Auteur (producer/director, sometimes writer) Howard Hawks drank and hunted and made some movies with William Faulkner: the two very entertaining Bogart/Bacall vehicles "To Have and Have Not" and "The Big Sleep," and the hideous Joan Collins mess "Land of the Pharaohs." I didn't know what to expect when I pressed "play" on their first (1933) collaboration "Today We Live." It seemed a very soap opera title and for quite a ways in, it seemed to be a turgid romance with a young Joan Crawford and three men (Gary Cooper, Robert Young, Franchot Tone) set in the English countryside, A.D. 1916.

Crawford, who seemed to me to be emulating Greta Garbo, began in high tremolo, receiving a telegram from the war office that her father had been killed and going ahead with the previously scheduled meeting with the rich American who was renting the family manse (Cooper). She is brave, but can hardly bear a stranger pawing at her father's guns and pipes. (Time out: Why is a rich, single American renting a British country mansion in 1916 with war rationing and all? If the family home is being rented out, why are none of the father's personal effects packed away? And from what planet—not to mention era—did Crawford's very striking dress come?)

The two boys with whom she grew up (Young and Tone) are going off the Royal Navy, leaving Crawford in a rather grand cottage on the same estate as the house Cooper is renting. With practically no preliminaries Cooper is declaring his love for Crawford and Crawford for Cooper (though they don't have much in the way of chemistry together... or time). Having discovered that civilization is in danger and loving England because he loves its daughter (that is Crawford, remember?), he is going to join the RAF, and the declaration of love is a farewell.

Almost as abruptly as the romance kicks in, Cooper is reported dead. The boys are back and Crawford agrees to marry Young, though he seems more like a frisky puppy than a great love. The only love chemistry is in the smouldering looks Franchot Tone supplies, and I thought she was making an odd choice between her playmates. It was not until the very last scene in the movie that I realized Tone was supposed to be Crawford's brother.

I don't think it is a plot spoiler to report that the first-billed star cannot have disappeared so early. The report of the American RAF flyer's death was inaccurate... but now Crawford is with Young, seemingly without benefit of clergy, though it is hard to believe that with their (characters') background they were "living in sin." However, there was a war on, and elsewhere Faulkner wrote sadly of women who were "three-day wives and three-year widows," and the movie was made before the Production Code stamped nonmarital sex off American screens.

Everything thus far summarized precedes the beginning of Faulkner's story ("The turnaround"). That opens with the American captain questioning an American M.P. why he is propping up a British lieutenant. The answer is that the very drunk lieutenant refused to move out of the street and was blocking a truck convoy.

The Americans, the M.P. particularly volubly so, express their contempt for what they assume is plying the harbor with small boats carrying dispatches, or napkins, or something from admiral to admiral while the American fly-boys are going out into harm's way every day. They decide to take the Brit out to experience the war. He acquits himself well and expresses admiration that they flagrantly don't deserve for the expertise of the flyers.

Then the American captain goes out on the rinky-dinky boat and finds that they do leave the harbor. In fact, they are torpedo boats and all but ram German ships to deliver their torpedoes. In Faulkner's story the American is chastened by discovering what is involved and that's the end.

In the booklength interview Hawks on Hawks, there is little about the movie, but Hawks relates that he was ready to make a movie with the three young male stars (i.e., Cooper, Tone, Young) when the studio (MGM) told him he had to use Joan Crawford, even though there was no female role in the story or script. This made clear why there is a lengthy (dare I say lackadaisical?) romance prologue to the war movie.

Although the love triangle (that I thought was a quadrilateral) was tedious and unbelievable (and while I'm at it, Tone and, especially, Young are not at all convincing as Brits; I can suspend disbelief in Crawford's nationality and social status), I have to admit that it provides motivation beyond misunderstanding of British culture for the captain to want to humiliate the paramour or husband of the woman he loved. It is also an improvement for Tone to invite Cooper along on a boat ride after hearing of Young's plane ride than for both trips being arranged by Cooper and Young before either wild ride. Tone intuits what Cooper thinks. (Indeed, he is the intuitive one, always knowing what Crawford feels, too.)

Both the plane and boat ride turn out to be very dangerous. Young more than proves himself. The young Gary Cooper was already Gary Cooper, Hero, and does not have to prove himself. His assistance in sinking a German ship is less than Young's feats in the air with a machine gun.

The action sequences seem very realistic with flimsy torpedo boats and WWI aircraft. The gallantry flows to such an extent that I had to remind myself that the movie was not propaganda for a US/UK alliance in either world war.

Like the Brecht/Lang collaboration Hangmen Also Die, this Faulkner/Hawks one eventually gets interesting, though I suspect that (post-)modern audiences lack the patience to wait that long for the payoffs.

Robert Young made a lot of movies during the 1930s, and may have "lost the girl" more often than Ralph Bellamey did. Though it was years before his paternal and avuncular tv roles, Young was too old for the part (Claude is 18 in Faulkner's story, and Young was 26 when the movie was shot). Ronnie is explicitly said to be older in both story and movie, and Tone was born two years before Young, so their relative age is right. Tone makes the most vivid impression in the film. This surprised me somewhat, since the only role in which I found memorable before seeing this was the one in "Mutiny on the Bounty."

The intensity of the Tone/Crawford rapport led, offscreen, to the altar, though they did not live happily ever after (they were divorced in 1939). Although the electricity was not running the same way as scripted, I have to say that Crawford was good at the noble, conflicted aristocrat. She was not the hard quasi-monster she became (I mean onscreen) after being dumped by MGM and carving out a second career beginning with "Mildred Pierce."

Cooper was laconic (quel surprise!), but throughout his long career Gary Cooper could convey a lot with his eyes, so it was not necessary to say what he was thinking or feeling. He was fine, if not extraordinary in "Today We Live."

Despite considerable awkwardness and slow development of the love stories, the skirmishes in the air and on the sea are outstanding, and the only film Hawks completed for MGM is also interesting for showing the charisma of the young Franchot Tone, Joan Crawford, and Gary Cooper. Both Faulkner (Pylon and various short stories) and Hawks (Dawn Patrol, Ceiling Zero, Only Angels Have Wings, Air Force) romanticized fly-boys repeatedly... and perhaps bear some of the blame for the common American belief (despite considerable evidence to the contrary, not least the much heralded persistence of the English through the Nazi bombings) that bombing shatters morale so that North Vietnam (or Iraq) could be bombed into submission.


Recommended:
Yes