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Post by topbilled on Nov 5, 2023 21:39:56 GMT
Supposedly THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS only has a 78% rating on Fresh Tomatoes. The direction is universally praised but the overall story is considered to be lacking in substance.
But I actually think this is a three-character study more than it is a specific storyline.
I do like the idea that a troubled wife can ultimately take comfort in her marriage. |
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Post by Andrea Doria on Nov 5, 2023 21:48:38 GMT
My favorite out of all the men in the movie. I fell in love with him way back during, "My Fair Lady." So much nicer than Henry Higgins.
 
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Post by topbilled on Nov 5, 2023 22:21:07 GMT
Thanks for choosing this film, Fading Fast.
Looking forward to reading your review...as well as next week's selection.
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 6, 2023 3:45:31 GMT
The Passionate Friends from 1949, directed by David Lean and starring Ann Todd, Claude Rains and Trevor Howard
David Lean directed movies are better the more times you see them.
No longer distracted with learning the plot and, in this one, keeping straight the confusing and overlapping flashback sequences, one can just enjoy the movie's atmosphere, character development and relationships - Lean's strengths.
Those features drive The Passionate Friends where Ann Todd, plays a woman who marries a man she likes, played by Claude Rains, instead of the man she loves, played by Trevor Howard, for the lifestyle and position the former can give her.
All is going fine in Todd and Raines' perfectly friendly marriage until she accidentally runs into Howard, which happens twice over a nine-year period. Each time knocks Todd off her emotionally delicate perch.
No one ultimately enjoys these brief encounters* as Rains gets jealous that Todd only likes him, but loves Howard, even though that is the bargain he knew he struck when he married her.
It's no better for Todd and Howard, as each encounter has them experiencing anew the loss of their true love. It is the reopening of an emotional wound every time they meet.
Their scenes together, though, are the highpoint of the movie's romance. They are two people who truly love each other, in part, because they simply enjoy each other's company.
Look for the scene where Todd comes over to Howard's small but charming apartment for lunch. It wonderfully captures the simple ease these two have in each other's presence.
From that quietly intimate scene, you quickly, but fully understand their love. Budding directors trying to learn how to portray on film the small, almost silent details of love, should study it.
The movie's melodrama, however, comes from the love triangle. It gets tense and ugly as not one of the three is now happy with the compromise Todd and Rains struck many years ago.
The center of this triangle is, no surprise, Todd because she wants both men for different reasons. Howard is her true love, but he has neither the wealth nor social position that international banker Rains can provide.
It's a frank look at a woman torn between love and money. Todd is neither angelic, "I'll scrub floors as long as we are together," nor evil as she truly is fond of Rains and was honest with him about her motives.
More would tread into spoiler-alert world, but the climax stresses the triangle to an extreme. It's also a little forced, but movie's need a dramatic ending, or writers and directors think they do anyway.
The Passionate Friend's black-and-white cinematography is post-war British gorgeous. England struggled with many things after WWII, but making outstanding black and white movies wasn't one of them.
It helps that Ann Todd is simply stunning to look at. At forty, she looks thirty and more beautiful than almost every other thirty-year-old actress. You have no trouble believing men would lose their minds over her.
Based on a H.G. Wells novel, there is none of Wells' science fiction in The Passionate Friends. Instead, human emotions - love, regret, anger and fear - are all thoughtfully and excruciatingly explored. (Comments on the novel here: "The Passionate Friends")
For us today, the elegant post-war travel in the movie is travel porn. There's no statacto "calling zone five;" instead, it's a pleasant, "may I get you something, ma'am?" It looks ridiculously luxurious and comfortable.
The same goes for the sleeper compartments on trains, a Chris Craft tender "taxi" service and a tram in the Alps. Yes, travel was exclusively a rich person's pleasure then, but it was elegantly done.
The Passionate Friends is poignant in a very real-life way. It's an "anti-Hollywood/Hallmark" movie as the story is about a woman who married for money not love and then has to live with the consequences of her decision.
David Lean would go on to make some of the 1960s' great romantic epics, but in The Passionate Friends, he shows he already knew how to capture the often quiet despair of lifelong heartache and longing.
N.B. Ann Todd's wardrobe in The Passionate Friends is worthy of its own study. Her elegant and stylish hats, evening gowns and casual clothes perfectly fit each scene. Most importantly, she looks at ease in every single outfit.
* The parallels to Lean's subtle masterpiece, Brief Encounter, are obvious, but The Passionate Friends is an expansion of the theme. Brief Encounter is a perfect "little" jewel of a movie about a moment in time; a brief encounter when two married people have a passionate affair. The Passionate Friends, takes the conflict of lovers married to others and expands it across two decades.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Nov 6, 2023 11:31:16 GMT
Thanks for the great review, Fading Fast, and thanks to Topbilled for choosing this extremely intriguing film.
