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Post by topbilled on May 4, 2023 13:32:27 GMT
This neglected film is from 1950.
Dunne & MacMurray team up again
Though Irene Dunne and Fred MacMurray had only appeared together in one previous picture, Paramount’s INVITATION TO HAPPINESS (1939), they were good friends and eager to reunite on screen. Miss Dunne was coming off an Oscar-nominated turn for I REMEMBER MAMA, and she would only make one more film after this. After her last picture, she teamed up with MacMurray for a third costarring venture, a radio program called Bright Star which aired during the 1952-53 season and ran for 52 episodes.
In NEVER A DULL MOMENT (no relation to Disney’s 1968 offering with the same title), Miss Dunne is cast as a singer-songwriter that falls for Mr. MacMurray, who plays a Wyoming cowboy. The script for this romantic comedy-drama is based on a bestselling autobiographical novel by Kay Swift, an east coast composer who was hired to direct light music at the 1939 World’s Fair. During the World Fair rodeo, Miss Swift met and fell in love with a cowboy from Oregon not Wyoming.
Their whirlwind courtship led to marriage. She moved out west and adjusted to life on her new husband’s ranch. In a way it’s a version of THE EGG AND I, which previously featured MacMurray…and the gist of the story concerns itself with the misadventures Dunne has in a rustic environment as a proverbial fish out of water. She expends a lot of energy winning over the locals.
While some of the incidents depicted on screen may come across naive to a modern audience, the scenario probably seemed fresh and innovative in 1950. The lines spoken by the two leads convey sharp comedic timing and wit. To say that Dunne and MacMurray are well–matched is an understatement, and the pairing reminds me of MacMurray’s earlier work with Carole Lombard. Miss Dunne was a skilled singer who excelled at dramatic stories, but she also had a natural flair for comedy, going back to her first comedic vehicle THEODORA GOES WILD.
The wild and woolly antics that occur during the movie are put over with help from an excellent supporting cast. Natalie Wood and Gigi Perreau are on hand as MacMurray’s daughters from a previous marriage.
Meanwhile, a rival rancher provides conflict in a subplot about a battle for water rights. He’s played by William Demarest, who later teamed up with MacMurray on the long-running TV sitcom My Three Sons.
If there’s a bit of familiarity to the proceedings, that is not exactly a drawback. Sometimes we like to be able to predict the outcome. This is a good old-fashioned story about two people from different worlds coming together to build a new life. Though the marriage of Miss Swift and her cowboy rancher husband didn’t last, the fictional version played by Dunne and MacMurray will…because they make a perfect couple who can go the distance.
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Post by topbilled on May 10, 2023 9:57:22 GMT
This neglected film is from 1933.
Strong character studies
Mae Clarke usually played unlikable women at this stage of her movie career, characters the audience didn’t root for. She was jilted, cussed at and in one case, had breakfast food shoved into her face…she seemed to deserve this. So it’s a bit interesting to see her play a good girl in FLAMING GOLD, a decidedly likable chick who gets involved with an equally likable guy (Bill Boyd).
Clarke was borrowed from MGM where she was under contract, so maybe this explains why she got the rare chance to play against type. She may have leapt at the chance to do a sympathetic role in a script that had been rejected by one of RKO’s lead actresses, such as Constance Bennett or Helen Twelvetrees.
As for Boyd, he had been appearing in a series of dramatic precode pictures, on the verge of his most famous role (Hopalong Cassidy). Here he does a decent job as a hardworking oil driller who’s trying to strike it rich in Mexico with his pal (Pat O’Brien).
Part of the main conflict that occurs in the story concerns Clarke’s former profession. She had been employed as an escort which is how she met Boyd when he took a recent trip to New York City. Of course, Boyd is rather naive, and he just went to dinner with her and fell in love with her…but viewers can surmise that as an escort, she often prostituted herself.
She soon marries Boyd without telling him the truth about her sordid past. But when she joins him at his place in Mexico where he is still drilling for oil, she has to deal with third wheel O’Brien who is much wiser to the ways of the world. O’Brien quickly deduces that Clarke is not a wife from a traditional background.
