Oh, Olive Films… If I remember correctly, they’re not as ambitious with restorations like, say, Cohen Films or Criterion…

Well, this looks nice — there are scratches and dust, but it’s been stabilised and colour corrected. I mean — normalised.

This is very noir.

The director here is Robert Siodmak, which is a very familiar name, of course. But! Looking at his list of movies, I find that I’ve probably seen none of his movies? Except People on Sunday?

That has to be wrong, but… Oh, he only worked in the US for about a decade before returning to Germany. And he seems to have done mostly noirs while he was in the US, and mostly B movies?

Uhm uhm uhm

I don’t quite understand this movie. All that’s happened so far is that these two people (both married) have started an affair… but… we haven’t really been told anything about them, or given a reason to care.

Except that it’s Barbara Stanwyck, so we should care automatically.

I guess they’re slowly working their way towards the actual plot — is she going to con him into killing her husband or something?

OK, I didn’t quite guess what the plot was, but … almost!

The problem with her plan is that it turns out that the guy is a complete moron who totally fucked things up.

Or… is that the plot? That he did all that to set her up? And he’s the killer!? He certainly seems like an asshole.

The guy’s name is “Cleve”… which surely is the least attractive name ever in a Hollywood movie.

No… this movie just doesn’t quite work. It takes so long to get started… and then Cleve (trying to help) is the only one who creates the case against Barbara, really. So he’s a dumbass. And a drunk. So it’s like… hard to care about the shenanigans (which turn out to be less interesting than you’d think).

Much of the problem the film has is that Wendell Corey plays the guy, and he’s just not very interesting on the screen. Stanwyck tries to act really hard to make up for his deficiencies, and almost succeeds.

The File on Thelma Jordon. Robert Siodmak. 1949. ⚂

I thought I’d seen this, but perhaps it’s one of the other <Foo> in/on <Bar> movies?

So true.

Hey, it’s Mickey Rooney.

This is very amiable — the kind of thing where they’re hamming it up to the max constantly, but without getting annoying — you just can’t stop smiling while watching this.

Oh, that’s whatserface! I’ve seen her in several movies — she’s so funny.

Virginia Wielder… oh deer. She died when she was just 41!

What’s a settlement house… a house where they settle kids?

As is often the case with these Busby Berkeley extravaganzas, this movie is about putting on a stage show. And I love how (as usual) he blithely disregards any thought of realism in how things are staged — everything is done purely for the camera, and would be impossible as an actual stage performance.

Oh, and suddenly there’s a bunch of English kids being introduced, who somehow are in the US and eating properly and stuff… but without actually mentioning the war — presumably to avoid being accused of pro-UK subversion.

*sniff*

Oh, Babes on Broadway was released December 31st, 1941 — just three weeks after the US finally joined WW II! Did they shoot this scene in those weeks and manage to splice it into the movie, or were they just prescient? The scene has nothing to do with anything.

But this is fantastic propaganda. This is how you do it.

OK, now they’re padding a bit — they’re adding a fantasy Cyrano de Bergerac thing… and then another thing… and then another thing… Did they just have a bunch of songs they had to use but couldn’t fit into the plot?

Or just a case of “we’ve got Rooney and Garland; we’ve gotta squeeze some more footage out of them”? Because the movie has moved along very nicely until now, but it’s ground to a complete halt now.

Oh deer!

Oh, this has to be the biggest blackface show ever.

I mean, blackface things in the 30s… OK, but this just seems straight out racist.

Right.

WTF.

Wow, that really took a turn during the last fifteen minutes, which consists of this minstrel show these “kids” are putting on as a finale to their show. It comes out of nowhere and isn’t just one of those good-natured blackface skits — it’s pretty explicitly racist.

It just comes out of nowhere — the first half of the movie is so enjoyable, and then we get that great propaganda bit, and then the movie grinds to a halt, and then there’s that ending.

It really makes me wonder what the thoughts behind the production was — in-movie, they’re saying that they’re putting on the minstrel show to attract a southern audience, and I wonder if that’s just what that was? I mean, you had to have something racist to outweigh the earnest plea mid-movie that the US should join in the fight against fascism? That wasn’t a garden variety blackface thing either — it was explicitly about making fun of black people.

And especially considering that there aren’t any black actors in the movie, it’s…

Wikipedia has nothing, and it seems like this movie has mostly been forgotten…

Babes on Broadway. Busby Berkeley. 1941. ⚃