Love is in the air… Christopher Strong (1933)/ Merrily We Go to Hell (1932), BFI Dorothy Arzner Season

 

I’m not sure if I watched this film looking for Dorothy Arzner but found her anyway in yet another film in which heteronormative behaviour is gently challenged. In both these films, there is a direct challenge to the sanctity of marriage with the wanderings of the heart illustrating the soulful complexities that can work against relationships forged by societal expectation and rigidly “enforced” moral rules. But as with Arzner’s other work, they show women’s agency and place them at the forefront of the moral challenges and, ultimate decisions.

 

Christopher Strong achieves this critique through the initial presentation of exemplars of this morality; a man who has always been faithful to his wife and a woman who has never been in love or in a relationship with a man. The previously unthinkable is soon drawn together as these two fall in love and begin a sexual adventure that is in complete opposition to their lives and morality up to that point. If the unexpected can happen to them it can happen to you, whatever it is.

 

Now then, the idea that Kathryn Hepburn’s daredevil Lady Cynthia Darrington might be tempted into lustful union by Colin Clive’s stuffed shirted Sir Christopher Strong, is another thing altogether; it’s a mismatch both in terms of acting ability and star power, Hepburn is magnetic and intense whilst Clive is rather dreary but maybe that’s the point. He would do more impressive work before his untimely death and I don’t mean to be unfair. This was, however, only Hepburn’s second screen role and first as the star and she carries the dramatic weight very well along with one other performer.

 

Sir Christopher and Lady Cynthia are brought together as the above examples by his daughter Monica (Helen Chandler) at a gathering of bright young things at a London party thrown by her aunt Carrie Valentine (Irene Browne). Monica is young and naïve and also involved in an affair with the very married Harry Rawlinson (Ralph Forbes) which might be one of the prompts for Aunt Carrie to declare a scavenger hunt in which the women must find that steadfast married man and the men a woman previously missed by Cupid’s arrow.

 

So it is that adventuress meets the politician and their priorities begin to change. What makes this story so poignant is the performance of Billie Burke as Lady Elaine Strong, who’s open-hearted ethereality – so well used in The Wizard of Oz as the Good Witch of the North – makes her perfect for the innocent wife at the heart of this otherwise two-sided love triangle. This being Arzner the drama pivots around Mother, Daughter and Flyer as much as the lovers.

 

Sir Christopher tries to stop Cynthia’s flying but we all know what that means: she needs to be free not just from him but from expectation. As she says, “courage can conquer even love…” and she has records to break and round the world races to win; she must be true to herself.

 

Directed by Dorothy Arzner with help from Tommy Atkins, the adaptation was written by Zoë Akins based on Gilbert Frankau’s novel. Hepburn and Arzner did not enjoy the smoothest of working relationships and it shows in some of the film’s unevenness but there are many fine moments, not least when Cynthia appears all dressed up as a silver moth for a fancy dress party… she looks unearthly and someone who should fly far, far away from Sir Christopher.

 

There are some fine dramatic moments, lovely-looking aircraft and a superbly suggestive sequence as highlighted by Pamela Hutchinson on the discussion at the start of the season in which we see only Cynthia’s braceleted forearm is seen as she and Christopher talk warmly in post-coital intimacy about their situation; has he brought her down to ground, is she bound by his gift… voluntarily, forever? It’s delightfully subtle film making.

“First she gave me gingerbread and then she gave me cake; and then she gave me crème de menthe for meeting her at the gate.”

  

In Merrily We Go to Hell (1932) Sylvia Sidney’s Joan Prentice is faced with similar decisions regarding Fredric March’s intoxicated Jerry Corbett who’s so out of touch with his feelings that he substitutes “swell” for “love” in all his praises. Swell is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary (no longer Moroccan-bound but online, if you know your Bing and Bob…) as a generalized term of enthusiasm but that’s not really good enough if you’re seriously committed and Joan simply deserves that.

 

This more comedic offering presents a heart-breaking take on a good man laid low by alcoholism; March’s Jerry is a charmer, even when drunk, but when he gets drunk he goes the whole hog and clearly there’s a deeper issue. Even his friend Vi (Esther Howard) warns her off before relenting knowing how intelligent, witty and kind he can be.

