Lovely Shmaltz
3/12/05 00:12![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madrobinsI have already professed my fondness for a certain class of 1930's-50's historical melodramas--films usually done in black and white, staring movie stars who were just a trifle larger than life: Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, Joan Fontaine and Jane Wyman and Lana Turner. So tonight I stumbled over All This and Heaven Too. It's a wonderful, shmaltzy old movie with Bette Davis as a spirited governess who goes to care for the children of the Duc de Praslin (Charles Boyer) and his wildly neurotic wife (Barbara O'Neil). The two fall in love--or think about falling in love, although their primary shared interest is the children. Of course the wife, who isn't interested in anything but herself and her hold over the duc, accuses them of having an affair, and demands that the governess quit; she does, and is starving for lack of a letter of recommendation, which la duchesse is holding on to, hoping to punish her husband. So of course, the wife is found dead the next day and the duc and the governess are interrogated as suspects. The duc takes poison and dies; the governess, let off the hook, moves to America. Angel choruses come up. The book was based upon a book of the same name by Rachel Field (who also wrote children's books), which was based in turn on real events. The real governess, Henriette Deluzy-Desportes, came to America, married a minister named Henry Field (Rachel Field's great uncle), and became the hostess of a salon. When art imitates a life this florid, attention must be paid.
Spouse regards my fondness for these goofy movies with amused tolerance (that's okay; he hears things only dogs and other recording engineers hear, and I get to tease him about that.
Other shmaltzy movies I love?
Madame X, with Lana Turner
All That Heaven Allows with Jane Wyman (young widow throws over chance at Rock Hudson when her grown children object to Mom having a life; kids attempt to assuage her lonliness by giving her...a TV set!)
and Magnificent Obsession, again Wyman and Hudson, with a religious thematic structure yet
Mildred Pierce with Joan Crawford
Letter from an Unknown Woman with Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan (as a cad!)
Now, Voyager and Dark Victory, both with Bette Davis
maybe even Showboat, if only for the look in Miss Julie's eye when she watched Ravenal ride off with Magnolia.
(Note to Nora Ephron: An Affair to Remember doesn't count, because of the horrid singing children. Ick.)
There are probably more, but those are the ones that come to mind. You don't see Katharine Hepburn in this kind of movie--or rather, you do, but they're not her best work. Whereas Davis and Crawford are at their best in black and white, balancing on the knife's edge between rapture and agony with all the neurotic undertones the traffic will bear. I could not survive on a steady diet of these films, but one every now and then is like a really lovely truffle.
Spouse regards my fondness for these goofy movies with amused tolerance (that's okay; he hears things only dogs and other recording engineers hear, and I get to tease him about that.
Other shmaltzy movies I love?
Madame X, with Lana Turner
All That Heaven Allows with Jane Wyman (young widow throws over chance at Rock Hudson when her grown children object to Mom having a life; kids attempt to assuage her lonliness by giving her...a TV set!)
and Magnificent Obsession, again Wyman and Hudson, with a religious thematic structure yet
Mildred Pierce with Joan Crawford
Letter from an Unknown Woman with Joan Fontaine and Louis Jourdan (as a cad!)
Now, Voyager and Dark Victory, both with Bette Davis
maybe even Showboat, if only for the look in Miss Julie's eye when she watched Ravenal ride off with Magnolia.
(Note to Nora Ephron: An Affair to Remember doesn't count, because of the horrid singing children. Ick.)
There are probably more, but those are the ones that come to mind. You don't see Katharine Hepburn in this kind of movie--or rather, you do, but they're not her best work. Whereas Davis and Crawford are at their best in black and white, balancing on the knife's edge between rapture and agony with all the neurotic undertones the traffic will bear. I could not survive on a steady diet of these films, but one every now and then is like a really lovely truffle.