SEPARATE TABLES

Rita Hayworth and Burt Lancaster

SEPARATE TABLES (1958). Director: Delbert Mann.

"I have no curiosity about the working classes." -- Mrs. Railton-Bell.

"Being alone in a crowd -- it's so painful ... frightening." -- Ann Shankland.

At the seaside Beauregard Hotel in Bournemouth, England -- where several people are permanent residents -- certain little dramas are unfolding. The highly snobbish Mrs. Railton-Bell (Gladys Cooper) has discovered the inappropriate behavior of Major Angus Pollock (David Niven), who has bored everyone with fictional stories of his allegedly heroic wartime exploits. Mrs. R-B gathers the other residents to vote on whether or not to insist that the man be thrown out of the hotel. Mrs. R-B's neurotically shy daughter, Sibyl (Deborah Kerr), who is exceptionally fond of the major, undergoes an emotional crisis when she learns of his illicit activities. Meanwhile, the proprietress, Pat Cooper (Wendy Hiller), who has become the lover of American resident John Malcolm (Burt Lancaster), discovers that his ex-wife, Ann (Rita Hayworth) is still in love with him and has taken a room in the hotel.   

David Niven and Deborah Kerr

Separate Tables was originally two plays by Terence Rattigan, sharing several supporting characters, that took place in the same location and were presented together on one evening in the theater, Although Rattigan was importuned to change this before the play debuted, the Major was originally a closeted homosexual and not a pervert who bothered women in a movie theater. (Although the movie is quite sympathetic to the major, it's a question how this would play in these post- MeToo days.) 

Separate tables indeed

The two plays have been intelligently put together and opened up (but not too much) and the film never appears stage bound or too talky, undoubtedly because Rattigan's dialogue is often excellent and perceptive. David Niven won a Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal and Deborah Kerr, who is outstanding, should have won but was only nominated. (Niven is quite good but a cut below Kerr. Hiller won Best Supporting Actress but was surprised by this, as she isn't onscreen very long and complained that her best scenes were cut.) Playing a comparatively superficial if vulnerable character, Rita Hayworth is effective as Ann, as is Burt Lancaster, although he really can't compare to some of these venerable British actors. Gladys Cooper and Cathleen Nesbitt as her friend are exemplary, as are Hiller, Felix Aylmer as Mr. Fowler, and Mary Hallatt as the brisk and self-sufficient Miss Meacham. Rod Taylor and Audrey Dalton have the thankless roles of a young couple temporarily staying in the hotel, their lines undoubtedly cut back to make room for the emoting of Hayworth and Lancaster.  Delbert Mann also directed the beautiful Middle of the Night and many others. 

Verdict: Superior British drama with some excellent performances. ***1/4. 

BEWARE OF PITY

Albert Lieven and Lilli Palmer

BEWARE OF PITY (1946). Director: Maurice Elvey.

When Lt. Anton Marek (Albert Lieven) visits the home of the Baron Kekesfalva (Ernest Thesiger), he encounters the man's daughter, whom he at first doesn't realize is in a wheelchair. When he learns that the daughter, Edith (Lilli Palmer), doesn't get out much due to her affliction, he begins paying calls on her, and the two become friends. Unfortunately, Edith's feelings for Anton become intensely romantic, and she pins her hopes for a full recovery on his alleged love for her and on an operation whose efficacy might just be mythical. Beware of Pity is based on a story by Stefan Zweig, who also wrote Letter From an Unknown Woman, but in this dark romance the man is the protagonist instead of the woman. Beware of Pity is a compelling tragedy which features some fine performances, especially from sensitive Lieven, a German actor who is essentially unknown today but appeared in many British and German films. Thesiger is fine as the concerned father; Gladys Cooper scores as a doctor's blind wife, who urges Anton to marry a woman he doesn't love out of compassion; and Cedric Hardwicke [The Winslow Boy] is also excellent as the doctor. Lilli Palmer [The House That Screamed], on the other hand, is unconvincing as Edith, and this greatly weakens the picture as a whole. An interesting aspect of the film is that when the final tragedy finally occurs, one isn't certain if Marek is heartbroken or relieved.

Verdict: Interesting psychological anti-romance with a fine lead performer from Lieven. ***.

