When Tomorrow Comes (1939) and Romantic Shelter From The Storm

Posted on July 8, 2021 by 4 Star Films

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Waitresses bustle about on their beats passing along the news like busy bees: eight o’clock tonight unity hall! It caused quite a stir in the ranks and the girls are currently walking on eggshells afraid to get canned. A few of the gals are especially jumpy including poor Lulu who drops a whole tray laden with plates.

So when a Frenchmen sits down during the dinner rush it’s how do you say, disconcerting. He’s not rude by any means. His manners are fine. But he’s a foreigner and he asks for things outside of her comfort zone like bouillabaisse for instance (I had to look up the spelling just now). For instance, we can’t hold it against her when she says “To me all foreigners are spies until I learn different.”

The prevailing thought is he might be with the management to check them out. So they put their most level-headed colleague on the assignment. It’s none other than Irene Dunne. He has no malicious intentions at all. In fact, it’s quite the contrary. After making the acquaintance of such a charming lady, he wishes to see her again.

Irene Dunne feels like the original Norma Rae. She has spirit — the kind of spirit that stands up against injustice and will not allow others to be bullied into submission. But this is grounded by a charitable heart and a sense of decency. It’s what makes people get up and take note within the clamor. Because there’s genuine substance to her words. We believe them to be true.

Amid the host of admirers is one very special one. He’s attended in hopes of seeing her, a man oozing with names (and the Boyer charm). What might have been a chance encounter in real-life, in turn breaths life into an entire movie romance. The humid streets of New York don’t exactly scream love nest, but the man is so taken with his company, he doesn’t mind if he has to meet half the city just to be with her.

There are other interludes in this budding relationship, though we might as well focus on the focal point. It comes during the onslaught of a tropical storm. The man, she now learns is the famed pianist, and he welcomes her into his home to get out of the elements. Far from feeling surreptitious, it seems like an oasis from the world outside.

She walks around one of the bedrooms scanning around, leafing through an album of pictures, trying to glean more about the man downstairs. What follows is an enchanting zoom mimicking Dunne’s gaze as she returns from freshening up. She’s brought down the stairs by the sound of his playing. There’s a forceful authority to it to, matching the gale raging outside the windows. On her face, we see the love brooding right in front of us.

The dramatic situation is made plain by the inclement weather (that’s an understatement) and falling trees overhead. Blaring coast guard bullhorns warn of waters rising. They must find high ground.

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Rest assured, this is hardly a survival film. The scenario itself is ripe with more intimate pleasures as Helen and Philip seek asylum in a church during the brunt of the storm. After the crowded, liveliness of the city, the actors are contented in one another’s company, and it provides an understated satisfaction.

They light candles, she raises a prayer to the unnamed Providence for getting them to safety. He has the subtle tact to take her up into the balcony to the organ as the water starts to flood inside. It’s a thoughtful act, and they continue their genial conversation unencumbered. As she sits, listening to him quietly play “Fur Elise,” she thanks him. Because she saw what he did too.

What a lovely digression it is for those willing to partake of the solace. The gentle hospitality of the minister and church organist is yet another touch of decency in a picture ripe with such encounters.

If this sounds blase, rest assured, it plays to the rhythms we might attribute to a Stahl melodrama. They somehow bend away from the brunt of drama and pierce our hearts far deeper. Like Tay Garnett’s One Way Passage, there’s the sense of a destined love of the highest most ethereal kind — a love that can never be — it can never fully acted upon.

Because if it’s not evident already, they are people of principle and conscience. It goes unspoken for so long — the impediment between then. But she knows. He is not free. He is married to someone else, albeit loosely, as Mrs. Chagal (Barbara O’Neil) is a sick woman.

When Helen’s roommate notes it looks like she’s been away for 20 years like Rip Van Winkle upon her return, there’s some truth in the words. Even an evening can feel like a lifetime under the circumstances.

She eventually meets his catatonic wife and lovely mother-in-law. There’s no malice or ill-will, only a bit of sadness on her part to see what his life really is. She feels obligated to leave him behind — to not make this any more difficult for either of them. So she goes back to her picketing and wins the victory she helped champion. The film has gone too far though. It is no longer about unions or these type of ideals. At the very least it is about romantic ones.

There is another scene where she answers a caller at the door. It’s the wife, out on the street, as if she’s perfectly fine, and she might very well be. The scene has been written many times before: A wife confronts the other woman. We’ve seen the scene play out in so many stories it’s mind-boggling. Here it’s different. You almost don’t realize what is upon you.

