Movie of the Week: The White Sister (1933) and Night Flight (1933)

This week, we’ve got a Clark Gable-Helen Hayes double feature: The White Sister (1933) and Night Flight (1933).

In The White Sister, Clark Gable is Giovanni Severa, a pilot in the Italian Air Force. He meets Angela (Hayes), an aristocratic daughter of a prince (Lewis Stone). Her father opposes their romance but they steal moments together anyway. When Giovanni goes off to fight in the 1914-1918 war, Angela waits for him so they can get married. When she learns he has died in combat, she knows she will never love again and joins a convent.

Clark is quite dashing here, in a uniform and all full of romantic prose. It seems an odd choice though for MGM to plunk him in this role after he shot to fame playing the rogue in A Free Soul and Red Dust.

I don’t know what it is about Helen Hayes, but I just don’t buy into her being a love interest for Clark. Something about her comes across as being matronly. She was only a few months older than Clark in reality, but she comes across as his mother. They have zero spark.

I had not seen this film in several years; it’s not one I revisit often. Upon watching it, I remembered why. It’s too long, it’s too prose-y, and it’s just….SAD. There’s all this death and sadness and grief. Clark and Helen are torn apart and brought together and torn apart. {Spoilers} Soon after Helen learns the truth that her mother had killed herself years earlier, her father dies in an automobile accident that she blames herself for, then she thinks Clark has died in the war. Clark suffers greatly in a prison camp for years, is repeatedly thrown into solitary confinement, is almost burned to death then narrowly escapes—only to find that his true love has “married herself to God” and become a nun, and pushes him away.

Her refusal of him after he pleads with her to give up the church and run off with him is oh-so-poetic: “I can’t say anymore now, the rest I will say to God in my prayers…” So after all they have been through they resign to just be miserable. Oh, then he dies. Grim, grim, grim.

The film was based on the 1901 novel by F. Marion Crawford and was essentially a remake of a remake, as it had been filmed twice before, in 1923 (with Lillian Gish and Ronald Colman) and in 1915.

Nutshell review here

 

Night Flight is not much of a “Clark Gable film.” He is just part of an all-star ensemble here, and a small part of it. The film is a tale of 24 dramatic hours in the Air Mail industry, where pilots risk their lives every day flying through the pitch black night with limited instruments and no lights guiding the way. This time, it’s a polio vaccine needed at a children’s hospital in South America. Gable is Jules, a pilot who has lost his way somewhere in the dark, while his wife (Helen Hayes again) waits at home for him and grows more and more frantic. Gable’s scenes are limited to a cockpit.

You can’t beat the cast of this film. MGM really shoved everyone who was available into it: Clark, Helen, Myrna Loy, Lionel Barrymore, John Barrymore and Robert Montgomery. Despite the cast, the film overall is a bit of a snore. It’s also very dated. Modern audiences don’t understand the tension over pilots flying in the dark.

Again, although they don’t have any actual scenes together, I find Helen Hayes unbelievable as his love interest. She’s his wife here, busying herself at home waiting for him to return, swooning over his picture. I would have better believed Myrna Loy as his wife.

The film paired Clark  with renowned producer David O’ Selznick, whom he would later memorably work with on Gone with the Wind.  David was all about doing things big and bold and his last ensemble piece, the classic Dinner at Eight, was a big hit. Night Flight did not perform as expected, however. Despite earning a decent profit of $175,000, MGM was disappointed with the returns, expecting more from a film that demanded so many of its big name stars. After the flop of this film and the disastrous production of their next joint effort–Dancing Lady, Clark’s distrust of Selznick grew and simmered on the back burner for years…undoubtedly one of the factors in him not wanting to play Rhett Butler under Selznick’s guiding hand.

Since Clark is in a cockpit the whole time, the best scenes are given to the Barrymores. The film overall is rather a dud, but it’s a treat seeing brothers John and Lionel in scenes together. Really, Clark is wasted here. His name on this one is for window dressing–the part could have been handled by a much smaller player. I suppose though they needed his name to round out their “all star roster.”

{Spoiler} We can safely say that Clark’s two pairings with Helen Hayes were not the best for him off screen (neither were blockbusters) or on screen (he dies in both!)

Nutshell review is here

Full review is here