Powerful

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Anthology film that centers around a formal tailcoat and the different people who come into possession of it. The first story is about an actor (Charles Boyer) in love with a married woman (Rita Hayworth). Her husband (Thomas Mitchell) doesn't like it one bit. Boyer and Mitchell are fine but Hayworth overacts big time. The story is thin but, as with the rest of the picture, director Julien Duvivier and cinematographer Joseph Walker make it look beautiful. The second story is also about a love triangle, although lighter in tone than the previous tale. This one's about a woman (Ginger Rogers) who suspects her fiancé (Cesar Romero) is cheating after finding a love letter in the pocket of his coat (same coat from before), which leads to her taking a second look at his best man (Henry Fonda). This is probably the weakest story in the movie. Just not as amusing or cute as it wants to be. Also Ginger Rogers sports one of the ugliest hairstyles I've ever seen.The third story has a struggling composer (Charles Laughton) getting his big chance to conduct his own composition in front of a large audience. But the tailcoat he's wearing (yup, same one) is too small and rips in front of everyone. What happens next I won't spoil but I thought it was pretty neat. This is my favorite part of the movie, albeit for sentimental reasons. The fourth story is the most widely-praised one, judging by the reviews I've read. It's a great story about a down-on-his-luck former lawyer (Edward G. Robinson) who borrows the tailcoat to attend his college reunion. Again, I don't want to spoil too much because of how good this one is, but it's another one that pulls at the heartstrings.Next is an interesting story in that it was originally cut to reduce the running time but has since been restored to the film, despite apparently missing a part at the end that connects it to the next segment. It's a funny story about a man (W.C. Fields) giving a lecture on the dangers of alcohol at the home of a wealthy woman (Margaret Dumont). But it turns out the woman's husband has spiked the milk they're all drinking with booze so everybody at the anti-alcohol meeting gets drunk. Simple story but fun. Fields is a hoot as usual. The final story has a crook (J. Carrol Naish) stealing the coat to help him commit a robbery at a casino. As he escapes via plane, he dumps the coat and it lands in a field where a poor black Southern couple (Paul Robeson, Ethel Waters) find it. The coat has the money from the casino heist in it, which pleases the couple at first as they believe it is a gift from God. But it dawns on them God would want them to use the money to help others, not themselves. It's a nice story, if a little patronizing. Paul Robeson, a devout communist who liked the story's 'community before the individual' philosophy, was so disappointed by the finished product and its stereotypical depictions of poor blacks that he would never make another Hollywood movie.In addition to the stars I've listed already, the cast includes many wonderful supporting actors like George Sanders, Victor Francen, Eugene Palette, Roland Young, Elsa Lanchester, Harry Davenport, James Gleason, Phil Silvers, Gail Patrick, and Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson. Julien Duvivier would do another anthology film for Universal the following year called Flesh and Fantasy. Boyer, Robinson, and Mitchell would also appear in that film. Dynamite cast and fine direction make this one something that I think most classic film fans will enjoy. The stories aren't all home runs but they're all interesting in different ways.

The somber men bringing a box to Paul Orman's apartment, as the story begins, are tailors that want to assure their client the tails coat suit they are delivering will fit him perfectly. Alas, the suit serves as a sort of a link that holds together the history of a suit, and the people that wear it. Each of the five narratives are different from one another. With the exception of the last one, Julien Duvivier's excellent American film is a joy to watch.The film boasts a galaxy of collaborators. Twentieth Century Fox produced the film during the period of WWII, as it gathered talent from the film industry that came together in a movie that should be seen by serious fans. Julien Duvivier, a distinguished French director, came to Hollywood during the years of the conflict in Europe. He had a natural talent for getting the best out of his cast and crew, as he proves in here.Some of the best figures working in movies during those years came together in what appears to be a coup of casting. Charles Boyer, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell and Eugene Palette are featured in the initial sequence. Cesar Romero, Ginger Rogers, Henry Fonda, Gail Patrick and Roland Young are seen in the second story. Charles Laughton, Elsa Lanchester and Victor Francen appear in the third installment. The great Edgar G. Robinson, James Gleason, George Sanders, and Henry Davenport, make their segment one of the best ones in the picture. The last one is not too shabby either, it showed performers of the stature of Ethel Waters, Paul Robeson and Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson in the last tale, which is a bit too mawkish to end the film. All the players assembled for this project do wonders under Mr. Duvivier's guidance.The writing was not too bad either. Distinguished writers of the stature of Donald Ogden Stewart, Ben Hecht, Ferenc Molnar, and even an uncredited Buster Keaton enhanced the stories for the viewer's enjoyment. Joseph Walker's cinematography worked wonders, as did the art direction by Richard Day and Boris Leven. One of the highlights of the film is the hunting lodge of the first story full of antlers. The musical score is credited to Sol Kaplan.Fans of Julien Duvivier should not miss his fantastic vision in "Tales of Manhattan".

I'm a sucker for the La Ronde or Slacker-type "life is a circle" films, with some plot device used in most cases to carry the story from character to character through the whole film, possibly back to the person it started with and possibly not. In this case, the ending is truly bizarre and unlikely, and almost kills a film which was a whole lot of fun up until that point. There's a jacket, see, a handsome tailcoat that belongs to a famous Broadway start, and it's the jacket that migrates, from Charles Boyer the start to playboy Caesar Romero, on to would-be composer Charles Laughton and down-and-out lawyer Edward G. Robinson, while also touching friends, lovers and enemies like Elsa Lanchester, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell, Ginger Rogers, and Henry Fonda. All well and good with plenty of moments of intrigue, romance, and good old fashioned star-power, until the coat makes one last journey, out of an airplane and into the hands of a poor black man in some unnamed and somewhat unearthly southern town. Paul Robeson's voice and presence are certainly powerful enough, but they aren't alone enough to keep the last segment's religious mawkishness from leaving a bad taste in the mouth as songs are sung and massive amounts of money are miraculously found and put to good use by the poor townspeople. Well, it was the war, and I guess they needed an uplifting ending...

I think it's fairly safe to say that this is the finest film that Julien Duvivier made outside France, let alone made in America; Anna Karenina which he made in England doesn't really compete with the Don Camillo films he shot in Italy - in fact on reflection The Little World Of Don Camillo may tie Tales Of Manhattan for Best-Duvivier-Made-Outside-France. He was a master of the 'anthology' movie and both Un Carnet de bal and Sous le ciel de Paris are outstanding examples that had the advantage of tighter scripting - in Tales Of Manhattan the roster of credited writers threatens to outnumber the cast and Duvivier deserves a small accolade for unifying so many diverse styles into a cohesive whole. Others have provided details of the several episodes as well as pointing out that not Every sequence takes place in Manhattan, notably the final sequence which is set in the Deep South and provides a perfect coda when the tuxedo in question finds a final resting place on a scarecrow. It feels as if every Hollywood actor who wasn't on active service in 1942 was on Duvivier's set standing up to be counted and Phil Silvers is brilliant in an all-too-brief segment working a pre-Bilko scam on W.C. Fields. A delight.