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The titular tune is belted out by Irene Dunne in an opening close-up that cranes back to a long shot to give the measure of the setting, a customary Rouben Mamoulian maneuver (cf. Queen Christina). The medicine show in 19th-century Pennsylvania is led by Raymond Walburn and features William Frawley in redface, the local prospector (Randolph Scott) promptly recognizes their miracle cure as rock oil bottled for the masses. "A daffy notion," drilling in the farm for bubbling crude, the fellow persists while the maiden's song is interrupted by the livestock's mooing-clucking-oinking cacophony. The barnyard jamboree finds Ben Blue in full loose-limbed swing, the wedding shimmers to "The Folks Who Live on the Hill" until a gusher leaves the guests drenched in anticipation of Stevens' Giant. "I like comic opera," sighs the grandmother (Elizabeth Patterson), Mamoulian has three or four other movies to go with it in an invigorating genre hodgepodge. The Western side has a railroad baron (Alan Hale) bent on freezing out farmers, the melodrama side includes a honky-tonk chanteuse (Dorothy Lamour) nearly killed by a mob of prudes. "You know human nature, don't you, Mac?" "From A to Z." "You must have skipped W. The women come under W." Music by Hammerstein and Kern, moonlit moods "like drowning in silver," an exotic eye on the romance and violence of Americana. The plutocrat's chortling visage gives way to a charging locomotive, Akim Tamiroff grinning amid felines dissolves to a caged tiger. The pipeline climax revisits Vidor's Our Daily Bread, though not before the circus rides to the hero's rescue, jumbos and all. "That happens to be a pretty good definition of business." Lang sharpens the form the following year with You and Me. With Charles Bickford, Irving Pichel, Stanley Andrews, and Roger Imhof. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |