THE GENERAL DIED AT DAWN: Blu-ray (Paramount, 1936) Kino Lorber

Disregarding historical facts, glacially paced, and lacking in virtually any great thrills to buttress its vogue as a spy adventure, director, Lewis Milestone’s The General Died At Dawn (1936) casts America’s stoic ‘every man’, Gary Cooper as O’Hara - a laid-back American mercenary/reporter on a perilous mission to supply arms to the Chinese peasantry in their stance against a mad warlord, Gen. Yang (Akim Tamiroff). Blending romance and mystery, but curiously void of that elusive spark of suspense, The General Died at Dawn proves an old maxim about star-driven Hollywood: namely, and to paraphrase Shakespeare, “the casting’s the thing.” Cooper’s star was, by 1936, Teflon-coated and virtually impervious to a flop. So, the picture not only made money, but received very high praise from the critics as one of the finest movies yet to emerge from the dream factories of yore. And Cooper is, indeed, the picture’s salvation, his chemistry with co-star, Madeleine Carroll, creating what little juicy excitement there is to be gleaned. Carroll is Judy Perrie, whom Coop’s O’Hara ‘cute meets’ on a train bound for Shanghai. Judy’s dad, Peter (Porter Hall), is of the anemic and shifty ilk, conspiring with Yang to devastate the rebels and, in the penultimate highlight, cause Judy to momentarily betray her love for O’Hara. Based on a fictional yarn by Charles G. Booth, further spun into pure fantasy by screenwriter, Clifford Odets, the story toggles back and forth between setting up and tearing down this doe-eyed alliance – both romantic and politically motivated – until the climax when Judy and O’Hara face the unscrupulous Yang with a whisper of vanity. “We could have made wonderful music together”, O’Hara tells Judy.

The General Died at Dawn was one of Paramount’s ‘prestige pictures’ of the year, yet, in hindsight, succinctly typifies every probable pitfall encountered when attempting to make a thriller. Most of the story is a soppy slog, self-involved in expounding its naïve morality with platitudinal morbidity until these characters virtually cease to be anything more or better that mouth-pieces for a cause – and not even an altogether flag-waving effort at that. There are several interminable ‘speeches’ to wade through. And yet, despite such lengthy diatribes, one never gets a genuine sense of who these characters truly are. The acting is hardly wooden, but the situations that these stick-figures with no soul find themselves in, increasingly turns each performance to chalk, or worse, barely forgettable froth once the house lights have come up.  The background of civil unrest, when warlords ruled Chinese territories with a dictatorial hand as venomous rivals, ought to have at least generated foreboding and advancing dread. But no, Gen. Yang is a curious lot, skulking about with wicked intentions, never to materialize as anything beyond vague threats. Coop’s American blunderer is more clumsy than courageous in his liberation efforts. The people’s revolt against Yang is imbued with that ‘can do’ spirit in the noblest and most heroic pursuit of freedom. Too bad, O’Hara is more the cockeyed optimist than realist, and, severely prone to tedious pontificating about the struggles and strive of these oppressed masses, while – of course – remaining immaculate and ‘above it all’.

On a mission to buy guns, O’Hara is undone by – what else? – a woman. Nothing can wreck a guy faster than his fancy for a member of the opposite sex. After betraying him, Judy repents, although we are never entirely certain whether her unusual contrition is an awakening of her own civic responsibility or motivated by the fact, she just thinks O’Hara is a stud. And Peter, who ought to have known better, succumbs to greed, absconding with the money he was supposed to use to buy guns for Yang. From here, the Odets’ screenplay only further muddies the mission until even we lose sight of the paper trail – or rather, ‘money belt’, and Yang, pressed to the edge of his ‘world domination’ psychosis, elects to begins a rash of public executions until the missing loot is recovered. Given all the perilous circumstances at play, The General Died at Dawn ought to have generated at least a modicum of thrills. Tragically, none are forthcoming. Odets, a communist in the thirties (when it was fashionable to be one) has transparently earmarked the picture as his personal pulpit for coarsely deciphered and badly mangled Marxist propaganda – pitching the nobility of class struggle against the oppressive hand of a power-mad dictator. Odets sets up his premise in a heavy-handed opener where a bullish British colonel and his haughty wife are casually bandying humor, regarding Yang’s ruthlessness in collecting taxes. As imperialists, firmly ensconced in their ‘what me worry?’ philosophizing, they are naturally oblivious, to downright disparaging, of the working class and peasants’ plight to be free. Why can’t these poor, dumb bastards just accept their lot in life and move along?

With too many platitudes to expound, Odets puffs out the popinjays with irritating bouts of verbal diarrhea. Coop’s O’Hara, very loosely based on Anglo-Canadian Jewish adventurer, Morris Abraham Cohen, is the most aggravating of the lot. Cooper could usually be counted upon to make his heroes, if not iconic, then at least, agreeable.  Alas, even the enigma of his on-screen congeniality gets crushed beneath the weight of Odets’ harried harangues. The, today sadly forgotten, Madeleine Carroll, a stunningly handsome woman who could hold her own with the big stars of her day, gets bulldozed into submission herein; first, by her father’s whims, then, in a wholly unconvincing conversion, swayed to back O’Hara.  The worst miscalculation is Akim Tamiroff (an actor whom I otherwise adore) as Gen. Yang – made up with heavy prosthetics a la make-up artist, Charles Gemora, as the unpersuasive caricature of a Chinese warlord of the ‘ah-so’ Charlie Chan ilk. Miraculously, Tamiroff was Oscar-nominated for this performance. The support cast is so marginal, so grotesquely unimpressive, and so willfully discarded, except as background furniture with a pulse, it all but makes Dudley Digges’ Mr. Wu the fizzled-out highlight of these lesser. Counterintuitive to the plot, which flops back and forth under the influence of Odets’ communist manifesto, is Victor Milner’s sublime B&W noir-styled cinematography. It always impresses and was, in fact, Oscar-nominated as well.

Given Odets’ proclivity for proletarianism, he has completely sacrificed the spirit of this adventure tale, but also, even his social conscience; the preposterousness of its political activism, neither horrifying nor sobering, and certainly, never to be confused with the picture’s value as pure entertainment.  As Hollywood’s foremost leftist, Odets ought to have recognized that the claque, then as now, who would continue to back his world view on capitalism as the root of all evil, would also not be so easily satisfied by mere nuggets of that communist doctrine, reconstituted as weak-kneed triumph over, and, disseminated against the soon-to-be extinguished Chinese warlord.   Besides, it is the Chinese whom Odets has targeted for extinction – not Coop’s crusader who champions democracy, as in the kind he left behind in a free and capitalist-loving America. And Tamiroff’s demonic despot translates as far more the escapee and/or reject from the opéra comique than as a dark, if senselessly political deviant. Even as his tenuous hold on the advancing rebellion simpers into extinction, Yang’s source of capital to buy guns and warriors devoted to his payroll/though never the cause, flies in the face of the picture’s clear-cut contempt for mass oppression. O’Hara’s mission, derailed by Yang’s hireling and his indecisive daughter, thereafter expediently unravels in a brisk canter of misdirection. Alas, the interminable game of ‘button/button’ played with O’Hara’s magically disappearing/reappearing money belt grows tiresome, its appeal resting on a sort of ‘who’s on first?’ mind game that lumbers into the picture’s only so-so and ho-hum climax. Odets’ dogma must have seemed dynamic and flamboyant to audiences in 1936. But viewed today, it is a bogged down and botched affair at best, anchored to its ‘teachable’ moments; the audience, repeatedly beaten over the brain with the author’s mangled Marxist philosophizing.

We’ll give The General Died at Dawn minor props for its densely packed situations, book-ended in wall-to-wall dialogue. Odets does not miss a second to shoe-horn his platitudes a plenty so as to never let the audience a moment’s respite from the ‘message’ of the piece. Relying on his ‘lamb bites wolf’ scenario to buoy the action, Coop’s O’Hara gets his share of digs in against Tamiroff’s Yang, momentarily beguiled by the sexy stranger he ought never to have trusted in the first place.  Belting Carroll’s cooing mistress one in the chops was not exactly celebrated as manly behavior in ’36 – and would all but be considered a cause celebre to get the picture banned by today’s ‘Me Too’ movement. Nevertheless, it illustrates that men of a certain ilk and generation had their pressure points no gal ought to push. Incidentally, Coop’ swings at Carroll’s left cheek. She later nurses her right. Evidently, some time passed between the point of contact and the retake, shot hours, or maybe even days later, to continue to scene. But from this inauspicious moment of sexual unease, The General Died at Dawn falls into an interminable and unwieldy mobile of intrigues and counter intrigues, more confounding than exhilarating. Arch-liberal, Lewis Milestone’s direction reveals some creative ingenuity along the way. But this is hardly his best work, even it if remains handsomely mounted with some exceptional camera trickery – and early use of the split screen - to recommend it.

The General Died at Dawn arrives on Blu-ray via Kino Lorber’s alliance with Universal Home Video – the current custodians of the pre-war Paramount back catalog. This one is advertised as being derived from a ‘new 4K master’, and while the results are quite good, they appear to mimic the stellar work achieved on Uni’s previously released DVD incarnation from 2002. Without question, the 1080p advances over the DVD. How could it not, with 6 times the resolution of its predecessor. But the age-related speckling and surface scratches that were on the DVD are more prominently present in exactly the same spots on this Blu-ray. So, if this is a ‘new 4K scan’, then Uni has invested nothing more since to eradicated the damage inherent in the original elements used in this remastering effort. Nevertheless, the image is refined, sporting deep, solid blacks, a modicum of film grain looking indigenous to its source and excellent contrast. So, no complaints. We get a 2.0 mono audio, very nicely represented, and, with a new audio commentary from Lee Gambin and Rutanya Alda who offer insight into the making of this movie that is well worth the price of admission. The only other extra is a badly worn theatrical trailer. Bottom line:  The General Died at Dawn is a weighty tome to Marxist virtue. Lewis Milestone skillfully maneuvers his camera through some minor intrigues and major hiccups that, ironically, divest the picture of its powerful message. This 4K remastering is solid, with minor caveats.  Otherwise, recommended for Cooper completionists only.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

2.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

4.5

EXTRAS

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