Your Critic Sticks
His Neck Out
(Dear reader: Please bear in mind that the language herein was typical of that used in 1959 when this review was written.)
Of the crowd that recently emerged from the narrow lobby of the Warner
Theater, it can be stated with certainty that one hundred percent of the women
carried sopping wet handkerchiefs in their purses. The men in the crowd could
only be pleased that their little women had a good cry, for they themselves
could never succumb to the tear tugs of motherly love and sacrifice.
The story is pretty complicated; it’s really two stories. One is about a
“perfect featured” widow (Lana Turner) with a child. She, the widow, is
determined to become an actress even if she’s getting into the struggle a bit
late, five years too late according to the script. But from a cold water flat
in New York as her initial base of operations, she eventually makes the big
time, though it involves tossing over a decent and ambitious photographer (John
Gavin) who genuinely loves her. Ten years of stardom later she realizes the
attainment of her goal has brought her no happiness. Of course, by now she’s
living like an Egyptian queen and enjoying every minute of it, though her duty
to her by then teenage daughter (Sandra Dee) gives her a twinge now and then
and inevitably she has to give in to concentrating on the more enduring
substances of life.
The
other story is about the ambitious widow’s colored and also widowed maid
(Juanita Moore) and her daughter (Susan Kohner) who is physically able and
fanatically determined to pass as white. The daughter’s problem is insoluble
and the mother’s problem over the daughter’s problem is equally so. There is no
resolution. Only a girl’s stricken conscience for having rejected her mother
comes of it.
Those are the two stories given far simpler than author Fannie Hurst
cared to put them. You may rightly ask what has one to do with the other, and
the answer is, obviously, very little. Their connection is contrived. Perhaps
the author intended that one contrast a mother’s neglect of her child with the
other of a mother’s extreme love. If so, then the theory of neglecting the
young ones wins out. You may even go further and ask: what’s the film trying to
say? Presumably the answer is success does not always bring happiness. But even
this thesis won’t hold up because all ends pleasantly, or else it’s implied
that it will, and the miseries of success have certainly brought some pretty
elegant surroundings for the majority of the characters in which to live out their lives.
Directed by Douglas Sirk
Screenplay by Eleanore Griffin and Allan Scott
Reviewed by Hugh on 5/14/1959
(Dear reader: Please bear in mind that the language herein was typical of that used in 1959 when this review was written.)
Of the crowd that recently emerged from the narrow lobby of the Warner Theater, it can be stated with certainty that one hundred percent of the women carried sopping wet handkerchiefs in their purses. The men in the crowd could only be pleased that their little women had a good cry, for they themselves could never succumb to the tear tugs of motherly love and sacrifice.
Of the crowd that recently emerged from the narrow lobby of the Warner Theater, it can be stated with certainty that one hundred percent of the women carried sopping wet handkerchiefs in their purses. The men in the crowd could only be pleased that their little women had a good cry, for they themselves could never succumb to the tear tugs of motherly love and sacrifice.
The story is pretty complicated; it’s really two stories. One is about a
“perfect featured” widow (Lana Turner) with a child. She, the widow, is
determined to become an actress even if she’s getting into the struggle a bit
late, five years too late according to the script. But from a cold water flat
in New York as her initial base of operations, she eventually makes the big
time, though it involves tossing over a decent and ambitious photographer (John
Gavin) who genuinely loves her. Ten years of stardom later she realizes the
attainment of her goal has brought her no happiness. Of course, by now she’s
living like an Egyptian queen and enjoying every minute of it, though her duty
to her by then teenage daughter (Sandra Dee) gives her a twinge now and then
and inevitably she has to give in to concentrating on the more enduring
substances of life.
The
other story is about the ambitious widow’s colored and also widowed maid
(Juanita Moore) and her daughter (Susan Kohner) who is physically able and
fanatically determined to pass as white. The daughter’s problem is insoluble
and the mother’s problem over the daughter’s problem is equally so. There is no
resolution. Only a girl’s stricken conscience for having rejected her mother
comes of it.
Those are the two stories given far simpler than author Fannie Hurst
cared to put them. You may rightly ask what has one to do with the other, and
the answer is, obviously, very little. Their connection is contrived. Perhaps
the author intended that one contrast a mother’s neglect of her child with the
other of a mother’s extreme love. If so, then the theory of neglecting the
young ones wins out. You may even go further and ask: what’s the film trying to
say? Presumably the answer is success does not always bring happiness. But even
this thesis won’t hold up because all ends pleasantly, or else it’s implied
that it will, and the miseries of success have certainly brought some pretty
elegant surroundings for the majority of the characters in which to live out their lives.
Directed by Douglas Sirk
Screenplay by Eleanore Griffin and Allan Scott
Reviewed by Hugh on 5/14/1959
Directed by Douglas Sirk
Screenplay by Eleanore Griffin and Allan Scott
Reviewed by Hugh on 5/14/1959