Allan Dwan | A Modern Musketeer | He Comes Up Smiling | Robin Hood | Chances | Heidi | Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm | Suez | The Three Musketeers | The Gorilla | Frontier Marshal | Young People | Up in Mabel's Room | Abroad with Two Yanks | Brewster's Millions | Calendar Girl | The Inside Story | The Sands of Iwo Jima | Belle Le Grand | Montana Belle | Woman They Almost Lynched | Cattle Queen of Montana | Tennessee's Partner | Slightly Scarlet | The River's Edge

Classic Film and Television Home Page

Allan Dwan

Allan Dwan was a Hollywood film director.

A notable article on Dwan is available on-line: Bill Krohn's The Cliff and the Flume.

Some common characteristics found in more than one of Dwan's films include:

Contests: The Natural World: Sets and Locations: People in unusual motion in architecture: Engineering and Communication: Props and Imagery: Animals: Families: Story Structure: Camera Movement: Visual Style: Color: Costumes: Not all of these are in every Dwan film.

A Modern Musketeer

A Modern Musketeer (1917) is one of several films Dwan directed with Douglas Fairbanks.

I found A Modern Musketeer disappointing. It has a few good sequences, mainly in the first half of the picture. But much of the film is labored. And like some other early Fairbanks comedy-adventures such as Wild and Woolly (John Emerson, 1917), A Modern Musketeer suffers from racism, here in its treatment of Native Americans. There is also an unpleasant rationalization of women "wanting" violence. These early Fairbanks films are disappointing.

The upper class appearing villain, turns out to have a secret past as a criminal. The bad guy in Belle Le Grand will be concealing a similar criminal background - although not from the audience, as in A Modern Musketeer.

The Town

The cyclone sequence shows both good special effects, and good visual style. It anticipates the big storm in Suez. The hurricane in A Modern Musketeer shows much of the hero's home town.

The best sequence shows young Fairbanks' enthusiastic response, to the idea of getting out of his small town. Millions of people must have shared this goal. The sequence starts off in his living room, and winds up with him leaping all over yards and buildings in his town. It shows a delight absent in much of the rest of the film.

Sand Works and Water Works

A Modern Musketeer has early, simple examples of two kinds of engineering constructions that will play a role in later Dwan: sand works and water works.

Fairbanks attaches a flat car platform to the back of his auto, and has the villain and chauffeur ride there. This causes sand to blow in their faces.

During the Musketeer prologue, d'Artagnan tips a pot of water from the fireplace onto a villain. This is really simple, compared to the elaborate water works in later Dwan.

Panoramas

In the second half, Fairbanks is shown against a panorama of the Grand Canyon, in some spectacular shots. These reflect Dwan's technique, of long shots that embed characters within a background.

Architecture and Movement

The shots showing the character being raised and lowered by a rope into the Canyon are fascinating. The title cards explicitly compare this to an "elevator".

Like his other early Fairbanks movies, A Modern Musketeer shows Fairbanks moving all over architecture.

Fairbanks climbs up or down multi-story architecture:

Fairbanks frequently moves through windows, a favorite Dwan action: Fairbanks' car runs over fences when he leaves town. This anticipates a clever escape in Dwan's The Three Musketeers (1939), where the carriage moves over a fence.

There are two angled-overhead shots, looking down on maze-like architecture. Both have walls open at the top:

Camera Movement

There are three vertical pans:

Overhead Views

Dwan includes an overhead view, looking down from a balcony at the hotel. This is not straight down, unlike the overhead shots in many later Dwan pictures. Instead, it is on a sloping angle.

Similarly, a shot of the heroine, villain and guide riding on the canyon floor, is from an sloping overhead angle, not straight down.

He Comes Up Smiling

He Comes Up Smiling (1918) is one of several films Dwan directed with Douglas Fairbanks. Apparently, all that mainly survives from it is the opening sequence. The sequence concludes with Fairbanks scrambling all over buildings in his town.

This opening is delightful. Like the previous Manhattan Madness (1916) and A Modern Musketeer (1917), it shows at an early date such Dwan subjects as:

All of this takes place in an urban environment, something that seems highly satisfying to me.

The town's street has a big "Vote for Dugan" banner over it. This will be multiplied into large scale bunting decorating towns in later Dwan films.

Visual Puns

The opening implicitly compares the hero's bank teller cage, with the cage containing the pet bird. Both seem imprisoned, albeit a bit gently.

There is soon a second visual pun: Fairbanks plays on the cage grillwork, as if it were a harp.

Costumes

Fairbanks is an early example, of a Dwan hero wearing a bow tie with his suit. One suspects that this was fairly common in real life in 1918. Dwan is still using this look for John Payne in Slightly Scarlet (1956).

Robin Hood

Robin Hood (1922) is a lavish re-telling of the legend, with Douglas Fairbanks.

Dwan Subjects

Robin Hood contains several Dwan themes:

Water Works

Dwan has a fondness for large scale water works, such as the canal in Suez and The Poisoned Flume. There are several water works in Robin Hood: The priory garden might be the medieval equivalent of the front yards in other Dwan films.

The Lances

Many of the crowd scenes, show countless lances with pennants, sticking straight up into the air. I do not know how unusual or conventional this was in 1922. They form a major part of Dwan's compositions. Raoul Walsh and Fairbanks would make similar effects in The Thief of Bagdad (1924) two years later.

Taking Back the Town

The hero encourages the townspeople of Nottingham to revolt. They do, in a way that recalls the French Revolution. Like the French revolutionaries of next year's Scaramouche (Rex Ingram, 1923) they carry farm implements. These tools echo the vertical lances in the castle scenes. Movies about the French Revolution were enormously popular, circa 1920.

Masks and Helmets

The hero makes a striking entrance, with his helmet concealing his face. This is both comic, and weirdly bizarre.

Later, a helmeted knight of mysterious identity will enter the picture. This character seems more taken from Sir Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe, than from conventional legends of Robin Hood.

Dwan and Fairbanks will soon make The Iron Mask.

Secret Passages

There is a secret passage from the Merry Men camp, through a tunnel to the woods and out a tree stump. This recalls the secret passages in the walls of the old dark house in The Gorilla.

In the comic books, Superboy will have a similar secret exit from his house, through a tunnel to the woods. He will also meet masked figures with concealed identities. One wonders if childhood viewings of Robin Hood influenced the comic book writers.

Multi-Story Interiors

Dwan likes large interiors, that show more than one level. The castle interiors are a prime example, with their high balcony, windows and staircases. These are featured in one of the film's best sequences, Robin's first raid on the castle.

Up and Down

Dwan's modern day films feature elevators, and mechanisms that help characters move up and down walls and cliffs. In Robin Hood, the hero moves down the huge drape in the castle. He also uses a sling to elevate the bad guy in his raid on the castle.

Robin Hood also includes memorable scenes of the hero climbing down the wall of the castle, and up the gate of Nottingham.

Panoramas

The hero stands on a cliff, where Marian has disappeared. We see a panorama behind him - although it is not as clearly photographed as in some of Dwan's other films.

Vertical Pans

Dwan includes what looks like vertical pans. There is a pan up to Robin Hood at the window, in his first raid on the castle. Later, we pan up from bad guys, to the Merry Men overhead in a tree.

Overhead Shots

The scenes on the battlement are frequently filmed from a high angle, so that we can see down to the ground. During the big fight, Dwan employs a high level, straight downward view.

Dwan also uses elevated angles, when it helps make the story clear. When the hero is pursued by the maidens with their scarves after the joust, Dwan's elevated angle makes each maid clear and distinct. Dwan similarly uses high angles, to show processions of the knights moving across the countryside.

Unusual Visuals

When the hero recovers, we see his point-of-view struggle have his vision come into focus.

The hero's memory of the heroine, materializes as a special effects image of her. In Montana Belle, the hero will recognize the heroine, when a brief flashback representing his memory of her from a previous scene, is cut into his current look at her.

Both of these techniques are not uncommon in film history. I do not know how unusual they were in 1922.

Chances

Chances (1931) falls into two parts: the early scenes at home in Britain, and later World War I scenes in France.

Parties

The British scenes at the beginning are especially good. They point out the importance of parties as settings for Dwan. This film opens first with a social evening in a British pub, then a country weekend, climaxing in a huge charity ball. The soldier protagonists have three days leave... Lots of Dwan films put his characters in party-like atmosphere. Black Sheep has them all on a trans-Atlantic cruise, Suez opens with Parisian fetes and social encounters, Abroad with Two Yanks has the men on shore leave, Up in Mabel's Room mainly takes place at a party, lot of the late Westerns take place in saloons, dance halls, etc. Dwan even did a musical called Hollywood Party. Dwan was a well known host, too. A party he gave in the 1920's was the real life model of the most famous get together in American Literature, the party in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novella The Great Gatsby.

Such parties are cheerful and festive - yet people get to have romantic encounters, and thrash out serious life issues. The parties can involve both family relationships, and romantic encounters. Family: there are two brothers in Chances, a father and son in Black Sheep. Triangles: both brothers fall in love with the same woman in Chances; the hero is chewed up in the duel between his wife and old girlfriend in Up in Mabel's Room, the hero is involved with two sisters in Slightly Scarlet.

