![\"\"](\"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/LeftHandGod.gif\" "\\"LeftHandGod\\"")
<\/a>Film: Very Good<\/p>\nDVD Transfer: Excellent<\/p>\n
DVD Extras: Good<\/p>\n
Label: Twilight Time<\/p>\n
Region: 0 (NTSC)<\/p>\n
Released: October, 2011<\/p>\n
Genre: Drama \/ Romance<\/p>\n
Synopsis: An American mercenary pilot masquerades as a priest to evade a local warlord, but finds his situation complicated when a nurse begins to fall for him.<\/p>\n
Special Features: 8-page colour booklet with liner notes by film historian Julie Kirgi \/ Isolated stereo music track \/ Limited to 3000 copies, available via Screen Archives Entertainment<\/a> only.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Review:<\/p>\n The Left Hand of God<\/strong> is an extremely peculiar drama, partially due to screenwriter Alfred Hayes\u2019 decision to focus almost exclusively on character scenes in spite of the marginal Chinese Revolution setting during the late forties; and the perceptible haze of sadness surrounding its main cast: this is Humphrey Bogart\u2019s third-last film, and Gene Tierney\u2019s career swan song prior to a struggle with mental illness that kept her off-screen for seven years.<\/p>\n The story of downed U.S. mercenary pilot Jim Carmody masquerading as a missionary to avoid recapture from an oppressive Chinese warlord could\u2019ve been fleshed out with a few backstories, plus grander presentations of the warlord\u2019s marauding troupes worming their way through nearby villages, but director Edward Dmytryk kept the camera on Bogart, following his character as he manages to avert suspicion among the villagers, and an American doctor and his wife (E.G. Marshall and Agnes Moorehead, respectively), and copes with the mutual love that develops between Carmody and nurse \/ widow Anne Scott (Tierney).<\/p>\n Jim copes<\/em> rather than struggles<\/em>, and he\u2019s almost stoic about the eventual confrontation with his one-time savior Mieh Yang (Lee J. Cobb), the smiling warlord who teases Jim with crap shoots for money and opportunities of freedom during a 3-year term as Yang\u2019s second in command. Jim isn\u2019t particularly bothered by Anne\u2019s obvious turmoil in falling in love with a priest, and he seems oddly indifferent to the possibility that Dr. Sigman (Marshall, dusted with extra grey hair powder to goose his age) may suspect he\u2019s a phony.<\/p>\n Less grand (production-wise) than the studio\u2019s other Asian biggies \u2013 producer Buddy Adler\u2019s Inn of the Sixth Happiness<\/a><\/strong> (1958), and the mush-fest Love is a Many-Splendored Thing<\/a><\/strong> (1955) – most of the sets are compact, leading one to suspect the film was never meant to be more than a mid-level A film starring two aging movie icons. Left Hand<\/strong> could easily work as a play, but Dmytryk and cinematographer Franz Planer (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea<\/strong>) did invest care in arranging shots to maintain character intimacy in spite of the wide \u2018scope ratio.<\/p>\n A few flashback sequences break up the largely indoor scenes, and Jim\u2019s trek to a nearby Protestant mission also introduces a new threat \u2013 exposure and vengeance by the church \u2013 but Jim deflates the whole tension by admitting he\u2019s a phony to Reverend Marvin (unbilled veteran character actor Robert Burton). It\u2019s another strange turn in Hayes\u2019 adaptation of William Barrett\u2019s novel, but it makes sense in terms of keeping the drama focused on Jim, and keeping the plot train headed towards the eventual showdown between himself and Yang. The final battle is again reduced to a simple scene (a crap game), and while the forbidden romance never blossoms into the heated union we all want (and one that would\u2019ve been realized in a contemporary adaptation), the ending is satisfying; with a modicum of imagination, one can believe Anne and Jim could\u2019ve corresponded soon afterwards, causing her to return back to the U.S. where they can be free to indulge in pure passion.<\/p>\n The cast is generally strong in spite of the film\u2019s emotional low key, and Lee J. Cobb as Yang is unsurprisingly theatrical, giving the rogue some charm, and assuaging the obvious political incorrectness of having a Caucasian actor with an east coast drawl play an Chinese warlord. (The script explains his colloquial-peppered tongue due to an education in America, but it\u2019s all scriptorial bunk.)<\/p>\n Film historian Julie Kirgo provides a compact history of the film\u2019s production, but it\u2019s more of a poignant tribute to Fox producer Adler, an unsung hero of dramas involving love, war, and often exotic Asian locations. His work ranks as some of the best melodrama of the fifties, and production values were top-notch; Fox may have been able to boast its image with the Color by Deluxe and CinemaScope brands, but Adler\u2019s roster of Oscar-nominated and winning dramas helped build the studio into the more muscular player among Hollywood\u2019s majors.<\/p>\n Twilight Time\u2019s DVD presentation offers a crisp anamorphic transfer with rich colours and one sparkling Dolby Surround mix. There\u2019s also an isolated score track of Victor Young\u2019s elegant music (with some pre-recording studio chatter), but the music\u2019s fidelity is indeed better in the film\u2019s original surround sound mix. Fox\u2019 engineers went a little nutty with their panned dialogue tracks whenever sideline characters even leaned<\/em> towards the frame\u2019s center, but in terms of music, sound effects, and dialogue, the Fox mixes really exploited the power of directional sound. Basses boom, and the fidelity of Young\u2019s instrumentation is stunning, making this particular title one to play loud through the home system.<\/p>\n . <\/span><\/p>\n Postcript<\/strong><\/p>\n Bogart, who had previously appeared in Dmytryk\u2019s The Caine Mutiny<\/strong> (also filmed by cinematographer Planer) in 1954 would end his career with The Desperate Hours<\/strong> (1955) and The Harder They Fall<\/strong> (1956) before succumbing to cancer. Tierney\u2019s long tenure at Fox included many of the studio\u2019s best genre efforts, including Laura<\/strong> (1944), Leave Her to Heaven<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(1945), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir<\/a><\/strong> (1947), and The Egyptian<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(1954).<\/p>\n Dmytryk\u2019s other glossy \u2018scope films include the westerns Broken Lance<\/strong><\/a> (1954) and Warlock <\/strong><\/a>(1959), the first-rate war film The Young Lions<\/strong> (1958), and MGM\u2019s attempt to recreate the magic of Gone with the Wind<\/a><\/strong> in the troubled Raintree County <\/strong>(1957).<\/p>\n Although Adler didn\u2019t producer Barrett\u2019s other novel, Lilies of the Field<\/strong>, into a film (Adler died in 1960), notables among his 14 Fox productions are Violent Saturday<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0(1955), House of Bamboo <\/a><\/strong>(1955), Bust Stop<\/strong> (1956), Anastasia <\/a><\/strong>(1956), and the similarly religion vs. love potboiler Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison<\/a><\/strong> (1957).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n .<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a9 2011 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n <\/p>\n External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n IMDB <\/a>— Soundtrack Album<\/a> — Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Film: Very Good DVD Transfer: Excellent DVD Extras: Good Label: Twilight Time Region: 0 (NTSC) Released: October, 2011 Genre: Drama \/ Romance Synopsis: An American mercenary pilot masquerades as a priest to evade a local warlord, but finds his situation complicated when a nurse begins to fall for him. Special Features: 8-page colour booklet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[885,883,353,358,884],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-Zv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3813"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3813"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19404,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3813\/revisions\/19404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}