Kings Row (1942)

Fantastic!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Blistering performances.

The story takes place in a small town at the turn of the 20th century and centers on the relationship between two friends, Drake (Ronald Reagan) and Parris (Robert Cummings), and their lives and loves from early childhood to young adulthood. There is enough turgid melodrama here to satisfy any soap opera fan.Given its cast, a score by Eric Krongold, and cinematography by James Wong Howe, I was hoping for more. I found Robert Cummings to be weak, always effecting the demeanor of an eager Boy Scout; he always seemed to be just reciting lines, without any real feeling. This was particularly true in one of his final scenes where he took it upon himself to recite the first two stanzas of "Invictus," coming across as a middle school student rushing through memorized lines. After saying that he couldn't remember all the words, he recited the first two stanzas word for word, but then did not even recite the most famous final lines:I the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul.Parris' final words to Drake had a miraculous effect, in the literal meaning of "miraculous." Unbelievable, actually. At the other end of the acting spectrum I thought Claude Rains was very believable in the role of a psychologically tortured medical doctor. Between the bad and good of Cummings and Rains the other actors did well enough, except the child actors were a bit stilted. In the time since this movie was made the quality of child actors as advanced dramatically.Released in 1942 this is prototypical of movie-making of the time, which may make it worth watching for film history buffs. The acting styles are dated--millennials will have a hard time with this, being astonished by its lack of realism and its deus ex machina ending. A quote that will have modern audiences reeling was when Drake's wife told him, "Of course you'd have to tell me everything to do, I'm only a woman." I did not detect any tone of irony in her delivery of this line. I found the Korngold score repetitive and intrusive, common features of scores for 40s movies.Given the world situation at the time this was released (shortly after Pearl Harbor) I imagine audiences at the time felt it was oddly irrelevant. On the DVD is an extra that has the United States Marine Band playing several rousing tunes, starting with the Marines' Hymn--this segment was filmed in 1942 and I suspect that it might have been commonly shown along with "Kings Row."

This is a picture about a typical, happy, small American town of 1900. There is murder, madness, premarital coitus, suicide, double amputations, poverty, alcohol abuse, and first-degree snobbery.Cummings and his best friend Ronald Reagan are young men in King's Row. Cummings is a bit on the earnest side, while Reagan is blithe and carefree. Both, we can tell at once, are good men and true friends. They live on "Union Street", full of mansions, while the other side of town is "below the railroad tracks." Ideas about propriety and convention stifle attempts at social change.It has the qualities of an epic novel that veers from triumph to tragedy on a precise schedule, rather like the railroad trains. It's like, oh, "Peyton Place" or "The Young Philadelphians." Paths cross and cross-cross. Characters come and go, but mostly go.I'd compare it to something like "Gone With the Wind" too, except that there's no menace in the offing like a Civil War. I'd like to compare it to "The Brothers Karamazov" but it's not so finely observed. It just sort of rolls along of its own weight and covers so much territory that it's not uninteresting.The plot, briefly: Cummings loses his first love, goes to Vienna, and returns as a psychiatrist. Reagan loses his first love, then loses his legs, then finds another love, Ann Sheridan, but he can't get over the fact that he's now only half a man. Fortunately, after some hesitation, Cummings cures him in about thirty seconds.Cummings looks boyish and effete throughout but isn't embarrassing. None of the performances are embarrassing. Reagan has a meaty role and does well by it. Sheridan is the blunt and practical love of Reagan's post-operative existence and she's pretty good.On the whole, I find these sprawling melodramas to be fatuous but this one is no worse than many others and better than some. The direction is efficient and the photography is in lustrous black and white.The musical score is by Eric Wolfgang Korngold and it helps the movie immeasurably. Those first four portentous notes of the main theme, like the opening of Beethoven's fifth -- except different notes, of course. I speak to you as your expert on this subject because I once audited a course in piano. Not to be immodest, but, yes, musical genius runs in my family. People came from yards around to hear my grandfather play the baritone horn in a German marching band.At any rate, this is worth seeing. You get to see Ronald Reagan, future president of the United States, waking up, looking stunned, and shouting "WHERE'S THE REST OF ME!"

Ronald Reagan mentions how lonely he is to Ann Sheridan, which represents a few of the characters who are also lonely. The story itself is not that interesting, but it has the potential to be interesting. I haven't read the novel, but I think there is something lost in the adaptation from the novel to the screen. It's probably trying to do too many things rather than focusing on one thing.I like the ensemble cast of Claude Rains (who dies off pretty quickly), Charles Coburn and Judith Anderson. Reagan plays a more interesting character than Robert Cummings, but you get the sense that you are on a journey with these characters rather than engaging in an absorbing plot.

Besides providing Ronald Reagan with his career role and the title of his pre-presidential autobiography, Kings Row is a finely crafted piece of film making by director Sam Wood. The film got Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best black and white Cinematography for James Wong Howe.Incredibly though, the rich musical score that Erich Wolfgang Korngold did was overlooked by the Academy. That's the thing you will take away from watching the film, even more so than Ronald Reagan's anguished cry of 'where's the rest of me'.The story takes place at the turn of the last century with an interlude of ten years from 1890 to 1900 where we see the leads as children first and then as adults. Despite Ronald Reagan getting all the notice here, he's actually third billed in the cast. Above him are Ann Sheridan and Robert Cummings and it's really the Cummings character whom the film is centered around.King's Row is the town these folks inhabit, purportedly based on Fulton Missouri, the hometown of author Henry Bellamann. This may be set in Missouri, but don't expect no Tom Sawyer like story. If in fact the novel is based on Bellamann's experiences growing up, he must have had one Gothic childhood.Sam Wood assembled an incredible cast of supporting players, like Claude Rains, Judith Anderson, Charles Coburn, Harry Davenport, Minor Watson, Nancy Coleman, and Kaaren Verne. Coburn and Anderson are the parents of Coleman and they don't like the fact she's keeping company with Reagan who's playing the entire Kings Row field. In addition Coburn is a doctor who is also a sadist, he does things like perform operations without use of anesthetic. I'm sure he had heard of Dr. Morton and his successful use of ether by this time.The best in the cast though is Claude Rains, something he usually was in a lot of films. He's another doctor, totally different from Coburn. He's a famous medical practitioner who has chosen to hide himself away in this small and obscure town. He's got a wife who never comes out and a daughter who grows up to be Betty Field who is suddenly and abruptly taken out of school as a child. It's with him who Robert Cummings studies medicine with to pass the examination and go to school in Europe to become a doctor.Rains's tragic story is what sets in motion the rest of the story that climaxes with Reagan's anguished cry. Rains creates such a mysterious and sad air about him that you think about him more than anyone else in the movie. Kings Row begs comparison to Our Town which is partly set in the generation where the Cummings, Field, Reagan, and Sheridan characters all grow up. Grover's Corners has its share of tragedies as well as happy times.Kings Row and Our Town should be run back to back in order to see what I'm referring to. It's not a bad double bill, in fact quite a literate one.