★ 7 / 10
Superstition... Director Julien Duvivier's 1943 anthology film tells
John Chard
Superstition... Director Julien Duvivier's 1943 anthology film tells three other worldly type tales. The first story is set at the Mardi Gras in New Orleans…
Superstition...
Director Julien Duvivier's 1943 anthology film tells three other worldly type tales. The first story is set at the Mardi Gras in New Orleans and finds the plain and embittered Henrietta (Betty Field) choosing a mask that alters her life considerably. The second involves a psychic palm reader (Thomas Mitchell) who predicts that Marshall Tyler (Edward G. Robinson) will commit murder. The third segment is about a circus performer (Charles Boyer) who literally meets the girl (Barbara Stanwyck) of his troubled dreams.
Though the title is a bit more grandiose than what is actually within the pic, this holds up as a very solid entry in the anthology splinter of classic era films. As is often the case, the stories differ in quality. Pic was originally to be a four pronged affair, but the original opening story was pulled and reworked into the feature film "Destiny", which was released the following year. This goes someway to explaining why the running order of Flesh and Fantasy feels unbalanced, a running order that sadly leaves us with the weakest segment as the closure.
A constant throughout the tales is the look, the twin photographic talents of Stanley Cortez (The Night of the Hunter) and Paul Ivano (The Suspect) firmly capturing the ethereal nature of the fantastical premise of the stories. The Mardi Gras play is delightfully off kilter in vibe, very noirish in visuals and hauntingly tender in characterisation terms. The second palmistry influenced section exudes a shadowy menace, as the great Robinson is put through mirrored torment, the resolution more darker than the other two offerings. Finally the damp squib that is the closure fails to ignite, the high wire sequences the only excitement as an ill fated love story smoothers the tantalising dream based core.
Good craft is mostly on show to make this well worth time invested for those who like such genre fare. 7/10
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★ 8 / 10
Flesh Is the Spur
telegonus
Flesh and Fantasy is a rare forties Hollywood attempt at an art film, and while I cannot say it's wholly successful, it's a good try. Directed by the highly…
Flesh and Fantasy is a rare forties Hollywood attempt at an art film, and while I cannot say it's wholly successful, it's a good try. Directed by the highly esteemed French director Julian Duvivier and produced by the highly esteemed French actor Charles Boyer, it consists of three stories of the supernatural, told to Robert Benchley, in a framing device, in what appears to be a men's club.
The first tale concerns a homely girl who is turned beautiful by the power of a mask sold to her by a strange little shopkeeper. It's a slight, lovely fable, well-acted by Betty Field and Bob Cummings. In the second story we find Edward G. Robinson in London, where a fortune teller reveals to him a fate he tries vainly to escape. The third segment, despite the presence of Charles Boyer and Barbara Stanwyck, is rather mediocre, and concerns predictions in a circus setting. Of these three tales the middle one, an adaptation of an Oscar Wilde story, is by far the best; it is also visually the most appealing.
Duvivier brings a Gallic gentility to the film, and his compositions are excellent and always fastidious. One gathers that the movie must have been a labor of love for producer Charles Boyer. All the actors are in top form, and the picture does not at all feel like a product of the Universal studio of this period.
Flesh and Fantasy is one of several wartime movies that dealt with the issues of death and fate, which were obviously hanging heavier than unusual on peoples' minds in those days. Off the top of my head I can think of Here Comes Mr. Jordan, I Married a Witch, A Guy Named Joe, Between Two Worlds, The Uninvited and The Picture Of Dorian Gray. Death, rather than dying, was a feature of most such films, which as a rule steered clear of anything grisly, which is to say reminiscent of battlefields. Flesh and Fantasy is quite good at this. With its soft chairs, cobbled streets and a convincing London bridge thrown in for good measure, it makes facing up to one's fate feel as comfortable and delicious a proposition as attending a masquerade ball.
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