Rage in Heaven (1941) Reviews

• Another Hilton-based movie

  theowinthrop2004-05-13

  James Hilton was not a great novelist, but he was a popular one in the 1930s and 1940s, and two of his books have managed to become minor classics. Both also were the basis of popular films: LOST HORIZON and GOODBYE MR. CHIPS. But, oddly enough, they were not the only Hilton novels that made it to the screen, nor the only two that became classic films. RANDOM HARVEST can be added to his novels that became film classics. And he also wrote his "Crippen" novel, WE ARE NOT ALONE (which starred Paul Muni and Dame Flora Robson), and this film, RAGE IN HEAVEN. In story it actually resembles RANDOM HARVEST a bit: In that film Ronald Colman is an amnesiac from World War I who escapes from an asylum, and eventually turns out to be the head of a large industrial empire. In RAGE IN HEAVEN Robert Montgomery is a paranoid who flees an asylum in France, and turns out to be the head of a large industrial empire. But Colman's character is intelligent and fair minded - a good boss. Montgomery is argumentative, harsh, and (ultimately) incompetent and cowardly. One can say that RAGE IN HEAVEN is the dark side of RANDOM HARVEST. Robert Montgomery's film career is one of the most aggravating in Hollywood history. He built up a career in the 1930s playing cads and bounders in MGM comedies, with an occasionally good comic hero role (THE LAST OF MRS. CHEYNEY and TROUBLE FOR TWO come to mind). Then he got the plum role of the psychopathic Danny in NIGHT MUST FALL, and an Oscar nomination for best actor in 1937. But he did not get the Oscar (Spencer Tracy did). I have always suspected that had Montgomery won the Oscar he deserved to his name would be properly remembered today, as more than just a good actor who was the father of television's "Samantha", Elizabeth Montgomery. Instead, while he still had some good parts later in his career (many as a director and producer, as well as actor), he never got the recognition he thoroughly deserved. It is obvious that RAGE IN HEAVEN was meant to be a follow-up "psycho" role for Montgomery, following Danny. But Phillip Morell is not as well done as Danny, probably because NIGHT MUST FALL was a play by Emlyn Williams originally, and so it was easier to transfer it to the screen than Hilton's novel. But then, LOST HORIZON, MR. CHIPS, and RANDOM HARVEST were well done screenplays too. Danny (for all his murderous habits) has his human moments, but Phillip doesn't. Phillip is always under-spoken and wide eyed. He always is on the verge of exploding (and similarly of collapsing - witness the moment the Union leadership force their way into his office to confront him over his unwillingness to settle the labor impasse, and how he just collapses and runs out yelling, "Give them whatever they want!"). A modern treatment might develop his mania somewhat. It is obvious that Hilton understood what paranoids were capable of - the business about the hidden confession in the diary rings true - but it is still not developed enough for the audience to understand. We know that Phillip's father was insane (and committed suicide) but more details are needed. It was Ingrid Bergman's third or fourth American film. She was slowly inching her way to real stardom (she had touched it opposite Leslie Howard in the Hollywood version of INTERMEZZO), but her performance, while natural, is not very memorable. George Sanders again demonstrates his dependability in any role, here as a good guy almost destroyed by his mad friend. Oscar Homolka does a good job as the asylum head, whose assistance to Bergman saves Sanders in the end. It is not as good a film as it should have been with a better laid out script, but it is watchable one or two times.

• Escapee from the insane asylum

  jotix1002005-06-14

  This film, based on a James Hilton novel, is not often seen these days. In part, the material Christopher Isherwood extracted from the book doesn't make a good movie. As directed by W. S. Van Dyke, the film seems to have been sabotaged by its star, Robert Montgomery, who made no secret he didn't want to be in the picture. It's a shame because the rest of the players are evidently acting in a different movie. The melodrama has some interesting things going for it. First there is the luminous appearance of Ingrid Bergman in her third Hollywood film. Also, George Sanders has one of the best roles he ever played in the movies. Both Ms. Bergman and Mr. Sanders are the reason for watching. Lucile Watson, Oscar Homolka and Philip Merivale, among others, make great contributions to the film. While this is not by any means a horrible film, it could have been improved if only Mr. Montgomery, a welcome presence in any movie, would have done a better job inter acting with the rest and following direction.

• Gee, I kind of liked it

  blanche-22005-07-09

  I guess I'll be the resident moron of this film's comment section. I liked Rage in Heaven. It was entertaining, interesting, and involving. I realize Robert Montgomery phoned in his role. His complete detachment makes the character evil rather than sick, and one cannot feel sympathy for him, if we were ever supposed to. The biggest problem is that his flat line readings and cool demeanor make it unbelievable that Bergman married a man so completely lacking in self-esteem, charm, and ardor. The very young, pre-superstar Ingrid Bergman is marvelous - very fresh and vibrant in the beginning, her personality becoming more somber after a short time being married to Montgomery. And who can blame her. George Sanders is excellent, his portrayal possessing all the charm and passion Montgomery lacks. As far as this plot being contrived, perhaps, but it was also clever. The original ending of "Fatal Attraction" was based on the same idea. Seen in today's modern perspective "Rage in Heaven" is most interesting. The obsession that Phillip had for Wade - very bizarre indeed!

