An edited
film review by Glenn Erickson for DVDTalk.com on Sept. 22, 2010.
Sutton Vane's Outward
Bound is a fantasy stage play about a group of people on a mysterious ocean
voyage, who only slowly realize that they're really on their way to judgment in
the next world. It was adapted for the screen in 1930, to become an early
example of the film blanc fantasy
subgenre. That picture marked the screen debut of actor Leslie Howard, who had
also played in the stage version. The play was revived on Broadway in 1938,
directed by Otto Preminger, and finally remade in 1944 as the film Between Two Worlds, updated to use the
WWII London Blitz.
It should
be mentioned that wartime audiences were accustomed to afterlife stories that
weren't exactly Sunday-school reverent: Here
Comes Mr. Jordan, Cabin in the Sky. Ernst Lubitsch's Heaven Can Wait disposed of holy-holy
attitudes with a framing story set in a reception office in Hell. When an
irritating woman enters demanding special treatment, The Devil dispatches her
to a fiery pit by opening a trap door at her feet. The original Sutton Vane
play needed work to avoid being laughed off the screen by 1944's less
poetically inclined audiences. Screenwriter Daniel Fuchs roughed up some of the dialogue so as to better
accommodate actors like John Garfield,
one of Warner’s most popular tough guys of the time.
As an air
raid threatens London and bombs begin to fall, we meet a group of passengers waiting
in the steamship company office for passage on an America-bound steamship.
They're quickly established as to type: the cynical newsman Tom Prior
(Garfield), aggressive actress Maxine Russell (Faye Emerson), merchant marine Peter Musick (George Tobias), the insufferably snobby socialite Genevieve
Cliveden-Banks (Isobel Elsom), her
quiet husband Benjamin (Gilbert Emery),
optimistic Reverend Duke (Dennis King),
sweet working class woman Mrs. Midget (Sara
Allgood) and the haughty industrialist & war profiteer Mr. Lingley (George Coulouris). All are granted
passage except European refugee Henry Bergner (Paul Henreid). As the passengers head for the docks by taxi,
Bergner watches a bomb squarely hit the taxi, killing everyone. Despondent, he
walks home intending to commit suicide. His wife Ann Bergner (Eleanor Parker) pleads to go with him.
John Garfield, Eleanor Parker and Paul Henreid
In the
next scene we see the Bergners on board the ship and Henry recognizes the
passengers who were in the steamship company office. The Bergners soon figure
out what's going on: everyone on board is dead, and the ship is taking them to
the afterlife. The only crewmember is a kindly bartender, Scrubby (Edmund Gwenn), who tries his best to
keep the passengers pleasantly ignorant of their situation. But the Bergners
spill the beans, leading to outbursts of protest and denial. All Scrubby will
tell them is that a mysterious man known as The
Examiner will be coming on board, and each of the passengers must meet him
in turn.
Between Two Worlds presents an old fashioned and
moralistic afterlife fantasy, and its schematic collection of humans are easily
sorted into those heaven-bound and those going you-know-where. Some of the passengers
have thoroughly modern cynical attitudes. Tom Prior thinks everything about
people is rotten, and takes it in stride when actress and diva Maxine turns
down his marriage proposal. Social harpy Genevieve rolls her eyes as she
patronizes the lower-class Mrs. Midget and the working-stiff Pete Musick, who
in turn behave so submissively that they would seem to invite the snub. The
Reverend appears to be on board to assure us that Christian values haven't been
left behind -- we aren't sailing to a Buddhist heaven -- while the nasty Mr.
Lingley is a knave on all counts. He's using the war to make money, he has
enough enemies to need armed bodyguards and he proposes to buy Maxine's hand in
marriage as a cold business deal. For her part, Maxine seems perfectly willing
to go along, as Lingley possesses the connections that can secure a theatrical
career for her.
Between Two Worlds is intriguing, if only to find out
how it ends. Will the passengers arrive at a cosmic junction, with an elevator
that goes up and a chute that goes down? In terms of style, director Edward A. Blatt keeps things rather
flat for a movie about a ghost ship cruising through an unusually cloudy outer
space. Blatt was dialogue director on a number of big Warner efforts, including
two earlier Paul Henreid pictures that may have provided the connection that
allowed him to jump to the director's chair. With much of the stage play's
wistful mood thrown out, the film falls back on a beautiful music score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, which provides
all the ethereal atmosphere one could hope for. The underscore flatters the
sometimes overplayed dramatic scenes. The delicate main theme peeks through at
carefully chosen moments, such as whenever anyone mentions the coming of The
Examiner.
The whole
point of the story is that human fate is pre-ordained by a Christian cosmos.
