Parnell (1937)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Parnell is one of those costume dramas that had a good idea, but the execution just didn't work. I'm a huge Gable and Loy fan, but it was hard sitting through this movie. As perfect as Gable would be as Rhett Butler two years later, he was completely wrong for Parnell. Equally, Myrna Loy was tremendous as Nora Charles in the two Thin Man movies prior to this film, but the chemistry between her and Gable in this film is bad, real bad. The love affair felt rushed and poorly scripted and the two actors, who were really good together in Manhattan Melodrama and Wife Vs. Secretary, just didn't seem to connect in this film. It makes me think it was either the writing or the directing.As far as the historical aspects go, this is also poorly handled. The romance between Parnell and the married Katie O'Shea was more sordid and scandalous than depicted in the movie. Parnell fathered three children with Katie which is never mentioned. Parnell also sported a full beard which Gable refused to do. Lastly, Parnell was a more sensitive character while Gable plays him as he does most of his roles, a man's man. This movie also nearly cost us Gable playing Rhett Butler. The reception and box office on this movie was so bad, Gable threatened never to do another historical costume drama and had to be convinced to play Rhett Butler. Whew. Thank god he changed his mind.If you like the actors involved, its a nice companion to some of their other pairings, but its easily the worst films of their careers.

The character of Parnell has interested me ever since I read James Joyce's Ulysses. I caught this movie by accident when channel surfing and landed on TCM, the source of many old movie nuggets. "Parnell" brings us some first rate actors, from Clark Gable to Myrna Loy, Edmund Gwyn and Donald Crisp. The viewer sees the main outline of the controversy involving Charles Parnell and Kitty O'Shea and its impact on the Irish Free State bill. The movie is dressed up in melodrama with violin music to the strains of Irish ballads. This cloying treatment, not unusual in Hollywood, does not detract from the story of a great man and the overlooked merits of this film. Parnell brought the Irish factions together to achieve a significant breakthrough in his time and might have saved many troubles. Parnell was the stuff of greatness and his story has been enshrined in history and literature. We know that the struggle for Ireland continued beyond his life; still, his story reverberates. This movie gives a sense of the tragedy but the poor sound and grainy film are a bit of an irritation. Also, the choice of Clark Gable, Hollywood's rugged icon of the 1930's, for the role of Parnell, falls flat. This is unfortunate because the movie is far from a disaster. Nevertheless, I would like to see a film with a more complete story, with more character development and background. It would tell the epic tale of Parnell's achievements and the forces that shaped Ireland in the late nineteenth century. The British movie industry does those period movies very well. This movie gives us a taste of that history.

When I saw that "Parnell" was coming up on TCM, I eagerly TIVO'd it, as an avid Gable fan and a rabid Loy fan. Plus, it enjoys an infamous reputation as a stinker and Gables worst movie. Coincidently I had earlier this week watched "Gone with the Wind" in it's entirety for the first time in about 5 years. This reinforced my three emotions about "Wind": It's the greatest movie ever made though not the best; It's script is a cloying, almost craven ode to the old South including the racist fantasy of happy slaves "diggin' fo' da South!";Lastly that as great a cast as it has, and how wonderful Vivian Leigh is, Gable steals the picture. He IS Rhett Butler. The film slows whenever he is offscreen, and lights up when he is on. No Gable, and Selznick has half the picture.Having seen "Parnell" (and I made myself watch it twice) I agree with other reviewers that other actors might have been better suited to the script and the director. However, I utterly disagree that that Gable is miscast;He could easily been great in this: He (and the rest of the film)were mis-DIRECTED. I can't imagine how this picture came to completion under the strict system at MGM. Stahl should have been yanked off and sent packing after the first days rushes. Was Louis B. Mayer off somewhere in space? It is the most shocking directorial failure I have ever seen from MGM.Gable merely followed his direction, which I think must have been "Clark, I want you to think of Ronald Coleman underplaying. Now I want you to do it just like that, but think Coloeman on opium....and kinda fey" It is extremely obvious that Stahl imagined this role for Coleman, Leslie Howard, Robert Donat or even as someone else has said, Walter Pigeon. It only makes it worse that that the real George Parnell was much closer to Rhett Butler than he was to the scipt of this piece.Gable, unlike todays leading men, was notoriously not a creampuff. I am frankly surprised that after this thing flopped, he didn't beat the hell out of Stahl. Famously, Gable was afraid of period pieces after this and reluctant to play Rhett. But having now seen Parnell, I believe that this experience also lead him to be wary of "Wind"s first director, George Cukor who, like Stahl, was known for "womens pictures", and summarily helped lead to Cukors dismissal from that film.Having said all this, if you have the chance to see it, do. it's not a zero...maybe a 3.BTW, as a postscript: Someone commented that Gable doesn't affect an Irish accent, which is probably wise....remember, he was the only one in Gone With the Wind without a bad Southern accent :-)

I am an avid lover of the book THE FIFTY WORST FILMS by Harry Medved. It's brilliantly written and funny. However, a few times the book lists movies that are poor but really don't approach awfulness. This movie is one of them (along with THAT HAGEN GIRL and SWING YOUR LADY). While I will gladly admit that it is about Gable's worst film from the mid to late 1930s, it's certainly better than some movies he did in 1931 when he wasn't yet a star. Also, with so many bad films from Hollywood, this movie just seems poor--not bad. After all, even with a saccharine script, this movie STILL stars Myrna Loy and Clark Gable and how bad can a film be when it features these fine actors? Yes, it's true that Clark as Parnell is pretty wussy and unbelievable (and completely unlike Gable in other films, but I actually saw some merit, albeit little, in the film and just can't accept that it deserves a 1 or even a 2.