Film Perfection

Dreadfully Boring

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Playing the title role of The Girl From Manhattan is Dorothy Lamour who came over from Paramount to do this independent film released by United Artists. Her leading man here is George Montgomery slipping out of his western and action features to play a young minister assigned to a parish by Bishop Charles Laughton. Montgomery is excited about going to a parish which is about to get a brand new spanking church. The problem is that it is going to be built on the site of a boardinghouse which Ernest Truex owns. Truex is also Dorothy Lamour's uncle.Montgomery is urged to board there by Laughton for a bit and he's caught in quite a dilemma. Of course that's nothing compared to the jackpot Truex is in. His generous easy going ways have put him in debt to Raymond Largay. In fact the only two guests that are paying regular are Lamour and Montgomery. The rest to be brutally frank are a gang of deadbeats. But they are delightful deadbeats like Constance Collier, Hugh Herbert, Frank Orth and more. It's just like the Vanderhof house in You Can't Take It With You.Truex's jackpot is similar to the one Lionel Barrymore is in in the Frank Capra film. The tone here is far more whimsical than the one George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart took with their story. I wish there had been more of Charles Laughton. He isn't given much to do, but does create an interesting character in his Bishop with very little to work with.The Girl From Manhattan is a pleasant bit of viewing, but could have been better.

The edges of this movie are tolerable. You have some fine, easily recognized actors doing some amusing bits, including Charles Laughton, Hugh Herbert, and George Chandler. The characters in the boarding house, eccentric misfits, are sweet and amusing.The problem is the center of the movie. Why would anybody put Dorothy Lamour, one of the sexiest and most beautiful women in the world in 1948, in a movie where her leading man is a priest? Lamour is stripped of all sexiness and there's not a hint of desire in any of her scenes with George Montgomery (Rev. Tom Walker). The only emotions that she's allowed to display next to the priest is some nostalgia for their youthful friendship and a bit of anger that he doesn't help her to save her uncle's boarding house.What should have been the center of the movie, Lamour seducing the new priest from his vows, gets sublimated into the priest trying to decide if he can be as good a priest as his dead father.The movie is simply annoying most of the time. The sets, costumes, direction and editing are on the level of a bad, cheap, 1950's television episode. I kept checking how much time was left every five minutes.George Montgomery, Dorothy Lamour and Charles Laughton fans might want to sit through it for the sake of cinematic completeness. Everyone else will have a difficult time making it to the end.

The Girl from Manhattan (1948)I feel like an ogre saying this is a goodie-goodie movie, and that is just a bore. It isn't bad deep down, not in any one way, and it moves along reasonably, the acting fine if unexciting, the filming solid if routine. But none of it is exceptional, even the leading role played by the title character, the super model of 1947 (in the movie): Dorothy Lamour. Charles Laughton as the bishop is impeccable but he's purely secondary.What holds it back most is just the story, about some people who are misfits and yet lovable in their quirks, and who are facing eviction from their old boarding house. The local church, of all things, wants the land where they live and a local real estate bad guy is orchestrating the eviction. All of this has shades of two Frank Capra movies, "It's a Wonderful Life" (with the community pulling together to save a good, selfless man and his house) and the rather zany "You Can't Take It with You" (with a nutty family all living together being nutty and oblivious to the real world). But the writing here is neither impassioned enough, nor funny enough, nor just plain original and warm enough to rise above. It trods along dutifully.The main character beside Lamour is a man who seems to have the poise and good looks to take command of his leading role but he is just lifeless on screen, and that's George Montgomery. I don't think even Jimmy Stewart (who was in both the Capra movies, by coincidence) could have lifted up this whole affair, but you can picture a much more moving and convincing and entertaining movie with him in Montgomery's place. Of course, we know whose side we are on. The story of these good people being threatened by greed makes you root for them against the church meanies (shades of "The Bishop's Wife" also appears in this aspect). But I had to keep consciously trying to get involved, which isn't how a movie should work. I wanted to like it. Even the dramatic turning point toward the end is dull as old bread, in the writing and the delivery. The director, Alfred E. Green, is known for quantity over quality, and is really a 1930s director, which might say something about his approach in filming as well as subject matter. Though he helped Bette Davis launch her career in 1935, by 1948 he was at the end of his career in films. It's nothing much, enjoyable if you are open to something sweet and plain.

The first reviewer has done a fine job of summarizing the film. What remains to be said, however, is that the film is a stinker. The script is particularly awful. It was designed to appeal to small town folks, apparently, and focuses upon homey matters such as the loss of a boarding house by a wicked businessman. Lamour and Montgomery are so wholesome and giggly you want to wretch. Christians are, as usual, cast as bigoted and gossipy. But how about Charles Laughton as a bishop. (What church? Methodist?) Hugh Herbert is completely wasted. The jokes are extremely lame. And 34-year-old Dorothy as a top high fashion model in New York is, well, ridiculous. George Montgomery should have stuck with Westerns, although he does his very best with his lame lines. A company on e-Bay is selling this film right now, which is how I came to see it. Money totally wasted.