These parties are more refined than Raoul Walsh's boisterous saloons. Dwan's characters do not always have money - but they tend to have a background of middle class refinement. The parties are also much warmer and friendlier than Alfred Hitchcock's duels over frighteningly stiff upper class restaurant meals (the cocktails in the Oak Room where Cary Grant is kidnapped at the start of North By Northwest, the early meal in Vertigo, the buffet supper in Rope, which takes place at home, but which has a similar feel).

Travel

Dwan's characters often commute from continent to continent. In Chances, the heroine is just back from Paris, where she has been studying art. In The Gorilla, the heroine is also just back from abroad; Black Sheep takes place on an ocean liner.

Costumes

The parties allow Dwan's characters to be dressed up to the max. The huge boots worn by his heroes in Chances anticipates Tyrone Power's big boots in Suez. The spectacular costumes in Chances are by Earl Luick, who also did Douglas Fairbanks' costumes in Little Caesar (1930) and Union Depot (Alfred E. Green, 1931). Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. never looked so good either before or after, as he did in these three films. Luick seems to know how to make him look like a real leading man. The long shots favored by Dwan, which displays his actors' whole bodies, serves to make these uniforms visible at all times.

Camera Style

Throughout the opening scenes in Britain, Dwan emphasizes long shots. He tries to keep all the actors involved in a scene on-screen at once, viewed as a whole. If the drama narrows down to two people, Dwan will move closer, until just those two are visible. Even in this case, Dwan prefers to frame them so their whole bodies are visible. Or Dwan can move to a medium shot, showing most, but not all of the legs, of his two characters. Dwan has little interest in cutting back and forth between close-ups of his characters.

Quite a few scenes at home are staged, so that we can see through the doorway of one room, into another. This is true both when just a few characters are visible, in the early shots at home - and when big crowds show up in the home for the party.

Dwan includes an elaborate tracking shot, through the garden, following Fairbanks and the heroine. A wall is in front of them, giving a visual grid or mask to the shot. Such foreground material in a lateral track is a trademark of both Sternberg and Ophuls. It is quite rare in Dwan's film, showing up in just this one scene.

The elaborate wooden bar and booth at the pub, anticipate the elaborate wooden staircase and its banisters in The Gorilla.

Heidi

Heidi (1937) is the first of three films Dwan did with Shirley Temple.

Fathers and Sons

Although we don't see the son, the relationship between the Grandfather and his son is a much talked about bart of the film's backstory. Father-son relationships are important in Dwan. In Heidi, the Grandfather rejected his son. This anticipates , where John Agar has experienced much rejection from his father.

It is clear that the Grandfather now repents of what he did. There is a moving scene where he reads the parable of the Prodigal Son from the Bible. It is hard not to wonder if this Bible story embodies a key aspect of the father-son relationships in Dwan.

A Hermit: Not Quite an Outcast

The Grandfather and the town have deeply rejected each other. This is close to, but not quite the same as, the Dwan theme of "false accusations make someone a social outcast". The roots of the trouble are in fact truthful: The Grandfather did indeed disown his son, leading to him being rejected by the villagers in turn. So this is not a false accusation. However, it has lead to a village view of the Grandfather being just plain rotten - which is false.

Similarly, the Grandfather is partly a self-willed hermit, rather than a true outcast. He has a choice, whereas outcasts don't.

I found it interesting that the Grandfather wants no part of the village school or church. However, this difference is soon papered over. It is not developed, or given a political dimension, the way many conflicts over government in Dwan are.

The Grandfather is one of several Dwan characters dissatisfied with small town life. Instead of running away to a big city or the Wild West, though, he becomes a hermit in the mountains. Heidi is also typical of much Dwan, in that the characters travel long distances (from the Alps to Frankfurt).

Late in Heidi, the Grandfather is falsely accused of stealing Shirley. He doesn't become a social outcast, but he is persecuted by the police, who refuse to believe him because he is poor.

Rich and Poor and the Police

The Grandfather is treated as an inferior human being by the police and government officials, because he is poor. He only gets a better treatment when Shirley mentions the name of a local rich man. Then the whole police force and local government suddenly springs to attention.

This is clearly a social commentary. It is pretty striking and powerful.

It perhaps reflects Dwan's interest in economic processes. It also might reflect the massive debate over Social Security, the government safety net program enacted in 1935, and which collected its first taxes in 1937. This was the first attempt in the USA to help older poor people, and still the key to drastically improved lives for older Americans today.

Phallic Symbols

The Grandfather is shown twice with phallic symbols:

Shirley Temple

Shirley Temple's ability to solve everyone's problems seems a bit hard to take, or at least believe. It is credible that she could help the Grandfather: they have a long term relationship. But she plays matchmaker for the pastor after meeting him for just a few minutes! If they had made a film about the Titanic with Shirley as a passenger, she would have prevented the ship from sinking, and the boat would have sailed successfully into New York harbor.

On the other hand, Shirley's determination seems admirable. The film's subtext - that "bravery will help people cope successfully with the Depression" - must have been encouraging in those tough times. Also, Shirley Temple seems a much better role model for young people than many characters in post-1967 films. Modern US cinema often shows young people obsessed with conformity, being hip and with it, and fitting in, as well as partying as the greatest good. There is nothing conformist at all about Shirley. She rejects any interest in good clothes, in favor of her Grandfather and helping the little girl.

Shirley helps the little girl to learn to walk. She is one of several Dwan characters who physically train others. She is more working class than the little girl she teaches: also a common Dwan characterization.

Multi-Story Sets

Both the Grandfather's house and the church are that Dwan favorite, interiors with more than one level.

A crane shot moves straight down from the hay loft to the ground floor. This relates to the vertical pans found in other Dwan films.

The church set reminds one of the tennis court in Suez. Both are rectangular enclosures, with people on upper balconies looking down on the protagonist on the floor below. In both films, the people on the upper level include authority figures, who are sitting in judgment in some degree on the protagonist.

Bill Krohn aptly links Heidi's slide down the banister, with Fairbanks' slide down a giant curtain in Robin Hood. Dwan films are full of characters climbing up and down walls, trees, and every other vertical surface.

Overhead Shots

Dwan includes some of his patented overhead shots, looking down from Heidi's window in Frankfurt to carriages in the street below.

Water Works

One of the first things seen in the village, is a huge, elaborate fountain. Women are doing their laundry. This has nothing to do with the plot. One suspects it is just there because Dwan likes water works so much.

The snowball is also an unusual construction, involving a glass ball filled with water. It is one of the most miniature water works in Dwan. The way it is linked to memory of a lost childhood, and the way it gets smashed, anticipate the opening of Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941).

The slippery floor during the monkey episode, might also be loosely thought of as related to water works. We see someone scrubbing with a bucket: buckets being a common Dwan image in water works scenes.

The Dance

The Louis XIV part of the dance number, has the symmetry of image sometimes employed by Dwan.

The Louis XIV dancers also form one of Dwan's deep-focus corridors. There is some camera movement, as is typical of such Dwan corridors, showing people move down the corridor.

Animals, Escapes and Windows

The organ grinder's monkey runs away into the house, and gets chased as he moves around. This recalls the escape of the canary from his cage in He Comes Up Smiling, and Fairbanks' chase of the canary.

Animals are often symbolically matched in Dwan films with people who are caged or escaped. The Grandfather is put in jail, and escapes. And Heidi is essentially imprisoned in the Frankfurt house.

The Grandfather escapes out of a window, like several other Dwan characters who break out of jail. And the monkey enters the house through a window, recalling many human characters in other Dwan films who enter or leaves buildings through windows. Before that, we see a staging through a window, another common Dwan feature, with the monkey and organ grinder seen in the street through a house window.

Another kind of Dwan animal imagery occurs in Heidi: farm animals. Here, it is goats. Like the donkey in Suez, the goats are recalcitrant, difficult to manipulate, and the center of comedy sequences.

The Opening Shot

Some Dwan films show their characters against panoramas of canyons: Douglas Fairbanks against the Grand Canyon in A Modern Musketeer, more Southwest USA scenery in The River's Edge. The opening panorama shot of Heidi has much in common with these films. However, it is of a studio set, not a location filming of a canyon. And Shirley is off to the right hand side of the shot on a ledge, not directly in front of the canyon like Fairbanks.

Christianity

Christian themes and imagery run though Heidi: Other religions are reverently depicted in other Dwan films: Islam in the Egyptian sequences of Suez, Judaism with the dying soldier's prayers in The Sands of Iwo Jima.

Camera Movement

The remarkable shot showing people singing "Silent Night" in the street, is one of the most complex camera movements anywhere in Dwan. It is roughly in the same mode as some key Dwan camera movements, that follow people as they move through front yards of neighborhoods: see A Modern Musketeer, Belle Le Grand. The "Silent Night" shot differs in that it does not follow an individual person's movements. Also, the square the film depicts is not quite a front yard, although it might be the urban equivalent, being the space outside a series of urban homes.

The "Silent Night" night shot opens with a look at two exterior windows of the house. Dwan loved to shoot building windows from outside. However, this shot differs from many in Dwan in that there are no people in the windows, or real glimpses of the house inside.

When people leave the marionette show, the theater aisle forms one of Dwan's deep focus corridors. And as is typical for Dwan, there is a little camera movement along the axis of the corridor, following some people walking along it.

