George Cukor

  • Les Girls (1957)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2021) Just as I thought I had run out of high-profile Gene Kelly musicals, here’s one I had missed: Les Girls, an expensive production signed by none other than veteran director George Cukor that marks Kelly’s last MGM contract movie. The plot has to do with a tell-all exposé about a dancing troupe, leading to different versions of the same story. Kelly plays the troupe manager, with the three leading dancer roles filled by Mitzi Gaynor, a very funny Kay Kendall and a rather bland Taina Elg. Often heavier on comedy than music, the result nonetheless has some very good numbers — including Kelly riffing off Marlon Brando in a number with Gaynor. For Kelly, Les Girls had the opportunity to play with very familiar themes: ballet, Francophilia, choreography and portraying a bit of a cad. The result is fun, even if it’s not as memorable as many of his other musicals from earlier in the decade. Indeed, the late 1950s were the end of an era at MGM with contracts not being renewed and the Freed unit down to its last musicals. Les Girls marks another solid production — a step short of being a classic, but still wonderfully polished and enjoyable by itself. I have a feeling I’ll enjoy revisiting this one eventually, even if it doesn’t play as often as its more famous contemporaries.

  • Susan and God (1940)

    Susan and God (1940)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2021) Try as I might, I just couldn’t get interested in Susan and God. Watching it because it’s directed by George Cukor, I was reminded that, having seen the best of his filmography, I’m now seeing the rest. As a comedy, it’s limp, and as a drama, it’s insubstantial. I’m not Joan Crawford’s biggest fan, and Fredrick March leaves me unmoved most of the time. There’s some promise in the premise (bored socialite claims to have found religion, then proceeds to blow up friendships and relationships by exposing everyone’s sins) but the execution is bland and featureless. I can sort-of-see the echo of the end of prohibition in how the film tackles self-righteousness and piety-as-tourism, but it’s really not enough to elevate the entire film from the doldrums. Too bad, really, because reading reviews of Susan and God has me thinking that this is the kind of material that appeals to me… but what I saw on-screen was simply not enough to stay interested.

  • Holiday (1938)

    Holiday (1938)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) I was somehow under the impression that Holiday was a major film, but that may have as much to do with it being a reunion between Cary Grant, Kathleen Hepburn and director George Cukor than any specific merit in the film itself. Oh, it’s not bad— but it’s liable to come up short when compared to either Bringing up Baby or The Philadelphia Story. The story does make near-perfect use of Grant as a promising young man who, as the story begins, discovers that his holiday romantic partner is a rich heiress and that her family expects a man of his accomplishments and potential to become a potential successor to the family dynasty. He has other plans, though: Tired of having worked nearly twenty years before taking this first recent holiday, he intends to retire young in order to enjoy life. His fiancée doesn’t have the same hopes, but as it turns out her free-spirited sister does, and given that she’s played by Katharine Hepburn, it’s practically over for the other one as soon as Kate walks into the film. Directed by Cukor, Holiday is a mildly funny comedy of self-discovery and affirmation rather than the kind of silly screwball farce that could have been. Adapted from a theatrical play (with one supporting actor, Edward Everett Horton, reprising the same role), it’s gentle and often melancholic, leading to a very quick conclusion that almost raises as many questions and doubts as it resolves. Still, Grant is Grant, and you do get a classic moment of growing exasperation as a curl pops out of his perfectly manicured hair. He gets to demonstrate his skills as an acrobat and shares a great rapport with Hepburn, all the way to a classic sequence in which they perform dangerous-looking spills together. The 1930s humour feels familiar and strange at once, especially during a scene in which the characters throw a Nazi salute to mock some of their stuffy relatives. Considering that one of the film’s major themes is about breaking free of the dull orthodoxy in order to live a free life, it makes sense that entire stretches of the film don’t contain many laughs nor opportunities for Grant to shine. But if Holiday is not the laugh riot I was expecting, it’s still absorbing enough to be worth a look, and a great showcase in Grant’s first decade of acting.

