3 reviews for the price of 1

Swedish poster for Design for Living (transl: "Between us Gentlemen"), and two Italian posters for Dark Victory (same transl.) and The Old Maid (transl: "The Great Love").

I still have a cold (probably the swine flu, I really shouldn't socialize with all those strange men down at the docks), so there have been some film viewing.

When I had seen three really great films in a row, I felt it hard to decide which one to write about - so I thought I would try to make short reviews of all of them instead. Summarizing the plots in a few lines, and focusing on what I liked/disliked about them. And lots of pictures. Sound any good? I'll do it anyway.

The films: Design for Living (1933), Dark Victory (1939) and The Old Maid (1939).

Frequently used ingredients: Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, George Brent, Edmund Goulding and socially awkward situations.

Spanish film poster (transl: "A Woman for Two").

Design for Living

Director: Ernst Lubitsch

USA 1933

91 min

Starring: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Gary Cooper, Edward Everett Horton and Isabel Jewell, among others.

See it on YouTube here.

Gilda (Hopkins) meets two young artists on a train in Paris: painter George (Cooper) and playwright Tom (March). Complications arises when both men fall in love with her, while she keeps up a liaison with both of them. She admits that she can't choose between them, so they make a gentleman's agreement: They will all three live under the same roof, but no sex can occur.

The ménage à trois seems to work, and Gilda becomes their artistic muse. But when Tom goes away to London to work on his successful play, Gilda and George are left alone with their frustrations. Around this time, Gilda proclaims that "It's true we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman.", and the carousel of relations suddenly spins at top gear, making all the contestants feel sick and confused, but no less a-mused.

What I like about Design for Living:

• The amazing actors and actresses, down to the bit parts. E. E. Horton is a comical genius playing the old friend of Gilda's, Max Plunkett, who only deeply cares about his social position. His stenographer is played by pretty Isabel Jewell, an actress that worked in a lot of great pictures (including Gone With the Wind. 1939), but seldom had any meaty parts. She is highlighted in Kate Gabrielle's Silents and Talkies [post] and Mark Clark's Film Noir Photos [post] blogs.
• Miriam Hopkins. When I first saw her in a film, I thought I would hate her. I always adored Bette Davis, and they are known to be each other's nemesises. But I can't avoid it - I like Hopkins. Her accent and voice is so charming, and she is a darn good actress with a lot of charisma.
• Tom's silly play. Hilarious.
• George's seriously good paintings. (I really want to believe that Cooper painted them in real life.)
• Two strikingly good-looking men in the leading parts. I understand Gilda's problem - I would have had trouble choosing too. I love their drinking scene, obstinately trying to find something to drink for every time they raise their glasses (which is frequently).
  
• "The Lubitsch Touch". Such a great picture! Probably impossible to get bored by, no matter how many re-runs of it you participate in.

What I don't like about Design for Living:

• Ehm... nothing? That I haven't seen enough of it, perhaps.

Italian film poster (transl: "Sunset).

Dark Victory

Director: Edmund Goulding

USA 1939

104 min

Starring: Bette Davis, George Brent, Humphrey Bogart, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Ronald Reagan, among others.

See it on YouTube here.

A spoiled 23 year old heiress, Judith (Davis), is faced with the fact that she is dying of a brain tumour. When Judith falls in love with her brain surgeon, she is afraid that he proposes to her out of pity.

Since we know from the beginning that Judith sooner or later has to die, the film focuses on the environment's inconvenient feelings toward the tragedy and how Judith tries to make the best out of the time she has left, rather than focusing on the question "Will they find a cure?" or "Will she really die?". A brilliant plot direction.

What I like about Dark Victory:

• A brilliant script, that doesn't chicken out with an un-realistic happy ending, as post-codes tend to do.
• Bette Davis in her probably best role. I can't see any other actress do the part of Judith as perfectly as Davis. Those big eyes of her hold a lot of emotions.
• Ronald Reagan. I mean, seriously. How mant other countried than the USA could make a presidant out of a, perhaps only decent, actor?
• Well, the rest of the amazing cast. George Brent is really growing on me as an actor (hadn't any opinion of him just a few months ago), and Geraldine Fitzgerald is amazing as the heartbroken best friend of Judith's.
• The ending. So sad, beautiful and artistic.

What I don't like about Dark Victory:

• How could Warner Bros do this to Humphrey Bogart? He is just so wrong as the Irish stableboy. His accent is embarrassing, and his part has really no great purpose in the film.

The Old Maid

Director: Edmund Goulding

USA 1939

95 min

Starring: Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, Donald Crisp, George Brent and Jane Bryan, among others.

See it on YouTube here.

