Film Summary DCCCVII (Swing High, Swing Low)

 


It's a story of rags to riches.
And then back down to rags. 
Possibly back up to riches? 
I'm not 100% on that, as the movie just kind of ends. 

But let's get into that. 

A woman (played by Carole Lombard) is travelling across the Panama Canal Zone from New York City to California state. 

She's planning on getting married to some random cattle rancher (or business tycoon?). 
Truth be told I can't remember what the guy was supposed to be and it really doesn't matter as we never see him* and the woman who's going to marry him hasn't actually seen him either. 

She's just hedging her bit on a better life out somewhere in the west away from the problems of New York. 
She's also working as a hairdresser upon a ship and has no prior experience in the job. 
Even getting distracted by Fred MacMurray (He plays the love interests ''Skid'') as she staring out of a window. 
He's some sort of military guard standing upon the Panama Canal liftgate as boats raise and lower. He of course is flirting with this woman and wants to take her out for a night on the town and she's not showing him in it a bit of Interest. 
He gets in trouble from his superiors as he's clearly not attending to his job and she also gets in trouble from her own boss as she forgets about the client whose hair is currently under one of those weird curling irons that you see in the 1950s with the big dome shape. 
Except this one doesn't have a dome. 
It shows every individual curling apparatus being plugged into this woman's hair and apparently if you leave it on too long it'll kill the hair (that is the follicles underneath the hair) and leave the client bald. How accurate is that to the actual hair drying apparatus in real life? 
I have no clue. 
I don't know anything about hair. 
I can barely keep my own hair together. Let alone the Affairs of others. 

Anyways she ends up leaving the boat for a time to accompany one of her friends on a sightseeing tour of Panama City.
They plan on hiring one of those tourist taxis to take them on a tour. 
The guy from earlier who is trying to catch a date with this girl pretends to be one of these taxi service people and purposely wears a silly hat to distract them from his face. 
He also puts on a bad accent and then drives around the city aimlessly talking about this fact in that fact and getting most of the information incorrect. 

The lady eventually realizes who he is and then tell him for essentially stalking her. The whole thing shoot end right here with a: ''Leave me the hell alone. I don't have any interest in you'' .
But instead he somehow persuades both her and her friend to go on a double date with him and his buddy for the evening. 
Resulting in them getting arrested because of some ''turbulence'' with the locals and the boats leaving them all behind. 

Now this girl is stuck in Panama City with some random guy and no way of getting the California. 
So she takes up a job at a night club dancing and even convinces the guy that he should take up trumpet playing after he demonstrated to her that he could do it and do it so well that she actually takes a liking to the instrument which she had formally hated. 

It's from this that a little romance starts to bloom between the two of them. Even though it's pretty clear that the two of them shouldn't be a couple to begin with. Especially given that this guy is a worthless no good hustler who can't seem to keep a job or money in his pocket for any considerable amount of time. 

You'd think later on he improve from this; but not really. 

He's playing well get him the attention of a nightclub owner in New York who wants to hire him for a couple grand performances on Broadway.

He's eventually able to get himself to New York City to go on playing for a couple of nightclubs and he's supposed to take this woman (now he's wife) back with him at some point after the two had gotten married. 
But he forgets about it. Partly due to the manipulation of one of these other women. 
A former lover of this guy. 

The film has this whole angle where you think a love triangle is going to pop up and the three of them are going to have some sort of Confrontation at the end of the film. 
But this third woman is just forgotten about at some point. 
Like the whole purpose of this woman's life is just to destroy the marriage of these two people because of some petty jealousy. 
But then she just fades out of the movie and we never hear from her again. 
You see her name at the very end of the movie after our male lead loses his job in Broadway and his name is turned off from the production. 
But otherwise that's it. 
Mysterious woman is nowhere to be seen.

And the last 20 minutes of the film turn into a strange drama in where our two main romantic leads are passively aggressively at each other's throats while trying to keep a brave face on there now very public divorce. 
The male protagonist to squandering all of his money on liquor and gambling. Losing his career and ending up so ravaged that he can't even get a job at a army recruitment office.

He is given one last chance to prove his worth on Radio by performing one song with a big band Orchestra. 
The only reason he was able to accomplish it is because his now ex-wife shows up at the last minute to assist him. 

It's supposed to be this heart touched moment of two souls rekindling for a final time to complete one more song. But you're left with the impression that the relationship is ultimately dead and if this woman is smart she'll leave this guy and find greener pastures.

*It's possible this random guy that pops up later on the movie to marry our female lead is the guy from California but I honestly can't remember. 
That's the real issue with this movie it's not bad in anyway it's just not overly rememberable. Very middle of the road

Comments