East Lynne (1930-31)

 

The melodramatic leanings of East Lynne become increasingly wild as the film progresses. I’ve watched a lot of pre-Code films, especially in recent years, but I’ve never seen one that has such an unhinged ending as this one. It’s based upon a Victorian novel by Ellen Wood (as Mrs. Henry Wood, of course), but it’s taken considerable liberties with that book’s plot. I don’t think this is truly an Oscar-caliber film, but I cannot deny that it becomes increasing more watchable if for no other reason that you’re curious as to what crazy plot twist lies ahead. Since you’re unlikely to be able to find this film easily, I may spend too much time providing plot summary, but I think that will give you a clear sense of just how bonkers it is.

A beautiful young woman, Isabella (Ann Harding, who was having a good year at the movies), marries a rich man named Roger Carlyle (the great Conrad Nagel) and moves into his estate, East Lynne. On her first day at his austere, gloomy house, she meets Cornelia, Roger’s sister, a control freak of the first order. Cornelia (played with great malice by Cecilia Loftus) even refused to attend Isabella and Roger’s wedding because she thinks Isabella is too young and frivolous. Cornelia wanted Roger to marry a neighbor girl, Barbara, who she thinks is more “suitable” for her brother. Needless to say, that attitude doesn’t bode well for the marriage if Cornelia is going to live in the same house with them and continue overseeing every aspect of life at East Lynne, and that’s just what happens.

Three years pass quickly, and Isabella’s life has changed a great deal. She’s wearing drab clothing now instead of the beautiful, fashionable gowns she brought to the estate. The house is just as dark and dreary as ever; Cornelia doesn’t like open windows and sunshine — it’s bad for the carpet, I guess, or perhaps the light would cause her to burst into flames. Isabella and Roger have a son, but Cornelia doesn’t like him to play because he sometimes tears his clothes. You know, like a child sometimes does when they’re having fun. Cornelia has also cancelled Isabella’s orders for new clothes for herself and her son. Money for fashionable clothing is a waste in her mind.

Then “the incident” occurs. While Roger is out of town, Isabella and Cornelia plan to attend a party. Unfortunately, on the day of the event, Cornelia develops a convenient headache. The prospect of having a good time must have been devastating to her. Isabella decides to go anyway, accompanied by a former suitor of hers (played by handsome Clive Brook). After the party, Brooks’ Captain William Levenson escorts Isabella home, professes his love for her, and even kisses her. Nothing else happens between them, and she goes to sleep by herself. I mean, it was the 1930s, so nothing much more than that could have been shown anyway.

Cornelia waits until the return of her brother to share what she thinks happened between Isabella and William, and Roger becomes accusatory very quickly. Isabella yells at them both – a rare moment of strength for her at this point in the film – and calls them and the house “old and drab,” not the most inaccurate statement, to be fair. She leaves the house, but Roger won’t let her take her child. She’s heartbroken over this but decides to leave for France to get away from all of the gossip in England. She’s become such a scandalous figure that even in France, people from England won’t talk to her in public.

It’s the portion in France that throws the plot into melodramatic overdrive. Capt. Levinson is on the same ship going to Calais, and he suggests that they have a good time in Europe. She agrees and doesn’t even demand that they marry at some point. Levinson gets kicked out of the British Army for some vague reason having to do with the Franco-Prussian War. Was he helping the French? Was he hurting them? Who knows? Who cares? Does it matter? He gets sent to Paris, which seems an odd thing for the Army to demand of him, and she goes with him. The war has gotten worse, so they cannot leave the country and return to England despite her desire to see her son again.

During an argument between Isabella and William about returning home, they both run into the street just as a bomb hits a building near them. It falls on them, and her injuries include a loss of eyesight. In fact, she may lose her full sight. That’s when she finds out her son is ill, and she makes it back to England against the doctor’s advice. Joyce, the maid who served her many years ago, lets her into the house and lets her sit with her son overnight. Isabella loses her remaining eyesight during the night after getting to see her son one last time. Carlyle throws her out of his house, and Joyce (a delightful Beryl Mercer) finally tells him off about how he abandoned a woman who loved him unconditionally and was the victim of Cornelia’s lies. It’s just a bit late for justice, though.

The dramatic end to this nonsense? Isabella walks out of East Lynne and, no longer able to see, walks off a cliff just as Roger tries to catch up to her! The plots in those days could really provide an ending, couldn’t they?

Harding, who was nominated in the same year for her performance in Holiday (but didn’t win) is quite competent here. Her best moment is when the film gives us a closeup of her face as she’s listening to a melancholy song. It’s clear that the song is raising so many emotions, and she lets us have a momentary look inside.

