The Saint Strikes Back (1939)

The greatest movie ever made..!

A bit overrated, but still an amazing film

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

"Hondo" director John Farrow directed George Sanders' initial incarnation of British-Chinese author Leslie Charteris' suave sleuth in "The Saint Strikes Back," and "Band of Angels" scenarist John Twist adapted Charteris novel "The Saint Meets His Match" with many changes of locale. Incidentally, Sanders didn't originate the intrepid character; that distinction belonged to actor Louis Hayward. Hayward starred in the first movie, director Ben Holmes" "The Saint in New York." Interestingly enough, Hayward encored as the halo clad hero in the 1953 film "The Saint's Girl Friday," long after not only Sanders, but also Hugh Sinclair had impersonated the fictional Robin Hood character. Sanders starred in five "Saint" sagas between 1939 and 1941 for RKO Pictures. Charteris himself felt that Sanders was miscast as his debonair gentleman protagonist, but he applauded Roger Moore in the role as a better fit. Meantime, during his prestigious career, Sanders went on to play another legendary shamus "The Falcon," before he relinquished that role to his brother Tom Conway. "The Saint Strikes Back" is a rather straight-forward crime thriller with the Saint living up to his own self-proclaimed description of himself as "the man who knows everything-just the man who knows the important things." Indeed, our hero knows ahead of time that the heroine he must save is not guilty of murder.In "The Saint Strikes Back," our adventure-prone protagonist dispatches a New York cop killer, Tommy Voss, in the Colony Club nightclub in San Francisco on New Year's Eve and sets out to save Val Travers (Wendy Barrie of "Dead End") who has suffered a lot of bad publicity since her father was framed for police corruption. After the dead man is found, some of the patrons scramble to leave, and Val is one of several. She encounters Simon Templar (Oscar winner George Sanders of "All About Eve") who is awaiting her just outside on the sidewalk. "Cabs are scarce tonight, aren't they?" is Templar's first line when he meets her. Templar prevents Val from being taken in by the police. After he pulls this stunt, Templar flies back to New York City to meet his own friend, Inspector Henry Fernack (Jonathan Hale of "Son of Pale Face"), who has been assigned to find Templar, while Simon outsmarts Fernack during a stopover in Fort Worth, Texas, on their transcontinental flight to San Francisco. The unfortunate policeman goes on a wild goose chase when cannot find Templar aboard the aircraft,and winds up missing his plane. He is left standing in the airport terminal with nothing but his pajamas and a dressing gown. Incidentally, Hale co-starred in the first "Saint" escapade and he reprised his role here.This Saint outing is adequate, and Twist gave Sanders some good lines that he utters with aplomb. Since I've never read a Charteris novel, I cannot understand what the author objected to about Sanders' performance, but the British actor seems born to play the role, and he appears to have a grand time doing it, savoring each of his loquacious lines.

George Sanders, Wendy Barrie, John Hale, Jerome Cowan and Barry Fitzgerald star in "The Saint Strikes Back," which serves as the debut of George Sanders as Simon Templar. He follows Louis Hayward who starred as The Saint in "The Saint in New York." Simon travels from coast to coast more than once in this story, which concerns a San Franciso crime ring. A police inspector, accused of being part of the crime ring and subsequently discharged, committed suicide. As a result, his daughter, Val (Barrie) has formed a crime organization of her own, hoping to draw out the head of the ring, a man named Waldeman, who is responsible for framing her father.Templar and Inspector Fernak (Hale) work together to find Waldeman -- of course, Fernack thinks Waldeman might actually be Templar.Directed by John Farrow, the script is a little confusing. Not only that, I lost interest in it after the first half hour and had to go back and try to watch it something like three times. I'm not sure why - it could have just been ADHD.Anyway, Sanders made a good Saint - charming, flirtatious, amusing, not completely on the up and up. But I have to admit, much as I loved him, there was something about Louis Hayward as The Saint that was very smooth and charismatic. He made a big impression on me when I saw The Saint in New York a long time ago.Wendy Barrie plays the late police inspector's tough daughter, and she's pretty hard-nosed. Hale and Sanders play well off of one another.I like some other Saint films better, but this one is okay.

"The Saint Strikes Back" (1939) is directed by a young John Farrow, who would not only go onto to make film noir classics like "The Big Clock" (1948), "Alias Nick Beal" (1949) and "Where Danger Lives" (1950), but he would win an Oscar for writing the screenplay for Michael Todd's multi-award winning "Around the World in Eighty Days" (1956). So, not only do you have a notable director at the beginning of his career here, but George Sanders in his first role as The Saint, eleven years away from getting the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for "All About Eve" (1950). Also, there are quite a few familiar faces in the picture: Jerome Cowan, Barry Fitzgerald and Jonathan Hale, all of whom would be active in the motion picture business in the forthcoming decade. So, historically, quite an important film. But there's a lot more to it than just recognisable names. The photography, by Frank Redman, is striking, an impressively long shot at the very beginning of the movie in particular, is a cut above the rest. The acting too, is polished and professional.On the other hand, the screenplay, written by John Twist, from Leslie Charteris's "She Was a Lady" (1931), credited in the film as "Angels of Doom", while it moves briskly along, is a tad confusing. For the life of me, I couldn't tell you who did what and why in this film. But this doesn't detract form the enjoyment, and in a perverse way, it enhances it. It's not the best of its kind, but this proto-noir is certainly worth a watch.

Saint Strikes Back, The (1939) ** (out of 4) The second film in RKO's series has George Sanders taking over the role of The Saint. This time out The Saint helps a young woman who is trying to clear her father, a cop who was kicked off the force for apparently having connections to the mob. As The Saint gets deeper into the case it appears that the father might have more to hide or perhaps a cover up was done. I must say that this second film comes off very disappointing and is extremely watered down compared to the original, which I found very entertaining. The biggest problem is that the story is rather weak and instead of the ruthless killer in the first film here we are greeted to Sanders doing his womanizing. The film is mostly dialogue driven with only a few action pieces that stand out. Another problem is I think Sanders, a great actor, is too dry for the role and this eventually turns the character pretty boring. It's always fun to watch the actor but I really didn't buy him in this role. Several years after this film Sanders would make The Falcon series and I think he did a better job there, although looking at this film and those Falcon movies it's hard to tell which is which because Sanders plays the role the same way. Perhaps I wouldn't have been so hard on this film if I hadn't watched it so closely with The Saint in New York but where that film is original and entertaining, this one here just comes off rather bland.