14. How Green Was My Valley (1941) (Feat. Citizen Kane)

How Green Was My Valley Plot Intro

A small coal mining village in Wales during the late 1800’s. The Morgan family consist of Gwilym Morgan (Donald Crisp) and Beth Morgan (Sara Allgood) and their seven very-Welsh-named children, in particular their only daughter Angharad (Maureen O’Hara) and their youngest son, Huw (Roddy McDowall). There’s also a dishy new vicar, Mr Gruffydd (Walter Pidgeon) who has eyes for Angharad. Huw is the narrator and main POV of the family’s trials and tribulations, as they take us through strikes, money-worries, illnesses, emigration, malevolent school teachers, marriages, and deaths down the mines. 

Citizen Kane Plot Intro

In his colossal, barren mansion of Xanadu, newspaper magnate and Rupert-Murdoch-esque businessman, Charles Kane (Orson Welles), dies. His last word is cryptic and inexplicable to even his closest servants and friends- “Rosebud”. A team of journalists, determined to get a scoop, delve into his life, determined to discover who, or what, Rosebud is, and discover more about this enigmatic man. 

Paul says...

Citizen Kane is often named as one of the greatest films of all time. The American Film Institute, which compiles arguably the most definitive rankings of films and stars, places it at number one, surpassing other such household names as Gone With the Wind, The Godfather and Casablanca. It has had supreme influence on film-making thanks to its innovative cinematography and non-linear narrative structure (flashbacks and music-heavy montages are used very liberally). Any good film student would have studied it at some point - on pain of death. 

So why no Best Picture Oscar for Kane in 1941? Kane has so much to say about the human condition and how it changes when corrupted with power. It’s also a landmark in film-making styles. Well, on viewing How Green Was My Valley, I can now see why it won. It’s outstanding. The film is sweet, involving, and has a huge amount of heart to it, and provides an insight into a culture and time like a David Starkey documentary.

While Orson Welles approached Citizen Kane with a heavily artistic and conceptual frame of mind, John Ford (who won four Best Director Oscars) directs Valley much more simplistically, but lets the story and characters speak for themselves. There are extremely powerful and inspirational moments- Beth Morgan’s recovery from illness and her speech against the miners ostracising her husband; the elder brothers’ bittersweet departures to America, New Zealand and Canada in search of a better life; a hypocritical preacher’s condemnation of a fallen woman in front of an entire congregation. I was transported to 19th-century Wales throughout the whole two hours. It was so vivid and natural that it was like looking through a time-hole into a forgotten age. I wanted to be there, but the fear and suffering of these people, who manage to find humour even in the most grim of moments, also made me want to remain a bystander. I defy anyone to make their way through the film without shedding at least one tear, particularly for Sara Allgood’s stunning performance as matriarchal Beth. My only criticism is of the episode involving a sadistic, snobbish school teacher which felt a little too pantomime amidst the naturalism to me.

Is it a deserved win over Citizen Kane? In hindsight, perhaps not. Valley has pretty much faded into obscurity, unless you’re a big film buff, while Kane’s endurance and timelessness is self-evident. But in 1941, with war raging and cinema’s audiences crying out for smaller, more-domestic films, films that show real people overcoming real situations rather than the reverential life stories of the ’30s, Valley would have been the perfect catharsis for any cinema-goer worried about their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons consumed by the fogs of war. Charles Kane could be read as a relatively tenuous allegory for Hitler because his pursuit of helping the under-privileged turns into a struggle to maintain power and influence over the people, but Valley resonates more strongly in its depiction of communities helping each other no matter what strife is thrown at them. 

These are two very different films. Kane is innovative, character-driven, and timeless in its themes. Valley is more traditional and linear in its plot structure (similar to All Quiet on the Western Front, Cimarron and Cavalcade), but with more heart and realism than in previous pictures. It’s a much more quintessential example of the ’40s film as the next few films will prove, while Kane combines the magnitude of the ’30s films with the experimentation of the ’70’s. The latter would be my personal choice of winner due to its current notoriety, but both are excellent pieces of entertainment. Your preference really depends on your taste in films. 

