The Green Cockatoo

A gangster, Dave (Robert Newton) who double-crosses some other gangsters finds himself in desperate trouble in "The Green Cockatoo."

Warned by his brother Jim (John Mills) to get out of town quickly, Dave goes to the train station. He has an altercation with the gang and is knifed. He latches onto a young woman, Eileen (Rene Ray) who has just arrived in London from a small town. He tells her that he can bring her to a good place to stay, and she accompanies him.

You really have to suspend disbelief that a young woman would just go off with a stranger. And it gets better. Once she's in her room, and he has left, he suddenly returns. I'd be screaming my lungs out.

However, she sees that he's hurt and agrees to help him. Unfortunately, he dies, and the landlady thinks she did it. Before he dies, he gives her a message for his brother at the Green Cockatoo.

With the police and the gang after her, she finds The Green Cockatoo. She doesn't know anything about Jim, a song and dance man there, and to get away from her followers, she starts wandering around the upstairs of the club. She meets Jim, not realizing he's the man she's looking for.

Despite Eileen's strange behavior in the beginning, this is a fun film. John Mills is delightful singing and dancing. In one scene, as he attempts to hide Eileen from the police, he says she is his new performing partner.

He sings "Smoky Joe" - all she has to do is say the words "Smoky Joe" when he pauses. It's hilarious. She is supposed to not be able to sing, but you can tell by her off-key "Smoky Joes" that she actually had a good voice.

Recommended - nice British noir from 1937.

This feels more like something from the fifties rather than the thirties. It's dark, moody and grittily realistic. It's a beautifully photographed really atmospheric Film Noir.... just a shame that John Mills is so utterly awful.

Were John Mills not in this, it would have been something special. People might today reflect on it being the first proper Film Noir. All the classic tropes of that genre are perfectly exemplified in this... but John Mills, no! Why he was cast as a seedy, back-street club owner defies all known logic. His character was clearly based on James Cagney but Mills' impersonation of the great man is truly cringey. You want to hide behind the sofa with embarrassment for him as he trots out lines which seem straight out of an early Warner Brothers gangster flick - on the level! Any minute you're expecting him to call someone a dirty rat. Clean cut thirty year old John Mills is not a gangster.

It's so difficult to ignore this ridiculous casting that it spoils the whole picture which is a shame because apart from him, it's actually a good film. If you didn't know better you'd guess it was made at least a decade later. The acting is a million miles away from what you'd expect from a 1930s film - incredibly realistic and natural. Lovely Rène Ray is perfect as the sweet naive young thing plunged helplessly onto the nightmare rollercoaster ride into an unimaginable unknown.... but John Mills - no!

This has some good ingredients to make a jolly, if not exactly, menacing murder story - but it's all just way too fluffy and talky. The doey-eyed Rene Ray is "Eileen" who arrives into London very late one night. At the station, she encounters "Dave" (Robert Newton) who offers to show her an hotel where she might pass the night. What she doesn't know, is that her good Samaritan has fallen foul of some crooks and a station fracas ensues and he is mortally injured. Before he croaks, he gives her a message to give to his brother "Jim" (John Mills) in the eponymous nightclub. She meets the brother, but a rather unlikely series of mishaps befall the pair as they are being sought by the police and the hoodlums. Aside from some singing and dancing that one wouldn't normally attribute to John Mills, the thing is entirely procedural with little by way suspense or peril; and saving a rather curious performance from Frank Atkinson as the butler "Protheroe" would be instantly forgettable.

With direction from William Cameron Menzies and a script by Graham Greene, The Green Cockatoo should have come out a whole lot better than it was. The film was what we call a B production and over there they call a quota quickie. In this case quick was not good because haste made some sloppy waste.

Young Rene Ray a girl from the sticks arrives in London and almost before she knows it she's got herself involved with gangster Robert Newton who gets stabbed by another mob for betraying them in a dog race fixing scheme. Newton dies in her room, but not before naming his killers and telling her to get in touch with his brother John Mills who has a song and dance act at a club in Soho called The Green Cockatoo.

The biggest thing that The Green Cockatoo has is that it shows off some musical talents that a lot of fans including myself didn't know that John Mills possessed. Unfortunately Graham Greene's script is rather incoherent, possibly the fault of some bad editing on this quota quickie.

Both Mills and Newton would certainly go on to bigger and better things. I'm sure neither was impressed by The Green Cockatoo as I wasn't.

Although today the term 'B-movie' is taken to be a bad or cheap film, this isn't exactly what Bs were back in the 1930s and 40s. A B-movie was a short film (about 50-70 minutes) that was relatively cheaply made and it was intended to be the second movie in a double-feature. But they were not necessarily good nor bad...they were just short and economically produced. And, when you watch "The Green Cockatoo", you're watching a British B-movie...so American studios were not the only ones making such pictures.

A very naive (and rather stupid) country woman (Rene Ray) is going to live in London. Aboard the train is a very weird man who talks about the evils of big cities...and he is a most ridiculous character who completely telegraphs what's coming next. What is that? A gambler (Robert Newton) is stabbed by some fellow thugs after he cheats them and he dies in her arms a bit later. It looks as if she killed him and she runs to avoid arrest. She goes to the nightclub owned by the brother (John Mills) of the dead man to tell him about the killing and to get his help. What's next? See the film.

The film is a mixture of good and bad. The production values, noirish camerawork, and most of the acting is very nice. What isn't is the leading lady,...she has virutally no personality and is too passive (such as when Jim Connor is being attacked...and she just stands there doing nothing). They also make her a bit too stupid. As a result, the story is a mixed bag and is reminscent of a cheaper and less stylish version of Hitchcock's "39 Steps".