Two fun excursions into 1930s elegance
Yes, I am on a classic movie kick.
Sometimes when I look at how lush some 1930s movies were with their fancy elegant gowns and gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, it is almost a physical pleasure...
I mean, look at this:
These are Hedy Lamarr and Robert Taylor in Lady of the Tropics, a doomed romance set in Vietnam the way only MGM made it look (any resemblance to real Vietnam is surely non-existent). Robert Taylor is an American on tour who falls madly in love with the gorgeous Hedy Lamarr (and who could blame him). However, *gasp* Hedy is a half-blood, with a white father and a Vietnamese mother - she and others like her are ostracized by the prejudiced European society (this movie is unintentionally quite telling about matter-of-fact and prevalent racism of the time). Nobody would blame Taylor for a fling but when he goes and marries her, this is clearly taking things too far! The lovebirds soon find that not only can they not live on love alone (nobody will hire Taylor now because he married a non-white woman who also used to be *gasp* someone else's mistress) but even Taylor's application for a passport for his wife so they can go back to America is stalled. For his own good, of course. *gag* Bad things happen. Really really bad things. It's all angsty and romantic and wonderfully tragic, but permit me to note that at the end, Hedy is dead (and Taylor inconsolable) thus puttting an end to plainly icky interracial cooties. To have a successful and viable interracial relationship in a 1930s movie was plainly impossible - it could show the love as true and other people bigoted, but that was as far as a movie of the time was willing to go.
Another glossy and delicious melodrama (decidedly undoomed, as it came from Pre-Code days) is the Joan Crawford/Clark Gable bonbon Possessed.
Just look at her dress. *weeps in envy and desire*
Even the title is somewhat provocative, invoking, rightly, carnal desires and kept women. Joan plays a small town girl with big dreams, who will do anything to get out of the slums and a hard life with a dull boyfriend. Cue her going to a big city armed with nothing but her stunning looks and her confidence. It is there she meets the upper-class Clark Gable. No nonsense and secure in what she wants, she offers to be his mistress in exchange for comforts of life. Since it's Joan Crawford decades before wire hangers (she really used to be gorgeous!) he readily accepts. Since it's Clark Gable, she finds herself in love with him. But can his political career survive the scandal of having a mistress? Will he be insane enough to propose to a low-class kept woman? Will they try to outsacrifice each other in delicious emo melodrama? You bet. I have read some hilarious comments on this movie which boiled down to 'every Depression-era woman would love to be so possessed - shamed by having to make out with Clark Gable who showers her with jewels.' Too true.
And to cross-pollinate, a still from Comrade X, starring Possessed's Gable and LoT's Hedy Lamarr:
Is it any wonder I love kdramas - just look at the plots of these!
(Possessed is available on DVD and LoT is not. TCM plays it occasionally though).
Sometimes when I look at how lush some 1930s movies were with their fancy elegant gowns and gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, it is almost a physical pleasure...
I mean, look at this:
These are Hedy Lamarr and Robert Taylor in Lady of the Tropics, a doomed romance set in Vietnam the way only MGM made it look (any resemblance to real Vietnam is surely non-existent). Robert Taylor is an American on tour who falls madly in love with the gorgeous Hedy Lamarr (and who could blame him). However, *gasp* Hedy is a half-blood, with a white father and a Vietnamese mother - she and others like her are ostracized by the prejudiced European society (this movie is unintentionally quite telling about matter-of-fact and prevalent racism of the time). Nobody would blame Taylor for a fling but when he goes and marries her, this is clearly taking things too far! The lovebirds soon find that not only can they not live on love alone (nobody will hire Taylor now because he married a non-white woman who also used to be *gasp* someone else's mistress) but even Taylor's application for a passport for his wife so they can go back to America is stalled. For his own good, of course. *gag* Bad things happen. Really really bad things. It's all angsty and romantic and wonderfully tragic, but permit me to note that at the end, Hedy is dead (and Taylor inconsolable) thus puttting an end to plainly icky interracial cooties. To have a successful and viable interracial relationship in a 1930s movie was plainly impossible - it could show the love as true and other people bigoted, but that was as far as a movie of the time was willing to go.
Another glossy and delicious melodrama (decidedly undoomed, as it came from Pre-Code days) is the Joan Crawford/Clark Gable bonbon Possessed.
Just look at her dress. *weeps in envy and desire*
Even the title is somewhat provocative, invoking, rightly, carnal desires and kept women. Joan plays a small town girl with big dreams, who will do anything to get out of the slums and a hard life with a dull boyfriend. Cue her going to a big city armed with nothing but her stunning looks and her confidence. It is there she meets the upper-class Clark Gable. No nonsense and secure in what she wants, she offers to be his mistress in exchange for comforts of life. Since it's Joan Crawford decades before wire hangers (she really used to be gorgeous!) he readily accepts. Since it's Clark Gable, she finds herself in love with him. But can his political career survive the scandal of having a mistress? Will he be insane enough to propose to a low-class kept woman? Will they try to outsacrifice each other in delicious emo melodrama? You bet. I have read some hilarious comments on this movie which boiled down to 'every Depression-era woman would love to be so possessed - shamed by having to make out with Clark Gable who showers her with jewels.' Too true.
And to cross-pollinate, a still from Comrade X, starring Possessed's Gable and LoT's Hedy Lamarr:
Is it any wonder I love kdramas - just look at the plots of these!
(Possessed is available on DVD and LoT is not. TCM plays it occasionally though).