One Romantic Night (The Swan) - 1930

“One Romantic Night” (1930), AKA “The Swan” shows a world, and a medium, in transition. The world is one in which fairly tales about princesses are out of step with the Jazz Age just passed. The decade ahead will bring plenty of fairly tales, but they will be about shop girls instead. The medium was the dawn of talking pictures, which had not yet delivered a freedom of expression they’d promised; instead the actors and crew were shackled to the demanding and unforgiving microphones.

“The Swan” was remade in 1956 with Grace Kelly in the lead, with Alec Guinness as the Prince she pursues, and Louis Jourdan as the lovelorn tutor who pursues her. We discussed “The Swan” here. Comparisons are inevitable and must make up the bulk of this post. I won’t go too deeply into the plot, as we’ve covered that in the previous post.

Most glaringly different is the absence of the sad and lovely speech the Prince makes comparing the Princess to a swan and reminding her, and us, of her responsibility to remain true to her birthright. Here, the Prince tricks the Princess into becoming his bride. She slaps on a cloche hat and they run off together in an automobile. An attempt to modernize the piece?

Lillian Gish, in her talkie debut, was in her middle 30s at the time of this film, but with her grace and beauty, this is not necessarily a detriment to playing a much younger character with regal poise. She looks every inch the princess. Her princess, however, is a warmer, more confident young woman than Grace Kelly’s princess, who was tortured by her own diffident angst. Interestingly, there are moments when Miss Gish actually sounds a great deal like Grace Kelly in her careful intonations of Ferenc Molnár’s lines (Maxwell Anderson adapted the script). Their voices sound quite similar.

Rod La Rocque plays Prince Albert, who here is a much more caddish fellow than the Prince appeared in the 1956 remake. We meet him at a debauched soiree saying farewell to a line of girlfriends. Alec Guinness’s prince was reserved, a muddled fellow bumbling about in his own vague self-involvement. Both are struck with bouts of jealously and resentment, but La Rocque has less humor, less depth. At times he has more spark. He is a playboy. He also has one of the most grotesquely toothy grins one will ever find on film.

Conrad Nagel is very appealing as the love struck tutor who is wounded by the Prince’s sarcasm and the Princess’s pity. His deeper, modulated voice carries better than the other actors, and he seems to easily leave behind the silent film mannerisms that many carried into the sound age.

This would include Marie Dressler, who is the most animated of the group and raises the level of the ambitious mother to broad comedy.

O.P. Heggie rounds out the principle cast as the friar uncle, confidant of many, and voice of reason.

Reportedly there was creative conflict on the set between director Paul Stein and Miss Gish.  Some of the film's unevenness may be due to that.  Still, there are a few lovely framed shots of the rose garden, and a dramatic tracking shot while La Rocque and Lillian Gish are dancing. The camera watches Conrad Nagel, his beautiful dark eyes with their pained expression, watching them.

Overall, the film misses the wry, gentle humor of the 1956 version. Most of us might prefer the 1956 remake, which, far removed from both the Jazz Age and the transition into talkies, is free to indulge in a long-ago fairy tale world about a princess, ironically starring an actress who became a real princess as that film was released.

But the 1930 version was, itself, a remake. “The Swan” was first made as a silent movie in 1925 featuring Frances Howard as the Princess, Adolphe Menjou as the Prince, and Ricardo Cortez as the tutor.

The obligatory stiffness of scenes in the first sound remake is likely less due to this being adapted from a stage play than it is due to the modern sound equipment. Mary Astor makes her typically astute observation on those transitional years of early sound when actors were made awkward. From Mary Astor - A Life on Film (NY: Delacorte Press, 1971):

“At that point in technical development, talkies were nothing but a poor imitation of theater itself. Silents were an entirely different medium. It was a way of telling a story -- images created the emotion -- a direct appeal…"

Talkies required more rigid camera setups: "Everything would have to be straight cuts, no fade-ins or fade-outs, no dissolves. All the fluid movement of the camera would be lost. It would be static, dull, tied to a microphone. You couldn’t go outdoors…

“Even in more intimate scenes, you could never speak while moving around. Of course, you could hide a microphone in things. It was only slightly smaller than a breadbox, but it could be done.” (pp 73-74).