I watched it a few months ago after I was first introduced to Ann Todd from these Sunday movies. I still have questions. I feel like some of Ann Todd's conflicts were brought up by David Lean and then dropped without resolution.
When we first see her refusing Trevor Howard's proposal, she doesn't say anything about his financial situation but says she doesn't want to "belong" to anyone but herself and when he tries to kiss her passionately she pulls away and asks why there can't be love without all this, groping and gripping. Clearly, she either fears, or has an aversion to, s*exual expression and is afraid she will lose her sense of self in a normal marriage. Later we see her in a marriage with no children, twin beds and a husband who allows her to be his wife in many ways while still not "belonging," to him.
When she runs into Trevor Howard again her love for him is obvious and, as Fading Fast pointed out, their natural compatibility is shown in the wonderful visit to his apartment and, later, the sheer joy on her face during her picnic with him in the mountains. Her hair even gets a little messed up!
So we know she loves him. Soon poor Claude Raines knows it, too, and feels sure she is giving Trevor Howard what she never gave him. But is she? What happened to her hang-ups? What about her aversion to groping and gripping and the fear of what Doris Day calls "surrender?" If we saw some passionate kissing we would know that Trevor broke through that, but we do not.
Everyone seems to see her as choosing a rich man over a poor one, but I thought that had little to do with it and it was a matter of choosing one who would settle for twin beds over one who wouldn't.
The ending left me confused. Trevor Howard seemed almost too relieved to be losing her and going back to his wife -- I thought the phone call to her could have waited, and while I was happy to see Ann Todd staying with Claude Raines, without an ending kiss we don't know but that the marriage is going to be exactly the same.
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 6, 2023 12:15:11 GMT
Andrea, thank you for the compliment and for your very insightful comments and questions.
If we use the book to try to answer some of your questions - and remember that I read it five or so years ago - I think there were two factors at play in Todd's decision not to marry Howard.
One clearly was money as he didn't have any (he was born into a rich family, but since he was not the first born son, all the money went to his older brother). I forget her situation, but I think she had lived on the fringes of the rich - was the poor relative of a wealthy family (I'm really not sure, but I think that was it) - but she made it clear that she didn't want to struggle financially when married.
The second reason, as you caught in Lean's film yesterday, had to do with her desire for "freedom," which is never clearly explained - and might not have even been clear in her head - but seemed to be about not wanting to be "owned" the way a wife was "owned" in some marriages by her husband in that day. Wells explores that theme and several other feminist themes of that day in more depth in his 1909 novel "Ann Veronica" (comment on it here: "Ann Veronica")
My memory from the book is not that Todd's character was frigid and didn't want to have sex, but that is certainly hinted at in the film in that great quote you noted and in a few other subtle clues, but that she wanted to have what we'd call an open marriage and Rains' character in the book gave her that. But even in the book, that was only hinted at and I think she was, at minimum, unsure of her own views on sex.
It also matters that the book was published in 1913 and "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was published in 1928 with the latter creating quite a stir (it was banned in many places) for its explicit sex scenes (which are very tame by today's standards). So one assumes Wells was being careful not to be too explicit.
My impression from the movie yesterday was that we are supposed to assume that she and Howard were have a full affair - sex and all - but I can't think of the exact scene that gave me that impression, so maybe I assumed more than I should have. I also came away with the impression that Rains and Todd were going to go back to the exact same marriage they had before as, other than when Howard came knocking, they both were pretty happy in it. Rains gave a pretty good explanation of it in one of his speeches toward the end.
Wells was his own thinker, for sure. When you read his books it's not so much that he is simply telling you his philosophy, but that he's working it out in front of you as the ideas aren't always fully formed or clear, so maybe we're trying to "solve" for a character that Wells hadn't even "solved."
Most importantly, Todd wanted her hair to get messed up in that scene you noted or she would never have allowed it to happened. My guess, she even chose how each particular strand would "get out of place." 
I could watch the film again right now as I'd like to look for some of the details and ideas we are discussing.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Nov 6, 2023 13:29:04 GMT
"I could watch the film again right now as I'd like to look for some of the details and ideas we are discussing."
My thoughts exactly.
As soon as I do some unpleasant chores here, I'm going to give it another viewing and watch for those 1949 clues that hanky panky just happened. Also to see my boyfriend-lawyer tell her that her husband is out to "win." The whole divorce situation in those years was horrific and hard to follow.
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Post by topbilled on Nov 6, 2023 15:06:53 GMT
I kind of agree with Andrea's comments about the sexual behavior of Todd's character...it seems to be only hinted at in the movie, not fully played out or developed as a subplot in its own right.
Her wanting freedom seems more like her fear to be intimate with any one man. I think on some slightly ridiculous level (if we are a 1949 movie audience back in the day), we are supposed to believe the whole time they shared together in the Swiss mountains was platonic. When Trevor Howard leaves on the boat, he gives her a peck, not exactly a passionate kiss. In fact, she is making a bigger deal of him leaving than he is!
