A dancer novel

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Movie
German title A dancer novel
Original title The Men in Her Life
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1941
length 89 minutes
Rod
Director Gregory Ratoff
script Friedrich Kohner
production Gregory Ratoff Production distributed by Columbia Pictures
music David Raksin
camera Harry Stradling Sr .; Arthur C. Miller
cut Francis D. Lyon
occupation

Novel of a Dancer (OT: The Men in Her Life ) is an American feature film from 1941 about the arduous rise of a talented dancer to the acclaimed prima ballerina and the emotional price she has to pay for her success. The main roles are played by Loretta Young and Conrad Veidt , directed by Gregory Ratoff . With its portrayal of the heroine's conflict between career and emotion, the film is a typical example of the “woman's picture”.

action

Polly Varley earns her living as an equestrian in a shabby traveling circus. However, her dream is to celebrate success as a ballerina. One day Stanislas Rosing, a formerly famous dancer, visits the circus and realizes Polly's possibilities and talent.

After two years of the toughest routine and endless hours of training, Polly, who has now adopted the stage name Lina Varasvina, is ready to perform in public. Then she surprisingly meets Sir Roger Chevis, a young, attractive nobleman. Both fall head over heels in love. Stanislas urgently warns his protégé of the dangers of an overly tight emotional bond. To be successful, according to Rosing, a ballerina has to forego any form of personal happiness and devote all of her energy to dancing.

Lina, aka Polly, heeded the advice and soon celebrated triumphs on the stages of the world. When Lina realizes how much Rosing has fallen in love with her, she agrees to marry him. On her honeymoon, which is more like a worldwide series of appearances, Lina meets and loves the young and very rich American David Gibson. While Lina is celebrating the greatest success of her career in the piece "The Dance of the White Rose", specially choreographed by Stanislas, her husband dies behind the stage.

Deeply hit, Lina decides to deny her true feelings and live only for the dance. Her new impresario, Victor, helps Lina to reach new heights in her career. Out of gratitude and in order not to be left alone, she wants to marry Victor, but ends up with David in front of the altar. The marriage is unhappy and shortly after the wedding, Lina realizes that she is pregnant by David. Immediately after the birth of their daughter Rose, there was a scandal and the couple divorced. With a heavy heart Lina renounces her child and leaves the upbringing to David. Broken inside, Lina has no more strength to perform in public. In the end, however, David and Lina are reconciled and the family lives in great wealth in New York.

background

Loretta Young ended her long-term studio contract with 20th Century Fox in an argument in early 1939 . Darryl F. Zanuck had the actress put on a so-called blacklist , so that the other film studios refused to hire Young. Eventually, Young's agent Myron Selznick managed to sign a deal with Columbia Pictures . The fee of US $ 50,000 per film was well below what Loretta Youngs has earned so far, but the deal ultimately helped her make the comeback she had hoped for. A Dancer's novel was the third film under the current contract and began under the title Tonight Belongs to Us , only to be renamed Woman of Desire . The studio ultimately selected The Men in Her Life for distribution , an effective, if unsubtle, plot summary. The script is based on the novel Ballerina by Eleanor Smith , a distinguished author of the time. Loretta Young prepared intensively for her role and trained with the American Ballet Company. Although she had a double available, the actress completed many dance scenes in person.

Narrative structure

In American film theory, the expression “woman's picture” refers to films that, across genres, place the fate of women and, above all, their emotional conflicts within a restrictive environment at the center of the narrative.

"A woman's picture is a film that depicts a woman's attempts to solve the emotional, social and psychological problems that arise from her identity as a woman."

What all the films have in common is that the heroine is put in a position to actively and self-determinedly influence the events and thus her own fate in the course of the plot, regardless of the resistance of the - here mostly male-dominated - society.

A dancer's novel is a typical example of renunciation as a form of successful autonomy for women. Polly alias Lina consciously renounces the fulfillment of romantic feelings and private happiness in order to devote herself entirely to a higher goal, here her career as a dancer. However, she is not an "ordinary" woman, she is an exception, she is extraordinary and she accepts without complaint all the suffering and temptations that arise from this exceptional position, which her talent makes possible. Therein lies the message for the female audience that self-determination and the fight for one's own ideals are only associated with great sacrifices, preferably the permanent renunciation of love and private happiness. The viewer is asked, unspoken, to answer the question of whether she would personally be willing to pay this high price in order to lead an autonomous life like the heroine.

In addition to the emancipatory message of equal rights for women, the film also clarifies the restrictive statement that success can only be achieved by exceptional women on the one hand and only at the price of permanently renouncing the actual vocation of a woman in the form of marriage and motherhood on the other . This contradictory narrative structure is typical of the "woman's picture" and an essential structural element. The basic constellation that an ambitious woman portrays between love and a career, the obligation to her mentor and the love for another man, can be found in numerous films of the era such as May time , The Red Shoes , The Last Veil from 1946, in which Ann Todd only matures into a successful pianist under the tough regime of James Mason , and Frank Borzage's I've Always Loved You from 1946.

reception

In the New York Times , Bosley Crowther found unkind words for the female star:

“Loretta Young is not a good actress; she poses excessively and is almost laughably miscast as a dancer. "

With praise for Loretta Young and Conrad Veidt, however, Variety could be heard:

"Loretta Young does a lot to hold the attention and has strong support from Conrad Veidt."

Awards

The film went into the 1942 Academy Awards with a nomination in the category

literature

  • Jeanine Basinger: A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women, 1930-1960. Knopf, New York 1993, ISBN 0-394-56351-4 .
  • Paul Loukides, Linda K. Fuller: Beyond the Stars: Themes and Ideologies in American popular film. University of Wisconsin, 1996, ISBN 0-87972-701-2 .
  • Adrienne McLean: Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, the Body, and Narrative Cinema. Rutgers University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-8135-4280-5 .

Web links

Individual references and further comments

  1. ↑ There is no really suitable German translation for the expression "woman's picture". Neither are they not to be equated with the German expression women's film . The term film melodrama is still applicable, as it only covers one genre. Woman's pictures are expressly not genre-bound, but rather define themselves through their uniform narrative style. Compare the following explanations as well as the basic Jeanine Basinger A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women
  2. ↑ A woman's film is a movie that places at the center of its universe a female who is trying to deal with the emotional, social and psychological problems that are specifically connected to the fact that she is a woman. Basinger, p. 20.
  3. ↑ cf. Jeanine Basinger, p. 57, "What the woman's film always accomplishes, even at its lowest and most depressing level, is the empowerment of a female figure who gets to decide how things will be."
  4. ↑ Basinger, p. 58.
  5. ↑ See the explanations in Basinger, p. 306 ff and p. 20, where she reduces the basic message of the films to the simple sentence: “My true profession is love.” (“My true calling is love.”)
  6. ↑ See the explanations in Basinger, pp. 6 ff, in which she explains the paradox of criticism and confirmation of the circumstances as well as the simultaneous subversiveness of many of these films and substantiates it with numerous examples.
  7. ^ Loretta Young is not a good actress; she poses outrageously and her lack of resemblance to a dancer is almost laughable quoted: [1]
  8. ↑ [Loretta] Young […] does much to maintain interest, aided by strong support from [Conrad] Veidt. Quoted: [2]