The restored copy that Turner Classic Movies ran this week is a little soft, but I'm twenty years younger and also getting a little soft myself. Long the hardest to see of the Academy Award winners for Best Picture, it's easy to see why it fell out of favor, with its old-fashioned attitudes of Britain, and its starting out with the Boer War. Who cares about such things now?
Yet if we look at it in the context of turning Noel Coward's immense and elephantine stage pageant about the first third of the 20th century into a movie, we can see the artistry, from the immense crowds, to the spectacular staging, to the artistry of Charles Dudley's make-up work, as Diana Wynard and Clive Brook grow old, lose their children to disaster, yet remain stalwart in their love of country and each other. For 1933 and with Fox Studios an organization on its ass, it's an immense achievement. Even I, who am no fan of spectacle, can see that.
Yet if we look at it in the context of turning Noel Coward's immense and elephantine stage pageant about the first third of the 20th century into a movie, we can see the artistry, from the immense crowds, to the spectacular staging, to the artistry of Charles Dudley's make-up work, as Diana Wynard and Clive Brook grow old, lose their children to disaster, yet remain stalwart in their love of country and each other. For 1933 and with Fox Studios an organization on its ass, it's an immense achievement. Even I, who am no fan of spectacle, can see that.