The bride's sister

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title The bride's sister
Original title Holiday
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1938
length 92 minutes
Rod
Director George Cukor
script Donald Ogden Stewart ,
Sidney Buchman
production Everett Riskin for
Columbia Pictures
music Sidney Cutner
camera Franz Planner
cut Otto Meyer ,
Al Clark
occupation
synchronization

The Bride's Sister (Original Title: Holiday ) is a screwball comedy by George Cukor with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant from 1938. The play of the same name by Philip Barry was used as a template .

action

The New Yorker Johnny Case and Julia Seton have while vacationing in Lake Placid met by chance and head over heels in love. He is quite surprised to discover that the attractive Julia is the daughter of a multimillionaire. Her father Edward Seton has considerable doubts about accepting Johnny as his son-in-law when his daughter tells him that she will soon marry him. After all, the young man comes from a very simple background, and he is not exactly happy with wealth. But when Mr. Seton learns that Johnny has just graduated with a profit and is entitled to hope professionally, he looks forward to the marriage plans with more affection.

Julia's sister Linda is enthusiastic about Johnny as a brother-in-law from the start. Linda separates herself from her family in her views and inclinations. Above all, she does not consider making money to be the essential thing in life. When she realizes that Johnny thinks alike, she becomes drawn to him. Meanwhile, it becomes clear that the family is dysfunctional despite their wealth: The marriage between Mr. Seton and his deceased wife was unhappy, their son Ned - who originally wanted to become a musician against his father's will and is trapped in his position as the company heir - has meanwhile a drinking problem.

At a lavish New Year's Eve party, at which the couple's engagement is announced, Johnny first encounters the arrogant and cynical world of the New York money nobility. After some hesitation, he withdrew from society and celebrated a lively little party in Linda's "family room" with Linda and his best friends, the professors Nick and Susan Potter. When Julia and her father try to put an end to the anarchic goings-on, it bothers Johnny. For Julia and her father, the engagement gets out of hand when Johnny explains to them that he wants to retire from working life for the time being with the money he has earned from a business transaction and see the world. Linda thinks the idea is reasonable; meanwhile, Julia and Mr. Seton try to dissuade Johnny. He is traveling to Lake Placid for a few days.

While Linda is becoming increasingly aware of her love for Johnny, after his return he reconciles with Julia and wants to give up plans to travel around the world for the time being. But when Julia clocks the honeymoon with her father meticulously and according to business interests (this is how they should meet business people on the way), Johnny realizes that money and social prestige count more for his bride than joie de vivre, romance and self-fulfillment. Johnny has to choose and decides against Julia, but the pain about it doesn't last long. He loses Julia, but wins Linda. Together they go on a trip to Europe with the Potters.

background

Gertrude Sanford, alleged role model for Linda, painting by William Orpen

The film is based on the Broadway comedy Holiday by Philip Barry , which ran successfully on Broadway between November 1928 and June 1929. The still unknown Katharine Hepburn had participated in this production as a second cast for Hope Williams in the role of Linda Seton and was allowed to play her in a performance. As early as 1930, the comedy was filmed under the same title by Edward H. Griffith with Ann Harding and Mary Astor in the leading roles. Edward Everett Horton played Professor Nick Potter in both films.

As a model for the character of Linda Seton, Barry is said to have served the unconventional socialite and adventurer Gertrude Sanford Legendre (1902-2000), who came from a wealthy family and was enthusiastic about big game hunting. During the Second World War she was a spy in France and at times in German captivity.

Columbia Pictures , the film rights to a number of pieces, including secured 1,936 Holiday from RKO Pictures for $ 80,000. First Grant was to play alongside Irene Dunne as Linda, with whom he had already turned off the successful screwball comedy The Terrible Truth . Also, Joan Bennett and Ginger Rogers were talking. However, director George Cukor wanted his good friend Hepburn, with whom he made a total of 10 films over a period of almost 50 years. A scene was also filmed in the California bishop , which shows Johnny and Julia getting to know each other at Lake Placid and which should be at the beginning of the film. However, Cukor was dissatisfied as the scene detracted from the film's chamber play-like atmosphere and later removed it. Today only still photos of this scene exist.

synchronization

The German dubbed version of The Bride's Sister was created by Berliner Synchron in 1979 , and Horst Balzer was responsible for the dialogue script and dialogue direction .

