The little-known MGM melodrama Turn Back the Clock (1933) has been given new life by Warner Archive's recent burn-on-demand DVD release. Lee Tracy is first-rate as a man whose frustration with his seemingly unsuccessful life is tested when he finds a way to live his life over again with the knowledge of what's to come. He's operating a tobacco shop and living a simple, modest existence with his wife (Mae Clark), when old friend Otto Kruger happens to drop in for a pack of cigarettes. Kruger had earlier married another mutual friend (Peggy Shannon), and now the two couples reunite for a dinner. Kruger, a successful banker, offers to help invest Tracy's life savings. Clark protests, and after an ensuing argument Tracy is knocked unconscious in an accident, and proceeds to live his adult life all over again in a realistic dream sequence that makes up the bulk of the movie. And this time, Tracy is in it for the money first and foremost -- though he inevitably discovers that it can't buy happiness.

While this narrative conceit has been done to death over the years, in movies and stories like It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol and innumerable others, there's a freshness here and a particular fascination at play, as the film hurtles from one major historical event to another. Tracy's knowledge of World War I, of the stock market crash, and of what to invest in and when, makes him wealthy and gives him political influence that reaches all the way to the White House -- a fantasy scenario that is shown convincingly and becomes ever more intriguing.

And it's a great showcase for Lee Tracy, a part that allows him to play a range of emotions, though most of the time he channels his brash, self-confident, loud-talking persona. But he handles scenes of touching drama very well, too, and has a wonderful moment where he is forced to smile for some photographers while posing with his wife who he has just discovered has been cheating on him. Otto Kruger, Mae Clark and especially Peggy Shannon are all excellent in their supporting roles, and the Three Stooges even pop up, uncredited, as wedding singers in one of their first feature appearances.

Director Edgar Selwyn, who wrote the screenplay with Ben Hecht, keeps the pacing at a good level and employs some nifty effects like multiple exposures, slow-motion, and expressionistic angles and lighting, reaching a pinnacle at the climax and looking almost like '40s film noir. This was Selwyn's seventh film as director, and he would direct only one more. But as good a director as he was, with fine films like The Sin of Madelon Claudet (1931), Skyscraper Souls (1932), and The Mystery of Mr. X (1934) to his credit, he also was a notable producer and writer who made important contributions to the development of the entire Hollywood studio landscape. Selwyn had started in the New York theater world in the 1890s, rising from usher to actor to playwright to producer, and in the 1910s he formed his own motion picture production company. In 1917 that company merged with Samuel Goldfish's studio to become Goldwyn Pictures Corporation, which later on helped form the basis of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Selwyn, then, was directly responsible for the "wyn" in Goldwyn and partially responsible for the "G" in MGM!

In a sign of the high standing he achieved in Hollywood, the honorary pallbearers at his 1944 funeral included such luminaries as Louis B. Mayer, Arthur Freed, Ira Gershwin, Samuel Goldwyn (previously Goldfish), Cecil B. DeMille and Harry Cohn.

Warner Archive's DVD-R of Turn Back the Clock shows the film in perfectly decent shape and includes an original trailer.

By Jeremy Arnold