There is a curious energy about it. Quieter and yet not unsure. Forthright and devastating in its very simplicity. What could be incisive and vindictive feels blunted and equally delicate in the hands of Stahl, and I believe this is quite purposeful. The main characters pull back, compelled by their sense of good and decent feelings. The “villain” in actuality is a helpless victim.

In another film the ending of When Tomorrow Comes would feel uncomfortably abrupt. Here it somehow works for me and not because the swelling music is cued. It’s because we know there is a foregone finality. It might not be today or tomorrow exactly, but it will have to end, going their separate ways and holding onto the love they had and what could have been. That is all.

Because unrequited love is not the most tragic form; it is the uninitiated followed closely by the unfulfilled romances that sear the most. If you are inclined, this is a tender drama more than capable of inducing a few misty eyes. I’ll never get over the grace of Irene Dunne, the adroitness of her reactions, touching on each and every emotion. Boyer has never been more gentlemanly. Together they feel sublime.

If my praise sounds too effusive, I’ll admit I haven’t seen Love Affair for some time. Have I simply forgotten what their chemistry was like? I’d like to believe Stahl brings something of his own to the material as well.

3.5/5 Stars

Magnificent Obsession (1935): Stahl Vs. Sirk Again

Posted on May 13, 2021 by 4 Star Films

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As I continue my mini odyssey considering the differences between the melodrama of John M. Stahl and Douglas Sirk, one of the finest exhibit pieces is an early scene in Magnificent Obsession.

The beloved Dr. Hudson has died because the life-saving pulmotor he needed was being used on someone else. An irresponsible playboy, named Bob Merrick, is saved in his place, having capsized his boat during one of his typically drunken evenings. It just doesn’t seem fair. One man so good is lost and the man who probably doesn’t deserve to live regains his life. It’s a rather blatant allegory of Christian grace and it makes sense, after all, Magnificent Obssession was supposedly penned by a minister: Lloyd C. Douglas.

Here is my long-winded point. This plays as a critical scene in Sirk’s picture. We see Merrick on the water and we see it happen right in front of us. However, in Stahl’s rendition, it’s all over and done with after a few throway lines of expositional dialogue between doctors. It’s as if he’s purposefully shying away from the drama. It’s this quality that might save Magnificent Obsession from being a total bore.

I never gave much thought to it before, but Robert Taylor makes a modest approximation of Rock Hudson a few decades earlier. One could say Rock’s career was far more successful and well-remembered, but they both manage the smart-aleck ne’er do well quite easily. In both cases, this was one of the early movies helping to put them in the public eye as legitimate star power.

Regardless, a curious dichotomy is purposefully set up by the movie, with one man unseen a beloved martyr, and another one alive, the incorrigible playboy. Dr. Hudson’s goodness hangs over Merrick’s life — haunting him in a sense — making him feel even worse about who he is as a person.

Soon he’s struggling with self-loathing. Although it feels more complicated than that because he’s still overtly narcissistic; deep down he knows everyone dislikes him vehemently.

It becomes a movie of who Merrick falls into company with after sneaking out of the hospital against protocol. First, it’s Masterson (Charles Butterworth) who might as well be his comic sidekick unwittingly carried away by all his mischief.

Next, it’s Mrs. Hudson (Irene Dunne) the beautiful young wife of the man he indirectly killed. When he actually finds out who she is he feels even more ashamed to show his face in front of her. He just wants to get drunk and try to forget.

Then, by some curious bit of Providence, he winds up at the home of a stonecutter. The man happened to be a close friend of Dr. Hudson. Similar to Sirk’s rendition, he imparts the wisdom the good doctor provided him. He was taught how to make contact with a source of infinite power. If you think this sounds like a seance and pseudo-science, you’re not alone. It feels like the strangest introduction of religion into the storyline imaginable with electrical energy acting as some mystical metaphor for God.

This layman makes another fascinating statement that might not sound all that foreign to us today. He’s not interested in religion but interested in Jesus — the God-man — who was so successful in the science of generating human power. It’s as if he was a mere humanitarian or an entrepreneur in human capital.

I always have trouble dealing with these kinds of expressions in relation to the Christian doctrinal claims. It’s not that it’s simplistic; rather it seems to totally disregard some of the things this God-man purportedly said. They feel radical, unsettling, incisive at times — surely not warm and fuzzy enough for a movie like this.

Still, this pseudo-Gospel becomes a journey to find people who need help and then giving it to them. But, of course, there’s a catch. You must give to others in absolute secrecy — it’s a scrooge-like endeavor and there’s some truth in this kind of altruism, still, it feels laughable even folly to call it a theory to be followed.

