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Saltimbanques along the Mississippi, out of Twain for the benefit of Bergman (Sawdust and Tinsel). "Hiya, public!" Cast and crew aboard the Cotton Palace, vaudeville and melodrama on and off stage, four decades from post-Reconstruction South to Jazz Age Chicago. Showbiz management means having to play all the parts of the spectacle when your mustache-twirler gets shot at, Charles Winninger delivers a bravura rendition of the captain's impromptu tumbling. "A miscegenation case" involving the covertly biracial leading lady (Helen Morgan) halts rehearsals, her husband (Donald Cook) nicks her hand and gulps from the wound to get around the state's "one drop of Negro blood" law, the ingénue (Irene Dunne) steps into the spotlight. Her rise runs parallel with the fall of the gambler she loves (Allan Jones), thus A Star Is Born on the main stage and Imitation of Life on the sidelines. "Queer how a woman goes all to pieces over a man." Edna Ferber set to Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, James Whale has it at his fingertips with a sensitive eye on American divides and a dynamic grasp of musical technique. The camera tracks in for Paul Robeson's entrance ahead of Ford and Wayne in Stagecoach, then circles around him at the wharf for a profile close-up to launch "Ol' Man River," with its magnificent protest rumble and pantheistic expressionism. "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" spills out of the kitchen onto the deck, "Ah Still Suits Me" couples Robeson with Hattie McDaniel in a fond talking-blues duet, "Bill" floods the screen with Morgan's lugubrious grace. (A cutaway to the segregated audience provides sufficient commentary during Dunne's blackface number.) "I want you to know I always put on strong moral plays." The true companion piece is not MGM's remake but I Walked with a Zombie. Cinematography by John J. Mescall. With Helen Westley, Queenie Smith, Sammy White, Arthur Hohl, Charles Middleton, J. Farrell MacDonald, Clarence Muse, and Sunnie O'Dea. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |