perfectpawn

I've been working my way through Claudette Colbert's early films and this is one of the best. It doesn't offer the sauciness of "Torch Singer" and there are no milk baths in sight, but overall it's probably the most expansive production she was in, pre-"Sign of the Cross." For this is a "big" movie, the early '30s equivalent of a modern "event picture;" the sort of thing studios like to push just in time for the Oscars. It has some fantastic production values, only it's let down by a runtime insufficient to fully play out the story.

Claudette (looking again like Betty Boop – I've gone on about this before but it's amazing how greatly this woman's appearance changed between 1932 and 1933) plays a young nurse who marries the ever-staunch Clive Brook. Why any girl would fall for this stoic killjoy is beyond me – and it's beyond the script, too. But regardless the two are mad for each other and spend a night out in WWI-era Paris, Clive a British soldier about to go back out into the field. We see him in battle shortly after this, a well-shot and produced scene which takes place right in the trenches. Soldiers stagger about in gas masks, machine guns rend the night, distant explosions provide brief snatches of illumination over the hellish landscape. I should point out that Karl Struss provided the cinematography and he's up to his usual skill in this scene and others.

Overcome by poison gas Clive's left on the field, considered dead. Claudette is informed by one of his battalion mates and she passes out – also because she is pregnant with Clive's child. Enter Charles Boyer, playing his usual Gallic charmer; a field surgeon, he takes an instant liking to Claudette and promises to care for her and her coming child. Only we soon discover that Clive in fact is still alive, taken prisoner by the Germans along with an American soldier (gravelly-voiced Andy Devine). Years pass and Claudette lives with Boyer in Paris, raising Clive's son. The couple goes to Switzerland for vacation, where Boyer intends to provide a little help at the local sanatorium in which wounded WWI soldiers convalesce. You guessed it – Clive is one of those soldiers, and though his doctors claim he should've died long ago, he persists in living, sticking to a daily regimen and clinging to life. Everything comes to a head with Claudette caught between these two men, uncertain if she should continue to "be the wife" for the man she believed dead, or if she should follow her heart and stay with the man who has cared for her and her child these past few years.

So really this is just a sumptuously-produced melodrama. A wealth of production details are thrown at what is a simple story too quickly told. For really the plot gets in the way, making certain characters seem too cruel or too stupid. As if realizing this, director Berthold Viertel handles affairs with a slick touch, fully capitalizing on the flawless art direction. Paris and Switzerland are recreated on the studio lot; in Switzerland we get an entire village, complete with taverns, boat-filled canals, and sweeping verandas. Paris too is expertly rendered, featuring bomb shelters and wide streets upon which several taxis jostle for space. It's all really incredible, and I have a feeling some of the sets (the canal in particular) are leftovers from Ernst Lubitsch's Paramount marvel of the same year, "Trouble In Paradise." We even get a bit of proto-special effects; in one scene Claudette watches a train leave the village, watching it through a window: her back is to us and we see the moving train out beyond, in the forest. Only, the jaded eye will soon realize it's nothing but a model train out there, moving through a miniature forest. But still, such simple and childish tricks only serve (for me at least) to make the film all the more enjoyable. I love the "artificial world" of old movies, and The Man From Yesterday takes place solely within one.

All the actors come off well but as usual Boyer's accent is as thick as oak. The man has always reminded me as a Desi Arnaz prototype. Clive Brook is just as staunch and humorless as in "Shanghai Express" and any other movie he ever appeared in. And Claudette here plays more of a dramatic role than the more sultry types she played in her Pre-Code years; even though this film is a Pre-Code it really offers nothing that couldn't be shown once the Code was enforced. My only complaint, again, is that the story is not fully developed, which harms some of the characterizations. And also I wish I had a better copy – yet another of the many classic films never released on DVD or VHS, The Man From Yesterday is currently only available as a bootleg-quality DVDR, one which seems to have been sourced from 16mm. Meaning the majority of those fine production details just come off like a black and white blur on your screen. A pity.