It’s a kind of pay-your-way to the good person’s club, whether you believe in the afterlife or just in being a good person in a legalistic sense. Either way, surely we can agree these strict parameters seem suspect.

Regardless, Merrick somehow gets swept up by them as he vows to put this “theory” into practice. He’s done so much to injure and totally destroy Helen Hudson’s life through his own selfish negligence.

However, in a strange way, it’s as if he’s in pursuit of his dead rival’s wife. Although it might be totally out of the goodness of a changed heart, he looks to reconnect with her, and give her life new joy. It all feels rather twee in comparison to Sirk’s update, which at least swells with the kind of grandiloquence which seems, at the very least, self-aware.

As much as I admire Irene Dunne as an unsung and ever adaptable talent and my mild affinity for Robert Taylor has gotten a boost in recent days, Magnificent Obsession is rather hard to take. It’s an outlandish drama full to the brim with preposterousness that doesn’t even attempt to court any semblance of reality. Similarly, its religiosity, romance, and just about everything else feels sugar-coated and simplified. Somehow it hasn’t maintained its flavor as well as some of Stahl’s earlier efforts.

3/5 Stars

Imitation of Life (1934): Stahl Vs. Sirk

Posted on May 11, 2021 by 4 Star Films

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The opening shot of Imitation of Life is memorable for its sheer novelty and the very simplicity of the space. It’s not an establishing shot of a place or a person. Instead, it’s of a rubber duck bobbing in the bathwater as a little girl whines about wanting her “Quack Quack” off-screen.

This is how we’re introduced to single mother Bea Pullman (Claudette Colbert) and her daughter. A moment later, an African-American woman, Delilah Johnson (Louise Beavers) shows up on her doorstep having mixed up an address (in her defense I’ve mixed up some avenues too).

In a matter of minutes, they’ve decided to join forces. They both lack money and resources, but they gladly make do with what they have, happy to share one another’s company as they raise their daughters together.

Bea starts setting up a shop on the boardwalk armed by Delilah’s secret pancake recipe and her own ambition. One of the movie’s more troubling caveats is how Delilah has little ambition in life and proves herself to be perfectly content looking after Bea’s home as her friend gets all the credit for her family heirloom.

While Delilah remains content sinking into the periphery, with $19 to their names, Bea takes a risk on their venture. They have to rent out the space, get a fresh coat of paint up, and of course, you can’t have a restaurant without furnishings. She finagles her way into all sorts of deals and alliances — one of her newfound associates happens to be a typically jolly Alan Hale. However, it’s the nasal-voiced Ned Sparks who gives them the $100,000 idea: “box it.” Immediately their business takes off with a sustainable reach.

Auntie Delilah’s Pancake Shop is bustling with business. It has a certain antiquated charm to it. The image is a combination of Aunt Jemima and some of the more troubling images out of Jim Crow minstrel culture.

However, the most intriguing — and the most groundbreaking — aspect of Imitation of Life is how it grapples with questions of personal identity throughout its run. These are questions that still manage to challenge and perplex me to this day. My heart breaks for Peola. She is Delilah’s light-skinned daughter who is ashamed of both her race and her mother.

Even as Louise Beavers’s role is dubious at times, reminiscent of some of Hollywood’s worst portrayals, Fredi Washington represents the hardship for African-Americans trying to break out of the molds set out for them. There were rarely roles of strength for the likes of Josephine Baker, a Paul Robeson, a Lena Horne, or a Rex Ingram, parts that fully illuminated their talents.

As with the later adaptation, this becomes the most intriguing piece of commentary, particularly in this instance since Washington actually identified as black and was proud of her heritage never choosing to pass as white. Her real life played as the antithesis of her character even as it comments on the hallowed place being white had in American society in the 30s and beyond.

Their stake in the pancake game blows up and as the exulted mastermind, our heroine becomes the Claudette Colbert one might be more accustomed to, glamourous and good-humored as ever. Warren William makes his dashing entrance at the party, and they’re smitten at first sight. It’s a particularly amicable role for him beyond his typical hard-nosed Rockefellers, and he proves adept enough at the characterization even if it’s not too stretching.

The budding romance with the ichthyologist is amicable if the most humdrum part of the picture. As is the return of a precocious Jessie from school. She forms a crush on her mother’s beau and you can fill in the rest. More interesting still is Peola totally repudiating her mother and with it, her identity, foregoing a prestigious negro college by looking to pass as white and get work in everyday society.

These are the biggest issues on hand, and it’s all romance and family in line with much of Stahl’s melodrama. He is not Sirk after all. But what exactly does that mean? Because thanks to both Imitation of Life and then Magnificent Obsession, it feels like there’s a need to try and decipher the variations in John M. Stahl’s work compared to Douglas Sirk. If nothing else, it might help get him out of the other man’s shadow.

There are obvious distinct differences in content — Colbert’s pancakes instead of Turner’s acting — although many of the same narrative beats are present. Sirk obviously eclipses this drama through sheer decadence, color, and all manner of staging. He was the maestro of using near-trashy spectacle to subvert his material, making it burst with new ironies. However, his picture also feels updated to somehow fit so distinctly into the civil rights conversation of the ’50s and ’60s.

Stahl’s earlier version is more sedate and straight while still being imbued with its own burgeoning power. We have to take it more sincerely at face value. So in a sense, for 1934, the story certainly pushes boundaries, and Stahl is capable of drawing out the subtleties with the typically raw candor we might attribute to many of his movies from the period.

Certainly, Louise Beavers’ funeral doesn’t have the color nor a Mahalia Jackson dirge, but somehow, again, it fits into the context of the surrounding scenes. There’s still indubitable pomp and circumstance to the solemn occasion. We feel this intuitively. We witness the casket being brought out of the church and black men in uniform, armed with sabers, guiding the procession.

This image alone plays interference against all the images of Stephin Fetchit, Willie Best, Hattie McDaniel, and even Louise Beavers propagating stereotypes of mindless, weak, subservient blacks. It gives off this innate amount of dignity.

After you’ve seen Sirk’s version, of course, it’s difficult to go back — it’s true Stahl’s version pales in comparison — and yet you could say this is almost by design. It’s as if his predilection is toward anticlimax or at the very least cushioning the blows of melodrama in an arena where Sirk would lay it on thick for all its worth.

Thus, we end not on the hard-hitting tears of a daughter but gay reminisces of “Quack Quack.” It’s like we watched two completely different stories: The white family and then the black family. Maybe that’s the point.

3.5/5 Stars

Back Street (1932): Irene Dunne and Director John Stahl

Posted on April 20, 2021 by 4 Star Films

Back_Street_1932 “There’s not one woman in a million who has ever found happiness in the back streets of any man’s life.”

John M. Stahl is a bit of a neglected craftsman, even by me. Like others, I became aware of him solely for Leave Her to Heaven, a noirish technicolor melodrama positively dominated by Gene Tierney.

However, as with any director, he wasn’t formed in a vacuum and during the 1930s he worked on some of his most intriguing efforts like Back Street. Then, the following year’s Only Yesterday offered up similar dynamics, featuring Margaret Sullavan front and center. Sullavan and Dunne implement different personas and yet in trying to put my finger on what might draw them together, my mind goes instantly to one thing: class.

This particular story was adapted from a Fannie Hurst novel. Dunne ably anchors the leading role of Ray Schmidt, earning a bit of a reputation because she’s a glamorous girl who likes to get out and have a good time. However, there is a distinction to be made between a girl who has no standards and one who probably opens herself up too much. Ray fits in the latter category. She says it all in one fleeting line of dialogue, “It’s all the way or zero with me.”

Opposite her is John Boles as a gentleman narcissist somehow managing to suggest the jarring contrast of mild manners and infidelity in bodily form. Coincidentally, he would also reappear opposite Sullavan the following year. Here he meets Ray, this extraordinary girl while he is still engaged, and he’s instantly smitten. It happens when a mutual acquaintance introduces them in passing, as he makes his way out of Cincinnati. It’s the beginning of something that will define their lives.

One key benchmark occurs in a local park in front of the bandstand. Walter is to bring his mother to see the performance, and he conspires to have Ray show up, making a glowing appearance, as if by accident. It’s the bit of manufactured serendipity they need to gain approval in their relationship. And yet it never happens like it’s supposed to in the movies (at least the ones we usually play in our heads).

The story starts to construct itself out of these vignettes. It’s now 5 years later. We’re on Wall Street in New York, and the two former flames bump into each other right where they left off. The fire hasn’t died because old habits die hard. Ray willingly waits for him because it’s true there’s something electric between them. Unfortunately, it disregards reality. He’s married with two children (all but unseen).

Instead of meeting on street corners and hiding in doorways, they get a bit more sophisticated. He furnishes her with a room and so now we have the new status quo where this clandestine, illicit thing feels almost mundane.

