ESCAPE TO GLORY
(Columbia)
S revealed in last week’s Listener, picturegoers to-day tend to prefer escape to realism in their entertainment, but nobody need imagine that he is
going to be unduly harrowed by Escape to Glory just because it happens to have a wartime setting. If ever a film was made to a Hollywood formula, it is this — and the formula is that pleasantly escapist one which prescribes that human nature almost invariably suffers a miraculous .change for the better when confronted by danger. In this case a ven-geance-seeking gunman turns into a hero, a drunkard sobers up and takes a command, and a gold-digger becomes purified and ennobled by love. Even a German reacts bravely according to his lights.
Escape to Glory is so much a matter of Hollywood formula that one can almost visualise the producers taking a situation here and a situation there out of well-worn pigeon holes. As a general basis they have used the Grand Hotel theme of a bunch of varied characters confined to a limited space-here it is a British merchantman sailing from England for New York with a group of American passengers on the outbreak of war. For a finale they dived into the Five Came Back pigeon-hole for the
situation in which one of the regenerated characters (a wanted murderer) "plays God" and decides who shall die in order to save the others. Every now and then other equally well-tried situations come to light. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, Escape to Glory is good average entertainment which, if it never rises to any very great heights, never sinks to any appreciable depths. After all; I-sup-pose the very fact that the film is such a composite of proven ingredients is some sort of guarantee of its popular appeal. I know that I enjoyed it, even though I could, as it were, see the wheels going round inside. The atmosphere of the story is rather better at the beginning than at the end. There really is an air of dramatic expectancy as one by one the passengers board the merchantman for America on
September 1, 1939 — a nasty District Attorney (John Halliday) with a furtive look in his eye and a blonde beauty (Constance Bennett) in, tow; a noisy, noxious big business man and his dimwitted henchman; a timorous professor and his motherly wife; a loud-mouthed society woman; a German scientist convinced that civilisation will yet draw back from the precipice of war; a determined young man with a gun (Alan Baxter), who is on the trail of the District Attorney; and a drunken soldier-of-fortune (Pat O’Brien) who is being deported as an undesirable alien. Finally, the merchantman takes aboard a cargo of gold bullion for safé keeping in America-and by doing so commits herself to resisting attacks from a submarine when war does break out, thus putting the neutral passengers right into the combat zone. The duel between the German U-boat and the armed British merchantman is protracted and exciting-and during it the characters of almost all the passengers suffer a sea change. One gathers that the film must have been made before the Lease-and-Lend Bill, for it is fairly noticeably neutral, particularly in its treatment of the German scientist. This role is well played by Erwin Kalser. Best performance of all, however, comes from Alan Baxter. He has become "typed" as a tight-lipped, good-looking young gunman, but he plays the part almost better than anyone else in Hollywood. Least noteworthy of all are the performances of the "official" stars, Constance Bennett and Pat O’Brien. The latter, as usual, plays on the same strident note throughout; the former is just there for ornament. But the rest are good.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19410516.2.33.1.2
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 99, 16 May 1941, Page 16
Word count
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621ESCAPE TO GLORY New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 99, 16 May 1941, Page 16
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
Copyright in the Denis Glover serial Hot Water Sailor published in 1959 is owned by Pia Glover. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this serial and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the Listener. You can search, browse, and print this serial for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Pia Glover for any other use.