  • A Woman’s Face (1941)

    A Woman’s Face (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2021) It’s easy to see in bits and pieces what makes A Woman’s Face a bit better than most melodramas of the time. Despite a fundamentally unlikely premise blending organized crime, blackmail, disfigurement, child murder and a framing device set in a courtroom, the film gets quite a bit of mileage from Joan Crawford’s convincing performance in facial scarring makeup. The film wrings extra tension from the back-and-forth between the events of the story and the courtroom framing device, while George Cukor keeps things grounded despite the unlikely narrative and the Swedish setting. (But then again, the film is a remake of a Swedish original starring Ingrid Bergman.)  While I’m not much of a Crawford fan, she’s quite good here and A Woman’s Face remains an above-average 1940s melodrama.

  • The Animal Kingdom (1932)

    The Animal Kingdom (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) Regrettably enough, I had a really hard time staying interested in The Animal Kingdom, even restarting the film midway through in an attempt to goose my interest as my attention kept wandering elsewhere. It does have elements that I like—a Pre-Code era production (with some risqué themes), a protagonist associated with the publishing world, a choice to make between a safe-but-dull romantic prospect and another wild-but-unpredictable one. Myrna Loy is one of the most interesting actresses of the 1930s, while Ann Harding and Leslie Howard are not to be dismissed either. George Cukor had a hand in directing, and the film has theatrical roots that translate into better-than-average dialogue for the time. Still, there’s something to the rhythm of the film, its approach to the material and its audiovisual flatness (which, to be fair, is common to many early sound-era films) that simply had a hard time keeping my attention. When I realized, late in my second attempt to watch the film, that I simply wasn’t going to enjoy it, I also felt that nothing was going to help this time around. The film is in the public domain—it’s not going to take much for me to watch it again eventually.

  • Our Betters (1933)

    Our Betters (1933)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) I expected just a bit more from Our Betters, a satirical comedy that should logically take the best from the Pre-Code era, George Cukor’s direction and the Somerset Maugham play on which it’s based. There’s certainly plenty of realized potential here about an American heiress upsetting the London social scene, as the characters overtly engage in adultery and poke fun at London high society. (The title is meant to be ironic.)  Still, I had a harder time than I expected in keeping invested in the film. Direction-wise, Cukor specializes in acting here, meaning that for all of the fancy costumes and good dialogue, there isn’t much in terms of cinematic qualities of the film—it’s almost a filmed theatrical play—which, to be fair, was not all that uncommon in the early sound era. At least there’s the Pre-Code portrayal of hypocrisy in the upper classes to fill in the blanks, and some better-than-average dialogue in terms of comedy. Ah well—they can’t all be winners, and maybe I’ll revisit Our Betters later in a more agreeable frame of mind. It’s not any worse than average, which is already not too bad.

  • Camille (1936)

    Camille (1936)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, November 2020) Firmly steeped in the tradition of 1930s romantic period melodramas, Camille never hesitates to go with the big dramatic guns—no subtlety is allowed here, and the ending milks everything out of its depressing nature. The main draw here is Greta Garbo as a 19th century Parisian belle, draped in the best costumes that Hollywood could muster at the time. She is, as is de rigueur for such heroines, both afflicted with a deadly disease and torn between two men. Adapted from Alexandre Dumas’s La Dame aux camélias (itself inspired by Dumas’ own courtship), the rest of the plot plays exactly as you would expect an old-school romantic tragedy to go. Lavishly produced, Camille still has a few things worth crowing about—the great sets, terrific costumes and a completely humourless Garbo in one of her most memorable performances being what anyone will remember from the film. It is, obviously, not for everyone—as an old-fashioned weepie, it almost plays to clichés all the way through. But it’s not exactly a painful film to watch, and it does help round out George Cukor’s early filmography.