But that’s a curious factor to Stahl’s picture. Surely it is melodrama — especially on paper — but he makes it feel instinctively human. Of course, humanity isn’t always high-minded and righteous. It can be selfish and lonely and confused. In fact, we often embody these feelings most of all.

It’s not about the accumulation or even the escalation of scenes to the apex of a bigger climax. Instead, each moment supplies an impression to add another layer to this searing romance. And it’s in these successive snapshots from which we must fill in the gaps for ourselves. It’s a testament as much to what is shown onscreen as off. This is not in the sense of Production Codes getting in the way, but a concerted choice to have ellipsis set up all around the story. We drop and then pick up the narrative at these various intervals in the cycle of life.

Later he’s too busy to get away from all his professional and personal responsibilities. These are his excuses. She’s waiting on his words, for the ring of a telephone, playing solitaire. It feels like a thankless position to be in.

Down the hall from her, a woman is burnt badly in a house fire — all but disfigured, though she won’t call her husband — she is another kept woman. Is this the writing on the wall? Ray chides her to get out, preaching independence, although she doesn’t quite know how to put it into practice. She still believes she might just be the one in a million who will make it work.

It’s the film’s first true wrinkle when she makes a decision to break with convention. It remains to be seen what the consequences might be. Kurt (George Meeker), who’s had a crush on her since childhood, comes a-calling again, goofy and endearing as ever but having made good. He casts his usual line, and it might as well be the same old story. Ray looks at him and there is sadness even pain in her eyes. He thinks she’s rejecting him again because she’s not free, and he’s right, but not in the way he thinks.

The reunion with Walter, now a successful businessman in his own right, is a complicated thing. He has a way of exerting his will on her but making it feel like it’s her decision to determine whether he is happy or totally devastated. It’s this driving, prevailing selfishness and woebegone attitude that dominates the story.

We settle into another scene. It’s on an ocean liner. Walter is with his wife and a grown son and daughter. It has the flavor of One Way Passage and a very different sort of Love Affair. One of the most heartbreaking scenes comes when the young upstart son comes to confront Ray to try and get her undesired presence out of their life. And in another movie this scene would play out like so — at least like how he’s imagined it. She’s the wicked, opportunistic woman ready to tear through a household with blackmail and scandal.

Still, we know Ray to her core, how much she loves — how decent and thoughtful she is — and yet she has somehow found herself in such a frowned upon station in life. It doesn’t seem fair. Then again, how much does she have herself to blame? Worse yet, is the fact that the men — the ones with money and the benefit of the doubt — are allowed the position of victim.

The whole family must come to terms with reality. Walter continues with his entitled streak telling his son, “a corner of my life belongs to me alone.” There Ray is somewhat loved but literally waiting on the end of the line for him even unto death. The ending is a kicker, a fitting dream for it to coast off on even as Ray’s own light finally goes out.

Back Street is a love story that could not have existed in mainstream Hollywood a mere 5 years later. It more than lives up to its title as this little, cofounding film working not in the mounting drama but the quiet splintering of a lovelorn soul. It befuddles my own sensibilities even as it makes me sympathize with the lovers in its grips.

3.5/5 Stars

Only Yesterday (1933): Margaret Sullavan Shines

Posted on April 6, 2021 by 4 Star Films

In the opening designs of Only Yesterday, the New York Stock Exchange is encapsulated by its usual hubbub only to hit the skids of pandemonium when the market crashes. We’re talking about the Big Crash of 1929. It plays as the backdrop to our story, very much functioning as current events.

The backstory makes the film fall even closer to home. Because like just about everyone else, Universal Studios was saddled with their own financial troubles so it seems fitting Only Yesterday was the project made to get them out of the doghouse and salvage their holdings.

If we are to believe this film, part of what Black Tuesday did was totally humble both the rich and the poor (and the movie studios) in their separate estates. Before the sheer magnitude of the devastation has spread, we get a front-row seat at the party hosted in the home of Mr. and Mrs. James Emerson.

What becomes immediately apparent is the buzz of the atmosphere with tumultuous music and a smattering of glib zingers. There’s a cascading frivolity on all sides to go with the idle chatter supplied by such gossipping fiends as Franklin Pangborn.

However, Mr. Emerson (John Boles) comes home positively shellshocked because he’s been cleaned out. He’s in no state to make merry opting to disappear into his study. It’s in the backrooms and corridors where the crushing reality sets in, to the point of private devastation.

From the outset, Boles comes off as a sympathetic figure and a calming presence even as he comes to terms with the weight of the Crash and its innumerable implications. It’s true the man of the house looks to be teetering on the brink of suicide, if not for a mysterious letter on his desk.