Outside the theater, there is a camera movement following the father carrying his daughter down the steps. Dwan liked camera movements of people moving on slopes. This particular shot is slow and very gentle. The steps are brief.

Other shots follow the Grandfather in the streets. These are more generic camera movements. Dwan regularly includes such "follow people in the streets" shots in his films.

Costumes

The city official is in that Dwan favorite, a fancy dress uniform. And like many Dwan characters, the police have elaborate, unusual headgear: here, spiked helmets.

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938) is a musical with Shirley Temple.

Front Yards and Constructions

Dwan films are full of front yards. Some of the best scenes, visually, occur in the hero's front yard: The movable plank in front of the aunt's house, is also a sort of construction, although a small and simple one.

Shirley Temple moves from part of the aunt's yard, next door to the hero's. Dwan likes entire neighborhoods of front yards. However, I can't find a connection between this piece of the aunt's yard, and the main set of the aunt's front yard.

When the characters first drive up to the aunt's house, Dwan's camera follows them through the huge set featuring their farm and front yard. Later scenes will also take place in this set.

The Auditorium: A Multi-Level Set

The radio auditorium is seen in the first shot. This camera movement emphasizes that the set is on more than one level. So do the late scenes in the movie, which show the control booths high over the stage.

The opening shot involves men, walking high up behind the glass wall at the top of the auditorium. First we see a uniformed usher. Then men in good suits looking down.

Financial Processes

We see both the sponsorship of a new radio program, and the signing of talent. Neither process is shown in quite as much financial detail as is found in some Dwan movies. But there is still a fair amount of emphasis on the financial aspects.

There are also jokes about actions that might make radio networks go bankrupt. In 1938, at the height of radio, this was simply far-fetched humor.

The two rival radio producers at the end, resemble the rival government parties in other Dwan. After all, such men are in charge of and running the "country" of radio.

Engineering and Communication

Radio was high tech in 1938: The radio advertiser hero's status as an advocate of high tech, is indicated by the mural behind his desk. It is full of planes, radio antenna, gears and other technology symbols of the era.

The hero's office is the sort of ultra-lavish place, that will be parodied in Brewster's Millions. Both offices have built-in seats in one corner.

A number of signals run through the film:

Women Musicians

The all-woman orchestra in the opening "Happy Ending" number is interesting. Dwan featured a woman art student in Chances, and a young soprano in Belle Le Grand. All of these characters are treated with sober respect.

Enjoyment of Food

Food and its pleasures are featured throughout:

Transition

There is an unusual transition. At the radio rehearsal, we see Brooks and Haley in their normal street clothes. Then we transition to the actual broadcast, and they are now in formal wear. It makes an odd "jumping effect".

Uniforms

In the musical number at the end, dancer Bill Robinson wears a busby, and the chorus men are in elaborate helmets. Fancy headgear runs through Dwan.

So do dressy uniforms. The toy soldiers in this number are examples. So is the uniformed usher at the station.

Shirley Temple is in a man's toy soldier uniform, in the final dance number. The women dancers in Young People are also in men's clothes. This is a conceit that runs through many Hollywood musicals.

Suez

Allan Dwan's Suez (1938) and The Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) have some common features. Both have many scenes taking place in vast outdoor landscapes in tropical latitudes. In both, the landscapes have a sandy foundation, and are full of a combination of natural scenery, and vast human enterprises taking place on them - construction in Suez, soldiers camping out in the latter film. In both, the heroes have to make their way through a difficult life, showing personal determination and courage. In both, public issues are paramount. In both, there are no clear directions for the heroes: they have to use their own best ideas, and are on their own, as far as any pre-conceived answers go. They have to make a lot of difficult decisions and commitments. In both, they meet gutsy women whose efforts mirror theirs in taking on a difficult world. Both have men friends, too, and spend a lot of interacting within groups. Both films have young men, who are trying to follow in the footsteps of a distinguished father, sometimes uneasily.

The hero of Suez is falsely accused of a crime, and subjected to censure from large sections of the public. Such a situation will recur in Dwan's Silver Lode (1954). Belle Le Grand also opens with its heroine convicted in court for her husband's crimes.

Dwan's films can take place in times of social upheaval. Life and society are not fixed and static; instead, great changes are taking place. This can be as small scale as the changing power in a city government in Slightly Scarlet, or as large scale as the building of the Suez Canal in Suez. Dwan's lead characters often trigger this social change. They seem to be riding a huge wave of change.

Water Works

The Suez Canal is the biggest of all water works in Dwan.

The heroine's bathing hut is perhaps a simple example of a water works, too. The recalcitrant donkey who pulls it, recalls the equally difficult mule on the railroad tracks in A Modern Musketeer.

Although it is not created by humans, one wonders if the rainbow should be considered a water works, too. It is a large "construction" produced by a rain storm.

Politics: Rivalries between Government Parties

Suez contains a fair amount of material about dictator Louis Napoleon versus democratic forces in France. Such a topic was timely, with the real world rise of Hitler and Stalin. It also embodies Dwan's long term interest in conflicts between government parties and groups.

The election of Disraeli in England also gets a good deal of attention. This too is a political conflict. The scenario could easily have avoided this, simply by showing Disraeli already in power. Instead, there is fairly extensive coverage of the election night itself.

Camera Movement

At the school for girls, the whole scene is one long take camera movement. First we see a matron move down the row of beds from left to right, followed by the camera. Then the heroine moves from right to left, back down the same row.

The camera moves in as Tyrone Power goes up the steps, in the ceremony at the end. Soon, the camera moves out as Power backs down the steps.

At the fete near the start, there are some of Dwan's looks down long corridor-like rooms. Some of these have Dwan's trademark "brief camera movements showing characters moving along these corridors towards the camera". One corridor is made to look even longer, by a mirror at its far end. Some of the rooms contain another favorite Dwan image, elaborate chandeliers.

The fete has an unusual for Dwan 90 degree pan, showing people making a right angle turn.

Symmetry

When Louis Napoleon is introduced at the tennis match at the start, he is photographed at the center of a symmetric composition. Such compositions run through Dwan. He is flanked on either side by similar views. This gives a typical such Dwan composition: someone in the middle, with matching views on either side.

What is unusual here is that Louis Napoleon looks at people off-screen, both to the left and right. Dwan cuts to these off-screen people, and they are in matching, paired views! These extra images preserve the symmetry of the shots of Louis Napoleon himself.

Hats

Loretta Young's fancy hats symbolize her corruption, her need for a life of luxury. These hats also exemplify Dwan's interest in unusual headgear. We first see Young in a huge hat with two veils on the side: something very overdone! (The woman in the Musketeer prologue in A Modern Musketeer wears a huge veil.)

Young's sinister motive - to wear a crown - also ties in with hat imagery.

Also unusual: the shiny helmets worn by the soldiers in Egypt.

The Three Musketeers

The Three Musketeers (1939) is a musical comedy version of the classic Dumas tale.

The Three Musketeers is not very good: one of Dwan's lesser movies. This inoffensive tale is full of dull material. I didn't like the Musketeer sequence in A Modern Musketeer, or The Iron Mask either. So maybe Dwan just doesn't connect with swashbuckling sagas.

The Ritz Brothers are often better than one might expect, with their comedy relief episodes. On the other hand, the film's songs are often not so hot, and the costumes are dull.

The Ritz Brothers act zany, while many characters around them play the swashbuckling material straight. This contrast in acting styles is also found in other Dwan films, such as The Gorilla. However, in The Three Musketeers the zany characters are in a minority, while in The Gorilla it is the serious actors who form a small exceptional group in a film full of more comic players and events.

Song of the Musketeers

This song makes one of the better scenes in the movie. It simply shows the Musketeers marching through Paris singing, while Dwan's camera tracks before them in the city streets. The Paris buildings are a bit interesting, and remind us that Dwan is an architecture-oriented director.

The song is reprised at the end, for a similar "march through Paris" finale.

The Rescue from the Cardinal's Palace

The next-to-last major sequence in the film, shows the heroes trying to rescue the heroine, who is held captive in the Cardinal's chateau. This sequence, while no masterpiece, is lively and successful in the way much of the film is not.

The sequence has a logical (if comic) story, with each event following logically from another. The rest of the film is often episodic, by contrast, with little narrative cohesion or flow.

The sequence benefits from the best Ritz Brothers material: a cymbal dance. The other song is also smoothly done.

Dwan also includes some of his trademark architectural style:

The final escape in the coach also has an inventive plot idea, involving the fence. I haven't seen this gambit in other films. It leads one to reflections on how ideas that don't fit into our standard ways of thinking can be "invisible", just like the escape path of the coach.

Confidence

There is dialogue explicitly mentioning that the hero is confident with women. Since the majority of Hollywood heroes are also fairly confident with women, this dialogue is not too conspicuous or startling. But it makes a contrast with Robin Hood, whose hero is afraid of women. In both films, the story spells out the hero's psychological state.

The Gorilla

The Gorilla (1939) is an adaptation of a 1925 comedy-thriller stage play, by Ralph Spence.

Camera Style: The Long Shots

Dwan films much of the movie in long shot. These shots fulfill a number of functions:

Dwan's long shots are thus play-like, allowing a global view of the action, and cinematic, in that they create beautiful compositions. This is an unusual combination.

