lørdag 25. september 2010

Class in classic Hollywood films

This afternoon the s.o. and I were walking downtown, and while we were discussing relationships between people of different social backgrounds and educations, the Hitchcock film Rebecca came up, one of my favorites actually. I said that this particular film dealt with the issue of romance between social classes. The person who "marries up" always feels a sense of insecurity, in addition to the suspicion that he or she is loved for being "refreshing" or "quaint", and that once this person feels comfortable in the new social role, the "charm" for the other person wears off.

So we decided to watch the film again. This film was perfectly cast, with Judith Anderson as the creepy Mrs. Danvers heading the list (see Susie Bright's description of this character in the HBO documentary The Celluloid Closet), but even Florence Bates as the corpulent nouveau riche vulgarian globetrotter Edythe van Hopper and Gladys Cooper as Maxim de Winter's plain-spoken sister Beatrice Lacey are so good in their roles that one could scarcely imagine anyone else in them. Joan Fontaine is also perfect as Edythe van Hopper's paid companion and the otherwise nameless Second Mrs. de Winter (a non-hammy performance that deserved an Oscar, but for the fact that it was up against Kitty Foyle, the film in which Ginger Rogers proved her range as an actress). Nor can we forget George Sanders as the "favorite cousin"/would-be blackmailer and dealer in fine motorcars Jack Favell, the queeniest heterosexual man who ever lived. Very unlike the male leading role, Maxim de Winter, played by the very butch and very bisexual Sir Laurence Olivier, whose not exactly discreet dalliances with men were what probably put his second wife Vivien Leigh in the funny farm (she should have listened to her mother, like I did to mine: if you love a man, don't try to change him. And girls, this does not only apply to getting him to put down the toilet seat).

4 kommentarer:

Michael Leddy sa...

Normann, can you suggest some other movies with class and romance at the center of things?

normann sa...

Stella Dallas is the first to come to mind. One novel (and movie) where the author blithely assumes that despite their class differences, the lovers will find bliss in some homophile arcadia, is E.M. Forster's posthumously published Maurice (and Merchant-Ivory film of the same name). Forster rightly delayed publication after his death. Not because of the subject matter, but because the novel is an exercise in wish-fulfillment. Let me think about this some more, and I will get back to you.

normann sa...

And of course, Mildred Pierce, with the inimitable Joan Crawford as the ambitious, masochist business woman and the snob murderous daughter, exquisitely hammily played by Anne Blythe, whom people of a certain age remember from Hostess Twinkie and Cupcake ads.

Michael Leddy sa...

Thanks, Normann. Two that just occurred to me: Born Yesterday and City Lights.