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Raoul Walsh's lovely comedy of fin de siècle athletic showmanship pivots on the sport's progression from waterfront brawls to "the scientific art of self-defense," Jim Corbett (Errol Flynn) sees it as an upgrade from bank clerk's window to Nob Hill drawing room. His natural brashness segues seamlessly from hitting on a posh customer to getting a tour of San Francisco's Olympic Club, parlor, gym, and all. "In six months he'll own the place," marvels the patrician belle (Alexis Smith). His first great victory is against the Aussie champion hired to pound some humility into the braggart, the post-fight bash kicks off the mingling of plebeian and aristo values and includes the wonderful sight of his soused pal (Jack Carson) waltzing rowdily with a socialite half his size. Embodied by the never-better Flynn, the pugilist is a blithe, dandified tomcat who likes top hats and Shakespeare and getting his mother gifts and doing a jig when his father breaks into impromptu song, the motor of the film's study of masculinity and celebrity. ("He should've been a dancer," the priest chimes in from the audience' side.) The direction is attuned to the protagonist's kinetic footwork, "no fancy knots" and plenty of deep-focus details (bearded moneybags doing stretching exercises like Thomas Nast cartoons). Alan Hale leads the charge of roughneck Irish minstrelsy, Ward Bond's grand John L. Sullivan provides the chest-pounding Old Guard's curtain call. "If I get knocked out, I hope you'll throw a little water on me." "When you get knocked out, I'll throw some champagne on you." The most buoyant of period pieces, the least pious of biopics, Walsh's Grand Illusion, an elegy for men trying to hang on to the notion of blood sports as games of honor. (The Set-Up, Champion and Body and Soul all loom on the horizon.) With John Loder, William Frawley, Arthur Shields, Minor Watson, Rhys Williams, Madeleine Lebeau, and Dorothy Vaughan. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |