Flesh and Fantasy *** (1943, Edward G Robinson, Charles Boyer, Barbara Stanwyck, Betty Field, Robert Cummings, Thomas Mitchell, Robert Benchley, Charles Winninger, Anna Lee) – Classic Movie Review 10,859

Director Julien Duvivier’s 1943 black and white Flesh and Fantasy is a fantasy anthology film of three polished tales of the macabre, linked by club chatterer Robert Benchley, who muses amusingly on the subject of dreams and how they can some true.

1. Plain Henrietta (Betty Field) gets a mask on Mardi Gras night and Michael (Robert Cummings) falls for her, in Ellis St Joseph’s story.
2. A version of Oscar Wilde’s Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime, in which palmist Septimus Podgers (Thomas Mitchell) tells sceptical lawyer Marshall Tyler (Edward G Robinson) that he will commit a murder.
3. Charles Boyer is a circus high wire arcrobat Gaspar who dreams that he will fall to his death –and then he encounters Joan (Barbara Stanwyck), who has appeared in the dream and falls for her – in Laszlo Vadnay’s story.

The stars keep the start-stop-start movie going and it is given some style and charm by director Duvivier, but the only real true hit of the three tales is the Oscar Wilde story, and both Robinson and Mitchell are excellent, though the Mardi Gras story is gently appealing.

It runs 94 minutes, but it would have been much longer. A deleted fourth episode became a separate film, Destiny (1944), with Gloria Jean, Alan Curtis and Frank Craven. Destiny was originally a segment of Flesh and Fantasy. The footage was cut from the final print and expanded into an independent feature, directed by Reginald Le Borg, with Duvivier uncredited.

Also in the cast are Charles Winninger, Anna Lee, Dame May Whitty, C Aubrey Smith, Edgar Barrier, David Hoffman, Leyland Hodgson, Eddie Acuff, James Craven, Joseph Crehan, Peter Lawford, Doris Lloyd, Mary Forbes, Marcel Dalio, Charles Halton, Arthur Loft, Lee Phelps Ferdinand Munier, Ian Wolfe, Lee Phelps, Gil Patric, Anita Sharp-Bolster, Heather Thatcher, Nedra Sanders and Frank Mitchell.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 10,859

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