He opens it up and thereby begins the heart and soul of our story. It is partially his story and someone else’s as well; it began before anyone knew of a Depression, in 1917. If you remember, without leafing through your history books, “The War to End All Wars” was reaching its conclusion.

Back then James was a dashing soldier, unmarried, and still looking to finish up business overseas. It was on one such evening back in 17 where he met a buoyant young woman (Margaret Sullavan in her stellar debut) on a dance floor.

She is the picture of youth and her voice has yet to reach depths of only a few years later Regardless, precocious Mary Lane comes out of the woodwork to confess her love for him from afar after well nigh 2 years!

He takes it good-naturedly enough, altogether flattered anyone might look at him in this manner, and it leads to something — a dance and then whatever might come next. If the cynical would term it a one-night-stand, then it’s a little bit of paradise and Mary holds onto the evening.

In her mind, it’s the first of many, if not for the fateful news that the 309th is engaged to be shipped overseas. This is the event her whole life seems to hinge on up to this point; one evening was an entire lifetime. It just goes to show how the same event can take on differing degrees of resonance for two people.

It happens so quickly as to totally catch the audience off guard. James is off to fight a patriotic war and Mary is going up to New York as to not besmirch her family with her ignominy; she is with child.

Shopworn Angel would capture much the same jingoistic “Over There” milieu a few years down the road and yet that time around, not only would Margaret Sullavan be the veteran opposite a still callow Jimmy Stewart, the Production Codes would exert themselves more rigorously.

In terms of solely content, there’s little doubt Only Yesterday is armed with the uncompromising brazenness of the Pre-Code era. This includes a broad-minded perception of a woman’s place in an evolving society. It makes for a fascinating bit of observation, especially considering how Classical Hollywood would eventually settle into a status quo — a cult of domesticity tailored to the mid-20th century.

However, in Only Yesterday, we get Aunt Julia (Billie Burke), a progressive woman who has a life involving such independent-minded things as bob hairstyles and full-time employment. Aside from The Good Witch, Burke often played ditzy oddballs in numerous comedies where she wears on the viewer. Here there’s something resolute and distinctly likable about her because she does beat to a different drum.

The words leaving her lips are both an encouragement to her rejected niece even as they color how she sees the world in the 1930s. She has effectively worked to “kick the bottom out of the bucket called the old double standard” and she fervently believes “Today a woman can face life as honestly as a man can.”

Aunt Julia also helps to temper the situation swirling around Mary helping ease her mind. As a word of comfort, she says, “It’s no longer a tragedy, it isn’t even good melodrama, it’s just something that happened.” Meanwhile, Burke’s jovial suitor (Reginald Denny) seems like a playful generally affectionate chap. This portion is one of the film’s most carefree as a result.

Armistice eventually comes and with it parades of victory. We know what must happen now: a reunion. There don’t seem to be many close-ups throughout the film, but Sullavan gets a few of the most crucial ones when she’s reunited with her man only to realize he doesn’t remember her, having found someone else to love (Benita Hume). It’s a devastating bit of exposition and her face says it all.

If Gold Diggers fo 1933 details a forgotten man, she’s a forgotten woman, although she’s not about to wait around to be noticed — she has a son to look after. It shows the depth of her character.

Mary shares a bit of the sacrificial devotion of Stella Dallas or the tragic unrequited point of view a la Letter from an Unknown Woman, maintaining a thin line of communication with her former love through a string of telegrams.

What’s astounding is even in her youthfulness — at only 24 years of age — Sullavan’s more than able to carry the weight of the performance, not only a vivacious ingenue but a mother who’s forced to weather the weight of the world alone. Like Stanwyck a few years later, they prove themselves wise far beyond their years. What a way to enter Hollywood.

Finally, it happens and The New Year brings her face to face with the man she once knew. Boles feels more and more of a cad over time, whether he was meaning to be or not. He has a steady demeanor, a serenity in his favor, but after being so ignorant of one woman, he manages to rebuttal his wife as well, all in a very civilized manner, mind you.

Even as Billie Burke represents something else, there’s still a prevailing sense that women can be cast aside for the sake of a story. Sullavan, on her part, exudes a quiet regality even unto death. What Mary has, however, is a legacy in the life of her child, and in him, like with any life, there is still some hope for the future.

From a historical perspective, there’s a lot to be learned. Even back then a young lad would rather go to the pictures to see Chaplin than read a book, and all the women want to look like Greta Garbo — one of the most sought-after glamour girls of the 30s. Some things never change.

