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Adventure

1945, Movie, NR, 130 mins

Adventure: Review

This was Gable's first film after being mustered out of the Air Force following WW II (where he flew many missions over Germany and was decorated for heroism), and MGM ballyhooed its greatest star with an enormous publicity campaign, proclaiming: "Gable's back and Garson's got him!" The role was tailor-made, that of a roughneck seaman who had been around the world and had the traditional girl in every port, but never a girl like Garson, a reserved, beautiful librarian whom he meets in a San Francisco library when trying to look up a history of the human soul for his friend and shipmate, Mitchell, superbly playing a superstitious Irishman who believes his soul "went up Powell Street," fleeing his body after a knife fight. Gable sweeps Garson off her feet in a dizzy courtship but then sails away on another freighter. He returns to find her pregnant and gone to the old farm homestead to await the birth of their child; her friend Blondell gives him a ranting piece of her mind in the best scene of her small part. Gable does the right thing and settles down with Garson in a ramshackle house, but he resents being landlocked, a sullen attitude that does not change until the birth of the child. In a tense and moving scene, the old country doctor, Davenport, struggles to bring the weak baby to life, when the newborn is clutched desperately by father Gable who passionately talks him into breathing, a speech happily heard by an exhausted Garson in the next room that tells her that her wandering husband is home to stay. Critics at the time of the film's release universally panned this light-hearted production, most likely expecting the old Gable of BOOM TOWN and TEST PILOT and disappointed at the middleaged man before them. But a less heroic Gable is no less interesting, and this is an entertaining and sincere film well worth watching. leave a comment