How Green Was My Valley Highlight

Beth’s recovery from a prolonged illness is a powerful scene. Beforehand, the miners had been turning against her husband for opposing their strike. But they greet her at the door with friendliness and atonement. A lovely moment symbolising the importance of camaraderie and community.

Citizen Kane Highlight

Oh God, there’s so many moments to choose from! I suppose my favourite is when Kane is contacted by a colleague in Cuba saying that everyone’s writing poetry here and war will not happen. Determined to provide a headline, Kane replies, “You provide the prose poems, I’ll provide the war”.

How Green Was My Valley Lowlight

An over-acting school teacher bullying Huw for his low-class status and allowing other children to assault him. He eventually gets his comeuppance but it felt very melodramatic and incongruous compared to other episodes.

Citizen Kane Lowlight

I literally can’t think of anything. The film is so carefully thought out and connected together that it’s verging on perfect (despite my assertion that nothing can be totally perfect).

How Green Was My Valley Mark

9/10  

Citizen Kane Mark

10/10 

Doug says...

When we started this project, we scrolled through the films ahead of us, and alighted on the curious fact that Citizen Kane - considered by many film buffs to be the best film ever made - did not go on to win the Oscar, and lost out to a now-obscure film called How Green Was My Valley. We decided there and then that when it came to this week, we would watch both films and critique them, seeing whether the forgotten film about Welsh mining villages would stand up to the renowned Orson Welles masterpiece. I for one was excited to write a scathing review of some saccharine piece that had nothing on Welles’ film of power’s ultimate decay. 

As it was, they are both extraordinary pieces and to define which should have won the Oscar is ultimately incredibly hard. Kane is the first example we have of someone actually taking cinematography and running with it - something that films such as Birdman and La Vie En Rose owe a huge debt to. Every shot is perfectly planned, the central character is constantly shrouded in shadow, and in his final shot in the film, he walks past a mirror and is reflected in it thousands of times, each self walking on lonely into the dark. I was gripped by the central drama of who this man is, and the groundbreaking methods Welles has used to create it. 

So how on earth could Valley have beaten it? Well actually, it is in itself a wonderful piece. By focusing on the actualities of miner life (we see cave-ins, poverty, strikes and infighting), and setting it from one family’s viewpoint, we are drawn into the characters while never falling into sentimentality. And the Welsh singing throughout! It is a musical, mesmerising piece, with heroes and villains. The teacher Paul so disliked for pantomime villainy, I found rang terrifyingly true - and when two miners from our central character’s village storm into the classroom and beat the teacher up, I found myself loudly cheering at the tv screen. There’s a whole ream of themes - from the rich/poor divide, to how religion means different things for all of them. It’s filled with naturalistic acting, realistic and emotional narratives, and all tinged over with the everyday humour that is in all our lives. 

Ultimately I am unsure of who should have been the winner. In terms of breaking ground with style, cinematography and non-linear stories, Kane takes the crown in no uncertain terms. But for me the real winner is (by a hair’s breadth) Valley - it is our first instance of really naturalistic, powerful acting - led by the incomparable Sara Allgood who as the matriarch whips us through comic scenes and one scene of devastating tragedy with utmost realism. As she stands, frozen, simply waiting to hear the terrible news, I found myself unable to rip my eyes from her face. A forgotten masterpiece. 

   

How Green Was My Valley Highlight

Sara Allgood quietly steals every single scene she’s in with patient good-humoured kindliness, meaning that a tragic scene later on reaps great pathos.  

Citizen Kane Highlight

Every single shot is thought about and considered. Welles clearly adhered to the school of Hitchcock thinking. It’s a lesson in cinematography.

How Green Was My Valley Lowlight

There are moments which feel slower - though not dragging - but are soon whipped back up into the story, and proven to be necessary. 

Citizen Kane Lowlight

The acting, while elegant, is not really worth writing home about as the style overwhelms it. Also, the second wife’s angry voice is so irritating that it detracts from the power of her scenes

How Green Was My Valley Mark

10/10  

Citizen Kane Mark

10/10 

13. Rebecca (1940)

Plot Intro

An unnamed heroine (Joan Fontaine) who is nervous, introverted and working for a cantankerous upper class lady, meets Max de Winter (Laurence Olivier) who is handsome, kind, debonair and, most importantly, filthy stinking rich. The two fall in love, marry, and Max sweeps our heroine off to his colossal Cornwall mansion, Mandeley. But when she arrives, our poor heroine finds it difficult to adjust, due to the shadow of Max’s deceased first wife, Rebecca, still lurking within the mansion- not least due to the mentally-unhinged housekeeper, Mrs Danvers (Judith Anderson), who would feel more at home in the hotel in The Shining.