It sort of played out like an unrequited schoolgirl crush, which her husband (Rains) was patient with up to a point. But she kept repeating the infatuation and she kept being distracted from the vows she had made to Rains, that eventually Rains lost all patience and threatened a divorce action. We are then supposed to believe that is part of what snapped her mind into reality, well that and the realization that Trevor Howard was committed to his own marriage and would never leave his own wife for her.
When she figures she has wrecked her own marriage because this crush/infatuation has gotten too far out of hand, she contemplates suicide...only to learn that her husband is willing to forgive her and take her back. Thus, we get the requisite happy ending...but again, as Andrea noted, we don't really see her being passionate with her husband so it's not like she is going to be rushing home with Rains to hop in bed and (re)consummate their union. Much of the character's sexual behavior is ignored in the movie.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Nov 6, 2023 18:37:52 GMT
Thank you Topbilled for your input on this. I just watched it again and I'm still not 100% sure about my earlier questions and as you say we see her making a bigger deal about the mountain date than Steven does and thus she is taken by surprise to see that his wife meets him when he arrives home and he seems very happy to see her.
Yesterday, I didn't see that Mary was lying to Steven about the divorce suit being dropped. She must have been, but thought that she could persuade her husband to drop it. She made the really rather stupid mistake of asking her husband to do it "for Steven's sake," rather than her own which he was clearly ready to do. When he refused and shouted at her she ran to the subway station thinking that now her death was the only way to stop the divorce proceeding. Or was it that our independent/belong to no one Mary was afraid to go on without a man to lean on?
Now I want a sequel, "Miss Layton's Story." Lovelorn secretary spends 24 hours a day anticipating her boss's every need while she remains largely invisible to him as he obsesses over his cold blooded wife.
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 6, 2023 19:03:56 GMT
Thank you Topbilled for your input on this. I just watched it again and I'm still not 100% sure about my earlier questions and as you say we see her making a bigger deal about the mountain date than Steven does and thus she is taken by surprise to see that his wife meets him when he arrives home and he seems very happy to see her.
Yesterday, I didn't see that Mary was lying to Steven about the divorce suit being dropped. She must have been, but thought that she could persuade her husband to drop it. She made the really rather stupid mistake of asking her husband to do it "for Steven's sake," rather than her own which he was clearly ready to do. When he refused and shouted at her she ran to the subway station thinking that now her death was the only way to stop the divorce proceeding. Or was it that our independent/belong to no one Mary was afraid to go on without a man to lean on?
Now I want a sequel, "Miss Layton's Story." Lovelorn secretary spends 24 hours a day anticipating her boss's every need while she remains largely invisible to him as he obsesses over his cold blooded wife. |
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Post by Andrea Doria on Nov 6, 2023 19:19:25 GMT
Thanks for the selection, Fading Fast, (I got that wrong earlier.) If all our British women gone wild are as fascinating as this one we're in for a good month.
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 6, 2023 20:02:17 GMT
Thanks for the selection, Fading Fast, (I got that wrong earlier.) If all our British women gone wild are as fascinating as this one we're in for a good month.
Have you seen next week's choice "Brief Encounter?"
Something that struck me this viewing of "The Passionate Friends" that we didn't talk about yesterday was Todd's glee at the nice service on the plane. I don't remember noticing it before. It was child like in a nice way, but it also said something about how much her character enjoys luxury. |
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Post by topbilled on Nov 6, 2023 21:16:37 GMT
I went on an Ann Todd binge yesterday after we finished THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS. I watched SO EVIL MY LOVE, a 1948 gaslight noir from Paramount which I loved and plan to view again.
Then I watched MADELEINE (one of Fading Fast's selections this month) which was a perfect follow-up to SO EVIL MY LOVE. Then I looked at TIME WITHOUT PITY, one of her last films, which pairs her with Michael Redgrave circa 1957. All of these are on the Criterion Channel.
What a fantastic actress.
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Post by Andrea Doria on Nov 6, 2023 23:02:18 GMT
I have seen "Brief Encounter," but I'm looking forward to seeing it again.
Celia Johnson is another fine actress. I love her sweet, vulnerable face.
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 7, 2023 2:12:03 GMT
I went on an Ann Todd binge yesterday after we finished THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS. I watched SO EVIL MY LOVE, a 1948 gaslight noir from Paramount which I loved and plan to view again.
Then I watched MADELEINE (one of Fading Fast's selections this month) which was a perfect follow-up to SO EVIL MY LOVE. Then I looked at TIME WITHOUT PITY, one of her last films, which pairs her with Michael Redgrave circa 1957. All of these are on the Criterion Channel.
What a fantastic actress. |
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