Audience Member
The film is very effective at a number of things. It mixes pastoral setting with ghostly atmosphere, Moonyeen makes several appearances as a specter as well as intergenerational tale of loves lost and found give it a gentle edge. The plot is not very good. All the characters discuss is platitudes of how much they love each other. The Gothic trappings of the film's war torn and revenge encrusted fantasies are laid to rest with those same simple platitudes. While it may be a sweet, playful love letter to the mystical powers of lost loves, in the end it's just a lavish nothing.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/08/23
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steve d
None of it worked for me.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
03/30/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The fantasy genre was only really beginning to permeate films in the early 1930s with The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Portrait of Jennie (1948) still yet to come but this was one of the early financial successes as it blended romantic drama with a tale of ghosts haunting a man to great effect. 87 years later the film is not gripping stuff as it moves along at a slow pace and never builds up a sense of urgency about anything even as plot developments that should be highly dramatic occur. I wanted to like the film more than I did and while it was not a difficult 98 minutes to plow through I did find myself bored more often than not and that was simply not enough when considering the pleasures provided by the similarly light and fluffy Little Women (1933).
On the wedding day of the beautiful Moonyeen Clare, Norma Shearer, and her longtime love John Carteret, Leslie Howard, she is murdered by her jealous ex-lover Jeremy Wayne, Fredric March. For the rest of his life Carteret continues to mourn her as he raises his niece Kathleen, Norma Shearer, as an older man. Kathleen has been in a relationship with the dull Willie, Ralph Forbes, but during a storm the two take shelter in Wayne's house and encounter his American son Kenneth, Fredric March. Kenneth and Kathleen fall in love but when Carteret reveals dark family secrets she tells him that they cannot see one another anymore and both are left distraught. They reconcile in secret before he heads off to fight in World War I and she spends her time worrying while his life is put at risk overseas. When he returns the two tell Carteret that they intend to stay together and he comes to terms with the fact that he can no longer control them.
Where my heartstrings should have been tugged was in the impossible love that Carteret nurses for his dead bride as he wallows in his grief and holds onto a brief moment of happiness he experienced in his life. Almost all people can relate to the feeling of grief and just wanting to talk to a person you loved one more time but having that literally represented in the form of a ghost version of Clare providing closure for Carteret pushed the idea a little too far for me. There is something simultaneously beautiful and problematic about a person remaining devoted to a person even after their death, if you believe as I do that there is no afterlife, as they are gone and will be forever irretrievable. If we were not human and did not feel illogical emotions we would not limit ourselves as we do in feeling grief for a person but it is that very silly, frivolous emotion that makes love such a wonderful feeling and what allows us to feel so close to a person that it is devastating to lose them. This film captured little of that emotion as it seemed more concerned with the special effects required to show Clare as a ghost than writing convincing dialogue for Shearer to spout.
The love between the members of the younger generation was sweeter and more capable of taking it's time to develop but there was the feeling that each of the characters were too innocent and childlike for how old Shearer and March appeared. They spoke in the style of Romeo and Juliet but while those characters are young teenagers these two appear as at best 25 with the drinking and smoking they presumably engaged in in real life hurting their looks. Shearer does her best as she tosses her head back frequently and lets out breathy squeaks but March feels older than her and so when he delivers line so direct and earnest it feels odd to hear them coming out of the mouth of a man who seems wise and experienced. You want more out of these characters in what we see of them together as young love is beautiful in it's innocence and how all consuming it can feel but it chooses to rest purely on the attractiveness of it's stars.
Few will be particularly pleased by this unambitious little film that was acclaimed at the time but has faded from the public consciousness for good reason.
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
02/01/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The best romance movie ever made!
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/26/23
Full Review
Audience Member
What a charming film this is. It's definitely for the lover of romance, and if that's the type of film you like, this one is easy to love - it has one strong scene after another, great acting, and that wonderful feeling of how magical, strong, and yet fragile love can be. Norma Shearer's character has been raised by her uncle (Leslie Howard) after being orphaned as a child. Howard himself has suffered the loss of his wife on his wedding day, and has been pining for her ever since. One evening while Shearer is taking shelter in an old mansion with her boyfriend (Ralph Forbes) during a thunderstorm, she happens to meet another man (Frederic March), and the two are instantly drawn to one another. Things get complicated when it's revealed that March's father (also played by March) was the one who caused the death of Howard's wife (also played by Shearer). Also threatening things is March being scheduled to go off to war.
I loved the way the story was told, with a flashback, so that it was a bit like a movie within a movie. It also felt like love playing out across generations, and recurring, with all the same depth of feeling. Some of the scenes evoke a sentimental or poignant feeling - in the cemetery, remembering love lost - and others evoke that wonderful feeling of falling in love. The mansion scene, with that delicious ambiance of cobwebs, a fire, an old portrait, and with Shearer and March toasting one another after he finds an old bottle of port, is fantastic. "Any old port in a storm," he quips. The two have such chemistry together. Their bike ride and time in the teahouse is also sweet, after he had essentially admitted to stalking her ("you're a window-peeper", she teases). Towards the end of that scene Shearer says, almost breathlessly, "Love is ... something you feel. It just happens. You can't do anything about it. If I loved somebody, I'd love him forever", as the camera dissolves on the old woman who has fallen asleep.
I'm usually not big on Leslie Howard, but he was great too, and his scenes with the other character Shearer played were wonderful. He says to her "Wouldn't it be marvelous if every time I opened my eyes for the rest of my life, you were there?" She says: "I will be." And he says: "And always as beautiful as you are tonight?", the last bit echoing March's toast in the mansion. It's all the more touching seeing these kinds of scenes in an old movie where the actors have all passed away, but are captured in these moments, so ephemeral and fleeting, and yet with feeling so strong and dramatic.
Shearer's character's personality is a romantic, and the plot allows her to express her love with such urgency, because March is going away. It is reserved and proper, with almost all of the characters (except March's father / evil March and his drinking problem) having a sense of decorum and grace, and yet these two are allowed to express their love so freely and fiercely ... it's a great combination. As she says when he's going away, "It's no use, I'll always love him. I'm just that sort of a fool. I have no pride", any hopeless romantic can identify.
March's dual role may remind you a bit of his role in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (though this is of course two characters), and as the film plays out, you may also be reminded of "An Affair to Remember". There is real angst here, from those whose love is unrequited for reasons that simply can't be explained - love happens or it doesn't - to those who suffer tragedy. When Shearer and March must part, she says with real passion, "I'm yours and you're mine; I want that to be true before you go" implying marriage and sex, but he demurs, torn.
And yet, how magical it is; the eyes, the smiles, the banter, the embraces. This would be a great movie to curl up in front of with someone you love.
Rated 4.5/5 Stars •
Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars
01/13/23
Full Review
Audience Member
It didn't take long to remake this one but the original is quite something to behold. Shearer and March are at their finest.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/07/23
Full Review
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