Tag Archives: Guy Green

‘Great Expectations’: David Lean’s Finest

Original Poster. At the time, the picture was too mature to be considered suitable for general exhibition?

Original poster.

“Great Expectations” is far from Charles Dickens’ greatest novel, but David Lean’s adaptation (Cineguild, 1946) is, I think beyond any question, the best of all the many Dickens pictures. There is everything right with it. Frankly, I found the book, with its contrivances, coincidences and cartoon characters, so exasperating that I avoided the picture for many years. When finally I saw it (under protest), it so thoroughly enchanted and touched me that I had trouble remembering what, precisely, about the book could have displeased me. David Lean and his actors bring clarity and logic to the whole enterprise: the picture has a moral authority and a richly satisfying emotional pull that I failed to detect (much less appreciate) in the novel. The blend of buffoonish comical characters, multiple coincidences and social criticism is an uneasy one to make work, except as satire. But “Great Expectations” is by no means satire. Under David Lean’s direction, it’s a medium-grim fairy tale whose romantic atmosphere is repeatedly rent by sudden, startling flashes of realism that unexpectedly come crashing through and lighting up the fairy tale world like claps of thunder and bolts of lightning. Here’s one example of the sort of realism I mean. You will kindly note that it is also wonderfully poetic. It is Dickens, after all, and even the harshest reality in his work has poetry in it. I mean, really: beat this for filmmaking. It’s as perfect a cinematic moment as I’ve ever come across.

Whenever I look at this scene, I’m reminded of a tremendous line from a mad soliloquy spoken by Harry Andrews in “The Ruling Class”: it’s the day before he must pass a death sentence; he’s dressed in his play clothes (red military tunic, ballet skirt and a cocked hat), and he’s indulging in some auto-asphyxiation with a pearl-white silken noose, which his pear-shaped valet has suspended from his bedroom rafters. Just before he puts the noose round his throat, he murmurs, “Once you’ve put on the black cap, everything else tastes like waxxx frrruit!”

Next to Shakespeare, Dickens is the most word-drunk popular author in the history of English literature. Like Shakespeare, Dickens is most notable for his imaginative use of language. One remembers his characters more for the way they express themselves than for anything else. Consider Ebenezer Scrooge: that he is a miser is not what fixes him in one’s mind; he is memorable on account of the force of his eloquent vituperation against charity in general and Christmas in particular. Silas Marner, his near contemporary, was also a miser: but who remembers what he ever said? Rhetorical exuberance is the engine that drives Shakespeare and Dickens. Of the two, Shakespeare is clearly the deeper philosopher, but both have at their command a genius for expressive turns of phrase. To date, no screen adaptation of a Shakespeare play has ever been entirely satisfactory, no matter how admirable individual scenes may have been. The most common theory about why Shakespearean movies never quite work is that Shakespeare is first and last about the Word, while movies are primarily about the Image; therefore, the argument goes, to film Shakespeare, you must first cut away much of the language; yet cut away the language, and you lose Shakespeare — and there you have an insoluble problem. This certainly seems true in the case of Shakespeare. (Kenneth Branagh’s “Hamlet” kept all of the text, and that didn’t work either: in my experience, it is the most stultifying — though not nearly the worst — Shakespeare picture to date.) Yet Dickens gives the lie to this argument, since screen adaptations of his novels very often work splendidly, and the ones that work the best are always those that keep as much of his highly stylized, artificial, literary dialogue as possible. The crazy plots may be simplified, so long as the rhetoric is left standing: Dickens without his linguistic flights of fancy would not be Dickens — that is why modern adaptations of his works are doomed to fail (the Ethan Hawke/Gwyneth Paltrow modern version is an abomination: it should have been called “Great Expectorations”), and perhaps why there have been so few attempts to set his stories in the modern world. David Lean’s “Great Expectations” succeeds because so much of the dialogue has been taken from the novel verbatim, and because Guy Green’s superb cinematography captures Dickens’ descriptive passages with amazing accuracy and vivacity.

Freda Jackson as Mrs Joe: 'If that boy comes home his head blown to bits by a musket, don't look to me to put it together again!'

Freda Jackson as Mrs Joe: ‘If that boy comes back ‘ere with his head blown to bits by a musket, don’t look to me to put it together again!’

I’m lost in wonder at the stupendous number of ways David Lean and his colleagues have found to make “Great Expectations” a thing of exquisite beauty; the picture perfectly captures the spirit and sensibility of Dickens, while improving on the novel. And it’s a real movie movie — that is, it’s brilliantly cinematic (Guy Green won that year’s Oscar for Best Black and White Cinematography, the first time a British picture ever won in that category), while also containing some of the best writing and acting ever to be put on film. Lean’s adaptation succeeds so brilliantly that I find it hard to understand how Dickens could have written the novel eighty-six years before it was made; the picture is so ideally cast that one gets the feeling that Dickens must have had these very actors in mind when he wrote it. Here’s the opening sequence, which should give you a reasonable idea of all the rest of the marvellousness to follow.

Shortly after this scene, we see Pip (the excellent Anthony Wager) steal the “wittles” and the file for Magwitch the convict (played with astonishing authority and musicality by Finlay Currie — one of the most reliably entertaining actors who ever drew breath). He sneaks out to the churchyard to deliver the stolen items and this is the scene that follows:

The entire picture is as excellent as these early scenes: it’s engrossing and emotionally satisfying from the first frame to the last. Every actor in the cast is perfect. As Uncle Bumblechook, Hay Petrie is the living embodiment of a few score of Dickens’ demented tertiary characters — he also looks remarkably like a tinier (he stood 5′ 3 ½”), freaked-out Claude Rains. If Ronald Searle had drawn a caricature of Rains, the result would have looked like Hay Petrie.

Here, without introduction, is Alec Guinness in his first appearance of what would prove to be his career-making performance as Herbert Pocket. Guinness had already played the part with great success in the West End, in his own adaptation of the novel.

It is probable that Miss Havisham is the most famous character in the story; she is played to perfection by the great actress and wit, Martita Hunt. Hunt was not yet fifty when she made this picture, but you’d never know it. Here are the first three scenes that feature Miss Havisham; I think it should be obvious why her character is so famous. I show them partly because Martita Hunt’s performance is so interesting, and partly because I want to pass along a funny anecdote about the redoubtable Miss Hunt after you have taken a look at the clips. The three clips, as you will see, are all quite short and superbly entertaining — but I believe you really must have Miss Hunt’s voice clearly in your head if the story I am going to relate is to have its maximum effect.

The young Estella is played by Jean Simmons. In a 1999 interview, she was asked if David Lean was difficult to work for. “With me and the boy, Anthony Wager, he was very gentle. He seemed amused by us for some reason. It was a perfect part for me; sixteen is the age of flirtation.” Did she break his heart, as Estella breaks Pip’s? “Oh no, no. But we liked each other. In fact, he saved my life on the film one day. I had to go up and down those damn stairs so many times holding the candle that I was tired late one evening and I kind of relaxed and let my arm drop. Suddenly there were flames shooting up. My apron was on fire! Anthony just rushed in and brushed it out. He was there before anyone else could move. Really a great sense of timing. I often wonder what happened to him. He may have just given up acting and gone into business.” (For the record, he did continue to act, but in the late sixties, he moved to Australia, where he acted in television shows. He died on the isle of Bali on December 23, 1990.)

Valerie Hobson and John Mills as Estella and Pip.

Valerie Hobson and John Mills as Estella and Pip.

When Estella grows to young womanhood, she is played by Valerie Hobson, who was married to the picture’s executive producer, Anthony Havelock-Allen at the time of the filming. Hobson played her last starring role in 1953, when she appeared as Mrs Anna Leonowens in the West End production of “The King and I.” The following year, she married John Profumo, a member of Parliament. In 1963, Profumo’s ministerial career ended in disgrace when it was discovered that he had lied to the House about his affair with his mistress, Christine Keeler. Hobson stood by her husband, and till the end of her life (she predeceased him by eight years), they worked for charitable organizations, dealing with lepers(!) and mentally handicapped children. (A story straight out of Dickens.) She died on November 13, 1998.

“It and I have worn away together; mice have gnawed at it. And sharper teeth than teeth of mice have gnawed at me.” The rhetorical brilliance and superb balance of that one short passage dazzle me. The technical skill of the writing is a pleasure for its own sake. There’s an echo of Richard II’s prisonhouse lament “I wasted time and now doth time waste me” in Miss Havisham’s words, both in her theme and in the figures of speech she employs. But then there’s the actress, who knows how to set those devices a-work. Martita Hunt, a great actress, makes everything count.

