The Mudlark

No one likes an historical drama more than the present writer, but he will not brook films that are dull and boring. Jean Negulesco's The Mudlark (1950) is a case in point. This pedestrian and forgettable drama can't work up interest in its thin story, though some of its actors try.

It's 1875, and Queen Victoria (Irene Dunne) has spent over a decade mourning the death of her beloved Prince Albert. A dirt-smeared waif named Wheeler (Andrew Ray) finds a locket with her picture and decides to pay "the Mother of all England" a visit. Wheeler infiltrates Windsor Castle and unwittingly sparks a political incident, accused of heading an Irish conspiracy against the Queen. Devious Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (Alec Guinness) seizes the incident to advance his political agenda - and to bring Victoria out of hiding.

The Mudlark shows how not to make a period piece. The plot is a trifle, and the intertwining of Wheeler's whimsical misadventures, Victoria's grief and Disraeli's political machinations doesn't come off at all. Nunnally Johnson provides lots of silted dialogue, with several stupid subplots and useless side characters further diluting the drama. The film doesn't even look good, Negulesco providing drab black-and-white and rote period art direction. Everything is just too shallow and uninvolving for the emotional payoff to work.

Irene Dunne plays Victoria as a wax dummy, showing little emotion even in the pits of her widowed anguish. Andrew Ray went on to a respectable career, but there's nothing here to distinguish him from a dozen other child actors. Dashing soldier Anthony Steel and servant girl Beatrice Campbell (Last Holiday) enact a trite forbidden romance that just pads out the runtime.

Two actors stand out. Alec Guinness made this film in between Ealing comedies, clearly relishing his shot at a meaty dramatic role. Late in the film Guinness gives an impassioned, six-minute speech to Parliament, an impressive sequence that momentarily enlivens things. Then there's Finlay Currie (Billy Liar) as Victoria's manservant John Brown, investing his part with energy and wit everyone else lacks. These two pros try their best to inject some life into the show, but face an uphill battle.

The Mudlark is a real headscratcher. Who thought that this silly story was substantial enough to hang a 99-minute film around? The overall reaction is one big "Who cares?"

Three Came Home

A pleasant surprise, Three Came Home (1950) is an honest and affecting prisoner-of-war film. Director Jean Negulesco paints a sober portrait of life in a Japanese "woman's camp" during WWII, with a superb Claudette Colbert performance at the center.

Novellist Agnes Newton Keith (Claudette Colbert) is the wife of a British official (Patric Knowles) in the Far East. When war comes, the Japanese Army quickly overruns their settlement and Agnes and son George (Mark Keuning) are separate from husband Harry. Agnes endures the often-cruel treatment of the guards through pluck and perservance, and she's helped more than once by the likeable Colonel Suga (Sessue Hayakawa), a fan of her work. But Agnes gets into trouble when she accuses a guard of attempted rape, and as the war drags on her oft-sickly son struggles to survive.

Many films have been made about Japan's internment of Allied civilians (Empire of the Sun, Paradise Road) but few with the power and dramatic impact of Three Came Home. The usual POW dilemmas (cruel guards, low supplies, tension with bunk mates) are amplified by Agnes's civilian status: doubly agonized by the fate of their missing, also-interned husbands, Agnes and her colleagues suffer doubly, and their gender makes them a target for other abuses. The Japanese are an interesting cross-section of types, from the crude, murderous camp guards to the educated Colonel, but it's still a cruel and rotten system as evidenced by the reaction to Agnes's rape accusation.

Three Came Home is in many ways a "woman's picture," with its female lead and the family drama at the center, but it's still more brutally honest than most POW films from Grand Illusion onward. Billy Wilder's Stalag 17 (1953) borders on bad taste in its comic treatment of a Nazi prison camp, and even the mostly-serious Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) soft-pedals Japanese atrocities. A key sequence, where an ogling session by Australian POWs comes to a shocking conclusion, is almost a rebuke to a parallel scene (played for laughs) in Stalag 17. A surprisingly-nasty torture scene also factors in later on. Neguelesco perfectly captures the desperation and intolerable uncertainty of the situation, and the conclusion has genuine emotional impact.

Claudette Colbert's superb performance is a real treat. Colbert wonderfully plays down her usual persona; her Agnes is certainly strong-willed, but driven more by a grim determination to survive rather than ideals or self-righteousness. The rest of the cast is fairly non-descript, save Sessue Hayakawa, rehearsing his Bridge on the River Kwai part as a sympathetic commandant.

Three Came Home is a solid POW film and it comes highly recommend. For its honesty and its superb lead performance, it's an underseen winner.