Watchingwell
Curated classic films
Speaking
of… Love
My nomination for the best love story of the classic film era is
an adaption of a great novel so it has a head start. But as we know, Hollywood doesn’t have an
unblemished track record in this area, so it could also be a handicap. Anyway, my choice is Wuthering Heights from 1939. It fulfills my requirements, totally
arbitrary, of what does and does not constitute a great love story. It is not about a love that is made poignant
by suffering and separation due to contrived accidents of Fate, or the
blindness of one of the individuals that is only lifted at the last moment of
the film. This lets out Random Harvest, Gone with the Wind, Romeo
and Juliet (in all its forms), The
Shop Around the Corner, and the one that YOU are thinking about.
Yes, WH has suffering and separation, but the love story
is not defined by this – it actually serves to underline the resilience of the
bond between Cathy and Heathcliff. The pair are never out of love, even when
absent from each other, even when married to others, while, at the same time they
seem to accept that they cannot be together.
All right, it is a fine line I draw, but it’s my party. The fact is that the
inescapable-love-as-obsession story by Emily Bronte was pretty
well realized by the screenplay by Ben Hecht and the direction of William
Wyler. But a large part of the credit must
go to Laurence Olivier who really ‘got’ Heathcliff, and sold us the tortured
soul who was incapable of separating from Cathy’s even when realizing the
shallow character of hers. It took me
years to look at Merle Oberon’s performance objectively, after my aunt had
poisoned my child’s mind with her criticism of her “cat-like” looks and bad
acting. Actually, she does a credible job with a difficult role. My aunt, whose opinion of Oberon did not prevent
her from loving the film, thought Vivien Leigh would have been better in the
part. So, reportedly, did Olivier. But I disagree. I think I even disagreed when I was a
child. Leigh was too delicate. Cathy needed to be robust, a child of the
moors, a tomboy, who rode horses and scrambled up the rocky outgrowths of Penistone
Crag. So, Oberon did OK, except for a little too much emoting in the moments
before she dies. Oh – spoiler alert, I
guess. And, in her most important
scene, IMO, in the kitchen with her maid/confidante, when she admits how she is
hopelessly bonded to Heathcliff, and suddenly, framed by lightning, declares,
“Ellen, sometimes I think I am Heathcliff”, she understands this revelation has
to balance all the behavior that otherwise would make her unlikable. And, although the words are Emily Bronte’s,
they are probably the most eloquent expression of love you see on American
film before the modern era. Second to
this would be the speech Heathcliff pronounces over the newly-dead Cathy
begging her to haunt him, “only never
leave me alone in this abyss”.
Speaking of Laurence Olivier, and women novelists who were
adapted into decent movies, I must give a nod to the 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice, directed by
Robert Z. Leonard, with Greer Garson as Elizabeth Bennet and
Olivier as Mr. Darcy. I have never seen
a bad film of P&P, come to think of it, and although Garson seems a little
more mature than some of the other Elizabeths, it works in a different kind of
way, because no matter who pronounces the words, they are good words. This is a
satisfying romance where the audience knows before the two protagonists that they
will end up together, and it is sooo lovely to hear Olivier and Garson speak
English. 
Speaking of director, William Wyler, you’ve got to give him
credit for recognizing the screen magic that Audrey Hepburn would produce in
her first starring role as the errant princess in the 1953 film, Roman Holiday, written by Ian MacLellan Hunter, fronting for the
blacklisted, Dalton Trumbo. With Gregory Peck who plays the reporter who tries
to capitalize on his luck in finding her and ends up falling in love, as audiences did. And she falls for him as they spend
one glorious day and night in Rome before she tears herself away from him and
returns to her important princess duties.
Who doesn’t cry at that ending?
Breaking away from women novelists, but back to Ben Hecht,
who, let’s face it, was a great and prolific American writer, we turn to one of
my faves of all categories, Notorious, from 1946, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Starring Ingrid Bergman as a woman who is
recruited by the American government to spy on Nazis in South America and Cary
Grant as her ‘handler’ who gets emotionally involved and then feels guilty, so
he feigns detachment and then feels guilty for that. Cary Grant plays a more stoical version of his
usual self, made even more so by the naturalistic Bergman. There is great chemistry between them and
tension, as only Hitchcock knows how to provide. The ending, with its revolving shot of their whispered
embrace is made more explicit by the touch of realism that Bergman brought to every role.
Speaking of William Wyler again, a powerful love story is
enclosed in the multi-layered The Best
Years of Our Lives (1946) between Dana Andrews and Teresa Wright. The screen play by Robert E. Sherwood from
the novel by MacKinlay Kantor is about America’s post-war adjustment, but it is
contained in several story lines. The love story of Frederic March and Myrna
Loy is poignantly expressed to their daughter, Wright, as they oppose her relationship with Andrews who is married, unhappily, to Virginia Mayo. But by the touching wedding ceremony they all
attend at the end, we know that true love has won out. Tears are required
here also.
Speaking of Dana Andrews, he becomes obsessively in love
with a murder victim in Laura, the
1944 film noir directed by Otto Preminger. Based on the novel by Vera Caspary,
the screen play by Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein, and Betty Reinhardt (with an uncredited Ring Lardner, Jr).
displays just the right tone of cynical and witty dialogue. Of course, Laura
Hunt, played by Gene Tierney isn’t really dead.
But by the time she shows up in the film, Andrews is already on the
verge of losing his professional judgment.
This tension is balanced by Tierney’s calm influence, which, in the end,
is no match for obsession. She falls
under his spell. Yes, it is a murder mystery. But it is a love story, too.
Speaking of which, this is precisely what happens in the
1945 film, Without Love, directed by
Harold S. Bucquet and starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in one of
their less-famous vehicles. Written by Donald Ogden Stewart and based on the
play by Philip Barry (Philadelphia Story,
Holiday), the ‘marriage of convenience’ between the two stars is a tender
story of how fragile people who want to be emotionally safe are enticed into trying
again. There is a great supporting
performance by Lucille Ball that livens up the drama.
Speaking of a marriage of convenience, this is the plot
device in a charming romance from 1944, Come
Live with
Love and chocolate to you.
