Moral and emotional nuance. Intricate characterisation. An ambiguous ideal of masculinity and a revolutionary woman’s place in a man’s field of labour. A dark portrait of assailed conscience in a world of inherent corruption and inhumanity. None of these phrases immediately bring the name of Cecil B. DeMille to mind, but they’re nonetheless present in this film, although everything is subordinate to the flagrantly romanticised interests of DeMille’s personalised brand of historical hogwash. Saddled with some right silly comic relief, including a ventriloquist’s dog, Paulette Goddard singing gritty shanties to the disapproval of Charleston society matrons, and getting spanked by Ray Milland as a prelude to being dumped overboard to prevent her marrying John Wayne, Reap the Wild Wind takes a while to find its sea-legs. DeMille’s usual narration at the opening pompously relates the coming shenanigans to the security of the United States and Manifest Destiny, before offering up a portrait of slavery-riddled, propriety-shackled antebellum Dixie that’s very pretty and very bogus.
Once Reap the Wild Wind gets on with things, however, it’s quintessential escapism, made with the usual overripe intensity that was DeMille’s gaudy capability, and his delectable eye for physical detail. The recreation of period Key West
Reap the Wild Wind is also the most entertaining of the several films, including Wyler’s Jezebel (1938), made to provide an actress who felt cheated of playing Scarlett O’Hara a chance to practise her Ah Dee-clairs, Goddard in this instance, playing Loxi Claiborne, the tomboyish, tricky, ardent inheritor of her father’s salvage business who’s introduced casting off her plum petticoat and broad hat in favour of boots and jersey to ride out to the rescue of a wrecked ship’s crew. DeMille’s love of tough, rule-breaking heroines was always however counterbalanced by a firm inevitability of their being punished for their wily ways. Goddard had earlier played a wild half-caste femme fatale in DeMille’s disastrous North West Mounted Police (1940), and here she took centre stage with an energetic, saucy performance, if one that still sees her squashed between disparate types of dashing gentleman, and at last humiliated in her wrongheaded choice.
Loxi falls for Captain Jack Stuart (Wayne
Tolliver nonetheless defends Stuart against Devereaux’s outrage, and secures for him the command of the line’s new steam vessel, the ‘Southern Cross’, on condition of Tolliver’s being able to prove him innocent. But through a series of misunderstandings, not aided by Loxi’s scheming and assumption-making, Stuart ends up disillusioned and signing onto Cutler’s side, plotting to wreck the ‘Southern Cross’. What should be a ticket to a nefarious fortune is however impeded when the possibility arises that the wreck cost the life of Loxi’s cousin Drusilla (Susan Hayward), who was romancing Cutler’s younger brother Dan (Robert Preston) and stowed away to return to him.
Loxi is trailed by a rotund maid (Louise Beavers) whose looks and mannerisms are patently copied from those of Hattie McDaniel’s great Gone With the Wind character but with all of her strong points removed, to instead spend most of the film being freaked out by Stuart’s pet monkey, a stand-out amongst a proliferation of minstrel caricatures. Nonetheless, some of DeMille’s faintly discernible Lincoln Republican background idealism is present as Cutler, as well as a wrecker (argh!) and lawyer (eek!), is also branded a slave trader, who promises to make Stuart rich by giving him a ship to fill with “black ivory”, suggesting an underlying darkness to the storybook portrait of the old south, the economy of which seems, here, to float on the sea and on a wealth of exploitation and violence. DeMille took care to avoid upsetting anyone by making sure that Cutler is written off as a “bad Yankee” by the captain of Loxi’s salvage ship, Philpott (Lynne Overmann): “I’m a good one,” he adds smartly. The actual story, however, suggests less Margaret Mitchell than DeMille’s riposte-cum-supersized remake of Hitchcock’s interesting Jamaica Inn (1939). It’s worth noting that the screenplay was co-written by Hitch’s regular collaborator Charles Bennett, and Alan Le May, who would later write the book that provided the basis for the great Wayne vehicle The Searchers (1956).
As usual, it’s sharkish profiteers and sleazy manipulators who are the villains, white-anting a noble, burgeoning culture. There’s the usual cameo by an historical figure, here, David Farragut (Milburn Stone), when he was still a lieutenant, to bring these shenanigans in line with a coherent sense of national narrative. Tolliver becomes a combination secret agent and Perry Mason, as he travels to Key West
“Put him on the beach, see how he takes it,” Devereaux decides, to test Stuart’s mettle, a test that proves finally too much, especially when he thinks Tolliver means to taunt him, and although Wayne
It’s to DeMille’s credit that he wrings as much flavour and tension out of an extended court room sequence, with the sweat-stained denizens of the galleries and sense of nerves fraying in a humid, claustrophobic balm, in a room designed to feel like a vice closing on the protagonists, as he does out of the long, amusing scene when Cutler sets some thugs on Tolliver and friends to shanghai them away on a whaler, requiring Loxi and Stuart to help him fight off a collective of very ugly mugs and then selling the defeated heavies off in what was supposed to be their place. The seagoing scenes are gorgeous and well-detailed, making this a must for anyone fond of seafaring flicks, and the finale, in the tottering, endangered wreck of the ‘Southern Cross’, is excellently visualised, if weighed down by a certain contrivance. Even if it’s a lumpy mix, it’s still a good ride when it gets down to business, and DeMille’s sense of pictorial style – replete with fanciful wipes to propel scenes, teeming and painterly master shots, and soaring crane work to absorb his meticulous mise en scene – is impossible to deride.
