Craig's Wife (1936)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title Craig's Wife
Country of production USA
original language English
Publishing year 1936
length 74 minutes
Rod
Director Dorothy Arzner
script Mary C. McCall Jr.
production Eddie Chodorov for
Columbia Pictures
music RH Bassett ,
Emil Gerstenberger ,
Milan Roder
camera Lucien Ballard
cut Viola Lawrence
occupation

Craig's Wife is an American melodrama directed by Dorothy Arzner from the year 1936 . The film is based on the play Craig's Wife of George Kelly from 1925 that the Pulitzer Prize was awarded.

plot

Harriet Craig, who grew up in simple circumstances, married her wealthy husband Walter mainly for materialistic reasons. He doesn't suspect that, however, he is very much in love with Harriet. All other people around Walter, however, are treated with coldness or condescension by Harriet, which is why he - without realizing it - has slowly lost many of his friends. Harriet's pride and joy is her perfectly arranged interior and she therefore only tolerates a few people in the house, when the maid Mazie lets her friend Tom briefly in the kitchen of the house, she is promptly dismissed for it. Walter's aunt Ellen, who lives in the household with the couple, carefully tries to open her nephew's eyes to Harriet's true character, but that proves to be very difficult.

Harriet visits her seriously ill sister Mrs. Landreth in the hospital. While Harriet's niece Ethel wants to look after her mother and stay with her, Harriet wants to leave home as soon as possible. She rushed back to New York with Ethel in her luggage. Control-addicted Harriet is upset that Walter did something that evening while she was away. Correctly, he tells her that he has visited his friend Fergus Passmore, but Harriet prefers to call the Passmores herself. However, their phone call is intercepted and tracked as Passmore and his wife Adelaide - who were in a marital crisis - were found shot dead. That's why a police detective will soon be at the door. She lies to the police officers in order to cover up her phone call and show no connection with the murder, thereby making her husband suspicious at times. However, it is later revealed that Fergus killed his wife and then himself when he learned of her infidelity.

Harriet's intrigues are becoming increasingly evident. Harriet has prevented the contact between Ethel and her fiancé Gene with lies, because she considers their planned love marriage to be foolish. Gene, however, refuses to accept that, drives to New York and finally picks up Ethel. Aunt Ellen has had enough of Harriet's harassment and sets off on a trip around the world, on which she also takes Mrs. Harold - the long-time housekeeper and good soul of the house - with her. Walter also learns of Harriet's lies in the Passmore case and realizes that his wife never really loved him. The Passmores had at least made love when they got married, which obviously never was the case with them - and he could not live in a marriage without love. So he leaves the house she designed that he wants to leave to her, since it is obviously the only thing that she has ever loved.

Harriet is left alone in the house. When she receives a telegram that her sister has died in the hospital this morning, she breaks down crying. Suddenly Mrs. Frazier, the neighbor she always hated, appears and brings a bouquet of flowers over. Harriet tries to share her feelings with Mrs. Frazier, but she has already left the house. Before the end of the film, the final moral is the sentence previously spoken by Aunt Ethel: "People who live to themselves - are generally left to themselves".

Production background

This is the second of three film adaptations of the award-winning play by George Kelly , Grace Kelly's uncle . Previously, a now-lost film adaptation with Irene Rich and Warner Baxter in the leading roles had already appeared in 1928 , in 1950 The Liar with Joan Crawford was directed by Vincent Sherman .

Dorothy Arzner , at that time the only female film director in Hollywood, promised the Columbia studio boss Harry Cohn to turn Kelly's play into "A picture for B picture money" - a first-class film for second-rate money. She had been given greater artistic freedom in the film by the actual producer Eddie Chodorov. The film was only moderately successful when it was first released, but was later returned to theaters several times due to its good reviews, making it a huge hit. Arzner later referred to Craig's Wife as her favorite of her own films.

For Rosalind Russell , who was still at the beginning of her screen career, it was her first demanding film role and a milestone in her career. For the role of Harriet Craig, Dorothy Arzner wanted an actress who was little known and had no positive connection with the audience through other films. At the time, Russell was only seen in supporting roles in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer , but Arzner thought she was a brilliant actress and stood up for her cast. Thomas Mitchell , later one of Hollywood's most famous supporting actors, made his sound film debut in the character of the modern husband (his first and only film until Craig's Wife was a 1923 silent film).

