RALLY ‘ROUND THE FLAG, BOYS!
**½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras D+
starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Joan Collins, Jack Carson
screenplay by Claude Binyon and Leo McCarey
directed by Leo McCarey
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover I have conflicting feelings about Leo McCarey’s Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys!. Part of me thinks it’s a professional, well-crafted comedy that happily stops just this side of vulgarity; another part of me wishes it had actually crossed into the land of the vulgar and settled in Frank Tashlin’s hometown. To its advantage, it’s an extremely polished film with a nice feeling for shape and colour that’s very well acted in all the major roles. But I still wish that someone like Tashlin had directed it and turned it into the rowdy shambles it so desperately wants to be.
This is the fast and frenetic story of Harry Bannerman (Paul Newman), a public-relations man who finds himself in one of those parody small towns that exist only in fifties farces. His chief problem is that between his ugly commute and the busy social schedule of his wife, Grace (Joanne Woodward), he has no time to relax or see his family. And though he’s diligently faithful, neighbour and friend Angela Hoffa (Joan Collins) never sees her husband, either, and so attempts to seduce the fed-up Harry. His problems are compounded when a top-secret military base is set to go up in town and ruin property values; Grace is appointed to run the committee to fight it, and she ropes Harry into going into Washington to talk the top brass out of it. This sets in motion a chain reaction of apparent infidelity, civil disobedience, and conflict of interest that threatens to tear Harry and Grace irrevocably apart.
On the surface, everything goes smoothly. There’s no faulting any of the principals in their performances: Newman is sufficiently harried as hapless Harry, Woodward is lacquered to perfection as his “ideal” wife, and Jack Carson is equally fine as the bumbling Capt. Hoxie, whose job it is to bulldoze his way into the town one way or another. And the aesthetics are a combination of light touches on jackhammer effects: despite the cavalcade of stereotypes (including a teenage hellcat being pursued by both bikers and soldiers) and the tendency of the script towards people running around shouting and bugging their eyes out, the film manages to be downright elegant in these items’ deployment, allowing us to indulge in their cravenness without feeling as though anything untoward is happening.
But that’s the problem. Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys! is rather like the priests in Schepisi’s The Devil’s Playground, who flirt with women and then flee in terror for their virtue. It wants the thrill of subversive behaviour without actually having to be subversive, and thus sails close to the deep end without actually jumping in. Ergo, no real infidelity actually happens, the army and the townspeople are equally stupid, and a puzzling non-sequitur ending bypasses all of the issues of NIMBY-ism and military powers that the previous 90-odd minutes have raised. The film’s caginess keeps it from truly taking conceptual flight, reigning in its wilder impulses so as not to offend any of the targets at which it fires blindly.
THE DVD
by Bill Chambers Fox presents the long-overdue Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys! on DVD in a sparkling 2.37:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer. The digitally-restored image manages to be mostly blemish-free while maintaining its celluloid integrity. Saturation is remarkably controlled considering the film’s garish palette, though some dialling down of the rich Technicolor hues might’ve not only helped to curb some of the fake-n-bake complexions on display, but improved fine detail as well. Although the accompanying Dolby Digital 4.0 audio isn’t as super-directional as some Fox titles of the period, Cyril J. Mockridge’s score is stereophonic in nature and the surrounds aren’t completely neglected. Dialogue is crisp but it’s worth noting that Joanne Woodward didn’t have the brassy pipes for farce and her voice sounds curiously fragile here.
On another track, find a disposable commentary by film “historian” Aubrey Solomon that pops up at irregular intervals; when he isn’t simply narrating the feature, Solomon says things like “Joan Collins is well-lit.” Occasionally he’ll pedantically identify behind-the-scenes talent by name, but further edification is rarely forthcoming. (Maddeningly, he drops like a hot potato a promising tangent about our extratextual discomfort with Harry Bannerman’s infidelity, since Paul Newman’s onscreen and offscreen wife are one and the same.) As Woodward, Collins, and Newman are still very much alive and there’s certainly no shortage of Leo McCarey authorities out there, the inadequacy of this yakker is almost perverse. Leaving aside Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys!‘ theatrical trailer, the remaining supplements are the standard Fox classics novelties: an animated photo gallery; a 16×9-enhanced, horizontal splitscreen restoration comparison; an interactive pressbook; an advertising gallery; and a vintage press release that’s mainly of interest for including the start and stop dates of production. Available individually or as part of the studio’s 5-disc “Joan Collins Collection.”
THE AWFUL TRUTH
***½/**** Image A Sound B+ Extras D+
starring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Joan Collins, Jack Carson
screenplay by Claude Binyon and Leo McCarey
directed by Leo McCarey
by Bill Chambers The Awful Truth, a much earlier Leo McCarey comedy (one for which he won the first of his two Best Director Oscars), is a little more low-key than the screwball farces lead Cary Grant went on to star in for Howard Hawks. Here, Grant plays a distrustful husband who gets into an overheated fight with his wife (the singular Irene Dunne) that ends in threats of divorce, and since Mr. Warriner is too stubborn to call Mrs. Warriner’s bluff, the couple actually goes through with it. With the dissolution of their marriage to be finalized in 90 days, the soon-to-be former spouses conspire to get the other to say “uncle” by forging new relationships with hapless suitors. Despite having an idiot plot that’s been deprived of its freshness by years of imitation on sitcoms and in other movies (thanks to Hawks’s alterations to “The Front Page”, His Girl Friday wound up rehashing The Awful Truth but three years later, with Grant and Ralph Bellamy playing characters at similar cross-purposes), The Awful Truth remains an agreeable piece of fluff not without its distinguishing highlights–Grant getting into a jujitsu fight among them. As Mrs. Warriner’s paramour, Bellamy does his dumb-hick routine, which is disarmingly gentle as usual (the movie seems to drop him before the third act because it realizes it’s just kicking a puppy), and the ending’s lovely, wistful quality is a pleasant reversal of genre expectations; Duck Soup the exception that proves the rule, McCarey always was a bit too sentimental for the nihilistic, fever-pitch tempo of the door-slammer.
THE DVD
Released in 2003, Columbia TriStar’s fullscreen black-and-white DVD transfer is an uneven affair. The grainy image is consistently acceptable, but the occasionally obnoxious print deterioration, which sacrifices crispness of contrast, speaks to a lackadaisical restoration effort. Though the 2.0 mono sound is adequate, it’s too quiet at reference-level volume. Beat-up trailers for Born Yesterday, His Girl Friday, and It Happened One Night round out the disc.
- Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys!
107 minutes; NR; 2.37:1 (16×9-enhanced); English DD 4.0, French DD 2.0 (Mono), Spanish DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; English, Spanish subtitles; DVD-9; Region One; Fox - The Awful Truth
91 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 2.0 (Mono); CC; English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese subtitles; DVD-5; Region One; Sony