Dwan only rarely shifts to a close-up. Sometimes, he needs a scary close view of a gorilla head, or to make clear some intricate bit of business that needs to be seen closely. But he tends to do this as little as possible.

Dwan sometimes cuts from one long shot to another. But he also frequently includes camera movements. These have the effect of adjusting the camera from one long shot position, to another. Dwan can move in. Or pan to the left or right. Or make a lateral camera movement through the set. In most cases, the moves are designed to serve as "long shots in motion". They are highly unusual, in this effect, which is not all that common in film history. While these shots sometime reframe the image due to the characters moving to a different part of the set, they do not seem like pure accompaniments of walking characters, a far more common type of camera movement.

Ensembles

The ensemble approach here returns in other Dwan films. The way in which different groups of characters keep interacting with each other, always moving the plot forward, is a kind of construction also seen in some of these Dwan ensemble pieces. A non-farcical example is The Inside Story (1948). It also shows up in Dwan farces, such as Up in Mabel's Room (1944). Such great critics as Peter Bogdanovich and Andrew Sarris loved Up in Mabel's Room, and disliked The Gorilla, but I felt exactly the opposite. Don't know what this difference of response means, if anything.

Acting styles in the film are calibrated in strange ways. The Ritz Bothers and Patsy Kelly do comedy, the uncle, his niece and her boy friend do straight dramatics, and the other characters are pitched somewhere in between. Dwan and his performers never lose sight of their approaches. They are perhaps helped by the "comedy relief" tradition of studio Hollywood film, in which one character would supply a succession of jokes in an otherwise serious film - see Alan Hale in Raoul Walsh's Manpower, for example. The niece and boy friend are especially good. They manage to keep on delivering apparently conventional dramatics, when everyone else is mugging in all directions. There is something a bit self conscious about all this, in a good way. I think the audience is encouraged to enjoy these performances. They are slightly heightened, and seem a bit tongue in cheek. Edward Norris is particularly steady as the noble boy-friend, always showing the exactly right pitch of concern for the heroine, and proper level of response to the horror twists of the plot. He is fascinating to watch, in a performance that is deliberately cut loose by the director from a realistic context around him. The Gorilla is in some ways an experimental film, in which Dwan is playing in creative ways, taking apart conventional narrative structures the way Alain Resnais would do with L'Année dernière à Marienbad.

The heroine's gesture of grief late in the film, when she collapses in a chair, seems stage-like. It is highly effective. It also seems designed to be seen as part of a long shot - one of the Ritz Brothers is also performing in the background. Dwan uses such gestures, rather than focussing in on a close-up of the heroine.

Pre-Film Noir

The Gorilla (1939) is of the era that might be termed "pre-film noir". True noir films begin in 1940, with Boris Ingster's The Stranger on the Third Floor, and gradually emerge as a genre in 1941-1942. The Gorilla (1939) is definitely not noir. But it has a few features that seem to anticipate noir to come:

Frontier Marshal

Frontier Marshal (1939) is a Western. It tells the story of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday and the big shoot-out in Tombstone. It was remade as My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946).

Frontier Marshal is not one of my favorite Dwan films. It is racist in its treatment of the "drunken Indian" stereotype. Its negative look at a "bad woman" is puritanical. It is only a little better in these aspects than Dwan's early A Modern Musketeer (1917), which also suffered serious bigotry problems.

In addition, the story is relentlessly violent. Its characters are unlikeable, with few positive goals or values. I confess I don't understand the perennial appeal of the Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday story. My Darling Clementine has wonderfully lyric photography - but it has never seemed central to John Ford's work to me, which is where many critics place it.

Entrance of the Hero: Camera Movement

One of the best staged sequences of the film is the entrance of the hero. Unfortunately, this is also the "drunken Indian" scene. Still, its elaborate camera movements are worth studying.

Earp (Randolph Scott) enters the film climbing down a pole from a balcony, just like Douglas Fairbanks used to do. And Dwan follows him with a vertical camera movement, just like he used to do with Fairbanks.

Scott moves across the street to the saloon, with two striking lateral camera movements. These show Scott full figure, a favorite Dwan staging, and show his prominent cowboy boots: also a Dwan favorite. After the shooting in the saloon, Dwan promptly has Scott return back across the street. Dwan shows Scott's return with the same two camera movements, only moving in the reverse direction. The scene has the path / reverse path camera movements that are a key element of Dwan's style. The parallelism is quite strong: both the trip over and the return are broken down into the same two moving camera shots, with a reaction shot cut in-between showing onlookers.

Immediately after this, a separate shot follows Scott as he moves through the crowd. This Sternberg style camera movement has crowd members as foreground objects in a lateral movement, behind whom we see Scott move. (Later, in the Bella Union saloon, the bad gal will have some similar moving camera shots accompanying her as she makes her way through the crowd.)

Soon after, Scott returns to the hotel. We see one of Dwan's deep focus stagings down a corridor, inside the hotel. As is typical of Dwan in such corridor shots, the camera follows Scott moving straight down the corridor as he walks along it.

Young People

Young People (1940) is a musical with Shirley Temple.

Social Processes: The Town Meeting

At the center of Young People is the Town Meeting. This is explicitly set up as a look at traditional small town democracy in action. Dwan loved to show economic and social processes at work. The meeting involves both participatory democracy, and discussions about the economic direction the town should take. Like the stock market sequence in Belle Le Grand, this involves a large indoor gathering of a crowd of energetic, eagerly participating people, in a dynamic meeting.

Like The Inside Story, Young People has a didactic intent. Both films try to teach the audience a sociological lesson, with their portraits of a social process. Young People wants people in small towns to shake off old ways, and start trying to connect themselves with up-to-date aspects of the US economy as a whole.

The meeting also brings out another persistent Dwan theme: young people dissatisfied with their small town existence. Unlike, say, Douglas Fairbanks in A Modern Musketeer, who merely leaves his home town when the chance arises, in Young People the youth actually revolt, and try to change things, politically and economically.

Young People is unusual, in that a sympathetic character is actually a named member of a political party. Young newspaperman George Montgomery is explicitly a supporter of the Democratic Party. And his old fogey opponents in the town are depicted as enemies of the New Deal. I've seen few films this explicit about who the Good Guys and Bad Guys are.

How the family acquires the farm is also a financial process, made clear in detail by the film. Similarly, when Anthony Quin sells his farm in The River's Edge, we see the financial transaction on-screen.

Civil Engineering

Other Dwan films involve major civil engineering projects, such as the canal builder in Suez. In Young People, civil engineering is discussed, but not shown on screen. The town meeting discusses bridge repair. The good guys are in favor of it, the bad guys opposed. Late in the movie, the town gravel pit is also analyzed.

The Storm

Young People is another Dwan film with a major storm. People have to battle the elements, just as they did in the big sand storm in Suez.

On a literal plot level, the events here are closer to those in A Modern Musketeer. Both films show violent hurricanes, attacking small towns.

Social Outcasts

Several Dwan films include heroes who are falsely accused, and who become social outcasts. The family in Young People are not quite accused of anything, other than being city slickers who don't know the wisdom of traditional small town ways. But they definitely become social outcasts.

The Theater

Dwan shoots his on-stage characters, against huge backgrounds of the theater. These recall the shooting of characters outdoors, against scenic vistas. The theaters, complete with balconies, are also examples of the multi-story architecture that runs through Dwan.

Costumes

The jester in Robin Hood did everything the king did. In Young People, both Shirley Temple and Charlotte Greenwood are always in the same men's clothes as Jack Oakie. This gives them coherence as a team. It also suggests they are comic clones of him, a bit like the jester and the king. Paradoxically, it also has feminist elements, suggesting they are taking on men's roles and independence, rather than being restricted to what 1940 regarded as a "woman's sphere".

Up in Mabel's Room

Up in Mabel's Room (1944) is a farce, about a husband trying to recover a slip he gave to an old girlfriend, before his wife finds it.

I think Up in Mabel's Room is a tedious farce, with often unpleasant characters and situations, and little compensating visual style. It has a couple of good scenes (the dream, the hero's brief outburst of joy), but mainly it is one of Dwan's least enjoyable films. Admittedly, taste in comedy is a personal thing, and some expert critics are on record as enjoying Up in Mabel's Room. Seeing a good husband cringe in fear because his nasty tempered wife might discover that he (gasp!) had another girlfriend long before he met her, just seems distressing to me, not funny. The same is true of seeing another couple's marriage hit the rocks, because the husband catches another man sneaking around her bedroom (she knows nothing about it, and is a faithful wife). Nor does wreaking havoc on a third couple's wedding ceremony seem amusing - just unpleasant. Some of this material does relate, however, to Dwan's theme of characters who are falsely accused.

One can see other thematic links. Most of Up in Mabel's Room transpires at a week-end house party: Dwan's films are full of parties. And the wife's rotten mother is another look in Dwan of mothers of grown children.

The Russian and his Labor Union

Mischa Auer's Russian waiter is mainly sympathetic, if comic. He claims to be of royal blood, so he is likely non-Communist or even anti-Communist, although politics are not discussed. I love the gag where Auer snaps his fingers at a flickering light, and it goes back on.