  • One Hour with You (1932)

    One Hour with You (1932)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) It’s easy to see in One Hour with You why Maurice Chevalier was Hollywood’s Favourite Frenchman in the early 1930s—It’s not just about the really charming accent, it’s about the congenial bonhomie, the joie de vivre and the almost irresistible charm of the man. This may not be a great movie, but it’s a lot of fun and it allows Chevalier to do what he does best, up to speaking (and singing) directly to the audience in an attempt to explain himself. The story, slight as it is, has to do with a happily married couple being tempted by adultery—and while, in the freewheeling pre-Code era, our heroes do succumb to “temptation” by kissing, modern audiences may want to fill out more salacious details in their minds. Still, the plot isn’t nearly as interesting as seeing Chevalier (and Jeanette MacDonald as his wife) sing and deliver some great monologues, along with some witty repartee and sophisticated European attitude toward marriage, love and courtship. Amazingly enough, the film can be said to have been directed by Ernest Lubitsch and George Cukor thanks to some production shenanigans, although the Lubitsch touch is more obvious. Clocking in at a tightly tuned 80 minutes, the film earns a few laughs and leaves us with a big smile on our faces (which, considering that I watched it in close proximity with other tales of adultery through the decades, is no mean feat). A great script filled with witty dialogue and sophisticated comedy wraps up the rest. A clear star vehicle that delivers, One Hour With You is a shining example of Pre-Code romantic comedy, funny, daring and still incredibly effective ninety years later.

  • The Marrying Kind (1952)

    The Marrying Kind (1952)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) According to contemporary accounts, audiences didn’t quite know what to make of The Marrying Kind’s blend of comedy and drama, as it worked its way backward in flashbacks from the divorce court to show the strains of an ordinary marriage. Helmed by George Cukor, the film showcased funny scenes in between more dramatic ones, and I can understand how unpleasant it must have felt for critics and audiences back then to sit through what feels like ninety minutes of arguments between husband and wife. But there’s been a critical re-evaluation of the film by later generations, helped along by a growing familiarity with movies blending comedy and drama—we can draw parallels with 2019’s Marriage Story as a sombre film with darkly comic moments, and quite a few romantic comedies willing to showcase more serious moments on their way to a happy conclusion. It’s not a stretch to say that modern audiences are more sophisticated about their movies—or at least that they’ve seen many kinds of tones and moods. As a result, The Marrying Kind does work relatively well today: The unusual flashback-filled structure is more interesting than most similar films of the time, Cukor makes good use of ironic visuals to counterpoint spoken narration, and there’s an attempt to depict an unglamorous reality at work here. Far from the idealized portrait of marriage and archetypical characters, here we have two people struggling to make it work, suffering humbling setbacks and yet building something together. Judy Holliday does well as the wife, while Aldo Ray is sometimes a bit caricatural as the husband. Still, their work does find a happy compromise between the attempt at realism and the glossiness of studio pictures at the time. It’s a bit too dark to be fully enjoyable, but it will be interesting for those looking for evidence that the studios knew about real life even at the beginning of the glossy glam 1950s.

  • Travels with my Aunt (1972)

    Travels with my Aunt (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) I’m a big fan of George Cukor and will make a good-faith attempt at watching most of his filmography, but Travels with my Aunt is clearly from the twilight of his career—still amusing, but a clear step down from his previous films. The somewhat convoluted plot has a young shy English gentleman discovering an eccentric aunt during his mother’s funeral, and being manipulated in extensive travels through Europe and eventually Africa in the pursuit of a ransom. Plenty of opportunities come along for him to grow up along the way. He may be the protagonist, but the dominant character of the story is the titular aunt, played with exuberant panache by none other than Maggie Smith. Considering that the story switches back and forth in time between the present-day travels and excerpts from the aunt’s younger wilder days, Smith ends up playing an old version of her character and a really good-looking younger self as well. The effect for modern viewers is delightfully strange, as “old” Smith looks like the one with which we’re most familiar, making the impact of the younger Smith all the more apparent. The complex plot takes us across the continent and to personal growth for the oddball characters, but the way to that point feels loose and indulgent. If you read about the film’s genesis, there’s quite a bit of material there about this being a picaresque episodic novel first, before being adapted for the screen by an uncredited Katherine Hepburn (!) Fortunately, Travels with my Aunt does hold up as a mildly entertaining comedy with a production that obviously travelled as much as its characters did. It’s colourful, light, twisty and fun. Perhaps not as much so as earlier Cukor movies, but you can put it against a lot of other early-1970s New Hollywood productions as an antidote to their dreariness.

