Audience Member
In adapting his own stage play 'Berkeley Square' for the screen, playwright John L Balderston made numerous changes. One change is significant in hindsight: during Act One of the stage play, the dialogue makes several references to a war hero named Bill Clinton! (A hero on the side fighting AGAINST the United States.) In the film, this British officer is merely identified as Major Clinton, and there are no mentions of his heroics.
Leslie Howard, everyone's definitive Englishman, was actually English only by a fluke: his parents were Hungarian Jews who moved to London shortly before his birth. In the film version of 'Berkeley Square', Howard portrays two Americans -- one from the 18th century, one from the present -- but his accent and demeanour in both roles are quintessentially English. Howard had previously starred on Broadway in this story, but in the stage play he portrayed only the modern-day Peter Standish who journeys into the past; his namesake ancestor (swapping places with him in the present) remained offstage.
Here we have the fantasy about a modern American who contrives to switch places in time with his 18th-century ancestor: both men are named Peter Standish, and are physically identical. (This is unlikely: the medical, dental and nutritional standards in 1784 would have kept that century's Standish looking very different from his descendant.) Apart from failing to convince me that he's American, Howard gives an excellent performance in both roles. Soon enough, Peter Standish acquires a touch of Peter Ibbetson as he falls in love with a woman who will die in 1787, more than a century before his own birth.
The ever-reliable Samuel S. Hinds (wearing a bizarre moustache here) plays straight man to Howard in one fascinating scene, in which Standish explains the difference between linear time and non-linear time: in the latter, all the events in the universe are occurring simultaneously.
Also quite excellent is Betty Lawford in an unsympathetic role. She wears some very chic gloves but also sports a bizarre fur collar that seems to be intended for a female impersonator. A transvestite linebacker could hide his shoulders inside there!
As the doomed young lady of 18th-century England, Heather Angel has one memorable scene opposite the 18th-century Standish's body possessed by his modern descendant. Staring into Standish's eyes, she glimpses an amazing stock-footage montage of the chaos and mayhem of modern times. Her reaction is memorable.
A story like this will have intentional anachronisms, but I looked for unintentional errors. Here's one: a string ensemble in 1784 perform Gossec's 'Gavotte' two years before he wrote it. Have another: in the opening scene, set in September 1784, Lionel Belmore reports that a French aeronaut has just flown from Dover to Calais (Belmore mispronounces this name) in a balloon. Actually, that didn't happen until January 1785: the flight was in the opposite direction, and there were two men (one of them Anglo-American) in the balloon. In a later scene, some English gentlemen give the word 'bathed' the wrong pronunciation (yes, I'm quite certain). The art direction is generally excellent, except for a dodgy thunderstorm. And it's weird to encounter the term 'crux ansata' applied to what modern viewers know better as the Egyptian ankh.
This film gets very much right a detail that many other period stories get wrong: 'Berkeley Square' acknowledges that the past is a dirtier, not cleaner, place than the present.
The single worst thing about 'Berkeley Square' is the overscored soundtrack: practically every scene assaults the ears with loud background music, when so much of this gentle fantasy would have worked better with no music at all. I was delighted that the character actress Beryl Mercer is much less annoying than usual here, probably because (for once) she's been given no maudlin material.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/08/23
Full Review
ashley h
Berkeley Square is a boring film. It is about a young American man who comes to believe that he can will himself back to London in the time of the American Revolution and meet his ancestors. Leslie Howard and Heather Angel give terrible performances. The screenplay was badly written. Frank Lloyd did a horrible job directing this movie. I was not impressed with this motion picture.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
Full Review
steve d
Clever and different enough from others of its time.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
03/30/23
Full Review
Audience Member
An early time travel movie which was undoubtedly a little mind blowing in 1933, and while it may seem a little creaky and less impressive 85 years later, itâ(TM)s still charming and entertaining. There are the usual sorts of cool, haunting aspects of the genre, thinking of people who had once lived full lives and walked this same earth, now long dead and buried, and wondering what it would be like to travel to the past to meet them. The film has all sorts of cute references to differences in mannerisms and language, as well as to people or events that those in 1784 wouldnâ(TM)t have known, but where it works best is in tugging on the heartstrings with a love separated by time, as cheesy as that might sound. There is something thatâ(TM)s so romantic about the line âI loved you before I ever saw you. In my first dream of you, coming from somewhere far away to meet me,â? maybe a little ridiculous too, but perhaps thatâ(TM)s what romance is.
Leslie Howard and Heather Angel are strong here, and in addition to the love scenes, there is a fantastic sequence where she gets a glimpse of the future through his eyes, and is blitzed by a montage of horrifying images. Between this and his own growing disillusionment of the time heâ(TM)s now in (âDirt, disease, cruelty, smellsâ¦Lord how the 18th Century stinks!â?), we thus see the danger of glorifying either the past or the future. Itâ(TM)s tempting for me to think that by extension, itâ(TM)s showing us the need to simply be happy in the present, but thatâ(TM)s not the filmâ(TM)s point â" itâ(TM)s more along the lines of the timelessness of love, and its immortality, e.g. via an afterlife. Whether you believe that or not, itâ(TM)s a touching film, and I loved how it ended too.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
01/13/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Innovative! Somewhat weak on the actual time travel... needs a suspension of belief.
Just watched it again (Sept 2020)... innovative, a bit slow, but a change from many of the modern movies we waste our time on.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/26/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Frank Lloyd's romantic fantasy doesn't do much to belie it's stage origins but Leslie Howard and Heather Angel winningly recreate their Broadway characters.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
02/27/23
Full Review
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