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| Miriam Hopkins and Frances Dee |
BECKY SHARP (1935). Director: Rouben Mamoulian.
Becky Sharp (Mariam Hopkins), a charity case in a finishing school, goes off with her wealthy friend Amelia (Frances Dee of
I Walked with a Zombie) where she hopes to become affianced to Amelia's portly brother, Joseph (Nigel Bruce). Things don't go quite the way Becky expected, but she advances in society due to her looks, her aggressiveness, and many compliant men, including the Marquis of Sheyne (Cedric Hardwicke) and her husband, Rawdon Crawley (Alan Mowbray), whom she seems to love sincerely. But Becky's scheming may eventually undo her ...
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| Miriam Hopkins and Alan Mowbray |
This version of Thackeray's
Vanity Fair, filmed in early Technicolor, is amusing and engaging. Hopkins demonstrates true star quality, although her performance is at times overwrought and overly theatrical, yet she always plays with undeniable passion. It's hard to see Alan Mowbray [
Dante], better known as a comic foil than anything else, as a romantic figure, but he is as good as ever, as is Hardwicke. Frances Dee is fine as Amelia, even though her character is allowed no real fireworks even when she thinks her husband is carrying on with Becky. Nigel Bruce offers one of his best portrayals as Joseph, and Alison Skipworth is a riot as Rawdon Crawley's peppery Aunt Julia. Billie Burke has a small role, and Mrs. Leslie Carter is lost in a crowd with no lines. (Five years later Hopkius would
play Carter in
Lady with Red Hair.) An exciting sequence takes place at a ball when Napoleon arrives at the nearby village of Waterloo.
Verdict: An arresting if uneven performance by Hopkins in an absorbing, fast-paced adaptation of a classic novel. ***.