Doug says...

We’re into the ‘40s! And our film journey takes an abrupt twist with a move away from the films reflecting the contemporary time, full of war and glory, and gives us this early Alfred Hitchcock adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s superb novel Rebecca. It’s the second one in a row based on a novel, and what I find interesting about this faithful adaptation is that it actually mirrors the less than great moments that are in the book itself. 

What I mean by this is that in the novel, the last third takes a turn for the duller side, full of inquests and court cases and pages of necessary but relatively uninteresting events. And so it is in the film - the first two thirds and the ending are terrific, but there’s a distinct point when the events become less absorbing, and start being a slight chore to plod through. This said, the film benefits from two excellent performances - that of Joan Fontaine (stunningly beautiful) as the timid and naive Second Mrs De Winter and that of Judith Anderson as the still-pretty-terrifying housekeeper Mrs Danvers, whose obsession with Rebecca - the late First Mrs De Winter - utterly consumes her. Laurence Olivier turns in a pretty bog-standard performance as Max De Winter, but utterly fails to lend him any charm making all of his pretty dickhead-ish actions even more unforgiveable. The moment when the Second Mrs De Winter (importantly she is never named in novel or film) sweeps down in a costume to a fancy dress party, unknowingly wearing the same thing as Rebecca did a year before, Max turns on her and sends her away crying. It’s a pretty nasty thing to do, especially as the Second Mrs De Winter is such a timid little thing. 

It’s the first American film Hitchcock did and as such there are hints of what is yet to come - he uses light and shadow carefully, rendering Mrs Danvers a terrifying presence simply through her stillness, and manages to make the Second Mrs De Winter look tiny and insignificant in nearly every camera shot. It’s not a masterpiece, and doesn’t particularly feel Hitchcockian, but I enjoyed most of it. It’s terribly overacted and I have to say the general acting style of the ‘30s and ‘40s is beginning to grate now, given that I come from an era when naturalism is considered the ultimate goal in performance. We found ourselves making lots of jokes throughout, and the only moments we were truly sucked in were when Judith Anderson materialised and terrified everyone. I am still quite a fan of the Brief Encounter-esque delivery of lines (clipped British accents, rattled through at great speed), but I’m definitely looking forward to a move away from this highly emotional style of performance. It’s a decent adaptation of a great novel, but certainly not my favourite film so far.

Highlight 

The (very famous) moment where Mrs Danvers pins the Second Mrs De Winter in the window frame and murmurs in her ear that she should commit suicide and jump right there and then is terrifying. You want to slap her hard and tell her she’s fired, but yet no one does. 

Lowlight

The courtroom and inquest scenes were so dull and tediously written that I switched off entirely, checked social media, and then had to quickly wikipedia what had happened. 

Mark 

7/10 (one mark higher because of Anderson’s great work) 

Paul says...

I love Alfred Hitchcock films. And I also love usurious melodramas involving mansions and women in big dresses. So Rebecca was always going to be far from a flop.

The film is a bit of an anomaly, both in the Hitchcock canon and as a Best Picture winner. In terms of Hitchcock’s career, it’s his first film made in Hollywood. It sits between his tales of mystery, adventure and espionage of the ’30s (such as The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes), and the “murder-in-the-household” suspense stories of the ’40s (Suspicion, Shadow of a Doubt). Rebecca is a combination of the two. On the one hand, it’s rife with handsome men with dark secrets, locked west wings and striking revelations in the mist. It’s 50 Shades of Grey for the Enid Blyton generation. On the other hand, it has the delicate, sinister Hitchcock touch. Sun shining through windows creating jail-bar-like shadows across the main characters’ faces; Mrs Danvers’ minimal movements, giving her a serpentine quality; Hitchcock telling Joan Fontaine that the cast hates her so that she would seem all the more frightened and pathetic (IMDB fun fact!); all minuscule ideas that, when combined, create an efficacious whole. This is unlike the grandiose colours, music and total lack of subtlety in Gone With the Wind or The Great Ziegfeld.