Some films blanc become offensive
when they limit salvation to a certain race or even nationality. The highly
popular but conceptually rancid A Guy
Named Joe imagines heaven as an extension of the Allied War effort, with
nobody from enemy countries allowed. The lack of a social conscience usually
doesn't do damage because the average film
blanc is too simplistic to deal with such things anyway. Their whimsical
escapism proposes an afterlife of harmony and order away from real-life
injustice and political discord.
We're not
at all surprised when The Examiner (Sidney
Greenstreet) turns out to be an ex-clergyman. Judgment is conducted by the
men (apparently Protestants) we should have been seeing every Sunday. Every
passenger receives a personal hearing (and a showcase acting moment) with the
portly emissary in the white suit. The first thing The Examiner does is to give
the Reverend Duke a free pass. Mr. Lingley predictably tries to take control of
the proceedings the way he would a company boardroom. Oddly, although The
Examiner prepares for private interviews, most passengers barge in before
they're called, demanding or pleading to be heard right away. The Examiner
listens to the nice people with
kindly eyes, but gives the sinners the withering Greenstreet glare reserved for
his bad-guy roles in Warner thrillers. The outcomes are fairly predictable,
except when special wishes are granted to the most deserving humans. We aren't
supposed to mind that the goody-good
are all docile and submissive types. The redeemable people we like (Garfield's
cynic; Emerson's misguided gold digger) look as if they're in for a period of
atonement.
Sidestepping
any resemblance to actual Bible predictions, Between Two Worlds preaches that when we puny Earthlings die, we'll
just go on as we did before - that we make our own Heaven and Hell on Earth.
That plan sounds okay, but the film doesn't bear it out. Revealed as a scheming
monster, Genevieve seems bound for some kind of unpleasant castle where she'll
be forced to live in isolation. Mr. Lingley shouts and protests before caving
in and slinking off to some undisclosed fate. Sure, he's a jerk, but how does
Heaven discriminate between him and a righteous
citizen that has the same proclivities but not the opportunities Lingley had?
And for that matter, exactly what is The Examiner’s function, besides
encouraging the passengers to make emotional speeches? The only purpose for the
examination seems to be to demonstrate that guys with backwards collars are in
charge. It's a bit like a totalitarian show trial, where the guilty are
encouraged to confess before their crimes are discussed.
Screenwriter
Daniel Fuchs would later work a different kind of ironic Fate into his
excellent screenplays for films noir, such as Criss Cross. But even he couldn't do much with the play's theme of
suicide, one of those thorny real-world issues normally disapproved by the
Production Code. In 1944 suicide was simply not allowed to happen to nice characters in movies. Henry and Ann
Bergner spend most of Between Two Worlds
hugging each other, only to discover that the rules will separate them forever.
We also discover that the lovable crew bartender Scrubby is spending eternity
shuttling souls to the next world because he is guilty of the same crime that
Henry and Ann have committed. The Examiner simply turns his back on the pair
and leaves them behind on the lonely, fog-bound ghost ship. But Between Two Worlds quickly concocts a
workaround for the suicide taboo, one that provides the needed happy ending.
The movie
feels like a filmed play, which accounts for the theatrical pitch to most of
the performances. Isobel Elsom, Sara Allgood, Faye Emerson and especially
Edmund Gwenn excel in this context, with their little standout speeches that
might as well be performed under a spotlight on an empty stage. George
Coulouris and Sydney Greenstreet do their usual characters without much effort,
while John Garfield must push himself a bit too strongly to make Tom Prior
stand out. Paul Henreid and Eleanor Parker's loving couple express well the
fear that they're already in limbo.
Between Two Worlds begins with an alarmingly violent
scene that works against the play's concept. Most of what I've written above is
not a spoiler because the audience is let in on the purpose of the ghost ship
from nearly the beginning of the show. I would hope that the original play and
movie found a way to hide these things so that they could be revealed to the
characters and the audience at the same time. If one loosens one's cynical
defenses a notch or two, some passages in this odd story can be very
compelling.
Between Two Worlds is a fascinating look at a popular
fantasy from an earlier era. Today we have many big concept fantasies that try (and mostly fail) to fool the
audience with hoary narrative tricks seemingly escaped from old episodes of The Twilight Zone. Writer-Director M.
Night Shyamalan pulled off one such shaggy dog story (I see dead people) but fell on his face with a series of ever-more
laughable Big Concept thrillers. It's high time for somebody to sweep away
these pretenders and make another ethereal film
blanc masterpiece. The last one I can recall is Harold Ramis' Groundhog Day.
Labels:
action, adventure, drama, Eleanor Parker, fantasy, mystery
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