Man Wanted

Directed by William Dieterle, Man Wanted follows a high-powered magazine publisher (Kay Francis’ Lois Ames) as she finds herself falling for her male secretary (David Manners’ Tom). Filmmaker Dieterle, working from a script by Charles Kenyon, delivers a distressingly uninvolving and underwhelming endeavor that squanders its star’s charming, magnetic performance, as the movie progresses through an excessively thin storyline with little in the way of standout sequences or even forward momentum – with the short-but-not-nearly-short-enough 62 minute running time padded-out with a whole host of aggressively pointless interludes (eg Lois attends a polo match). And while the picture admittedly does boast a small handful of compelling attributes, including Andy Devine’s agreeable turn as Tom’s best friend and Gregg Toland’s periodically stylish visuals (eg a shot of Lois and Tom facing opposite sides of a door), Man Wanted‘s tedious emphasis on the protagonists’ far-from-engrossing romantic entanglements paves the way for a sluggish midsection and second half that peters out to a fairly distressing extent – which does, in the end, cement the film’s place as a lackluster piece of work that feels like it should be much, much better.

** out of ****