It’s a shame that this is our only encounter with Hitchcock in the Best Picture winners (he was also nominated five times for Best Director but never won) because I’ve always felt his later films, particularly the big-budget thrillers of the ’50s are far stronger. Here, although Judith Anderson steals every scene she is in, Rebecca suffers from the same problem as Cavalcade in that it’s so posh and over-acted that it often becomes maudlin and disingenuous. At the time, this was the style, and it was still a big hit, but it hasn’t aged as well as, say, Rear Window or Psycho.

Also, and this goes back to my assertion that Rebecca is an anomaly in the Best Picture canon, it doesn’t really have much to say. We’ve had melodrama before- Gone With the Wind is hardly a Woody Allen film. But last week’s film had far more to say about the resourcefulness and tenacity of even the most spoilt and selfish of human beings, and about the devastation of war. Rebecca’s a cracking mystery, it’s genuinely creepy, and an excellent study of unlikeable characters (Max is a twat and the heroine’s a wet tissue), but I do think that a film with arguably the most prestigious accolade in the film industry should deliver a story that resonates on more levels than a hysterical gothic adventure. 

Is that snobbish of me? Perhaps it is. I should assert that Rebecca is still enjoyable and if you don’t know the twist in the tale, then it’s a good shock. But if you want a more quintessential example of Hitchcock, then look at his films of the ’50s and early ’60s instead.

Highlight

Judith Anderson’s performance as Mrs Danvers sends shivers down your spine. She’s the one part of the film that feels timeless.

Lowlight

“I’m going to violently make love to you behind a palm tree!”- says Max de Winter with absolute dignity, sending Doug and I into immature hysterics. 

Mark

6/10

The PAD Awards: 1920s/1930s

The twelve films of the 1920s and '30s. 

Well we've made it past our first milestone. And as we reached the end of the 1930s, we thought it'd be a good moment to stop and reflect on what we've seen so far. And so - without further ado - the PAD (Paul and Doug) Awards...

Least Favourite Film 

Paul says: The Broadway Melody

I think we’re pretty unanimous on this one. Obviously, we were expecting some antiquated movie-making in the first decade of the Oscars but The Broadway Melody went so far with this that it was almost unbearable to watch at times. Acting and directing techniques were very much of the silent era, so most of them came across as over-acting in a sub-standard Broadway musical. The whole thing felt like it had been glued together with Prit-Stick, and it very much belongs back in the time it was made, like mullet hairstyles or 90’s track suits.

Doug says: The Broadway Melody

Oh god The Broadway Melody was so awful. It makes me cringe even to think of it now. Full of long dance pieces that seemed unintelligible, with a plot and characters that didn’t make any logical sense. It was as if they’d never made a film before, and I think it won purely for the novelty of sound and music - even though some cinemas weren’t yet equipped with the technology and so showed this musical - silent. It was truly a transitional piece, showing the difficult manoeuvre from silent to talkie and how easy it is to fail at. Definitely one to be left in the dusty museum cabinets.  

Favourite Male Performance 

Paul says: Lionel Barrymore, in Grand Hotel

Of course I’d heard of the Barrymore dynasty- right from Ethel, John and Lionel in the ’30’s through to Drew in Charlie’s Angels. But this project fully exposed me to the elder generation, and Lionel floored me in Grand Hotel. He was a scene-stealer in You Can’t Take It With You too (yes, he was in two of them- Clark Gable was in three!), but his performance as a man going on a massive European bender before he perishes from a terminal illness had more depth to it due to his development throughout the film- and due to his confrontation with the prehensile businessman for whom he worked for decades, but was never thanked. Although Grand Hotel was far from the best film, and Barrymore is not the most central of the cast (Garbo nicked that slot), his climactic attack on the businessman’s lack of humanity was the centrepiece of the film for me. Charles Laughton in Mutiny on the Bounty was also a close second.

Doug says: Edward Arnold, in You Can't Take It With You

Truth be told I’m not in love with any of the male performances from this era. We’re still stuck in the period where men weren’t really allowed to emote in case they come across as pathetic, which means we have a lot of same-y performances with men saying quick-witted lines and then taking a drag of their cigarette. However there’s one that stands out - Edward Arnold in You Can’t Take It With You. As the rich banker who begins to realise that his family do actually mean more than his financial status, he delivered a tour-de-force in underplayed acting, culminating in a typical Capra-esque ‘letting go and being happy’ narrative that actually felt pretty real. Big props to the scene where he sat in the boardroom, silently stealing the focus without moving a muscle. Judi Dench would be in awe. 

Favourite Female Performance 

Paul says: Vivien Leigh, in Gone With The Wind

Let’s face facts here, Viv acts her socks off. She conveys Scarlett O’Hara’s volcanic, mercurial, snarling side whilst also rendering her sympathetic and even admirable in her inherent expertise at surviving the American Civil War (again, survival! A theme!). And she is the Queen of Resting Bitch Face. This is no mean feat, especially considering the chaos that Gone With the Wind’s production went through. Re-writes to prevent the film going past an inordinate four hours; one director (George Cukor) getting fired while his replacement, Victor Fleming, was temporarily replaced by a third director, Sam Wood, due to exhaustion; and a budget that was never quite enough. And yet, Leigh maintains her energy and her focus all the way through, flitting from expression to emotion without resorting to the over-acting of Luise Rainer in The Great Ziegfeld.

Doug says: Clara Bow, in Wings 

It’s a close call, and while Vivien Leigh is deservedly iconic as Scarlett O’Hara, delivering each and every ‘fiddle dee dee’ with a genuine carelessness, I’ve found it hard to shake the star power of Clara Bow from my memory. Watching a 1927 silent film was a fair slog, and yet every scene Clara Bow was in immediately lit up and seized the attention. Her name is still remembered as one of the silent film greats, and it was easy to see why. She is all energy and vitality, much as Vivien Leigh would be a decade later, and she was an unexpected find among the juddering amateurish film-making of the late ‘20s. The scene when she hid from bombs under her car in particular stood out as a great example of her superb physicality mingled with a skilled acting ability and without any voice at all - ‘look mama, no sound’! 

Favourite Film 

Paul says: The Life of Emile Zola

For me, the key theme of the 20’s/30’s films is survival. As society crumbles then rebuilds itself through the Great Depression in both excellent and hideous ways, most of our main characters are striving to keep their heads above water in some way or another. Whether they are doing this quite literally whilst dodging gun fire in war films Wings and All Quiet on the Western Front; or trying to establish their name in a brand new community in Cimarron; or surviving at sea with no food in Mutiny on the Bounty; or fending off greedy businessmen and corrupt politicians in The Broadway Melody and You Can’t Take It With You. This was the constant throughout, but The Life of Emile Zola tackled survival in the face of regnant corruption, and the battle for a changed, good society, with full force. I was captivated by the courtroom scenes especially (we all know I love a good courtroom scene), and Paul Muni’s central performance oozes with charisma and sympathy. Above all, it was my most exciting film, an air-punching insight into one of history’s best known tales, and one which I would recommend to anyone who loves a bit of social injustice.

Doug says: It Happened One Night

Going into this from the very beginning has been fascinating, as we’ve started off with a black-and-white silent film (oh the barrel organ music…) and have just finished our first full-colour epic. And while there’s been a clear shift in the films’ content from memorialising World War One to anticipating World War Two, we’ve also seen the film-makers become more confident in their techniques, each film slicker and more professional than the last. For me, although Gone With The Wind was by far the best-made film, my favourite had to be the screwball comedy It Happened One Night. Before Frank Capra delved into saccharine sentimentality, he proved himself capable of hilarious film-work like this. Not only do Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert shimmer on screen with energy and vitality, but the film itself is very funny and so beautifully constructed. It’s one of the few that I’d willingly watch again, and the background of the Great Depression only serves to make it more intriguing. 

