The 10 SADDEST old movies (I've watched)

NOTE: This entry was reposted over MovieFanFare, becoming one of their most popular articles with nearly 1,000 comments :)

Well, you know them. You're watching them and you're thinking:

"Mother of god, life can be awful. Why people have to suffer so much! I'm not gonna cry, I'm not gonna cry. Think of something positive. Or something that makes you angry. Oh no, a tear is coming. I'm gonna cough to try to pass this heavy lump in my throat. Oh, what did she or he have to say that line? That's the saddest thing..."

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Anyway, I sacrificed myself for you, and re-watched some of these films. I included movies in which the predominant feeling is sadness or those whose endings are very dramatic.

So, grab your tissues, here we go (warning: spoilers ahead):


10.- Les parapluies de Cherbourg (1964)
Plot: A girl and a boy fall in love and have a child but can't be together (review).
You can't hold your tears when...they say goodbye at the train station (watch).

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9.- Waterloo Bridge (1940)
Plot: Vivien Leigh thinks her boyfriend Robert Taylor is dead so she finds a socially rejected way to survive (mentioned in 5 movies in which tragedy was caused by chance).
You can't hold your tears when...the camera focus a little special object after some tragic event and then Robert remembers Vivien in the bridge (watch the ending).

8.- The Wedding Night (1935)
Plot: A writer (Gary Cooper) falls in love with a girl (Anna Stern) from a strict Pole family of farmers (review).
You can't hold your tears when...at the end, Gary looks out the window and "sees" the love of his life disappearing (watch a clip from the movie).

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7.- This Land Is Mine (1943)
Plot: Awesome Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara respectively play a coward teacher and his love interest in this World War II film (review).
You can't hold your tears when...Charles sees how a teacher he admired and respected is killed. But the worst part is the ending, one of the best fictional uses of the Declaration of Human Rights (watch).

6.- Camille (1936)
Plot: An impossible love between a courtesan (Greta Garbo) and Robert Taylor (listed in Favorite Movies).
You can't hold your tears when...Camille faces Lionel Barrymore and when Robert visits a "very weak" Camille in the last scene (watch the trailer).

5.- A star is born (1937)
Plot: After two actors marry, the success of their careers enter in a inversely proportional relationship (review and haiku).
You can't hold your tears when...the granny takes her granddaughter to the station. And when Fredric March embraces Janet Gaynor knowing it would be the last time and then he says "do you mind if I take just one more look?" (watch the second moment).

4.- Make Way for Tomorrow (1937)
Plot: An old couple (Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi) realize they have the worst children in the history of cinema (mention).
You can't hold your tears when...these people are humiliated and separated, which is practically the whole film (watch an example).

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3.- Three Comrades (1938)
Plot: After World War I, three German friends (Robert Taylor, Franchot Tone, Robert Young)  meet Margaret Sullavan and their lives change forever. Adapted by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
You can't hold your tears when...you watch the final scenes. Really. (here are some of them edited).

2.- The small one (1978)
Plot: A poor family have to get rid of their old donkey, a task that is entrusted to the kid (mention).
You can't hold your tears when...the last time I saw this one I cried my eyes out like the whole film, especially when the kid tries to cheer up his little animal and the ending (watch the whole film).

1.- Ever in my heart (1933)
Plot: Barbara Stanwyck marries a German before World War I (review).
You can't hold your tears when...the family faces tragic situations (I mean TRAGIC) and the ending (trailer).

Honorable mentions: Letter from an Unknown Woman (mini review), I Remember Mama (mention), Penny Serenade and Doctor Zhivago.

What do you think?

Haiku #15: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (and THANKS)

First of all, I wanted to thank all the people that commented on my review of this movie for the CMBA Blogathon, that would be: Rachel, Caftan Woman, Desiree, Grand Old Movies, R. D. Finch, Rick, DorianTB, Page, whisthilngypsy, FlickChick, John, ClassicBecky, Audrey, ClassicFilmBoy, The Lady Eve & Jacqueline T. Lynch.

Seriously guys, I'm very honored. This one is for you:

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

"Oh, she's gone, she's gone!
The darkness is returning.
The bells are crying"

This is an entry for the Best For Film Hollywood Haikus blogging competition. Enter now.

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CMBA Movies of 1939 Blogathon: The Hunchback of Notre Dame

(...)

Lost in a crowd of greats.

Not a single Oscar. 

That's showbiz"

Maureen O'Hara, 'Tis Herself.

If there's a period in Human History I would NOT have liked to be born in, that would be Medieval Europe. Think about it: invasions, lack of education for common people, diseases, abuses, wars, dirtiness...and even when it's fiction, if there's a character I would not like to be, that's Esmeralda, the gypsy. I mean you have to add to the whole terrible scenario, the fact of being persecuted because of your race, the fact that a creepy archdeacon wants to kill/torture you because he desires you, oh, that in a creepy night, after being chased by an ugly-looking hunchback, you get married with a stranger because a gang of thieves wanted to kill him.