  • Two-Faced Woman (1941)

    Two-Faced Woman (1941)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2020) What a strange, strange idea—to put famous can’t-laugh Greta Garbo as the lead of an ordinary romantic comedy. Sure, the film has a pedigree—with George Cukor directing, Two-Faced Woman at least has some baseline quality. But Garbo? She’s miscast so badly—in the role of a woman who pretends to play her own (fictional) twin sister in order to get her husband back—that she retired after this film. (Her retirement wasn’t completely due to Two-Faced Woman’s commercial flop—but it did not help.) This being said—ah, how can I say—I liked the film anyway. For one thing, the classic oh-so-serious Garbo isn’t my favourite; and for another thing, I’ve always had a soft spot for silly over-the-top comedy. Combine those things, and Two-Faced Woman isn’t so bad after all. Sure, the film is a bit mishandled (some of it due to hasty reshoots to placate censors) a bit broad, a bit inconsistent. But it’s still a high-concept romantic comedy, and this is one of the rare films where being unfamiliar (or unsympathetic) with the filmography of its star may be a benefit. I do think that another comedienne would have been better (as in: looser, funnier) than Garbo, but the film itself is worth a look and a few chuckles.

  • It Should Happen to You (1954)

    It Should Happen to You (1954)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2020) No matter whether you’re talking about 2020s influencers or 1950s aspiring actresses, the lure of instant fame is evergreen, and It Should Happen to You offers a time capsule of what that looked like in mid-twentieth century America. The hook lies in having an obscure young woman taking out a billboard in her name, hoping that the publicity will lead somewhere. Against all odds, it works—and she quickly finds herself in a romantic triangle between a well-off executive and a more modest filmmaker. The unusual premise quickly leads to a far more conventional romantic comedy, but there are enough known names in the production to keep things interesting. Under George Cukor’s direction, we have Judy Holliday as the young not-so-smart ingenue, being wooed by Peter Lawford and Jack Lemmon in his movie debut. While some of the film’s initial intentions get lost in the shuffle, the film ends on a funny and romantic note. The black-and-white cinematography highlights It Should Happen to You’s old-fashioned atmosphere (at times, it feels like a late-1930s film): Maybe Cukor, as competent as he was, couldn’t quite bring himself to shoot the material in colour and reflect the slightly dourer 1950s—ah, colour footage of those Manhattan locations would have been something to see! The actors are all charming in their own way: while I’ll confess never quite getting the fascination for Holliday’s persona, she does well here. While not a waste of time, It Should Happen to You certainly does feel as if it’s restraining itself—although, considering that it’s about advertising in the mid-1950s, we’re already getting quite a lot.

  • The Actress (1953)

    The Actress (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) While adapted from the life of actress-playwright Ruth Gordon, The Actress (despite being scripted by Gordon herself) aims for amiable family comedy more than biographical sketch. By using Spencer Tracy as the sometimes-goofy family patriarch, it’s likely that director George Cukor meant to evoke fresh good of his then-fresh turns in Father of the Bride and Father’s Little Dividend. The theatrical origins of the story aren’t readily apparent in the film’s eagerness to vary locations, but the quality of the dialogue is there. Still, the film does feel (especially seventy years later) like a small-scale domestic comedy. The biggest conflict is whether the family will accept the daughter’s dream of becoming an actress, and this being a Classical Hollywood movie, you can guess how that ends. There’s an affectionate component to the film’s look back to 1913 Massachusetts, and an amiable tone to the family’s small-scale troubles. Anthony Perkins shows up (in his debut) as a would-be suitor. The Actress, in many ways, is charming in its mediocrity—something to watch if you haven’t got enough of Tracy’s patrician roles.