It’s rather sobering to read Margaret Sullavan’s son Jimmy Jr. was played in real life by Jimmy Butler, who was affected by WWII like many were affected by the previous war — killed in action in France at the age of 23. It grounds Only Yesterday in real tragedy.

3.5/5 Stars

Review: Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

Posted on May 13, 2019 by 4 Star Films

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Film Noir is usually synonymous with black and white. Of course, as with everything, especially something as notoriously difficult to categorize as film noir, there are notable exceptions. Obvious outliers are Niagara (1953), Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), House of Bamboo (1955), and this picture from almost a decade earlier, Joseph M. Stahl’s Leave Her to Heaven (1945).

One of the film’s finest assets, in fact, is its highly saturated Technicolor tones which are unequivocally some of the best that Hollywood had to offer during that period. Leon Shamroy, a Hollywood workhorse who seems to have faded in deference to other names, nevertheless makes the picture that much better with his photography.

It’s gorgeous — as pretty as a postcard even — almost too gorgeous. Something cannot be that beautiful without there being a catch or something buried underneath the surface. The same might be said of the film’s female lead, Ellen Harland (Gene Tierney).

The exquisite young lady meets the author (Cornel Wilde) of the book she is reading quite unwittingly. He can’t help but stare at her because she’s very attractive and she can’t help look at him due to the familiarity of his face. More on that later. Anyway, they both end up getting off at the same stop and find out they share some mutual connections. They’ll be seeing a good deal more of each other shortly.

As much as I often disregard Cornel Wilde as an acting talent; he more often than not seems unexpressive and dull, those perceived qualities nevertheless make the beguiling wiles of Gene Tierney all the more prominent as she steals the picture away in one of her greatest performances.

It certainly doesn’t hurt that she is blessed by the gloriously vibrant colors as one of the preeminent beauties of her generation. However, even in a picture as Laura (1944), where she was at the center of the entire plot — this otherworldly beauty — in Leave Her to Heaven she positively commands the screen from the minute she arrives and doesn’t let go until her untimely demise. Even then, she still enacts her will on the narrative but for once her husband is able to have some peace from her stifling displays of affections.

Screenwriter Jo Swerling drops subtle hints of a dubious nature throughout but this is the beauty of it, only in hindsight will you notice them. By that time it’s far too late. One observer notes matter-of-factly, in an early line of dialogue, as she races two children across the lake, “Helen always wins.” Its a metaphor for her entire life thus far.

She simultaneously harbored some twisted father complex, alluded to early on and suggesting Ellen’s rather unhealthy attachment to the man who passed away recently under curious circumstances. That’s why Ellen, her mother, and sister have all convened. To proceed with her father’s wishes of having his body cremated in his favorite place.

It’s no small coincidence that the man who was taken with her on the train and who she takes a liking to reciprocally, shares a striking resemblance to her dear departed dad. It’s almost uncanny. However, even this, while duly noted, only seems like a side note.

Because the spectacular scenery and how deliriously happy they are together, seem to discount any other distractions. This is the key. Everything is so perfect for them you can hardly expect anything might be wrong. They have a whirlwind romance, Ellen ditches her stuffy fiancee (Vincent Price), and practically takes it upon herself to propose marriage to Harland. Her kisses seal the deal.

They are married and she vows to do everything for him. The cooking, the cleaning, everything; she’s the perfect example of doting wifely domesticity. She is the symbol of the ideal 1940s housewife even. Beautiful and caring — making Harland extremely content and do everything in her power to make his crippled but good-natured younger brother (Daryl Hickman) feel cared for. Again, it’s so perfect. Until it’s not…

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The signs are there again. Ellen begins to sour, bemoaning the fact that ever since they’ve gotten married she’s never been alone with her husband. There are always other people, whether Danny, or the kindly hand (Chill Wills), or even her own family. She doesn’t want any of them around. She just wants Richard and nothing else. The extent of her jealousy surpasses healthy levels by severe margins. And it becomes all too obvious her outward show of demureness goes only so far. Because, in truth, there have been few femme fatales as homicidally deadly as Ellen Harland. Let this go on record.

While her husband wonders what has come over her, trying to knock out his latest novel, Ellen systematically works to remove everyone from his life currently impeding her road to greater attachment and total control of all his time and affections. It comes in three waves. The films most haunting scene is subsequently one of the most unsettling to come out of Classic Hollywood, solidifying the image of an icy Tierney cloaked in shades as one for the ages. Because you see, she sits there emotionless, with no feeling whatsoever as a boy begins to drown and frantically calls out for help. And still, she sits there and does nothing. Thrown in juxtaposition with the glorious imagery makes the composition all the more jarring.

