I love a good romantic film, I cannot for example think of anything more moving than the 1939 version of WUTHERING HEIGHTS and so looked forward to seeing this. What a disappointment - this is just awful. I felt I needed some extra insulin to absorb all this sugar-coated nicey, nicey niceness being vomited at me from the screen.
This was actually an absolutely massive hit in 1933 and so in fact was the original back in 1922. These were both times of hardship so maybe unsophisticated gushing sentimental garbage like this was what was needed then? But maybe not - fortunately most films in 1933 weren't like this.
What's it about? Obviously just after the Great War, which is when this was originally written, themes like: love is eternal, love can survive death, we will meet the ones we've lost again were in vogue. From Shakespeare to Hollywood's TITANIC or Bollywood's OM SHANTI OM, these tropes pepper all our films but usually with more substance than with this. This defines the phrase 'style without substance,' it looks nice but that's all you can say about it.
MGM clearly spent a lot of money on making it look good but the story, the dialogue and the acting is all horrible. The script consists of that annoying, theatrical, made-up way of speaking which Hollywood thought English people all spoke at the start of the twentieth century - we were all frightfully poetic and erudite back then weren't we! It all sounds so unnatural. There seemed to be quite a few writers contributing to this - I think they must have been challenging each other to see who could write most nauseatingly.
Sidney Franklin directed this. He did PRIVATE LIVES the previous year - a film which is actually even worse than this - so, he's a name to watch out for and avoid! Ultimate responsibility for this film's "nice" style this rests with Mr Thalberg but since it made a lot of money, he clearly did his job. As a piece of cinema however then Sidney Franklin has not done a good job. Visually it looks good or rather it looks nice, but his actors are terrible. These are three top A-list actors but you'd never guess from watching this. Leslie Howard doesn't seem to want to be there, Frederick March is acting like a TV weatherman doing his first Christmas pantomime and Norma Shearer has forgotten that she's a movie actress. Norma Shearer is especially disappointing because when she's good she's amazing. Her role for example in A FREE SOUL made the previous year is electrifying. Her genius managed to create the most sensuous portrayal of sexual awakening and latent yearning ever seen on screen but she doesn't seem like the same person in this. None of that nuanced stuff here, no twinkle in the eyes with this.
This is the sort of film people who don't like old films would give as an example of why old films are rubbish. If they showed this to someone who had never seen a film from the 1930s before they would never do so again.
This was actually an absolutely massive hit in 1933 and so in fact was the original back in 1922. These were both times of hardship so maybe unsophisticated gushing sentimental garbage like this was what was needed then? But maybe not - fortunately most films in 1933 weren't like this.
What's it about? Obviously just after the Great War, which is when this was originally written, themes like: love is eternal, love can survive death, we will meet the ones we've lost again were in vogue. From Shakespeare to Hollywood's TITANIC or Bollywood's OM SHANTI OM, these tropes pepper all our films but usually with more substance than with this. This defines the phrase 'style without substance,' it looks nice but that's all you can say about it.
MGM clearly spent a lot of money on making it look good but the story, the dialogue and the acting is all horrible. The script consists of that annoying, theatrical, made-up way of speaking which Hollywood thought English people all spoke at the start of the twentieth century - we were all frightfully poetic and erudite back then weren't we! It all sounds so unnatural. There seemed to be quite a few writers contributing to this - I think they must have been challenging each other to see who could write most nauseatingly.
Sidney Franklin directed this. He did PRIVATE LIVES the previous year - a film which is actually even worse than this - so, he's a name to watch out for and avoid! Ultimate responsibility for this film's "nice" style this rests with Mr Thalberg but since it made a lot of money, he clearly did his job. As a piece of cinema however then Sidney Franklin has not done a good job. Visually it looks good or rather it looks nice, but his actors are terrible. These are three top A-list actors but you'd never guess from watching this. Leslie Howard doesn't seem to want to be there, Frederick March is acting like a TV weatherman doing his first Christmas pantomime and Norma Shearer has forgotten that she's a movie actress. Norma Shearer is especially disappointing because when she's good she's amazing. Her role for example in A FREE SOUL made the previous year is electrifying. Her genius managed to create the most sensuous portrayal of sexual awakening and latent yearning ever seen on screen but she doesn't seem like the same person in this. None of that nuanced stuff here, no twinkle in the eyes with this.
This is the sort of film people who don't like old films would give as an example of why old films are rubbish. If they showed this to someone who had never seen a film from the 1930s before they would never do so again.