O’Brien feels a need to protect Boyd, fearing his friend will get hurt if Clarke wants to return to her old ways. After all, she could get tired of this cozy arrangement, leave Boyd and head back to the life she knew in New York. Part of O’Brien’s interaction with Clarke when Boyd is out in the field, has him insulting Clarke and trying to break her down. These are interesting scenes, and the two performers had previously costarred in the 1931 version of THE FRONT PAGE.
While O’Brien grapples with whether to tell Boyd everything he knows, we see that Clarke is no gold digger or opportunist. She genuinely loves Boyd and intends to make their marriage work. Eventually, O’Brien realizes Clarke has heart in the right place, and he decides to be more supportive. They go from bickering to bantering.
Speaking of Pat O’Brien, he did a similar film later at Warner Brothers with a similar title: FLOWING GOLD (1940). He was teamed with John Garfield and Frances Farmer in that one.
As for this film, FLAMING GOLD is not a prestigious big budget affair. However, it does give us three strong character studies from three solid performers. And that, along with some good action sequences, makes it worth any viewer’s time.
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Post by Fading Fast on May 10, 2023 10:17:55 GMT
Flaming Gold from 1932 with Mae Clarke, William Boyd and Pat O'Brien
In the 1930s, there were many movies made about young American men going down to Mexico or South America or "out to the Orient" for well-paying jobs or investment opportunities.
Fruit and rubber plantations, oil fields, start-up airlines and other businesses offered a young man a chance to get rich, if he was willing to do often dangerous work in a remote part of the world.
That alone is a good story, but Hollywood quickly sussed out its best part, the same part it susses out of most stories - the part about two people getting naked together. Specifically, how does a man get sex in a remote part of the world where, mainly, only men are working?
Enter, of course, one of Hollywood's favorite characters of all time: the woman practicing the oldest profession of all time.
Now you have everything you need for a good prurient story: men, women, lust, passion, love triangles, deception, class snobbery and commerce all smashed together in a remote part of the world where the regular rules of civility don't always seem to apply.
Flaming Gold is a fast fifty-three minute take on this typical tale of the era, which has an oddly complicated business story wrapped around the important sex-deception-jealousy story the movie really cares about.
A big US oil company operating in Mexico tries to destroy a wildcatter's nearby well by setting fire to one of its own wells hoping the fire will spread to the wildcatter's. Okay, I guess that's a strategy. It did make for a crazy scene.
It also sets off a chain of events that brings one of the wildcatters, played by William Boyd, to New York City to secure financing for a new well. There, for entertainment, the financier sets Boyd up with a prostitute, played by Mae Clarke, whom Boyd mistakes for a real date.
Clarke doesn't correct Boyd's mistake. They then fall in love, get married and, with the well's financing secured, Boyd heads back to Mexico with his new wife, the former call girl.
Once there, Clarke tries her best to be a good wife, despite the deception she pulled on her husband, but Boyd's wildcatting partner, played by Pat O'Brien, sees Clarke for who she is.
O'Brien doesn't outright say anything, but he is nasty to Clarke and makes life miserable for all three of them.
Flaming Gold is just one of a surprisingly large number of pre-code movies involving a man marrying a prostitute and not knowing it. It was viewed as a very big deal back then.
To be fair, it kinda is a big deal, at least from an honesty perspective. Today though, we'd, ultimately, be more forgiving of the situation as, what the hey, nobody comes into a marriage anymore with a low "number."
Back in the 1930s, however, this stuff still mattered so Flaming Gold climaxes with truths being exposed, wells shooting up oil and decisions around honor and forgiveness being made.
In the movie, there are a ridiculous number of shots of oil wells being drilled, of their machinery pounding into the earth and of oil spurting out the top of them to make the sexual symbolism fun in an obvious but silly way.
The picture, overall, is a good, not-great version of this common story with super-cute Mae Clarke, sporting a boy's short haircut, standing out as the calmest, smartest and nicest of the three leads.
In pre-code land, women often were smarter and more mature than the men, which tells us the Motion Picture Production Code has distorted our modern view of that prior era's true outlook on women.
Even though she is billed below Boyd, this is Clarke's movie. Boyd comes across as a bit wooden, while O'Brien, employing his usual machine-gun-style delivery of dialogue, is a bit too strident. Clarke's performance, though, is sympathetic and nuanced.
Flaming Gold is nothing more than a short B movie with a story and theme incredibly common to the era, but it's worth the watch for Clarke's performance, the over-the-top business machinations and the ridiculous oil-well sexual symbolism. |
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Post by topbilled on May 10, 2023 14:54:08 GMT
Great review, and I agree, Mae Clarke is the best thing in it.
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Post by topbilled on May 20, 2023 7:55:15 GMT
This neglected film is from 1943.
The use and abuse of power
THE GHOST SHIP is the captain’s ship. And the captain, as played by Richard Dix, is the only authority. Nobody is allowed to question his decisions– none of the ship’s crew, including the officers.
When a crew member (Lawrence Tierney in an early role) complains to the captain one day on their way to the port of San Sebastian, he has made a grave mistake. For this insubordination will cost him his life. In a chilling scene, Dix locks a door so that Tierney cannot get out of a cargo room where a large metal chain and hook are stored on top of him.
The vessel’s third officer (Russell Wade) suspects what the captain has done and it gnaws away at him. This is his first voyage with Dix, and initially they had gotten along well. Dix saw traits in Wade that reminded him of his younger self, and he was eager to mentor the chap.
But their cordial exchanges soon give way to hostility, when Dix feels Wade is undermining his authority after Tierney’s “accidental” death. An added complication occurs when one of the other crew is stricken with appendicitis. Dix as captain is the one who has been authorized to perform the appendectomy.
But when Dix is unable to make an incision, Wade takes over which further humiliates him. Dix, of course, provides an excuse for why he allowed Wade to handle the emergency operation. Wade seems to buy it for now, but he starts to wonder if Dix is even capable of running things. Plus he is still in doubt over Dix’s role in Tierney’s demise.
This leads to Wade making official complaints when they arrive in San Sebastian a short time later. A hearing is held, where most of the men testify. But most of them are either in awe of Dix or in fear of him, and do not go against their captain. Any suggestion of impropriety or wrongdoing is dismissed; Dix is able to resume control of the ship when they leave port, but Wade will not be working for him any longer.
There’s an interesting scene where Wade runs into a middle-aged woman (Edith Barrett) who considers herself an authority on Dix. She intends to marry Dix. After she meets up with Dix at the port, they confer about the future. He tells her that he thinks he’s not in full control of his mental faculties, which he would certainly not admit to anyone else. She agrees to wait for his hand in marriage, giving him time to pull himself together.
Ironically, Wade winds up back on the ship, this time as a passenger. He quickly realizes that Dix consented to giving him passage to the next port, with the aim of killing him…you know, to teach him who’s in control.
Dix is a certifiable lunatic in this story, not unlike Ahab in Moby Dick. He plays this role with a great deal of flair, but wisely refrains from over-the-top theatricality. Except when he’s instructed by the scriptwriter and director to take the character to the brink of (in)sanity.
As a Val Lewton production, THE GHOST SHIP contains the requisite amount of horror and suspense that we come to expect with his output. There are plenty of shadowy compositions to sustain interest and hide the cheapness of the primary set, which was a reused structure from a previous RKO film.
The characters are dealing with an enforced definition of authority and how they are all trying to gain control over their own lives and happiness. Thought-provoking questions are posed. For instance, does a man’s boss have the most authority over him? Does a woman have the right to control his destiny? How long does the man continue this way, before he must take ownership of his own life…or else it becomes a doomed journey?
This isn’t a story about making choices as much as it’s a story about the way in which power is used and abused. In that regard, it’s exemplary cinema.
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Post by Fading Fast on May 20, 2023 11:50:04 GMT
⇧ That's a fantastic review. I saw it a looooong time ago, but now really want to see it again.
A neglected film that has a somewhat parallel story and similar themes is the outstanding The Sea Wolf, for which I wrote the below comments on a few years back.
Topbilled, I posted it here for now because it's a cognate to The Ghost Ship, but will happily move it to the Warner Bros. thread or wherever you suggest - or please feel free to move it yourself, I'm good with whatever you decide.
