Dreadfully Boring

Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Legend has it that Clark Gable was badly miscast in this movie, an example of an actor who wanted to show that he could do more than the roles in which he had been type-cast but in fact showed that he could not.Well, legend is in part right. Gable could do many things, quite well. But he is very bad in this movie, for several reasons.First is that he seems to have no command of the oratorical style that is supposedly the gift of every Irishman and certainly of every Irish politician. This is strange, because he certainly commanded an oratorical style in movies like *San Francisco*. But it's true. When he addresses Parliament, or his fellow Irish politicians, he sounds weak, and in no way raises his audience with the power of his oratory. That is all the more clear because several of the other actors in this movie demonstrate a fine oratorical style. The contrast is striking, and not in Gable's favor.Second, the script often stinks. It is wooden, unrealistic, and sometimes almost laughable.Third, there is no drama in these scenes. The movie drags badly.I have the feeling that Gable, or the director, did much of this intentionally, making an effort to create a character that did not have Gable's usual flair, like Blacky in *San Francisco*, for example. Perhaps I'm wrong. But seeing Gable play someone so often so weak is not an appealing sight.

Surely when this movie first appeared in 1937 somebody, (everybody?), involved must have known what a crock, (and I'm not talking gold, here), they were sitting on. "Parnell" is a turkey fat enough to feed a family of forty and like a lot of big, bad movies is, nevertheless, quite enjoyable, if for all the wrong reasons. Historically, I can't vouchsafe for its accuracy but then this isn't a film about Irish history and the struggle for Home Rule but a romantic drama about a real-life historical figure ruined by his love for a married woman and it starred two of the biggest names in movies at the time.When this movie came out Gable had already won an Oscar and Myrna Loy was fresh from playing, superbly, in The Thin Man movies but they are both terrible here. Indeed, this isn't just Gable's worst performance but one of the monumentally bad performances in the history of the movies, (his death-bed sequence is a classic). A sterling supporting cast, (Edna May Oliver, Donald Crisp, Billie Burke, Edmund Gwenn), do offer a few crumbs of comfort but they are far from enough to redeem this sorry mess. John Stahl directed but you would never have guessed it.

If one were to see the movie Captain Boycott and see Robert Donat in a brief cameo as Charles Stewart Parnell making a speech you would be seeing a far closer portrayal to the real Parnell then Clark Gable gave in this film. Myrna Loy wasn't too much better as Kitty O'Shea, both the leads looked like they had something else on their minds.The real Charles Stewart Parnell was a great Irish patriot who by force of intellect and oratory rose to the head of the Irish party in the House of Commons. During the 1880s the members for Ireland in Parliament under Parnell's leadership held the balance of power between the Conservatives and Liberals. If the whole business with his affair with Mrs. O'Shea had not come to light, Ireland might very well have gotten it's own parliament and essentially home rule which was Parnell's goal. He accomplished this all the while clinging to his Protestant faith. The fact that Parnell was a Protestant was not mentioned at all in this film.Also, the key to Parnell's downfall was his haughtiness. He was not an easy guy to like. He was a great Irish patriot, but he was also haughty and arrogant. When he was brought down by a back street affair come to light, even a lot of his allies weren't unhappy at his political demise.Before the affair came to light, his enemies tried another gambit with some forged letters that purported to show Parnell's complicity in the assassinations of Lord Fredrick Cavendish and his secretary in Phoenix Park in Dublin in 1881. The trial scenes were the best in the film and it might have been a good film had they stuck to that of course with someone else playing Parnell. The best performance in the film is that of George Zucco who was Parnell's attorney, Sir Charles Russell. Running a close second in acting is Alan Marshal who plays Myrna Loy's husband, Captain O'Shea who thinks by pimping his wife to Parnell he can advance his own career. Gable took ribbing for this film the rest of his life and even he admitted it laid an ostrich egg.

John Stahl is famous for his tear-jerkers -often excellent- which make ladies (and gentlemen)cry rivers of tears.Remember "only yesterday" "back street" or his precedent movie "the magnificent obsession"."Parnell " is another matter because it deals with the life and times of an Irish hero who fights for his people right ,a real human being ,not,say, a Fanny Hurst's character.The problem is that Gable's and Loy's characters resemble Fanny Hurst's characters.The movie runs almost two hours and the screenplay is often muddled and confuse.Arguably,Stahl hesitates between a straight political biography -and he's not really good at that- and a full bore melodrama -Gable's and Loy's impossible love)and it satisfies neither the fans of the first genre nor the soap operas' buffs.The ending ,which is guaranteed to send the sensitive people tearing through a ton a kleenex,is pure Stahl Stuff. Best part comes from Edna May Oliver ,playing Loy's auntie.Otherwise,a disappointment and .. a bore.