I never liked this novel by Victor Hugo because it give me the creeps. I didn't even see the Disney version. I found the whole thing disgusting.

Then one day I saw the 1939 version (William Dieterle) with my mom on TCM. Yes, all the creepy and disgusting elements were there. And under Dieterle's direction, they were even maximized. An aggresive and vulgar multitude gathers to see people being punished or executed. They're shown laughing at others' disgraces. They become one character, an obscure, noisy character under dark lighting, in a setting that makes you feel the dirtiness of the city, mud, puddles; Paris never looked less charming.

But Charles Laughton was also there.

And he was giving his poor character a soul, some kind of dignity amid such disgrace and terrible times. The hunchback says that he's not human, not a beast. And Charles plays him like a bit of both. Sometimes he behaves like a happy child playing with a new toy, the next like a cornered animal. With his one real eye visible, Charles stares Esmeralda like a sad puppy looking for affection and then like a young man --the character was 24 years old-- hopelessly in love.

Charles is one of the reason why this film is so memorable. What a terrific performer he was. He acted putting together the main powerful core of his characters and rich details, everything in a perfect combination, the kind of combination that makes you think that that's it, there's not other way to play it.

And when you add to his performance the great work from Perc Westmore, at the time the number one makeup man in the picture business, well it just can't get any better.

Maureen O'Hara remembers in her entertaining autobiography (review), how Charles became the hunchback:

When I saw Laughton for the first time as Quasimodo, I almost fell over. I took one look at him and gasped,  "Good God, Charles. Is that really you?" He answered me with a wink and then limped off. The transformation was unbelievable, and was accomplished without any of the advance technology used today (...)

Laughton wanted the hunchback's face to look lopsided, and so the mask had to pull the right side of his face up and the left down. A false eye was placed on the left cheek and Laughton wore colored contact lens in his right eye to give it a cloudy look. The hump itself weighed four pounds and consisted of an aluminium scaffold filled with foam rubber and then covered with a thin layer of elastic. Laughton wanted it heavy so he cold feel the physical pain of walking with it. He also had an inch added to the stole of his left shoe so that one leg would be shorter than the other, creating a natural limp.

When I entered this blogathon, I thought hell yeah, what a great year was 1939...for films. Because that year was a terrible time for humanity. While they were filming, the World War II began. Maureen remembers two related memorable moments: the first, when Hitler invaded Poland.The cast and crew arrived fearful to the set. Everyone started trying to comfort each other. Charles, dressed as Quasimodo, was sitting on his chair, absent minded and silent. But then he stood and started recitig the Gettysburg Address. Like a prayer. Everyone listened to him, moved. Maureen says it was the greatest single piece of acting she has ever seen.

The second occurred when England and France declared war on Germany. They had to shoot the scene when Quasimodo rings the bells for Esmeralda:

It was supposed to be an expression of the hunchback's love for her. But Laughton was so overcome with pain that the emotion of the scene swept him away. He began ringing the bells and then it grew into something that trascended the film. He rang them with a ferocity that I had never seen in him before. The sound was almost deafening. Everybody, including Dieterly, was so overcome we all forgot we were shooting a scene. Dieterle forgot to call  "Cut'' when the scene ended, and Laughton kept ringing the bells until he collapsed from exhaustion.

Afterward. I went to see him in his tent. "Charles, are you all right?" I asked. "It just took me over, Maureen" he replied. "I couldn't even think of Esmeralda up there at all. I could only think of the poor people out there going to fight that bloody, bloody war. To arouse the world, to stop that terrible blutchery! Awake! Awake! That's all I could feel!

In many ways, the war helped Laughton's performance. It became his nexus. It was the voice which he could express the world's pain and suffering "

And Maureen O'Hara --Charles' protégée (he even wanted to adopt her)-- as Esmeralda brings a special light to the film. Dieterle's cameras captured forever this fresh new face, an eigtheen year old Irish girl making her first film in the States. I especially like the scenes in which she talks to Virgin Mary, when she gives water to Quasimodo and when she claims her innocence before the guilty monk. And after re-watching this I thought how great is that Maureen is still with us.

There are some parts in the story that I don't get though. At the end Quasimodo wants to save Esmeralda, the thieves want to save Esmeralda, her husband wants to save her, the Church wants to save her, the King wants to save her...but somehow they all end up confronting each other, instead of uniting against the noble men that want to execute her. As The Captain & Cool Hand Luke would say, what we have here is a failure to communicate :)

But there are more things to like about this film, like Harry Davenport as the The King, who was kind but still mixed goverment, religion and justice. Or Cedric Hardwicke as Frollo, the bad archdeacon (aka the guy with terrible hair cut), who makes his character detestable by working with his eyes when he is near Esmeralda, making you know all about his obscure thoughts. Just check the still. We could name it "My eyes are up here".

I'd like to end this post with a point that talks about human nature. When the people is jollilly watching the Hunchback being crowned king of fools, The King says: 

One shrinks from the ugly, yet wants to look at it. There's a devilish fascination in it. We extract pleasure from horror. 

