Showing posts with label The Last Outpost. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Last Outpost. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

On This Day in October - Posters and Lobby Cards.

 I'm No Angel - 6th October, 1933.










Wedding Present - 9th October, 1936.







The Last Outpost - 11th October, 1935.








The Awful Truth - 21st October, 1937.


 











 



Hot Saturday - 28th October, 1932.










Wednesday, October 11, 2023

The Last Outpost (1935)

 "...a curious mixture.  Half of it is remarkably good and half of it quite abysmally bad."

With Gertrude Michael.

The Last Outpost - Review is taken from 'The Films of Cary Grant' by Donald Deschner (1973):

"The Last Outpost, which will be shown shortly at the Plaza, is a curious mixture.  Half of it is remarkably good and half of it quite abysmally bad.  One can even put one's finger on the joins, and it will be well worth a visit if only because it indicates what might be made of the short story form on the screen.  It consists of two stories unrelated except for the coincidence of characters. The first, which lasts for about half-an-hour, is a very well-directed and well-acted War story of a British secret service agent and his success in warning a defenseless tribe against a Kurd attack and inducing them to move with their flocks over a flooded river and across a snow-bound range of mountains to safe pastures.  It is one of those stories of dogged physical endeavor that the film does so well.  It belongs in the order of Grass and The Covered Wagon.  Mr. Claude Rains as the secret service agent in Turkish uniform and  Mr. Cary Grant as the incurably light-minded and rather stupid British officer whom he rescues from the Kurds both act extremely well.  Mr. Rains's low husky voice, his power of investing even commonplace dialogue with smouldering conviction, is remarkable.  He never rants, but one is always aware of what a superb ranter he could be in a part which did not call for modern restraint but only for superb diction.  I should like to see him as Almanzor or Aurengzebe, for he could catch, as no one else could, the bitter distrust of the world, religious in its intensity, which lies behind the heroic drama.  

The Last Outpost, if it had stopped on the mountain pass above the pastures with the officer on the way down to hospital and the comforts of Cairo and the secret agent turning back towards the enemy, would have been a memorable short film.  Mr. Charles Barton, the director, has obviously used old documentaries: the crossing of the flooded river is not a California reconstruction, and all through this first section the camera is used with fine vigor to present a subject which could not have been presented on the stage.  

I cannot see why we should not have serious films of this length as well as farces, short stories as well as novels on the screen.  The essential speed and concision would be an admirable discipline for most directors, who are still, after seven years of talkies, tied to stage methods, and we might be saved from seeing such a good film as this padded out to full length by the addition of a more than usually stupid triangular melodrama of jealousy and last-minute rescue in the Sahara where needless to say Mr. Rains sacrifices his life at the end, for his wife's love, so that it all may end in the fixed, almost Oriental, short-hand of military melodrama, "It is better so," clasped fingers and topees off and fading bugle calls."  

Graham Greene, The Spectator

New Artwork by Rebekah Hawley at Studio36 -
Number 20 - The Last Outpost (Lobby Card Style)

Part Of



For more, see also:

Quote From Today - 11 October 2022

On This Day - 10 October 2021

On This Day - 11 October 2020

Tuesday, October 11, 2022

Quote From Today... The Last Outpost (1935)

"...here's to those lovely eyes! In any language."

With Kathleen Burke.


The Last Outpost was Cary Grant's 20th full-length feature film.

Michael Andrews: Oh Hello. And what do they call you, my pretty maid?.. 
(A young Turkish woman hands him a drink)

Thanks. Comment t'appelles-tu?

(Then Andrews attempts to speak Turkish)

Young Woman: Ilya.

Michael Andrews: Oh. Ilya, huh?

Well, Ilya, here's to those lovely eyes! In any language.


Sunday, October 11, 2020

On This Day...The Last Outpost (1935)

 The Last Outpost was Cary Grant's 20th full length feature film and was released today in 1935.


Synopsis:

In World War I, British-officer Michael Andrews (Cary Grant) is captured by a band of Kurdish raiders on the Eastern Front, and is rescued by a man calling himself John Stevenson (Claude Rains), although he refuses to tell his name to Andrews. 


The two men form a strange friendship, and help save an entire Kurdish village from a massacre and also avert a surprise attack on the British army-unit stationed there. Andrews suffers a wounded leg and is sent to the British military-hospital in Cairo. He falls in love with a nurse, Rosemary Haydon (Gertrude Michael), and she with him, but she is married although she has not seen nor heard from her husband in over three years. 


It is at this point that the man who saved Andrews' life turns up to claim his wife, who is Rosemary. The latter bids adieu to Andrews who does not know that the man he considers his best friend is also the husband of the woman he loves. But, by pure coincidence and chance, both Andrews and Rosemary's husband come face-to-face again in a remote garrison that is under an attack that appears to have the possibility of no survivors among the fort defenders.


"Mr. Claude Rains as the secret service agent in Turkish uniform and Mr. Cary Grant as the incurably light-minded and rather stupid British officer whom he rescues from the Kurds both act extremely well." - Graham Greene, The Spectator.


"To Cary Grant, Claude Rains and Gertrude Michael fall the assignment of giving life and conviction to the romantic segment of the plot. They all do well by their roles." - Ben Bodec, Variety



Did You Know ?:

Stock footage from Four Feathers (1929) is used to augment the battle scenes in the later half of the film.


Cast:

Cary Grant...Michael Andrews
Gertrude Michael...Rosemary
Claude Rains...John Stevenson
Margaret Swope...Nurse Rowland
Jameson Thomas...Cullen
Nick Shaid...Haidar
Kathleen Burke...Ilya
Colin Tapley...Lieutenant Prescott
Billy Bevan...Private Foster
Claude King...General



Lobby Cards:




International Posters:


Directed by Charles Barton and Lois Gasnier.
Distributed by Paramount Pictures.
Running time: 75 minutes.