Sombras del pasado

"Sweet" is not a word I've ever used to describe a film, mostly because the films that might merit the word are invariably too sappy to qualify. But "Hide-Out" pulls it off and truly deserves that description.

Much like "Bad Bascomb" (1946) and "Angel and the Badman" (1947) this is the story of an incorrigible criminal who is reformed because of his accidental association with good people. In "Hide-out" they are not reformers and there is no deliberate effort to reform; the character change comes because the positive examples cause him to adopt their values and belief system.

Robert Montgomery plays Lucky Wilson, a charming Broadway playboy who is part of a protection racket specializing in nightclubs. His boss gets a percentage of each club's profits and Lucky insures the payoff is correct by estimating each club's business from their napkin usage (a convenient procedure because they control the laundry the clubs use).

The opening sequence is exceptionally well staged, with Lucky's insatiable appetite for women revealed through a montage of blonde conquests; in the opening minutes he goes from a girlfriend's maid, to the girlfriend, to another girlfriend waiting for him in a car, to a new conquest at the night club he visits. During the brief intervals between conquests he finds time to leer and flirt with every pretty girl who crosses his path.

All these girls are blonds with lots of makeup and with elaborate hairstyles. Their appearances are meant to contrast with the natural appearance of Pauline Miller (Margaret O'Sullivan), the girl with whom he eventually falls in love.

"Hide-Out" is one of those films where the casting is perfect, as you cannot imagine anyone but Montgomery and O'Sullivan being able to pull this out without appearing completely silly. They are nicely assisted by Elizabeth Patterson (as Pauline's mother) and by a very young Mickey Rooney (as Pauline's younger brother Willie). The standing gag is Willie's frustrated attempts to get the family to call him Bill. His scenes with Montgomery are especially good and it is interesting how much natural acting talent he exhibits this early in his career. They go out on a standing gag about the reproductive abilities of the rabbits he has been raising.

A big reason why the film works is the attention paid to the details,. A second viewing will reveal many things you do not even notice the first time around, like Montgomery's continuing discomfort with "nature" when he brushes a rose bush in the front of the house. There are hundreds of these little details, most of them involving the citified Montgomery's fish-out-of-water adjustments to country life.

There was a 1941 remake titled "I'll Wait for You" staring Robert Sterling and Marsha Hunt. Although I love Marsha Hunt the 1934 original is easily the better film.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Yeah Yeah Yeah, I read about the Cliché's, but thats why I watch movies like these. I want a predictable ending, I want cliché's. I don't want to be emotionally challenged, I want to be entertained. A forgotten concept in todays movies. Occasionally weak acting and improvisation that lends a sense of realism. I like the mix between actual barnyard scenes and studio shots, probably technologically difficult in those times. Overall a very satisfying movie, and you gotta love Mickey Rooney as an ornery boy. I would have liked to see a sequel where the main character gets out of Jail and goes back. Marries the Girl, fixes the milk problem for Pa, and raises a passel of little piglets.

This sentimental M-G-M "gangster" film works like a "Tarzan" in reverse: here the seemingly incorrigible hood played by Montgomery, urbane and a touch cynical, finds his cold heart surely melting in the warm embrace of a simple farm family and their soothing workaday life.

In "Tarzan" Maureen O'Sullivan is the "outsider", and although she must adjust to life in the jungle the thrust of that story is that she "domesticates" the "ape man" even as she learns to accept the simpler pleasures of living "close to nature". Here Montgomery is the one out of his element and we find him mystified by the sounds of crickets in the evening--something almost as strange and foreign to him as the unpretentious caring ways of the Miller family. When Mom and Pop and little "don't call me" Willy (played by young Mickey Rooney) conveniently leave the farm for a day, Montgomery and O'Sullivan get to play "farm" (baling the hay, splitting wood) the same way Tarzan and Jane get to play "house" together. In both cases O'Sullivan has "tamed" the wild beast.

"Tarzan" was an adventure film, however--the journey takes place in the great outdoors and nature is a mirror. "Hide-out" is an inner journey, on the other hand--even as he's hauled off to prison Montgomery smiles because he's finally come "home".

It's a modest movie. Not a big deal. But it's got some things in it I like. First, it stars Robert Montgomery, and Maureen O'Sullivan, which though not a guarantee of a good movie, sure is a sign of promise. And in this case it pays off. Montgomery plays a racketeer who has to lam it to the countryside to wait for some heat to die down. The odd thing is, I could not really figure out what his "racket" was. There he is injured and stays with a family to recover, meeting and chumming it with the daughter. That's where the dividing line is. In the first part you are in precode gangster land. Then Montgomery wakes up in a four poster bed with a gingham bedspread - he has arrived in production code land. The plot's flimsy, for sure, on both sides of the line, but it's there to provide the opportunity for Montgomery and O'Sullivan to meet and chatter. And that's the main attraction. The banter between the simple, ingenuous, yet clear-headed and no-nonsense country lass, and the sophisticated, jaded, out-of-his-element city feller, as they get to know each other, like each other, and fall in love. The style of their exchanges has an informal, conversational feel, as if they were talking, not reciting lines.

Of course, the love story is accompanied by his character reformation into a good person, or one that looks to be in the future. But it's handled discretely, and if you ignore it, it doesn't spoil things. The supporting cast is a bunch of pros, so they know how not to step on things: Elizabeth Patterson and Whitford Kane as the ma and pa, Mickey Rooney-for once not insufferably irritating playing an insufferably irritating son, and Edward Arnold as the dogged cop. One other thing I like about the movie is that it achieves portraying a lively, energetic, spontaneous family scene without being noisy, discordant, and irritating. Something a lot of movies attempt, but fail miserably at doing.

"Hide Out" starts out focusing on a group of racketeers operating in Manhattan. We are introduced to Jonathan Wilson, who seems to be a key man to the organization. Jonathan is clearly a ladies' man, but his luck is about to change after he is seen pursuing the glamorous Baby. In a hilarious scene, Jonathan, has secured a ring side table to watch the beautiful Baby singing, as part of a night club act. He proceeds to ask her for a date that same night, without the singer missing a beat while she accepts his invitation. That also proves to be his own undoing because the police is closing after him.

The second part of this comedy, directed with style by W. S. Van Dyke, concentrates in how Jonathan, who has been wounded when he tried to flee his pursuers, is found on the side of the road by a Connecticutt farmer, Henry Miller. He takes him home, where the whole family takes an interest in making him well. The lovely Pauline Miller, a young teacher, likes "Lucky", as Jonathan calls himself. Life in the farm works its magic in this man and transform him when he falls in love with the beautiful Pauline.

Of course, we all know that crime doesn't pay, so when at the end of the film we see Det. MacCarthy come knocking on the Miller's door, we realize that Lucky must pay for his evil ways of the past, although he makes us feel, because of his transformation and the love he feels for the young woman, that somehow, he has vindicated himself by wanting to stay in the farm forever.

Robert Montgomery's appearance in the film makes it even better than what it should have been. Mr. Montgomery is excellent in his scenes with Maureen O'Sullivan, who is perfect as the young Pauline Miller. Pauline Patterson and Whitford Kane are the older Millers, and Mickey Rooney, who was about thirteen, but looks much younger, makes a valuable contribution as Willie Miller. Edward Arnold, one of the best character actors working in films at that time, puts an appearance as Detective MacCarthy.

The film, with a running time of 81 minutes, has the right length and involves us in it. W. S. Van Dyke directed with usual sure hand and got a lot out his great cast in this delightful film.