When I saw the start of the title sequence, with the American eagle and everything, I thought that we’d finally arrived at a honest-to-goodness American war movie.
But no: It’s a Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza set in 1840.
It’s a romantic/comedic/epic kind of thing, and I had no idea that the plot would get this complicated. It’s very nice watching a movie and not really knowing where it’s going, in a general sense. And it doesn’t happen that often. I wasn’t even sure what genre this was going to turn out to be.
Paulette Goddard is great as the leading character here, and it’s fun seeing John Wayne not on a horse. And looking younger than most films I’ve seen him in.
If you want to be picky, I thing you could say that this film just goes through too many phases: Naval adventure, romantic intrigue, courtroom drama and finally undersea horror. But I like it. It’s huge and unwieldy, but it’s good.
Reap the Wild Wind. Cecil B. DeMille. 1942.
Popular movies in March 1942 according to IMDB:
| Poster | Votes | Rating | Movie |
|---|---|---|---|
 | 396 | 6.8 | Star Spangled Rhythm |
 | 877 | 6.8 | The Male Animal |
 | 2285 | 6.8 | Reap the Wild Wind |
 | 369 | 6.7 | The Courtship of Andy Hardy |
 | 397 | 6.7 | Rings on Her Fingers |
 | 305 | 6.5 | Always in My Heart |
 | 588 | 6.2 | To the Shores of Tripoli |
 | 4120 | 6.1 | The Ghost of Frankenstein |
 | 808 | 4.2 | Black Dragons |
This blog post is part of the Decade series.
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