Eddie and his "Pretensions"

theowinthrop

I agree with another writer on this thread that this should have been a better film - but it suffered from a poor script.

Until he became a major star (possibly Hollywood's biggest star) in the 1940s, Humphrey Bogart was doomed to rarely be more than a movie menace. Prior to HIGH SIERRA and THE MALTESE FALCON a role like his horse trainer in DARK VICTORY or his frightened stooge of a Klan group in BLACK LEGION were rarities. Most of his roles were villains. Against Cagney in THE ROARING TWENTIES and THE OKLAHOMA KID. Against Flynn and Randolph Scott in VIRGINIA CITY. And definitely against Eddie Robinson in KID GALAHAD, THE AMAZING DR. CLITTERHOUSE, and this film. As we will see, it is a little odd that he got cast as a thuggish villain so often (even with his harsh if handsome presence), particularly in a film like BROTHER ORCHID.

For Bogie happened not to be born in a city ghetto like Cagney, or raised in one like Robinson. He was born in an upper class background, the son of a society doctor. In fact, in his early stage training, he appeared in society comedies. Reputedly he was the first young actor to pop up in such a play through the garden doors into the crowded parlor, racket in hand, saying "Tennis, anyone?" Actually (and ironically, as he hated it) the film that closest mirrored his early years was SABRINA, which Bogie did not make until the 1950s.

On the other hand, his more successful fellow Warner Brothers actor, Eddie Robinson, relished a chance to alter his public image. Having achieved movie stardom as Rico in LITTLE CEASAR, Robinson constantly tried to get out of movie gangster-dome. Sometimes he succeeded (like his biography films such as A DISPATCH FROM REUTERS and DR. EHRLICH'S MAGIC BULLET) but more frequently the gangster film was altered - particularly the "comic ones". CLITTERHOUSE, for example, has a whimsical premise of a society doctor gathering material for his opus on the criminal mind by becoming one. Better examples are THE WHOLE TOWN IS TALKING, whereas a befuddled little clerk is constantly dragged into crime by his resemblance to a crime kingpin, or A SLIGHT CASE OF MURDER (wherein beer baron Remy Marko has a whole slew of problems to straighten out in one afternoon).

BROTHER ORCHID takes off on a different slant regarding Robinson. A Roumanian (and Jewish) immigrant, Emmanuel Rosenberg happened to be pretty well read and educated, and continued showing interests in books and art all through his life. He was far from the "Ricos" he played on screen. Put another way: when he played "Wolf Larson" in THE SEA WOLF, the character personifies "Social Darwinism". Robinson could have critiqued "Social Darwinism".

Naturally this culture business may have amused the Warners, and they had already lampooned it in an earlier Robinson film LITTLE GIANT, wherein (again looking for class) Robinson discovers that social position does not make a person nice or decent. There it was the family of Berton Churchill, all seeing him as a sucker to unload worthless stock on. In BROTHER ORCHID it is a gangster who finds that it is a whole change in his life's attitudes that is needed to gain real class.

Robinson does a "Johnny Torrio" Act. He leaves his enterprises in the hands of his able lieutenant Bogart, while he takes a long trip to try to acquire class. Instead he slowly gets ripped off by every con-man and salesman who sees him coming. Finally he returns from Europe, and decides to resume his old job. But Bogie is well planted in the seat of power (as Al Capone was when Torrio retired), and Robinson finds his girlfriend (Anne Southern) has married rancher Ralph Bellamy (sort of a flip side to Bellamy's Oklahoma lover in THE AWFUL TRUTH). Bogie, seeing Robinson is trying to force his way back, has the latter taken for a ride and shot. But he is dumped on the grounds of a monastery run by Donald Crisp. Robinson is nursed back to health, and slowly begins to appreciate the finer things of a quiet, spiritual life.

The problem of the script is that Robinson's second half should have emphasized his discovering spirituality. Actually the script began to do that at the best moment in the film, when Robinson is almost thrown out of the order due to violating a rule, and protests that it was just a momentary mistake on his part. Crisp decides to give him another chance. His growing abilities to work with flowers in the monastic garden (the title is his name due to his abilities with orchids) could have been used to expand on. Instead the film has to resume the gang warfare - the monastery's income is threatened by Bogie's mob, and Robinson (with Southern and Bellamy's help) beat Bogie's men. That's fine, but it threw aside the triumph of a real type of class that Robinson was finding. Possibly had the writers seen fit to have Bogart avoiding capture by the police because of Robinson and the monastery giving him a temporary sanctuary the story line could have been straightened out, with Bogart wondering in the end if he had really gotten the better of the deal. But unfortunately that was not done here.

It is a moderately entertaining film, but it might have been a more meaningful one.

score 7/10

theowinthrop 9 January 2009

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw2004121/