The Saxon Charm

Robert Montgomery makes the film by his overwhelmingly impressive performance non-stop as an autocratic Broadway producer without any scruples at all - everyone collaborating with him become his victims, eventually ending up as suicides. It's a brilliant script above all, the dialog is intelligent and witty all the way in constant crossfire, making this more of a play than a film. Susan Hayward and Audrey Totter are the women who see him through and ultimately win over him, but not until he has lost everything. His character appears to have been a real phenomenon, the Broadway producer Jed Harris, who in the same way made his way by ruthlessly driving over everyone else and enslaving them in a leash of serfdom. John Payne is the sympathetic writer who gets caught up with him, a novelist who tries writing a play, and in their collaboration the producer's tragedy becomes visible - he could never write anything good himself, he only lived on finding others to write for him, and then he had to destroy them by over-editing their work. John Payne finally evades that ruin by the help of his wife, and the interesting thing is that his play, after being massively over-edited and flopped on Broadway, is then proved a success in its original version. So much for others trying to improve your creativity. Although Robert Montgomery makes an abominable character, the film is his, and his performance is as magnificent as the best of John Barrymore.