Highland Flung

Film: The Hasty Heart
Format: Turner Classic Movies on big ol’ televison.

There are plenty of times I go into a movie without knowing a great deal about it. With The Hasty Heart, I didn’t even realize that this was a film with a military angle to the story. In fact, there’s not so much a military angle to the story as this is a very strange military story from front to back. In that respect it reminds me a bit of Tunes of Glory, except that this one is weirder in almost every regard.

The Hasty Heart earns some big points right away for placing itself in the most obscure and least-known corner of World War II: Burma. We’re also going to be not in combat for the most part, but in a makeshift British hospital. The war ends right at the start of the movie, a fact that is going to set up the premise for the rest of the film.

Jezebel, Part Two

Film: Mr. Skeffington
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on rockin’ flatscreen.

I’m always curious and a little excited when I locate a piece of Bette Davis’s filmography that I haven’t seen. Sometimes you get Now, Voyager or Jezebel. Then again, sometimes you get Mr. Skeffington. I chose those two films to mention here in comparison with Mr. Skeffington with reason. I bring up the brilliant Now, Voyager because, like today’s film, it co-stars the great Claude Rains. I referred to Jezebel because the character played by Bette Davis in that has a lot of resonance with the character she plays here. The problem is that both of those films are vastly better than this one.

Fanny Trellis (Davis) is the socialite to end all socialites. As the film starts, she is hosting a dinner party to which a group of suitors individually show up early in the hopes of some alone time with her. The only person she’s really interested in seeing is her cousin George (Walter Abel). The person she is not expecting is Job Skeffington (Claude Rains), who happens to be the boss of her brother, Trippy (yes, he goes by Trippy, and is played by Richard Waring). It seems that Trippy has not only burned through the Trellis family fortune in a matter of a couple of years, he’s also managed to embezzle some $24,000 from Skeffington, which is a large chunk of change, especially a hundred years ago, when this takes place.