I really enjoyed how screwbally this Powell-Loy pairing was. Myrna Loy is a no-nonsense businesswoman whose plans are disrupted when her sister, whose fiancé has been all picked out, is encouraged to pursue a career in acting by bohemian William Powell. As expected, hijinks and romance follow suit. Seeing Powell’s trailer house and its set decoration is a delight, especially when the entire cast makes their way into the vehicle for the big day, reminiscent of the stateroom scene from A Night at the Opera. 

An odd film noir set in post World War II Japan, here we have a gang of ex-GIs staging robberies throughout the Tokyo area. Robert Ryan is the leader of the gang, while Robert Stack shows up to get to the bottom of the crimes after one of the gang members is shot and dies. There’s a lot of chemistry in the interactions between the two, but I particularly enjoyed the big climax at a small amusement park. 

I wish this had been a bit longer to fully flesh out the motivations and actions of the characters better. Feeling neglected from the long hours her husband, William Powell, puts in as a lawyer as well as receiving evidence of a potential liaison on his part, Myrna Loy succumbs to her own dalliance. Probably because of the Hays Code, these affairs, and their consequences, are both alluded to more than seen. Loy and Powell have great chemistry as always, but they are given little time to really play off each other. Una Merkel is also wonderful as Loy’s friend who always seems to be around.

I hadn’t remembered watching this before, but once it started, it became immediately familiar. The previous time I had watched, I found Miriam Hopkins’s character way over the time. Now that I am more familiar with her other work, I now know it’s less the actress and more what the character called for. She’s an extremely histrionic, romance author and she’s costumed as if someone took the best author photos those novels. She’s wonderfully juxtaposed to smart and serene Bette Davis, composed in front of others even when facing heartbreak. In some ways they don’t make sense as lifelong friends and professional semi-rivals, but sometimes that’s what the best relationships look like from the outside.

I had gone into this fairly blind and was left more underwhelmed than expected. I fear there isn’t anyone out there currently to bring fully realized musicals to the big screen. Reading the wikipedia entry for the stage version, it seems like the story was sanded down so utterly that there is little conflict left in the film aside from ‘should I stay or should I go’. The answer that question is unearned in the end. I can understand wanting Lin-Manuel Miranda to be part of the movie, but his character could easily have been sacrificed in order to develop some of the main ones fuller. The songs make Hamilton seem less impressive as they all seem to have been reworked into that musical. The lip synching, especially for the younger women, is poor and disengaging. Instead of singing about their actions, the actors often seem to be doing things because the song tells them to. Maybe it feels more real for people from the area, but here, aside from an overabundance of fanny packs, Washington Heights appears to be little different from any other neighborhood in any other city. All that being said, there was a real joy expressed in the film and real emotion portrayed, particularly from Anthony Ramos and Olga Merediz, that it is hard not to feel immersed in the production. 

I have a feeling that Michael Landon watched this movie a billion times before creating Highway to Heaven. A handful of prisoners, including Clark Gable, escape the prison on Devil’s Island guided by a person with heavenly connections. It’s odd that this was included in a Joan Crawford box set since she’s secondary as a love interest to Gable. She looks very pretty in this film, more natural than I’ve ever seen her. The rest of the film is bizarre with a very specific, preachy version of morality which some of the escapees eventually succumb to while others do not.