Mr. Ace

Rating:
Summary: Mr. Ace
Review: Congresswoman Margaret Chase (Sylvia Sidney) is rich and beautiful and used to getting what she wants with few undue delays. Eddie Ace (George Raft), Mr. Ace to the likes of us, is the cool and soft-spoken leader of the Tomahawk Club. Here in Everystate, U.S.A., one does not become governor without going through the Tomahawk Club. Not if they want to be elected, that is. Mrs. Chase wants to be governor.
MR. ACE was released in 1946, just a year after World War Two ended, and it offers solid evidence that the Greatest Generation had indeed discovered cynicism. Essentially MR. ACE is a morality play with Practicality pitted against Idealism, machine politics versus populism. It may play somewhat slow and flat if you?re not a political junkie with historical curiosity, and it?ll play a bit too straight if you?re expecting a twisted little film noir. Without giving anything away, I?ll also argue that the MR. ACE deceives itself in the end. Although the drift in this movie is away from the corrupt practices of Mr. Ace and the Tomahawk Club towards the ideal political environment embodied by Mrs. Chase?s mentor Professor Joshua Adams (Roman Bohnen), Idealism doesn?t really triumph in the end. Something like love does, and the audience has to attribute it more to Sidney?s high-cheeked beauty than Mr. Ace?s discovery of a higher moral code.
The leads here are competent, if not necessarily memorable. My ancient copy of Film Companion says Ms. Sidney star rose in the depression-era 1930s, when she was almost invariably cast as the downtrodden girl of the working class. There?s little vulnerability in her role here. In any event, Sidney?s discontent with being typecast led to her working more on stage and less on screen in the 40s. Tough guy?s Raft most remarkable bio-entry is probably the list of the movies he passed on; High Sierra, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca and Double Indemnity are a few of the movies he rejected.
The three-stars I give MR. ACE are intended for those patient with old, b/w movies.