User Reviews

Exotic Anglo-Indian beauty Merle Oberon, best known for her great turn as Cathy in the 1939 film version of 'Wuthering Heights', is at the centre of this pleasant, melodramatic 1941 offering. She plays Lydia MacMillan, an ageing wealthy philanthropist who has never married. Lydia and three of her suitors meet together early in the film, and in an extended flashback they, and the viewer, find out why the lovely, winsome girl never ended up with a ring on her finger.

Oberon gives a very good performance here. She is convincing as both the beguiling young Lydia and the mature, somewhat hardened older version of herself. Edna May Oliver, in a role she would have relished, is also fine as Oberon's aunt. Joseph Cotten is in the mix too, in one of his nice-guy roles.

It's a very sentimental, shamelessly romantic piece with some poignant moments.

6/10

If you can feel the pain and longing of others (and who can't?), this picture will break your heart. Yes, it is slow, even plodding at times, but the ending overrides all of that.

Being totally, hopelessly (or is it hopefully?) in love, she rejects the stability offered by a loyal, devoted suitor and friend for the memory of the one man who made her blood boil. Although he did not return to her, as promised, she thinks of him constantly and dares to cherish the hope that one day he may, after all, return to her.

She is an old woman when in fact he does reappear by chance in her life. Pathetically, this is to somehow justify the wasted years. She is trembling with anticipation, ready to learn why he was unable to return to her, his lover, eager to forgive even though it has cost her youth and happiness.

Need I go on? He doesn't even remember who she is. He was the one man in her life; she learns much too late that she was obviously one of a great many women in his.

More than a "women's picture" or conventional tearjerker, this one deserves your attention. Just be patient.

Right off the bat, I need to tell you that the makeup used to make Merle Oberon, Joseph Cotton, and George Reeves old as they narrate this tale, is atrocious. On the other hand, the brief ballroom scene early on in the film is exquisitely beautiful. The portion of the story regarding Lydia's work with blind children is quite charming. A brief sleigh race is quite well done. And yet, despite these sporadic highlights, this film doesn't quite come together. I kept thinking that more competent screen writing could have done wonders with putting the chapters of the story together in a more coherent manner.

Joseph Cotton was a fine, underrated actor, and he is wonderfully pleasant in this film. Merle Oberon was -- in some films -- remarkably beautiful. I say that in that way because in this film you will see her beauty in some scenes, but in other scenes -- providing you are aware of her biography -- you will see her face and truly wonder what her true heritage was.

This film benefits greatly from the presence of a wonderful female character actor -- Edna May Oliver. What a gem! And for once she got the billing she deserved...second in this film only to Merle Oberon. And, in this film you get to see George Reeves (later to play television's Superman) in a more substantial role than he had in most other films.

Despite my criticisms of this film, I never once was tempted to turn it off. It was ALMOST a great film.

There's no stopping this vision of loveliness, beautiful inside and out. Lydia (Merle Oberon) is a Bostonian socialite with the world at her feet who leaves a trail of broken hearts behind her because of her philanthropist endeavors. But 40 years after her youthful romances ended with her decision to use her money to put an end to human suffering, she is reunited with four of her former lovers as she is honored for her life's work.

Reminding me of a mid 20th Century version of Brooke Astor, Oberon ages from 20 to her early 60's, although her makeup makes her appear older in some scenes than she actually is. What counts, however, are the love stories in her life, and her discovery of a sweet blind boy who lives in squalor with his irascible mother (Sara Allgood). Oberon learned her feistiness from her matriarchal grandmother (the always delightful Edna May Oliver), a salty old money broad who hires one of the lovers (Joseph Cotten) as her doctor after firing her own. "The nerve of him telling me that my liver is perfect", Oliver grumbles. "I should run him out of Boston!" Oberon is of course ofter than her beloved granny, but she's full of fire herself, especially when going up against Allgood who threatens to soil her pretty dress with slop from her dirty house.

"It's the one reward of being a spinster. You decompose but you don't change", the aging Lydia claims after telling her secretary when Cotten arrives for a visit, "Take a good look at him. This is how your sweetheart will look in 40 years." The real star of the film, however, is the lavish black and white art direction and breathtaking photography, even more lush than "Gone With the Wind", which was filmed in color. There are more mirrors, ballrooms, harps, sequins and marbled floors than all of the Busby Berkley and Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals put together. It may be a bit much for some viewers to swallow, but overall, it is only slightly pretentious. Even I, a loather of all things phony, couldn't help but be swept away. Try not to fall head over heals in love with Oliver who gets so many great lines, telling Cotten as her doctor, "I'll have plenty of time to rest when I'm dead", and threatening Oberon with "I'll dance at your wedding, alive or dead!" What a way to live!