role actor German Dubbing voice
Linda Seton Katharine Hepburn Katrin Schaake
John 'Johnny' Case Cary Grant Norbert Langer
Julia Seton Doris Nolan Marianne Gross
Ned Seton Lew Ayres Norbert Gescher
Mr. Edward Seton Henry Kolker Leo Bardischewski
Nick Potter Edward Everett Horton Friedrich W. Building School
Susan Potter Jean Dixon Charlotte Joeres
Laura Cram Binnie Barnes Barbara Adolph
Seton Cram Henry Daniell Friedrich Georg Beckhaus
Butler Edgar Neil Fitzgerald Klaus Miedel
Butler henry George Pauncefort Eric Vaessen
taxi driver Matt McHugh Friedhelm Ptok

Reception and aftermath

With the audience

Holiday was a box office failure despite good reviews. One reason for this was later suspected by film historians that Barry's play - which was written before the stock market crash in 1929 during an economic boom - did not fit into the Great Depression of the 1930s. Linda, who is dissatisfied despite her wealth and withdraws from society, and Johnny, who voluntarily wants to give up his work for a trip around the world, may not have found identification with the audience affected by social cuts and unemployment.

Most of Katharine Hepburn's previous films, such as The Leopards You Don't Kiss, had also been flops, which is why the list of the American Cinema Association declared the actress a box-office poison . According to the plan of her film studio RKO, she should then only appear in B-films. She then broke her film studio contract and played the lead role on Broadway in the hit comedy The Philadelphia Story , as written by Holiday by Philip Barry. With the film adaptation of The Night Before the Wedding , she made a big comeback in Hollywood in 1940 - as in Holiday with George Cukor as director and Cary Grant as her film partner.

Reviews

In contrast to the public reaction, the reviews in 1938 were good. The Variety predicted the film would be a hit in May 1938. In addition to “fine technical work”, the Variety praised all the more important actors: Hepburn was back in her top form after a few weaker roles in her last films and her performance was “entertaining and shaded with fine feeling and understanding”, her film partner Grant would his role against it more seriously than in his previous films. Doris Nolan was "outstanding" as Hepburn's sister, Ayre's performance as Hepburn's brother was "emotionally effective, played with a lot of restraint". Horton and Dixon would offer good comedy and Henry Kolker was "wonderful" in the role of the family man. Frank S. Nugent wrote in the New York Times on June 24, 1938 that since the first performance of Holiday ten years earlier, many events and changes in society had occurred. Nevertheless, Cukors Holiday is interesting because he and the scriptwriters have modernized the play slightly, but not too far, and adapted it to current circumstances. Nugent wrote that Grant had the "best role" and was "stealing the show". Cukor's directorial talent, the “good dialogues” and the “amusing” supporting cast would make Holiday almost a real vacation.

The high criticism of Holiday held up the following decades. On the US critic portal Rotten Tomatoes , The Sister of the Bride , based on 22 reviews, has a positive rating of 100% with a high average rating of 9.1 points.

In Germany, the film service wrote that The Bride's Sister was an “extremely spirited comedy, which is a kind of forerunner of the film The Night Before the Wedding (1940) by the same director: Both are masterpieces of 'sophisticated comedy', both are Broadway pieces by Philip Barry and screenplays by Donald Ogden Stewart, both play in the biting, lovingly ironic circles of the American money aristocracy, and in both the same leading actors play in a brilliant mood the couple who find each other after a lengthy turmoil of love. " Prisma also pulled the Compared to The Night Before the Wedding and judged that Holiday was an "extremely funny screwball comedy" with the main actors "in the best mood."

Awards

1939 were Stephen Goosson and Lionel Banks for an Oscar in the category Design Best nominated.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The Broadway League: Donald Ogden Stewart - Broadway Cast & Staff | IBDB. Retrieved February 18, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Enid Nemy: Gertrude Sanford Legendre, 97, Socialite Turned Hunter and Prisoner of War . In: The New York Times . March 13, 2000, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed February 18, 2018]).
  3. ↑ The bride's sister in the German dubbing index
  4. ↑ EmanuelLevy: Holiday (1938): Cukor's Oscar-Nominated Masterpiece, starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant | Emanuel Levy. Retrieved January 6, 2019 (American English).
  5. ^ Edwards, Anne (2000). Katharine Hepburn: A Remarkable Woman, p. 166.
  6. ^ Holiday Review - The Ultimate Cary Grant Pages. Retrieved January 6, 2019 .
  7. ^ Holiday Review - The Ultimate Cary Grant Pages. Retrieved January 6, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Holiday (Rotten Tomatoes). Retrieved February 16, 2018 .
  9. ↑ The bride's sister at two thousand and one
  10. ↑ The bride's sister at Prisma