The Sea Wolf from 1941 with Edward G. Robinson, Alexander Knox, John Garfield, Ida Lupino and Barry Fitzgerald
"Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven"
- John Milton Paradise Lost
How is this movie not better known? It is a gem of a psychological and philosophical drama wrapped inside a good "cruel captain commanding a ship of outcasts and criminals" story set in the early 1900s.
The Ghost, Captain Edward G. Robinson's eerie San Francisco-based clipper ship, which seems to only sail in fog, takes on an additional hand, John Garfield, wanted by the police, just before leaving port. Once at sea, it then picks up two survivors of a wreck.
One survivor is Ida Lupino, an escaped convict; the other is Alexander Knox, a well-bred urbane professional writer. Garfield, Lupino and Knox quickly realize they are on some sort of ship from hell with a captain suffering from Nietzsche's Superman complex and a crew of cowed but violent, amoral men.
Knox, in one of the best roles of his career (ditto Robinson, Lupino and Garfield), immediately butts heads with Robinson, who can size men up and find their weaknesses with frightening alacrity.
Robinson dismissively sees Knox as his opposite, a man who makes his living sitting in comfort while typing out words; whereas, Robinson successfully captains his ship using physical violence and psychological intimidation over "inferior" men.
When these two debate the world, the philosophies get muddled a bit as Nietzsche, Freud, Darwin and Christianity are all kinda mixed up and mixed in. Knox represents the "civilized" moral man who believes in honest competition and charity. Conversely, Robinson is the might-makes-right-as-the-only-way-to-survive man.
Mocking Knox's "soft hands" (foreshadowing Quint making fun of Hooper's "city-boy hands" in Jaws), Robinson tells Knox he'll be a selfish and violent man by the time the voyage is over. Knox rejoins that his beliefs and character are not that malleable.
In Robinson's book-filled cabin, Knox and he debate the morality of rule by force - Robinson proffers the famous Milton quote about reigning in Hell being preferable to serving in Heaven. Knox responds with tenets of Christian kindness, brotherhood and fair play.
These two aren't going to find common ground. While Knox and Robinson argue round after round, Knox discovers Robinson suffers from crippling headaches and bouts of temporary blindness - the latter Robinson hides from his crew.
As they sail on, Garfield repeatedly tries to thwart Robinson with physical attacks, but he loses every time. Finally, Garfield and Lupino, the latter's natural delicateness looks outright fragile on this floating den of thieves, along with Knox, ask Robinson to be put off at the next port.
Robinson, who, on The Ghost, has created his own Hell in which to reign, has no intention of letting anyone off as he tries to break all three of his new "passengers."
After seeing Robinson cruelly drive the ship's alcoholic surgeon to suicide, Garfield leads a mutiny that almost works, but incredibly, Robinson retakes command. In a brilliant move of psychological warfare, Robinson lets all the mutineers off without punishment as if to say, "you still are no threat to me."
Further pushing the psyops, he punishes his own stool pigeon who helped him break the mutiny, the ship's cook, Barry Sullivan. Sullivan plays his evil-gnome role here to the hilt. Having never seen Sullivan in anything but kindly roles - sympathetic priest, sensitive horse trainer, understanding father - his turn here as a scary, pathological sycophant to Robinson is chilling and impressive.
But Robinson's reign is threatened as a more powerful ship, captained by his brother (a fascinating thread never developed), mortally damages The Ghost. In a last grasp at cruelty, Robinson - now all but blind, yet still stunningly in control - locks Garfield in a storeroom as the ship sinks, which forces Lupino and Knox to stay on board as they try to free him.
This sets up Knox and Robinson's final encounter. With the philosophies a bit scrambled again, Robinson asserts, to the end, his might-makes-right ideology, while Knox argues for kindness and compassion.
The outcome sorta gives the nod to Knox, but Robinson's impressive finish, despite being blind on a sinking ship, and a deception Knox has to make to win, results in a less-than-total philosophical victory for Knox.
The Sea Wolf is Warner Bros. at its best. Using its top-talent, an okay budget (Jack Warner rarely fully opened up the wallet like Mayer did at MGM) and strong source material (a Jack London novel), Warners delivers a tense psychological and philosophical action-adventure movie that forces you to think while it entertains. Why this gem isn't better known today is a mystery.
