The Green Glove (1952)

Thanks for the memories!

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Despite extensive location lensing on actual French locations, this movie emerges as a somewhat tepid chase thriller when viewed in a theatre. On the Payless DVD, however, it comes across like gang busters. Set against a backdrop of thrilling natural backgrounds, the script rouses the interest right from the start. Admittedly, the green glove itself is not much to get excited over, but what does stir the soul are the rugged mountainous exteriors which are all utilized most effectively for plenty of action thrills by director Rudolph Maté and ace cinematographer Claude Renoir. Admittedly, both photography and direction look dull on a cinema screen, but on the home screen they are both transformed and come across most effectively. True, Glenn Ford has turned in better and far more charismatic portrayals than his somewhat listless, ex-G.I. hero who seems outclassed by both the feminine lead, Geraldine Brooks, and by villainous George Macready. Alas, the unconvincing parish priest, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, poses no threat in the acting stakes. He is also somewhat undone (1) by the fact that he is obviously not French and (2) because the script forces him to play his scenes twice!

The amazing locations are the real stars of "The Gauntlet" from 1952. Rudy Mate directs Glenn Ford, Geraldine Brooks, George MacCready, and Cedric Hardwicke in this film, which takes place during and after World War II.Filmed in black and white in Monte Carlo and Paris, the scenery is eye-popping, particularly the mountain on which a church stands. It's a shame this movie wasn't in color.The story concerns Michael Blake (Ford) who captures a Nazi collaborator, who has in his possession a relic from a church - a jewel-encrusted long glove. Michael leaves it with the family who rescued him, due to the fact that he was injured and couldn't bring it back to the states.Mike's luck after the war isn't good, so he returns to France to retrieve the glove. He has people following him, a dead guy who turns up, and his flirtation with a tour guide (Brooks) causes a problem when her apartment is searched. Then the Nazi collaborator (MacCready) turns up.Other than the scenery, this isn't much of a movie. The plot isn't skillfully put together and it's convoluted, so it was hard to follow.For some reason, Sir Cedric Hardwicke is in this film playing a priest and he has absolutely nothing to do. George MacCready is an effective villain. Geraldine Brooks' performance can only be described as frantic. One thing about Glenn Ford - he was never frantic. They make an odd match. Ford to me anyway is always likable, but it was hard to relate to these characters in this disjointed film.Disappointing.

Part mystery adventure and part romance, "The Green Glove" is a sometimes uneven tale of an ex-GI returning to France on a suitably dubious mission - to retrieve a jewel encrusted glove that might take the edge off a run of seven years bad luck. Almost sounds like Glenn Ford broke a mirror, or something like that. Ford's character, Michael Blake, is joined mid-way in his mission by an attractive tour guide (Geraldine Brooks), who's immediately caught up in a tale of dead men, Nazi spies and stolen treasure. It always makes me curious why characters in movies are drawn into completely untenable situations, but I guess if they weren't, you wouldn't have a story.Like most of the other posters for this film, I was struck by the the Hitchcockian elements of the picture, and caught myself thinking of the jeweled glove as that fabled Bogart Falcon. The film suitably keeps one on the fence as to Blake's real intentions regarding the gauntlet, even as he tries to stay a step ahead of his cunning adversary, Nazi collaborator turned fine art dealer, Count Paul Rona (George Macready).What was unbelievable to me was the chase scene down a virtually sheer rock face known as the goat trail (for good reason), and then back up again for a couple of middle aged guys (Ford,36 and Macready,53) who didn't look like they were in the best of shape to begin with. With all that, Blake still had the stamina to climb up the church tower and make with the bells to set up the mystery that book-ends the story.

Occasionally charming foreign adventure/romance with Glenn Ford as a down-on-his-luck American returning to post-war France to retrieve the title treasure he found during the war and becoming entangled with cops, bad guys, and tour guide Geraldine Brooks. Lovely Brooks has a wonderful girl-next-door quality, but the 50s priggishness makes the romance tiresome at times.The whole affair has a nice Hitchcockian feel, altho Hitch would never have been so priggish--with either with the sex or the violence. Director Rudolph Mate was the cinematographer for Hitch on Foreign Correspondent and other A-list directors in the 40s but had already directed several films himself by the time he did The Green Glove, including the classic DOA in 1950, with Edmund O'Brien.Still, something is missing. Ford remains a cipher thruout; we don't get the feel of desperation that Hitch (or his leading men) was so good at conveying. Ford was a battle-hardened lieutenant in the war, yet it doesn't seem to help him much against the bad guys. Brooks is clingy, yet coy. A European dame, sexier and more independent, might have been a more interesting choice. (This is one of those stories where the leads have to pretend to be married at one point, thereby forcing them to be titillatingly intimate, right? Wrong: Mate blows it by having them demand separate rooms anyway!) The climax is good, if a bit predictable. But the exciting mountain chase down a goat trail feels a bit like a setting in search of a story, since we know from the opening scene that the story doesn't end there. Overall, it's a good A-picture adventure that could have benefited from a bit of B-picture sex and violence.