Average Film Scores 

Paul: 6.58/10

Doug: 5.75/10

12. Gone With The Wind (1939)

Plot Intro

Atlanta, Georgia, 1861. Spoilt, volcanic Southern Belle, Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh), the Paris Hilton of the Deep South, is obsessed with marrying local bachelor Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard). But Ashley is betrothed to angelic goodie-two-shoes, Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland). Also present is dashing douchebag, Rhett Butler (Clark Gable), who basically calls Scarlett out on her bullshit and proves to be a better match for her. Into this love quadrilateral steps the American Civil War, which destroys Scarlett’s entire world. Using her courage, intelligence and guts, Scarlett must re-build her life, and navigate a tumultuous relationship with Rhett. 

Paul says...

What ISN’T there to love about Gone With the Wind?! It’s one of the most eventful four hours you’ll ever endure. Vivien Leigh flounces brilliantly through the film in dresses big enough to hide a walrus. Gable breaks your heart with his smarmy arseholeyness. Over-budgeted, over-long, and trawling through three directors, various re-writes and racial tensions on set, out of the chaos was born a film that is so iconic that it has been endlessly imitated, parodied and referenced. It has the first black person ever to win an Oscar (the inimitable Hattie McDaniel). After adjusting for inflation, it is the most financially successful film of all time (surpassing Avatar, Titanic and any of the individual Harry Potter films). Brimming with passion, pace and set-pieces, it’s a gargantuan, salient juggernaut of a film.

I say again, what ISN’T there to love about Gone With the Wind?

Well, there’s a couple of niggling points that prevent it from achieving a full 10 from me. Firstly, there’s the fact that the first half of the film, which covers the war, the fall of Atlanta, and some of the most spectacular moments in cinema, is hugely superior to the small-scale, more domestic-based second half. The first half has a steadier pace and builds up its emotions well. Meanwhile, the pace of the film in the second act quickens so dramatically that marriages, births, separations, deaths and miscarriages come at you so thick and fast that there’s barely any time to fully process and enjoy them. Many of the events (such as Rhett’s trip to London) could have been abbreviated or cut out to make a film with less laughable mawkishness - and a more manageable length. 

Secondly, there is the much bigger race issue. Gone With the Wind has no qualms about depicting Southern culture as the pinnacle of glamour and morality, with the slaves happy and content with their status- and treated well by their white masters. Modern-day eyes will find this uncomfortable- 12 Years A Slave would later reveal the darker truth in 2013. One could argue that the film is of its time, or that it primarily wants to evoke the sadness of the Southerners at losing their fortunes and ways of life. But we must remember that this is a culture that would flutter its fan coquettishly with one hand, and beat up its slave with the other. A 21st century re-working would, for good reason, have more sympathy for the Yankees, and draw attention to the very relevant reasons why Lincoln had it in for the Southern states.

Having said all of this, Gone With the Wind remains one of my all-time faves because it’s so utterly massive without becoming overdone. Leigh manages to convey Scarlett’s mercurial but heroic nature with spontaneity and naturalism. It’s hard not to get swept away (see what I did there?) by the torrent of emotions, colours and music. It’s the perfect climax to a decade of films fraught with lofty themes around building civilisations and surviving in the face of adversity. 

Now please excuse me whilst I dance around the room in a marquee and shout “Fiddle dee-dee!” with alacrity.

Highlight

The scene towards the end in which Mammy (Hattie McDaniel) informs Melanie Hamilton of what happened after the death of Scarlett’s child whilst climbing a set of stairs. McDaniel must have won her Oscar based on that scene because it is an absolute heart-breaker.

Lowlight

Why the hell does Rhett take Bonnie to London for all of 3 minutes?! Such incongruity. 

Mark

9/10  

Doug says...

There are several things that people often don’t get about Gone With The Wind. One of them is that it is, in essence, two separate halves with a continuous storyline running through. The first half is a study of the fall of the South, complete with grand houses, huge dresses, and everyone saying how happy the slaves look. The second half is an intimate portrait of Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler’s inability to get over themselves and admit how in love with each other they are. The two halves make up one epic whole which covers the decline of a long-gone society while also bringing superb, addictive characters to the fore. 

It’s a great film. Vivien Leigh is on formidable form, ‘fiddle-dee-dee’ing her way through scenes with a bombastic energy that makes everyone fade away except for Clark Gable, who matches her with his sexual energy poured into each dimpled smile, and Olivia de Havilland whose Melly is sweet yet quietly forceful. 

