Saratoga Trunk (1945) – full review!
Saratoga Trunk (1945) – full review!
Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman appeared as the leads in two films together and Sam Wood (For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) the other drama) directed both. This is clearly the lesser of the two and not just because it was shot in B&W vs. Technicolor. The title refers to a train rail connection between two main lines near this New York state city but the plot really has little to do with it until the final third (at most). Based on the novel by Edna Ferber which was adapted by Casey Robinson (Captain Blood (1935)) the story is about Bergman’s character Clio Dulaine. She’s an ambitious woman whose past is sordid such that she’s bent on revenge first; she then relentlessly pursues a goal to social climb above her class by marrying a millionaire. These plans are interrupted and altered when she meets and falls in love with Cooper’s character ‘Colonel’ Clint Maroon. Flora Robson was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award (her only Oscar nomination) playing Clio’s Creole servant Angelique Buiton; dwarf Jerry Austin plays Cupidon her other domestic helper and/or partner in "crime". The best parts of the film are the dialogue especially what Clint gets to say to Clio who is not only beautiful but a highly skilled practitioner in the art of female manipulation (of men). Unless you love Cooper and Bergman though the movie’s 135 minutes running time may seem like an eternity.
The first hour of the movie is set in New Orleans. Clio has just arrived by boat from Paris with Angelique and Cupidon in tow. Her plan is to get back at the Dulaine family who’d effectively run her out of town though they’d continued to pay her living expenses; her mother had evidently had an affair with Nicholas Dulaine some fifteen years earlier. When he ended the dalliance Clio’s mother was going to kill herself but he’d ended up being shot dead in the process of preventing it. So Clio has come to Louisiana to embarrass the wealthy Dulaine family who’d thought the scandal was behind them. However she meets gambler Clint Maroon from Texas. There is a strong physical attraction between them and he effectively delays her plans. Clio also tells Clint of her plans to "entrap" a rich man into marrying her one day. Clint embodies much of Cooper’s well established screen persona. Before Clio is able to go too far with her plans the Dulaine’s lawyer visits her in her mother’s now restored home to offer a settlement (of $10000 and) which requires that she leave town and give up the family name permanently.
Since Clio had received a letter from Clint telling her of the horse racing wealth and millionaires present in Saratoga she travels there by train with Angelique and Cupidon. Angelique is learned in voodoo and acts much like a disapproving mother of her master’s activities though she also fiercely protects her as she did Clio’s mother. Cupidon is a happy go lucky dwarf who listens in on the grapevine (or through keyholes) and literally & figuratively looks up to Clint. John Warburton plays Bartholomew Van Steed a Momma’s boy who’s the initial target of Clio’s ambition. Florence Bates does a terrific job playing a town gossip-type character Sophie Bellop who turns out to be fairly ambitious herself; Ethel Griffies plays Van Steed’s protective mother. John Abbott plays the Saratoga hotel man.
Cooper’s character has some ambition of his own; he creates an opportunity for real wealth by exploiting the conflict between Bartholomew and Raymond Soule (Louis Payne): the titled piece of railway. Through a poker game (in which Thurston Hall’s character appears uncredited) Clint ingratiates himself with some railroad stockholders allied with Bartholomew and then provides the needed muscle to take on Soule. A spectacular train crash precedes a rail-side brawl between the competing factions in which Clint and stowaway Cupidon are injured. Naturally this evokes the (nurse) Florence Nightingale nurturing that’s ostensibly in every woman including Clio who gives up her dream just when she’d landed Bartholomew to settle for Clint to whom she promises control.
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