The Flame of New Orleans

              

René Clair's The Flame of New Orleans is an occasionally engaging piece of fluff from 1941. The project was a major production for Universal Pictures, an attempt to craft a vehicle for Marlene Dietrich after she experienced a career revival with Destry Rides Again and Seven Sinners. Dietrich portrays a newcomer to New Orleans sometime in the mid 19th century who draws the romantic attentions of an effete aristocrat played by Roland Young and a roughhewn sea captain played by Bruce Cabot. Guess who gets the girl. Cabot is a fine actor, but has little chemistry with Dietrich in a part, a man's man role, that cries out for Clark Gable or John Wayne. The electricity that Dietrich has with Wayne in Seven Sinners and The Spoilers is absent. All in all, The Flame of New Orleans was a troubled production. Dietrich did not like Cabot and thought he was poorly prepared. She thought even less of Clair, a feeling that was shared by the crew during the production.

The film feels truncated at 79 minutes. Trouble with the censors, a not unusual problem for a Dietrich picture, resulted in the elision of several sequences. Dietrich gets to sing an anodyne parlor ballad for Young and his swell pals, but a sequence in a rowdy cafe, which cries out for a ballsy number by the diva, fails to provide that showstopper. The screenplay by Norman Krasna is a patchy affair. Some of the plot devices he concocts, such as Cabot's pet monkey getting entangled with Dietrich's carriage, seem hoary. There is japery about gout. The device of Dietrich pretending to have an identical cousin, the naughty one of course, is also trite and silly. Cabot does a high wire act and there is a truncated knife duel. The film provides little genuine New Orleans flavor and zero sense of history. We are not really sure if the film is set in 1850 or 1870, Are the African-Americans servants or slaves? Apparently, it doesn't matter. That said, the blacks in this film have more agency in this film than most in this era of Hollywood. In particular, Theresa Harris has her best role ever as a servant who is more partner in crime with Dietrich than a maid. Krasna and Clair utilize  the black characters in the segregated peanut gallery of an opera house where Young and Dietrich meet. Dietrich meets Young's gaze and then faints to draw him to her side while the peanut gallery denizens act as a chorus.

The Flame of New Orleans was a flop, but it has enough production values to make it above average entertainment. The costumes, artistic design, and cinematography by Rudolph Maté are all top notch. Dietrich and Young are always solid performers. The supporting cast is exemplary. Anne Revere, Melville Cooper, and Laura Hope Crews are enjoyable as Young's snooty relatives. Likewise, Andy Devine, Eddie Quillan, and Frank Jenks are fun as members of Cabot's crew. Mischa Auer and Franklin Pangborn are entertaining, if underused as a pair of European roués who know of Dietrich's shady past. Shemp Howard has an effective cameo as a scruffy cafe waiter. With all this talent, The Flame of New Orleans should have been a better film, but it is a fitfully amusing trifle.