Watchingwell Curated classic films
Love in Dystopia
It's that time of year -- hearts and flowers and starry-eyed declarations of love forever more. But what about those who have a different association with L.O.V.E. -- betrayal, love unrequited, love unrealized, wrong choices, rejection? In other words, love in the dystopian universe.
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One of the oldest versions of love that never works out is the woman in love with the married man. There is the story with the man who has no intention of leaving his wife, or the man who can't leave his wife (she has a disease, a disability, will take the children, has got the money), and then there's the man who really believes that he's going to leave, really does love the other woman, but gets too comfortable after many years of having his cake, so to speak, that he never gets around to making the break.
This latter category is the one in which I would place Charles Boyer in Back Street (1941), co-starring Margaret Sullavan.There was a version of the Fannie Hurst novel with Irene Dunne and John Boles in 1932, and a more recent version in 1961 starring Susan Hayward and John Gavin. The consensus is that the 1941 version is the best. It is an old story, but seems fresh and honest as presented by the fine cast, especially Margaret Sullavan at her most enchanting, an affecting score by Frank Skinner, and charming period details. We, the audience, buy in emotionally and may even shed a tear, especially at the end. This is not a spoiler. I told you this was about love gone wrong. Directed by Robert Stevenson.
Then there is a story of the other woman who almost
makes it to happy ever after except that the Hays Office production codes wouldn't allow such a relationship to work out. Alexander Knox plays a respectable Boston judge and unappreciated husband who walks out of his unhappy life in The Judge Steps Out from 1947, co-starring Ann Sothern and directed by Boris Ingster. He travels west to California where he stops at the diner run by Sothern. He stays there while he assesses his life, realizing that all the things he was preoccupied with before were not so important. He signs on as a short-order cook and he and Sothern form a relationship that brings them both the happiness that had eluded them both in the past. Finally, he decides he must return to Boston to rectify a mistake he has made, but promises to return. At the very end, however, they both abandon rational thinking and for some completely unconvincing reasons, go back to their separate, unhappy lives.
There is also the marriage that has failed long before
either partner realizes it. In Dodsworth (1936), Ruth Chatterton plays a woman who chases after youth, away from her marriage, declaring that she is not ready to be old. When that doesn't work out, she returns to find that her husband, played by Walter Huston, has tired of waiting, particularly since he has glimpsed another, more satisfying life in Italy, with Mary Astor, who is wonderful as the other woman. From the novel by Sinclair Lewis, the intelligent script describes 3-dimensional characters seeking what they believe to be their last chance at happiness. Directed by William Wyler.
Speaking of Italy, David Lean in 1955, directed his ode
to love that never was in Summertime. In the most romantic of settings -- Venice, Katherine Hepburn is an unmarried woman of a certain age who tries to drink in the romance of the place without appearing to care that she is alone. Of course, she meets a handsome Italian (That always happens, doesn't it?) who courts her even though he has a wife and children. She is resistant, afraid of seeming like the gullible American, but the warmth and the music and the wine have their effects. Beautiful to watch -- both the scenery and the acting. The ending was emotionally traumatizing to me the first time I saw it. I'm better now.
Also, from 1955, a film about people who don't know how to talk to each other, who bring out the worst instead of the best in each other, where the love underneath the surface antagonism remains unrecognized and
unexpressed. This describes James Cagney and Doris Day in Love Me or Leave Me, the fictional biography of 1920s chanteuse, Ruth Etting, directed by Charles Vidor. Cagney plays her gangster/manager and later, husband, Marty Snyder, in another tough-talking role.
Doris has never sounded better than when she sings the score's classic songs, and her acting is a revelation to anyone who only knows her from the comedies she did in the 60s. As Etting, she is ambitious and knows what she wants. She is taken out of the chorus line of a small club in New York by Marty Snyder, who becomes obsessed with her. She is aware of this and still allows him to direct her career, hoping to gain stardom before the debt to Snyder becomes due. At some point she realizes that he will never let her go and she agrees to marry him, while never letting him forget that her gratitude has turned to contempt. At one point, we feel our sympathies changing sides. It is a scene in her dressing room when a frustrated Snyder explodes in anger and smashes a vase. Doris merely holds out her arm in response for him to undo the clasp of her bracelet. She is cold and bitter and we actually start to feel sorry for the guy who has realized she will never return his love.
In one of his best performances, Cagney, as Snyder, doesn't know how to be anything but a tough guy, while he manages to convey that he wishes it were not so. In a casual viewing, it might not seem that Cagney is doing anything different than he has in many previous roles, but it is hard to imagine anyone doing the last scene as deftly, expressing a tough guy trying to conceal the pain of his loss.
