Sept. 02, 2002 - 2:21 am

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Mister Roberts (1955)

my mom, being the great James Cagney fan that she is, dropped off her copy of this film with me last weekend when she was in town. it also stars Henry Fonda, William Powell, and Jack Lemmon and was nominated for Best Picture of 1955. i hadn't heard of it before seeing her copy around the house, but it turned out to be a good little film.

it's about the boredom and toil that a single ship (referred to as "the bucket") faced in the Pacific in WWII. this film is mostly a comedy, but it has some more dramatic moments too. it centers around Henry Fonda's character (Mr. Roberts obviously) who is the cargo officer of the naval vessel, and the only person that the small crew can look up to. their captain, played by Cagney, is a harsh man who wants only to advance his career and he seems to hate the fact that he has to rely on his idiotic crew in order to do so. the thing is that Mr. Roberts wants to see battle before the war is over, and since the ship does nothing more than transport cargo he has to keep asking headquarters for a transfer. it seems like it will never come. so he is left trying to do the best he can for his men under the iron rule of the despicable captain who will never give them a break.

man, looking at my description that doesn't really sound like a comedy, but it is. i guess the Academy of Arts & Sciences was acknowledging the difficulty of combinging those two elements together with the nomination. it's hard to make a story that sounds like that be funny. but it really is done well in this film. the best portion has got to be the part when the men finally get "liberty," or what is commonly now referred to as shore leave. they go out for a night on the town in this small island port and all come back drunk. one guy drives a motorcyle off the pier, another comes back with a pet goat covered in adornments, and there's a great story that the military police tell to Mr. Roberts about how a few of his men threw a bust of Henri de Balzac out of the French Colonial Governor's plate glass window.

as far as the cast goes, i'm not really a huge Henry Fonda fan. but he is good sometimes and this was one of the times. and you can't help but like Jack Lemmon. he's one of those people that just always plays himself. his character is just him in a movie. keep in mind he did win an Oscar for his performance here though. great job by William Powell as the comforting and all-understanding ship's doctor. he was seen most recently as Ziegfeld in The Great Ziegfeld (1936). this was a really different character him, as well as for James Cagney. i haven't really seen James Cagney in many supporting roles like this. usually if he is the villain, he's still the protagonist. like in some gangster films like White Heat (1949) or in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938).

i hope everyone likes all the changes i've made to the site. let me know what you think, good or bad.