There is a brief mention that Auer belongs to the "waiter's union", and that the union frowns on unethical behavior by its members. Compared to other descriptions of economic institutions in Dwan, this is short and simple. Still, it is notable as a mention of the labor union movement in a Hollywood film.

Architecture and Motion

Up in Mabel's Room has a little of Dwan's trademark motion around architecture: One of the film's best scenes in O'Keefe's outburst of joy half-way though, when he thinks he has recovered the slip. He runs around the furniture and set, with a Douglas Fairbanks-like exuberance. It recalls Fairbanks running joyously amok in his parents' living room in A Modern Musketeer. O'Keefe is a little less extravagant than Fairbanks, but still shows something of the same style: The "miniature", "pocket version" of these acrobatics make them especially charming. Both take place in a single shot.

Staging Through Doors and Windows

The ground floor rooms in the house interlock, and Dwan regularly stages action so that we see from one room through a doorway into another room. This is a standard Dwan approach. It is nice enough in Up in Mabel's Room, and adds a bit of visual interest to the scenes. One of the best such shots shows people putting together a jigsaw puzzle, in a far room seen through a doorway.

Dwan has one of his through a window shots, when people outside watch action in the house through a window.

A deep focus shot NOT linked to architecture: the hero burning his lipstick-stained napkin in the fireplace in the background, while others talk in the foreground.

The Dream

The brief dream sequence is the best part of Up in Mabel's Room. Its plethora of characters in elaborate costumes anticipates the finale of Dwan's next film, Abroad with Two Yanks. That finale is far longer and complex, however, and set in the real world, rather than being a dream.

The hero's formal wear is part of a Dwan tradition, to have men dressed up. And the hero's top hat also recalls Dwan's love of elaborate headgear. Dwan men are more likely, however, to be in white tie and tails and other evening wear, than to be in the formal day clothes of Up in Mabel's Room. These are most popular in real life at weddings, and the clothes seem to have a wedding party look. This is in keeping with the "problems of marriage" subject of Up in Mabel's Room as a whole.

The dream recalls a bit the daydream opening of Stage Struck. That too eventually has leading man Lawrence Gray running around dressed-to-the-nines, this time in a comic operetta style fancy uniform.

Abroad with Two Yanks

Abroad with Two Yanks (1944) is a farce, about two rival Marines competing for the same woman. The early sections rely on farce conceptions, such as mistaken identity. The later parts of the film are richer in mise-en-scène.

While it is a comedy, Abroad with Two Yanks anticipates The Sands of Iwo Jima:

Dialogue talks about how Bendix lost a football play-off, when he got distracted by a woman in the stands. This is an echo of the opening tennis scene in Suez, where Tyrone Power gets misses a tennis ball, when he takes his mind off the game to look at a woman in the stands. In Abroad with Two Yanks, Bendix gets hit in the neck by a football.

When O'Keefe raises money for the ring, Bendix gets confused about currency exchange rates between US dollars and Australian pounds. This is a brief example of Dwan's interest in financial processes.

The judo match between Bendix and O'Keefe in the garden, is another example of a contest in Dwan.

Construction

The most elaborate construction is the canteen. This is an outdoor stand, built opposite a long picket fence. Nearby, a kangaroo in a wheeled cage is pushed by.

The canteen's food, coffee, sandwiches and donuts, is an example of the enjoyment of food theme in Dwan.

O'Keefe climbs a tree and moves over a fence, in a way that would do credit to Douglas Fairbanks.

There is also a plank, over the orchestra pit at the stage.

Windows

There are characters moving through windows: Bendix sneaking back into the barracks, the heroes leaving through a window later.

We also see the heroes with their heads stuck out through portholes, the "windows" of the ship. This recalls several shots in Dwan, in which we see characters from outside buildings, through windows. Also: at the club, Bendix and Loder stand outside, watching through a window.

The phone booth has a back wall made of glass. We see the set behind it through the booth's wall. This is a bit like the glass doors elsewhere in Dwan.

The greenhouse is an elaborate window-walled room. We frequently see though these window walls.

The square dance is shown from outside the building, through open French doors.

Water Works

The washing Bendix does on ship could be a simple example of water works. We also see Jane Russell doing hand laundry in Montana Belle.

Also a simple kind of water works: scrubbing down the jail cell, including a bucket that gets thrown.

But the film's true water works scene is cleaning out the well. It is a geometrically striking large circular hole. The men actually get inside it. They also use a special tool, hoe-like implements with buckets for bailing on the end. These can be described as special water work construction equipment. Dwan includes shots of dynamic things happening to the water: air bubbles coming up; the men spewing water at each other from their mouths.

Camera Movement

Abroad with Two Yanks has two shots with characters walking down angled slopes, a favorite Dwan subject for camera movement: Dwan has a pair of beautifully designed camera movements, with the characters walking along the balustrade in the garden outside the party. One has Bendix and the heroine move from right-to-left. Later, Bendix and Loder move back along the same path, but in the reverse direction. This sort of path / reverse path camera movement runs through Dwan. These camera movements also reflect another kind of Dwan favorite: tracks through gardens or yards. The first movement with Bendix and the heroine has many plants in the foreground, recalling Sternberg. While this track is quite lateral, the sequel with Bendix and Loder shoots them more on an angle, and with fewer "romantic" plants and foreground objects.

There is deep focus staging down corridors, with the heroes moving a bit along them, accompanied by the camera. This too is a standard kind of Dwan scene:

A pan at the fair moves to the left, until we see the heroes in a strange distorting mirror.

Animals and People in Cages

Abroad with Two Yanks repeatedly shows both animals and people in cages: This parallel between humans and animals in cages was also a main theme in He Comes Up Smiling.

Masks

The fair at the end, has that Dwan favorite, masks. These are unusual masks that cover the entire head, like the helmet Fairbanks wears in Robin Hood.

Normal Performers and Zaniness

The heroine is remarkably refined and lady-like. She makes a deliberate contrast with the rowdy, low brow heroes.

John Loder, a skilled performer, is deliberately clumsy with the pick-up lines fed him by Bendix. This makes his character seem sincere and un-manipulative. Like the heroine, he is a "normal" character floating through a zany farce.

Brewster's Millions

Financial Processes - to the Max

Brewster's Millions (1945) is a comedy, about a man forced to spend one million dollars.

One can see what might have attracted Dwan to this project. Dwan's films are full of depictions of economic processes. Brewster's Millions is virtually an encyclopedia of such financial systems, shown in lavish and often realistic economic detail:

These systems are all played for laughs. But they also are educational looks inside these worlds, just as in other Dwan films. As in The Inside Story, we see a great deal about money circulating around. And as in Young People, there are often realistically named institutions, such as labor unions and government agencies.

The hero's difficulties spending money, anticipate the "problems" the wealthy miner Hope Emerson in Belle Le Grand has in furnishing her castle of a mansion in the most lavish way possible. Both are nouveau riche former ordinary people, who now comically have to put up a front.

Brewster's Millions also recalls A Modern Musketeer, in contrasting a zany wealthy hero, with the normal business people at a large company. Brewster's Millions is much less malicious than A Modern Musketeer. In A Modern Musketeer, a worker is depicted as a wimp who is less masculine than the wealthy hero, a nasty concept. In Brewster's Millions, the ordinary people are treated with sympathy and respect. They know their job, do it well, and try to protect the hero from what they see as his "madness". They are admirably honorable, showing genuine integrity in difficult situations.

Falsely Accused

The hero is one of many Dwan characters who are falsely accused: this time of being a spendthrift or deranged. Unlike many other Dwan heroes, this never leads to any sort of social ostracism. But he does get denounced in the press, like the hero of Suez.

Normal Performers and Zaniness

In The Gorilla, such performers as boyfriend Edward Norris had to act "normal", in the midst of all the zaniness going on. Their performances almost made The Gorilla a sort of experimental film.

Something a bit similar happens in Brewster's Millions, with the hero's financial advisor (Herbert Rudley) and fiancée having to play it straight, in the midst of the financial absurdity in which they are trapped. Herbert Rudley is especially convincing as a real financial expert. He understands the world of money and management very well, and loyally tries to give good advice in all this zany chaos. It is a well-done performance, and also carefully supported by the financial detail in the screenplay. One suspects that both films' characterizations were carefully graded and conceptualized by the director.

The Lobby - and its Tracks

Several of Dwan's films feature memorable tracking shots, moving through front yards of buildings. Brewster's Millions has an interior track that perhaps is analogous. The huge lobby of Brewster's company is set up as a long, vast corridor, in front of a row of office doors of the characters. This lobby is like a "front yard" of the various offices. And the doors are like the series of neighborhood houses in A Modern Musketeer. Dwan has a spectacular tracking shot, past all these doors, following the characters. Soon the camera reverses itself, and we get another move down the corridor, in the opposite direction.

Later, Micky and Trixie walk down the same long lobby. They are followed by what looks mainly like a pan.

The lobby also includes that Dwan trademark, an elevator.

Flowers

The hero sends massive amounts of flowers to the heroine, anticipating Belle Le Grand, and all the flowers sent to the opera singer. The flowers are visually elaborate in both films.

The Office

The hero's office has a built-in seat, in a curving nook. Similarly, the heroine's room at the castle in Robin Hood had a built-in seat, near her window.

