Another Dawn (1937)

Very Cool!!!

Fresh and Exciting

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Fine movie for what it is but 'what it is' won't be to everyone's tastes. Leonard Maltin's Film Guide calls it an adventure story but that's not really accurate. There's very little action in this film. This is a melodrama, a soaper even, as evidenced by the fact it stars Kay Francis. She was one of the queens of the melodrama in the '30s, often torn between two men as she is here. The plot is trite. Francis plays a woman who lost her pilot fiancé in an accident. She meets honorable and all-around-swell-guy Ian Hunter, who quickly falls in love with her and proposes. She marries him despite not being in love with him. Later she meets hotshot pilot Errol Flynn and, well, you can figure the rest. For his part, Flynn is as charming as ever and has good chemistry with Francis. The highlight of the film is the Erich Korngold score, which makes things seem more exciting than they ever really are. A nice production, great actors, and a beautiful score are nothing to dismiss. Still, how much you enjoy this will depend on how much you enjoy romantic melodramas from the 1930s, where everyone stares off at some point and recites a soliloquy like they're in a stage play.

. . . which are radically different than the American martial marital customs. In ANOTHER DAWN, the screenwriters explore what happens when a Captain gives up his pastime of playing solitaire in favor of regular coitus with his commanding officer's wife. Most every time such a thing comes up on an American military base, the junior officer is defrocked of his command, serves a lengthy sentence in a federal penitentiary, gets dishonorably discharged, and loses whatever government pension he's accrued. That's why it's Standard Operating Procedure for the American Brass to keep it zipped, except when they visit Officers-and-Gentlemen's Clubs. As ANOTHER DAWN illustrates, the British response to this exact same triangular equation is the polar opposite to the U.S. military's. The Brit cuckolded commanding officer feels duty-bound to immediately assign himself to a suicide mission, especially if it's one for which he's ill-suited. It's his corpse that counts, as the Primary Objective here is to clear a glide path for the top commander's wayward wife to be able to enjoy her future jollies with less guilt and apprehension. This is why her upper lip is always so stiff at her husband's funeral.

Offsetting the awkward and embarrassing elements of the triangular love story are Korngold's gloriously exotic (if at times obtrusive) score and some occasional poetry in the dialogue. And, for the last two minutes of the film - finally - inspired direction from William Dieterle who, as we know from his better films (Devil and Daniel Webster), was perfectly capable of such things.

Stodgy and over talky movie that falls between two stools--being neither satisfying as a romantic tale or an action movie.It largely unfolds in a British army outpost in Mesopotamia commanded by Ian Hunter who ,while holidaying in England ,falls in love with and marries a vivacious American widow,played by Kay Francis.On returning to the outpost a relationship develops between her and the second in command-a dashing Errol Flynn.This being the age of the stiff upper lip nobility and self sacrifice rule the day. There is one brisk desert fight between the British and the rebel Arabs but otherwise this is a picture that unfolds in drawing room chat and trembling lower lips are the order of the day.Flynn was always at his best in action rather than dialogue and while looking suitably dashing is simply dull, a state Francis is not good enough to attain being largely inert. The strong point of the movie,and the reason for my heading of this review is the striking score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold who used its themes in his majestic and still unduly neglected Violin Concerto When a score carries its main emotional weight then you have a movie which is sadly lacking in other departments Ignore the movie--track down the Concerto instead