... is what I ask myself when I watch this. You can tell by the trailers Warner Brothers was shooting for epic. Instead they end up with a seemingly endless annoying historical potboiler. But WB was growing up, just a poverty row studio less than ten years before. They didn't really get "epic" right the first time until The Adventures of Robin Hood two years later.
Not that it is overly long but it tries to do too much in too many settings, yet has little to say at the same time. The end product is disjoint and more than a little silly. But it is the goofy dialogue and unbelievable plotline that truly dooms it.
For instance, there is no way that nice guy Anthony would suddenly take up slave trading just because he was wheedled by his "loving" boss into becoming a collection agent! To make matters even worse, the production team must have stressed "Hey, this is an epic! Everyone act epic!!" because every performer in the movie--from the stars to the extras --overacts immensely, making for a number of stupid and laughable scenes. There is a scene where Don Luis (Claude Raines) and Denis (Louis Hayward) are dueling and Maria (Anita Louise) shouts out "Look out, Denis!", idiotically distracting her lover just long enough for him to get wrung through by her evil hubby. In another "action" scene, the bad guys try to run Anthony off a mountainside but end up coming across like Boris and Natasha from the Bullwinkle Show. So instead of epic you get corny and completely artificial.
I'm a big fan of Fredric March, and it is only this man's talent that grounds this story in even a sliver's worth of reality, but even his skills are put to the test in this, surely his worst film. Nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, today it is Exhibit A in just how bad films could be after the production code was first adopted.
Not that it is overly long but it tries to do too much in too many settings, yet has little to say at the same time. The end product is disjoint and more than a little silly. But it is the goofy dialogue and unbelievable plotline that truly dooms it.
For instance, there is no way that nice guy Anthony would suddenly take up slave trading just because he was wheedled by his "loving" boss into becoming a collection agent! To make matters even worse, the production team must have stressed "Hey, this is an epic! Everyone act epic!!" because every performer in the movie--from the stars to the extras --overacts immensely, making for a number of stupid and laughable scenes. There is a scene where Don Luis (Claude Raines) and Denis (Louis Hayward) are dueling and Maria (Anita Louise) shouts out "Look out, Denis!", idiotically distracting her lover just long enough for him to get wrung through by her evil hubby. In another "action" scene, the bad guys try to run Anthony off a mountainside but end up coming across like Boris and Natasha from the Bullwinkle Show. So instead of epic you get corny and completely artificial.
I'm a big fan of Fredric March, and it is only this man's talent that grounds this story in even a sliver's worth of reality, but even his skills are put to the test in this, surely his worst film. Nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, today it is Exhibit A in just how bad films could be after the production code was first adopted.