GRAND HOTEL, MILDRED PIERCE and POSSESSED: A TRIPLE BILL OF CLASSIC JOAN CRAWFORD FILMS REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
GRAND HOTEL. (1932) BASED ON THE
NOVEL 'MENSCHEN IM HOTEL' BY VICKI M. BAUM AND THE PLAY BY WILLIAM A.
DRAKE. DIRECTED BY EDMUND GOULDING. STARRING JOAN CRAWFORD, GRETA
GARBO, JOHN BARRYMORE, LIONEL BARRYMORE AND WALLACE BEERY.
MILDRED PIERCE. (1945) BASED ON THE
NOVEL BY JAMES C. CAIN. DIRECTED BY MICHAEL CURTIZ. STARRING JOAN
CRAWFORD, ANN BLYTH, EVE ARDEN, JACK CARSON, ZACHARY SCOTT AND
BUTTERFLY MCQUEEN.
POSSESSED. (1947) DIRECTED BY CURTIS
BERNHARDT. STARRING JOAN CRAWFORD, VAN HEFLIN, RAYMOND MASSEY AND
GERALDINE BROOKS.
I love Joan Crawford, she of the fur
coats with the wide shoulders and the imposing eyebrows. She's every
bit as good an actress as Bette Davis, her one-time screen rival and
her co-star in one of the best psychological horror films of all
time, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962).
Maybe
more people have a soft spot for Bette Davis than they do for Joan
Crawford, though, and I suppose the film MOMMIE DEAREST (1981),
about Joan's alleged mistreatment of her children and especially her
daughter Christina, didn't do the lady any favours. I still love her
work though. She really was an incredible actress, a true star
in an era when that word truly
meant something.
These
three films we're looking at now are three of Ms. Crawford's best and
most memorable. If you ever get the chance to watch them, you should
take it. They're marvellous old classics and two of them, GRAND
HOTEL and MILDRED
PIERCE, were selected for
preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the
Library Of Congress as being 'culturally, historically or
aesthetically significant.' That's
a great honour, by the way, as if you didn't know...!
GRAND HOTEL invites
us to peep into the lives of the people who are staying in the
titular hotel in Berlin during a particular few days. Joan Crawford
is so young in it that she's virtually unrecognisable from the diva
we know and love in her later films. She's gorgeous too, dressed in
an almost flapper-ish fashion as the 'Twenties are only barely over, and
her huge expressive eyes could certainly rival you-know-who's any day of the week...!
She plays a
penniless stenographer who must rely on the men she meets for the
money she needs to survive. Certainly, there's no shortage of men
sniffing round her at the Grand Hotel: the suave and handsome Baron
von Geigern, the frail but fun-loving Mr. Kringelein and the wealthy
but married Herr Preysing all vie for her attentions but the outcome
is rather surprising, to say the least.
You
absolutely must watch this film, if only to see what a stunner Joan
Crawford was in her twenties. She doesn't get top billing in it,
though. That honour actually goes to Greta Garbo. She plays a
temperamental Russian ballerina and she even utters the immortal
words 'I want to be alone' in
the film, so I think that that's the origin of that,
haha.
There's
one scene in which Ms. Garbo drops to the floor, ballet dress
billeting out around her, and begins taking off her ballet shoes.
She's so graceful she looks like a swan. It's
just breath-taking to see. Poor little Adolphus the dachsund lying
all alone on the bed is another special scene for me. I wonder
whatever happened to that doggie afterwards. It's strange, isn't it,
thinking about a dog that lived a whopping eighty-four years ago?
Well, that's the kind of thing I think about.
MILDRED PIERCE is
the film for which Joan Crawford won the coveted Oscar. It's the
story of a housewife who makes a conscious decision to improve her
life for the sake of her daughter Veda, whom she thinks deserves only
the best things in life. Mildred leaves her deadbeat husband and works
her fingers to the bone until she's the proud owner of a chain of
successful restaurants. Now that's how you do it...!
The heartbreaking thing about this film, of course, is this: the more riches
Mildred bestows on her spoilt, selfish ungrateful daughter, the more
Veda throws the whole lot back in her face. Nothing is good enough
for Veda. Except, maybe, for her mother's second husband, the caddish
and weak Monte Beragon...
Joan Crawford
gives a powerhouse of a performance as the mother whose efforts to
improve and enrich her daughter's life have not yielded the results
for which she would have hoped. On the contrary, they've ended in
disaster.
Veda is an
extremely unlikeable character and it's hard not to root for Joan to
cut her off without a cent. I like the character of Wally Fay, Joan's
business partner and one-time lover. He sure does like a dame with a
pair of gams that don't quit...!
I also love Ida, Mildred's manageress. She's a game broad who's been there, done that and hand-stitched the bloody T-shirt. She's wise to men and their tricks, in other words. Also, check out the scene with the policeman who doesn't feel like 'taking a swim.' That's one way of putting it.
Prissy from
GONE WITH THE WIND (aka Butterfly McQueen) does a nice job of
playing Mildred's maid. Remember in GWTW when Prissy told
Scarlett she was an expert at 'birthin' babies' and then when
Scarlett found out she was lying she gave poor old Prissy a
backhander that you could probably hear all the way out to Tara?
Happy days.
I also love Ida, Mildred's manageress. She's a game broad who's been there, done that and hand-stitched the bloody T-shirt. She's wise to men and their tricks, in other words. Also, check out the scene with the policeman who doesn't feel like 'taking a swim.' That's one way of putting it.
I've left POSSESSED till last because it's my favourite of the three. It really shouldn't be, because it reminds me painfully of every instance in which I ever tried to cling on to a guy who was just looking for no-strings-attached fun 'n' games and not a commitment for life...!
Still,
I think we women like to
watch films in which other women make the same cringe-worthy mistakes
we've already made a million times over in our own lives. It makes us
feel better about ourselves, heh-heh-heh. I love watching FATAL
ATTRACTION and feeling as
virtuous as hell because I never went as far as boiling some guy's
bunny to pay him back for his bullshit...!
Joan's
character Louise Howell makes a lot of
mistakes in this film. She's completely obsessed with Van Heflin's
character David Sutton, even though David's had his fun and now he
wants to move on. The bastard...! Ooops, sorry. I promised myself I'd
keep calm while writing this part of the review and not get annoyed
all over again at the cavalier ways of the male sex, haha.
Anyway,
Louise's steadfast inability to relinquish her hold on David causes
nothing but pain for Louise herself and the people around her. She
winds up in a hospital bed miles from home in a strange city, telling
her tragic story to a bunch of medics.
The
medics who, by the way, make some pretty alarming snap diagnoses for
conditions that I'm sure would require a battery of complicated tests
today, but hey, it was the 'Forties and it
was a movie. There's probably no point in my being too nit-picky...!
These
are truly marvellous films, as I said earlier. Women will certainly love them and guys
will too, if they love classic movies from the days of the big
studios when a film was called a 'picture'
and a real star made some of the so-called 'celebrities' of today
look like total nobodies. Miaow...!
Sorry about that.
Women
in particular should watch POSSESSED if
they've ever felt inclined to do a Glenn Close on some guy's beloved Mr.
Floppy Ears or Fluffy Tail. It's a cautionary tale that (hopefully) should keep you
well away from the bunny-hutch...
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA
HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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