User reviews

A gangster, Dave (Robert Newton) who double-crosses some other gangsters finds himself in desperate trouble in "The Green Cockatoo."

Warned by his brother Jim (John Mills) to get out of town quickly, Dave goes to the train station. He has an altercation with the gang and is knifed. He latches onto a young woman, Eileen (Rene Ray) who has just arrived in London from a small town. He tells her that he can bring her to a good place to stay, and she accompanies him.

You really have to suspend disbelief that a young woman would just go off with a stranger. And it gets better. Once she's in her room, and he has left, he suddenly returns. I'd be screaming my lungs out.

However, she sees that he's hurt and agrees to help him. Unfortunately, he dies, and the landlady thinks she did it. Before he dies, he gives her a message for his brother at the Green Cockatoo.

With the police and the gang after her, she finds The Green Cockatoo. She doesn't know anything about Jim, a song and dance man there, and to get away from her followers, she starts wandering around the upstairs of the club. She meets Jim, not realizing he's the man she's looking for.

Despite Eileen's strange behavior in the beginning, this is a fun film. John Mills is delightful singing and dancing. In one scene, as he attempts to hide Eileen from the police, he says she is his new performing partner.

He sings "Smoky Joe" - all she has to do is say the words "Smoky Joe" when he pauses. It's hilarious. She is supposed to not be able to sing, but you can tell by her off-key "Smoky Joes" that she actually had a good voice.

Recommended - nice British noir from 1937.

What stands out most of all from this film are the credits.The film was directed by William Cameron Menzies at Denham just after "Things To Come".It was from a Graham Greene story.It was photographed by Mutz Greenbaum(Max Greene) who was one of Herbert Wilcox's favourite DOPs and the music was by Miklos Roza,one of the numerous Hungarians brought over to work in the UK by his compatriot Alexander Korda.So not your average quota quickie.I first saw this when i hired a 16mm print in the 1960s.I saw it again yesterday.I have to say it is fairly entertaining.A young Robert Newton for once not overplaying.A young John Mills reminding us that he started out as a singing juvenile lead.His performance is a bit off key.He seems at times to be in a Warners crime film of the thirties doing his Cagney impersonation before doing his Gordon Harker impression.A really enjoyable reminder of a now moribund genre.

This is a real mixed bag of a film, which could have been a lot better if the screenplay had been kept more taut and tense. The basis of Graham Greene's novel is certainly there, as are some of the characterisations with Rene Ray as wide-eyed innocent in the big city, and Robert Newton playing a low-key role to good effect. There's even TV's Fabian of the Yard, Bruce Seton, playing a gangster. The one major cuckoo in the nest is John Mills, who is quite hopelessly miscast in the lead role. He comes across as a watered down, British version of James Cagney! In a long and distinguished film career, this is probably his most forgettable performance. The changes in his accent are pretty hilarious, and some of the dialogue phony, to say the least. On the plus side, the photography is impressive, in that an atmosphere of the dingy side of the city is invoked, and the gangsters look suitably menacing. And, it could be said to be a forerunner of the later film noir series from the USA. Unfortunately, as other reviewers have pointed out, it is too talky with not enough action, and could have been a lot better given the talent at its disposal.

I've just seen this film tonight and since nobody else appears to have done a comment, I'll do it while it's fresh in my mind. Briefly, the story concerns the murder of Robert Newton who has double-crossed a gang who fix greyhound races. (The track seen briefly in the film appears to be Hackney.) John Mills plays Newton's brother and Rene Ray the girl who is wrongly suspected of the murder. I'm sure John Mills will be the first to agree that his accent varies wildly throughout the film- he seems to be doing a sort of James Cagney character with a bit of posh West End and cockney thrown in. Robert Newton comes out best although he dies early on. Bruce Seton plays a bad guy; we're used to seeing him as a policeman. The action sequences are well done, (they were obviously trying to make the film as tough as possible) but the talk goes on far too long between the fights.

This has some good ingredients to make a jolly, if not exactly, menacing murder story - but it's all just way too fluffy and talky. The doey-eyed Rene Ray is "Eileen" who arrives into London very late one night. At the station, she encounters "Dave" (Robert Newton) who offers to show her an hotel where she might pass the night. What she doesn't know, is that her good Samaritan has fallen foul of some crooks and a station fracas ensues and he is mortally injured. Before he croaks, he gives her a message to give to his brother "Jim" (John Mills) in the eponymous nightclub. She meets the brother, but a rather unlikely series of mishaps befall the pair as they are being sought by the police and the hoodlums. Aside from some singing and dancing that one wouldn't normally attribute to John Mills, the thing is entirely procedural with little by way suspense or peril; and saving a rather curious performance from Frank Atkinson as the butler "Protheroe" would be instantly forgettable.