This next clip begins with another one of those fine British character actors, Francis L. Sullivan, who plays Mr Jaggers, the explosive attorney. He specialized in peremptory lawyers and timpano-bellied plutocrats, which he played with brio and swagger. He’s roughly the London equivalent of America’s Eugene Pallette; both men were reliably funny and conveyed a special soulfulness without ever engaging in the least bit of sentimentality, but I’m bound to say that Sullivan’s range was somewhat wider — perhaps so was his girth. In any case, Sullivan is always worth watching, even in the worst drivel, but he is especially suited to the world of Dickens, which is a society of outsized people and personalities.

After making such a success as Miss Havisham, Martita Hunt spent the rest of her career playing old dragons, aristocratic crones and high-falutin busybodies. Ten years after “Great Expectations,” she was cast in “Anastasia” (a scornful pleasure of the first water) as the Baroness Elena von Livenbaum, a lady-in-waiting to the Dowager Empress Maria Federovna, which part was played by Helen Hayes. In Guy Bolton’s West End stage version of “Anastasia” in the early 1950s, the Dowager Empress was played by a highly respected British stage actress named Helen Haye (no “s”), who played the role to great acclaim. In fact, she was supposed to reprise the role in the 20th Century-Fox picture, but through a clerical error, the role went to that First Pixie of the American Theatre, Helen Hayes. (“Rather bad luck on our actress,” wrote John Gielgud, who was great friends with Miss Haye (no “s”), who had given him his scholarship to Lady Benson’s Acting School in 1921; “I remember Martita Hunt complaining bitterly because she only got a lady in waiting.”) While “Anastasia” was being filmed, Sir John was at a large party when Martita Hunt saw him across the room. She tottered up to him unsteadily — very tipsy, as he reported — and said in a dignified voice, “I am worn out by curtseying all day to that f-f-f-f-fucking Helen Hayes!” Even if Martita Hunt hadn’t been the brilliant comic actress she was, I’d have to hold her close to my heart for her taste in actresses.

Notable Claude Rains Pictures (Part II)

Notorious

Claude Rains in 'Notorious':  The Nazi mama's boy.

Claude Rains in ‘Notorious’: The Nazi mama’s boy.

Alex Sebastian in “Notorious” (RKO, 1946) is one of Claude Rains’ best parts.  As Sebastian, Rains’ performance is so indelible that once you’ve seen it, it’s hard to imagine another actor in the role.  After “Notorious,” whenever a picture called for a silky, suave villain, producers would tell the casting agent:  “get me a Claude Rains type.”  Rains was not, however, Hitchcock’s first choice.  Hitch wanted that poor man’s George Sanders, Clifton Webb.  To be sure, Webb would have been entirely convincing as a mama’s boy (which he was). He was, moreover, such an unsympathetic screen presence, one would be glad to believe he was also a Nazi.  But as a heterosexual in the grip of an obsessive sexual passion for Ingrid Bergman . . . not bloody likely.  One can easily imagine his putting clothes on Ingrid Bergman, but not his tearing them off.  Hitchcock had to be convinced to let Rains play the role.  When he talked to Rains about the part, Hitch asked him, “What about this business of a being a midget?”

“What do you mean, a midget?”

“Your wife, Ingrid Bergman, is very tall.  There are occasions when we can build a ramp, but have you ever worn elevated shoes?”  It was a blow to Rains’ pride, but he bought the lifts and often used them throughout the rest of his career.

When critics refer to Sebastian as a Nazi mama’s boy, there’s always the sense that they find his being a mama’s boy somehow more objectionable than his being a Nazi.  The other famous Hitchcock mama’s boy is also a villain:  Norman Bates.  In that one, Bates’ villainy only comes out when he actually IS his mama.  I’m not sure what to make of this, other than Hitch was a strange fellow.

Bergman isn’t good in the first reel, when we’re supposed to believe she’s a hard-drinking tramp, but after the first dozen or so minutes, I’d say it’s the best performance of her career.  Cary Grant, for once, doesn’t twinkle and make coy faces, but he goes too far in the other direction:  he’s so brutal and unyielding, it’s hard to understand why Bergman puts up with him.  He is very good looking and beautifully dressed, but what a swine . . .  I keep thinking she’d be better off with Rains, if only he weren’t trying to kill her.

Rains, Grant, Bergman:  'We both invited you, Mr Devlin.'

Rains, Grant, Bergman: ‘We both invited you, Mr Devlin.’