But that’s only her initial move, next comes a baby that she doesn’t want, and she even pulls a first premeditating on her own death so that she will keep anyone else from ever having her man. So in the end, she readily enters into death just so that she can hold onto Richard one last time. In fact, you could make the case it’s not solely out of malice but a perverted sense of hyper-obsessive love.

Though all but pushed aside in the beginning, it is the acidity of Vincent Price as the once-spurned fiancee who makes the courtroom scenes burn with not uncertain malice. He’s not only the prosecutor but very much a tool for Ellen to utilize even in death. She comes to haunt him from the depths of the grave.

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It’s little surprise that there’s almost a conscious effort to make Jeanne Crain more pure and exquisite by the minute. At first, she’s merely the girl with the hoe, with a green thumb, face smudged with dirt or the model in the playroom. But as she’s more distraught with Ellen and ultimately implicated in her sister’s murder, her saintly qualities, making her the quintessential noir angel, come into sharper relief.

In fact, Leave Her to Heaven is one of the most foremost examples in both the female archetypes. While Tierney chills are bones to their core with that beguiling combination of glamour and obsessive malevolence, Crain gives us nothing but warmth and even in an abrupt ending caps things off in the most satisfying way possible. If anything they both make Cornell Wilde better because this is their picture and not his. As an enduringly contorted psychological drama, the 1940s arguably produced few superior vehicles to Leave Her to Heaven. Gene Tierney burns with bewitching beauty and potent fury.

4/5 Stars

Henry: Cornel Wilde just kissed Gene Tierney.
Hawkeye: On the teeth?
Trapper: Right smack on.
Hawkeye: If he straightens out that overbite, I’ll kill him.
~ M*A*S*H episode House Arrest

Keys of the Kingdom (1944)

Posted on December 21, 2016 by 4 Star Films

“Heathens are not always low just as Christians are not always high.” – Gregory Peck as Father Chilsum

Tales of humble priests are more fit for the likes of a Bresson or Rossellini, but Hollywood proves it too can offer up a film with resonance along similar lines. It’s a more melodramatic tale, a historical and religious epic of sorts, carved out of the studio era mold, but its facets are auspicious and abundant. The script comes from veterans Nunnally Johnson and Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

It’s also hard to believe that it was this role as Father Chilsum that truly galvanized Gregory Peck’s career early on. Because if you look at him, he’s an imposing figure, kind-faced and calm. Still, there’s an unwritten maturity that seems to dwell beyond those eyes of his like he’s been doing this for a long, long time. It makes his playing an old man not all that unbelievable, in spite of any amount of makeup.

Keys of the Kingdom is also blessed by the studio system with the likes of Thomas Mitchell, Edmund Gwen, Vincent Price and a surprisingly adequate array of Asian performers including Philip Ahn, Richard Loo, and Benson Fong in an especially notable turn as the Father’s faithful right-hand man Joseph.

Despite having a loving family, Francis came from humble roots and tough beginnings illustrated by the long-held divide between Catholics and Protestants. Even as he resolved to join the clergy, his heart struggles with love and assignments that feel unfulfilling to his heart.

That is until he asks to be assigned as a missionary in a province of China. In the ensuing decades, he works to leave his mark of goodwill on a community, and he’s an upright man not looking for so-called “Rice Christians,” believing such bartering is a forgery for God. As his track record reflects, he’s a rather unorthodox as far as priests go, but he makes up for it with sincerity. His best friend is an atheist, a doctor from back home, and he’s not just concerned about the spiritual well-being his flock but their physical health too–all too soon becoming a trusted healer of the town, despite having little to no official medical training.

And although his gains are humble, he garners the respect of most everyone he meets. His fellow helper Joseph, the initially curt Reverend Mother (Rose Stradner) and even a republic soldier Major Shen (Richard Loo), who is amazed by the religious man’s resolve. True, his congregation is hardly a boon of religious conversions, but he begins an orphanage, taking in discarded children and nurturing them on the mission grounds. Many years later the Father Chilsum is to be sent back home for the sake of his health. It’s a bittersweet goodbye to this place he called home for so many years.

However, there’s a peaceful contentment to his character that Peck reflects so seamlessly. This was a man who came here to this foreign land with a vision that went beyond conversion rates. First and foremost, he cared about loving people well, and everything else was added to him.

3.5/5 Stars