The cast watches a horse race on television, in the office. Television was still something of a novelty in 1945. People will later watch a newscast on TV in Slightly Scarlet.

Revealing a Face

At the opening, the face of Eddie Anderson is gradually revealed, as he removes soap from a window he is washing. The gradual build-up of a face, reminds one a little bit of the construction of the silhouette in Robin Hood. The parallel is not close.

Calendar Girl

Calendar Girl (1947) is a nostalgic musical set in turn-of-the-century New York City.

The heroine is a woman singer, a profession that runs through Dwan. Many of the characters are aspiring young artists and musicians, also Dwan favorites.

Architecture

One of the main joys of Calendar Girl is the way Dwan treats architecture and the sets. The film recalls Dwan's pictures with Douglas Fairbanks. We have such favorite Dwan approaches as: Many of the sets interlace considered as locations in the story, even if they are not actually connected on the sound stage. There is a third story in the rooming house, with a huge studio apartment; a dance studio; a sidewalk and street out front; and a restaurant in the basement. Dwan has fun with this rich, complex geographical world, with the characters constantly on the move.

Camera Movement

Calendar Girl is loaded with camera movement. Combined with the elaborate sets, the movements make the film resemble a huge wind-up toy. It seems like a delightful mechanism.

Dwan often follows the characters as they walk through rooms.

Camera movements follow the characters from floor to floor, as they go down the large staircase. Dwan is clearly having fun with these spectacular shots.

Towards the end, there is a vertical pan, as the camera moves from one window showing a musician, to the window above also with a musician.

The camera follows the heroine down the sidewalk. Most notably, this occurs when the heroine gets away from the crowds admiring her calendar painting.

A Contest

Also recalling the Fairbanks film Robin Hood: the tug-o-war contest at the fireman's picnic. Just as the knights jousted at the tournament in Robin Hood, so here too do we have a public contest.

Costumes

The costumes in Calendar Girl are festive. James Ellison is a splendidly dressed Dwan young man, like Tyrone Power in Suez. Both men wear white tie and tails.

The firemen's uniforms are also good. Their huge helmets recall Dwan's interest in elaborate head gear.

The Inside Story

Financial Processes

The Inside Story (1948) is a didactic comedy-drama, about the importance of keeping money in circulation. Dwan's films are full of financial processes; The Inside Story is entirely built around one.

In addition to its central subject, The Inside Story is full of educational discussions on many financial subjects: the causes of the Depression, pricing groceries and inflation, getting credit, the US Government calling in gold in the 1930's. The film is set during the 1930's Bank Holiday, which is also discussed.

Gender Roles

Like its successor, The Sands of Iwo Jima, The Inside Story has much on gender roles. The lawyer is devastated that he can no longer support his wife. The Inside Story constantly suggests that the man should accept that the times are rotten, and that his wife and other women want to contribute too. However, in fact the lawyer does not seem to learn this. He only becomes happy when his work income improves.

False Accusations

The father is terrified that he is going to be falsely accused of stealing the money: but he never actually is so accused. Dwan films are full of people who become social outcasts after false accusations. The father in The Inside Story never becomes either actually accused, or a social outcast.

Camera Movement

There is a camera movement that goes almost 360 degrees around the inn lobby. It follows the lawyer's wife through the windows as she walks outside, shows her entering, and twirls around as she crosses the lobby to the staircase. This is like a longer version, of many nice camera movements showing either people entering the lobby, or moving across it.

Outside the lawyer's home near the end, we see a garden path out front. First, lawyer Shayne and father Lockhart are in one of Dwan's symmetrical compositions, with the pair flanked by the fences on both sides of the garden gate. Soon, we have some of Dwan's "brief bursts of camera movement, following characters as they move forward or back along a corridor, stretching directly away from the camera". Shayne and Lockhart move down the path, the outdoor "corridor", the camera moves forward or back with them.

Immediately following, we see the heroine and Roscoe Karns moving along the fence. Flowers are in front of them. This is one of Dwan's tracks following characters walking through front yards or gardens. Like other such shots, it is elaborately composed, and has a rich beautiful feel.

Animals and Cage Imagery

Dwan films sometimes link animal sequences, with humans in cages. The Inside Story has a bit of both. But unlike some other Dwan films, they are not linked: Much is made of the safe. Dwan films are full of concealed hiding places. However, while the safe is certainly a hiding place, it is not concealed. Everyone can see it in the lobby. The same is true of the safety deposit boxes in the prologue and epilogue. These thus differ from the hidden safe behind the painting in Slightly Scarlet: a true Dwan concealed hiding place.

Water Works

Unlike many Dwan films, The Inside Story lacks an obvious water works. This is perhaps a function of how stripped down and low budget it is. But the film does have a finale in the Cider Cellar. This is the inn's basement, full of casks from which one can draw cider. This is perhaps a form of water works, or at least a kind of fluid (cider).

Platforms

While having her picture painted, the lawyer's wife sits on a chair on an elevated platform. This recalls the platform that the Egyptian royalty st. on in Suez. She looks very aristocratic.

Window and Door Staging

The town is seen through the bank's plate glass window, in the opening scene.

Much of the film transpires in the inn lobby. We often see the street outside, through the lobby's glass door or windows. Eventually, we also see through the door in the opposite direction: from the street into the lobby.

Dwan stages many scenes through open doorways, such as the door between the lobby and restaurant. Or the door leading outside from the lobby. His camera can follow characters through such doors, a little - rarely in big sweeping moves, but in little paths.

There is not a hard-and-fast distinction in The Inside Story, between staging through open doorways, and shooting through closed glass doors. At one point late in the film, we see characters leave through the lobby open doorway. Soon we get a second shot, taken through the glass of the same door, now closed. The two shots both show the lobby interior from the street, and are filmed from similar points. They have much in common, even though one is "staging through an open doorway", and the other is "shooting through a glass door".

We also see people near the start, through windows of a bus.

Costumes

The lawyer is one of many Dwan men who wear bow ties. His tie is of a striking checkerboard pattern.

His wife has an elaborate bonnet, with two long trailing pieces of cloth: an example of elaborate headgear in Dwan.

The Sands of Iwo Jima

The Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) is a war film. Despite having one of the few big budgets of any Dwan sound film, it lacks the elaborate mise-en-scène of many much cheaper Dwan films. It seems less elaborate visually than Abroad with Two Yanks or Calendar Girl, for instance. While some of the discussions of sexual roles and masculinity are interesting, the combat scenes are grim and depressing. It is not a film I enjoy watching.

Sexual Politics

The Sands of Iwo Jima is a strange movie.

Much of the film is a talk fest, outlining differing attitudes towards masculinity. The two main antagonists, Sgt. Stryker (John Wayne) and Private Conway (John Agar), have very differing views. But the film aligns these views with character traits and behavior that today seem a bit unusual:

So we have the anti-macho liberal who has "family values" and a macho military enthusiast who is linked to every sort of anti-heterosexual situation the screenwriters could think of. This is very different from how these types are portrayed in today's "culture wars".

The conflict between these two types is a bit like the conflict between political parties elsewhere in Dwan. The two men do represent different philosophies of life. However, neither one is part of an organized political group.

Stryker keeps trying to impress himself on Conway. One wonders if there is an element of gay courtship in his approach. Late in the film, Stryker saves Conway's life by tackling him and bringing him to the ground. This image can be seen to have a gay subtext.

Stryker's scene with the bar girl has an ambiguous construction. Going away with a bar girl to her apartment can be seen as a heterosexual act. Yet, a gay man can also visit a woman's apartment and form a friendship with her. The film does not actually show deep heterosexual desire or experience in this scene.

Racism

The Japanese are denounced by Stryker for their yellow skin. This is racism, and it is seriously wrong.

Unlike many World War II films, The Sands of Iwo Jima does not feature a platoon of soldiers who are conspicuously from different racial groups. Many of the soldiers here instead have WASP names. There are some white ethnics, but no one from a different race.

There is a conspicuous, sympathetically treated Jewish soldier. This is a good thing.

Camera Movement

There are some lateral tracks, that move down a row of men, starting and stopping along the way: Both of these are extremely somber, tense moments. A related shot: when Stryker is dispersing the soldiers at night, breaking them off in pairs of two. This is also a lateral stop-and-start track. But it follows a group of men walking, not a fixed row of motionless men, like the other two shots.

The film has two pans, introducing dance halls. One shows the wholesome dance hall where Conway meets his bride-to-be. The other shows a dive in Honolulu where Stryker meets the bar girl. This second shot has an interesting reverse camera move finale, which moves back in the other direction to the bar girl.

Stryker moves up a ladder on the hill containing the bunker on Tarawa beach. Dwan pans along with him. This is another Dwan camera movement, showing men moving on a slope. Dwan soon starts a second camera movement showing Stryker going back down the hill - but this is brief and rapid, and not fully a reverse of the earlier pan.

A more conventional camera movement shows Stryker and Bass walking down a sidewalk in Honolulu, after Stryker has said good night to the bar girl. Dwan likes such camera movements of characters walking down sidewalks - and so do countless other directors.

The early scene where the Marines discover Stryker drunk, is of a kind often found in Dwan. It points down a long street, with some camera movement showing men moving either forward toward the camera along the street, or away.

