Francis Lister Movies

Reverent to the point of tedium, Christopher Columbus stars Fredric March in the title role, and he's welcome to it. March's wife Florence Eldredge co-stars as Queen Isabella, who finances Columbus' expedition to find a westward route to India. After several reels devoted to table-top miniatures impersonating the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria (punctuated by rumbles of mutiny--no, not "rumble rumble, mutiny mutiny") Columbus reaches the New World. Though obviously filmed on an extravagant budget (Technicolor was still a rare commodity in 1949), the British Christopher Columbus has less going for it than the 1939 Porky Pig cartoon Christopher Columbus Jr.. Filmgoers stayed away in droves, as they would when the movie industry "rediscovered" Columbus for a brace of disastrous multimillion-dollar films in 1992. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Laurence Olivier's adaptation of Henry V is one of the finest Shakespeare films ever made, full of rousing action, beautiful colors, and passionate performances. Henry V is the story of the newly crowned king of England, who fights the French for possession of Normandy. Olivier's direction is inventive, beginning the film as if it were a performance at the Globe Theatre, and having it slowly expand so the final battle scenes take place in realistic settings. Released in 1944 during the height of World War II, Henry V didn't receive an American release until 1946, upon which Olivier won a special Academy Award for "his outstanding achievement as actor, producer and director in bringing Henry V to the screen." ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi

Originally released in England in 1938 as Murder in Soho, this moody melodrama was advertised in America as "The rapid-fire story of an underworld mobster with a social bee in his bonnet and a rod on his hip"(Whew!) The mobster in question is Steve Marco, played with appropriate sneering menace by Jack LaRue. Booted out of Chicago by the feds, Marco sets up a respectable nightclub in London as a front for his many criminal activities. When a murder is committed in the club and the body deposited in the street, Scotland Yard inspector Hammond (Martin Walker) suspects that Marco is responsible. With Hammond's unofficial blessing, nightclub hostess Ruby Lane (Sandra Storme), the dead man's widow, and inquiring reporter Roy Barnes (played by Bernard Lee, later to gain worldwide fame as "M" in the James Bond series) go undercover to get the goods on the social-climbing mobster. Though Murder in the Night could have gotten by on its own merits, the bravura performance of Jack LaRue truly "makes" the film. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Future Connecticut governor John Lodge stars in the British crime drama Sensation. Lodge plays a hotshot reporter who devotion to his job is messing up his private life. Despite warnings from his girl friend that she'll walk out if he follows up one more hot scoop, Lodge tries to flush out the murderer of a waitress. A packet of incriminating love letters is the "maguffin" in this one. Based on a play by Basil Dean and George Munro, Sensation packs an awful lot of story in its 54 minutes. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The 1932 publication of Charles Nordhoff and James Norton Hall's Mutiny on the Bounty sparked a revival of interest in the titular 1789 ship mutiny, and this 1935 MGM movie version won the Oscar for Best Picture. Clark Gable stars as Fletcher Christian, first mate of the infamous HMS Bounty, skippered by Captain William Bligh (Charles Laughton), the cruelest taskmaster on the Seven Seas. Bligh's villainy knows no bounds: he is even willing to flog a dead man if it will strengthen his hold over the crew. Christian despises Bligh and is sailing on the Bounty under protest. During the journey back to England, Bligh's cruelties become more than Christian can bear; and after the captain indirectly causes the death of the ship's doctor, the crew stages a mutiny, with Christian in charge. Bligh and a handful of officers loyal to him are set adrift in an open boat. Through sheer force of will, he guides the tiny vessel on a 49-day, 4000-mile journey to the Dutch East Indies without losing a man. Historians differ on whether Captain Bligh was truly such a monster or Christian such a paragon of virtue (some believe that the mutiny was largely inspired by Christian's lust for the Tahitian girls). The movie struck gold at the box office, and, in addition to the Best Picture Oscar, Gable, Laughton, and Franchot Tone as one of the Bounty's crew were all nominated for Best Actor (they all lost to Victor McLaglan in The Informer). The film was remade in 1962 and adapted into the "revisionist" 1984 feature The Bounty with Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian and Anthony Hopkins as Captain Bligh. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Ronald Colman plays Robert Clive, a true-life 18th century Britisher who works up the ranks to become leader of Britain's military forces in India. Though produced on a superficially lavish scale, the film inexpensively sidesteps several of Clive's more famous battles with Indian insurrectionists, relegating them to offscreen events described by subtitles. The notorious Sepoy Mutiny "Black Hole of Calcutta" incident, hardly a costly event to recreate, is faithfully presented. In real life, Clive was ruined by a trial in the House of Commons, after which he suffered a nervous breakdown and committed suicide. The film tactfully closes on the trial and Clive's reunion with his faithful wife (Loretta Young). Typically jingoistic in its "White Man's Burden" approach to East Indian affairs, Clive of India is best viewed in context of the time it was filmed (1935), when the sun still hadn't set on the British Empire. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this British comedy, a clumsy young man must make do by joining the police force instead of Scotland Yard like his father, who thinks the boy is ill-suited to be a detective. His father may well be right, yet, somehow, the lad manages to stumble after some famed jewel thieves and redeem himself--it was he who messed up the first arrest. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this comedy, a quiet bank clerk inherits a fortune, quits his job, and tries to become a major theatrical producer. He then falls in love with a chorine and spends most of his money on a lavish production designed to make her a star. Unfortunately, the show is a bomb. To save the performance of the overly dramatic drama, the would-be producer hops up onstage and begins earnestly trying to play the lead. The audience goes into paroxysms of laughter for he is too awful to be taken seriously and soon he is heralded as a comic genius. The next time the show is listed as a comedy and becomes a hit. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Nearly 70 years before James Cameron made the Titanic tragedy his own personal property, E. A. DuPont offered his own spectacular spin on the same story in the landmark early talkie Atlantic. Adhering to the classic three-act structure, the first portion of the film concentrates on the passengers -- both above and below deck -- of a huge luxury liner on its maiden voyage. The middle portion deals with the liner's collision with an iceberg and the reactions of the passengers, ranging from mild annoyance to outright panic. Dupont reserves the best for last, as the great ship Atlantic begins its final descent amidst the terrified cries of the passengers as they try to crowd into too few lifeboats. Stalwart courage and craven cowardice come head to head in the climactic scenes, but in the final summation it is the special effects, rather than the behavior of the characters, that linger longest in the memory. Amazingly, the film fades before the ship sinks beneath the waves, which may be why Atlantic came nowhere near the box-office success of Cameron's Oscar-winning Titanic (besides, who had a billion dollars back in 1930?) In addition, too much time is spent on a comedy-relief steward, as if the death of the great ship was some sort of Broadway musical revue. Based on a stage play by Ernest Raymond, Atlantic was simultaneously filmed in English, French and German-language versions. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi