Monday, February 07, 2011

Land of the Lost

Strange Cargo (1940)
directed by Fran Borzage
rating: 2 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from the Squirrel Hill Public Library

Clark Gable's a thief, imprisoned in Guiana, with nothing left to steal but "a piece of freedom." His pencil-thin mustache comes and goes with the days between shaves, and he gets himself assigned to dock detail by a warden who likes to watch men try and escape through the jungle. Most of the time they go crazy instead, but Jesus, of all people, shows up disguised as a man named Cambreau to help a half dozen of Clark's friends run.

Borzage, I understand, believed completely in his own sentimentality, but this was probably not the best place for me to start. I'm always suspicious of mystical mystery men with sanguine expressions and holy equanimity, but movies love them. Here, the visiting spiritual benefactor leaves Joan Crawford to "tough it out" with a creepy rapist in the jungle, since killing the man would, of course, be a sin.

The coward who looks up to the worst of the convicts for his outgoing bluster is more interesting to me than anything Cambreau says. At least Clark is upfront with his fleshly priorities, and at least Peter Lorre signed on to lurk in his own amiable, sweaty way at the fringes. As the laughably sad M'sieu Pig, his stool pigeon worries make a believer of a man like me.