That was an excellent one.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Ernie Mott (Cary Grant) is an irresponsible vagrant roaming the streets of London. His father had died in the Great War. His mother (Ethel Barrymore) runs a small shop by herself. He plays the piano, fools around with a gangster's ex Ada Brantline (June Duprez), and has a friendship with nice neighborhood girl Aggie Hunter (Jane Wyatt). After learning about her mother's cancer, he stays to run the shop despite their combative past.Ernie is not really an appealing character and that's tough to do for Cary Grant. I'm also annoyed by his relationship with Ada. I want more time with Aggie and have more love triangle action. The character would be appealing as an exuberant youth struggling to find his way in the world. Cary Grant was 40 by then. I can see this as a lower class melodrama like a Mike Leigh movie but Cary Grant doesn't really fit the role. It's interesting nevertheless.

The story behind this one when it was made was the return of Ethel Barrymore to the movie screen after a long time doing live stage productions. Interesting in that she is one of the few in this with very little British accent, yet because of her acting skills and return nobody cared. In fact RKO was already on major cramped budgets when this film was made. Like Barrymore, it had been a long time since King Kong and Gunga Din.Neither story made out too well, as this one did little business in the theaters. It seems in 1944, with the war raging in both oceans, this one just was not really in demand. The story is okay though a serious Cary Grant did not seem to be ready for prime time. Grant tries to carry part of the film, and Barrymore as his mother tries to carry the other. The cockney accent of the support cast is difficult to understand which made the film less audience friendly. Some of the writing on this is from the same writers that worked on How Green Was My Valley but this one is not even a shadow of that one, though the accents in that movie are thick too. Guess that proves that sometimes a weakness in one movie is not the same thing in another one.Grant is the careless son who mom is trying to make responsible this entire movie. He has many girl friends trying to move him in the same direction. It is only his mom who has any success though.

The movie's a wildcard in Grant's otherwise debonair career. Here he's an aimless London slum-dweller, who thinks futility is just the way the world is. So why should he, Ernie Mott (Grant), try for anything better when the world's rigged for defeat. Still, Ernie's got an indulgent, if fatally ill, mother, along with two adoring girlfriends. They might help if he weren't so casual about their affections. The movie's heart is in the right place, as lefty screenwriter-director Odets links the ease of crime with slum conditions. The trouble is it's hard to take Grant (age 40) as either youthful or poverty stricken (couldn't they have dirtied him up a bit). Maybe I've seen too many of his slick light comedies, but I just couldn't forget that this is the great smoothy playing against type. No doubt, he was trying to expand his range, but the choice of vehicles was unfortunate as he himself admitted. The movie itself is about as dingy as any I've seen. The murky b&w is tediously unrelenting. Naturally, that emphasizes the slum-like conditions, but also serves a more practical purpose. Namely, the dimness masks the many studio-bound streets and sets that are about as cheaply done as any of Grant's many films. Frankly, between the unrelenting talk and bleak visuals, my attention wandered. Still, Jane Wyatt is fetching, Barrymore doesn't over-act, Fitzgerald is not too cuddly, while Grant tries his manful best. Too bad, the results aren't better— the 113-minutes could easily have profited by shaving off 20 of those. Anyway, the movie remains more a bleakly done oddity than anything else in Grant's fabulous career.

