Dust Be My Destiny (1939)

Waste of time

Fantastic!

It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

It's difficult to believe that this collection of tired clichés and cardboard characters was written by Robert Rossen but there you go. Having signed Julie Garfield from the Group Theatre Warners thrust him into one tough-guy-who-never-had-a-chance vehicle after another after it paid off handsomely in his debut Four Daughters. Not one to balk at hedging their bets the freres Warner teamed him once again with Priscilla Lane in this slice of hokum rather than slice of life opus. If Howard Hawks had a knack for coming in at the tail-end of a genre and making the definitive example (see: Only Angels Have Wings) Lewis Seiler just came in at the tail-end of a genre and added nothing. Garfield gets out of stir at the beginning only to be informed by the warden that he had been wrongfully convicted; he then gets a series of bad breaks punctuated by false hopes until it all ends in smiles. Along the way he is helped by several people who behave unrealistically, somehow acquires a camera whilst not having change of a match and ... well that's about as credible as it gets. Always nice to see Garfield and Lane but don't raise your hopes.

A routine John Garfield film that Garfield really didn't even want to do. It starts out with Garfield serving thirteen months in jail for a crime he didn't commit and as soon as he's back on the streets, he gets on a train with two of the dead end kids and winds up getting in a fight with Ward Bond, who is hiding out from the cops. The cops arrest all of them and Bond says Garfield helped him when he committed the crime and he's sent up again for a crime he didn't commit. He's given 90 days on a work farm and he and warden take a disliking for each other immediately. That's when he meets the warden's daughter and there is a lot more plot to the movie but you can find that out for yourself.

Garfield is excellent as falsely-accused Joe Bell escaping to try to prove his innocence. Priscilla Lane is excellent in a character type she repeated three years later, virtually word-for-word, in Saboteur with Robert Cummings. But, this film stands on its own merits, even without the Hitchcockian camera angles or the Statue of Liberty. It is soulful, well-scripted, and tense.I highly recommend it.

You can see why John Garfield rocketed to stardom just from watching this film: he has a tough but charismatic demeanor and is a natural born actor. He plays an embittered, cynical and distrustful youth, who is released from prison at the start, being told he was wrongly convicted when the real culprit was caught and confessed. He vows that he will never again trust authorities. He lands in a state work farm because of vagrancy and meets Priscilla Lane, the stepdaughter of the yard boss (Stanley Ridges) and they fall in love. But they are caught in an embrace by Ridges, who slaps Lane, incensing Garfield enough to hit Ridges, who dies of a heart attack due to his poor health caused by alcoholism. They flee and feel safe over the border but are almost penniless, so they take advantage of a promotion at a movie theater and get married on stage free of charge with lots of bonuses, despite it being a humiliating experience for both. Then they hear Ridges' death is considered a murder and they are wanted fugitives. Lane wants to turn themselves in, but Garfield will have none of that, and she sticks by him. Eluding police, they are given a job by kindly diner owner, Henry Armetta, who even helps them escape when Lane is caught and Garfield breaks her out of jail. This was an exciting nail-biting sequence. Garfield then lucks out when he is at the right place at the right time: he photographs details of a bank robbery in progress and gets a job as photographer with a newspaper. Because of these sensational photos and the fame it was sure to bring, Garfield was again threatened with being exposed as the wanted fugititve. This film is worth seeing for Garfield's performance, but Henry Armetta and Alan Hale are both excellent, and there's an enjoyable Max Steiner score. For those who are interested in credit abberations, Victor Kilian and Frank Jaquet are both in the onscreen cast credits but were edited out of the film. I've seen this happen occasionally for one performer in movies of the 1930's, but this is the only time I can remember it occurred for two.