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Central Park pigeons, fluffy as swans, herald Frank Borzage's vision of lower depths and heightened feelings: The camera tilts up to find Spencer Tracy wearing top hat and tails, then pans right to reveal Loretta Young on the same bench, her famished peepers on the popcorn he's feeding the birds. The striking play of realism and reverie continues at a ritzy restaurant, where "the unemployment situation" is brought up with consequences for My Man Godfrey, and the boulevard, with the couple posed before a blatant process shot (passersby smile at the lenses) in a proto-Syberberg effect. The gag is that the king is penniless, Tracy's high-society robes are really a walking billboard (advertising for coffee lights up on his shirtfront), he doffs them and goes skinny-dipping with Young. "I expect he's the cleanest man in the world!" The shantytown is both purgatory and sanctuary, a place of psalms and jibes ("Plenty of running water, a whole river of it") and just the sort of studio evocation of vagabond emotional states that Kurosawa would strive for in Dodes'ka-den. Other dwellers include the preacher turned night watchman (Walter Connolly), the lush next door (Marjorie Rambeau), and the envious scoundrel (Arthur Hohl). Borzage's heart however lies with the delicate tussle between Tracy's guarded swagger and Young's practical magic, he trying to bury tenderness under sarcasm, she stepping daintily through the rubble, hugging with her eyes. The danger and necessity of "stepping out of your class," the warmth of a stove and the volatility of a train whistle, the carnival reunion between the humbled rooster and the pregnant waif that's closer to Molnár than the director's own version of Liliom. The beautiful final ascension declares: Look and you will find Botticellis and Fragonards in a hay-strewn boxcar, all you need are two lovers. With Glenda Farrell, Helen Jerome Eddy, and Dickie Moore. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |