Come and Get It (1936) review - A wildly uneven lumberjack drama

If you have any love for old Hollywood melodrama that goes completely off the rails, yes, Come and Get It is absolutely worth your time. It is perfect for anyone who likes seeing big-budget 1930s studio films that cannot decide what genre they want to be. But if you get easily creeped out by older guys lusting after girls who look exactly like their exes, you should probably skip this one. 🌲

The film starts in the Wisconsin woods with Edward Arnold playing Barney Glasgow, a ridiculously loud lumberjack boss. He is obsessed with cutting down trees and making a name for himself, which is fine, but then he meets Lotta, a saloon singer.

Frances Farmer plays Lotta, and she is the absolute best thing in this movie, hands down. She has this smoky, tired voice that makes her feel like a real person surrounded by cardboard cutouts.

Anyway, Barney dumps her because he wants to marry his boss's daughter and get rich. It is a classic jerk move, but the movie makes the logging business look so dirty and sweaty that you almost get why he is desperate to escape.

Actually, those early lumberjack scenes are incredible. They have a raw, chaotic energy that reminded me of Night Nurse, just pure kinetic filmmaking before the studio censors completely cleaned everything up.

But then the movie does a massive time jump, and things get... weird.

Barney is now old, rich, and miserable. He goes to visit his old buddy Swan, played by Walter Brennan, who actually won an Oscar for this role.

Brennan does this high-pitched chuckle that is cute at first but gets a bit much by the end of the film. 😅 Swan married Lotta after Barney dumped her, and they had a daughter who is also played by Frances Farmer.

This is where the movie turns into a bizarre mid-life crisis nightmare. Barney sees the daughter, who looks exactly like his lost love, and immediately tries to buy her affection.

It is deeply uncomfortable to watch. He is basically trying to date his ex-girlfriend's ghost, who also happens to be his best friend's kid.

You can tell Howard Hawks directed the first half because it is all fast-talking guys and action. Then William Wyler took over for the second half, and it suddenly becomes a stuffy living room drama with people staring intensely at paintings.

The transition is so jarring, it feels like two different movies glued together with some cheap sap. Yet, I could not look away.

The scene where Barney's son (a very young Joel McCrea) also falls for the daughter leads to this incredibly awkward dinner table confrontation. The tension is so thick you could cut it with a logging saw.

In the end, it is a messy film that does not quite come together, but Frances Farmer's dual performance keeps it afloat. Just don't think too hard about the family dynamics, or your head might hurt.