MADAME BOVARY (1949)

Emma (Jones) wants a more exciting life and husband (Heflin)

MADAME BOVARY (1949). Director: Vincente Minelli.

"A man can change his life if he wants to ..."

Published in France in 1857, Gustave Flaubert's brilliant novel "Madame Bovary" was  accused of being an "outrage against public morals" and the author put on trial (and acquitted). This film version of the book begins with James Mason as Flaubert in the courtroom, explaining his creation, and then proceeding to [unnecessarily] narrate the early sequences of the movie. Farm girl Emma (Jennifer Jones) meets and falls in love -- or so she thinks -- with a simple, unambitious country doctor named Bovary (Van Heflin). But her day to day life is tedious and lacks color, and she realizes she is living with the wrong man, kind but dull. Her need for passion and excitement is even more energized when the couple are invited to a ball at the home of the Marquis D'Andervilliers (Paul Cavanagh) and she sees how wealthy people live and realizes how many men find her attractive. Guilt-wracked and initially resistant, she is drawn into affairs with Rodolphe Boulanger (Louis Jourdan), who shatters her, and later a young lawyer named Leon (Christopher Kent, who later became the director, Alf Kjellin). Meanwhile her taste for the finer things in life means that her debts are adding up alarmingly, but it may be her husband who has to pay the piper. Emma isn't evil, but her dissatisfaction with her life with Bovary makes her susceptible to, shall we say, outside stimuli. Madame Bovary is pretty faithful to the novel, despite a couple of changes. In the book Dr. Bovary is pressured to operate on the clubfooted Hippolyte (Harry Morgan, herein known as Henry) with almost tragic results, while in the film he wisely realizes that he hasn't the skill of a surgeon, making him somewhat more sympathetic. The more licentious scenes of the novel, such as Emma and Leon driving all around town in a carriage obviously having sex in the back behind lowered blinds, have been jettisoned. Although Madame Bovary could have been better cast -- Heflin never comes off as that dull or unattractive and Jones isn't the perfect Emma, although Jourdan is fine -- the actors are still quite good, including those of the large supporting cast, which includes George Zucco as Leon's boss; Gladys Cooper as his mother; Ellen Corby as the maid, Felicite; Mason as Flaubert; and especially Frank Allenby as the slimy salesman, Lhereux. The film is well directed by Minelli and has a nice score by Miklos Rozsa. Kjellin/Kent later appeared in Ice Station Zebra and directed the telefilm Deadly Dream.

Verdict: Certainly not the masterpiece that the novel is, but on it's own terms vivid and entertaining, with Jones in very good form. ***.

THE HAPPIEST MILLIONAIRE

A striking shot from "Happiest Millionaire"

 THE HAPPIEST MILLIONAIRE (1967). Director: Norman Tokar.

Walt Disney decided to try and get another blockbuster musical like The Sound of Music or its own Mary Poppins by adapting a play about the real-life Anthony Joseph Drexel Biddle, Sr. of Philadelphia. Frankly, Biddle seems an unlikely subject for a light-hearted musical, as he sounds like a rather grim, conservative soul -- despite his eccentricities, which sound more like childish curmudgeonliness -- who started an athletic-religious movement and probably never had to work a day in his life. As embodied by the ever-likable Fred MacMurray, Biddle is made more palatable in this screen treatment, which could have used a little more of a story. The chief plot has to do with the 1916 courtship and ensuing marriage of Biddle's daughter Cordy (Lesley Ann Warren) and Angier (John Davidson) of a prominent New York family. Biddle has two sons but they seem to disappear early in the picture, and even the maid, played very well by Hemione Baddeley, takes a hike after the intermission [the film is nearly three hours long!]. On the other hand, Tommy Steele's winning personality as the butler is on display throughout the film. Greer Garson is cast as Biddle's wife, and while she adds a bit of class to the film, she doesn't really seem to be in the same movie -- you just can't see her as thinking anything but that Biddle is utterly declasse. Garson doesn't make any attempt to be funny, which may have been wise of her. Speaking of class, Gladys Cooper as Aunt Mary and Geraldine Page as Angier's mother nearly steal the picture, especially in the parlor scene when they have a sophisticated verbal cat-fight. An unexpected cast member is Joan Marshall [who starred in Homicidal as Jean Arless] playing a maid who is terrified of Biddle's collection of pet alligators. [More than once we see Tommy Steele pulling one of the larger gators by the tail.] The songs by the Sherman Brothers are vaguely pleasant at times, but not very memorable.This was the first film for both Warren and Davidson, both of whom are excellent. The Disney studio later teamed them in The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. MacMurray is fine.NOTE: The restored, expanded DVD of this movie actually has a kind of vague double-image on the picture and is certainly not as crisp and clear as it should be.

