 |
Our Columnists Reflect on Oscar's Best Films |
|
"CAVALCADE" |
|
"CAVALCADE" FOX/1933 with Diana Wynyard, Clive Brook Directed by Frank Lloyd |
 |
An Oscar for this turkey?
What were they thinking?
By CHUCK McFADDEN
of TheColumnists.com
A while back, I picked up an old VHS tape of a 1933 film entitled “Cavalcade,” thinking to myself, “Hey, it’s based on a hit play by Noel Coward, it won an Oscar--what’s not to like?”
Plenty.
“Cavalcade,” was an American film using English actors to tell the story of the first third of the 20th Century from a British standpoint. It won three Oscars at the 1932-33 awards ceremony: Best Picture, Best Art Direction (William S. Darling) and Best Director (Frank Lloyd.) Amazingly, it won that Best Picture Oscar in a year that also saw "King Kong,” “Dinner at Eight,” “Queen Christina” and “42nd Street."
Those four films are generally considered classics. For “Cavalcade” to win anything at all that year, especially compared with those films, is a travesty. What were they thinking?
It’s not only that the movie is dated--though it is, badly--it’s that it was pretty sappy to begin with. There are scenes that weren’t very clever then, and are beyond hackneyed now. For instance, two of the bright young things in “Cavalcade” spend some time improbably talking about fate, and death, and love while obviously standing on the deck of an ocean liner heading across the North Atlantic in 1912. They walk away, to reveal a life preserver bearing the name....Right! It’s the Titanic! What a surprise!
And the movie has the ship bearing the homeport of Southampton. It was actually registered in Liverpool.
“Cavalcade” is an ambitious, sprawling attempt to tell an “Upstairs Downstairs” story of two English families from New Year's Eve 1899 until 1933. It ends as a depression ravages the world, and the carnage of the Second World War is six years in the future. We see how the Boer War, the death of Queen Victoria, the sinking of the aforementioned Titanic and the Great War affect the lives of the upscale Londoners Jane and Robert Marryot and their servants. There is an attempt to show the changing social mores of the time through the shifts in the relationship of the Marryots and the Bridges.
Jane Marryot was played by Diana Wynyard, one of the bright lights of the London stage; her husband, Robert, was played by Clive Brook, an actor who fully grasped the art of ponderous overacting. He showed how maudlin is done.
Una O’Connor and Herbert Mundin were the “Downstairs” Bridges family. O’Connor and Mundin are about the only bright acting spots in the film. A second high point in a movie that spends most of its time in a trough is the treatment of the casualties of World War I. That montage of young men, although old-fashioned, does still carry some emotional impact. Sadly, it is heavily outweighed by an overly sentimental screenplay by Reginald Berkeley and some really goopy acting. It’s as if a group of movie people got together and had Singapore slings under those 1930s palm trees and said to themselves, “Look, mawkish has really never been properly exploited in American movies. Let’s get a little something going here to see just how far we can go. We’ll make it English. Yeah. Maybe something by Noel Coward. He’s not always at the top of his form, you know.”
Coward, by the way, picked up a cool $100,000--1934 dollars, remember--for the rights to his play and a few songs.
I suppose that viewed in today’s unsentimental, stainless-steel world, a nostalgia-oriented movie such as “Cavalcade” doesn’t stand a chance. In fact the film is largely forgotten. But it is not a deserving treasure that some devoted movie historian needs to bring to our attention.
“Cavalcade” is not available on DVD, and there seems little prospect that it ever will be.
If you are interested in film archeology, or have a particular zest for movies of the ‘30’s, then you might be interested in disinterring “Cavalcade” on tape as an academic exercise. But other than that, it is best left forgotten and unmourned.
©2008 by Charles M. McFadden. The videotape cover is courtesy of Fox Home Video. This column first posted Feb. 18, 2008.
OTHER 1932-33 BEST PICTURE NOMINEES: "A Farewell to Arms," "42nd Street," "I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang," "Lady For A Day," "Little Women," "The Private Life of Henry VIII," "She Done Him Wrong," "Smilin' Through," "State Fair."
OSCAR TRIVIA: Playwright Noel Coward got the idea for "Cavalcade" from a photograph showing English troops departing for The Boer War in a back issue of The Illustrated London News....Pictures eligible for the 1932-33 Oscar were those released in the 17-month period between Aug. 1, 1932, and Dec. 31, 1933. This was done so the Academy could switch to a calendar year awards period in 1934...Will Rogers was the host of the 1932-33 Academy Awards, which were handed out on March 16, 1934. When Rogers invited Best Actress nominees Diana Wynyard of "Cavalcade" and May Robson of "Lady For A Day" to the speakers' table during the ceremony, many expected he would announce a tie, which had happened at the 1931-32 awards ceremony with Fredric March and Wallace Beery both earning Best Actor Oscars. But Rogers really just wanted some "star power" in the spotlight. He thanked them both for their performances and announced the award would go to Katharine Hepburn, who wasn't in attendance. Hepburn won for "Morning Glory," the first of her four Best Actress Oscars.
You can comment
on this column online. Please address your message to either
"The Editors" or Chuck McFadden. To send an email,
click here and don't forget to mention Chuck's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|