I’ve never heard of this movie, but it was apparently a box office success and everything. It’s from 1965, but it’s very much a 50s Film Noir movie, so it’s all kinds of weird.
It’s one of those paranoid movies where you don’t quite know whether he’s lost his memory or something else screwy is going on. It’s nice and tense.
Walter!
Triple A.
It’s pretty good! I’m not sure the plot actually makes sense — there’s a conspiracy going on, but it seems to rely on things the people involved couldn’t possibly know. But it’s really tightly plotted — it’s like a clockwork thing.
It’s hard to really get into, though, because it’s just so weird.
I was watching a couple famous Howard Hawks movies and I thought “well, I should watch them all, eh?” But many of them are pretty hard to find — this bluray was released in Italy, but fortunately the original soundtrack is on an alternate track.
The footage of the timber rafting is fascinating. I mean, it’s so unromantic — we don’t get pics of men heroically wrestling with the timber, but instead we get them dynamiting the timber whenever there’s a snag somewhere. So much dynamite.
Upon returning to the studio, Goldwyn viewed a rough cut of the film and was shocked to discover Hawks had shifted the focus from the unbridled destruction of the land to a love triangle in which brawling Barney Glasgow and Swan Bostrom vied for the affections of lusty Lotta Morgan. The character of Richard Glasgow, intended to be the second lead, barely was in the film, which was cluttered with Hawks-like improvised bits of business. When the director refused to comply with Goldwyn’s demands for major changes, the producer fired Hawks from the project.
[…]
Wyler never considered Come and Get It a part of his filmography and disowned it whenever he could, although it greatly pleased Ferber, who praised Goldwyn “for the courage, sagacity, and power of decision” he demonstrated by “throwing out the finished Hawks picture and undertaking the gigantic task of making what amounted to a new picture.
Wow, the history of the production of this movie is more interesting than the movie is…
Frances Farmer is fun, though.
Heh heh. That’s a shot all right.
Personal saunas.
Spencer Tracy was originally intended to play this guy, and I can totally see that. It’s not that there’s anything particularly wrong with Edward Arnold, but he’s, er, a bit lacking in the Leading Man dept.
Well, the wife looks nice!
Well, this is creepy! So he didn’t marry the first Frances Farmer character (because he married his boss’ daughter instead) but now (25 years later?) he has the hots for the daughter of his best friend and the first Farmer character (who’s also played by Frances Farmer).
It’s weird! It’s creepy! It’s weird!
He’s so horny.
But now the Farmer daughter has the hots for the Tracy son! Complications!
It’s not a very… compelling movie? Perhaps it’s the weird production history, but…
Such love triangle!
It’s just not very good, innit?
Come and Get It. Howard Hawks, William Wyler. 1936. ⚁
This movie is so close to being really enjoyable — it’s a zany thing about a woman running a sort of scam on everybody, but then doesn’t feel very good about it all. You know, the usual thing. And they try so hard! Especially Carole Lombard. But it never actually takes off? It remains a series of somewhat escalating but not compelling scenes?
It may just be me, though.
The director, William A. Wellman isn’t somebody I remember, but he seems to be a proper jobbie kind of director:
Etc etc. Starting in the 20s, he does like seven movies a year. And looking at this list, I have seen a few of his movies (The Ox-Box Incident, Beau Geste), and they’re pretty good?
Indeed.
Tough guy, see?
It’s fun, but it’s really odd. I wonder whether they didn’t quite know what to do about it all — it’s 1h13m long, which takes it into B movie territory — which is pretty unusual for such a big star as Lombard, I think? Or is it? Hm.
Anyway, it’s one of those “there’s some fun scenes” bits, so let’s go with:
