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TopBilled

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Posts posted by TopBilled

    TCM and Other Sources for Classic Film

    in General Discussions

    Posted

    2 hours ago, Fading Fast said:

    One goal for tomorrow will be to try not to watch "The Day the Earth Stood Still" again as I have other things to get done and other never-seen movies I should use my movie-watching time for, but alas, I have a weak will and will, thus, probably end up watching  some or all of it again.  But at least there's this, is time spent with Patricia Neal ever really wasted? 

    Time watching Patricia Neal is never wasted. 

    • Like 2

    Neglected films...how would you define a film that's neglected?

    in General Discussions

    Posted

    43 minutes ago, Fading Fast said:

    Kicking around in my drafts were my comments on this one ⇧ that I never posted, so now seems a good opportunity; although, one never looks good following @TopBilled's reviews. It always feels like being the movie on after "Citizen Kane."

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    Next Time We Love from 1936 with Margaret Sullavan, Jimmy Stewart and Ray Milland
     
     
    Ursula Parrott wrote popular romantic novels in the 1920s and 1930s, many of which were made into successful movies. The novels were a bit formulaic, but with strong female characters, they were ahead of their time and frequently risque, covering topics like divorce, extra-marital affairs and children born out of wedlock.
     
    In pre-code Hollywood (1930-1934), the movies made from her novels hewed to the books' stories as those topics had yet to be deemed out of bounds by the Motion Picture Production Code. Unfortunately, movies made later, such as Next Time We Love (a title awkwardly changed from the book's Next Time We Live), were so altered to fit the Code's standards that the point of the story was often lost by the time Hollywood was done with it.
     
    Next Time We Love suffers this fate as Tinseltown's Code-forced rewrite undid the core of the story and the motivation of the characters. It left us with a broken tale of young love that's confusing as heck as we don't really understand why it's broken.
     
    Jimmy Stewart plays a young newspaper man who meets a college student / actress wannabe  played by Margaret Sullavan. They fall deeply in love, get married and, initially, struggle to pay the bills after he loses his job as a foreign correspondent that he, effectively, quits in order to be with her when their first child is born. 
     
    Up to now, the story is working, but then it all gets messed up in a way that any normal couple would have worked out with a few heart-to-heart conversations. Instead, Stewart's best friend, played by young and handsome Ray Milland, helps Sullavan restart her acting career  (she stopped when she was pregnant). She quickly becomes successful.
     
    With Sullavan now the primary earner in the family, Stewart's ego is bruised, so she, unbeknownst to him, gets him his foreign correspondent's job back. The rest of the movie is these two putatively deeply in love people being too proud to admit they want to be together, so they pursue their careers which take them further and farther (he goes overseas, she to Hollywood) apart. 
     
    The climax, a few years later, has more Code-driven nonsense leading to a marriage-is-a-wonderful-institution ending that made the entire movie silly unless you believe an articulate newspaper man and intelligent actress were incapable of having one real conversation over several years. There's also a side story about Milland's character, a successful actor himself, pinning away for Sullavan that was denuded of all the grit it had in the book by the Motion Picture Code.
     
    Jimmy Stewart, Ray Milland and Margaret Sullavan, all talented actors, are at the peak of their youthful pulchritude in this one, so the movie is worth one watch just to enjoy their performances. There's also some fun time travel to the mid 1930s, especially to that era's incredibly energized newspaper industry.
     
    Unfortunately, though, the Motion Picture Production Code so mangled Ursula Parrot's light but enjoyable page-turner story that by the time it made it to the screen under the tortured title Next Time We Love, it made almost no sense. Sometimes you could read between the lines in a movie to get to the real story, but not in this one. Instead, you really do have to read the book. 
     
    Somehow, the arbiters of 1930s morality had decided Americans could handle reading about the messiness of real life in books, but they were not mature enough to see that same messiness portrayed on screen. 

    I enjoy reading your reviews...and appreciate your sharing them on this thread.

    • Thanks 1

    Neglected films...how would you define a film that's neglected?

    in General Discussions

    Posted

    Today's neglected film is from 1936. It has never aired on TCM.

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    This classic melodrama from Universal is a real tearjerker. Maybe it’s just me, but this studio seemed to do these kinds of pictures best in the 1930s…the original BACK STREET with Irene Dunne; the original IMITATION OF LIFE with Claudette Colbert; don’t forget the original MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION again with Irene Dunne…you get the idea. A stone would cry watching these pictures.

    NEXT TIME WE LOVE is based on a story called Next Time We Live. I guess the central idea here is that if you’re going to live, you’re going to have to love, as painful as it might be. It all starts rather simply and sweet. Margaret Sullavan is in love with James Stewart. She attends college with dreams of being an actress; he’s a budding reporter.

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    They soon marry, and he gets sent off by his boss (Robert McWade) to a post as a foreign correspondent in Europe. Of course, this means a separation as she will remain behind to pursue her goal of becoming a legitimate stage actress.

    Oh, there’s another guy in the picture, their mutual pal (Ray Milland) who is able to pull some strings which helps Sullavan get her big break while Stewart’s chasing down scoops halfway around the world. Of course Milland is also smitten with Sullavan, and he’s more than willing to be a support for her when it turns out she’s pregnant.

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    It’s a woman’s picture, or at least predominately marketed towards female movie patrons. So the focus is on Sullavan balancing career and motherhood. Stewart finds out about the birth, gets drunk, misses a big story and loses his job. He returns to the nest but is unable to financially provide for wife and baby. Sullavan heads back to her work in the theater and her increasing success makes her more important than her husband.

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    Most of these stories are about the woman in question being made to feel as if her life outside the home is a threat to domestic tranquility and marital bliss. As a result, she does the right thing and helps Stewart get another newspaper job. He then leaves again, and she’s once again consoled by Milland.

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    Years go by, and we see that while Sullavan and Stewart love each other very much they are basically stuck in a holding pattern, living their lives apart more than living together. These two performers work so well with each other, they are perfectly in sync in all their scenes, that every bit of emotion they register in the given scenario resonates strongly with us.

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    If this had been a film made at Columbia, Stewart would have been paired with Jean Arthur. If it had been made at his home studio, the bosses at MGM would have probably cast him alongside Jean Harlow. Interestingly, when Sullavan’s contract ended with Universal she moved to Metro and appeared in three more pictures with Stewart. They obviously enjoyed collaborating, and audiences adored them.

    Sullavan repeated this particular role twice on radio, while Stewart also did a radio remake of the story with another actress. They knew they had a hit with the material and kept going back to the well. And audiences kept welling up with tears. Next time we watch, let’s make sure to have some tissues handy.

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    • Like 4
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