Monthly Archives: April 2014

Pride and Prejudice
Directed by Robert Z. Leonard
Written by Aldous Huxley and Jane Murfin based on the novel by Jane Austin
1940/USA
Loew’s
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Mr. Darcy: You must allow me to tell you how much I admire and love you.[/box]

I have several quibbles with the adaptation with of one of my all-time favorite novels but, setting that aside, I found this a polished and enjoyable production.

Mr. (Edmund Gwenn) and Mrs. Bennett (Mary Boland) have five marriageable daughter sand no dowries in sight.  Mrs. Bennett is an annoying flibberty-gibbet whose match-making efforts are actually counter-productive.  The two eldest girls, Jane (Maureen O’Sullivan) and Elizabeth (Greer Garson) are appealing beauties but the three youngest take after their mother as “the silliest girls in England”.

Things start looking up when a wealthy bachelor, Mr. Bingley, rents a neighboring estate with an even wealthier friend, Mr. Darcy (Laurence Olivier), in tow.  Bingley and Jane hit it off immediately but Elizabeth takes an instantaneous dislike to the proud and reserved Darcy.  You are guaranteed a wedding or two at the end of all of Austen’s novels.  How she gets there is the delight.  With Ann Rutherford as the wayward Lydia, Melville Cooper as Mr. Collins, and Edna May Oliver as Darcy’s battleax aunt Lady Catherine de Bourgh.

I find the novel endlessly re-readable and have watched most of the adaptations and it seems I have all of the plot and most of the dialogue memorized by now.  Some of the liberties taken with the story threw me for a loop.  The unctuous Mr. Collins has been transformed from a clergyman to a librarian, I suppose in deference to the Hayes Code. But the worst is the final transformation of Lady Catherine into a gruff but secret ally of Elizabeth!  The writers also manage to invent beaus for all the girls by the end, including the bookish and socially clueless Mary.

That said, Garson is one of the most charming of all Elizabeths and Olivier shines as the sophisticated Darcy only a year after he convinced us as the untamed Heathcliff.  The supporting cast is quite wonderful.  On balance, Austin lovers should check it out.

Cedric Gibbons won an Oscar for his Black-and-White Art Direction.

Clip – Lady Catherine confronts Elizabeth Bennet

The Westerner
Directed by William Wyler
Written by Jo Swerling and Nevin Busch from the story by Stuart N. Lake
1940/USA
The Samuel Goldwyn Company
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Judge Roy W. Bean: Mr. Harden, it’s my duty to inform you that the larceny of an equine is a capital offense punishable by death, but you can rest assured that in this court a horse thief always gets a fair trial before he’s hung.[/box]

I enjoyed this rather off-beat Western, chiefly due to its Oscar-winning performance by Walter Brennan.  Wyler’s direction and Gregg Toland’s lighting didn’t hurt either.

Roy Bean (Brennan) is a saloon keeper and self-appointed hanging judge with a worship of British beauty Lily Langtry, to whom his bar is a shrine.  His other allegiance is to the cattlemen of his part of Texas who are in a brutal range war with homesteaders in the area.  One day, stranger Cole Harden (Gary Cooper) is hauled in for riding a stolen horse. Though Cole claims he bought the nag, the “jury” is soon deliberating over a few drinks. Cole’s fortune changes when he begins admiring all the photos of Langtry and telling tales of how he met her and has a lock of her hair.  Bean immediately decides to delay execution so Harden can send away for the tresses.  Immediately thereafter, the man who sold Harden the horse is caught.

Bean and Harden form a bond over their mutual admiration of the actress but their ways part when Harden falls for a homesteader’s daughter and is sickened by the persecution of the farmers.  The rest of the story is devoted to Harden’s efforts to get real justice for these people.  With Fred Stone as a homesteader and Dana Andrews in a tiny role for one of his very first screen appearances

Brennan has as much, or more, screen time as Cooper.  This is classic Brennan, complete with all his tics, but is a joy to watch.  Somehow he manages to keep the character both endearing and despicable at the same time.  It’s a good looking film, too, with a wonderful score by Dmitri Tiomkin.  Recommended.

Walter Brennan won his third and final Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work on The Westerner.  The film was also nominated in the categories of Best Original Story and Best Black-and-White Art Direction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sfFFNF2-iM

Clip