Mon 23 Jan 2017
Movie Review: THE LAST JOURNEY (1936).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , Suspense & espionage films[5] Comments
THE LAST JOURNEY. Twickenham Films, UK, 1936. Godfrey Tearle, Hugh Williams, Judy Gunn, Mickey Brantford, Julien Mitchell, Olga Lindo, Michael Hogan, Frank Pettingell, Eliot Makeham, Eve Gray, Sydney Fairbrother, Sam Wilkinson, Viola Compton. Screenplay: H. Fowler Mear, based on an original story by Joseph Jefferson Farjeon. Director: Bernard Vorhaus.
There are a lot of names there in the credits, I grant you, and most of them are total unknowns, but it’s an ensemble cast with lots of screen time for each of them, so I listed them all. Now if I could only mathc up the names with their faces!
From what I’ve read, must of the British film industry in the 1930s was a vast wasteland, but if so, this has to be one of the better ones, by far. I’ve listed it in my Suspense and Espionage category, but you can forgot the spy part. It’s the story of a railroad engineer about to be railroaded into retirement. H’s not severely disgruntled about that, but he’s gotten into his head that the fireman on his train is having an affair with his wife.
And as part of the confrontation he plans on having with his previously longtime friend, he plans to run the train as fast as it can until this last journey ends in utter disaster, a plan unknown to the oblivious passengers until train starts to pass through railway stops at breakneck speed without stopping.
This may be one first “disaster” films of this type ever filmed. On the train are a young newly married couple, he unbeknownst to her a con man interested only in her money; and not on the train but in a motorcar trying to catch up with it her former boy friend; also a male and female pair of thieves trying to get their companion drunk enough to rob him; a well-known doctor whose specialty is hypnotism (this is important); a female abolitionist who wanders up and down the train handing out temperance cards; a stutterer who can’t find anyone who can answer his questions; and so on.
What adds most to the excitement, including lots of action photography — on the train, on the road, and in the air, are the quick shifts of scenes, faster than most in 1936, as I recall, even in this country. I’d have to see the movie again to see sure I caught everything the first time, and if I decide to do so, I’m sure I won’t be wasting my time.
January 23rd, 2017 at 4:19 pm
Sounds like it might have inspired LA BETE HUMAINE
January 23rd, 2017 at 4:54 pm
Well, Zola came first. Was this one inspired by the novel? Very loosely, at best. The focus is too narrowly on the impending train wreck and the lives of the oblivious passengers on it.
HUMAN DESIRE, with Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame directed by Fritz Lang in 1954, was another adaptation. I watched it recently and enjoyed it, but for some reason I never wrote up a review of it. I don’t know why not.
January 23rd, 2017 at 9:32 pm
Railroad stories were popular fare in that era though the Grand Hotel theme was still fresh. The disaster theme might be unusual, but the drama on a train was well established going back to Arthur Griffith’s ROME EXPRESS and the popular plays THE WRECKER and THE GHOST TRAIN.
January 25th, 2017 at 9:29 am
If I’m remembering correctly, there was a British law that required a certain percentage of films shown at British cinemas be British productions–which accounts for the rather “uneven” British films of the era. For every Korda production with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, there were many more films of this type.
January 26th, 2017 at 2:35 am
From Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge (until someone tells me otherwise):
“The Slump of 1924 caused many British film studios to close, resulting in the passage of the Cinematograph Films Act 1927 to boost local production, requiring that cinemas show a certain percentage of British films. The act was technically a success, with audiences for British films becoming larger than the quota required, but it had the effect of creating a market for poor quality, low cost films, made to satisfy the quota. The “quota quickies”, as they became known, are often blamed by historians for holding back the development of the industry. However, some British film makers, such as Michael Powell, learnt their craft making such films.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_United_Kingdom
Further on in this article, it says that this Films Act was in effect through at least 1937, when it was up for renewal.