The Crib

The baby is seen in a crib. The crib has vertical bars on its side, and John Wayne is photographed through them. Perhaps it is a stretch, but the crib might recall the pet animals in cages imagery elsewhere in Dwan, such as the canary in He Comes Up Smiling, the kangaroo in a wheeled cage in Abroad with Two Yanks.

The photography makes it look as if Wayne is inside the cage of the crib, just as bank teller Douglas Fairbank's work cage at the bank in He Comes Up Smiling suggested that he too was in a cage, just like the canary.

Belle Le Grand

A Mix of Genres

Belle Le Grand (1951) is a Western: most of it takes place in Colorado in 1870. But in many ways, it resembles a Dwan historical epic like Suez, more than it does a typical Western. As in Suez, the characters are people who love to build vast enterprises: in Belle Le Grand, these are mainly mines, but they also include gambling houses. The performers are usually in fancy 19th Century suits and evening clothes, also like Suez, rather than the cowboy gear of most Westerns. A possible ancestor of Belle Le Grand: Silver River (Raoul Walsh, 1948), which also deals with mining and capitalism in the Old West.

Belle Le Grand is also a musical of sorts. It is full of songs by Muriel Lawrence, a gifted real-life operatic soprano who would make three of her four films with Dwan. She mainly sings "light" classical music showpieces here, and does a terrific job.

The early sections of Belle Le Grand seem to be from yet another genre of Hollywood film, the anti-bellum tale of the Old South. A little of this dubious genre goes a long way, and one feels relief when the action moves forward in time to 1870.

Ensemble

Like other Dwan works, Belle Le Grand has something of an ensemble feel. The characters often take turns, coming to the forefront of the action.

William Ching plays the hero's partner. The two are often together and very close. They recall the brothers in Chances. Both tend to be similarly dressed, in suits, evening clothes, etc - also like the brothers in Chances.

Processes

Belle Le Grand shows Dwan's fascination with large scale processes. The stock market sequence is perhaps the most ambitious in any film before L'Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962). Its look at a complex economic process, here the buying and selling of stock, recalls Dwan's look at the economy of money circulation in The Inside Story.

The look at 19th Century Western opera houses, the courtroom scene, and the picture of a whole mining town and its way of life, are other large scale processes in the film.

The Fence

Dwan includes an outstanding panning shot, near the start. This shows the heroine, moving through a black district. The architecture includes a long running fence. The fence recalls the massive flume in The Poisoned Flume.

The character's slow move through the front yards, contrasts with Fairbanks' mad dash through the yards of his neighborhood in A Modern Musketeer.

Multi-Level Interiors

Dwan moves the camera up and down between boxes at the opera. He also has a large staircase in the mansion.

Montana Belle

Montana Belle (1952) is a Western with a not very good story. It concerns outlaws Belle Starr, the Dalton Gang, a third group of outlaws, and people who want to capture them, all negotiating various deals, robberies, traps and double crosses. All of this is routine, and makes for a succession of episodes that have no goals or narrative drive. It has a few good scenes, including a well-shot finale.

The film was reportedly shot in late 1948, but not released till 1952.

Jane Russell works as a saloon singer: another one of Dwan's woman singers. She has two good musical numbers, among the film's more enjoyable scenes.

The Dalton gang are more of Dwan's brothers.

The Finale: Depth Staging and Architecture

The finale at the bank is visually inventive. Dwan uses deep focus: we see the town outside through large windows in the bank. Action is staged both within the bank, and in the streets seen through the windows. The bank is on an angle at the corner, producing further visual complexity.

The camera takes in huge swaths of action: events inside the bank, outside in the street, on buildings across the street, including upper level balconies. Such a global view recalls Dwan's long-shot staging in The Gorilla. However, the staging in The Gorilla partly recalls its history as a stage play. By contrast, the finale of Montana Belle is "the final shoot-out of a Western", a very un-theater-like sort of film element.

Dwan creates an introduction to his scene: the shades are pulled up on the bank windows, allowing to see this complex environment for the first time. This is a bit like the curtain going up on a stage play.

The town at the end is full of red-white-and-blue bunting, celebrating the economic event of the bank having record sums of money. This anticipates the bunting celebrating the Fourth of July in Silver Lode.

Economic Processes

Like other Dwan films, Montana Belle has economic processes: These processes seem a bit simpler than in other Dwan films.

Construction and Sets

The barn near the start has a loft, with a movable ladder leading up to it, and a trap door. This is a Dwan multi-story set. The ladder is perhaps a substitute for the elevators in other Dwan. (It is possible that this "set" is actually two sets, one of the barn and the other of the loft, joined together through editing.)

A wooden bridge is over a stream. The heroine rides down the bank from the bridge.

A swing is on a tree.

Water Works

Montana Belle has some simple water works:

Small Devices

A running gag has Devine using the world's smallest lasso. He first uses it to capture shot glasses of whiskey. Then it plays a plot role later on.

The outlaw heroine's hands are manacled, at the start. These are soon removed with tools. Later, the Sheriff's office has something I've never seen in another Western: a row of manacles hanging from the wall. They play no role in the plot.

There is a funny scene, in which the heroine discourages a bad guy, by sweeping dust over his feet. This perhaps recalls the sand imagery elsewhere in Dwan.

Maps and Signs

Two maps of the casino are drawn on the ground, in preparation for the Big Robbery. Both the maps and the dialogue show the position of the manager's office with the safe. When we get to the actual casino, we discover that the maps are correct: the office really is in this corner of the casino shown on the maps.

Both the casino and the blacksmith's have signs, with a drawing of an object symbolizing their business.

Symmetric Composition: Rule of Threes

Several shots have a principal object in the center, flanked by matching, less important objects on each side: Such structures appear in Art Deco architecture, where they are dubbed "the rule of threes". While Dwan's images are not exclusively architectural, they are rather similar compositionally.

Camera Movement

The camera pans with the characters, as they ride down hill through a tree covered slope. Both the tilted slope and the thin forest add visual interest. Then the camera pans back, picks up their pursuers, and then repeats the original pan, following the pursuers down the hill.

When Devine uses his tiny lasso to get the whiskey shot glass, the scene is in one long take camera movement. First we follow the shot glass being pulled along the bar, right to left. Then after the camera shows Devine, it follows the glass again, as it is slid down the bar from left to right. This shot anticipates the catfight in Woman They Almost Lynched, in which one of the women is slid down the bar as the camera follows.

The shot also follows a Hollywood convention, perhaps:

The camera moves with the robbers, as they enter the bunting-filled town at the finale.

Overhead Shots

We see nearly straight down to the street below, showing people getting out of a wagon. Dwan soon suggests this is a Point of View shot, from a second story room looking down on the street.

Color

Blue and Red-Orange, with a bit of Green. Trucolor films tend to emphasize "blue and orange" - at least in the way the surviving prints look: Some of these scenes have a bit of green, especially from Brent's blue-green suit.

Red and Green. There is also a scene with a red-green color scheme. In the first scene at the blacksmith's, the blacksmith has a red shirt, while much of the rest of the scene looks green. Perhaps it is bathed in a green light.

White, Blue and Black. The first song, "The Gilded Lily", is nicely designed in a saloon with mainly white walls and many accents of blue and black. The white gives the scene an expansive, open, airy quality.

Costumes

Montana Belle is another Dwan film with a woman dressed as a man: Belle Starr in disguise as a male robber.

The blue kerchiefs worn by the robbers are more Dwan masks. The blue color symbolizes the Dalton gang. It is hard to understand why the Daltons wear an identifying color: the whole idea of masks is to conceal identity, not to proclaim it with a color! But it makes for a striking visual effect.

Woman They Almost Lynched

Woman They Almost Lynched (1953) is an exuberant Western. It is unusual in that its lead characters are women. It perhaps influenced Johnny Guitar (Nicholas Ray, 1954) the next year. In addition to being Westerns in which female antagonists square off, both films also have Ben Cooper as a young outlaw.

The Cat-Fight

The big cat-fight shows Dwan's vigorous staging. It has a number of powerful camera movements, which create a great feeling of energy. It also has Dwan's slightly overhead long shots, which show the whole ensemble as if on stage.

Cattle Queen of Montana

Cattle Queen of Montana (1954) is a Western. The following discussion contains SPOILERS. Please see the movie first - it has a number of unexpected plot developments.

Links to Robin Hood

Cattle Queen of Montana often resembles Robin Hood.

The depiction of Native American life recalls Medieval England in Robin Hood:

The conflicts between the Cavalry and the Federal Government on the one side, and the racist white townspeople on the other, is also a conflict of government.

Economic Processes

Like other Dwan films, Cattle Queen of Montana gives a detailed look at economic processes:

Small Towns

Cattle Queen of Montana is another Dwan film with a negative depiction of small town life. Here the townspeople are full of racial hatred and prejudice. The moving camera shots of them looking on in disgust at the Native American hero are vivid echoes of the Civil Rights era.

The townswomen also engage in vicious sexual gossip about the heroine, linked to their racial prejudice.

The men in the town are later seen to undermine the efforts of the Cavalry and the US Government to find a peaceful solution to white - Native American conflicts. These people are narrow minded, nasty, and quick to use violence, especially against other races.

False Accusations

The heroine is accused by the townspeople of sexual misconduct with the Native American hero. She is one of many Dwan heroes who are falsely accused, and who become social outcasts.

