Mandalay

Poor Ricardo Cortez. While undoubtedly a fine fellow in real life, in his reel life of the early '30s, he was almost always a cad, and, more often than not, he paid big time for it. He was very good at being a cad, as demonstrated in "Mandalay." The movie, set in a back lot Rangoon, is snappily directed by Michael Curtiz, who always brought his Hungarian verve to a film (Mildred Pierce, Casablanca, The Sea Hawk, among many). Some of the night club scenes are reminiscent of Josef von Sternberg's exoticisms.

Kay Francis can do no wrong, as far as I'm concerned (and I look forward to reading the new bio "I Can't Wait to be Forgotten"). Those big dark eyes and that velvety voice! And as a character in the film comments, she "certainly can wear clothes."

In Rangoon, gunrunner Tony Evans (Ricardo Cortez) gets a bad deal from scheming nightclub owner Nick (Warner Oland). Nick is more eager to have Tony's performing girlfriend Tanya Borodoff (Kay Francis). He tricks her to believe that Tony had abandoned her. With the stage name of Spot White, she has to work the men of the club to survive.

This has an unknown Shirley Temple in a minor role. More than anything, this is Kay Francis doing woman's work and I love the darker ending. There is no need for a happy ending in this one.

If you feel a bit dozy watching Mandalay, you're probably reproducing the state in which the screenwriters produced this lackluster script. Samples: "I was a coward. I ran away. But I couldn't run away from myself." "None of that matters to me. (pause) As long as I have you."

The dialogue, however, hasn't been through the mill as often as Kay Francis. Once more, she suffers! She is betrayed! She lives a life of shame! But, boy, does she clean up, with an arm that looks like a jewelry display for diamond bracelets and a wardrobe heavy on the sequins, satin, and chiffon--with a little embroidered organdie number for when she is Redeemed. I don't know how she did it, but Kay always had more sophisticated evening gowns than anyone, even Joan Crawford. There is also a number that out-Dietrich's Dietrich, when she sweeps into the police commissioner's office in a skin- tight gown, a hat the size of a cartwheel, and a fan half as big as she is!

This and some incidental players and pleasures (Ruth Donnelly, Hermann Bing, Rafaele Ottianao) make Mandalay agreeable enough. But what dumb dialogue--when someone knocks on Kay's door and calls her with a name by which she is known only to one person, she not only asks who it is but is shocked to see him when she opens the door! Never mind, just go with the flow, like Kay.

Mandalay (1934)

There are a few great reasons to see this movie. For one, it's an early Michael Curtiz film (he's the guy who did "Casablanca" and "Mildred Pierce"). Another, it stars the great Kay Francis, who is what we expect from her-charming, intense, subtle, significant. And finally, this is a pre-Code film (barely) with that little edge that makes it fresh. The plot is a bit jarring at first--the leading character played by Francis is Tanya (or Spot White, later) and she is trapped into being a nightclub hostess (and prostitute?). Francis is great at being both the victim and the ultimate in femme fatale (or a woman of power, at least). She's great. The cast around her is strong, too, and the scenes keep changing and evolving, so you have to stay awake to keep up. There is some really fabulous cinematography here, by the great but unheralded Tony Gaudio. One scene uses a mirror in the center of the frame to show one scene while the background shows another, giving us a fast impression of her nightclub. In smaller ways, the camera moves and approaches the key moments with elegance. Other scenes have just a great sense of light and drama (the short part with the turning paddlewheel of the boat at night is great). Everything begins in Rangoon. The scene shifts eventually to Mandalay, which is an inland city in Burma (Myanmar now). It requires a nice boat ride through the jungle, with all sorts of characters along. There are issues of servitude, alcoholism, virtue (as seen by Westerners visiting Asia), and maybe (in a strained way) love. It's a lot of drama and I like it, held in place finally by Francis. And check out the last five seconds. This is truly a pre-code film, and if justice is served in the end, it isn't what the Hays Code would ever have allowed. Sweet

"Mandalay" starts off as if it's going to be a real pre-code classic along the lines of "Safe in Hell" or "Red Dust". Kay Francis is abandoned by her gunrunning lover in Rangoon, and is doomed to become a courtesan (with the great moniker "Spot White") in Warner Oland's high class cabaret/brothel. Unfortunately, once our heroine escapes these confines and hits the river for Mandalay, the film becomes a turgid melodrama.

Michael Curtiz's baroque direction keeps matters visually interesting, but he can't breathe any life into the dismal characters. Ms Francis's lisp is more prominent than usual and Lyle Talbot shows why he deserved a future in Ed Wood extravaganzas. Plus, they both should have impaled the studio hairdresser. Although Oland plays an Oriental as usual, he's not saddled with the Charlie Chan accent this time, and shows plenty of mettle. Ricardo Cortez comes off the best with much spontaneity as an opportunistic rogue.

Pre-code buffs will definitely want to hang around for the conclusion, wherein the perpetrator of an insidious criminal deed blatantly walks off into the sunset scot-free! The short running time and jumps in the narrative make one wonder how much of the back-story was left on the cutting-room floor.