PETER IBBETSON (1935)

A fascinating, if not quite successful, dark romantic fantasy about childhood sweethearts (Dickie Moore & Virginia Weidler are the kids who grow up to be Gary Cooper & Ann Harding) who are torn apart only to meet again as adults.  But now a sadistic husband (John Halliday) and la forza del destino separate them once again.  Only their ability to ‘dream-true’ as one holds them in a mystical bond of metaphysical love.  The stage play (adapted by co-star Constance Collier from a once popular George du Maurier novel) was a huge hit for young John Barrymore at his most poetic; the ladies swooned at matinees.  Helmer Henry Hathaway worked well with Coop, but was a bit rough & ready for a film that cries out for the quasi-religious romantic fatalism of a Frank Borzage.*  But even with the bumps in execution, there’s a lot of chemistry between Coop & the underrated Harding, along with a remarkably effective background score from Ernst Toch and staggering atmospheric lensing from Charles Lang.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY/LINK:  *Frank Borzage did come to Paramount the following year and did direct Coop & Halliday, but with Marlene Dietrich not Harding, in DESIRE/’36.  A romantic comedy that’s more like the work of its producer, Ernst Lubitsch, than of Borzage.  That’s Hollywood.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2020/04/desire-1936.html