Another Dawn (1937)

Truly Dreadful Film

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Blistering performances.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

A seeming marriage of convenience provides companionship for the lovely widow Kay Francis and foreign legion officer Ian Hunter, but when Hunter's dashing friend Errol Flynn comes along, it's only a matter of time before sparks fly. The threat of war seems to create constant danger, but Francis, always impeccably dressed, finds time for polite chit-chat with her husband and romance with the dashing Flynn. With a script of poetic mutterings by Flynn, how could she not? But for Flynn's sister, the noble Frieda Inescort, having been in love with Hunter for years, realizing what's going on is a crisis for her conscience, and for these four beautiful noble people, it must be as heart-wrenching for them as it is dull for much of the audience.With no key villain involved in this triangle (pretty much a sexless one), there's little sizzle between the leads and that causes this oh so nice romantic soap opera to suffer from slow pacing and unrealistic situations. The four stars are all fine, but outside of the intrigue concerning their mission, Hunter and Flynn are dull and lifeless. Flynn sounds silly with much of his lines, and when Hunter has to become commanding, he's unconvincing.That's not the case for the two ladies, putting glamour and feminine charm in what was essentially a man's film. The generic title just seems to lay there with no purpose. Herbert Mundin provides a bit of comedy and Ben Welden is amusing as a wealthy Russian letch who makes a play for Francis, prompting a great reply from her which indicates bluntly, "No dice". I had hoped for more heat between Kay and Errol, but that is lacking. The over nobility of the major characters leads to a ridiculously clichéd finale that even after multiple viewings had me rolling my eyes. As a huge Kay Francis fan, I would watch this over and over, but as a film historian, call it a second rate finale to her A list years at Warner Brothers. She scored the same year with "Confession", and to a lesser degree with "First Lady", but in spite the use of the title in the film's last scene, it's just average.

. . . which are radically different than the American martial marital customs. In ANOTHER DAWN, the screenwriters explore what happens when a Captain gives up his pastime of playing solitaire in favor of regular coitus with his commanding officer's wife. Most every time such a thing comes up on an American military base, the junior officer is defrocked of his command, serves a lengthy sentence in a federal penitentiary, gets dishonorably discharged, and loses whatever government pension he's accrued. That's why it's Standard Operating Procedure for the American Brass to keep it zipped, except when they visit Officers-and-Gentlemen's Clubs. As ANOTHER DAWN illustrates, the British response to this exact same triangular equation is the polar opposite to the U.S. military's. The Brit cuckolded commanding officer feels duty-bound to immediately assign himself to a suicide mission, especially if it's one for which he's ill-suited. It's his corpse that counts, as the Primary Objective here is to clear a glide path for the top commander's wayward wife to be able to enjoy her future jollies with less guilt and apprehension. This is why her upper lip is always so stiff at her husband's funeral.

Fans of Flynn's swashbuckling sagas or western dust-ups may be disappointed to find him here in a rather talky, restrained melodrama in which he is off-screen for a startling amount of the run time. The story is really Francis'. She plays a forlorn American whose three-year love affair with a daring pilot was cut short when he died during a flight. She is wooed and uneasily won by British Colonel Hunter while he is on a trip away from his remote desert post. Upon arriving back there with his new bride (who has sworn she will never truly love again after suffering the loss of her previous mate), he is called upon to leave on a mission, leaving Francis to get to know his second-in-command Flynn. Not only is Flynn drop-dead handsome, but his laugh reminds Francis of her deceased love and soon the pair is flirting with the possibility of an affair. In order to salvage her marriage to Hunter, Francis recommends Flynn for the next dangerous assignment, but then frets over him the entire time. When a third mission comes about, the two men (who, by now, realize the position they are in with Francis) haggle about who will end up flying off into the sunset, and quite probably not returning. Francis (showing off some fancy Orry-Kelly gowns) is lovely and charming despite her sometimes dreary, drippy character. Flynn is beautiful and dapper, but gets little or no chance to show off the roguish, impish charm that made him a superstar. He and Francis do share one very romantic embrace in a garden and he also gets to engage in one rather minor action sequence, but it's a bit of a letdown to see him trudging through this story which is more a study of honor and self-sacrifice than a powerful love story. Hunter does a good job, but is understandably less captivating than Flynn. Inescort portrays Flynn's sister and doesn't have too awful much to do. Her oncoming MS can be noted in a telephone scene in which she holds her hand in an awkward position. It's an acceptable, well-appointed, but unspectacular film (that's also thankfully brief!) that's an okay time-killer, but not likely to be ranked very highly in the canon of its stars, especially Flynn's.

Stodgy and over talky movie that falls between two stools--being neither satisfying as a romantic tale or an action movie.It largely unfolds in a British army outpost in Mesopotamia commanded by Ian Hunter who ,while holidaying in England ,falls in love with and marries a vivacious American widow,played by Kay Francis.On returning to the outpost a relationship develops between her and the second in command-a dashing Errol Flynn.This being the age of the stiff upper lip nobility and self sacrifice rule the day. There is one brisk desert fight between the British and the rebel Arabs but otherwise this is a picture that unfolds in drawing room chat and trembling lower lips are the order of the day.Flynn was always at his best in action rather than dialogue and while looking suitably dashing is simply dull, a state Francis is not good enough to attain being largely inert. The strong point of the movie,and the reason for my heading of this review is the striking score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold who used its themes in his majestic and still unduly neglected Violin Concerto When a score carries its main emotional weight then you have a movie which is sadly lacking in other departments Ignore the movie--track down the Concerto instead