And I think that's part of us. What makes show business and TV channels and newspapers covering stories of 'celebrities' and people that voluntarily expose themselves so succesful. What makes news channels give the most shocking news first. Maybe we're still a crowd laughing at a human being, finding some kind of wicked entertainment in others' misfortunes and lack of judgement.

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• This entry is part of the CMBA Movies of 1939 Blogathon, hosted by Page and Becky. Check wonderful reviews of the other many great movies released that year, here.
• This film is available on Amazon ($5.49)
  
• You can check my review of Maureen O'Hara's autobiography here. I've also reviewed a bunch of her films including the great This Land is Mine also with Charles Laughton;  The Parent Trap, The Black Swan & Only the lonely. I also included her in my list of performers that should have won an Oscar.
• Remember that you can follow me on Twitter and Facebook :)

Coming around again...

...after committing one of the most terrible sins in blogging: not posting in ages (well, it was like a week and a half). Let me start by telling you that —just like Regina Lampert said—I'm not a lady of leisure anymore. I got that good journalism internship offer that I told you about, so I'll be very busy from 9.30 am to 19 pm starting tomorrow and ending in September.

So this is gonna be the last long post that you read in my blog in months (I've planned to answer a survey that will provide me an easy to make post per day for a month). And this last long post it's gonna be very random, since I'm gonna try to cover all the things I didn't wrote about last week. So fasten your seat belts, it's gonna be a bumpy post.

Finished "The secret lives of a princess" by James Spada and I tell you, I wouldn't trade my life for Grace's. I mean, she had an awful family, her father was obsessed with success but never said something nice about her little girl, even when she won an Oscar; her sisters were abusive when she was a kid, and her mother sold stories about Grace to the press! Had lots of famous lovers but couldn't settle down with any of them, mainly because of her family opposition. Loved to act, was great at it, but her studio (when it didn't lend her to others) just gave her stupid parts. Then she marries the Prince —who had a list of possible Hollywood actresses to wed just to improve Monaco image— in a ceremony paid by MGM. She has to suffer all the archaic customs of the palace, but she was prohibited to make another movie, even when Hitch offered a role in "Marnie". The only escape she found was raising her kids the better she could, but the girls turn out to be rebels and had dissipated lives. AND then she died in a car accident. So, no thanks, poor Grace.

This knowledge increased my inner debate about whether is good or not to classic film fans to investigate the private lives of performers and directors. I mean, sometimes you really loved someone's work, but then you read something bad about their behavior, something sad about their lives, or you realize that they beliefs are very very different to your own, and then what was more important —the films— are kind of overshadow to your eyes by this knowledge. Anyway, it doesn't happen to me frequently, one of my cases is Norma Shearer (I've been avoiding watching more of her movies) because I read somewhere that she got the parts mostly because she was married to Irving Thalberg.  And of course, it does happen the other way around, for example, I appreciate the work of Myrna Loy even more since I learned about her fight for human rights. 

Anyway, been reading "People will talk" by John Kobal, and I want to read more of his work. It's like any of us, classic movie lovers, have had the opportunity to sit down and chat with the stars. Loved his interviews with Gloria Swanson, Ingrid Bergman, Mae West and other famous actresses and professionals related to movies. Loved the way he describes the way the stars treated him (like Marlene Dietrich putting him up in her hotel room, since he had traveled a long distance and didn't have a place to stay). Or the way the stars of silent films described their work, so vividly...If you find this book, buy it, I'm loving it.

Well I saw a lot of movies in May, I talk about the most of them in previous mini-reviews. But the last two weeks a saw three great films:

a) I remember mama: Irene Dunne was a great actress. When you see her in this film, you forget who she is, you forget the other roles she played, because she really is the Norwegian immigrant mother. There are some scenes that break your heart, especially when she goes to visit her little girl at the hospital.

b) Witness for the prosecution: I love Billy Wilder, I just had forgotten how much I loved him. My Film Review teacher always said that we should avoid treating the subjects as masters, but he was one. Laughton was terrific, Marlene was terrific, Tyrone Power was great, and Agatha Christie did it again.

c) Three Comrades: Maybe the movie written by Francis Scott Fitzgerald is the weakest of the three, but I liked it very much. Saw it last night and I couldn't sleep well. Saw the scenes over and over in my mind. Robert Taylor is #7 in my top 25 favorite classic actors (someday I'm gonna update and translate that post), and I don't care if his characters are pretty much the same in every movie I've seen him in, I always enjoy his presence on screen. I just had seen Margaret Sullavan in the "Shop around the corner" but her performance is really heartbreaking, her character seem so defenseless, but at the same time strong minded and generous. 

Well, I can't write more, because we're too many in this house using one computer, but let me finish this post with this picture I captured from "Stardust, the Bette Davis story" I saw today. Don't you think that the classic stars can look even more modern than modern actors? I want to see this picture in the next Everlast campaign :) 

Well, see ya tomorrow with the first post of this meme.