The most famous scene in the picture is the big party and the furtive investigation of the wine cellar — it’s Hitchcock at his absolute best.  But my favorite scene happens the morning after, when Sebastian in robe and slippers goes into his mother’s (Madame Konstantin) bedroom and tells her that he is in big trouble.  “I am married to an American agent,” a memorable line reading that belongs (but isn’t) on the AFI’s 100 Movie Quotes list.  Mme. Konstantin responds by lighting a cigarette while she absorbs the news in silence.  It doesn’t take more than five seconds, but it’s a Master Class in great acting.  She conveys more about her character in those few seconds of silence than most actresses could convey in a hundred lines of dialogue.

Rains, Mme. Konstantin:  'I am married to an American agent.'

Rains, Mme. Konstantin: ‘I am married to an American agent.’

But it is Rains’ performance that makes the deepest impression.  As usual, he dominates every scene he’s in.  He makes the Nazi mama’s boy a more sympathetic character than Cary Grant’s hero.  It was his fourth and last Academy Award nomination.  He didn’t win this time, either.  For this was the year that Clifton Webb was supposed to win for “The Razor’s Edge,” only to lose out (along with Rains) to Harold Russell in “The Best Years of our Lives.”

Now, Voyager

Davis to Rains:  'I should think you're the least clumsy man I ever met, doctor . . .'

Oh, Doctor!  Rains: ‘I have a great admiration for people who are clever with their hands.  I was always so clumsy with my own.’  Davis:  ‘I should think you’re the least clumsy person I ever met . . .’

About “Now, Voyager.” Its failings are many, but I continue to love it, probably because I’ve always gotten deep satisfaction from transformation stories. The first and final scenes are wonderful, but in the middle there is much to dislike.

Here’s an important early scene, in which Rains, as Dr Jacquith, America’s foremost alienist, does what he does better than anyone else.  The material is entirely second-rate, composed almost entirely of platitudes, but he makes it sound like the last word in compassionate sagacity.  His closing line, “I suggest a few weeks at Cascade . . . ” lets you know that poor, crazy Aunt Charlotte will emerge from Dr Jacquith’s sanitarium as a butterfly from a chrysalis.

“Now, Voyager” works just about perfectly for the first forty-five minutes or so, until Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) and Jerry Durrance (Paul Henreid) take that taxicab in Rio, driven by that stereotypical (but completely inaccurate) greaseball, Giuseppe. (He’s supposed to be Brazilian, but he’s named Giuseppe and his cartoon gibberish sounds nothing like Portuguese.) The taxicab scene is tiresome and offensive and goes on forever. Happily, it is followed by several wonderful episodes, beginning with their romantic parting in Rio, which is beautifully written and acted. The scenes immediately following Charlotte’s homecoming are the best in the picture: Gladys Cooper fully expects her neurotic child to return to enslavement without a murmur of protest; she is seriously displeased when the wretched girl mildly refuses to do as she’s told. Cooper rebukes her for refusing to perform a daughter’s duty, but Charlotte dryly observes, “Dr Jacquith says tyranny is often expressed as the maternal instinct.” Cooper’s surprise and outrage are wonderful to behold. Every new encounter becomes a skirmish in which the old woman pursues a new strategy, but the girl treats chastisement and obloquy as if they were birthday greetings, and Cooper must quickly beat a retreat while she gives the matter more thought. Finally, she threatens to cut off Charlotte’s allowance completely and to disinherit her: but the ungrateful girl blandly tells her “I’ve often thought of working for a living. I’d make an excellent headwaitress.” Over the course of these episodes, the old tyrant slowly comes to realize that this stubborn female person is no longer her neurotic daughter/servant Charlotte: this person is Bette Davis — obedience isn’t what she does. I love every scene with Gladys Cooper, but when the old cat finally drops dead and the guilt-ridden Charlotte runs back to Cascade, the picture hits another patch of tedium while Charlotte finds herself looking after young Miss Tina Durrance, the most insufferable little neurotic in the history of motion pictures. Let me point out at once that the little actress is actually quite terrific: it is the character who is so revolting. At least, until Charlotte takes charge of her.

I’ve always wondered about the theory of treatment at Cascade(s): I mean, who in his right mind would believe it a good idea to force a nervous wreck like Tina to compete at ping pong with children who are far more skillful than she, especially if they are equally neurotic? That strikes me as a sure way to push her over the edge. But then Charlotte steps in. Something marvellous happens when the ugly little duckling comes under Charlotte’s care. Earlier in the picture, Charlotte herself had gone from ugly duckling to swan. Now she transforms her by-proxy daughter from ugly duckling to . . . ugly duckling with cleaner fingernails and an expensive party dress.  For a long time, that threw me.  Whenever I saw homely, awkward little Tina descending the stairs in her ribbons and ruffles, I thought of those lines from “Don’t Put Your Daughter on the Stage, Mrs Worthington”:

She’s a vile girl and uglier than mortal sin,
One look at her has put me in
A tearing bloody rage.

But then I noticed how beautifully the child actress, Janis Wilson, handled the scene. All dressed up, she’s still not pretty and she knows it. She’s awkward and self-conscious and pathetic. But she’s doing her best to look poised, confident and pretty, because she wants to please Charlotte and her father. It’s an amazing little performance.

Moments before this, Claude Rains has asked the immortal question, “Roasting wienies?!” Quite irresistible!

It was wise to cast Claude Rains as Dr Jaquith, because Dr J, as written, may be the worst alienist who ever drew breath.  Rains soft pedals the terrible advice and lays on the creamy charm with a large trowel.  “You’ll never get a new pair of eyes if you spoil them with tears,” is some of the first quackery we hear from him and there’s plenty more to follow.  I mention this because Olive Higgins Prouty, the author of the novel, had a long acquaintance with psychiatrists.  When she was twelve, she suffered a breakdown that lasted nearly two years.  Later on, when she was a successful novelist, she became a philanthropist and gave an endowment to Smith College, where she first met Sylvia Plath.  After Plath’s failed suicide attempt, Prouty supported her financially.  To show her gratitude, Plath caricatured her in “The Bell Jar.”

Cooper:  'Charlotte, I thought I told you to wear the black & white foulard.'

Cooper: ‘Charlotte, I thought I told you to wear the black and white foulard.’

Keep a look out for what Gladys Cooper does with her hands. She uses them to great effect in a few important scenes.  I’ve always admired her technical skill, especially since she wasn’t, alas, a great actress. I love the way the camera focuses on Cooper’s fingers drumming on the bedpost while she listens to Charlotte’s disobedience. That may be the best thing she ever did in pictures. She was une grande dame par excellence and a thorough professional, but she wasn’t imaginative or talented enough to be great. Her voice wasn’t terribly interesting or expressive, though I am CRAZY in love with her old-fashioned pronunciation. She provides a window into Edwardian pronunciation: for instance, she’s the only person I’ve ever heard pronounce “secretiveness” as seCREETiveness. In another picture, she’s the only one to pronounce the last name “Cartwright” as KHAR-tritt. Both pronunciations are clearly (at least to me) not her own invention, but fossils from Edwardian, perhaps even Victorian RP (i.e., “received pronunciation” — you may already know that acronym, but it was new to me as of about a year ago). Gladys Cooper didn’t have the imagination to come up with eccentric pronunciations. Such eccentricities as she possessed were not eccentricities at her career’s beginning, when she was universally considered to be the most beautiful woman in England (circa 1905 – 1925). The British postcard industry was invented almost entirely so that her face could be printed and mailed about the country and all over the world. She was a good, sensible actress, but hardly a great one. Bette Davis loved her, really adored and admired her. When Davis made her memorable appearance on the Dick Cavett Show in 1971, it was the day after Cooper died. Davis paid a brilliant, moving tribute to Gladys Cooper . . . so moving, in fact, that I hunted down Sheridan Morley’s biography of Cooper, which I read, and also had a look at as many of her movie performances as I could find. She never, ever gave a bad performance, but she rarely did anything terribly imaginative. She simply wasn’t that clever. That’s why her hands in “Now, Voyager” mean something to me. She communicates anxiety and frustration with them in a way that neither her voice nor her face were capable of. I like to think that Cooper rose to the occasion of working with a great actress like Bette Davis and a great actor like Claude Rains (whom she knew from her theatre days in London — by the way, she was the first living actress in England to have a theatre named after her). But I’m afraid this is sentimental fantasy on my part. She had no use for ugly actors and certainly recognized and deplored incompetent actors. But I doubt she recognized Davis’ and Rains’ greatness — certainly not fully. Davis’ adoration was almost certainly one-sided: Cooper doubtless thought Davis’ admiration was simply an indication of common sense.

