Mr.
Robinson Crusoe
A Park Avenue
boiled shirt bets a thousand dollars he can land on a jungle island and live in
a penthouse with hot and cold running water within a couple of months. The
other guy bets he’ll be tied to a stake by cannibals.
The material was
put to good use in Byron Paul’s Lt. Robin
Crusoe, U.S.N., but here the opulence of imagination is the long suit.
Sutherland’s slow
dolly shot right along the implements whittled and assembled out of “Dan
Beard’s Handy Book” culminates in a floor plan of the penthouse.
Friday comes and
goes, Saturday is a native girl from another island fleeing an unwelcome
marriage.
The opposition
tries to add a little sporting challenge, but the boiled shirt (Douglas
Fairbanks) is so resourceful, industrious, jovial and brilliant that he calls
one of his handcrafted pieces of furniture “Early Grand Rapids” (the opposition
cracks a good joke, marveling at the dexterity of his inventions, “the man’s
Mussolini!”).
The
Flying Deuces
The great student
of Laurel and Hardy is of course Samuel Beckett, who may be imagined watching
this in late ’39 or early ’40, in Paris, with his heroes calmly and
unavailingly attempting suicide.
The famous finale
certainly inspired another one, that of Edward F. Cline’s Never Give a
Sucker an Even Break a few years later.
The frame of
reference is Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with a touch of Chaplin (the
Bohemian café from The Immigrant, and Mr. Laurel’s caricature at the
end), from the Lilliputian Parisian garret to the last transfiguration of the
Houyhnhnm, with surprising results in Jaws and Goldfinger,
and gags that reach the zenith of the sneezing wardrobe.
The
Invisible Woman
A very pretty gag
and a poetic idea of genius.
The one you don’t
see, as a rule.
She trounces a
tyrant and levels a gang of crooks and conquers a “fishless fisherman” playboy.
For this, a
unique cast of characters, precisely deployed.
John Barrymore as
Professor Gibbs.
Virginia Bruce the
model volunteer.
John Howard the
playboy, Charlie Ruggles his valet.
Donald MacBride,
Edward Brophy, Shemp Howard the gang, Oskar Homolka its leader.
Margaret Hamilton
the professor’s housekeeper, Charles Lane the bad boss.
T.S. of the New
York Times thought it “trash” but noted Barrymore as Lionel, Halliwell’s
Film Guide deprecates it as “generally very laboured.”