The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)

Retired British officer Rudolf Rassendyll (Ronald Colman) is visiting one of those curious fictional Balkan countries that pop up so often in Hollywood, the pulps, and comics for a fishing trip. As a matter of fact, the country in Anthony Hope’s novel this is based on, called Ruritania there and not named in the film, is often seen as the earliest example of the made up Eastern-ish European country in popular culture.

In any case, a peaceful fishing trip it’s not going to be for the man, for he just happens to look exactly like the very soon to be crowned king of the country, also called Rudolf, and Rudolf the king is in a spot of bother no true Englishman of Rudolf the Brit’s type is going to let him hang in. Being a notorious carouser and alcoholic gadfly, the king isn’t well loved by his subjects, leaving the door wide open for his perpetually coldly angry and pretty evil brother “Black” Michael (Raymond Massey). Really, simply drugging Rudolf on the night before his coronation should do the trick, providing Michael with an opening to declare himself regent, marry Rudolf’s betrothed Princess Flavia (Madeleine Carroll), and probably rename the country into Latveria.

As it happens, said drugging is taking place right when Rudolf the Brit is present, palling around with the king after a chance encounter. Because nobody would believe the truth, the king’s oldest and most-suffering retainer, Colonel Zapt (C. Aubrey Smith) comes up with a plan: why not let his king’s virtual twin go through the coronation to thwart Michael’s plans, without anyone knowing any better?

This is of course only the beginning of a series of intrigues, romantic interludes and curious adventures for our Rudolf.

The Prisoner of Zenda is, in its nature and type, a kissing cousin – or really rather a making out heavily in the backyard cousin – of the swashbuckler, really only missing that particular genre descriptor in my eyes because its moments of physical derring-do are nearly completely relegated to the final act. It’s a very fine final act, though.

And really, this is me doing genre nit-picking and not me complaining about the actual film, for the adventure and romance movie we get here is indeed one of the great achievements of classic Hollywood. Not only because it puts quite a few of the British actors working in Hollywood at the time into one movie – for what is more continental European than guys from Oxbridge to American eyes, apart from lederhosen – but because it really does wonders with them.

This is one of those films that don’t just feature a perfectly cast hero in Ronald Colman, who does the wit, the romance and the physical demands of the role more than just justice. Nearly everyone else on screen is more than just fit to type, enhancing the traditionally flat characters in a film like this through mild ironies, charisma, and a hand for the telling details of body language and intonation. Even Raymond Massey’s Michael is only not considered one of the great screen villains because he’s overshadowed by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.’s Rudolf von Hentzau, the most fun to watch bastard imaginable, whom I left out of the plot synopsis as well the roles played by Mary Astor and David Niven because synopsising the film’s finely wrought net of dramatic interpersonal relations and improbable intrigue would have to go into novel, or at least movie, length.

Apparently, this was a bit of a difficult production, director John Cromwell having some kind of beef or the other with about half of the main cast – which sounds ridiculous going by what we see of them on screen – so that some scenes may or may not have been shot by someone else. George Cukor was supposedly shooting whatever, as well as, and more probably to my eyes, W.S. Van Dyke doing work on the fencing scene in the climax. Whoever told DP James Wong Howe in any given scene what to do (or was wise enough to let him get on with his business) did a bang-up job in any case, creating one of the best fairy-tale Europes of the American subconscious, built out of sumptuous, beautiful and exotic scenes gliding into another elegantly, everything culminating in a finale that visually seems to take place in the direct neighbourhood of Universal’s backlot Europe of shadows and expressionist castles.

It’s as perfect as anything you’ll see.

Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (1934)

On the wedding day of his brain-dead sidekick Algy (Charles Butterworth), adventurer Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond begins to think about retirement in Sussex; after all, all that romance and excitement in his life is beginning to get tiresome, and now that Algy isn't around for a quickie anymore, what's left?

Drummond changes his mind very quickly when he leaves his friend's wedding and steps into a foggy London night, where he first meets a confused young woman (Loretta Young) - later to be named as Lola Field - and then stumbles upon a dead body lying in an empty villa. Strangely enough, once Drummond returns to the villa with a bobby in tow, the place isn't empty any longer but populated by Achmed (Warner Oland), the "oriental" (because Warner Oland) envoy or prince or something of a made-up country, and his henchpeople. There's no trace of a dead body anymore, and the bobby sure as hell isn't going to think anything bad about a decent gentleman like Achmed.

Drummond for his part returns to his home to call Algy away from his wedding night and ponder things quietly. Until the confused young woman he met in the fog appears on his doorstep right when Drummond - the creepy toffer - is fantasizing about his need for a woman in need. Her name is Lola Field, and she was actually looking for Drummond's neighbour Captain/Colonel/Inspector Neilson (C. Aubrey Smith) of Scotland Yard, for her uncle is missing, and people seem to pretend he never even existed. Of course, Drummond is instantly smitten by Lola and willing to help, and of course, the dead man he saw will turn out to have been Lola's uncle. From this point on, people will repeatedly be kidnapped from Drummond's living room, Drummond will repeatedly break into Achmed's villa, Neilson will doubt Drummond's sanity (he's right), and Algy's wedding night will be a no-show. Fun will be had by all.

This is the second and last time Ronald Colman was taking on the role of Bulldog Drummond - the actor's first appearance in the role being in 1929's Bulldog Drummond - and like his first outing this mystery comedy in the same spirit of style and verve responsible for The Thin Man is quite a bit of fun.

Unlike the earlier movie, Drummond Strikes Back does not feature the stiff and possibly slightly confused acting of an early talkie. Instead, the film is dominated by the type of slick and glossy acting I find typical of classical Hollywood films. Colman still is the stand-out actor here, hitting the right spot between charming and smug, convincing the audience that being a crime fighting vigilante must be quite the lark, and again pulling the rest of the cast with him in any scene he is in; the difference this time around is just that his colleagues don't need as much pulling and clearly are able to stand on their own feet.

Most of what I have written about the 1929 film stands here too, though the level of pulpy thrills has been reduced a bit - there's no mad scientist in place, the more risqué psychosexual undertones have gone missing, and Warner Oland's "evil oriental" (sigh) is a bit bland as a villain for my tastes - in favour of more comedic bits, which usually would spell doom for me liking any film. I don't mind in Drummond Strikes Back's case though, for most of the humour - except for the always insufferable Algy - is as witty and charming as what Colman projects.

Even though the movie's plot really is paper thing - the mystery Drummond is trying to solve isn't much of one, and there isn't much happening beyond kidnappings and rescues once the situation has been set up - it's a whole lot of fun to watch Colman having fun, delight at the often very stylish manner director Roy Del Ruth shoots his few yet finely made sets, and forget all about the rather nasty political background of the Bulldog Drummond books. Sure, there is Oland's "oriental" evil mastermind (sort of) to remind one of the latter, however, there's so little mean-spirited about his use I found it difficult to get annoyed. It's an unfortunate cliché in a generally good-natured film, and seems to me more of a sign of the times the film was made in than any sign of active racism of its makers; it's the difference between actively doing evil and being thoughtless.

Apart from that, I can only criticize Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back for making me unhappy Colman didn't star in more Drummond films, and that's a criticism born of the fun I had with this one as well as the actor's earlier stint as the character.

 

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Bulldog Drummond (1929)

The former soldier Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond (Ronald Colman) is quite bored with his new life as useless upper-class lazypants. So, as you do in such cases, he puts an advertisement into the Times, looking for adventure.

Said adventure does indeed come in form of a girl named Phyllis (Joan Bennett) who invites our hero to a conspiratorial meeting in an inn in the country. Understandably, Drummond can not resist that sort of invitation. When they meet, Phyllis, who turns out to be young, pretty and quite a friend of dramatic hand-gestures, describes her troubles to Drummond. Her father is being held captive by the evil psychiatrist Dr. Lakington (Lawrence Grant) and his cronies, the brother and sister pair (or are they?) of "Pete" Peterson (Montagu Love) and the vamp Irma (Lilyan Tashman), who torture (Lakington will turn out to be quite the fan of electricity) the old gentleman into giving them access to his money.

Clearly, this sort of thing isn't done on Drummond's watch, especially not when there's a pretty girl to impress, so he - alas with the help of his mentally handicapped friend Algy (Claud Allister) and his butler as a horrifying un-comic relief double-whammy - goes about given the blackguards whatfor.

If you ask me, early talkies like Bulldog Drummond are more of an acquired taste than silent movies ever were - after all, the silents often have a dream-like quality to make up for their theatricality the very early talkies couldn't aspire to for technical reasons. Fortunately, this free adaptation of the first adventure of Sapper's crypto-fascist, racist hero makes liking it pretty easy.

Especially since it removes the fascist elements and most of the racism and replaces them with the universal language of the more friendly elements of pulpy fun and a large amount of silly witticisms. If you ever asked yourself where the Thin Man style of mysteries in the movies came from, this might be an auspicious place to start, for the dialogue - at least whenever Algy's not concerned - is generally charming and often really funny.

It sure helps that Ronald Colman seems perfect for Drummond as the film interprets him: highly competent, difficult to perturb, and never without a witty repartee. Colman's acting is quite different from that of most of his peers on screen. Allister and Grant - if in very different ways - are both of an annoying, stagy theatricality (exactly the type of acting you expect of actors working at a point in time when the rules for sound acting on screen were still being written) which only is enhanced by the more easy-going charm Colman oozes. Bennett and Tashman, for their parts, are all over the place. There are moments when Colman seems to pull the actresses away from the old ways of stiffness; at other times, you'd find pieces of wood who are more expressive.

Of course, this sort of thing is to be expected of a film from this period, and it's rather more sensible to concentrate on Colman's approach - that pretty much carries every scene he is in anyway - than on all that stiffness.

F. Richard Jones's direction is pacy, and more than once, framing, use of shadows, as well as the production design by William Cameron Menzies hint at the influence of German expressionism and make the film more interesting to look at than I had expected. Some scenes seem to pre-figure Universal horror and noir, even though these films would end up to bee completely different in tone. Plus, there's a minor mad scientist lab with a torture chamber and an electric door of which our scientist is inordinately proud.

Which is symptomatic of exactly the sort of pulpy thrills Bulldog Drummond offers when it's not letting its hero run his mouth. Plot contrivances, chases and minor fights are the name of the game, and are - as such things go - completely timeless. Well, for me at least.

Seeing as the film was made in the wonderful pre-code times of 1929 (although it doesn't belong to the classic pre-code era; this stuff is more complicated than algebra), it also has the opportunity to add other timeless things that delight me, like hints of (fake) incest, double entendres, dominant women, sexually "deviant" (read "not boring") villains, torture and everything else that's fun in the movies and (disregarding the torture) in real life.

I don't want to end another write-up with the question "what's not to like?", but really, what's not to like?

 

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