City Without Men (1943)

In 1943, Linda Darnell was an up and coming star--destined to make quite a career for herself at Twentieth Century-Fox. However, as she hadn't yet had this big break, she appeared in smaller films--in this case a film for Columbia's B-unit. When you watch "City Without Men", it's pretty easy to tell that this wasn't a particularly distinguished film--with a plot that, at times, is VERY heavy-handed and even silly.The film begins with a new recruit for the US Navy getting pulled into the middle of a spy ring just before Pearl Harbor. Although he captures two evil Japanese spies, his superiors believe he was in league with them--and sentence him to five years in prison. His fiancée (Darnell) is determined to not only try to get him out, but she goes so far as to move into a rooming house near the prison. This place is full of other women whose men are behind bars (such as Sara Allgood and Glenda Farrell). Can she manage to get someone to look at her boyfriend's case and give him a second chance? The idea of the film isn't bad, but all the WWII jingoism is a bit hard to take. In particular, Edgar Buchanan makes a long speech about America, apple pie and the like and it just comes off as preachy and ridiculous. In fact, much of the film is pretty ridiculous--with silly one-dimensional characters and not much more. An odd film...and not a very good one.

There's a lot of great actresses in "City Without Men", one of those "B" Columbia films about women in peril. But unfortunately, what they forgot about was getting a screenplay with a story, not touches of a plot here and there, surrounding the wife of a wrongly accused man who moves in with other prison wives to be near her husband. The men, of course, plot an escape, and there's enough cat-fights, card cheating and tragedy to go around. Sara Allgood gets acting honors as the sort of den mother to the girls, whose own husband has a life sentence. That fabulous "wicked witch" (Margaret Hamilton) seems to have fun every time she throws out a wisecrack or kicks a cheating wife in the butt. Unfortunately, she (like the majority of the others) isn't at all likable. Throw in Uncle Joe from "Petticoat Junction" (Edgar Buchannan) adding the same type of sympathy and wisdom he used in "Penny Senenade". This seems to take the plots of "The Big House", "The Women" and "Tender Comrade", throw them all together, and try to come up with something of quality. Unfortunately, they miss by a long shot.In reference to the DVD, I agree with other reviewers that this is not a high-quality transfer and much of the dialogue is difficult to decipher. Please keep this in mind when watching the movie which is hard to resist with that cast. (I must confess, I've watched it three times, hoping to find something worthwhile.)

I am rating this film with a 6 out of 10 on the basis that if i *could* have heard the dialogue, it would have been a very satisfying B-Movie. As it is, the Alpha Video DVD release has incredibly BAD sound quality, rendering much of the speech incomprehensible and thus muddying up both the plot and the emotional impact of the work. I am generally a promoter and fan of the Alpha releases of Poverty Row movies, but the condition of the sound is beneath what anyone should be made to endure. Anyway, on the premise that somewhere there's a better print, i think i would like to see it again. Margaret Hamilton is outstanding as a piano playing card cheat, Edgar Buchanan is unexpected as an alcoholic lawyer, and Sara Allgood is tragic as a woman who has lost her husband to the prison system and loves him still. The film really belongs to the women, but the men do a credible job, especially Sheldon Leonard as a tough-guy inmate.

Picture quality on Alpha DVD release is terrible but garbled soundtrack is even worse. Almost like watching a primitive foreign-language talkie in a language not yet recognized. Basic situation--a boarding house full of girlfriends, wives, and mothers of convicts living across the street from a prison where their men are impounded--has possibilities (think "Stage Door" on visitors' day) but it's impossible to understand what Linda Darnell, Glenda Farrell, Margaret Hamilton (in change-of-pace role as a sassy beer-swilling card cheat), etc. are saying 80 percent of the time. (And what was Darnell doing in a Poverty Row clinker like this at this point in her career?) Odd little film with early David Raksin score, light years away from his "Laura" panache just a few years later.