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Post by topbilled on May 20, 2023 12:56:33 GMT
Yeah, that's fine...it goes nicely with the review of THE GHOST SHIP.
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RKO
May 20, 2023 13:02:15 GMT
Post by Fading Fast on May 20, 2023 13:02:15 GMT
Yeah, that's fine...it goes nicely with the review of THE GHOST SHIP. |
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Post by topbilled on May 20, 2023 13:14:18 GMT
Yeah, that's fine...it goes nicely with the review of THE GHOST SHIP. |
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Post by Fading Fast on May 20, 2023 13:49:35 GMT
That's great - thank you. They are very similar movies. Have you seen, "The Sea Wolf?" |
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Post by topbilled on May 31, 2023 7:22:39 GMT
This neglected film is from 1939.
Western farce with romance
Before RKO remade it, there had been several previous iterations of this rousing Mexican-American western. Initially, the story had been produced as a silent picture at United Artists starring Norma Talmadge, Noah Beery and Gilbert Roland in 1927. RKO obtained the rights in 1931.
A year later, the studio produced the first sound version. The 1932 production was called GIRL OF THE RIO, a title that seems to have slipped into obscurity. It featured Dolores Del Rio, Norman Foster and Leo Carrillo in the lead roles. Carrillo would repeat his part in the 1939 remake, though his character underwent a slight name change.
By 1939, the production code was in full force, so a lot of the more provocative aspects had to be toned down. The main female role was given to Steffi Duna, the Hungarian-born wife of Dennis O’Keefe, who had been specializing in ethnic characterizations. Duna often appeared in B-pictures in support of better known actresses, so this was a rare chance for her to shine.
As for her romantic partner in the film, Tim Holt, he was just starting his lengthy career in the movies. Holt would make a name for himself in a series of popular RKO B-westerns from 1938 to 1952. In this tale, he doesn’t play a cowboy, but rather a gambler who is smitten with Duna’s charms, while she is fighting off Carrillo’s advances.
Mostly THE GIRL AND THE GAMBLER is Mr. Carrillo’s film. He gives a masterclass in the exaggerated bandit stereotype, as well as a ‘good’ lesson in mangling two languages. We will politely call it Spanglish. Carrillo’s considerable charms work in favor of endearing him to the viewer, if not to the lovely Miss Duna whose heart belongs to young Holt.
Part of the fun is that Carrillo, playing a thief known as El Rayo, likes to rob from the rich and give to the church. It is all shades of Robin Hood to be sure. And a bit ironic, since Carrillo himself was from a landowning family that had first colonized California (some of his prime real estate became Leo Carrillo State Park in Malibu).
Carrillo’s character has taken a bet that he can get Duna, referred to as a dove, to love him and go away with him to his casa. But she’s too committed to the handsome gambler she loves (Holt), who’s up on a murder charge and needs saving.
We know how it will end. Duna and Holt will beat the odds and make a new life together. But they help ensure that Carrillo doesn’t lose face while ‘losing’ the bet he wagered. Ultimately, what we have is a pleasant energetic farce about love, rivalries, reputations and winning at all costs.
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Post by topbilled on Jun 11, 2023 14:27:45 GMT
This neglected film is from 1933.
Viper-in-law
Irene Dunne was RKO’s most popular lead actress during the 1930s. She specialized in dramas during the early years, though she would later find success in comedies. One of the precode dramas the studio assigned her to do was this reworking of a Broadway play by Sidney Howard. On stage, Howard’s tale of an overbearing mother (played by Laura Hope Crews) was a hit with audiences, though some of its themes were quite daring.
The studio optioned the rights and had screenwriter Jane Murfin tone down some of the darker aspects, which involved incest and suicide. However, Miss Murfin managed to retain the story’s main theme about possessiveness. John Cromwell, who had directed the Broadway version in the late ’20s, was hired to direct it on screen. Laura Hope Crews was also hired to reprise her role as the mother, and go toe-to-toe with Dunne who was cast as the new daughter-in-law.
RKO contract player Joel McCrea would take on the role of the oldest son, who brings his new wife from Europe to the family’s wealthy New England home. After their whirlwind courtship and elopement, Dunne and McCrea are very much in love…yet it’s clear Dunne knows hardly anything about McCrea’s background, and she certainly does not realize at first what sort of viper Crews is. But of course, she quickly finds out, and once the niceties are set aside, a sharp conflict between the two women takes center stage.