 

Joan has been used to every luxury Corbett. I never taught her the value of money only as I didn’t intend she’d ever have to know it…

 

Joan’s father, Mr. Prentice (George Irving) is altogether more suspicious and he offers Jerry $50,000 to give up Joan but he’s not taking any amount even though her father describes her as just a child… he wants them to wait until she is sure. But we are sure, says his daughter, we are sure, aren’t we Jerry. You’re sure of everything when you’re in love…

 

So, there’s a class issue here – as well as over-protective masculinity - but Joan is remarkably self-determined, she knows her own mind and is only let down by the men in her life. Her father is perfectly right in his instinct that Jerry might be a waster and the journalist soon does his level best to prove him right by getting drunk and incapable on the evening of the reception where the engagement is to be announced.

 

Joan’s in love enough to go through with the wedding but there’s a Arzner moment when, having forgotten the ring, Jerry has to use a bottle opener he finds in his tuxedo for Joan’s wedding ring. The worst of all starts, but Joan forgives him again as she does when he drops their Thanksgiving turkey… he’s trying and she sees something in him that he hasn’t quite found himself.

 

Encouraged/financed by Prentice, Jerry writes plays and finally gets one accepted, a satirical comedy called When Women Say No which is to be produced in New York. A success at least, what could possibly go wrong? Well, his former paramour Claire Hempstead (Adrianne Allen) is exactly what the doctor wouldn’t order, she’s encourages his drinking, rewrites some of her part and, of course, makes a play for the playwright…

 

Sir, if I said yes I should mean no and if I said no I should mean yes but my silence is all true and for you…

 

It’s almost as if Jerry wrote the play with Claire in mind and these lines reflect the ambivalence in his own communication and commitment, hiding his uncertainties behind witty circumlocution. On the opening night he succumbs to temptation deliberately placed in her dressing room and is pie-eyed by the time he is pulled on stage to take his bow. Joan asks his pal Buck (Richard "Skeets" Gallagher) to look after him but he’s senseless by the time he gets home in the early hours.

 

You can’t be a doormat!

 

I’m not a doormat, you don’t know how sweet and fine Jerry really… I know what I’m doing.

 

Soon he succumbs to Claire’s temptation whilst Joan responds by dating fellow cast member Charlie Baxter (some fellow called Cary Grant) and the rift deepens… Joan has to fight her father and her husband’s weakness/illness to get what she wants but it’s not a simple or straightforward path yet she has the strength.

 

March makes for a very good drunk but Sylvia Sidney is superb, her face alive with so much emotion, vulnerable, quaking and yet steadfast and resolute. Arzner may have been the only woman directing film in the Thirties but there were so many fascinating actresses and she worked with a number of them.

 

Merrily we go to Hell.

 

Merrily you go to your girlfriend.

 

This is no easy ride.

 

The spaces between… Notorious (Hitchcock, 1946), BFI re-release restoration

“Of all its qualities, the outstanding achievement is perhaps that in Notorious you have at once a maximum of stylization and a maximum of simplicity… “ Francois Truffaut interviewing Alfred Hitchcock

This sparkling new 4k restoration was one of the hits from this year’s Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna and is being screened at Bristol’s Cineredis before nationwide re-release starting at the BFI on 9^th August.

Hitchcock’s response confirmed Truffaut’s assertion and that he was aiming to make an espionage story without the usual violence but with as much insecurity and menace as possible. He also achieved this with baddies who have depth, love and fear of their own: Claude Rains’ Alexander Sebastian loves Ingrid Bergman’s Alicia Huberman every bit as much as Cary Grant’s Devlin and yet, whilst Alicia reciprocates the latter’s feelings she is also not without sympathy for Sebastian. We fall for the shocking intimacy between the double agent and the spy as much as for the “goodie” and for a while there is doubt.

