Customer Reviews

General Died at Dawn [VHS]

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Pretty good Eastern intrigue made before Hollywood had decided how exactly they were going to do it. Therefore it is driven more by character than by plot, unlike the fun but mass-produced programmers that began to follow when the rumblings of world war got louder. TGD@D is sometimes slow, but always atmospheric and well-shot, with indistinctly noirish tension and nifty direction by Lewis Milestone (All Quiet on the Western Front, Halls of Montezuma) bailing it out most of the time. The atmosphere throughout the film is dark and uneasy, not unlike the early portions of Lost Horizon. It captures well the uncertainty of a country in conflict. It also is an excellent example of how dark and mysterious, exotic and almost spooky that we thought China was in the mid-30's era, when Fu Manchu was at his most popular and our own country was none-too secure, within or from without.

The plot has to do with mercenary Gary Cooper initially failing in his mission to secure guns for local Chinese rebels battling warlord Akim Tamiroff, and then trying to rectify the situation. Along the way there are captures and escapes, duplicitous motives, romance, redemption and death. The downbeat ending is probably the best-known part of the movie and underscores Hollywood's cautious fascination with Chinese ritualism.

It's a spy noir, and a reasonably enertaining one.

Also reference: The movies mentioned earlier; Spy in Black; Night Train To Munich; Cloak and Dagger (1946).

In THE GENERAL DIED AT DAWN, the unlikeliest of heroes accidentally inflicts fatal stab wounds on despotic Gen. Yang (Tamiroff), but before this occurs, an American mercenary (Cooper) trying to aid a peoples' resistance movement is betrayed by other Occidentals and given over to Yang.

Playwright Clifford Odets' first movie (as writer) was Oscar nominated for Supporting Actor (Tamiroff), Music and Cinematography. Odets also has a cameo here. This film's director, Lewis Milestone, and author John O'Hara have minor roles as reporters.

Parenthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 IMDb viewer poll rating.

(6.8) The General Died at Dawn (1936) - Gary Cooper/Madeleine Carroll/Akim Tamiroff/Dudley Digges/Porter Hall/Bill Frawley/J.M. Kerrigan/Philip Ahn/John O'Hara (uncredited: Sarah Edwards/Russell Hicks/Lewis Milestone/Clifford Odets)

I was looking forward to this movie. The General Died at Dawn has a great title and seemed to have great potential...money smugglers in a noble cause for freedom, an exotic villain, the possibility of a dangerous nighttime rail journey through China, a tough, good-guy hero and a luscious femme fatale who might have a conscience. I should have known better as soon as I saw the screenplay was by Clifford Odets.

The film has its moments. O'Hara (Gary Cooper) is on a dangerous mission to bring money for arms through territory controlled by the warlord General Yang (Akim Tamiroff) to Shanghai. The money will be used to buy arms and overthrow the General, freeing the peasants he treats like animals. But Yang's agents find out about the money and use a weak, dying man with no moral fiber, Peter Perrie (Porter Hall), and his daughter, Judy (Madeleine Carroll), to lure O'Hara onto a train. The train is stopped; the General and his men board and capture O'Hara. He realizes he was set up by Judy, and Judy realizes she loves O'Hara more than she loves her father. The General gives the money to Perrie with instructions to deliver it to a gun seller who will then deliver vitally needed arms to the General. But Perrie has other ideas. From then, it's a long slog centered on the money. The General wants it back. O'Hara wants it back. Judy's father wants to keep it and has hidden it cleverly. Mr Wu (Dudley Digges), who is working against the General and who had employed O'Hara, wants it. The obnoxious, often drunken gun seller (William Frawley) wants it. A smarmy opportunist, Mr. Leach (J. M. Kerrigan), wants it. With all these possibilities for action, adventure, double crosses, clever repartee and romance, however, we only get Odets' words. Here's a sample:

"I'd do anything I could to give you a kick in the pants," says O'Hara to the General on the train after the General has captured him. "To my jaundiced eye you're a social disease. I don't like your disposition. I don't like your friends. I don't like your politics and I don't like your hat. Your faithful dozen [guards] may stick with you, but you're still a small noise at the end of a parade." "I have a great destiny," the General says. "So have I," says O'Hara, "but mine's tied up with millions of people. Yours is tied up with yourself and the power of machine guns. Your belief is in your own very limited self. Mine is in people. One day they'll all walk on the earth, straight, proud; men, not animals, with no fear of hunger or poverty. That's not so bad to die for, sweetheart." With this kind of self-conscious wordiness, the movie grinds to a halt just as quickly as the train did.

