Sun 21 Jun 2009
Movie Review: ADVENTURE IN MANHATTAN (1936).
Posted by Steve under Crime Films , Reviews[5] Comments
ADVENTURE IN MANHATTAN. Columbia, 1936. Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, Reginald Owen, Thomas Mitchell. Suggested by the story “Purple and Fine Linen” by May Edginton. Director: Edward Ludwig.
There are actually two stories involved in this moderately entertaining crime-romance trifle. The first is kind of a story within the story, if you will, and it’s the one by May Edginton listed in the credits. But I’ll back up a little, though, before saying more.
Hot shot crime reporter George Melville (Joel McCrea) is one of those fellows the rest of the guys on the beat love to hate. While he gets along with them fine, he’s by nature smug and self-possessed, and for good reason. He gets scoops that no one else does, not by chance, but by pure intellect and a dispassionate viewing of the facts.
If a good-looking woman comes along when he’s working on a story, she’d just be another clue, he is ribbed, and he good-heartedly agrees. But when a good-looking woman does come along (Jean Arthur), he falls for her story hook, line and sinker, just like every other guy would. Or is it a story? Well, it’s the one I mentioned by May Edginton above, and it’s a good one.
You can even read the entire story online right here. It will suck you in too, I guarantee, a tale of a young woman down on her luck who has to resort to picking pockets in order to see her young girl who’s been living with her father and whom the mother has not seen since the divorce went through.
This first part of the movie takes up no more than twenty minutes of the film, and while I hate to say it, given that I like both Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea as actors, but it goes downhill from here. I also say that even though the second half of the film is one of those grand high-stakes art theft movies I was talking about in regard to crime caper fiction not so long ago.
What the segue is, and how the story makes the switch from the first part of the movie to the second, I will leave for you to watch (and enjoy) on your own.
I think what the problem is, relative to the second half of the film, though, is that there’s too much story and not enough plot — and there’s somehow not enough time left to explain (convincingly) what the attraction between the two leading players is, other than that she’s a woman and he’s a man, and of course the twain have to meet.
Nonetheless, moderately entertaining is what I said up above, and I’ll stand by what I said. But in terms of simple comparisons, if you’re a fan of romantic comedies, The More the Merrier (1943), with (quite coincidentally) the same two stars, this movie is not. Given a choice and a chance, I’d watch that one instead — any time — even if there’s no crime in it.
June 22nd, 2009 at 2:25 am
I liked this one better than you, but admittedly on the charms of the cast and not the story. I get the feeling the title Adventure in Manhattan may have gotten the best of the writers.
I’ve always wondered how we forgot what a good comic actor McCrea was in films like this, The More the Merrier, Sullivan’s Travels, Palm Beach Story, and even Foreign Correspondent. We think of him mostly in relation to westerns and forget early on he was a good general leading man in a wide mix of films including The Most Dangerous Game and the South Seas adventure Bird of Paradise.
Two films of his worth seeing are Two in a Crowd made just before this one, and The Unseen. The latter the same team that made the classic The Uninvited with Gail Russell again, and Herbert Marshall. The Unseen isn’t anywhere near as good as The Univited, but it does have a screenplay co written by Raymond Chandler (with Hagar Wilde), which makes it at least interesting.
He was also the original Dr. Kildare in Internes Can’t Take Money with Barbara Stanwyck, which had him involved with gangsters and good in Shoot First, a Brit. spy film based on Geoffrey Household’s novel Rough Shoot with a screenplay by Eric Ambler.
Still his best crime film is probably Dead End with McCrea the poor but honest guy who has worked himself almost out of the slums but has to wade back in one last time to save a bunch of kids on the cusp from the charms of gangster Humphrey Bogart. Among other things it was the film that gave us the Dead End kids who eventually morphed into the Bowery Boys.
The Sidney Kingsley play it is based on is grim but William Wyler gives it solid direction and the sets themselves are practically a character. It’s less preachy than it could have been thanks to good performers. Lillian Hellman wrote the screenplay, which suggests at this point in her career there is almost certainly a bit of input from Dashiell Hammett (Raoul Whitfield used to claim he could lift the speeches out of her plays whole cloth that Hammett had written). I can’t testify to that, but even her biggest fans grant Hammett wrote one of the major speeches in Watch on the Rhine, so it is possible. I’d find it hard to believe she didn’t at least run a screenplay on this subject past him.
Anyway, McCrea is good in it in the unappealing role (for an actor) of the good decent guy. To give him his due he was one of the actors who could make simple goodness interesting. To see him at his best playing the good guy who is never dull catch one of his best later films Stars in My Crown — the scene at the beginning when he holds religious services in the saloon at the point of his guns is worth catching even if the film wasn’t a charmer from Jacques Tourneur and didn’t feature a pre Gunsmoke James Arness and Amanda Blake in the cast.
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:34 am
Steve,
This is a good review! You make ADVENTURE IN MANHATTAN sound like fun.
Edward Ludwig is a forgotten director today. The only Ludwig film seen here is OLD MAN RHYTHM (1935). This is a silly-but-fun musical, about a midddle-aged man who enrolls in his son’s college. Rodney Dangerfield did the same thing years later in BACK TO SCHOOL.
David,
That’s a nice summary of Joel McCrea’s career.
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:03 am
Reviews of this movie are mixed on IMDB, but the consensus is about the same as mine — the story line is weak but the cast is great.
One commenter suggested that McCrea’s role would have been better served by James Cagney. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Whatever success the movie has is due in a big way to McCrea’s low key charm.
As David says, he “could make simple goodness interesting,” and Jean Arthur takes second chair in frilly fare like this to almost no one.
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:17 pm
After praising McCrea I have to say a little about the great Jean Arthur. I just don’t know where to start — or stop. Meet John Doe, Mr.Smith Goes to Washington, The Talk of the Town, Only Angels Have Wings, The More the Merrier, The Ex Mrs. Bradford (she was also in two Philo Vance films — Canary and Greene Murder Cases with William Powell), The Plainsman, You Can’t Take it With You, The Devil and Miss Jones, Foreign Affair, Shane…
There are fewer clunkers in her resume than almost any other actress (or actor) of the period. When Adventure in Manhattan is one of your lesser movies you have to be pretty damn good.
No one played the smart, cynical, but in the long run romantic, modern woman better, and she was always at her best when her character was frustrated, angry, in love, and just a little screwball. In fact I’m not sure there could have been much of a screwball school of films without her. She was the ideal heroine in three of Frank Capra’s best, not to mention her work with George Stevens and Billy Wilder. Arthur is in the same league with Hepburn, Stanwyck, Carol Lombard, and Myrna Loy in the screwball school.
For mystery fans I have to single out The Ex-Mrs, Bradford, a Thin Man style film where she and divorced tec hubby William Powell tackle a murder. It’s only a little behind the Thin Man films in terms of enjoyment and better than some of the later ones.
And Stevens The More the Merrier is one of best screwball films ever made largely thanks to the considerable on screen rapport she had with McCrea and Charles Coburn.
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:57 pm
There’s nothing you said about Jean Arthur that I can quarrel with one bit, David, not a single quibble.
— Steve