  • A Life of Her Own (1950)

    A Life of Her Own (1950)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) There are so many examples of how the Production Code undermined the substance of films told between 1934 and the 1960s that it’s hardly useful to throw another example on the pile. Still, there’s A Life of Her Own as yet another example—a visibly toothless portrait of a young woman trying to make it in New York City that flirts with a more mature outlook than other 1930s films, yet can’t quite have the creative freedom to really make any kind of point. (It’s even worse when you measure the film against the original novel, which is remarkably darker.) Lana Turner stars as a Midwestern girl coming to Manhattan, meeting an older woman who didn’t make it (and who then kills herself), becomes successful, gets involved in an affair with a married man, and—well, this is where the film gets particularly fuzzy. The original ending had her kill herself in a cyclical commentary on the process that grinds young hopefuls into washed-up husks (and as evidence that under the Production Code, no one gets away with adultery); the rewritten ending is an unsatisfying step back from the ledge without much meaning to it. Clearly, A Life of Her Own isn’t one of director George Cukor’s finest works—but then again, the film’s production history suggests that he knew that the project was doomed under the Production Code.

    (Second Viewing, On Cable TV, February 2021) Thanks to a large-capacity DVR, I record movies indiscriminately and while my memory (and record of movies watched) is good enough that I don’t accidentally end up re-watching too many things by accident, there’s an entire class of not-too-memorable movies that I don’t necessarily recall watching in the first place. (Also: The pandemic lockdown is playing tricks with my perception of time.) A Life of Her Own ended up (again) on my DVR based on it being directed by George Cukor, but it turns out that I didn’t have too many memories of my first viewing. The somewhat well-worn plot probably explains much of a lack of recollection: As a small-town beauty leaves town to enter the bustling world of Manhattan modelling, it quickly turns to melodramatic romance as she embarks on an affair with a man married to a paraplegic. It’s all quite dull, and my lack of particular affection for star Lana Turner probably further explains why the film washed over me a second time without registering anything specific. Not all of Hollywood’s golden-age movies were good, and even fewer of them were memorable: now that I’ve seen the top films of that era, it’s no accident if I’m going to end up seeing more and more forgettable ones, and be condemned to watch them again if I don’t cross-check my lists at some point.

  • The Chapman Report (1962)

    The Chapman Report (1962)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2020) Expectations are a dangerous thing, especially when we’ve been conditioned by later movies to assume a certain style or tone given plot summaries. Considering the spate of 1960s sex comedies exploring the loosened mores of mainstream America, you would be more than forgiven for thinking that The Chapman Report, revolving as it does around academics researching the sexual habits of average Americans, would be a silly farce. Something light and perhaps naughty, if dozens of later movies are any guide. But light and naughty are exactly what it is not: This is an early-1960s movie that clearly shows signs of being stuck in the 1950s—from the opening few minutes, it’s clear that this will be an earnest drama about characters coping with sexual permissiveness and how it can ruin their lives. As our sex researchers become entangled with their volunteer subjects, the heavy relationship drama becomes increasingly suffocating. Even on those terms, it becomes long, turgid and so incredibly dull that I had to make a conscious effort to remember why I had recorded it—because it’s from director George Cukor, far better known for his Classic Hollywood lighthearted comedies. But 1960s Cukor wasn’t as nimble at 1930s Cukor—his growing misanthropy is reflected in the high-contrast colour cinematography, with entire character’s clothing disappearing in the deep blacks of the background. It’s essential to remind ourselves that The Chapman Report was daringly made for an audience still tittering uncomfortably over the Kinsey Report on human sexuality (obviously the inspiration for the film)—it’s almost inevitable that the film would become abnormally boring to today’s far more sophisticated audiences. It certainly doesn’t help that the film is far more analytical than emotional, putting an atmosphere of dishonesty over something that could have been animated by honest emotions. (There are far more restrained movies from the Hays Code that are more heartfelt than this one, and much of it has to do with real emotions being used rather than couching it in quasi-legal dramatic analysis.) Ah well—I didn’t expect all Cukor movies to be worth my time, but The Chapman Report is particularly disappointing.