What I find fascinating about this is how far it differs from the book. Notably the use of the ’n’ racial slur was removed from the script after campaigners complained. To my memory, the word is in frequent use in Margaret Mitchell’s novel - as are a host of now-derogatory slurs. There are other details that have been removed too. When Frank Kennedy, Scarlett’s ill-fated second husband, gathers his friends (including the sanctimonious Ashley) to punish the men who attacked her, what the film neatly omits is that this gathering calls itself the Ku Klux Klan. Sound familiar? 

It’s details like this that fascinate me. In the novel, Scarlett wonders how the Northerners consider her racist as they have no real contact with black people. She even thinks how the Southerners consider black women to be the best nannies as proof that they aren’t racist. And certainly her relationship with Mammy - and Mammy’s authority over her - make their way into the film, raising questions about who is in charge of who. Scarlett is by far more likeable in the novel, with far more examples of her sheer resilience, so that by the end when she has been left by Rhett once again (‘My dear, I don’t give a damn’), the reader needs her to pick herself back up, while in the film you can’t help but think that she kind of had it coming to her. 

A side-detail is that so many readers were unable to deal with Scarlett’s apparent failure to win, that in the ‘80s, a new author picked up the thread and wrote a sequel ‘Scarlett’ which is actually very good. She is a fascinating central figure who we want so desperately to win - and seems incapable of not getting in her own way. 

The film struggles to fit in all the novel's 1000 pages of action, even with its four hour running time, and so by the end it is rushing to catch up with itself (also featuring one of the most - unintentionally - hilarious deaths ever seen in film. I actually had to rewind and watch it again, I was laughing so hard). But that said, it’s a tour-de-force of fashion, eyebrow arching, and colour (boy is it good to see a colour film after eleven black-and-white ones), and they have spared no melodrama in the recounting of this great tale.   

Highlight

The moment when Scarlett O’Hara appears in that red dress at a party having just been accused of cheating with her best friend’s husband is just fabulous. The dress, the gauzy shawl, the arched eyebrow  - it’s all just so theatre. 

Lowlight

Prissy the young black maid is not only a disturbingly racist stereotype, but her whiny voice is just so, so annoying. 

Mark

9/10

11. You Can't Take It With You (1938)

Plot Intro

The Sycamore family, headed by the maternal Grandfather, Martin Vanderhof (Lionel Barrymore), are a happy but downright bonkers middle-class family living a life of fun, happiness and freedom. Meanwhile, the Kirby family, headed by Anthony P. Kirby (Edward Arnold), are basically the Trump clan- living a life of opulence, dignity and consumed by wealth, power and snobbery. However, the granddaughter of Martin Vanderhof, Alice Sycamore (Jean Arthur) has fallen in love with the son and heir of Anthony Kirby, Tony Kirby (James Stewart), and it’s about time both families discovered the truth…

Doug says...

What’s most interesting about this film for me is that it comes three years after the director Frank Capra’s superb It Happened One Night, and many years before his hugely famous It’s A Wonderful Life. And yet, it is easy to see how Capra is shifting his directorial focus from the witty screwball comedy of One Night and edging already towards the saccharine-drenched style of Wonderful Life. There are scenes in You Can’t Take It With You which are direct predecessors to crucial plot points in Wonderful Life, and the plot spins around the same theme - that friends are forever while money is ultimately unimportant. 

All this is dandy, except for the fact that Capra-esque films tend to nauseate rather than move (I found It’s A Wonderful Life dull and without any genuine ability to inspire emotion, thanks to its constant on-the-nose message). It Happened One Night managed blissfully to escape this plastering-on of ‘emotion’, mainly thanks to its rough and ready plot and the dry sparkling wit of its two lead actors. However - and here’s the interesting thing - because Capra has not reached full-Capra with this film, there are still moments that actually are quite affecting. It helps that the plot is not really about the two young lovers at the centre of the story, but actually about their respective fathers - one of whom is Lionel Barrymore playing Martin Vanderhof - a kind, friendly man who cares more about friends than money. Barrymore has a lot of big speeches about capitalism and communism, and at one point a tirade about dying alone and friendless being all that awaits some people. But unlike last week’s The Life of Emile Zola, Barrymore has enough talent and energy to push through these and ensure they don’t become mawkish. 