By the end of the Thirties, Clifford Odets was considered one of America's greatest playwrights. He wrote Waiting for Lefty, Awake and Sing and Golden Boy, all Broadway smashes loaded with social conscience. It's not by chance that they are rarely revived except as interesting historical artifacts. I've seen Golden Boy in a solid, professional production. It's obvious stuff now. He later did a handful of screenplays (this was his first, to earn serious money). The best is probably The Sweet Smell of Success in 1957. For all of his wordy passion for social justice, he was one of those who, when hauled before the Congressional committees investigating commies in Hollywood, named names. He just slowly drifted into irrelevance.

Every time the General Died at Dawn looks like it might start moving it gets bogged down in exposition. Still, the secondary performances give it a good deal of interest. Dudley Digges doesn't sound like an elderly Chinese man at all, but he projects a nice combination of avuncular toughness. Akim Tamiroff with fake eyelids seems to be enjoying himself. Porter Hall with that weak chin and large eyes is perfect for spinelessness and he carries it off with skill. William Frawley, unfortunately, overacts the drunken, loudmouthed arms seller to the point where he's just irritating. The prize, however, goes to J. M. Kerrigan as Mr. Leach, the opportunist. He plays a sweaty, fat little man in a dark straw hat, with a bow tie and a boutonniere, who wears his pants pulled way above his belly. He steals every scene he's in.

And Gary Cooper and Madeleine Carroll? They do the best they can considering she has to look lovingly at Cooper while Cooper has to say lines like these: "We could have made wonderful music together. We could have worked and made ourselves a circle of light and warmth." The movie is out on VHS and is part of the DVD package The Gary Cooper Collection. The DVD is clean but a little soft. There are no extras.

Typical "cloak & dagger" film made way back when. Cooper walking around with a monkey was dumb. Madaline Carroll was beautiful. The russian actor made up to be Chinese, not good. Poor story line.

Thanks to the cast of characters in here, led by the wise-cracking Gary Cooper and a pretty Madeline Carroll, this was a pretty interesting film.

Some of the minor characters also made this movie to fun, notably Akim Tamiroff's "General Yang," as well as Bill Frawley''s "Brighton;" Porter Hall's "Peter Prrie/Peter Martin" and Dudley Digges' creepy busybody "Mr. Wu."

Nowaday, Digges and Tamiroff's characters would be played by real Asian actors and would be a bit more credible. Also, in a real-life situation, Cooper would have been eliminated early on after the bad guys had gotten his money.

Nevertheless, credibility issues aside (which you have to do in most movies, anyway, old and new), the good dialog, interesting faces, characters and cinematography all make this movie a lot better than I expected. I'd like to acquire this on DVD, without having to get a package deal via a set of discs.

The stoic and handsome Gary Cooper playing American mercenary O'Hara, becomes involved in an attempted overthrow of the corrupt, despotic Chinese General Yang played by Akim Tamiroff by acting as a courier carrying money to purchase arms for the opposition.

Yang, also desperate for money and arms, has also recruited foreigners to aid his cause including the father-daughter team played by Porter Hall and the alluring blonde Madeleine Carroll. Carroll lures Cooper aboard a train headed for Shanghai where she helps separate him from his cache of money. Cooper is captured and imprisoned by Yang.

All the while, Chinese patriots sympathetic to Cooper's cause plot to free him and reaquire the funds.

While the film is a tad too melodramatic director Lewis Milestone does an effective job in his portrayal of this excerpt in history. Of note is the casting of William Frawley, better known as Fred Mertz from TV's classic "I Love Lucy", playing Brighton the gruff, tough talking arms dealer.

The great age of the Hollywood Studio system allowed gifted directors,like Lewis Milestone, to take simple, banal stories and to transform them into intelligent, involving cinema. It is more a director's film than an actor's film, in spite of the presence of Gary Cooper and Madelaine Carrol. One is never sure whether to be frightened or amused at Akim Tamirov's version of the stereotypical Chinese. Yet the whole is far greater than the sum of its creaky parts.
In an amazing series of shots, a white cue ball becomes a door knob, acting as a visual bridge that flawlessly joins two disparate scenes. Milestone uses an early split screen effect to inform us seamlessly of all of the goings-on in the various thread of the plot. And one is almost thankful for the cheap Paramount sets, gauzily overlaid with dense fog from the various machines wafting across the studio interiors. There is much to be learned from this film and anyone who suggests they know film who is not aware of this gem is either a sycophant or a fool.