I have to mention the quality of the version that I watched. The sound and picture were quite awful, and it is tough to see what was so appealing about this film in 1931. The only complete print seems to be at the University of California at Los Angeles, but it too is apparently pretty bad. The film will be in the public domain in 2027, but there are plenty of bootleg copies out there, including the one that I watched. Many of these copies, though, don’t include the last reel with Isabella’s return to England. Interestingly, the version I have does include the full ending, but it looks like someone recorded it off a television screening of the film. That somehow seems a fitting way to view this film.

Oscar Nomination: Outstanding Production

Best Actress of 1939

 

Bette Davis was always at her best when she played strong-willed women, and the role of Judith Traherne in Dark Victory was perfect casting. Judith is a hard-drinking, hard-partying socialite who learns that she has a brain tumor. At first, she refuses medical attention, but eventually she succumbs to the wishes of those around her, including her doctor, played by George Brent. It’s interesting to watch Davis as a young woman who realizes that she might die from her illness. She’s so good at fidgeting when she’s uncomfortable such as during her initial examination in the doctor’s office. You know she’s fearful and fragile under all of her bluster. After the surgery, Judith initially has a different personality; she is confident and cheerful and outgoing. However, discovering by accident that the tumor was inoperable and that she has very little time left to life, she reverts to her old ways of drinking. She’s hurt and angry after learning the truth, and she lashes out at people who are her friends and even at her now-husband, the doctor. By the way, Davis is particularly good at playing drunk. She doesn’t overplay it; she behaves the ways that drunks often do. The film’s emotional payoff happens after Judith comes to a place of acceptance. The final sequence of the film, after she’s learned that she’s going to die within a few hours, is heartbreaking to watch as Davis makes a series of choices for her reactions to her best friend and her husband. She’d already won two Academy Awards by this point, and no one was likely to take the honor away from Vivien Leigh for Gone with the Wind, but Davis gives another one of her unforgettable performances in Dark Victory.

Irene Dunne plays Terry McKay, a former nightclub singer who enjoys a fling with a handsome French playboy in Love Affair, and she’s witty and knowing and dear, qualities Dunne could bring to almost any role. She also displays a flair for fashion and sophistication in this film, so it’s no wonder that Charles Boyer’s Michel Marnay falls for her. Both of them are, naturally, involved in relationships with other people, but as we watch their romance bloom while they are on a journey by boat to the United States, we can sense how they are meant to be together. Terry may act very coy with Michel at times, but Dunne infuses a wry sense of humor (and that hearty laugh of hers) into the performance at just the right time to undercut any sense of hesitation we might have about believing that she loves him. When they arrive in America, they depart with plans to meet up six months later to see how they feel about each other after some distance apart. You don’t think a Hollywood romance can occur without obstacles, do you? Unfortunately, it’s Dunne’s Terry who suffers the most; she is struck by a car on her way to the Empire State Building for their rendezvous. She decides not to burden him with the news of her injuries, so he’s left to believe that she didn’t want to meet. Of course, whenever she thinks about their time together on board the ship, she gets rather wistful, so it’s unclear what exactly motivates her to let him think she’s abandoned him. The two lovers accidentally meet at the theater after another six months pass, and he comes to her apartment to visit her and learns of her paralysis. It’s the romantic ending you might have hoped for, but it does seem that the obstacles the film has placed between Terry and Michel are horribly unnecessary. If they truly feel this strongly about each other, wouldn’t they have been together even after her accident? No matter. Dunne makes their reunion a tender and emotionally satisfying ending to the film, and that’s really what we should care about.

Greta Garbo received her third and final Oscar nomination as the title character in Ninotchka. Watching her Nina Ivanovna Yakoshova, nicknamed “Ninotchka,” alter her facial gestures and body language and almost every aspect of her character as the film progresses is quite a marvel. This would be Garbo’s penultimate film, and she’s marvelous. At the start of the film, she’s so deadpan and matter of fact and seemingly emotionless that you can’t imagine that she’s going to fall in love with Melvyn Douglas’ Count Leon or anyone else, really. After all, she has only arrived in Paris from Russia to settle a matter of some royal jewelry that the Bolsheviks are trying to sell in order to raise money for needs back in their home country. However, Garbo delivers her lines perfectly, and she modulates her facial expressions to fit the plot’s development. When she breaks out into a laugh after Leon falls in a restaurant, it’s so shocking that it’s no wonder that MGM advertised the film with the tagline, “Garbo laughs.” She gets to do more than laugh, though. She starts to adjust her posture as she becomes more accustomed to Parisian customs; you can see her body relaxing. Her smile, that radiant smile, appears with greater frequency, and she conveys so naturally the progression of a woman’s emotions as she falls in love. One of the most moving and effective scenes occurs when Ninotchka has returned to Russia and is meeting with the three agents who failed to sell the jewelry quickly enough in Paris. They’re having a dinner at her (shared) place – four eggs made into an omelet – when a telegram arrives. Unfortunately, it’s been redacted because it comes from Leon in Paris. The disappointment on her face is heartbreaking. So few actors, male or female, could master the closeup the way Garbo did. She would never win a competitive Oscar, and she would retire from the screen just a couple of years after Ninotchka’s release. What a loss for the profession of acting!