Ingrid talking to an unidentified man: it's a full two minutes before we see Cary's face

This is one of the many things that continue to engage the modern viewer in this a-typical and quite gripping post-war spy story. The three leads are mesmerising with Bergman, inevitably, the centre of attention radiating a vivid spectrum of emotion and yet always holding something back. It’s in the tilt of her head as she nuzzles up against Cary Grant in one of innumerable close ups from Ted Tetzlaff’s camera, that we search to find her true meanings. Sometimes the screen is filled with a slow-motion waltz between the two lovers as their heads touch or, famously, kiss for three minutes… which may or may not have been the longest kiss in screen history or a virtual ménage a trois as Hitchcock later suggested with his notoriously crude humour.

Notorious approaches the genre from the most acute of angles from the start when Alicia sees her German father convicted of treason by a US court; even this is witnessed form the point of view of a court official looking through the courtroom doors as her father learns his fate.

We're all Peeping Toms for notoriety

After avoiding the press outside court we’re back at Alicia’s apartment for the drowning of sorrows 

and the rare sight of watching Ingrid Bergman getting drunk. There’s one man she doesn’t recognise and we don’t either as only the back of his head is shown. Its only after the party has broken up and the handover lands that we see the full face of Cary Grant’s FBI agent. She takes him drunk driving and only finds out he's a cop when she's stopped by a traffic cop.

More great camerawork greats Alicia's massive hangover the following morning arguably one of the Director's finest portrayals of the pained disorientation of over-indulgence; Cary appears at an out-of-focus angle whilst Ingrid stares desperately at her orange juice, barely able to track the man as he crosses over her room to stand over her: we've all been there although not with these two in the room. 

Under over hung

 There’s an instant connection between Alicia and Devlin – we expected it – but he’s there to do a job and she’s, frankly, a little bit out of control. Devlin persuades her to fly down to Rio and to do a job for the Bureau… she accepts with little to lose only to find that she has to romance a former admirer, Nazi sympathiser and friend of her father, Sebastian (Rains).

Love and loyalty are soon to be sorely tested as Sebastian truly falls for Alicia and, in order to obtain the information required, she agrees to marry him… Devlin is in too deep to accept this dispassionately and begins to distance himself from Alicia almost encouraging her to act the wife more than the spy… human nature undermining objectives.

The rapport between Rains and Bergman is real enough and we feel for the jilted agent until Alicia starts to spot the clues among Sebastian’s friends even though pretty much the only one acting like an anti-American is his beyond stern mother (Leopoldine Konstantin), who sees through Alicia and everyone else with the x-ray eyes of demented conviction.

Three minutes of breaking the Code's three-second rule

As Hitchcock plays with our heart strings – jealousy and betrayal are so potent – there is the further tension of Alicia’s double and possibly triple turn. The director builds new, awkward spaces between his two main lovers who are so intertwined when sure of their love whilst slowly applying the pressure of Alicia’s mission. The camera swoops down over a dinner party at Sebastian’s to show her holding the keys to his mysterious cellar among the Nazi’s surrounding her; one slip and she’s uncovered.

But those keys… the tension is almost unbearable as Alicia and Devlin search the cellar for clues among the bottles as the bar man upstairs gradually runs out of champagne: a trip downstairs is inevitable and, as usual Hitchcock has us flying by the seat of his pants.

The film is so well timed and balanced and follows a narrative full of threat but low on physical threat: there was so much fear in 1946 that it was simple a question of plugging in. Hitchcock’s choice of nuclear plotting was, ever so slightly too close to the bone and he aroused suspicion among the FBI…

Claude Rains comes between...

I can understand how it became one of Truffaut’s favourites, so well balanced throughout, lean and graceful just like its amazing stars. And, with that 4k restoration, it is simply irresistible!

Notorious is back in cinemas UK-wide from 9 August at BFI Southbank, Watershed Bristol, IFI Dublin, Filmhouse Edinburgh, Glasgow Film Theatre, Tyneside Cinema, Belmont Aberdeen, HOME Manchester, Broadway Nottingham, Arthouse Crouch End and selected cinemas UK-wide.

Full details are on the BFI website.

New trailer here too.

It will also be one of the highlights of BFI Southbank’s two-month Cary Grant season that begins on 1 August. It all looks great so here's some more of that...