The Green Glove
The Green Glove
NR | 28 February 1952 (USA)
The Green Glove Trailers

In World War II France, American soldier Michael Blake captures, then loses Nazi-collaborator art thief Paul Rona, who leaves behind a gem studded gauntlet (a stolen religious relic). Years later, financial reverses lead Mike to return in search of the object. In Paris, he must dodge mysterious followers and a corpse that's hard to explain; so he and attractive tour guide Christine decamp on a cross-country pursuit that becomes love on the run...then takes yet another turn.

Reviews
SoftInloveRox Horrible, fascist and poorly acted
Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense
Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.
Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.
Rainey Dawn Michael 'Mike' Blake (Ford) was in the war, captured Count Paul Rona (Macready) who got away and hid a green glove belonging to a church. Years later Blake goes back to France to get the glove and make things right again - but he has a lot of trouble doing so and find a love interest along the way, Christine 'Chris' Kenneth (Brooks).Rather boring story for the most part - it started out boring, picked up for a bit and interesting before it fell back into a majorly lame, boring film again. I was unimpressed with the movie overall.From what I've read, the film was based on actions that took place during Operation Dragoon - but apparently only the VERY beginning of the film was - the rest of the film was all about a fictional romance and a green glove.3/10
classicsoncall Part mystery adventure and part romance, "The Green Glove" is a sometimes uneven tale of an ex-GI returning to France on a suitably dubious mission - to retrieve a jewel encrusted glove that might take the edge off a run of seven years bad luck. Almost sounds like Glenn Ford broke a mirror, or something like that. Ford's character, Michael Blake, is joined mid-way in his mission by an attractive tour guide (Geraldine Brooks), who's immediately caught up in a tale of dead men, Nazi spies and stolen treasure. It always makes me curious why characters in movies are drawn into completely untenable situations, but I guess if they weren't, you wouldn't have a story.Like most of the other posters for this film, I was struck by the the Hitchcockian elements of the picture, and caught myself thinking of the jeweled glove as that fabled Bogart Falcon. The film suitably keeps one on the fence as to Blake's real intentions regarding the gauntlet, even as he tries to stay a step ahead of his cunning adversary, Nazi collaborator turned fine art dealer, Count Paul Rona (George Macready).What was unbelievable to me was the chase scene down a virtually sheer rock face known as the goat trail (for good reason), and then back up again for a couple of middle aged guys (Ford,36 and Macready,53) who didn't look like they were in the best of shape to begin with. With all that, Blake still had the stamina to climb up the church tower and make with the bells to set up the mystery that book-ends the story.
funkyfry I've been trying to locate this film for quite some time, and I wasn't disappointed by it. It's not a movie with a lot of gravity, but taken as just a nice little adventure romance it's quite satisfying. In a somewhat low budget or B film like this, you couldn't hope for a more fascinating hero than Glenn Ford nor a more nefarious and cultured villain than George Macready. I also thought that Geraldine Brooks was very beautiful and had a lot of positive energy, kind of like the early Veronica Lake. She has good chemistry with Ford and some of the back and forth between them is reminiscent of a Howard Hawks or John Farrow type of story. This film's director is Rudolph Mate, best known as the director of "D.O.A." but also a very significant cinematographer with films like Dreyer's "Passion of Joan of Arc", Lang's "Lilliom", William Wyler's "Dodsworth", King Vidor's "Stella Dallas" and other classics in his resume. He gives "The Green Glove" a steady veteran hand at the helm and an overall professional look despite the low budget he apparently had at his disposal. Mate was also the photographer of "Gilda", so perhaps it's not coincidence that two of its primary trio of stars appears in this film also."The Green Glove" itself is a famous religious relic that has been stolen (the Priest who guards it is played by Cedric Hardwicke, who is credited above Macready). Ford plays an American soldier who discovers the relic and returns to France years later to try to reclaim it. He meets the lovely tour guide Christine (Brooks) and she gets swept up in the suspense when the police find a dead body in Mike's (Ford) hotel room. They travel to Monte Carlo and try to find the jade-encrusted gauntlet before it can be seized by the shady art dealer Count Rona (Macready).It's a breezy film with some good action scenes, such as a fight between Ford and Macready's stooges and a climactic chase on perilous cliff tops. In some ways it's the good old fashioned kind of adventure movie that people who enjoy things like "Indiana Jones" and "Romancing the Stone" would appreciate, the older template for those types of movies. Ford is an appropriately ambiguous hero, and although the film is by no real stretch of imagination a "noir", he does have the ruminating and sometimes self-contradictory (or semi-suicidal) behavior that you see in many war veterans in those types of films. In terms of the film's meaning or message, it is obliquely about a veteran's efforts to return to the scene of his trauma and to try to correct some damage that he might have unintentionally taken part in. It's not clear right away however whether Mike wants to return the Green Glove to its sacred resting place or whether he wants to use it to achieve the elusive "American Dream" that he doesn't seem to be able to find at home. That makes him more ambiguous in the beginning, plus he keeps trying to tell his girlfriend that he's going to leave France in 2 days and never return, and it seems like he believes it. This is a man who in the beginning anyway has nothing to lose, and Ford plays these sort of detached and morally aloof characters very well.
John Seal The Green Glove is a medieval relic, removed during World War II, that Glenn Ford needs to return to its proper resting place. The story isn't particularly interesting, but a fine cast, highlighted by a thoroughly radiant Geraldine Brooks, makes this one worth a look. The film also benefits from French location work and the finale--a pursuit across, up, and over some incredibly steep terrain--is positively Hitchcockian.