Saturday, June 17, 2006
MELODRAMA
Today's Best Film was John Ford's
It features a bravura performance by Victor McLaglen as an ex-IRA enforcer with more brawn than brains who, well, informs.
The film is dark and stagy and has a lot of great moments. There is also a lot of melodrama which is a bit hard to take but, in 1935, they were still playing over the top from the silents.
Interestingly, there is not a lot of dialog.
Perhaps that is because the plot is thin. But the IRA shenanigans are all there to see. It has been a long time for them to get over it and they are still at it on a different plane.
The quasi-military/outlaw gang aspect of it is brought to the fore.
There is rather too much time spent on our anti-hero's drunken spree but then that is part of his problem.
McLaglen was a bigger than life actor who worked for Ford a lot. He had been a film actor for 15 years when this was made and had crossed the great divide between silents and 'talkies'. He can talk. And he can bellow.
I saw a lot of his pictures when I was a kid and loved him.
He is no less lovable here although in a perverse kind of thug way; which, of course, is the success of his acting.
We will see him again when The Great Man becomes available on disc.
I will give this one a 3 out of Netflix5.
I think that any Ford fan must see it. He did get an Oscar nod for it. So did McLaglen.