Crews pulls out all the stops to interfere with this blissful union. When she learns a grandchild is on the way, it seems to unnerve her even more. She views a baby as a stronger bond between her son and the outside woman, so she works even harder to drive a wedge between the newlyweds. In addition to Crews’ meddling in McCrea’s relationship with Dunne, there is an equally good subplot involving a second son (Eric Linden) and his fiancé (Frances Dee, future wife of Joel McCrea).
In the case of Linden’s engagement to Dee, Crews is able to manipulate Linden into jilting Dee. This probably leads to the film’s most dramatic moment, when Dee unable to endure another minute in the family’s dysfunctional home, decides to venture off to a hotel. She walks across a frozen pond, which has holes in it and she falls through the ice. She is saved by Linden and McCrea who pull her out. But when they return to the mansion and a doctor visits, trouble is far from over.
Crews is worried about an ensuing scandal when news gets out that Dee nearly died. She contrives to take younger son Linden off to Europe and uses the latest problems to inveigle McCrea into joining them. If McCrea heads off with them, then he will abandon Dunne and the unborn child. And this leads into the final showdown between Dunne and Crews. It’s all quite melodramatic and satisfying to watch.
Though Dee’s histrionics are a bit much when Linden breaks things off with her, and Crews tends to chew on scenery at times, McCrea and Dunne manage to give much wiser, more subdued performances.
I didn’t expect Crews to succeed in tearing the lead couple apart, and so the ending– where Dunne leaves and McCrea chases after her– wasn’t too surprising. But I also thought Dee and Linden would reconcile, and they don’t. I found it rather interesting how Crews managed to triumph with the younger son, still maintaining a “romantic” control over him at the end.
Obviously, we're not meant to like or even empathize with Crews. She’s a mother from hell who doesn’t have a prayer. But we can learn about mental illness watching her, and unfortunately, a lot of mothers still try to smother their sons in unhealthy and unnatural ways. For every ogre like Crews, there is a woman like Dunne who will come along and win the son away from her. You can count on that.
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Post by Fading Fast on Jun 11, 2023 14:52:12 GMT
The Silver Cord from 1933 with Laura Hope Crews, Irene Dunn, Joel McCrea, Frances Dee and Eric Linden
God bless the precode movie and not because The Silver Cord has any naughty sex in it (it doesn't), but because it takes a brutally honest look at a selfish mother who wields her "love" like a club to beat her two adult sons into submission.
It's a stark honesty you won't see often in movies in only a few years because, after 1934, The Motion Picture Production Code was all but fully enforced and a lot of truth left the screen
In The Silver Cord, Joel McCrea plays an American architect who, living in Europe for a time, romances and marries another American, a biologist played by Irene Dunn.
They then return to the States planning to move to New York City where she has a position waiting for her at the Rockefeller Institute and he has an opportunity with a large architecture firm, but first they are going to visit his mother.
Bad move. The mother, played by Laura Hope Crews, is a manipulative control freak who has no interest in letting McCrea or her other adult son, played by Eric Linden, leave the nest.
Wealthy, widowed long ago and with, convenient for her, heart trouble, she raised her two boys to worship their "self-sacrificing" Mom, and they do.
Her plan for McCrae is for him to build houses on a nearby strip of land she owns so that he'll be both near her and grateful to her for the opportunity. Dunn, no fool, quickly sees the trap Mama Crews has set, but it takes her time to form a counter argument.
Linden, the other son, is engaged to a young girl played by (Joel McCrea's soon-to-be wife) Frances Dee. When McCrea and Dunn arrive at his Mother's big gloomy mansion, we see that Crews has already been beating the spirit out of Dee.
Mama Crews uses a combination of passive-aggressive behavior, overwhelming chatter and, when necessary, outright bullying to keep her sons emotionally blackmailed and their wives/fiances cowed.
The plot is pretty straightforward: Crews wants total control; the women want the sons to break free and the boys are pulled in both directions.
Most of the movie, of which ninety-five percent takes place in the mother's mansion, is watching Crews use every weapon in her arsenal to get her way as the wives initially flail and the boys equivocate.
