John Lee Mahin's script has a couple of in-jokey references. 'Who do you think I am, the Good Fairy?' asks Frank Morgan, when he was in the 1935 film of the same name. Then later, there's a reference to Dante's Inferno, a film which Spencer Tracy starred in, also in 1935.
In this massively entertaining drama, Tracy and Clark Gable are rival oil prospectors who both love Claudette Colbert - the story was by James Edward Grant, and spans several decades. There's a really thrilling oil fire scene, which must have been bloody dangerous, and some of those dazzling montage sequences which look like they've been done by Vorkapich (they're credited to John Hoffman in fact, though Slavko was still at MGM and possibly supervised). Fabulous editing by Blanche Sewell, photography Harold Rosson, music Franz Waxman (didn't really notice the music, to be honest, but I'm sure it was very good!)
With Hedy Lamarr, Chill Wills, Lionel Atwill, Minna Gombell.
119 mins. MGM.
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