A costume "woman drama" set in the days during and after the Civil War. Delia (Hopkins) is just about to be married when her previous fiancé Clem (Brent) comes home from the war. Delia breaks her engagement to him and goes on with the marriage, but her cousin and friend Charlotte (Davis) has feelings for Clem and spend time with him before he goes to war again. He is later killed in the war, and the next thing we know Charlotte runs an orphanage for children who lost their fathers in the war. Among those children are her and Clem's love child, Clementina, who for security purposes is adopted by Celia and raised as her own.

Charlotte moves in with Delia and her family and grows into an old maid, while her daughter Clementina only knows her as the stubborn, unsympathetic "aunt Charlotte".

What I like about The Old Maid:

• Donald Crisp. It feels almost surreal to watch him as a kind, child-loving doctor in this film, the day after I saw him as the tyrannic father in Broken Blossoms (see previous post)!
• Davis' and Hopkin's chemistry. They may not have likes each other in real life, but every scene they have together is almost magical. Perhaps the tension between them did it. Whatever the reason may be, we always feel the unsolved problems and unverbalized thoughts hanging in the air between them.
• Miriam Hopkins, again. She is a really great actress. I read that she was very difficult to work with, but you can't blame an artist for being eccentric, can you? Anyway, Hopkins is, like George Brent, growing on me big time.
• My Darling Clementine. The tunes of the song is played when Charlotte and Clementina have a scene together, and it's so heart tearing. Charlotte really loves her daughter, while Clementina never aknowledges her, except for complaining and yelling. (Nothing wrong with Jane Bryan, but the character is a horrible, spoiled brat.)
• Charlotte by the fire. When Charlotte practices her speach to Clementina when she comes home from the ball. At first she is the loving mother, then at an instant she changes into the strict aunt. An obvious proof of Davis' acting qualities.
• The final scene.

What I don't like about The Old Maid:

• George Brent dies. Okay, his characters can die, but not 20 minutes into the film! That was just brutal.
• Yes, the Clementina character. I want to hit her.

Female (1933)

"I know for some women, men are a household necessity; myself, I'd rather have a canary."

- Alison Drake in Female (1933)

Female
Director: Michael Curtiz
USA 1933
60 min


Oh, dear God - help me with this one. What the F-? If you haven't yet seen this film, see it and come back to me - I'm in pieces. If you have seen it, please help me to get this right.

First of all - who should I blame for the ending that ruined this totally wonderful film? Curtiz? Warner Brothers? The producer? Will Hays and company?




I'll sum up the plot before I go into the what-the-F-part more. Alison Drake, played by a brilliant Ruth Chatterton who is perfect for the role, is the president of an automobile company. She is cold, respectable and professional. She is not the marrying kind of a women, which early on is understood by a dialogue Miss Drake has with her childhood friend Harriet Brown (Lois Wilson). She is fully pleased with taking her fellow co-workers home for "discussing business matters over dinner", i.e. - by seeing Miss Drake indicatively throwing a pillow on the floor with a big smile, we understand perfectly well how she likes to pass her evenings.

Miss Drake is also sick of all the men who obviously only flatter her because they want her money, and one evening she decides to go out on town anonymously to see if she can attract a man without them knowing about her power and wealth. She lays her eyes on a handsome man named Jim Thorne (George Brent), and tries her seducing routine on him. Being a "dominant male", he isn't pretty impressed by being manipulated by a woman - he wants to put down his own prey. None the less, Miss Drake has got her eyes on Thorne, and does not give up too easily. When he starts at her company, she tries her best to get her hands on him.




So far the film is absolutely stunning. Provocative - yes. Superb script - yes. Fine actors - yes. Enchanting Ruth Chatterton - yes.

But now to the what-the-F-part.
The ending.
Seriously, what the F-?

All through the film we have been proven over and over that Miss Drake is an independant woman in no need of a man to rule her life. It is of course only natural that she eventually finds her soul mate, and maybe go through a crisis and doubt that she has made the right choice in life - I understand it that far.

Then Thorne takes for granted that Drake wants to marry him, and he gets furious when she hezitates and tears the marriage certificate into pieces. She has a breakdown at an office meeting seconds later, and yells out that she doesn't care about the company and that she is a pathetic woman. I understand the reaction that far, too. But she gets on her feet again when her loyal co-worker/butler/secretary Pettigrew (Ferdinand Gottschalk, the great comic relief in the picture) provoke her by sarcastically remarking that "of course she can't run an entire automobile company - she's just a woman!". Great.

