patrick-50839

Though Stamboul Quest is probably not very accurate about the German spy service in World War I, I found it a most enjoyable movie, mostly because of Myrna Loy. I would've said Myrna was miscast as a sly, duplicitous, sexy spy. But remembering her previous (pre-MGM) performances in movies like The Squall and Thirteen Women, she could have indeed played the part to the hilt; it was just that MGM wanted her to be sympathetic and ladylike, even when inappropriate.

Even so, she seems to be having fun and gets to wear some sexy outfits designed by Adrian. One, that she wears in the restaurant where she picks up George Brent and subsequently at his apartment, is so skimpy that wearing it in public in many US cities might've gotten her arrested in that period. In the opening scene where she shows up disguised in the office of Von Sturm (Lionel Atwill), the German spymaster she works for, after a little hugging she immediately takes a bath in a bathroom so conveniently located right there in his office. Her undressing and teasingly tossing her shirt and slip in his face makes it clear there is an easy intimacy between them. (He scrutinizes her clothes closely, ostensibly looking for a message in invisible ink; this was as close as 1934 Hollywood could get to showing a panty fetishist--and Atwill, even when down-playing his customary hinted-at lewdness, gives signs of being obsessed with her.) This could've been a real cutting-edge film if it had focused a good deal more on the dignified middle-aged spymaster's fascination with his much younger, carefree, sleep-around spy, who seems quite a tease--and might be a perk that goes with the job?

She has a conventional but sexy romantic scene with George Brent (who I found a little annoying) and later on, she manifests a subtle eroticism in her scene with the Turkish commander (C. Henry Gordon) whom one would think would be more on his guard against such womanly wiles. When she lowers her dress at one shoulder (so he can write an invisible-ink message on her back) the feeling is very erotic, quite knowingly so on her part, cool and calculating--her finest acting moment in the movie and one where she really gives a feeling of ambiguity, as she obviously doesn't find this stiff, pompous Turkish big shot attractive but knowing she's been sent to seduce him, she certainly gets with it.

The superb cameraman James Wong Howe's talent for mood is unfortunately constrained by the MGM glossy, brightly lit look. However, he lights Myrna's close-ups with care and, for a few delicious seconds (to be exact, at 101.32) he uses baby spots on her eyes. It's such an exquisite effect that I freeze-framed it to savor it at length.

I was interested that reviewer "earlytakie" commented on the use of Trucolor in this picture and grateful that it's been preserved. I second that. I have read that Trucolor was essentially Republic's name for Cinecolor, which I have found to generally awful, especially in its rendering of flesh tones. (For example, in the 1948 spy film Sofia--which I've also reviewed--it is annoying that the beautiful Patricia Morison is so unflatteringly photographed and appears to have a sickly, waxy complexion.) To return to the film at hand, I think the Trucolor here is very good, especially in scenes shot in the desert. If it is Cinecolor, then Republic's lab must have processed it in their own way, making distinctly better.

The picture is basically about two characters--a reformed gambler who has gotten religion and an angry young woman who masquerades as a male when performing as a bandit. Bill Elliot is a very low-key actor, who is a lot easier to take than many B-movie (or even A-movie) heroes, but he does get a little monotonous. As far the cross-dressing bandit: In 1908, Max Beerbohn, reviewing a production of Euripides's The Bacchae, in which a prominent actress of the day, Lillah McCarthy, played Dionysus, wrote in his review: "It is a dangerous thing for a woman to impersonate a man except in a Christmas pantomime." He thought Ms. McCarthy carried it off though. Similarly, when Marie Windsor plays a tough woman who masquerades as a tough male outlaw in the first 40 minutes of Hellfire, she is highly effective in the part, only not 100% convincing because of the womanly way she fills out her outlaw shirt.

At midpoint, when she shucks off her masculine guise and transforms into a sexy, genial but conventional saloon singer, the movie gets less interesting (though she is very appealing in her frilly costumes and flirts amusingly with sheriff Forrest Tucker). She has a great cynical line to Tucker, hinting at her past as a whore, "I've known a lot of men who were in love with their wives." A scene that is really worth waiting for comes toward the end, when she is in jail, lolling on her bunk hugging her rather oversized guitar--the most suggestive use of a musical instrument since Cary Grant played a saxophone in Once Upon a Honeymoon. I recommend this movie to all Marie Windsor fans (though from mid-point on rather deficient in action).

Incidentally, a few years later in the TV series Stories of the Century (produced by a Republic subsidiary), Ms. Windsor played the real-life outlaw Belle Starr, making her as ruthless and savage as could be imagined. She engages in a no-holds-barred, furniture-destroying battle with show's distinctly overmatched heroine (the bland Mary Castle), staged with his usual manic zest by William Witney. You have to see it to believe it. It's curious that this TV series, though obviously intended to appeal to "the whole family," was often (as here) more violent than anything you were likely to see in contemporary movies. It was even sometimes more sexy (as in the "Cattle Kate" episode, where Jean Parker plays a very lewd middle-aged outlaw) than anything in films at the time. It's a shame that the two leads, Jim Davis and Mary Castle, are not very interesting. (In the second season, Castle was replaced by the excellent Kristine Miller, a great improvement.) The show uses a lot of stock footage from old Republic films, judiciously cut in for the most part. An exception: at times when there is a scene in a modest smallish saloon, the film editor couldn't resist cutting in a laughably inappropriate extreme long shot of a huge saloon-cum-theater set packed with hundreds of extras watching six chorus girls dancing on stage. Maybe some kind of private joke.