That Brennan Girl

The director Alfred Santell remains rather mysterious; his output ranging from moody black & white adaptations of Maxwell Anderson and Eugene O'Neill to Technicolor nonsense with Dorothy Lamour. A lot of people who consider themselves knowledgable about films have never heard of him. In 1946 he was considered important enough to include in the appendix at the back of Roger Manvell's 'Film', but twenty years later, despite still being alive, both he and this film (his last after breaking with Republic over a contract dispute in 1947) had fallen through the cracks in film history sufficiently to be omitted from both Andrew Sarris's 'American Cinema' and Maltin's 'TV Movies'.

Despite the twee title, it deserves consideration alongside other shoestring Republic 'art' movies like Orson Welles' 'Macbeth' and Frank Borzage's 'Moonrise', stylishly shot by Jack Marta (for whom it must have been a stimulating change from westerns), with an eccentric score by George Antheil and attractive lead performances by Mona Freeman and James Dunn (whose last lead this was, fifteen years after being launched by Borzage in the latter's Oscar-winning 'Bad Girl').