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Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Another Dawn (1937)

When her one true love is killed and believing she can never love again, a woman (Kay Francis) agrees to marry a Colonel (Ian Hunter) in the British army even though she doesn't love him and travel with him to his outpost in the Sahara desert. It is there that she discovers that she can love again ... only it's not her husband but a handsome Captain (Errol Flynn) working under her husband's command. Based on the Somerset Maugham short story CAESAR'S WIFE, this romantic melodrama lays it on pretty thick with Erich Wolfgang Korngold's underscore heaving with passion as Francis and Flynn fight the inevitable. But it does it with style and the two leads are quite appealing and there's even a moment or two that manages to tug at the heartstrings. It's the kind of film that flourished in the 1930s, titillating us with the idea of adultery without actually committing it. At an hour and 14 minutes, it's brief enough not to wear out its welcome and there's even some action (Flynn fighting marauding Arabs in the desert) to give us some momentary relief from the swooning romanticism. Directed by William Dieterle. With Frieda Inescort as Flynn's sister and Herbert Mundin as a soldier seeking to redeem an act of cowardice on the battlefront.

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