Garbo Speaks!

Film: Anna Christie
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.

I have gotten into the habit of picking up odd movies now and then when I find them. Most of the time, these are movies that I know I’ll need to watch for one list or another. I don’t just buy indiscriminately, though. Many that I buy are notable in one way or another. That’s the explanation for why I own a copy of Anna Christie. Sure, I knew I’d have to watch this eventually, but I bought it not just for that but because it’s also Greta Garbo’s first talkie. Fans who had desperately wondered what she sounded like finally got their chance.

What this means is that Anna Christie is an interesting piece of film history. It also means that it doesn’t have that good or that interesting because it relied on this gimmick to get people to go see it. What we’re going to get instead is a pretty straightforward melodrama focused on Garbo’s character with some assistance from Charles Bickford, Marie Dressler, and George F. Marion.

Probable Cause?

Films: Emma
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

When you’re dealing with the early era of the talkies, it’s a good bet that you’re going to be dealing with melodrama in a big way. That’s certainly the case with Emma. This is almost the definition of a melodrama, truth be told. We’re going to get a plot and characters here that couldn’t be more melodramatic if you paid them to be. It’s going to go right for the emotional jugular and it’s going to hurt a bit.

Emma Thatcher (Marie Dressler) is the housekeeper for the Smith family. As the film begins, three events happen simultaneously. First, Mr. Smith (Jean Hersholt) receives a check for $5,000 for an invention. This is the equivalent of just north of $80,000 today, so the Smiths are suddenly flush with cash. Second, Mrs. Smith gives birth to the couple’s fourth child, Ronnie. Third, Mrs. Smith dies from childbirth. Flash forward 20 years, and we’re at the main part of the film.

A Pie with Legs

Film: National Velvet
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on laptop.

Sometimes you can see a star in the making. National Velvet is that way. This wasn’t Elizabeth Taylor’s first movie; it wasn’t even her first movie with an animal. But it is a case where I don’t know that anyone expected that this would be a star turn for the young actress. She’s billed third on the film after Mickey Rooney and Donald Crisp despite clearly being the star of the film.

National Velvet is an interesting coming-of-age film in a couple of respects. Typically, and as I’ve said multiple times in the past, coming-of-age stories for boys are about death and for girls are about sex. In this case, it’s neither of the above. There’s not any death here and our main character is far too young for sex to be involved. This is a good thing, and noteworthy, really. It’s a little bit surprising, and I’m all for that.

Home Front USA

Films: The Human Comedy
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

Usually, I can figure out what a movie wants to be and can state that in a sentence or two. With The Human Comedy, it’s not that easy. The Human Comedy is a film that can only be described as a character study, but not one of a specific person. This is more a character study of the American way of life. It’s a study of life in the mythical small town of Ithaca, California, where everyone is friendly, fights are quickly broken up, boys marry their high school sweethearts, and even acting out is treated with a lecture instead of anything like punishment. It’s absolutely idealized in every respect. It’s America as it’s supposed to be, not as it actually is or was.

The film takes place in the present of when it was made, right in the heart of World War II. Initially, the story comes from the point of view of Mr. Macauley (Ray Collins), a man who died for unexplained reasons a few years before. He is sort of watching over his family as best he can, and while he does show up now and then in narration, most of the time we just get the various doings of the Macauley clan. While we spend a little time with Ma Macauley (Fay Bainter), daughter Bess (Donna Reed), and youngest son Ulysses (Jackie Jenkins), we are mainly focused on Marcus (Van Johnson) and Homer (Mickey Rooney, who was Oscar nominated for this role). Marcus is heading off to war and with the father dead, it falls to Homer to be the man of the house. Homer is still in high school, but as the film starts he has landed a job as a messenger and telegram delivery boy.

The Queen of MGM

Films: The Divorcee; A Free Soul
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

I’m always a little nervous when I dip really far back into Oscar history. Silent dramas and early talkies are especially difficult; they tend to pile on the melodrama and present us with characters that couldn’t exist outside of a farce even in a serious drama. There are exceptions, movies that manage to avoid the feeling of actors on a stage playing to the back row. There are other issues as well. No matter what the film or the genre, there apparently has to be a love story wrapped up in the proceedings. There also seems to always need to be a comic character, as if the film wouldn’t be complete without someone playing the fool. With The Divorcee we get kind of a mixed bag on all of these fronts; the film is clearly a product of its time, but it transcends that at times as well.

The Divorcee is a surprise because despite being pretty straightforward in where it’s going and melodramatic in its set-up, it’s actually entertaining. A gang of the idle rich are gathered together and Jerry (Norma Shearer) and Ted (Chester Morris) are off canoodling. They come back to the group and announce their engagement. Everyone seems to be pleased except for Paul (Conrad Nagel), who has carried a torch for Jerry for years. Upset and drunk and the party over, Paul goes speeding away with a few passengers and rolls the car over on a winding road. Everyone is unscathed except for Dorothy (Helen Johnson), who is badly scarred. Jerry and Ted get married. Paul marries Dot out of feelings of responsibility.

