Everything Is Thunder

Michael Balcon was ever the ambitious producer. In 1934, he decided to make a movie that would play overseas, so he hired a couple of American stars, Constance Cummings and Douglas Montgomery and made a movie about an escaped Prisoner of War falling in love with a poor German girl in this movie. Given the cast and the setting, he hoped this would play in the U.S. and perhaps even Germany.

Unfortunately, this movie did not work out as he had hoped. I attribute it to a schmaltzy story and lack of any distinction other than its stars. This production looks like something that John Stahl might have done at Universal. Neither do the stars offer any particular chemistry in this effort.

Balcon would keep on trying to crack the American market. He would succeed with Hitchcock ... and lose Hitchcock to Hollywood. It would take greater American familiarity with Britain, gained during the Second World War, and a lighter touch for the Ealing comedies to break into the American market: movies that were successful because they were distinctively British... and funny... and were better movies, too.

In World War I, a Canadian POW escapes and is hidden by a Berlin streetwalker in "Everything is Thunder" from 1936. The stars are Constance Bennett, Douglass Montgomery, and Oscar Homolka.

Hugh (Montgomery) is able to bribe a prison camp guard, but the guard turns on him and in the ensuing fight, the guard dies when he falls on his knife. Hugh escapes, but the guard's death starts a national search.

Hugh pretends to be a discharged German soldier who has a wooden leg. It's pieces of wood held together that he can remove at will. He makes it to Berlin, where he meets the beautiful Anna (Bennett), a prostitute.

When Anna, a true German, realizes who he is, she is ready to turn him in, but the two are falling in love. They decide to both escape to neutral territory.

The last half hour or so of this film is very fast-moving and exciting. The last shot is absolutely beautiful. It's not a great film, but it has good performances and a decent story.

Had "Everything is Thunder" been made later and set in WWII, perhaps it would have worked better. As it is, the film suffers from believability many, many times...and the most egregious mistake is showing Germans betraying their country repeatedly...something which just wouldn't have happened during WWI...and would have still been pretty unlikely during WWII. Trust me on this...I used to teach World History.

When the story begins, you learn that a Canadian officer, Hugh McGrath (Douglass Montgomery), is in a German POW camp...and that he'd already tried to escape three times. The fourth time seems to be the charm, as he is able to escape...though he kills one of the guards in the process. This means, if captured, McGrath will almost certainly face the firing squad. It helps that McGrath speaks fluent German and that he finds the great cliche--a hooker with a heart of gold (Constance Bennett). Inexplicably, she befriends him, sells all her possessions and heads to the Dutch border with him! If this isn't hard enough to believe, wait until you get to the insane ending!!!

In the film, almost no one speaks with anything other than an American or Canadian accent. Of the leading characters, only Oskar Homolka has a Germanic accent and you never hear Montgomery speak a word of German! Add that to the folks betraying Germany right and left and you're left quite confused. Overall, the acting and romance is nice...though the romance also makes no sense nor do many folks' actions throughout the movie.

Bribery of the guards is one of the daily occurrences at a POW camp just outside of Berlin. But when Canadian Hugh bribes one guard to 'turn deaf' while he escapes, the guard takes the bribe and then tries to kill Hugh at the fence. A scuffle results in the guard falling on his own knife - luckily Hugh escapes but when the other guards find their mate dead, a nationwide search is on for the murderer.

In Berlin, Hugh (disguised as a discharged soldier with a fake wooden leg) meets Anna and of course this then turns into a romance tale, but quite a deadly one. Anna is on the enemy's side but when she finds out who Hugh is, rather than turn him in, she agrees to smuggle herself to neutral territory with him. From this point on the movie majorly picks up the pace and if you blink just once, you're liable to miss something very important! Very low-budget, but very tense and thrilling - 8/10.

In the 1930s,Gaumont British,under their production head Michael Balcon,decided to have a go at breaking into the American market in a big way.There was of course already a tie up with Twntieth Century Fox who owned part of Gaumont British.However they formed Gaumont British Distributors of America.Alas like many a predecessor and also their successors,The Rank Organisation,they came a cropper.Many of GBs productions from 1934 till their demise in 1937 had American actors and stars.Given that Constance Bennett was just off the top of her career her salary must have been quite substantial aand obviously Montgomery wouldn't have come cheap.So this was a big budget film,not a low budget film by any means.The problem is that these films were still regarded as British on both sides of the Atlantic and that was a turn off for most audiences.It is not a bad film but it just resembles any other First World War film turned out at that time.There was a mini depression in 1937.Guamont British closed the Lime Grove studios,and went out of film production.They were eventually taken over by Rank.The studios were subsequently used during the war by Gainsborough,they were eventually sold to the BBC and there are now a block of flats on the site.The name Gaumont lived on in the name of the cinema chain.By some stroke of fate that last Gaumont was my local at Tally Ho North Finchley which closed in 1980.All other Gaumonts being rebranded as Odeons.So this film was made at the peak of the Gaumont British empire which was to close with the shutting down of my local cinema.