I think this passage can help us appreciate the stylistic choices of this film and give us a bit more understanding when it comes to appreciating what at times seems a very static movie.  The fairy tale was hobbled by the reality of the new technology.

Now Playing - Father Takes a Wife (1941)

This splashy ad for “Father Takes a Wife” (1941) hails the screen return of Gloria Swanson, who had not done a film in some seven years, and whose next film wouldn’t be for another nine years. But that film-to-be was “Sunset Blvd.”, so it would be worth the wait.

Her cast here in this comedy about an actress who gives up a career for marriage includes the ever dapper Adolphe Menjou, John Howard as his son (who we last saw in “Make Haste to Live”), Desi Arnaz, and more importantly, Mary Treen, who in her string of funny maids, waitresses, secretaries and other lovable plain Janes, was always delightful, occasionally poignant, and often better than her material. She is cast here as a secretary.

Barbara Stanwyck - 100th Anniversary

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Barbara Stanwyck. The body of her work is impressive. She was one of the best actresses of her day, sometimes called the greatest actress who never won an Oscar. Granted an honorary Oscar toward the end of her life (at the time she still had yet to perform in the television miniseries “The Thorn Birds” which would garner her a third Emmy), Stanwyck lived a very private life. Orphaned at a young age, learning her trade as a chorus girl in the seamy atmosphere of clubs and vaudeville, the intelligent and intuitive Brooklyn born Ruby Stevens eventually became a hit actress on Broadway, was the highest earning film actress of 1944, and worked well into her 70s on television. Her career spanned many media, and she adjusted to each.

She played an enormous range of roles. No other actress of her day played as many varied types. Few other actresses of her day could lose themselves in a role as she did.

Iconic actress of the period, including Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, and Joan Crawford leaped off the screen and commanded attention, and a great deal of publicity when they were off screen. As fine actresses as they were, one rarely can watch their films without being able to forget it is Hepburn or Davis or Crawford. They assumed their roles; they did not lose their own strong personalities in them. Barbara Stanwyck, on the other hand, never played the same person twice. Even her string of fallen women were different from each other.

Phyllis Dietrichson of “Double Indemnity” was nothing like Stella Dallas. The precocious sexpot of “Baby Face” is light-years away from Elizabeth Lane in “Christmas in Connecticut,” who was nothing like Sugarpuss O’Shea in “Ball of Fire.” Miss Stanwyck was lauded by her peers as hardworking and affable, a favorite with directors, but where the intensity came from that shot forth from her as Lulu in “Forbidden” or Florence Fallon in “The Miracle Woman” is still unknown to us. She came to screwball comedy late, but made it her own. Her villains were realistically evil, not cartoons of evil, so much so that they even earned our understanding. She came to westerns late, and that became a favorite genre. She came to television, when as an older woman film parts were more scarce, and made it her medium. She clearly adapted, and learned along the way.

Miss Stanwyck is especially fun to watch in ensemble scenes. She works well with other actors, seeming to enjoy the give and take of the process, where some other stars of the day were more given to posturing and not sharing the spotlight if they could help it. She was quick with a quip, quick on the trigger, and quick to learn.

She appeared different from her peers, even in the way she would handle the smallest scenes. In “Meet John Doe” her younger sisters come upon her working at her typewriter, and wanting her to play with them, tip her chair over and dump her on the floor. One of them attempts a headstand on her abdomen. I’d like to see anybody try that with Joan Crawford. And live.

