Archie Mayo

Confirm or Deny

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Mitch types while a locked up Jennifer tries to persuade him not to file his story

War is hell but also kind of fun in Confirm or Deny, one of a series of movies made by Hollywood when America was still a neutral power using emotional blackmail to counter isolationism and persuade the country to join the fray. Eventually Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s insane decision to declare war on the USA would render films like this redundant, but in 1941 they were turning up regularly, all of them positioning the UK, Britain, England, call it what you like, as the home of a doughty breed, people just like its intended American audiences, who needed all the help they could get in their hour of need. This is a remarkably … Read more

Moontide

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Anna and Bobo hold each other

One of the little joys of Moontide is trying to work out which bits of it were directed by Fritz Lang. His name isn’t on the screen credits but he was the original director, until he was fired after falling out with its star, Jean Gabin. Ironically, it was Gabin who had campaigned to get Lang attached to the film in the first place, which shows he had quite a lot of pull in Hollywood for someone who might have been France’s biggest star but was unknown in America when he arrived there to escape the Nazis. Archie Mayo gets the director credit but it’s surely Lang behind the camera for the opening … Read more