Then she changes her mind again. She realizes that she wants Thorne, and go out on a car chase to find him. Okay, so it's real love then. Fine with me. At least, she has decided that she still wants to be a business woman. She finds him, tells him that she still wants to marry him if he hasn't changed his mind. He smiles, asks her about what time a certain business meeting, that she cancelled for chasing after him, is being held. He convinces her that they will get in time for it. Great! All he wanted was to know that her feelings were true - of course he can accept her as a devoted business woman. It's pre-code after all, right?


Look at this trailer and tell me how they could fuck up this concept. George Brent's character is a real arsehole:




Oh no. Now's the real f*cked-up moment - she tells him that she puts all the business in his hands, and that she now wants to be a loyal wife and mother.

What the F-! Is this a joke? If I understand this the right way, the moral of the film is that any woman that pretends that she can do anything else but being a man's loyal companion, is wrong and should realize that this is a man's world. Jesus f-cking Christ, I can't believe that film was made before the Hays Code was finalized! And I am the woman who always make fun of feminists and all the kerfuffle they always make, but this film was so absurd that it even pulled the trigger on me.

"What the F-", is all I have to say about this one. Sorry for my lack of words, but I can't put my feelings into more detail than that. "What the F-".


At least Ruth Chatterton was fantastic.

Baby Face (1933)

Baby Face
Director: Alfred E. Green
USA 1933
76 min


Goodness, my oh me - this is a simply amazing film experience! I just got the "Forbidden Hollywood Collection volume 1" on the mail today, and after having manipulated my boyfriend to watch it with me (Oh, it's a dirty, dirty picture! It was locked away in a bank vault for 70 years!), here I am, totally excited.
(This film convinced be that it's okay to alter the trith a bit to get your way, so I won't feel bad for using people around me to make me feel better. Thanks, Ruby Stevens.)

Barbara Stanwyck and Nat Pendleton in the beginning of the film. (Was there one 1930's film made in America that didn't include Nat Pendleton? No offence, I like him. But Jeez...)

The plot is quite simple. Lily (played by a lethal pre-code Barbara Stanwyck) runs a speakeasy with her father who sells her body to slimy business men to get the business running. After some inspiration from a wicked old man of a mentor, Lily realizes that a beautiful young woman can go a long way in her career if she just "crushes all sentiment" (way to go, Nietzsche!) and uses everyone for her own purposes.
In a previously cut-out scene, Lily offers a train inspector sexual favours (accompanied by the lovely singing voice of her maid Chico) to be able to get to New York. Wandering the streets with Chico (Theresa Harris), she stops in front of a skyscraper building. She understands that there must be a lot of money in that building, seducing an innocent young man at the employment office and starts her womanizing way of climbing the career ladder - literally from floor to floor. Along the way she seduces a young John Wayne (hey, he could actually be handsome!) and George Brent among others, and soon is covered with furs and diamonds.

One of the cut-out scenes, where the douchebag gropes Stanwyck's breasts and she knocks him over with a beer bottle.

I won't reveal more of the plot, if any of my precious readers haven't seen this marvellous film yet. But for any classic film devotee, this is a must-see - it was one of the main films resulting in a much more strict film cencorship called the Hay's Code. (Hail, Satan.)
The cencors at the time ran amuck about the story of a female sexual predator and her friendly relationship to her black maid Chico. And I must admit, even today one is quite shocked while viewing the film - even though I don't feel to ban it as much as I want to worship it. But the cencors weren't even a little bit thankful to this masterpiece (I mean, just see how tastefully done all the seductions are - obvious, but far from vulgar), and took out the scissors.

But did they stop with only the scissor treatment? Oh no, they had to add a new ending, totally destroying the feeling of the film as a masterpiece. I thought that the original ending was relatively happy and realistic, so that cencored one was... Crap! Total crap! Insulting! Meaningless! A piece of re-used dog shit, to be frank. Why, oh why, did they feel that they had to insult the audience's intelligence that way?
The restored version didn't exist until 2004 (poor people), and when the original, five minutes longer, version finally was discovered in a film vault by Library of Congress curator Mike Mashon (George Willeman is the man credited on Wikipedia), we knew that we would no longer have to suffer.


Trailer for Baby Face.



To sum this up: This is an incredibly innovative, clever and amusing film with as many laughs as chins dropped. I will report back on the other Forbidden Hollywood films, Red-Headed Woman (1932) and Waterloo Bridge (1931). (And when the tax re-payment arrives the next week: watch out, volume 2 and 3!)

A John Wayne youngster and some Baby Face posters, for ya!

Jezebel (1938)

"This is 1852 dumplin', 1852, not the Dark Ages. Girls don't have to simper around in white just because they're not married."

Jezebel
Director: William Wyler
USA 1938
104 min

See it on YouTube here.


