After seeing "the greatest performance of all time" from Garbo in Camille the other week I fell upon two of her fellow oscar nominees that year - one I've been looking for for years (Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas - thank you youtube) and one that was basically on every classic site I could find (Janet Gaynor in A Star is Born) so I checked them both out.
Stella Dallas is a very simple tearjerker of a socially ambitious woman (Stanwyck) who marries above her class and tries to make the very best for her daughter. Of course Babs is the one thing that is holding her daughter back the most. This is a good film, not a great one, but genuinely moving and features a couple of cracking performances at its centre. Stanwyck is utterly superb, it may not be my favourite performance of hers (that will forever remain The Lady Eve) but it's probably her best and Anne Shirley is sugar-sweet as her daughter.
So Babs added to Garbo and Irene Dunne in the perfect The Awful Truth in 1937 (coupled with my lack of love for the Judy Garland remake in the 50s) meant I had next to no expectations for Gaynor in A Star is Born. My God, she was exceptional. Quite rare to see such a natural kind of performance back then, incredibly cinematic it's all little looks and glances and half-second moments, it's quite amazing the transition from silent cinema she made. The film though is decent, but it's Janet's show, in comparison I didn't particularly care for Fredric March (but then I seldom do). Not really my kind of story but Janet is quite wonderful. I've no idea how to place these women in the year and I'm equally sure I don't care (although I have cared enough to download the oscar winner that year, Luise Rainer, in The Good Earth to get the comparison - more on that at a later date).
Having had my interest raised in Gaynor I decided to check out, via youtube, a film I've half been interested in for a while, Sunrise : A Song of Two Humans. I've seen Murnau's Nosferatu (having my interest in that raised by Shadow of the Vampire) but I think this was a much better film. Not without its problems though, while almost ridiculously artistic and full of brilliant moments I don't think Murnau has a balanced feel for the whole piece. The opening 30 mins is very moody, dark and atmospheric (including a GENIUS title card worthy of La Antena) but then it goes into very light, airy and breezy, before descending into complete farce and then back to the moody atmosphere. Gets a little obvious towards the end and doesn't get quite as interesting as it could have, but these are minor quibbles, there's lots to like here, I just don't think it pulls itself together into being great, whereas it just remains very good.
The other film about a couple was Nicholas and Alexandra, which I saw on the BBC on Sunday, except I missed the opening 10 or 15 minutes. No matter though, this is still a very good, if very long film. As a rule of thumb I detest the 1970s, it gets praised for Scorsese and Spielberg and Coppola but a few fresh Americans are not enough to salvage a decade I only really think a handful of films are great in. This falls short of that but not by much. Lovely techs, great cast, interesting subject, I found this chronicle of the downfall of Russia's last Czar impossible to dislike and I'd recommend it in a heartbeat.