When is a remake not a remake is one that will keep the pedants occupied long past my own bedtime and on the whole I'm content to let them pick the bones out of it whilst I savor and/or am disappointed by the latest example to find itself on a screen near me. You could argue that one of the clues is when a remake retains the Original title, Kiss Of Death, Ocean's Eleven, The Manchurian Candidate etc but then along comes The Ladykillers, which retains both title and approximate plot of the Ealing entry but then moves the action several thousand miles West by several decades forward leading pedants back to Square One. When they change not only the country but also the title the additional factors that come into play are 1) are you, as a viewer, aware of this situation and 2) have you seen the original. I suspect that anyone who saw Julien Duvivier's magnum opus Un Carnet de bal will be disappointed, to say the least, with Lydia which he made four years later (1941) in Hollywood, whilst those who never saw, or perhaps have never heard of Un Carnet de bal, will find Lydia vastly enjoyable - it is, after all, the work of a Great director, albeit one saddled with a 'revised' script that tends to turn the original on its head. For the record Un Carnet de bal featured a recently widowed lady who, more or less on a whim, decides to trace the men with whom she danced at her very first ball as a teenager and is, inevitably, disappointed at what she discovers. The action was, then, set largely in the present with an elderly lady encountering elderly men; this time around the lady in question is a spinster and is reminiscing with three of her old beaux in the present which means that, by definition, the bulk of the film is flashbacks to forty years earlier. Those with no knowledge of Un Carnet de bal will relish the initial ball scene with shades of both Max Ophuls in the swirling camera and Busby Berkely in the phalanx of art deco lady harpists, and the lush score by Miklos Rosza whilst those who have seen Carnet will feel keenly the absence of Louis Jouvet, Fernandel etc and gaze open-mouthed at the hopelessly inadequate substitutes of whom only Joseph Cotton makes even a half-decent fist. Mixed feelings then; on the one hand it's still a Duvivier movie, on the other, there's only ONE Un Carnet de bal.

This reworking of Julien Duvivier's own earlier "Un Carnet De Bal" is heavily Hollywoodized (especially in making the heroine the founder of a "home for blind children", and later a patron of orphans), but well-made and successful on its own terms. There is nothing here to match the best segments of "Carnet" (the house-by-the-sea section comes closest), but Merle Oberon is exquisite and gives a multi-faceted performance. **1/2 out of 4.

Associate producer: Lee Garmes. Producer: Alexander Korda. Copyright 12 September 1941 by Alexander Korda Films, Inc. An Alexander Korda Production, released through United Artists. New York opening at the Radio City Music Hall: 18 September 1941 (ran 2 weeks). U.S. release: 26 September 1941. U.K. release: 16 February 1942. Australian release: 16 April 1942. Running times: 104 minutes (USA), 98 minutes (UK & Aust).

NOTES: A partial re-make of Duvivier's own 1937 Un Carnet de Bal which starred Marie Bell, Francoise Rosay, Harry Baur, Pierre Blanchar, Fernandel, Louis Jouvet and Raimu.

Rozsa was nominated for an Academy Award for his Music Scoring but lost out to Bernard Herrmann's All That Money Can Buy.

Despite producer Korda's efforts to showcase his wife by employing some of the finest technical talents available in 1941 Hollywood, the movie was not a financial success, barely recovering its expensive production costs.

Last film of John Halliday. (He died in Honolulu on 17 October 1947).

COMMENT: A wonderfully Gallic tale, full of ironies and surprises, stylishly embellished with some of the most lustrously photographed images we have ever seen. The sets too are absolute marvels of tasteful extravagance, and there's a hauntingly evocative music score by Miklos Rozsa. In short, on the technical side, just about everything needed for a movie masterpiece: a promisingly novel and potentially entertaining idea, a producer with money and acumen, a director with flair and imagination, a set designer of extraordinary intelligence and sweep, and a cameraman of such expertise and skill that the movie is always inventively lit through the eyes of both beauty and atmosphere.

Despite some most enjoyable set-pieces - including a contrast between Oberon's first ball as she romantically remembers it and as it actually was; and a rousing rendition of "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp" at Tony Pastor's Saloon, complete with singing waiters, a comic tenor, a be-tighted chorus and jostlingly enthusiastic patrons, all filmed in one crowded take as the camera pans from the stage to Oberon's back table - the movie comes slightly unstuck in its script and its cast.

Mrs Alexander Korda enacts the title role, which gives her not only the lion's share of the action but an off-camera commentary as well. Unfortunately she is something of a chatterbox. She never stops talking. This makes her characterization rather wearying. It's true that a man can put up with a foolish, chattering woman if he finds her attractive, so your enjoyment of Lydia will largely depend on whether you're an Oberon fan or otherwise.

It would be a pity to miss Lydia on Oberon's account, because it has so many other good things going for it, not least a very credible performance by that much-maligned actor George Reeves as a boorish football player. And of course any movie with John Halliday is always worth seeing, even when his role is fairly small as here. Many would say the same about Edna May Oliver. And I thought Alan Marshal was adequate, particularly if we remember that all but his last entrance portray Oberon's vision of him, which was certainly a long way from the Richard Mason of reality.

In short, a most interesting and fascinating movie which, despite its shortcomings, doesn't seem to deserve its current neglect.

Merle Oberon was wonderful here as the spinster who 40 years later meets with the men in her life and dutifully explains why marriage was out of the question with each of them. Did anyone notice that when she spoke as an older woman, she sounded just like Bette Davis when the latter played older parts as well.

In what turned out to be her final film, Edna May Oliver was in perfect form as her cantankerous grandmother, still with a heart of gold only because of her humble beginnings before she married into wealth.

Too bad that the film didn't concentrate a little more with Lydia's work with orphaned and blind children. The scenes depicting the children were certainly poignant.