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Saturday, October 21, 2017

B.F.'s DAUGHTER (1948)

That’d be Barbara Stanwyck, daughter of mega-millionaire/ industrialist Charles Coburn, whose life-plan is upended when she ‘sees plain’ long time fiancé Richard Hart (proper, conservative, handsome but dull) and falls hard, fast & unexpectedly for cash-strapped Van Heflin’s left-wing econ prof & radical lecturer. And at the height of The Depression. Not a bad set-up, from the John P. Marquand novel, known for uppercrust Bostonians & MR. MOTO, with scripter Luther Davis fresh off a hit on THE HUCKSTERS/’47. But the film hasn’t an ounce of imagination in presentation, M-G-M vet megger Robert Z. Leonard doggedly going thru the motions with exactly one interesting shot in the whole pic. (Heflin seated uncomfortably on a couch outside Coburn’s stadium-sized office where a ‘30s-style mural shows a laborer with a sledgehammer apparently ready to strike.) The drama comes out of Stanwyck’s & Heflin’s lifestyle compromises, and when she does something in secret with Papa’s money to either help his career or sabotage his political principles. It almost comes across. But the last act, when he makes a success & spends WWII working for FDR, plays out as a dramatic dodge. Perhaps at a studio less relentlessly Republican, this might have added up.

DOUBLE-BILL: Philip Barry’s HOLIDAY/’38 tackles similar issues with class, style, tenderness & laughs. Plus an unbeatable cast (Grant, Hepburn, Ayres, Horton) under George Cukor & lenser Franz Planer.

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