The production values and care of an MGM factory style motion picture is evident in the "big picture" called "The Red Danube". It was a failure back in 1949, and when I finally caught it at a Mid-Manhattan Library screening the pre-show poll of the audience of 80-plus revealed not a single fan had ever seen it before.
It had no significant afterlife, though Ted Turner's buying MGM meant some TV exposure plus a 2012 WB archive DVD issuance, but surprisingly the movie's themes and contents are still highly relevant nearly 70 years later.
Set in 1946 in Rome and Vienna, it concerns the displaced persons issue that was so significant after WW II, and treated in several classic films, notably Geza Von Radvanyi's neo-realist "Women Without Names" made a year after this movie and released in America on the art-house circuit by trailblazer Ilya Lopert.
A terrific cast is headed by legends Walter Pidgeon, as a cynical British colonel stuck with the unsavory assignment of turning over "subsersives" to the Russians for shipping off to Siberia, and Ethel Barrymore as a mother superior at the convent where Pidgeon & staff are billeted in Vienna. They have an ongoing dialectical battle of words, as her deep Catholic faith is played off of Pidgeon's depressive lack of any moral compass, down in the dumps since the death in the war of his son.
Two hour movie is separated into two distinct parts: the first half after some comic relief (Angela Lansbury as Pidgeon's assistant is terrific in adding warmth and Eve Arden style humor to the picture) settles into a glossy love story of officer Peter Lawford, as dashing as they come, falling in love with a beautiful Russian ballerina on the lam but due for deportation, played empathetically by Janet Leigh. Leigh even gets to show impressive dancing skills in a ballet class rehearsal, typical of the MGM class approach to an A picture.
Second half broadens the scope of the movie's themes, as Barrymore cleverly manipulates Pidgeon and the dire situation, even to get him to take her against orders on a trip to Rome so she can meet with the pope, all in the cause of saving the hapless refugees caught between lily- livered allies (represented by Pidgeon and his fellow Brits) and the duplicitous and patently evil Soviet regime. The film makes it points vividly against the authoritarianism and sneaky tactics of the Russkies, without lapsing into the blatant propaganda of the usual Hollywood Cold War movie, for example "My Son John", which starred Helen Hayes in a role Barrymore might have played (but it was a Paramount, not MGM, release).
George Sidney's direction is impressive, especially when he inserts tight close-ups of romantic Leigh and Lawford at key moments, looking as lustrous as silent era shots and having as much impact. I kept trying to guess how the ending would turn out -would it be the usual and derided "Hollywood Ending" or a more trenchant one given the dead-serious subject matter. The last couple of reels verge on camp, but both scripters and Sidney are to be commended for such clever audience manipulation as to deliver laughs and tears on cue.
Biggest surprise, beyond the clear relevance today of the Refugees problem, was an uncanny and comical reference to a specifically 2017 issue. The screenplay has many colloquial expressions as tag lines, notably an American phrase "like nobody's business", as well as the cutesy singing of Row, Row, Row Your Boat in many scenes, that pay off with a most amusing Barrymore/Pidgeon encounter. She compliments him, calling him a tramp, then correcting her English, "you're a Trump!". I wasn't familiar with the British colloquial term, which has other meanings in Blighty referring to farting, but here it occurs right after Pidgeon's character has been revealed to be easily duped by the Russians, led by imperious Louis Calhern as his colonel counterpart for the USSR. The relevance to President Trump's very odd taking everything President Putin says as truth and his incessant cozying up to the Russians is inescapable and amusing - Black humor in our current time of Trumpian woe.
It had no significant afterlife, though Ted Turner's buying MGM meant some TV exposure plus a 2012 WB archive DVD issuance, but surprisingly the movie's themes and contents are still highly relevant nearly 70 years later.
Set in 1946 in Rome and Vienna, it concerns the displaced persons issue that was so significant after WW II, and treated in several classic films, notably Geza Von Radvanyi's neo-realist "Women Without Names" made a year after this movie and released in America on the art-house circuit by trailblazer Ilya Lopert.
A terrific cast is headed by legends Walter Pidgeon, as a cynical British colonel stuck with the unsavory assignment of turning over "subsersives" to the Russians for shipping off to Siberia, and Ethel Barrymore as a mother superior at the convent where Pidgeon & staff are billeted in Vienna. They have an ongoing dialectical battle of words, as her deep Catholic faith is played off of Pidgeon's depressive lack of any moral compass, down in the dumps since the death in the war of his son.
Two hour movie is separated into two distinct parts: the first half after some comic relief (Angela Lansbury as Pidgeon's assistant is terrific in adding warmth and Eve Arden style humor to the picture) settles into a glossy love story of officer Peter Lawford, as dashing as they come, falling in love with a beautiful Russian ballerina on the lam but due for deportation, played empathetically by Janet Leigh. Leigh even gets to show impressive dancing skills in a ballet class rehearsal, typical of the MGM class approach to an A picture.
Second half broadens the scope of the movie's themes, as Barrymore cleverly manipulates Pidgeon and the dire situation, even to get him to take her against orders on a trip to Rome so she can meet with the pope, all in the cause of saving the hapless refugees caught between lily- livered allies (represented by Pidgeon and his fellow Brits) and the duplicitous and patently evil Soviet regime. The film makes it points vividly against the authoritarianism and sneaky tactics of the Russkies, without lapsing into the blatant propaganda of the usual Hollywood Cold War movie, for example "My Son John", which starred Helen Hayes in a role Barrymore might have played (but it was a Paramount, not MGM, release).
George Sidney's direction is impressive, especially when he inserts tight close-ups of romantic Leigh and Lawford at key moments, looking as lustrous as silent era shots and having as much impact. I kept trying to guess how the ending would turn out -would it be the usual and derided "Hollywood Ending" or a more trenchant one given the dead-serious subject matter. The last couple of reels verge on camp, but both scripters and Sidney are to be commended for such clever audience manipulation as to deliver laughs and tears on cue.
Biggest surprise, beyond the clear relevance today of the Refugees problem, was an uncanny and comical reference to a specifically 2017 issue. The screenplay has many colloquial expressions as tag lines, notably an American phrase "like nobody's business", as well as the cutesy singing of Row, Row, Row Your Boat in many scenes, that pay off with a most amusing Barrymore/Pidgeon encounter. She compliments him, calling him a tramp, then correcting her English, "you're a Trump!". I wasn't familiar with the British colloquial term, which has other meanings in Blighty referring to farting, but here it occurs right after Pidgeon's character has been revealed to be easily duped by the Russians, led by imperious Louis Calhern as his colonel counterpart for the USSR. The relevance to President Trump's very odd taking everything President Putin says as truth and his incessant cozying up to the Russians is inescapable and amusing - Black humor in our current time of Trumpian woe.