In the opening credits, the Oscar-winning Stephen Goosson is named as a set designer, but he was fired from Arzner during the production and replaced by the former silent film star William Haines . Haines, who had started a career as an interior designer after his film career, was therefore primarily responsible for the interior design of Harriet's house in the film (which is not unimportant for the plot). It was one of Haines' few engagements as a set designer for film, as he then mainly devoted himself to the interior design of the houses of rich or famous personalities.

Reviews

Frank S. Nugent wrote in the New York Times that the film was a well-made adaptation of Kelly's play. The film "wants to make a statement, keep that constant in view and at the end show it in a vicious way." Rosalind Russell and her main character carry the film and would offer a "viciously eloquent portrayal" in her first "real chance" in Hollywood. With the exception of one less successful scene during the outburst of anger, John Boles appears “safe and natural” in the role of the husband, which Kelly has written weaker, while the ranks of the supporting actors would show “uniformly magnificent” acting performances. Ann Ross wrote for Maclean’s in 1937 that the film was a "hearty and well-acted" adaptation of the play.

The US film critic Emanuel Levy writes that the film is a "grim, destructive criticism of bourgeois, patriarchal culture". He also found words of praise for Russell's performance. The feminist author Lauren Humphries-Brooks is of the opinion that Arzner's version is less psychologically oriented than the later film adaptation with Joan Crawford , but takes more into account the social circumstances of his characters. In this film, it is less the men than the women who push each other into cramped social behavior: “Harriet Craig is not shaped by her past, but by her culture, she fulfills the required role of the housewife in a way that she has to a monster formed by the patriarchy itself. "

In her biography of Dorothy Arzner, Judith Mayne emphasizes the differences to Kelly's original for the stage. The figure of Harriet is drawn a little more sympathetically compared to the clearly despicable person in Kelly's play, because Arzner portrays Harriet's striving for complete independence as a woman (ultimately impossible for her at the time) as one of the mainsprings of her problematic actions. The whole thing gets an ironic note because in the end she was alone, but actually free from the world of men.

literature

  • Judith Mayne: Directed by Dorothy Arzner . Indiana University Press, 1994. pp. 122-130.
  • JE Smyth: A Woman at the Center of Hollywood's Wars: Screenwriter Mary C. McCall Jr. Cinéaste, Vol. 41, No. 3 (summer 2016), pp. 18-23.
  • Lee Wallace: Reattachment Theory: Queer Cinema of Remarriage: Dorothy Arzner's Wife . Duke University Press, 2020. pp. 53-81.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karyn Kay: Interview with Dorothy Arzner. In: agnès films. July 16, 2011, accessed November 21, 2020 (American English).
  2. ^ Emanuel Levy: Craig's Wife (1936): Arzner's Favorite Film, Starring Rosalind Russell | Emanuel Levy. Retrieved November 20, 2020 (American English).
  3. ^ Emanuel Levy: Craig's Wife (1936): Arzner's Favorite Film, Starring Rosalind Russell | Emanuel Levy. Retrieved November 20, 2020 (American English).
  4. ↑ Craig's Wife (1936) - IMDb. Retrieved November 21, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Karyn Kay: Interview with Dorothy Arzner. In: agnès films. July 16, 2011, accessed November 21, 2020 (American English).
  6. ↑ Lee Wallace: Dorothy Arzner's Wife: heterosexual sets, homosexual scenes . In: Screen . tape 49 , no. 4 , December 1, 2008, ISSN  0036-9543 , p. 391-409 , doi : 10.1093 / screen / hjn056 ( oup.com [accessed November 21, 2020]).
  7. ↑ Craig's Wife (1936) - IMDb. Retrieved November 21, 2020 .
  8. ^ Frank S. Nugent : THE SCREEN; The Music Hall Presents a Skillful Film Version of That Pulitzer Prize Play, 'Craig's Wife.' (Published 1936) . In: The New York Times . October 2, 1936, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed November 21, 2020]).
  9. ↑ ANN ROSS: Shots and Angles | Maclean's | January 1, 1937. Retrieved November 21, 2020 (American English).
  10. ^ Emanuel Levy: Craig's Wife (1936): Arzner's Favorite Film, Starring Rosalind Russell | Emanuel Levy. Retrieved November 20, 2020 (American English).
  11. ↑ DameStruck: Craig's Wife (1936). In: Citizen Dame. June 12, 2019, accessed November 21, 2020 .
  12. ^ Judith Mayne: Directed by Dorothy Arzner . Indiana University Press, 1994. pp. 122-130.