|
''Tales of Manhattan'' is a 1942 American anthology film directed by Julien Duvivier. Thirteen writers, including Ben Hecht, Alan Campbell, Ferenc Molnár, Samuel Hoffenstein, and Donald Ogden Stewart, worked on the six stories in this film. ==Plot== Based on the Mexican writer Francisco Rojas González's novel, ''Historia de un frac'' ("Story of a Tailcoat"), the stories follow a black formal tailcoat as it goes from owner to owner, in five otherwise unconnected stories. The first is a love triangle between Charles Boyer, Thomas Mitchell, and Rita Hayworth. Boyer plays an actor who gives his finest performance when he's shot while wearing the jacket. The second tale is a comic story featuring Ginger Rogers who finds a romantic love letter in her future husband's jacket. Her boyfriend (Cesar Romero) enlists his best man (Henry Fonda) to help bail him out. Things don't go as expected when Rogers falls in love with Fonda and dumps her boyfriend. The third tale stars Charles Laughton as Charles Smith, a poor but brilliant musician, composer and conductor whose one big chance at fame and recognition is in jeopardy. While he attempts to conduct, the small jacket rips and the audience erupts with laughter. In a poignant moment, the orchestra's Maestro (Victor Francen) empathizes with Smith, removes his own tailcoat, and begs him to continue; the "gentlemen" in the audience remove their own tailcoats in a show of solidarity. The fourth story stars Edward G. Robinson as an alcoholic derelict who takes a last shot at life by borrowing the tailcoat to attend his 25th college reunion. The lawyer tries to convince his former classmates that he is successful, but one of his classmates (George Sanders) knew Robinson was disbarred for unethical behaviour as a lawyer. When one of the guests loses his wallet the group hold a mock trial where Robinson ultimately decides to admit that he is a derelict. The next morning his classmates come to his mission where he is offered a good job, and is back on the road to respectability. A fifth story involves a thief (J. Carrol Naish) stealing the coat from a second-hand store and then committing a robbery at an illegal casino where no one is admitted unless wearing evening dress. When he attempts to escape by plane in an open cockpit, the jacket catches fire from sparks from the engine; the panicked thief removes his burning jacket and throws it out of the plane, with the money still in the pockets. A poor African-American couple (Paul Robeson and Ethel Waters) in a deep South shanty community finds the jacket along with over $40,000. They take it to their minister (Eddie Anderson) who gives out the "money from heaven" to people so that they can buy what they prayed for. After distributing the cash, Luke (Robeson) asks loner Christopher (George Reed) what he's prayed for. He says he prayed for a scarecrow for the fields. They take the now practically shredded jacket and make a scarecrow out of it. The sequence features musical numbers by Paul Robeson and the Hall Johnson choir. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Tales of Manhattan」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|