Verdict: The movie is not terrible, it's just too long and aimless and needs a stronger story. **1/2.

LOVE LETTERS

Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten and Cecil Kellaway

LOVE LETTERS (1945). Director: William Dieterle.

"Most people aren't happy. They wait all their lives for something to happen to them."

"Women must understand that the returned soldier is not the man she knew and loved before he went away."

Allen Quinton (Joseph Cotten) does a favor for a callow Army buddy, Roger (Robert Sully), by writing love letters to the latter's girl back home, a woman named Victoria. Allen is disturbed because he fears when Victoria marries Roger, she'll be thinking he's an entirely different sort of man because of the letters. Years later Allen hears that Roger was killed by his wife during an argument, and is told that she, too, is dead. But is she? Allen meets a mysterious woman who goes by the one-word name "Singleton" (Jennifer Jones) at a party and at first barely notices her. But who is she really? And will the truth of her identity drive her to a nervous breakdown? Love Letters may sound intriguing, but be warned that it's a deadly bore, very slowly paced as if everyone concerned thought they were summoning up something deeply profound here. There were certainly possibilities in the premise, but Ayn Rand's un-cinematic screenplay fritters them all away with much talk and some truly suspect developments that make little sense -- it's almost as if she was writing a parody of a romantic film! Cotten is excellent, as usual; Jones has to deal with playing a very irritating character [but she received an undeserved Oscar nomination  anyway]; and Cecil Kellaway and Gladys Cooper (in a truly thankless part) are as wonderful as ever. But this is a misfire that even a pleasant score and some good dialogue can't save. File this under "Bad Hollywood Amnesia Movies."

Verdict: Leave "Singleton" to herself! **.

THE BLACK CAT

Gale Sondergaard

THE BLACK CAT (1941). Director: Albert S. Rogell.

In this entertaining comedy-thriller, the relatives of elderly Henrietta Winslow (Cecelia Loftus) are gathered inside the obligatory spooky mansion waiting for her to die and wondering how much they'll each get. Naturally murders and weird goings-on ensue. The Black Cat certainly has an unusual collection of actors: everyone from Bela Lugosi (as a groundskeeper) to Broderick Crawford to Alan Ladd to Gale Sondergaard [who at least you expect to see in stuff like this] and even Gladys Cooper [whom you don't]. Sondergaard is very amusing as the sinister housekeeper, Abigail, and Gladys Cooper practically steals the picture in her turn as Myrna -- her husband is played by no less than Basil Rathbone, and he, too, is excellent. Anne Gwynne, Claire Dodd, and John Eldredge also have roles and Hugh Herbert is comic relief -- or something. Some may find this a little too humorous to sustain any kind of real atmosphere but it's fun and has an exciting climax.

Verdict: Any picture with this cast can't be all bad. ***.

MY FAIR LADY

MY FAIR LADY (1964). Director: George Cukor.

George Cukor, primarily concerned with actors and not with being "cinematic," may not have been the best choice to helm the film adaptation of the smash Lerner and Loewe musical, but the film is still so entertaining and well-acted that there seems little point in complaining about its static, theatrical aspects. Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, and Stanley Holloway are all superb, and they are bolstered by an outstanding supporting cast made up of the likes of Gladys Cooper as Henry Higgins' mother (wish we saw more of her) -- Cooper, of course, was the dragon-mother of Now, Voyager -- Wilfrid Hyde-White as Pickering; Mona Washbourne as the housekeeper Mrs. Pearce; and Theodore Bikel as that "ruder pest" from Budapest, Zoltan Karpathy etc. This is probably one of the few (only?) film adaptations of a Broadway musical that includes all of the songs (the adaptation of Fanny dropped the songs entirely, although you at least heard the music in the background). Great story, great score, great entertainment. Eliza's haunting refrain of "what's to become of me?' echoes -- along with a great sense of loneliness -- as she returns to the place where she once sold flowers and none of her old companions fully recognize her. You really can't go home again.

Verdict: Loverly. ***1/2.

THIS ABOVE ALL

THIS ABOVE ALL (1942). Director: Anatole Litvak.

Prudence Cathaway (Joan Fontaine) appalls her snooty uppercrust British family by enlisting in the WAF during WW 2. She meets and falls in love with a bitter, disillusioned soldier, Clive Briggs (Tyrone Power), who has come to feel he's only fighting to preserve the unfair and hypocritical class structure -- although Prudence argues that the Germans must be defeated (oddly the term Nazi is never used. The film probably started production before the U.S. entered the war). Briggs has decided that he's going to be a deserter no matter what the consequences. This Above All (to thine own self be true) has some uncompromising attitudes in its depiction of Briggs, but the first half is superior to the second half. Once Prudence learns Briggs' secret, the picture veers a bit from romance into soap opera and becomes jingoistic. The business with Briggs encountering an unctuous priest who sets him straight is tiresome. However the performances are good and Alfred Newman's sensitive musical score embellishes every sequence. Fontaine is lovely in the film, although some may feel that she's borderline cloying at times. Power's performance is not so much great as rigorously earnest. Gladys Cooper is snippy and exact as Prudence's disapproving Aunt, and Nigel Bruce is excellent -- and nearly unrecognizable -- in the character part of an inn owner that is quite different from his Watson in the Sherlock Holmes movies. Certain scenes, such as a bar scene with melancholy songs, are imbued with the brave, sad, hopeless atmosphere of London during the Blitz, and an Air Raid sequence is chilling and well-done.

Verdict: Compelling if imperfect romance. ***.

NOW, VOYAGER

NOW, VOYAGER (1942). Director: Irving Rapper.

“No member of the Vale family has ever had a nervous breakdown.”

If you take the time to analyze this classic soap opera, you might find yourself wondering why you enjoyed it so much, as it is certainly full of moments both contrived and overly convenient, yet it works from start to finish on an emotional level, in no large part (although not exclusively) due to Max Steiner's memorable, intensely romantic musical score [which he recycled for at least one later movie]. Bette Davis gives one of her best performances – she is not as affected and mannered as she is in The Little Foxes, for instance -- as Charlotte Vale, who is dominated by a mother (Gladys Cooper) almost as bad as the old lady in Night Must Fall. Getting psychological treatment (it's never really specified what this consists of, although weaving is one of the components), and a major make over (it's also never specified who does this for her), her doctor (Claude Rains) suggests she open herself to life by taking an ocean cruise. There she meets a man (Paul Henreid) – unfortunately married -- who helps bring her out of her shell and feel attractive for what she suggests is the first time in her life (she obviously has forgotten her own flashback in which she relates her romance with a handsome wireless operator [Charles Drake] on a ship when she was twenty). Even though Henreid's wife sounds like a neurotic monster who is jealous and unloving of her own daughter, it never occurs to the man that a divorce might be in the offing. Certainly his daughter wouldn't be adversely affected by this, as she winds up meeting and loving Charlotte when she goes for a spell to – would you believe it -- the very same sanitarium where Charlotte got her “cure” (Charlotte has returned there after the emotional turmoil of her mother's death, which she unfairly blames on herself). Recognizing Henreid's child, another “ugly duckling,” Charlotte takes the girl under her wing and helps her, too, to blossom. In the famous ending -- “let's not ask for the moon, we have the stars” Charlotte tells Henreid – you get the impression that it won't be long until this supposedly wonderful man realizes which woman he should be spending his life with. This may not be a “serious,” profound drama, but the darn thing is nevertheless poignant and affecting because it deals in its own way with such compelling themes as loneliness; fitting in; the traps in choosing the right path in life and love; being cut off from the one person you need the most etc. It also has always struck a chord in the audience because of its intelligent exploitation of the ugly duckling/Cinderella aspect of the storyline: the hopeless geek makes good. Despite its many dumb moments, the well-acted and handsomely produced Now, Voyager is a cut above most of the other “Oh, how the rich suffer!” movies of the thirties and forties. Although it never could be said that Bette Davis was a genuinely beautiful woman, in some shots of this film she is genuinely stunning.

Verdict: Great Old Soap Opera. ***.