WARNING: All Spoilers WriteUp! Absurd three-hankie soaper supposedly adapted from master Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello. In brief: Leaving his clinging daughter to her morbid fixation over her late mother, widower doctor Charles Korvin goes to an out-of-town conference where a night on the town brings him face-to-face with his past . . . his very much alive wife (the girl's mother) Merle Oberon, currently working as piano-playing partner to nightclub ‘insult caricaturist’ Claude Rains. Hours later, our doctor is saving the depressed Oberon from a botched suicide. Surviving this near miss, Oberon’s now determined to reclaim her role as mother even if it means pretending to be Doc’s new wife and never telling her teenage daughter the biological truth. Flashback to the happy young couple just getting started as a family when town gossip places Oberon with another man. Rather then ask about it, Dr. Korvin grabs their little girl and disappears. Now, fate has brought a second chance. Back in the present, the girl only resents Step-mom, Doc won’t speak up, ‘new’ Mom hides behind her fake identity and accepts blame for all unfortunate changes at home, and Rains glumly says ‘I told you so.’ Then, a birthday party brings an unexpected guest, the mystery man who broke up the family. And he doesn’t even recognize Oberon! Not that he didn’t care, but that he couldn’t see. Yikes! Turns out he was a blind man at the time, but now can see and eventually (thru touch) remembers Merle as his former (wait for it) not lover, but piano instructor! Yes, it was all a most unfortunate mistake. Now, if only they can get the girl to understand. Perhaps Claude Rains, in making her wish come true by fashioning from verbal description a caricature portrait of her late mom, can bring resolution. Sure enough, when he does, it looks just like . . . guess who. What a Freudian nightmare of a happy ending. With director William Dieterle completely at a loss on how to pull this off, you’re left to imagine how John M. Stahl, Frank Borzage or Douglas Sirk might have done it. Sure enough, Sirk almost did, starting development on a Rock Hudson remake, NEVER SAY GOODBYE/’56, before handing it off to director Jerry Hopper.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: That remake, NEVER SAY GOODBYE (not seen her), sounds pretty clever, setting the whole farrago as a romance split in two by Iron Curtain/Cold War sympathies.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Unlike most Hollywood stars of her generation, Merle Oberon keeps fiddling with her hair style within a single film. Here with about five different looks. Exhausting!
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