From the moment that the image of Greer Garson’s lovely face emerges from a mist in the Alps, she becomes the heart of Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Her Katherine is such a warm, gentle presence in the film, and she serves as a naturalistic counterpoint to her costar Robert Donat as the title character of Mr. Chipping. Interestingly, Garson’s character is only in the film for about 35 minutes or so, and that would normally be considered a supporting role instead of a leading role for a movie of this length, but it’s the way that her Kathy, in essence, uses her sweet and easy persuasion to take over so much of the life of Mr. Chips that makes this such a star turn for Garson. She’s charming all of the time, but Katherine can also be a bit brash and forward; she is a suffragette, after all, who’s taking a bike tour of the Alps when she meets her future husband on that misty mountainside. Everyone in the film who meets Kathy is charmed by her – her husband’s colleagues, his students, even the headmaster of the school –and it’s tough for us as audience members not to be similarly charmed by Garson in her first major film role. When Katherine dies in childbirth, her absence casts quite a pall on the rest of the film, and frankly, with only Donat to take up our time, the movie falls precipitously in interest.

Gone with the Wind clocks in at almost four hours, and it gives viewers a lot of time to watch Vivien Leigh deliver one of the greatest performances in film history. Her Scarlett O’Hara begins the film as a vain Southern belle more interested in making her prospective beau jealous, but she ends the film as a woman who’s suffered a great deal of loss and pain in her life while managing to maintain a sense of who she is. She’s flirtatious and lively and charming, but she’s also serious and calculating and tough. Scarlett has the intelligence to be successful in business, but she doesn’t have the opportunity as a woman to do so. Southern society at the time defined women like Scarlett in terms of the man they were attached to. We understand why she marries each of the three men Scarlett weds during the course of the film, and we also realize before she does that it’s truly Rhett Butler that she’s destined to love, not the rather bland and colorless Ashley Wilkes. The film allows us several great close-ups of Leigh’s face, and it’s especially effective at allowing us to see just how masterful Scarlett can be at manipulating men. The ending of Gone with the Wind tries to make it seem like the focus should be on Tara, the former plantation that was her home, and the land and her connection to it. However, I never think the film is about Tara. It’s about Scarlett and how she’s managed to find a way to survive through some of the most astonishing events any one person could have experienced. When she notes that “tomorrow is another day,” you recognize that this is not the end of what has already been an astonishing story of a woman’s life. Watching this film allows us to savor how well Leigh conveys so much of what has happened to that woman.

Oscar Winner: Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind

My Choice: You think I’m going to disagree with the Academy on this? Leigh is so fantastic that it’s impossible to imagine any other actress in this role. I realize that this is such a stacked category of indelible performances, but Leigh has to be the obvious choice. If I were given the option of choosing a runner-up, it would be Garbo for her delightful comedic turn, but the Academy Awards don’t announce runners-up.

Predator (1987)

 

Ostensibly, Predator is a movie about a commando mission to an unnamed Central American country that goes horribly wrong. The team, led by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Dutch, was sent under false pretenses but wind up with bigger concerns than the fact that they’re being used. It’s all about some Cold War era concern about the Soviet’s invading the region. Of course, none of this truly matters because this is really a movie about how an extraterrestrial starts to stalk the members of the team, killing them one by one in some rather gruesome ways. I think I got the order of deaths correct: Hawkins (Shane Black), Blain (Jesse “The Body” Ventura), Mac (Bill Duke), Dillon (Carl Weathers), Billy (Sonny Landham), and Poncho (Richard Chaves). That leaves just Dutch to get rid of the Predator, and that’s no easy feat. The alien has cloaking technology, so it can easily disappear in the thick jungle, and it has the ability to see the humans through its infrared or thermal imaging vision (if that is the correct word for it). The onscreen rendering of these characteristics is, of course, what gained an Oscar nomination for the film’s visual effects, and special attention should also be granted to the costume and makeup for the creature itself and its glowing green blood. There’s a reason that we’ve had a series of sequels and prequels since this original film was released. It’s almost 67 minutes into the action before we see a full image of the predator (or a somewhat full image), and we don’t see its face until the last ten minutes or so of the film. Much like the shark in Jaws, I suppose, less is more when it comes to building tension? I guess that also gives us more time to enjoy Schwarzenegger’s performance and his delivery of such classic lines as “Get to the chopper” in that often-mimicked accent of his. If I have any complaints about the film, it’s that the camera locations and angles tend to signal too clearly where the Predator will appear next, and the fact that all it takes is mud to throw off its ability to find the humans makes it seem somewhat less threatening. Predator has always seemed like more of an action film than horror or science fiction to me, but the blend of genres and Schwarzenegger’s charisma work to great effect here.

Oscar Nomination: Best Visual Effects