Miriam Hopkins gives a spirited and possibly career performance in the title role of Becky Sharp based on William Makepeace Thackerey's novel Vanity Fair. The film comes by way of Langdon Mitchell's play based on Vanity Fair with the change in title. It ran on Broadway in 1899 for 116 performance.
And what a cast it had back in 1899. Mrs. Mary Madden Fiske was Becky, Maurice Barrymore was her luckless gambling fool of a husband, the part that Alan Mowbray has here and as the aristocratic rake that Hopkins is ready to give all to to square Mowbray's debts is played by Cedric Hardwicke in the film. On Broadway the role originated with Tyrone Power, Sr.
Thackerey's novel was a critique of the class system in Great Britain, but really offers no solutions. It's also a story of how much more difficult it was to be a woman and poor with so many fewer options open to them.
Becky Sharp is such a woman. She's been given a good education, attending school with the rich aristocratic Frances Dee. By education I mean finishing school. How she got there we're not sure, but having been exposed to how the other half lives she wants to be part of it.
Her friend Frances Dee invites her to live with her family and Hopkins starts seizing her opportunities. The rest of the story is about what happens to her and the various schemes she concocts. She's not afraid to use sex to obtain what she wants, riches and respectability.
Besides those I've already mentioned there's a really nice performance by Nigel Bruce as Frances Dee's Colonel Blimp like brother. In the end he proves to be Hopkins's salvation.
As a film Becky Sharp has come down in history to us as the first film using the modern technicolor process. It was a novelty, but as a story it definitely has merit.
And it is so much better than the version with Myrna Loy updated to the Roaring Twenties that came out under the original title of Vanity Fair a few years earlier.
And what a cast it had back in 1899. Mrs. Mary Madden Fiske was Becky, Maurice Barrymore was her luckless gambling fool of a husband, the part that Alan Mowbray has here and as the aristocratic rake that Hopkins is ready to give all to to square Mowbray's debts is played by Cedric Hardwicke in the film. On Broadway the role originated with Tyrone Power, Sr.
Thackerey's novel was a critique of the class system in Great Britain, but really offers no solutions. It's also a story of how much more difficult it was to be a woman and poor with so many fewer options open to them.
Becky Sharp is such a woman. She's been given a good education, attending school with the rich aristocratic Frances Dee. By education I mean finishing school. How she got there we're not sure, but having been exposed to how the other half lives she wants to be part of it.
Her friend Frances Dee invites her to live with her family and Hopkins starts seizing her opportunities. The rest of the story is about what happens to her and the various schemes she concocts. She's not afraid to use sex to obtain what she wants, riches and respectability.
Besides those I've already mentioned there's a really nice performance by Nigel Bruce as Frances Dee's Colonel Blimp like brother. In the end he proves to be Hopkins's salvation.
As a film Becky Sharp has come down in history to us as the first film using the modern technicolor process. It was a novelty, but as a story it definitely has merit.
And it is so much better than the version with Myrna Loy updated to the Roaring Twenties that came out under the original title of Vanity Fair a few years earlier.