Flynn is a corporal in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They used to dress every day in colorful red jackets. Now they're known as the RCMP and dress like the Highway Patrol. It is a great loss.
Flynn is more or less kidnapped by German pilot Helmut Dantine and his three Nazi companions and forced to lead them across the wilderness of northern Manitoba, where a bomber is stashed. The plan is to bomb the locks of the St. Lawrence River or to mar the splendor of Niagara Falls and disappoint all the honeymooners or something. It's not made very clear.
These Nazis are really bad boys, especially the stern and handsome Helmut Dantine. They kidnap a couple of women to take along as hostages. They kill anyone who gets in their way, as well as anyone they meet who is of no use to the Nazi cause. And if one of their own people is disabled, he can kiss his life good-bye. That's the kind of rats they are.
Flynn is handsome as usual, this being 1943. He'd not gotten along at all well with his previous director, Michael Curtiz, and by this time he was being directed by the Irish-American Raoul Walsh, whose work had as much zip but who was more tolerant of Flynn's boozing. The two had an agreement that Flynn wouldn't start drinking until 5 in the afternoon.
There's a supposedly comic introduction and close, involving Julie Bishop as the daughter of a cheapskate Scottish shop keeper at a trading post. At the very end, when Flynn and Bishop are finally married, he embraces her at the party. She asks, "How many women have you loved before me?". Flynn replies, "None, darling," then turns his face towards the camera, rolls his eyes, and mutters, "What am I saying?" Some joke. He'd recently been in court on charges of statutory rape brought against him by two teen-aged cutie pies who testified that he'd seduced them aboard his yacht and had made love while wearing his socks. Some wag suggested that the movie Flynn had just completed, "Gentleman Jim," should have its name changed to just "Jim." A couple of outdoor shots were done at Sun Valley, Idaho, including an exciting ski chase. Most of the film was shot at the Warners' Studios. Yet, the settings are reasonably convincing, except that nobody's breath steams and all the clothing is so immaculate and clean, even Helmut Dantine's white turtle neck, which he never seems to change. A kind of minor narrative thread alludes to the Canadians' treatment of Indians, which here generates a resentment soon dissipated when they see what the Nazis are like. Actually, Canadian Indians, probably Algonkin-speaking Woods Cree in this case, were treated fairly well, at least compared to American Indians.
Even with all the suspense, this isn't a very fast-paced movie, and either I was asleep when Flynn and his superiors worked out the plan to discover what the Nazis were up to, or else the editor should be tied to an evergreen tree trunk and left to be eaten alive by ravenous timber wolves, or maybe -- this could get to be fun -- maybe he could be impaled repeatedly by an enraged moose.
Flynn is more or less kidnapped by German pilot Helmut Dantine and his three Nazi companions and forced to lead them across the wilderness of northern Manitoba, where a bomber is stashed. The plan is to bomb the locks of the St. Lawrence River or to mar the splendor of Niagara Falls and disappoint all the honeymooners or something. It's not made very clear.
These Nazis are really bad boys, especially the stern and handsome Helmut Dantine. They kidnap a couple of women to take along as hostages. They kill anyone who gets in their way, as well as anyone they meet who is of no use to the Nazi cause. And if one of their own people is disabled, he can kiss his life good-bye. That's the kind of rats they are.
Flynn is handsome as usual, this being 1943. He'd not gotten along at all well with his previous director, Michael Curtiz, and by this time he was being directed by the Irish-American Raoul Walsh, whose work had as much zip but who was more tolerant of Flynn's boozing. The two had an agreement that Flynn wouldn't start drinking until 5 in the afternoon.
There's a supposedly comic introduction and close, involving Julie Bishop as the daughter of a cheapskate Scottish shop keeper at a trading post. At the very end, when Flynn and Bishop are finally married, he embraces her at the party. She asks, "How many women have you loved before me?". Flynn replies, "None, darling," then turns his face towards the camera, rolls his eyes, and mutters, "What am I saying?" Some joke. He'd recently been in court on charges of statutory rape brought against him by two teen-aged cutie pies who testified that he'd seduced them aboard his yacht and had made love while wearing his socks. Some wag suggested that the movie Flynn had just completed, "Gentleman Jim," should have its name changed to just "Jim." A couple of outdoor shots were done at Sun Valley, Idaho, including an exciting ski chase. Most of the film was shot at the Warners' Studios. Yet, the settings are reasonably convincing, except that nobody's breath steams and all the clothing is so immaculate and clean, even Helmut Dantine's white turtle neck, which he never seems to change. A kind of minor narrative thread alludes to the Canadians' treatment of Indians, which here generates a resentment soon dissipated when they see what the Nazis are like. Actually, Canadian Indians, probably Algonkin-speaking Woods Cree in this case, were treated fairly well, at least compared to American Indians.
Even with all the suspense, this isn't a very fast-paced movie, and either I was asleep when Flynn and his superiors worked out the plan to discover what the Nazis were up to, or else the editor should be tied to an evergreen tree trunk and left to be eaten alive by ravenous timber wolves, or maybe -- this could get to be fun -- maybe he could be impaled repeatedly by an enraged moose.