OVP: The Pied Piper (1942)

Film: The Pied Piper (1942)

Stars: Monty Woolley, Roddy McDowall, Anne Baxter, Otto Preminger, J. Carrol Naish, Peggy Ann Garner

Director: Irving Pichel

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Picture, Actor-Monty Woolley, Cinematography)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Anne Baxter-click here to learn more about Ms. Baxter (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Anne Baxter got into movies pretty quickly and with quite a bit of success early on.  She was only a teenager when she started to get star billing at Fox, first with the 1941 film noir Swamp Water.  A year later, she would appear in two Best Picture nominees, one of which would later be considered one of the great films of the era, The Magnificent Ambersons (which she made on loan to RKO), but that is a film I have seen (and loved) of Baxter's several times, and the goal with this series is always for me to watch (hopefully signature) films I hadn't seen of a performer for the first time.  As a result, we're going to focus today on the other Best Picture contender that Anne Baxter was in from 1942, a hit film that helped add luster to her growing leading lady status, but for which she is definitely playing second billing to another breakout star of 1942, Monty Woolley.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is focused on Howard (Woolley), a curmudgeonly old British man who detests being corrected & being around children.  When war breaks out, and Howard decides it is important for him to return to Britain in solidarity, he is asked to bring two children (McDowall & Garner) with him, as their parents are joining the war effort.  They venture forward, and soon we find that Howard is a bit of a pied piper (hence the title) leading a half dozen children out of war-torn Europe toward America.  Along the way he meets Nicole (Baxter), a French woman who romanced Howard's now-dead son, and they form an alliance that is nearly disrupted when Major Diessen (Preminger, in a rare acting role), a Nazi commander, imprisons them, but after finally believing that Howard truly is trying to save the children, he adds one of his own (a young girl who is half-German and half-Jewish), knowing what awaits her in Hitler's Germany.  The film ends with Howard finally embracing his grandfatherly position, excited to help these children get to safety.

The film is meant to be a happy wartime effort, and it is.  I always find movies about World War II made during World War II (the most famous being Casablanca) to be fascinating, mostly because it's essentially Hollywood making well-constructed propaganda, not ultimately knowing what will happen.  We take for granted years later that a film like The Pied Piper has a happy ending, but this wasn't something that was known in 1942-the ending has a degree of uncertainty even if it's hopeful.  This contradiction (where Hollywood doesn't know how to end the movie fully) is one of the more interesting things about The Pied Piper.

This is because the film itself is quite dull.  Woolley is terrific in his other star-making role of 1942 in the Christmas classic The Man Who Came to Dinner, but while he's wearing a similar routine here, it's a bit tired & doesn't really work.  Woolley is great at playing erudite snobs, but he's not as strong as playing obstinate men who fight the war effort, and while it's fun to think of him being this man who will stand up to the entire Third Reich, the film's relationship between he & Preminger's Nazi suspends belief so high you're going to need to a telescope.  Combined with him not really being able to pull off the film's schlockier moments, the movie falls apart, and Woolley, though a treat in his best scenes, is totally unprepared for this character, which probably needed someone better at straight drama.

Baxter's role is secondary-this is most definitely a supporting part, and not a well-drawn one at that.  The Indiana-born actress does a decent French accent (kudos for trying-most stars of that era wouldn't have), but that's about all she is asked to do.  Baxter's strength is melodrama, but the tonal shifts in this film (and Woolley's inability to roll with them) doesn't allow her to really capitalize on the film's weightiest moments.