High society, New Orleans, 1852.
Julie (Bette Davis) and Preston (Henry Fonda) are soon to be married, and they are constantly battling about the power over the relationship. When Preston has to break a promise to Julie to help her pick out a dress for a society ball due to bank business, Julie chooses a provocative red dress when all unmarried women are supposed to wear white. An unhappy Preston takes her to the ball, makes his best to embarrass Julie among the whispering society people (see film clip below), and after the ball breaks the engagement. A too proud Julie makes no effort to win him back, and he soon moves to "the North".



Time travels one year ahead. Preston is coming back to New Orleans, and waiting for him is a hopeful Julie who has been deeply depressed since he moved. She has realized that she was unfair to him, and now hopes to repair their relationship. But oh, no! He brings with him a wife. This leads to manipulation behind a friendly face, a social act that eventually ends with the shed of blood.



Partially this film is a masterpiece, and Bette Davis is at her very finest. I was, however, not really satisfied with the ending. I can't put my finger on it, but it felt like it was too easy and too quick. But otherwise, there's nothing to complain about. George Brent is just swell as the provocative gentleman Buck Cantrell, and Henry Fonda is great too. His character is quite flat and boring, it's true, but he's doing great - especially if you consider that he was a last minute choice for the part, and that his wife was in labour and about to deliver their daughter (Jane Fonda) and had to run off the set every now and then.

What is there more to say? A lot, I guess. But I'm satisfied with what is said, and that Bette Davis and Fay Bainter (aunt Belle) deserved their Academy Awards.

Bette Davis and William Wyler take a snack during the filming of Jezebel.

Fay Bainter, Jack L. Warner and Bette Davis at the Academy Awards, 1939.

Quotes:

Aunt Belle: Expecting a man to go to a dress makers with you! I declare, I hope Pres doesn't come!
Julie: He will.
Aunt Belle: But Julene!
Julie: Now dumplin', don't you fret about Pres - I've been training him for years!
Aunt Belle: Like that man-killing horse you bought!
Julie: Pres was outrageous! He had no right to tell me what I could ride and what i couldn't!
Aunt Belle: The horse showed you what you couldn't! You broke your collar bone and your engagement!
Julie: And they both mended, so I was right after all
[Smiles at Aunt Belle happily]

Julie: Why did you do it Prest?
Preston Dillard: Because I love her.
Julie: But you had my love.
Preston Dillard: And lost it.

Buck Cantrell: I like my convictions undiluted, just like my bourbon.



In reality (according to movie god Robert Osbourne), Julie's dress was bronze colored. It would look better in black and white than red. (But of course, I colorized it red anyway.)

The Great Lie (1941)

The Great Lie
Director: Edmund Goulding
USA 1941
108 min


A maid cleans up among empty bottles and smashed records in a villa after an apparently wild party. The hostess is the professional pianist Sandra Kovac (Mary Astor) and her fiancé Pete van Allen (George Brent). In the delight and influence of alcohol the two were married the night before, but a lawyer turns up in the hung over morning to tell the couple that Sandra's previous marriage hadn't had a finalized divorce.
Pete, who obviously has some second thoughts about the marriage, tells Sandra that if she wants to marry him she has to do that Tuesday next, when her divorce gets through but she also will have a piano concert in Philadelphia. She chooses to play, and Pete returns to the home of his previous fiancée, Maggie (Bette Davis). They marry, but soon a telegram reaches the couple that tells Pete he has to go to Washington. There he gets a mission to go on an aeroplane trip. His plane crashes in the jungles of South America and isn't found.





Not only have Maggie just lost her husband, but Sandra comes to see her to tell Maggie that she is pregnant, and that Pete is the father. They make an agreement - they settle down in a cottage away from the civilization during the pregnancy. When the child is delivered Maggie will bring it up, wanting a piece of Pete still with her. In return she will see to it that Sandra is financially secure.
However, Pete was not dead as assumed. He returns, witch forces Maggie to live with the great lie their baby is. As if it couldn't be worse, Sandra gets second thoughts about the agreement when she finds out that the man she loves is back.

Hattie McDaniel and George Brent.

A great drama with many twists and confrontations. And even though there is no actress better in argument scenes as Bette Davis, Mary Astor still manages to hold her own, even though she only has the third billing.
I read that both Davis and Astor disliked the script so much that they totally re-made it by jotting down notes on every page of the script. Astor got an Oscar for her role, and she really deserved it.
The character of Sandra plays several time a piece of music that I love, which is also played during the intertitles. It is Piano Concerto #1 in B flat minor by Tchaikovsky, and here it is:

Academy Awards 1942. Gary Cooper, Joan Fontaine and Mary Astor with an Oscar statue each. Cooper for Best Actor in Sergeant York, Fontaine for Best Actress in Suspicion and Astor for Best Supporting Actress in The Great Lie.