Review of So Big!

So many viewers have found this film wonderful that I would hate to spoil the pleasure for those who have not seen it yet and might find it the same… so if you are intent on viewing the film anyway, maybe just watch it and make your own opinion before possibly coming back to mine afterwards. On the other hand, if you are not quite sure yet whether you want to watch So Big, rather than another one of the myriad of outstanding or just pleasant Barbara Stanwyck's movies of the period, then you might compare the following dissenting viewpoint with others and decide. First let me state that I am an unconditional admirer of Stanwyck. She has been one of the strongest talents of Hollywood, if not the strongest, with a very wide acting range which enabled her to play mostly everything and never to be dull. So big! was certainly not a film beyond her capacities - actually there is not really much to reproach her, apart from the simple fact that she is not so credible as bright city girl Selina supposedly enjoying for years the dullest possible farm life. And apart also from the fact that while she seems to age like twenty years in the very first first few years of her married farm life, after that she appears to have aged not even a bit more when we meet her again twenty long years later – she is without a wrinkle and with the smooth velvety face and hands of the twenty-five-year-old actress she is, not of the hard-and long-toiling farmer lady she is supposed to be. Possibly asparagus farming is a secret recipe for some wonders? Anyway, so good for her glamour, but so much for making us believe that she really is that nice granny-like lady. But these are indeed very minor qualms. The serious ones are with the film itself. And for that, blame probably the old-fashioned views of author Edna Ferber on women's condition and the admirability of their sacrifice, but blame also, sad to say, the for once unsteady hand of generally admirable director William Wellman. First, for such a short film it has a long and boring start. All the time taken to introduce the heavily-caricatured hick family she lands into, then the equally laughable hick village community, is really misspent, everything there is to understand about it being clear after only two minutes – and not much fun, rather embarrassing in its patronizing way to depict the poor farmers' community. And then the husband, yet one more uneducated slow-witted though rather nicer hick, but definitely not an even remotely inspiring person for Stanwyck to fall into his arms, at least out of any more positive feeling than sheer resignation to her fate. Second, about three quarters of the film has already elapsed until something really happens – but almost immediately after that, whoops, unexpected fast forward twenty years. As mentioned earlier Selina has not changed a bit but her infant son Dirk is now a tall handsome young city professional. And unfortunately, the film mostly stops paying much interest to her and moves to Chicago to deal with the uninteresting professional and sentimental life of this uninspiring young man. The unintended reaction being, "did she really sacrifice the best years of her life for this young jerk, and is this supposed to be an example?". Therefore the last quarter of the film, while very different, would be even slightly more uninteresting if it was not saved from complete boredom by the arrival of a young and sprightly Bette Davis, who puts young Dirk back in the right track of following the hard but inspiring life of an architect rather than the prosperous but soul-stifling one of a bond trader. Not that we care very much about him going one way or the other, but at least it confirms belatedly that Selina' life of admirable sacrifice has not been spent in vain. And that's the third issue. The life of Selina is indeed supposed to be so admirable, and therefore so touching, as well as so inspiring. As to touching, hard to say : after the first part when Selina has landed in exactly the wrong place and with the wrong husband, we do not her spend the next twenty years and come to terms with that life – we understand she did it all for the sake of precious Dirk, but with no means to know whether enduring or eventually enjoying that life. And as to inspiring : if a young lady who makes a silly choice of job location, then doubles it with an even sillier choice of husband, then trebles it by making countless sacrifices for a son who seems to be a spoiled and rather ungrateful jerk – if the value of such a sacrifice is measured only by its price, then Selina is indeed an inspiring role model. I have my doubts about that. Stanwyck will land a similar role a few years later in the much better Stella Dallas, the big difference being that her sacrifice is shown there as pathetic, not admirable. However, Selina is supposedly an example because she takes to heart the life motto of her late gambling father, more or less, "take gracefully whatever life serves you, and then just follow your heart to make the best of it". Why not - this is what Selina teaches to her pupil Roelf and her son Dirk. Except that for them boys, this means following one's envies to become a sculptor or an architect, whereas for Selina, it means submitting to the rather dirty hand that fate (as well as your own decisions) has dealt you, housewife then widow and self-sacrificing mother, and forgetting about any other hopes. Not much of a real choice there, actually. Unless one believes she really stayed as she once asserted for the unsung beauty of cabbage fields?