• The Acting in "Rage in Heaven" - Contains spoilers

  fordraff2002-09-10

  Altho this film came from MGM, it is nothing more than a B quality Warners film. The plot is implausible and absurd, especially in the scenes where we're asked to believe Montgomery's character suddenly steps in as CEO of a major industry his family owns and is allowed to continue until he alienates the workers to the point of rebellion. Utter rot! And the suicide plan Montgomery devises for himself is just movie nonsense, as is the chase to Paris to find the bookbinder who has Montgomery's diary. The best laugh here is Oscar Homolka as Dr. Rameau, the psychiatrist. He looks like an ape-man. Everyone involved with this film should be ashamed. It's a waste of one's time to watch it. In her autobiography, Ingrid Bergman explains that Robt. Montgomery came to her before shooting on "Rage" began and said, "I'm very sorry to do this to you, but I'm forced to do this movie, so I intend to just say the lines but not act.... I'm not going to do what they tell me to do. I'll listen, but I shan't take any notice." He explained to Bergman that he had pleaded with MGM to have some time off from making films, but MGM put him right in to "Rage." Montgomery couldn't afford suspension because he had a family and a large house to maintain. Montgomery explained to both Bergman and George Sanders that his revenge on MGM would be to take no direction and deliver all his lines flatly. Bergman writes, "The director would explain what he wanted to Bob, and Bob would look up at the sky as if he wasn't hearing a word, and the director would say, 'Now, Bob, have you understood what I'm talking about?' Bob would answer, 'Now are we going to shoot this scene? Right; let's go." And Bob would go straight into this blah-blah-blah act of his, no inflections, nothing, same speed, same pace." Bergman said, "George Sanders was fed up with the whole thing and most of the time he slept. He would come out from his dressing room yawning, do his little bit, and go back to sleep again. He couldn't care less about it; just another bad movie." Bergman, new to Hollywood, tried her best, tho she disliked director Van Dyke and tried to get Selznick to have Van Dyke replaced or have herself taken off the film. Selznick would do neither. So Bergman confronted Van Dyke, who was surprised when she told him her complaints. He said, "Oh! All right. I don't know how, but I will try and change." In his review of this film in The New York Times, Bosley Crowther did an extraordinary thing for the time by including a final paragraph in his review which read, "It has been reported from Hollywood that Mr. Montgomery was compelled to play this role as 'discipline' for some things he said in public about motion pictures. That may be an explanation for the general obtuseness of the film...." On the set, on the screen, "Rage in Heaven" was a bad experience.

• Harbinger of noir cycle more convincing psychologically than dramatically

  bmacv2002-07-04

  A somber-hued melodrama whose psychology is more compelling than its dramaturgy, Rage in Heaven sounds many of the minor-key motifs and dark timbres that would shortly coalesce into the noir cycle. Its most striking aspect has to be its acceptance of its disturbed central character as a given, without attempting to supply a neat, reassuring `explanation.' The story – set in England, for no good reason – opens with a teasing prelude at a French insane asylum. But soon, in London, we meet up with Robert Montgomery as he meets up with old chum George Sanders and whisks him off to the country house of Montgomery's widowed mother (Lucile Watson), who in ailing health has retained the services of a companion (Ingrid Bergman). Though Bergman and Sanders generate some electricity, when he departs she marries Montgomery. This proves ill-advised. Montgomery, who reluctantly has taken charge of the family's steel works, shows himself to be not only incompetent, irrationally jealous and vindictive, but also self-loathing, desperately insecure, and (as it turns out, like his father) suicidal. He requires unquestioned obedience, even at the risk of running his business into the ground – or poisoning his marriage. He lures back Sanders in order to validate his suspicions of an affair between his wife and his best friend but, when no evidence emerges, devises a fiendish plot to ruin all their lives. His plans almost succeed, but for an eleventh-hour deus ex machina, in the person of the head of that sanitarium in the outskirts of Paris. Though somewhat cleverly contrived, the ending remains a contrivance yet doesn't quite invalidate the movie's dark vision (perhaps owing more to Christopher Isherwood, who wrote the screenplay, than to James Hilton's novel). Montgomery elects to play a charming villain, as he did in Night Must Fall, perhaps unsure of just how to depict a deranged psyche (he wasn't far off the mark). Sanders gets wasted as a square-rigger, which was never his long suit. That leaves the radiant Bergman, two years before Casablanca assured her stardom, handed the thankless world of the loyal, longanimous wifey. In this flawed but unsettling and precocious melodrama, it's she who utters the final benediction. That benediction lingers in the mind as an enlightened touch – and a far cry from the black/white mentality of today's thrillers, which view psychological aberration as just a more heinous kind of evil, and so a further justification for triumphantly exterminating the evildoers.