Pretty dim ninety minutes. It's typical late Hollywood Depression era stuff, based on a play, with lots of creaky melodramatics (persons running into burning houses, adulterous kisses followed by hushed recriminations) and the women speaking in vaguely British accents even though they're supposed to be from Wisconsin and NY. It all adds up to boredom interspersed with unintentionally funny moments, like Margaret Sullivan swathed in bandages, looking like The Mummy's Bride, in the film's lugubrious finale. Usually a stylish director like Frank Borzage can make you forget, at least for a while, that you're watching such schlock. Not this time. The visual elements of the film are uninspired, with lots of phony backdrops, standard Rich People interiors and Lake Arrrowhead doing a pretty bad job of simulating The Badger State. About the only halfway decent thing in it is a strong performance by Fay Bainter as a meddlesome, half sophisticated, half snobbish, spinster sister. Would have liked to have known more about her character, like why she's unmarried, but Jane Murfin and Ogden Nash's screenplay is too busy dealing with the dull love triangle of Robert Young, Joan Crawford and Sullivan for any such descent into interesting psychological terrain. And this has to be the dullest Melvin Douglas performance I've ever seen. All the guy does is chuckle and fiddle with his pipe. And occasionally snarl at Bainter. Give it a C.
Review of The Shining Hour