On the Move

The heroine and her father have just arrived in Montana on their cattle drive, as the picture opens.

Colorados is just back from college.

Lance Fuller

Lance Fuller gives a striking portrait of hero Colorados. He is highly articulate, and radiates nobility without self-righteousness. Fuller worked steadily, but never became a star. He regularly appeared in TV shows directed by the gifted Montgomery Pittman, including a gem of a performance as a comic rogue in the Bat Masterson episode Double Trouble in Trinidad (1959).

Upper Crust Secret Villains

Dwan films often have upper class looking people who are secretly villains. In Cattle Queen of Montana, the biggest local cattle baron is full of sinister secret schemes.

And Native American faction leader Natchakoa also is involved in secret activities.

Neither of these men is quite as upper class in appearance, as are some of the bad guys in other Dwan films.

Water Works

Water and streams are everywhere in Cattle Queen of Montana. They are always flowing, visibly moving water - never still lakes. They are some of the most lyrical shots in this film, notable for its quiet, lovely views of nature.

Dwan has only a little construction involving water. We do see a small foot bridge over a stream early on.

Construction

Dwan films often contain large scale outdoor construction. Cattle Queen of Montana has a house built in a huge pit. One suspects such houses in the ground might be part of real-life Western history. The house is featured in more than one episode, as people hide in it, and pass through its rooms.

The villain's house exterior is also visually interesting. It has a porch, free-standing steps, and a cross-shaped post with a hanging triangle.

Camera Movement

Dwan likes camera movements, that follow people through front yards. Analogous shots in Cattle Queen of Montana are two pans, that show the first entrance into the Native American village. As is typical of such Dwan "yard shots", these pans are rich in spectacle showing the village. Unlike many such Dwan shots, however, the characters on the move are in the background, instead of in the foreground.

Geometry

We see people standing on a porch, that is full of curved arches overhead. It makes for some pleasing compositions.

A peaked teepee roof interior, is echoed by a three-stick stand over a fire.

Zigzag ornaments on a teepee exterior are also striking.

Tennessee's Partner

Tennessee's Partner (1955) is a Western.

The Jail Break

The partners leave jail, from a window: a typical Dwan "characters exiting through a window" scene.

The window is in green-and-yellow. This is also the color scheme of two of the three buildings we see in the distance, outside in the street. The "yellow" on the left-hand building is more orange-ish, however.

The jail window swings out into the street. It recalls a door that Douglas Fairbanks swings out into an alley in He Comes Up Smiling.

Slightly Scarlet

Slightly Scarlet (1956) is a crime film. It is widely viewed as a "film noir in color": a movie that bears a strong resemblance to the film noir crime thrillers of the era - except for it being in color instead of black and white.

Color

Even back in 1925, Dwan's 2-color passages in Stage Struck were pretty flaming in their use of color. Dwan's interview with Peter Bogdanovich stresses that Dwan kept pushing the Technicolor man to greater extremes than said technician felt possible. Dwan loves red and white here.

Blue and Red, with a bit of Green. The mansion interior in Slightly Scarlet is really something else, with its vibrating red-blue color scheme. The year before, in the previous Dwan-Alton Tennessee's Partner, the jailer is in pink-and-blue clothes against blue-gray walls: a similar color scheme.

There are occasional green plants in the mansion interior, for a touch of green.

The blue-red-with-a-little-green color scheme echoes the far more common blue-orange-with-a-little-green color scheme, one popular among many directors. The blue-red approach is probably a variation on blue-orange. However, blue and orange are complementary colors, and hence a standard "recommended approach" in color design. Blue and red, by contrast, create a "vibrating effect" on the eye. They make an intensely vivid combination, one that is fun and delightful, but terribly busy and perhaps distracting. The combination is much rarer in color design.

The red-blue color scheme in the mansion sequences in Slightly Scarlet is not just a matter of the sets from art director Van Nest Polglase. It is also present in the costumes and hair of the characters. In the first main sequence, we have Arlene Dahl in a blue dress and red hair that matches the set. In the second main sequence, we have Ted de Corsia in a light blue suit, blue shirt, and red tie, that also matches the set. Even John Payne's brown suit seems to have a reddish tinge, which seems to play off all the red in the set.

Architecture

One can see Dwan tropes in the mansion scene. The glass doors to the terrace echo all the through the window shots in Dwan.

The hidden safe reflects the hidden compartments and secret passages in Dwan.

Camera Movement

When Arlene Dahl and John Payne first enter the mansion, they move from right to left, with the camera following them. This shot has delightful staging, with Dahl and Payne moving at different speeds and independently, but in counterpoint. Soon, a second camera movement follows Dahl from left-to-right, back across the living room. Her path is slightly different from the first camera movement. But mainly, this is one of Dwan's paired path / reverse path pairs of camera movements.

The River's Edge

The River's Edge (1957) is one of Dwan's least appealing films. It has nasty characters, in a depressing narrative about people whose lives keep getting worse and worse.

The River's Edge has an odd mix of genres. It is a crime thriller, but it is set in the modern day West. In this it resembles Lightning Strikes Twice (King Vidor, 1951).

Shooting Characters against Vistas

Dwan had previously brought criminal characters to the Southwest US desert in A Modern Musketeer. In both films, Dwan shoots the actors against panoramic vistas. Both include canyons in the backgrounds. People are up high on a level ground; the scenery drops away spectacularly behind them.

Characters also use rope to scale cliffs in both films.

Characters

Ray Milland plays another Dwan crook who masquerades as a charming member of the upper classes.

The heroine can't stand her life at the ranch, and wants to move to a glamorous city. This recalls young Fairbanks' discontent with small town life in A Modern Musketeer.

The hero of A Modern Musketeer tries to help a "woman in distress" near the beginning, who instead remains loyal to her bad boyfriend. The plot of The River's Edge is related.

Rancher Anthony Quinn enters the film riding a horse, recalling Douglas Fairbanks' skill as a horseman at the start of Robin Hood. By contrast, crooked big city slicker Ray Milland enters driving a convertible.

Harry Carey Jr. gets a chance to show off his charm in a brief modern day role, near the start. Carey plays a working class man - a garage mechanic, covered with grease. Carey seemed to get working class characters in his modern day non-Westerns: see his cameo as a cab driver in Niagara (Henry Hathaway, 1953).

Fun

The heroine wishes that there were "fun in our lives". This echoes the end of Young People, where Jack Oakie talks about happiness being the most important attitude people can have.

Water Works

The shower at the start, is perhaps an example on a small scale, of the water-works that run through Dwan. These include the giant flume in The Poisoned Flume, and the canal in Suez. Dwan was trained as an engineer, and such engineering works fascinate him.

The sand that comes out of the shower, also reflects the sand imagery elsewhere in Dwan. See the sand-diviner in Suez.

Not just the shower, but other parts of the trailer are also engineered by the husband. The oven he tinkers with, recalls the radio that has been hand-altered in The Gorilla.

The heroine's bubble bath, might be seen as a simple water works.

The gas pump used by Harry Carey Jr. is an engineering device to control fluids.

The Yards

Both Harry Carey Jr.'s gas station, and Quinn's ranch, are first seen as examples of the front yards Dwan favors. They have the elaborate architectural backgrounds often seen in other Dwan yard shots. They also include pans, following Milland's car or Quinn's horse. Both environments are technological, with gas pumps at Carey's station, and Quinn's wind-mill being conspicuous verticals.

Color

Red and White. Harry Carey Jr.'s gas station is all in hues of red, brown and white. Even his red hair is coordinated. He is working on a dark red vehicle, he wears white-ish clothes, and there is a red-orange and white sign on his roof. The pink convertible both fits in, and stands out, in this color scheme.

Blue and Red-Orange, with a bit of Green. The early interiors at the shack, are in a mixture of red-orange and blue. This color scheme runs through other 1950's filmmakers, notably Vincente Minnelli, George Cukor and William Castle. Quinn's blue denim rancher outfit, with a red scarf at the throat, fits in with this scheme. So do the heroine's blue clothes, pink slippers and pink towel. There is also a small green canister on the kitchen shelf, and a small green sugar-bowl on the table. Green is frequently a supplementary shade in directors who use this color scheme.

The hotel lobby also has blue furniture, contrasted with reddish-brown wall designs, and a red-and-orange stand for the gumball machines. The desk clerk wears a blue sport coat. It is a strikingly geometric place, with round arched doors filled with rectangular window panels, and huge diamond-shaped decorations on the walls.

The restaurant has a blue juke-box, contrasting with lots of wood that can be considered orange-brownish.

Red and Green. The heroine's bath at the hotel is green tile. This is contrasted with her red hair.

The dance sequence at the restaurant has the couple mainly in off-white. But the background colors are red and green. There is a woman in a green dress, and a man in a green-ish shirt. Another woman dancer is in red-brown. The hero wears a red scarf. There are several red accents on background tables. The barman wears a red coat.

Later, the trailer is green on the outside. It is green-and-red inside, with blankets and Milland's red scarf adding to the color scheme, along with reddish wood. Green-and-red is also found in Minnelli and Hitchcock.

All Gray. Dwan also uses monochrome harmonies. In the cave, Milland is shown sleeping against a gray wall, under a matching gray blanket, and with his gray case.