Throughout his career, Cary Grant tried to shake off the comic leading man - sophisticate roles that he fell into. He eventually did get parts in thrillers like NORTH BY NORTHWEST and CHARADES, or serious films like PENNY SERENADE and AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER showing a bit of edge, but up to his last film WALK DON'T RUN, he performed films that were mostly likable sophisticated comedies like INDISCREET. I suppose it was the flip side of being one of the best looking men in movies. Hitchcock had tried to get him a villainous role in the original concept of SUSPICION, and the studio and Grant's agent vetoed it - so the plot of that film was rewritten to make him look innocent of Joan Fontaine's deepest suspicions. The nearest he got was in the film MR. LUCKY, where he is a shady gambler and swindler, and even can be really violent in a fight scene, but still turns up being more honorable than he originally intended to be. In 1944 Grant was finally able (uniquely for his whole career) to play a movie role which, while hardly villainous, was far more realistic and tragic than anything else he ever played. Ernie Mott is his equivalent to Tyrone Power's "the Great Stanton" in NIGHTMARE ALLEY, the box office failure Darryl Zanuck allowed Power to make that showed he too was a fine actor. After NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART and NIGHTMARE ALLEY Grant and Power were taken seriously as performers by the theater going public.Ernie Mott is a London cockney (which Grant originally was - but rarely got a chance to show on film), who lives with his mother Ma Mott (Ethel Barrymore - in her "Oscar" winning performance) in a second hands goods/minor pawn broker store. Ernie has been rather light hearted and thoughtless, never settling down to a profession. But there are few good professions for such as him. He's in an East London slum (a reference to Whitechapel in the film reminds me that this story of the 1930s is only half a century from Jack the Ripper's rampages). He has two girls in his life - the glamorous Ada (June Duprez) and Aggie, a cellist (Jane Wyatt). Both like him very much, but he admits to Aggie that he favors Ada a bit more.Richard Llewelyn, who wrote HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY, wrote the novel for this film (screenplay version by dramatist Clifford Odets), and captures the spirit of that slum quite well. Ernie hates it, and wants something better, but can't concentrate. One day a family friend (Jewish pawnbroker Ike Weber - Konstantine Shane (THE STRANGER, VERTIGO)) tips off Ernie that his mother is dying of cancer. Ernie cleans up his act (he was about to see about prospects in Liverpool), and he starts taking over work from his surprised mother. But although the reforms bring him and the dying woman together, both worry about each other - and fall prey to temptations they really don't want to return to.In Ma's case, she had been a leading fence for stolen goods for many years. If she will handle some more she can earn 500 pounds (in 1939 England a very tidy sum) to leave to Ernie. Ernie, as he dates the luxury loving Ada, finds he needs more money too. There is a snag here - Ernie's opportunity involves him with the local criminal gang boss Jim Mordinoy (George Coulouris). Mordinoy has always considered Ernie a potential gang member, but Ernie has showed little interest. Now Ernie's interested, but Mordinoy has close personal interests in Ada too - and is determined to maintain them whatever anyone (including Ada or Ernie) wants.The film holds up very nicely, with Grant giving the best performance of his career (which did not even get noticed for an Oscar nomination). As mentioned Barrymore did get nominated as the loving but fearful Ma, and won her Oscar (making her and brother Lionel - A FREE SOUL - the only brother and sister "Oscar" winners in movie history to the present). Duprez is painful as a woman torn between real love for Grant and fear of Coulouris' vengeance. Wyatt is painful too, as she has to accept Grant's positioning her as "best friend" rather than girlfriend. Barry Fitzgerald comes into the film in it's middle as Henry Twite, a wise old fellow who does odd jobs and becomes a missing father figure to Grant (Ernie's father was killed at Verdun). Shayne, an actor of considerable strength, had a wonderful part here. Jewish pawn brokers were usually still subjects of humor in movies in 1944, but with rumors of the death camps coming up this was changing. His role of Ike is that of a decent human being in that area, who has to face Coulouris and his thugs at one point - and maintains our full sympathy.I have to make a separate comment about George Coulouris here. I always like watching him, but too frequently his nervousness and short temper or his mental condition made his roles "over - the - top". I don't think Jim Mordinoy is anywhere near that - in fact, with Teck in WATCH ON THE RHINE this is his best performance. Mordinoy is not a ranter - he is quiet and direct and totally without scruple. He is far more dangerous (and smart) than the average thug, and one imagines that even at the end of the film he won't get touched by what happens to his minions. Grant's performance and Barrymore's are the best here, but Coulouris is equally good.The title by the way comes from a song with music by Tschaikowski and words from a poem by Goethe. It was also played by Paul Lukas to Katherine Hepburn in LITTLE WOMEN.