Watching these two films spliced together and believe me despite the opening narrative the Joseph Conrad story The Secret Sharer and Stephen Crane's The Bride Comes To Yellow Sky have really nothing in common at all. James Agee wrote the screenplay for both and he was far better on the Crane story than the Conrad story.The Secret Sharer is a dull work as new captain James Mason with an unfamiliar crew stands watch himself one night and takes aboard a man swimming for his ship. It was Michael Pate who is mate of another vessel and he's killed a member of that crew. He tells a story so convincing in his justification for the homicide that Mason decides to help him flee.No real action in this one, it's Mason with his crew and then with Pate doing a lot of talk talk talk. This was not one of the better film versions of a Conrad story by far.The Bride Comes To Yellow Sky concerns Marshal Robert Preston who has cleaned up the town of Yellow Sky so much so that he's gone to San Antonio to wed Marjorie Steele and bring her home. The only problem is that old time outlaw Minor Watson has gotten all liquored up and is terrorizing the town waiting to kill Marshal Preston. Watson who usually plays dignified establishment type figures is really in an offbeat role as the old time outlaw and he's good.Marjorie Steele at the time was Mrs. Huntington Hartford and note the fact that Hartford is producer at RKO for this film. He would have had to deal with Howard Hughes who owned the studio then and the negotiations between those two billionaires must have been something. Though she's fine in the part of the bride, the film did not lead to a big movie career for Mrs. Hartford.If you watch the film, I'd skip the first half lest you be bored and go right to The Bride Comes To Yellow Sky in Face To Face.

Those are two totally different stories, one might ask what brings them together, and most will find no answer, but I will. Stephen Crane and Joseph Conrad are the the two most meaningful writers I have ever read. "The Outcast of the Islands", "Lord Jim" and "The Red Badge of Courage" have reached into me the way no other book did. The first half of the film, based on Conrad's "The Secret Sharer" is about a captain (James Mason) unsure of himself, becoming through a crisis more of a man. The second half, from a story of Stephen Crane "The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky" is about a Marshall, (Robert Preston), who just got married (Marjorie Steele excellent as the bride) traveling for the first time in a Pullman to his home town where he will meet a man who wants to kill him. There is no better example of how a good screenplay (James Agee) can make a film that otherwise would seem like a TV movie, become such a delight to see.

Face to Face is quite good, but it is, essentially, two different movies based on two different books, stuck back-to-back for no apparent reason. Personally, I think the two stories share a sneaky anti-Christian undercurrent, but other than that they don't share a lot of similarities. The first story is based on a book by Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness), which is about a first-time navel officer who, while on watch, finds a murderous refugee from another ship swimming in the ocean. It had a thoughtful and steady pace, and was fairly serious in its storytelling, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. The second story is based on a Stephen Crane book about the gunslinging Marshall of a small western town who gets married in San Antonio. It's a more light-hearted story which is surprisingly funny at times, especially when the town drunk puts on his 6-shooters and decides to stumble around town raising heck. I don't know why these two 40-odd minute movies were stuck together in order to make a feature length film, but it seemed to work pretty well because it told two complete short stories in under 90 minutes. A neat and enjoyable film. Whee!