#56 The Saint Strikes Back

February 22, 2021
The Saint Strikes Back (1939) ***
TCM
Free
Wildcard

“I’m very sorry, but under certain conditions, I simply can’t resist the temptation to be a cad.”

Here is good old George Sanders again, as seen in The Falcon and His Brother recently, playing a very similar role of a louche amateur detective. These films came first, and The Saint was always a more popular character than The Falcon, but the studio got in a dispute with Leslie Charteris, the creator of The Saint, so they basically made the same films with a different name until Sanders had enough and moved on.

Simon Templar, aka The Saint, comes to the aid of a woman who doesn’t want his aid a bit, she is the daughter of a late policeman who was framed as a baddy and is determined to take her revenge on the people who wronged him. Simon wants, instead, to prove he was innocent and bring the real villains to justice, while always appearing to be a villain himself and having to trick Inspector Fernack (Jonathan Hale), his sort of friend, but sort of foe (but really friend, but kind of foe) who really just wants to arrest Simon and make his life easier.

Appearing as a safe cracker is Barry Fitzgerald, whom I am used to being old and twinkly in Going My Way and The Quiet Man, though I had forgotten he was Cyfartha in How Green Was My Valley, and Going My Way was only five years later than this. Maybe I meant that I am used to him playing older. Anyway, my point is that he was a mere sprite of 51 here, and I hadn’t seen him so callow before.

Wendy Barrie plays the woman who seems like a bad guy but really is good, and she appears in two other Saint films, and then two Falcon films, always as a different character, so I guess the chemistry she has with George Sanders was noticed and they kept seeing if they could light those sparks.

This is a funny and charming film, though there is a lot of guff about how beautiful women should be decorative and so on, but it’s got an unusual plot, and the back and forth between the Saint and the Inspector is a real treat.