The Flame

John Carroll has spent all his inherited money and lives on what his brother, Robert Paige gives him. He's a good egg, and when Carroll fell ill, Paige hired nurse Vera Ralston for him. They fell in love and were going to be married, until she changed her mind and married Paige. Now here's Broderick Crawford, blackmailing Carroll lest he Tell All.

Under director John Auer, this one hits almost all the Film Noir tags: movie told mostly in flashback, femme fatale -- although Mrs. Herbert Yates, as she was known when the credits weren't rolling, is one of those inadvertent types who changes her mind more or less honestly, perhaps -- quirky angles, dark lighting...... except no Venetian blinds, for some reason. It's also well acted, except for Mrs. Yates, who is typically wooden and whining in her performance. Republic was quite capable of footing the bill on a pretty good movie, and did so, except for the female lead. Her husband wanted to make her a star, despite a lack of interest in anyone not on his payroll. THe result is pretty good anyway.

John H Auer was a major director at Republic Pictures and gave some good films, with the major star of the studio, John Carroll, who also served under Allan Dwann's direction. In this film noir, he is not brilliant but good enough to face Broderick Crawford, whom I did not expect in a Republic film. A classic story for a film noir, with a tepid Vera Ralston performance. Only the ending is very interesting, dark, gloomy and reminds me the end of LE DOULOS, from film maker Jean-Pierre Melville.

This is told by way of the reading of a letter that explains the story of how "George" (John Carroll) has frittered away his family inheritance and is now dependent on his half-brother "Barry" (Robert Paige) - a situation which he bitterly resents. A solution to his predicament presents itself when he suggests that his girlfriend "Carlotta" (Vera Ralston) take up the position of nurse to the ailing "Barry". Their plan is quite simple, really. She befriends him, gets him to fall in love with her and then they marry. Once married, "Barry" will meet his end and she will be free to marry "George" and inherit the family fortune. It's not so much a flame this as a flicker. It's pretty obvious what's going to happen, and but for a few scenes with the scheming "Ernie" (Broderick Crawford) and Henry Travers as the well meaning "Dr. Mitchell" this story proves to not quite have the courage of it's convictions. It's all just a little too formulaic in the end. Blanche Yurka does her best impersonation of Queen Mary as his aunt "Blanche" - no fool, herself and Hattie McDaniel livens things up, sparingly, too - but sadly this all just goes the way of the damp squib after a promising start.

The Flame is an interesting test of the theory that in cinematic art, style matters more than story. If it does, The Flame should be a near masterpiece. Graced with a generous budget despite its Poverty Row origins, the movie offers complex camera moves (starting with its impressive opening shot), elegant lighting, slick art design, and first-rate cinematography. So it's a winner, right?

Meh, not so much. All that eye candy can't make up for a slow-paced, listless, overly familiar story, which generates no dramatic tension and little emotion of any kind, other than a quasi-religious sentimentality that seems weirdly out of place in a film of this genre.

The performances are okay, with Crawford the standout and the much-maligned Vera Ralston doing a capable job. But given the decent cast, high production value, and stylistic razzle-dazzle, The Flame should be a lot better than it is.

So dull I spent the middle part of the action re-casting the lead roles to James Stewart as Barry, Ingrid Bergman as Carlotta and Clark Gable as George, Broderick Crawford escaped the cull. The plot starts brightly, the house, the amazing staircase and the uninspiring Barry's organ playing are so 'Dracula's Castle' but the middle thirty or so minutes is so heavily padded with superficial and insincere romantic interludes it becomes mind numbingly dull. How do the characters manage to afford an appartment with designer furniture, modern lighting and curtains (if they bother to ever draw them) when they are scraping around for ten bucks ?