Johnny Belinda (1948)

The heart of Johnny Belinda, nominated for Best Picture of 1948, is the performance of Jane Wyman. If you're only familiar with her work on TV's Falcon Crest, you will be astonished at the grace with which she portrays a deaf/mute girl who is raped and then tried for murder. Wyman, whom I've already discussed in the posting about The Yearling, was a contract player at the time and had already been in dozens of films playing small parts. Here she takes a leading role without dialogue, yet she manages to make the audience completely sympathetic to her character. That's no small feat to accomplish without uttering a word.

Belinda McDonald, Wyman's character, works for her father Blackie (Charles Bickford) on a farm just outside a fishing village in Nova Scotia. Having lost her hearing as a baby to scarlet fever, she has learned how to communicate through a series of facial expressions and marks on the pages of a ledger book, but both her father and her aunt (the great Agnes Moorehead) seem to think that her deafness means that she is also mentally deficient. A new doctor, played by Lew Ayres, moves into town and becomes interested in Belinda's almost immediately. He begins teaching her sign language, and she begins to fall in love with him. He, however, seems oblivious to her feelings. That's particularly odd given how expressive her face is whenever she's around him, but no matter. The plot must go on.

One day, while almost everyone else is gone, one of the town's bad boys, Locky McCormick (Stephen McNalley), shows up at the grist mill on the farm where Belinda is working alone and assaults her. Belinda, not fully comprehending his actions, becomes very sullen and uncommunicative, even with Dr. Richardson. The good doctor, hoping that perhaps Belinda's hearing loss is reversible, takes her to a specialist, only to have that doctor reveal that Belinda is pregnant. The townspeople eventually learn of the pregnancy and, in true small-town fashion, begin blaming the doctor. He has, after all, been spending a great deal of time with Belinda. They shun Belinda and the doctor and even Belinda's family. When Locky shows up to take custody of his child, thanks to a town meeting rife with false accusations and misunderstandings, Belinda tries to defend her child and kills Locky in the process. Her trial ends the film, and as you might expect from a Hollywood movie at the time, there is a happy ending.

The rest of the cast is strong as well. How could you go wrong, really, with Bickford and Ayres and (especially) Moorehead? But the true joy of watching this film is in Wyman's performance. She was already 31 when she made this film, yet she portrays Belinda with the naivete and joy that a teenage girl has. I can't imagine a better performance that year, male or female, and it's one of my favorites that I have watched since starting this project. She manages to express love and confusion and anger and intense happiness without ever saying a word, and for that, she richly deserved her Oscar for Best Actress.