Post by Brad Nelson on Oct 15, 2020 7:49:12 GMT -8
In the pre-CODE days, movies could be a little racier, although 1931’s Possessed is fairly tame, even somewhat lame.
Joan Crawford plays Marian Martin, a small-town girl who wants comfort and riches and will not settle for small-town life. She meets a man on a train that is passing through. It’s some kind of luxury train and Marian strikes up a conversation with a middle-aged libertine who is living the high (highball) life. He gives her his card and tells her to come visit him in New York if she is ever there.
She does just that, much to his surprise and annoyance. While visiting this somewhat drunken Wally Stuart she meets Mark Whitney (Clark Gable) who has stopped by his friend’s place to do whatever it is that the idle rich do. And Whitney is very rich.
Then instead of exploring this relationship (the main fault of the movie), we fast forward three years. Marian Martin and Mark Whitney are an item. Mark is already married (another main fault…we never meet his wife) but Marian accepts the position of a pampered kept woman.
But she begins to chafe at those boundaries. She knows she has made a deal with the devil and self-consciously states something like “A woman can have anything she wants as long as she doesn’t fall in love.”
It’s a good line (one of the few) delivered by Crawford. But not much more in this movie clicks. The only thing slightly racy about it is the bold acceptance of the idea of a kept woman. Yeah, they apparently want to eventually get married at the end but we don’t see how that works out.
Wallace Ford is good and then bad as Al Manning, the hometown fellow who had been bugging Marian Martin to marry him. He gets the message that Marian wants riches and comforts. We run into him later in New York. He tells the story of Marian’s mother (with whom he remained on good terms) giving him the money that Marian had been sending her. He built up a big business…so big that he came to New York and sought out Mark Whitney to help him secure a big contract.
And then this character turns from a sort of likable (if annoying) small-town Jimmy Stewart to an absolute sap. Despite the fairly lame script, they do throw some star power at it. But it’s not enough to save it.
The early scenes of Marian ogling the rich scenes in each passing luxury rail car at the beginning of the movie promise something very well-crafted. But the flair fades and we get a run-of-the-mill story that (because of the flash-forward) doesn’t even really bother to tell itself. You sort of wondered why they bothered. The gimmicks they use to try to draw out a story don’t work.
But there are good scenes here and there. Joan Crawford does some nice singing at a piano and takes requests. There’s some charm here and there. But these scenes are built on a framework of scripted sand.
Joan Crawford plays Marian Martin, a small-town girl who wants comfort and riches and will not settle for small-town life. She meets a man on a train that is passing through. It’s some kind of luxury train and Marian strikes up a conversation with a middle-aged libertine who is living the high (highball) life. He gives her his card and tells her to come visit him in New York if she is ever there.
She does just that, much to his surprise and annoyance. While visiting this somewhat drunken Wally Stuart she meets Mark Whitney (Clark Gable) who has stopped by his friend’s place to do whatever it is that the idle rich do. And Whitney is very rich.
Then instead of exploring this relationship (the main fault of the movie), we fast forward three years. Marian Martin and Mark Whitney are an item. Mark is already married (another main fault…we never meet his wife) but Marian accepts the position of a pampered kept woman.
But she begins to chafe at those boundaries. She knows she has made a deal with the devil and self-consciously states something like “A woman can have anything she wants as long as she doesn’t fall in love.”
It’s a good line (one of the few) delivered by Crawford. But not much more in this movie clicks. The only thing slightly racy about it is the bold acceptance of the idea of a kept woman. Yeah, they apparently want to eventually get married at the end but we don’t see how that works out.
Wallace Ford is good and then bad as Al Manning, the hometown fellow who had been bugging Marian Martin to marry him. He gets the message that Marian wants riches and comforts. We run into him later in New York. He tells the story of Marian’s mother (with whom he remained on good terms) giving him the money that Marian had been sending her. He built up a big business…so big that he came to New York and sought out Mark Whitney to help him secure a big contract.
And then this character turns from a sort of likable (if annoying) small-town Jimmy Stewart to an absolute sap. Despite the fairly lame script, they do throw some star power at it. But it’s not enough to save it.
The early scenes of Marian ogling the rich scenes in each passing luxury rail car at the beginning of the movie promise something very well-crafted. But the flair fades and we get a run-of-the-mill story that (because of the flash-forward) doesn’t even really bother to tell itself. You sort of wondered why they bothered. The gimmicks they use to try to draw out a story don’t work.
But there are good scenes here and there. Joan Crawford does some nice singing at a piano and takes requests. There’s some charm here and there. But these scenes are built on a framework of scripted sand.