John Gielgud told a funny story about the time he attempted to direct the aging Mrs Patrick Campbell (Shaw’s first Eliza Doolittle) in a West End play in the early 30s. Mrs Pat abruptly quit the show shortly before opening night, because she wanted to spend more time with her dogs. But before she did this, she raised hell at every rehearsal, one way or another. Though the play was perfectly straight-forward, Mrs Pat was (or pretended to be) in a constant state of irritable bewilderment. She interrupted one run-through by demanding, “Who are these people? Where do they come from? Does Gladys Cooper know them?” Cooper was not a great actress, but she most definitely had been a very great star for a very long time. Adoration was what she expected. In Hollywood, it was not always what she got.

Irving Rapper, the director, was a Warners’ workhorse — not particularly distinguished, but competent. He did a lot of apprentice work as dialogue director on pictures like “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” “Dark Victory,” “Juarez” and “All This, and Heaven Too.” The look, I’d suggest, is more the work of the Director of Photography, Sol Polito, who did a lot of excellent work in his career, including “The Adventures of Robin Hood,” “Old Acquaintance” and several other Davis and Flynn pictures. Still, Rapper must have had a lot to say about it, especially since “Deception,” photographed by another great DP (Ernest Haller — one of Davis’ favorites: e.g., “Jezebel,” “Dark Victory,” “All This, and Heaven Too”), is notable for how great it looks. But part of the great look was the Warners’ style, which I find irresistible, even in many of their cruddier pictures. I can almost always tell a Warners picture within a few minutes.

Davis:  'Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon . . . we have the stars.'

Davis: ‘Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon . . . we have the stars.’

For my money, “Now, Voyager” is one of Max Steiner’s best scores, specifically because it adds romance without being intrusive. “Oh, Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon: we have the stars.” is a beauty of a last line, and it is greatly helped by the underscoring. Steiner adds musicality to Davis’ voice that wasn’t there without music. His other great score is the one he wrote for “Casablanca,” which I consider to be the absolute model of great scoring. There’s one important musical cue in that picture — the underscoring for the Paris montage sequence — variations on “As Time Goes By” — that I swear is responsible for making audiences (including me) accept the picture as a great, gorgeous romance rather than a story of an attractive, somewhat bovine young woman and a middle-aged man in a partial toupee, with cigarettes and bourbon staining his false teeth and befouling his breath. There are a hundred things right with “Casablanca”; it’s one of my favorite pictures (though I don’t consider it a great one), and up at the top of the list is Steiner’s score, which is very nearly invisible to the ear, but creates atmosphere every bit as effectively and persuasively as the fog and rain in the last scene and the rotating blades of the ceiling fans in Rick’s Café Americain.

The Passionate Friends

Ann Todd, Trevor Howard, Claude Rains:  The old triangle stuff.

Ann Todd, Trevor Howard, Claude Rains: The old triangle stuff.

By her own admission, Ann Todd was not much of an actress.  Unfortunately, this did not prevent her from playing the prima donna and, as far as Claude Rains was concerned, wasting everybody’s time on the set.  Moreover, during the filming of “The Passionate Friends” — a literate, nicely acted romantic triangle picture from 1948 (released in ’49) — director David Lean began carrying on an affair with her, while he was still married to actress Kay Walsh, and it appears that Todd took wicked advantage of her hold over her director/lover.  Lean confessed to Rains, “Claude, I’m going to get into awful trouble.”  And he did.  Rains admired Lean enormously as a director (the feeling was mutual), but thought Lean was mad to have taken up with Todd — a man-eating “machine,” as he called her.  After shooting wrapped, Lean married her in May of 1949. They divorced in 1957.  Rains was appalled.  “By God, she took every cent from him.  I don’t think anyone could live happily with that woman.  She took every damn thing away from him.  He ended up with nothing but an old car.”

Todd was often referred to as “the pocket Garbo.”  That seems about right:  I’d add that she could just as reasonably be called “the pinched Garbo”:  except for the rare occasions when she smiled, she always looked as if her shoes were too tight.  She had a lovely speaking voice and beautiful diction (she studied elocution at the Central School for Speech and Drama in London) — all very good, as far as it goes.  But it doesn’t go far enough.

