Mon 4 Oct 2010
A Movie Review by Dan Stumpf: THE CAT’S PAW (1934).
Posted by Steve under Films: Comedy/Musicals , Reviews1 Comment
THE CAT’S PAW. Paramount, 1934. Harold Lloyd, Una Merkel , George Barbier, Nat Pendleton, Grace Bradley, Alan Dinehart. Screenplay: Sam Taylor, based on a story by Clarence Budington Kelland (serialized in the Saturday Evening Post, August 26-September 30, 1933). Director: Sam Taylor.
We like to think of the Past as a simpler, better time. Just how un-simpler and un-better that Time actually was is evinced with unsettling clarity in The Cat’s Paw, which is also Capraesque (not surprising, since it was written by Clarence Buddington Kelland, who authored Mr. Deeds Goes to Town) but in a more distinctly early-30’s style.
Harold Lloyd stars as a super-naive Missionary vacationing from China, who returns to his American home town in search of a wife. He quickly gets involved with corrupt local politics, local hoods (Grant Mitchell, Nat Pendleton and Warren Hymer: as bluff an ensemble of plug-uglies as graced any Gangster Film.) and the local wise-cracking soft-hearted Jean Arthur type, played here by the lovely Una Merkel.
In less time than it takes to tell, he becomes a local hero, gets elected Mayor, is framed, disgraced, and about to be indicted.
At which point I expected him to save the day with an impassioned filibuster or some such, and was mildly amazed to watch meek little Harold pull the Fat out of the Fire with some surprisingly grim (not to say Fascist) tactics better suited to Mussolini than Mr. Deeds.
This is an unusual — eschewing the star’s trademark inventive slapstick for a more thoughtful — and less funny approach. And while it’s not entirely successful, it’s fascinating to watch and wonder what else Lloyd might have done had he opted for Social Commentary instead of settling for being the Talkies’ best Physical Comedian.
I doubt that he could ever have come up with anything to match the Marx Brothers’ Duck Soup (1933, also Paramount) but it’s interesting to see him try.
October 5th, 2010 at 2:30 am
This is a very odd film, and curiously watchable. It reminded me a bit of I AM THE LAW with Edward G. Robinson in the absolute glee with which the hero throws away the book and goes after crime and corruption with a mix of populism, vigilantism, and — as Dan points out — near fascism.
Sort of MR. SMITH FORMS THE BLACKSHIRTS with echoes of the Bulldog Drummond book THE BLACK GANG.
Sort of a discomforting reminder these days that the jackboot sometimes lies under that populist cloak of all-American ‘values’ at either end of the political spectrum.
As Dan says, it doesn’t exactly work, but it is well worth watching, and it is at least a bit unusual when the ‘sinister’ Chinese in the mix turn out to be Lloyd’s allies in his fight against crime. It isn’t often a film manages to portray a racial minority as good guys and still be politically incorrect.
Curiously, by the time of MEET JOHN DOE, Capra himself had spied the threat of fascism and totalitarianism beneath populist zeal, but here it is embraced whole heartedly with no irony intended.
Other films that are almost as schizophrenic as this are Victor Fleming’s THE WET PARADE and Charles Brabin’s THE BEAST OF THE CITY. Whatever they say about where people’s heads were at that point they are all curiously familiar to some of what we hear on the nightly news right now.