In “Forbidden” she bathes her toddler, played by Myrna Fresholt (talk about your natural actresses) who continues to babble over Stanwyk’s dialogue, so Stanwyck, with humor and gentleness ad libs her own dialogue to fit what the child is doing. This happens again in the scene in the car with Adolphe Menjou and the child sitting between them, babbling during their tense scene.

Much of “Stella Dallas” is a revelation, and has been discussed on this blog before (see entry May 17, 2007). There is much to discuss about Miss Stanwyck’s work, but none of it can be summed up easily. She was enormously versatile, herself a work in progress. It is hard to imagine anybody else playing the roles she played, and yet, it is irresistible to imagine her in roles that were played by others. Taking nothing away from either Gloria Swanson or Bette Davis who were excellent respectively in “Sunset Blvd.” and “All About Eve,” what would Stanwyck have done with those roles?

She had never been directed by William Wyler. What would it have been like for her, who was one of those best-on-the-first-take actresses, to have worked with “forty-take Wyler?” What kind of partnership would that have been?

This is the conundrum of Barbara Stanwyck’s film career. Even though she opened herself up and showed extraordinary emotional depth, there is the feeling that there is still more, that her personal intensity, and talent for making us believe, is endless. No matter how many times you’ve watched the film.

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Forbidden (1932)

The three leads, the snappy dialogue by Jo Swerling, and impeccable direction by Frank Capra make “Forbidden” (1932) one of the most interesting films of the pre-Code era. Daring for the time, it is melodramatic without being simpering. The story of a woman who has a decades-long affair with a married man, bears his child and eventually gives their daughter to him and his wife to raise could be a soppy moralistic mess, but Barbara Stanwyck, Aldophe Menjou, and Ralph Bellamy make their characters believable, equally decent and imperfect.

Stanwyck is introduced to us as an “old maid,” the victim of condescending town gossip. She blows up, declaring she would like to “set fire to the whole town and play a ukulele while it burns.” She has no real big dreams, only wants life on her own terms.

Menjou plays her married lover. Their scenes are delightfully playful, and Stanwyck forms that intense bond with her principle partner that she seems to do in many of her films. Even though she will later marry Bellamy’s character, there is a thin psychological barrier she creates between them, never letting us forget who it is she really loves.

Bellamy is the newspaper reporter who hounds Menjou throughout his political career. Sometimes labeled as a portrayer of somewhat boring character roles, this role really shows his range. He is charming, pushy, intelligent, a little bit obnoxious, and fascinating to watch for the danger he unknowingly represents to Stanwyck.

Stanwyck’s fallen woman is multi-dimensional, and her ability to play a scene on so many emotional levels is especially evident in this film. The look on her stunned face as the society ladies and Menjou’s wife fuss over the child she has given up, shows she is only just realizing the mistake she has made.

Years later, when Menjou, sickened by living a lie, wants to confess their relationship to his wife and to the public, Stanwyck heads him off by breaking up and marrying Bellamy. In an electrifying scene over a cozy dinner table, Bellamy puts before her the documented proof he has of her affair with Menjou. He is calculating, but he is not just a newshound out to ruin a politician. Angry and hurt, he has become a jealous husband. A few moments later, after he pushes her away and bloodies her face, she shoots him, and continues to fire into his already dead body, and burns the documents. Capra has constructed a masterful scene. Stanwyck, still holding the gun, stands trembling in shock, her expressionless eyes riveted to the fire, as we hear Menjou making his acceptance speech on the radio for the governor’s race, and the police pounding at the door.

Even her last sacrifice in the film, when she destroys the dying Menjou’s written confession and naming her as a beneficiary in his will, we see Stanwyck not really as a noble, selfless woman, but as a person who aches to control her own life. She is the same willful woman who stomped out of her library job years before. When the camera pulls back, we see her walk the city streets and we lose her in the crowd. In fact, we may not even know her any better than we did at the beginning of the film. The movie comes to its conclusion, yet you still find yourself wondering what could happen next.

That’s all for this week. See you Monday.