NO SAD SONGS FOR ME (1950)

Back in 1939, Bette Davis died bravely of ‘Prognosis Negative’ in DARK VICTORY.  Now, a decade later, Margaret Sullavan, returning to the screen one last time after seven years off, was allowed to bravely say the forbidden word: ‘cancer.’  (Note self-congratulatory poster above.)  Though not naming anything more specific about what would carry her off in a few months, Doctor John McIntire also gets to mention the disease . . . once, and that’s it.  Progress!  In this relatively sobersided ‘Women’s Weepie,’ set in the sort of ‘50s suburban housing development you’d soon find on dozens of tv sit-coms, lackluster Wendell Corey is the busy husband, always off on a job while Sullavan wastes away.  Worse, he’s just hired attractive female assistant Viveca Lindfors.  A threatening triangulation turned opportunity/continuity for Sullavan who bypasses jealousy for matchmaking.  A perfect replacement for a soon-to-be grieving widower and a step-mom to daughter Natalie Wood.  (Excellent as always in her child star days.)  It all should make for a sticky piece of maudlin sentimentality, but director Rudolph Maté, just off D.O.A./’49, must have noticed the bizarrely similar story trajectories in two incompatible genres: Mortality calling in film noir and Women’s Weepie.  To their credit, both films honestly modest in their totally different ways.  And if Edmund O’Brien sweats his way thru the noir conventions of D.O.A., here Sullavan, looking decidedly worn since last seen, and done with the movies at only 41, yet finds under cinematographer Joseph Walker’s gentle care, a way to grow luminescent as the film goes on and she starts to lose the battle.  In her last scenes, reviving a sort of fragile beauty thru sheer will, acting and careful lighting.*

SCEWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Ingrid Bergman was the champ at growing more beautiful the sicker she got.  See GASLIGHT/’44, THE BELLS OF ST. MARY/’45 and NOTORIOUS/’44.

DOUBLE-BILL: Robert Donat , who had real health issues to work thru, brought unusual intelligence, acceptance & underplaying on a male iteration of ‘Women’s Weepie’ mortality tropes in LEASE OF LIFE/’54.    https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/06/lease-of-life-1954.html