Rains was too much of a professional to let his personal dislike interfere with his performance.  I rather think his irritation with the actress adds sauce to their onscreen relationship.  The picture has been almost entirely forgotten, yet it’s among his best performances (which, admittedly puts it among a large number) and unquestionably the best she ever gave.  On the surface, his character, Howard Justin, is a standard issue Rains part:  powerful, unflappable man of the world brought low by a straying woman.  But I doubt if Rains ever gave a more intensely emotional performance than he gives in this one.  For much of the picture, Howard Justin could be a stand-in for Alexander Sebastian (“Notorious”), Alexander Hollenius (“Deception”) or Victor Grandison (“The Unsuspected”), but near the end of the picture, things change — and Rains cuts loose in an emotional torrent that always overwhelms me, no matter how often I see the last reel.

Rains on the verge of a melt-down.

Rains on the verge of a melt-down.

“The Passionate Friends” is based on H.G. Wells’ novel of the same name.  The screenplay is by a fine espionage novelist, Eric Ambler:  the Thinking Man’s Ian Fleming.  Like Fleming, Ambler often featured a number of recurring characters in his novels, but none of them ever caught on like James Bond — more’s the pity:  Ambler was much the better writer.  His screenplay for “The Passionate Friends” is wonderfully literate.  In an early flashback scene (surprisingly, “The Passionate Friends” has more flashbacks than most film noirs, a genre that practically subsisted on the device), Steven Stratton (Trevor Howard) and his girlfriend Mary (Ann Todd), lie in a meadow and recite from Keats’ “Endymion”:

All its more ponderous and bulky worth
Is friendship, whence there ever issues forth
A steady splendour; but at the tip-top,
There hangs by unseen film, an orbed drop
Of light, and that is love:

Todd & Howard:  'Endymion,' anyone?

Todd and Howard: ‘Endymion,’ anyone?

Mary does not marry Stratton, whom she loves.  She marries Justin, whom she does not love — and to make life easier on everybody, she decides never to see Stratton again.  But this is a love triangle, so their paths needs must cross.  They run into each other at the New Year’s Eve party, 1939 — she with her husband, he with his current girlfriend.

This meeting leads to a more serious rift and again Mary vows to avoid Stratton.  Nine years pass before their paths cross again.  In a voice-over, she says:  “I suppose that if Fate had been kind and gentle, we would never have met again.  But Fate is not kind and gentle:  it sent us together to a sunlit lake and snow-capped mountains and a holiday in Switzerland.”  It’s a fine bit of writing, that; with her beautiful diction, Todd makes it exquisite — perhaps the one time in her career that Todd actually elevated good material.

In another scene, Mary reads this passage from a book she pulls from a shelf in Stratton’s flat:

In the beginning God gave to every people a cup of clay, and from this cup they drank their life.

It’s from a creation myth of the Digger Indians in California; I find it very beautiful, even though I don’t believe a word of it.  This is approximately how I feel about the central conflict of this love triangle story.  Mary refuses to marry Stratton because she says she doesn’t want to “belong” to anyone, and he responds, “Then your life will be a failure.”  We’re supposed to agree with him, but I wouldn’t marry anyone who said anything so caddish.  On the other hand, she goes off and marries Howard Justin, a man she doesn’t love, because he’s rich and offers her security and a kind of life she couldn’t otherwise afford.  It seems to me that, since Howard did not win her hand, but purchased it, she belongs to him, and without the compensation of true love.  That neither she nor Stratton sees it that way strikes me as a bit thick, especially since they’re given to spouting such lovely poetry at each other.  But let that go:  I think it may be accepted as a romance version of Hitchcock’s McGuffin — an unimportant, but necessary device to set the machinery in motion.  Once the engine is running, the rest of the picture clicks along efficiently and by the end, the emotional impact is very impressive indeed.

“The Passionate Friends” is one of David Lean’s later black and white pictures; after “Hobson’s Choice” in 1954, he made big Technicolor pictures.  His pictures always look good, but I prefer his smaller, more intimate black and white features; the cinematography (by Guy Green) in this one is great:  enough to make it well worth seeing.  The screenplay and the acting make it a minor classic.  So why was it not a hit in the United States?  I’ve often wondered.  Perhaps the name change had something to do with it.  In America, it was retitled “One Woman’s Story.”  Perhaps even more likely, it was the marketing.  Have a look at the ludicrous poster for the original release.

Does this like a picture you would want to see?

Does this like a picture you would want to see?

When Rains was asked if he could explain the reason for the name change, he replied, “Apparently, Americans don’t understand passion.”