Oh, Deer

Film: The Yearling
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

The Yearling is a coming of age story about a young boy living in the Florida wilderness with his parents. Pretty much since this blog has started, I’ve made the observation that coming of age stories come in only two varieties. When it’s a story about a girl, the coming of age happens specifically when she gets introduced to sex, often at the hands of an older man, and sometimes against her will. For girls, it’s all about procreation. When it’s a story about a boy, coming of age happens when the boy in question faces up to his own mortality. This means something has to die before the film ends. Since The Yearling is about the boy adopting a young fawn, it’s not difficult to figure out what’s going to happen.

Okay, that’s a spoiler, but only if you’ve never seen a movie before. Make a movie about a young boy becoming attached to an animal, and there’s pretty much only one place to go. What’s different here is that in The Yearling, the animal in question doesn’t show up for the first hour of the film. Instead, the first hour is more or less set up, bringing us into the world of the Baxter family. The Baxters are headed by Civil War veteran Ezra (Gregory Peck), who is nicknamed Penny. He is married to Orry (Jane Wyman), and the two are the parents of Jody (Claude Jarman Jr.). Penny and Jody are good friends, but Orry is distant, especially to Jody. It comes out in the first hour that Orry’s emotional distance is likely caused by the deaths of three of her four children. It’s her assumption that if she stays distant with Jody, either he won’t die or that if he does, she won’t be affected by it.

Josephine Who?

Film: Conquest
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

There are times when I could wish that my interests in film were not as focused as much as they are on plot and narrative. Were that the case, I’d have more to say about a film like Conquest, which can so easily be summarized in a single paragraph. That’s not too rare with a lot of earlier films on my Oscar lists. It wasn’t until we started getting massive epics and the twisty plots of film noir that things got more complex on the plot front in general (yes, I’m aware of exceptions).

Put simply, Conquest is a love story between Napoleon Bonaparte (Charles Boyer) and Polish countess Marie Walewska (Greta Garbo). When the film beings, Napoleon is conquering Europe and is moving through Poland. It is here that he meets Marie, who is married to Count Anastas Walewski (Henry Stephenson). After a second meeting, Napoleon falls madly in love with her and basically forces her to give up her marriage for him. She does, and at the moment of his triumph, he marries a daughter of the Hapsburg family for the political connections, not knowing that Marie is pregnant with his son already. In more socially liberal terms, Conquest is the story of a woman who gives up her entire life and everything she wants for the man she is essentially forced to love and continues to do so regardless of how she is treated.

Lovey-Dovey

Film: Romance
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

The early years of the Oscars tend to plague me not because I have trouble watching the films but because I have trouble locating them in general. Turner Classic Movies proves to be invaluable in locating some of the films from the first couple of years, and my DVR is a testament to this. With the DVR nearing capacity, though, I thought it was high time to get a few films out of the way to make room for what is coming in the next few months. Since those early years are a problem, Romance from 1930 made sense. It didn’t hurt that this was one of the shortest films I had on the entire Oscar list.

Romance is one of those movies that is told almost entirely in flashback. Young Harry (Elliott Nugent), the sone of a wealthy family, plans to marry an actress despite the social problems that this will cause and the embarrassment his family will suffer. He is granted an audience with his grandfather Thomas Armstrong (Gavin Gordon), expecting that this will be a long tirade against his impending marriage. Grandfather Tom, after all, is a minister and appears to have a reputation for demanding a high moral code from his relatives. And, after all, actresses don’t have the purest reputation.

Rudy Can't Fail

Film: The Eagle
Format: Internet video on laptop.

One of the biggest holes on The List in my opinion was the lack of anything featuring Rudolph Valentino, the greatest screen idol of the early years of cinema. Don’t get me wrong—there have always been plenty of holes on The List, but this was the first really noticeable one. Valentino may not have been a great actor, but it’s unquestionable that his presence on the screen was in no small part responsible for the popularity of early film. Given the choice, I’d have selected either The Sheik or The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as the best representations of his work. Instead, we get The Eagle, one of his last films.

Vladimir Dubrovsky (Valentino) is a lieutenant in the Russian army. Under review by the Czarina (Louise Dresser), Dubrovsky spies a runaway carriage and uses the Czarina’s horse to catch up to it and stop it. This introduces the lieutenant to Mascha Troekouroff (Vilma Banky), his immediate love interest. But it’s not going to be that easy; his daring rescue also inflames the desires of the Czarina who asks for a private audience. She offers him a generalship, but when it’s also apparent that she wants him for something else, Dubrovsky balks, and the Czarina puts a price on his head for the affront.