Runtime: 104 minutes
Directed by: John Ford
Starring: Madeleine Carroll, Franchot Tone, Reginald Denny, Sig Rugman, Stepin Fetchit
From: Fox Film Corporation
John Ford's Downton Abbey, featuring a racist caricature.
Admittedly I've never seen an episode of Downton Abbey; I stole that line from a mutual. There were several of Ford's movies to choose from before they left the Criterion Channel less than a day from now. This sounded the most interesting to me due to its plot and plus, it is a footnote in Hollywood history as I'll mention later.
The plot: it starts off in 1825 America as after the death of a family's patriarch, in his will is the decree that an alliance happen between his family and another for the purpose of running a cotton empire both in the United States and across Europe. Of course, it then skips ahead to the early 20th century (mostly in World War I time although it ends in the 1920's) where besides the alliance not having been broken-it becomes complicated once the war begins-there's a lot and it's kind of a mess.
There's a wedding, unrequited love, long soliloquies, the French Foreign Legion, war footage taken from the 1932 French motion picture Wooden Crosses, and Stepin Fetchit. He was a Black actor who I had never seen before but he's rather controversial now... while popular at the time, most now will likely cringe hardcore at the act he does where he makes Forrest Gump look like Albert Einstein by speaking nonsense while yelling the entire time. I certainly thought it was greatly regrettable, an uncomfortable reminder of what was deemed “acceptable” back then.
A lot happens in 104 minutes, as I've hopefully proven. Yet there are some rather strong sequences-depending on how cynical you are, you may fall in love with how Madeleine Carroll and Franchot Tone portray both characters in 1825 and their relatives almost 100 years later... they seemed to know each other from their antecedents despite never having met or even seen each other before, to the point that the 20th century versions faintly remembered an obscure tune their counterparts sang the previous century.
It is totally a mixed bag; some parts I definitely preferred to others. Yet overall I'll say this was fine. The first ten minutes not only features one person slapping another across the face w/ his glove (the old gentlemanly version of the middle finger) but there's also a dual. Furthermore, this was the first-ever movie approved by the Production Code (as sad as it was that the Pre-Code era ended then) so at least that is interesting historical trivia for dorks like us. That fact is undoubtedly true as at the very beginning there is a “Certificate No. 1” listed. Whether or not that's worthy of watching the movie... it's not Ford's best by any means but different from the norm, yeah it was.
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