of human weakness and corruptibility, Of Human Bondage delivers on the theme promised in its title, presenting an excellent consideration of the ties that bind, even to the point of strangulation.

Howard is the established star here, and the plot follows his character, a club-footed, uncertain young man named Philip Carey. His hopes of being an artist dashed by his mediocre talent, Philip is adrift; he pursues a medical career without really seeming to care about it or anything else, until he meets Davis' Cockney waitress in a restaurant. Something about her strikes a chord, and he begins to court her, although she clearly fails to return his ardor. She replies to his passionate entreaties with the same coy, mocking phrase, "I don't mind," shrugging her shoulders with indifference. Eventually Mildred abandons him for another lover, but, like a bad penny, she turns up again, always just in time to blight whatever progress Philip has managed to make on his own. Like the fool he is, Philip repeatedly allows Mildred back into his life, although each return reveals her at a lower point in her downward spiral.

Leslie Howard's Philip is typical of his characters, aloof, diffident, but searching for something about which he can really care. The club foot only adds to the air of frailty about him; we can see how sensitive and self-conscious he is about his deformity and about himself in general. He's amiable enough, but he seems to be tailor made for a chump, a quality that Davis' Mildred instantly recognizes. Against Howard's wan sensitivity, Davis is all hard edges and cruel, animal intelligence. Both the picture and the protagonist belong to her from the moment she first appears on screen. Always fearless in her willingness to be ugly on camera, Davis undertakes a striking transformation as Mildred sinks lower into vice and corruption. When we first see her, she is prim and attractive in her waitress uniform, but by the end of the film she has become a wasted hag, a terrible casualty of drug abuse, promiscuity, and her own rotten core. Even the luminous Frances Dee as Philip's new love interest, Sally, can barely compete with Mildred, and one gets the sense that Philip might have fallen under that destructive spell yet again had fate not intervened.

The issue of class lurks in the background of the story as one of its subtler and more troublesome themes. Philip is clearly born to civilized pursuits, like art and medicine; he's a white collar man whose lifestyle is supported by money from an unseen uncle. Yes, he needs to find an occupation, but his destined social space lies much higher than Mildred's lower class sphere. Is Philip merely slumming when he first becomes involved with Mildred? Are Mildred's fatal flaws those of an individual woman or of her entire class? There are some interesting counterpoints to this uneven match in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), where Angela Lansbury plays the lower class girl and Hurd Hatfield is the upper class man, only there the moral qualities of the characters have been switched. Tragically, it doesn't turn out any better for the woman because of it. In class conscious Britain, romances like these are always suspect, although they don't work out much better in American films like Stella Dallas (1937) and Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman (1940).

Of Human Bondage was also adapted for film in 1946 with Paul Henreid and Eleanor Parker and in 1964 with Laurence Harvey and Kim Novak. It would make for an interesting weekend to watch all three of them together. If you'd rather enjoy more of Davis and Howard, try The Petrified Forest (1936). Davis undertakes other striking physical transformations in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), Now, Voyager (1942), Mrs. Skeffington (1944), and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). Director John Cromwell also made Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), and Since You Went Away (1944).

An earlier version of this review originally appeared on Examiner.com. The author retains all rights to this content.