Well, this movie is certainly something. I'm just not sure what.

Gary Cooper plays the hardbitten captain of a merchant ship; while docked at a South American port someone leaves a caucasian baby in his boat. Cooper plans to take it with him to the US, he just needs someone to take care of it on the voyage. Enter Aloysius (Hamtree Harrington, what a great name) and Mark (Sidney Easton), his two African-American stewards – bumbling caricatures who speak in the phony "black American" patois acceptable in early Hollywood. IE, lots of "yassirs" and bug-eyed expressions of shock. Claudette appears as a seaport "entertainer" who wants to get back to NYC; she comes aboard as the baby's surrogate, employing skills she didn't realize she had. Along the way the baby instills in her the desire to "straighten up," and her and Cooper fall in love to boot. Only, Claudette has a shady past and it seems that every other mate on the ship has had her at one dingy seaport or another – all of them except for Cooper, that is, who despite being hardbitten is also a little too naïve. He buys Claudette's "my parents were missionaries who died and now I'm all alone" story and gets ruffled if anyone doubts her, ruffled to the point of fighting one of his men and knocking him overboard. It all comes to a head in NYC with a truly underwhelming courtroom scene.

Really, the whole movie is underwhelming. I mean, the film opens with a stock shot of a merchant vessel plying through the water, then a cut to the deck, and Gary Cooper ambles his way across it. THAT'S how the movie begins, no fanfare, no buildup, just another day at sea with Gary Cooper. Gary Cooper and his two racial stereotype crewmembers, that is; I have a theory that Malcolm X saw this film as a boy and it set him on his way. For truly this movie is offensive. I'm an open-minded guy and don't get offended easily, but this film goes out of its way to shoehorn every black stereotype into the characters of Aloysius and Mark. They are presented as incompetent nitwits who exist only to bulge their eyes and mutter banalities – in between loud prayers to "Gawd," that is.

And it's not just that. Whole chunks of this film are composed of nothing more than a baby crying. Minute after minute evaporates as the baby screams and bawls, with various characters attempting in vain to placate it. In addition the movie is very static, paced so leisurely that it appears to be out for a Sunday drive. Cooper can do little to save it; his character is a vapid sort, and it's obvious he had a hard time reckoning the polar characteristics with which he's been foisted: we're supposed to believe his character is a non-nonsense sea captain who commands respect in his grizzled men, yet at the same time he's so naïve as to buy whole-hog Claudette's obviously fake background story. As for Claudette – well, what can you expect: she's as good as ever. Her role offers her a bit more room and she does a good job portraying the whole "bad girl goes good" angle. This early in her career she still has that waiflike look – big Betty Boop eyes, fragile body. I swear this lady drank some sort of elixir – just compare how she looks in this film to say "Sign of The Cross," released the following year, or even "Cleopatra," from three years later. It's like she went through a second puberty.

Production-wise the movie's underwhelming as well. Don't expect the usual Paramount opulence here. Rather than a nice portrayal of a madhouse South American bar early in the film, the sets are mostly spartan-looking cabins within Cooper's ship, or the equally-austere deck. Once the ship gets back to New York we're only graced with a few stock shots of the city, and from there to a basic office room for the trial. The direction, too, offers little to appreciate; the whole thing, from beginning to end, is as basic as bread.

Special note: This film contains one of the worst line readings I've ever had the pleasure to hear. I'm talking "Ed Wood production" bad. When Claudette's back with her high-living galpals in NYC, all of them sitting around in negligees with their legs dangling in pure Pre-Code lasciviousness, she gets ribbed by them for falling in love with Cooper. Try as they might, the girls can't get Claudette to revert to her old ways. One of the galpals, a pretty blonde, shakes her head and says, "Well, I just give up." It is, by far, one of the worst deliveries of a line EVER.