The General Died at Dawn Review: Gary Cooper, Clifford Odets, and a very intense pear

If you want a dusty, weirdly poetic 1930s adventure where Gary Cooper looks incredibly cool in a trench coat, yes, you should watch this tonight.

People who love snappy, theatrical dialogue and shadows that look like they belong in a classic noir will have a blast. But if you are looking for accurate history or can't stand old-school Hollywood casting quirks, you will probably want to skip it. 🚂

The plot is simple enough on paper. Cooper plays O'Hara, a mercenary trying to buy guns for some oppressed peasants in China.

Standing in his way is General Yang, played by Akim Tamiroff who is wearing a lot of makeup and chewing every piece of scenery he can find. Honestly, Tamiroff is the best part of the whole thing.

He has this scene where he eats a pear that is just... weirdly intense. 🍐 I don't know why the camera stayed on him chewing for so long, but I couldn't look away.

Madeleine Carroll shows up as a damsel who betrays O'Hara almost immediately. You can tell she feels super bad about it, though, because her eyes get incredibly watery every time they are in the same room.

The dialogue is written by Clifford Odets, the famous playwright, and boy does it sound like it.

Nobody speaks like a normal human being here. It is all very deep and theatrical, like they are standing on a stage in New York instead of a train in China.

Cooper sometimes looks like he is trying to remember if he left his stove on while Carroll is delivering a three-minute speech about fate and destiny.

He is still great, though. It is a very different vibe from his silent era stuff or even something like The Trail of the Lonesome Pine where the great outdoors did most of the talking.

Here, Lewis Milestone (the director) keeps everything trapped in these beautiful, claustrophobic rooms. There is a shot where the camera tracks through a train carriage that is just incredibly smooth for 1936.

It made me sit up and go, "oh, okay, they actually had some money for this." But then there are moments that feel incredibly cheap, like a painted background that wobbles slightly when someone slams a door.

Also, William Frawley shows up! Yes, Fred Mertz from I Love Lucy is here playing a shady guy in a suit.

He does not fit in this movie at all, and I loved every single second he was on screen. He just brings this weird, breezy American energy to a movie that is trying very hard to be poetic.

The climax has this weird bit with a gun hidden in a basket that feels like it belongs in a different film. It gets a bit messy near the end, and the political stuff gets completely lost in favor of the romance.

But if you like moody, black-and-white melodrama that doesn't quite make sense but looks gorgeous, this is a really fun, slightly clumsy gem.