The real heart of Take It With You’s success however for me lay with Edward Arnold, an actor who apparently infuriated Capra with his inability to learn his lines, (this is despite Capra’s film technique of often getting actors to improvise their scenes a la Mike Leigh). We slowly (and it’s a beautifully paced change) get to see the rich banker Anthony P. Kirby realise how he has grasped for the wrong thing in life. A scene, late on in the film, has Arnold sitting still, saying very little, and yet managing to deliver an astonishing performance. It comes as no surprise then that Capra, despite being irritated by Arnold’s poor memory, still referred to him as being ‘a powerhouse on the screen’. There’s sentimental daftness - a daughter of the Sycamore family who dementedly insists on ballet dancing around the house, and a mother who uses kittens as paperweights for her dreadful-sounding novel transcripts. But overall the gawky sentimentality that would later overpower Capra’s work - and is mercifully absent in his greatest work It Happened One Night, isn’t allowed to dominate here. 

Highlight 

Edward Arnold’s measured and powerful transformation from corrupt banker to a man of harmonica-playing joviality is superb.

Lowlight

Jean Arthur and James Stewart (later to win an Oscar for The Philadelphia Story) don’t really have the acting chops to de-sentimentalise their long drawn-out love story. It’s where the film tips towards laughable rather than emotional. 

Mark 

5.5/10

Paul says...

How on earth did they come up with the title to this one? “We need a really memorable, punchy title that looks great in neon!” “Why don’t we just put 6 of the most common English words together?” “PERFECT!”

Last week’s Emile Zola was a real-life parable. You Can’t Take It With You covers similar love-affirming, corruption-of-power-hating territory but it’s made-up, and so, as Doug points out, the result is more idealised and sentimental. Frank Capra’s next film, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, also starring James Stewart, would be very similar but with a stronger political stance, rather than a family-based one.

However, unlike Doug, I was much more captivated by it. I loved the Sycamore family. A Grandfather who breaks his foot sliding down the bannister, a mother who writes atrocious plays, a father who illicitly makes fireworks, a daughter who desperately wants to dance despite having two left feet, and a son-in-law whose one talent is playing the xylophone. There’s also a pet raven, some sassy servants and a Russian dance teacher/wrestler thrown into the mix to create the sort of joyous, anarchic, socially-inept family that everyone aspires to. The ensemble scenes (in particular when the Sycamores meet the ultra-capitalist, adamantine Kirbys, and wind up in a jail cell together) are fast-paced, inventive and fun. So much so, that the central love story becomes pedestrian and uninteresting in comparison, and Stewart and Arthur are entirely overshadowed by Barrymore and Arnold. 

Like Emile Zola, this film tackles the late-30’s political climate more manifestly. The Kirbys represent the ambitious, avaricious, pseudo-patriotic upper echelons who ruined society’s welfare and inadvertently aided the rise of fascism. The Sycamores are one last attempt to remember humanity, and a frightened audience of 1938 would have supported them no-end. It’s not dissimilar to the values purported by Pixar in Up and The Incredibles. There were many times when I felt pangs of happiness and fear for the Sycamores, but beneath that veneer a modern eye can see some contrivance. It is revealed that the family patriarch does not pay his taxes- an act which, in 1938, may well have been inspirational but to me came across as selfish and overly-eristic. 

Another downside is that the film climaxes with an emotional courtroom scene (I say again, who DOESN’T love a climactic courtroom scene), one that could have tied up all characters and storylines in a very Shakespearean way, but then ambles on for another 45 minutes or so. 

But despite this, I laughed plenty of times, I empathised with the characters, and while Take It With You may be over-idealised, it still has important lessons of friendship and solidarity that many of our most predatory entrepreneurs and politicians should learn.

Highlight

The Sycamores have a “Home Sweet Home” sign that keeps falling down, but no matter what, someone always puts it back up. A lovely, subtle symbol of their resilience.

Lowlight

The film goes on 30-45 minutes too long. A quick re-write could have made it shorter and sweeter.

Mark

8/10