Leslie Howard breaks the time continuum in this romantic piece of tragic whimsy, producing & starring on B’way before bringing it to Hollywood four years later. Based on an unfinished Henry James novel (really?), Howard is both engaged & disengaged from his present day fiancée, lost in a morbid obsession with an ancestor’s past, informed by the man’s diary and a George Romney 18th century portrait. So consumed with the past, he doesn’t seem to be ‘quite there.’ And he’s not; having traveled back to his preferred era where he attempts to join in the London society of the late 1700s. But he wrong foots it, giving himself away thru too much knowledge & enthusiasm. The closer he gets to people, the more he frightens them away. All but the younger sister of the woman the diary says he’s fated to marry. With his dream past spoiled and present day life impossible, he sees no way out. This should all be a bit ridiculous . . . and it is! Yet the combination of Howard’s delicacy; the lack of fancy in Frank Lloyd’s typically square direction, between award-winning work on CAVALCADE/’33 and MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY/’35, his limitations help keep things relatively dry; and the connection Howard makes with unheralded co-star Heather Angel; give off a powerful, not to say unexpected, emotional glow in a film that ends without compromise.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: Similar impossible romantic folly with Gary Cooper & Ann Harding in PETER IBBETSON/’35. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2009/03/peter-ibbetson-1935.html
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Like many early ‘30s FOX films, the ones made before merging with 20th CENTURY, this once high-profile pic (Howard picking up an Oscar nom.) has largely slipped out of circulation.
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