Ever in my heart (1933): another good film from Miss Stanwyck

After reading Miss Stanwyck's biography by Al DiOrio last month, I had a list of the movies from her I wanted to see just because of the author's reviews. "Ever in my heart" (Archie Mayo, 1933) was one of them...

1909, USA. Barbara --is there a statue or something where I can go and pay respects to her genius?-- decides not to marry Ralph Bellamy playing a little character, but one of his friends, a nice hardworking and very German doctor played by Otto Kruger. Everything goes swimmingly: they buy a little German dog, have a little blond boy and a nice home. They also have lots of friends that are even more friendly when the doctor becomes a citizen of the United States. But here comes the switch: World War I. 

The movie deals with subjects like war, patriotism and fear from a very domestic point of view, which makes it painful to see. You see how the main characters built a life with love and how it's menaced just because the place they were born. You see how the world around them becomes more and more intolerant and aggressive and how the doctor and her wife are epically beaten, mentally and even physically, by circumstances, their old friends, her family and society.

While watching how director Archie Mayo and the screenwriters decided to visually build the main character's relationship, I remembered two other films: "Penny Serenade" (George Stevens; 1941) and "Blonde Venus" (Josef von Sternberg, 1932). Like these movies, "Ever in my heart" shows a really well-developed relationship united by a cute child, something that is always captivating, making the viewers even more attached to the their difficult situation. In "Penny Serenade" you see all the process that implies taking care of a baby, like not being able to sleep at night; in "Blonde Venus" Marlene lovingly gives her kid baths and tries to take care of him during the most difficult moments of their escape. Well, in this one, for example, there's a very intimate scene of Barbara and her husband talking relaxedly about the sleeping baby that ends when she breastfeed the child. And like in "Blonde Venus", the couple doesn't care about cultural differences and has a especial German song that unites them in difficult moments trough the film (and makes you weep every time they quote its lines).

One of the few things that reduces the kudos I give to this film, is the very structured way to present each scene. You can easily name each part like book chapters, like "The meeting" and "Happy days of marriage" or whatever and that is helped by a fade to black effect every time a "chapter" ends. This also happened in "Penny Serenade" but in that one each scene corresponded to Irene Dunne's different memories, so they worked fine as separated elements. Anyway, this just caught my attention the first half of the movie. 

I like the fact that in this film patriotism is seen as something negative, that separates human beings, leading them to irrationality, make things bitter (in my mind, there shouldn't be countries or boundaries). Because of this, in the final, very dramatic and well acted scene, Barbara has to make a radical decision, that at the end combines the two forces of the film: love (for her husband) and love (for her compatriots). See it to know what she finally chose. 

So this is one of the movies I hadn't seen if I totally relied on Imdb's ratings (yeah, I always use them as guide) because it had only 6.6. I'd give it a 7.3 which is a great difference in my books. And if you can't find it I can upload it to Youtube...sometime :)