After Here Comes the Groom, Capra took nearly a decade off of feature filmmaking. He became a farmer and then entered television and animation work through things like the Bell System Science series before being enticed back by Frank Sinatra to make this adaptation of an Arnold Schulman play. With shades of Capraesque elements sprinkled throughout, this is first and foremost a Sinatra vehicle at a time when he was still wanting to be taken seriously as an actor. And, it's okay. It's not good, and it's not terrible. You can feel the compromises that led to this milquetoast result all over the place.
Sinatra plays Tony, a down and almost out hotelier whose lease on his hotel, the Garden of Eden, is getting to the point where his landlord is sending him eviction notices which his son, Alvin (Eddie Hodges) finds first and tries to smooth things over before Tony gets the news. Tony spends most of his time trying to put on a front of success, which is little more than an excuse to party with his girl Shirl (Carolyn Jones) while trying to get a meeting with Jerry Marks (Keenan Wynn), a promoter with whom Tony wants to get financing for an idea, Disney in Florida (this was before Disney World). In order to cover his bills, Tony calls his brother, Mario (Edward G. Robinson) who runs a successful shop up north, which causes concern in Mario's wife, Sophie (Thelma Ritter), for Alvin's health, leading to them coming down to stay with Tony.
The kind of weirdness at the heart of the film is this balance between Sinatra being a loving father and a swinging cat who then gets matchmade with a friend of Sophie's, Eloise (Eleanor Parker), who lives in Miami nearby. The romantic triangle is so underdone but takes up so much time that it just ends up feeling really odd. There's a central image that Shirl expresses towards Tony that he's a kiwi bird, a flightless bird with small wings that tries to constantly fly but can't get off the ground. So, he wants to move on and be great, but he doesn't have it within him to actually do it. This is a variation of the George Bailey situation from It's a Wonderful Life except there was never a question that George had the capability to live beyond Bedford Falls, he was just a good guy who kept making choices to keep himself there. Tony, though, just seems kind of inept in his dreams of establishing some kind of hotel empire while Shirl begs him to give Alvin away to Mario and run away with him, but the ultimate dramatic turn is Tony settling down with Eloise and keeping Alvin. The hotel stuff feels like an extra layer on top that just kind of obfuscates what's going on, though it does end up being Tony's tragic downfall. Well, not that tragic. He doesn't die or anything.
I feel like the heart of the film is supposed to be the relationship between Tony and Alvin, but Alvin disappears for long stretches in favor of Tony and Eloise or Tony and Mario or Tony and Jerry or Tony and Shirl. So, we're left with Sinatra as the focal point of pretty much every scene, outside of a couple between Mario and his wife Sophie. And, so the question becomes: How is Sinatra?
He's pretty good. It mostly becomes an actor's showcase for him as he navigates these little episodes, and the guy had some chops. I like him best when he's interacting with Eloise, giving up some fragility, and Hodges is a delight as Alvin (he was totally a theater kid, I can tell), but it's all in service to this very loosely told story without much of a center. Sinatra is supposed to be that center, but a performance is hardly ever a great place to center a story on. He's pretty good, but he's not even the kind of amazing performance that people can latch onto like Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl (not that I'm a huge fan of that).
So, it's halfway decent. It's not that interesting or entertaining, but it has enough to keep attention through its runtime. Performances are good (save for Hodges who is a step above). Capra's first color and widescreen movie is well-composed, using the full wide frame effectively if not excitingly (there's a shot late where Sinatra and Wynn dominate the left side of the frame while the right side gets a water ski flash through the shot in the beginning before it just stands empty for the next ten seconds or so). It's not Kurosawa and The Hidden Fortress, but it's more adept than John Ford's visual framing in The Long Gray Line.
It's...fine, but it very much is more of a star vehicle, an okay star vehicle, than a Capra film. I mean, if you hire Capra, it's to make a Capra film, right?
Sinatra plays Tony, a down and almost out hotelier whose lease on his hotel, the Garden of Eden, is getting to the point where his landlord is sending him eviction notices which his son, Alvin (Eddie Hodges) finds first and tries to smooth things over before Tony gets the news. Tony spends most of his time trying to put on a front of success, which is little more than an excuse to party with his girl Shirl (Carolyn Jones) while trying to get a meeting with Jerry Marks (Keenan Wynn), a promoter with whom Tony wants to get financing for an idea, Disney in Florida (this was before Disney World). In order to cover his bills, Tony calls his brother, Mario (Edward G. Robinson) who runs a successful shop up north, which causes concern in Mario's wife, Sophie (Thelma Ritter), for Alvin's health, leading to them coming down to stay with Tony.
The kind of weirdness at the heart of the film is this balance between Sinatra being a loving father and a swinging cat who then gets matchmade with a friend of Sophie's, Eloise (Eleanor Parker), who lives in Miami nearby. The romantic triangle is so underdone but takes up so much time that it just ends up feeling really odd. There's a central image that Shirl expresses towards Tony that he's a kiwi bird, a flightless bird with small wings that tries to constantly fly but can't get off the ground. So, he wants to move on and be great, but he doesn't have it within him to actually do it. This is a variation of the George Bailey situation from It's a Wonderful Life except there was never a question that George had the capability to live beyond Bedford Falls, he was just a good guy who kept making choices to keep himself there. Tony, though, just seems kind of inept in his dreams of establishing some kind of hotel empire while Shirl begs him to give Alvin away to Mario and run away with him, but the ultimate dramatic turn is Tony settling down with Eloise and keeping Alvin. The hotel stuff feels like an extra layer on top that just kind of obfuscates what's going on, though it does end up being Tony's tragic downfall. Well, not that tragic. He doesn't die or anything.
I feel like the heart of the film is supposed to be the relationship between Tony and Alvin, but Alvin disappears for long stretches in favor of Tony and Eloise or Tony and Mario or Tony and Jerry or Tony and Shirl. So, we're left with Sinatra as the focal point of pretty much every scene, outside of a couple between Mario and his wife Sophie. And, so the question becomes: How is Sinatra?
He's pretty good. It mostly becomes an actor's showcase for him as he navigates these little episodes, and the guy had some chops. I like him best when he's interacting with Eloise, giving up some fragility, and Hodges is a delight as Alvin (he was totally a theater kid, I can tell), but it's all in service to this very loosely told story without much of a center. Sinatra is supposed to be that center, but a performance is hardly ever a great place to center a story on. He's pretty good, but he's not even the kind of amazing performance that people can latch onto like Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl (not that I'm a huge fan of that).
So, it's halfway decent. It's not that interesting or entertaining, but it has enough to keep attention through its runtime. Performances are good (save for Hodges who is a step above). Capra's first color and widescreen movie is well-composed, using the full wide frame effectively if not excitingly (there's a shot late where Sinatra and Wynn dominate the left side of the frame while the right side gets a water ski flash through the shot in the beginning before it just stands empty for the next ten seconds or so). It's not Kurosawa and The Hidden Fortress, but it's more adept than John Ford's visual framing in The Long Gray Line.
It's...fine, but it very much is more of a star vehicle, an okay star vehicle, than a Capra film. I mean, if you hire Capra, it's to make a Capra film, right?