This feels more like something from the fifties rather than the thirties. It's dark, moody and grittily realistic. It's a beautifully photographed really atmospheric Film Noir.... just a shame that John Mills is so utterly awful.

Were John Mills not in this, it would have been something special. People might today reflect on it being the first proper Film Noir. All the classic tropes of that genre are perfectly exemplified in this... but John Mills, no! Why he was cast as a seedy, back-street club owner defies all known logic. His character was clearly based on James Cagney but Mills' impersonation of the great man is truly cringey. You want to hide behind the sofa with embarrassment for him as he trots out lines which seem straight out of an early Warner Brothers gangster flick - on the level! Any minute you're expecting him to call someone a dirty rat. Clean cut thirty year old John Mills is not a gangster.

It's so difficult to ignore this ridiculous casting that it spoils the whole picture which is a shame because apart from him, it's actually a good film. If you didn't know better you'd guess it was made at least a decade later. The acting is a million miles away from what you'd expect from a 1930s film - incredibly realistic and natural. Lovely Rène Ray is perfect as the sweet naive young thing plunged helplessly onto the nightmare rollercoaster ride into an unimaginable unknown.... but John Mills - no!

At the start of his career, Robert Newton connected with producer Alexander Korda, who introduced him to film audiences in 1937 with small parts in a few movies. He played a barrister alongside Laurence Olivier in 21 Days Together, which was shelved for three years, shared a scene with Vivien Leigh in Dark Journey, acted with both in Fire Over England, and was in I, Claudius, which was shelved for thirty years. It was his memorable, likable role in The Green Cockatoo that propelled him to the next batch of films. By 1939, he was a star.

Robert Newton starts off The Green Cockatoo in confident, Cockney swagger. He doesn't seem at all like an inexperienced actor, and as you watch him, you've completely forgotten that John Mills got billed above the title in the opening credits. He's a bit of a bad boy, and when he crosses his gambling cohorts, he receives the ultimate punishment. He's only onscreen for fifteen minutes, but since he was so magnetic during his scenes, and since he's talked about by the other characters the rest of the movie, it feels like he had a much bigger part.

Alas, we have to say goodbye to Bobbie. The good news is John Mills takes over and is just as magnetic. He punches bad guys, flirts around with the beautiful romantic lead, Rene Ray, and is more energetic than I've ever seen him. Plus, when he gets mad and his hair gets mussed, he's awfully cute. But more importantly, he does a very good job in this obscure movie as a completely different character than he usually plays. He plays a performer in a nightclub, and he sings and tap dances, showing talents no one knew he had!

Rene Ray is given a difficult part: her character is incredibly stupid, but she has to make the audience root for her anyway. She's very pretty, and that doesn't hurt, but she manages to convince the audience she has very good intentions. Even though I didn't agree with what she was doing, I was rooting for her anyway.

Obviously, I liked this movie, so I'll recommend you give it a watch. It's only an hour long, so you might want to pair it with another flick for the evening, like Odd Man Out. But it's very entertaining, and you get to see John Mills tap dance!

With direction from William Cameron Menzies and a script by Graham Greene, The Green Cockatoo should have come out a whole lot better than it was. The film was what we call a B production and over there they call a quota quickie. In this case quick was not good because haste made some sloppy waste.

Young Rene Ray a girl from the sticks arrives in London and almost before she knows it she's got herself involved with gangster Robert Newton who gets stabbed by another mob for betraying them in a dog race fixing scheme. Newton dies in her room, but not before naming his killers and telling her to get in touch with his brother John Mills who has a song and dance act at a club in Soho called The Green Cockatoo.

The biggest thing that The Green Cockatoo has is that it shows off some musical talents that a lot of fans including myself didn't know that John Mills possessed. Unfortunately Graham Greene's script is rather incoherent, possibly the fault of some bad editing on this quota quickie.

Both Mills and Newton would certainly go on to bigger and better things. I'm sure neither was impressed by The Green Cockatoo as I wasn't.

The credits of this mediocre little thriller are impressive: scenario by Graham Greene, direction by William Cameron Menzies, music by Miklos Rozsa. But whatever interest may have been in Greene's original story has been washed away by clichés, Menzies' direction is brisk but uninspiring, and the best part of Rozsa's score is by Eric Coates. Also, a babyfaced John Mills is completely unconvincing as a tough guy (and his singing and dancing aren't up to much either), and Rene Ray does virtually nothing with the role of an innocent country girl who no sooner sets foot in the big city than she is falsely accused of murder. At least it's short.