Linden's character, it's implied in the subtext of the day, is closeted (maybe, even to himself) gay. It's explained that he didn't "fully" love Dee and he wants to be an interior decorator (era code for a gay man). This explains his struggle to break from his mother for Dee.
McCrea is a bit more independent, but it is Dunn who, eventually, goes toe-to-toe with Crews in the best exchanges of the movie, as the two women throw verbal haymakers at each other when the gloves come off toward the end.
There are a few key plot pivots including Dee having a hysterical breakdown when, at his mother's urging, Linden kinda sorta breaks their engagement. Another pivot happens when Dunn learns from the family doctor that there is nothing wrong with the mother's heart.
When Crews is confronted with this fact, though, she simply denies it and goes on lamenting her poor health and all she's sacrificed for her sons: the woman has no shame and an indomitable will.
The plot itself is really just here as a platform for the dialogue and family dynamic to play out in this very stagey movie, not surprisingly, based on a play. Still, the picture grabs hold of you from about ten minutes in and doesn't let go from there.
Sure it's contrived and obvious, but the story is also real and powerful as a common family dysfunction is painfully laid bare. You don't even want to think about why these adult sons kiss their mother on the mouth, ew.
Crews, Dunn and Dee give the strongest performances, in part, because they represent the antipodes of the argument and, eventually, fight with absolute conviction and emotion; whereas, McCrea and Linden waffle for most of the movie.
The Silver Cord today would be an HBO series about a powerful yet broken family, but in 1933, precode movies simply ripped through these stories with brutal honesty in just over an hour.
For modern audiences, these precode movies (1930-1934) are a valuable window into the true complexity of society back then as, once the code was enforced, most of this nuance and candor sadly left the silver screen for the next several decades. |
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Post by topbilled on Jun 11, 2023 16:36:10 GMT
One thing I found rather clever about THE SILVER CORD was how they had the mother repeat some of her dialogue, but switch tactics within the repeated dialogue. For example, in the beginning she tells Linden he's her boy and very much like her, and that McCrea is like the deceased father. Later, she is cozying up to McCrea to get him to ditch Dunne, and she says the exact same thing again, only this time she says McCrea is her boy and that Linden is like the deceased father. So not only is she manipulating the sons against the women, she is also manipulating the sons against each other.
I am not sure if Linden's character was meant to be a closeted homosexual, though that is an interesting way to read him. I actually felt like he was still in a sexual relationship with the mother, while McCrea had moved on from mommy to Dunne and no longer needed mommy that way. If Linden had been gay and had a boyfriend, no doubt Crews would have felt just as threatened by a male lover, the way she was threatened by Dee. She just wanted to continue possessing her sons as long as possible...oblivious to how she was damaging them and sabotaging their chances at happiness.
Another thing I found clever was how McCrea and Dunne, though they have those early scenes in Europe, are actually backgrounded during the first half of the movie. It isn't until Dunne figures out how deceptive Crews is that the relationship between McCrea and Dunne becomes more prominent. Because there is this delay in terms of how McCrea's relationship with Crews is depicted, we are forced to focus on the scenes with Linden and Dee, though they are technically supporting characters. The delay sort of builds suspense, because we are waiting for Dunne to figure things out and challenge mommy dearest.
And I think it was a stroke of genius that they sort of presented the mother as a cardboard villain for 90 percent of the story's running time...then in the end, we actually learn her backstory...how she was married at 20 to a man of 35 who didn't love her...how she was widowed at 25 with two boys, and that instead of remarrying and finding a new romance after her husband's death, she indulged in the romantic aspects of motherhood. She was still sick and perverse, but she became a fully fleshed out person at the end of the movie, where we learned how she had become that way. I didn't feel pity for her, but it helped to understand her more, since all her machinations ultimately made sense, as twisted as she was.
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on Jun 11, 2023 17:03:42 GMT
With regards to the comment: Irene Dunne was RKO’s most popular lead actress during the 1930s.
I would have assumed Katherine Hepburn (even with the box-office poison issue during the later part of the 30s).
Of course, it comes down to how one determines "popular": If based on box-office income I would still assume Hepburn, but either way it would be close.
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