One More River (1934)

Having forced myself to suppress the yawns while watching two big-budget movies over the weekend ("The Exorcism of Emily Rose" and "The Producers" -- more on that one below), I thought I'd write about another obscurity from my collection instead.  Directed by James Whale (always good value), this is based on a novel by John Galsworthy and given the casting and the stiff upper lips, one would never believe this film to be a Hollywood production. One forgets that Hollywood in the '30s was broadly populated by dozens of useful British actors and one could have easily cast another dozen or so stories without going further afield.  In this one our heroine Diana Wynyard leaves her abusive husband and finds innocent romance with a young man met on shipboard; but the husband sues for divorce and damages.  The courtroom scenes are involving and the outcome is not what one might have suspected were this a later movie.  True it's all a bit stodgy and dated, but I enjoyed my revisit.

I said above that I would comment briefly on "The Producers" (2005).  The truth is that I am probably too fond of the original non-musical version to give it a fair trial -- but adding songs only really puffs out the running time.  Since this is the film of the show of the film for which Mel Brooks wrote both the music and lyrics, there is no one else to blame.  That apart, I thought Matthew Broderick was very good (I have no particular axe to grind for Gene Wilder) with a surprisingly pleasant singing voice, but the rest of the cast only reminded me how much I prefer the original players.