The bride wore red

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
German title The bride wore red
Original title The Bride Wore Red
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1937
length 104 minutes
Rod
Director Dorothy Arzner
script Tess Slesinger
Bradbury Foote
production Joseph L. Mankiewicz for MGM
music Franz Waxman
camera George J. Folsey
cut Adrienne Fazan
occupation

The Bride Wore Red (OT: The Bride Wore Red ) is an American film with Joan Crawford directed by Dorothy Arzner from 1937. It is based in part on the play The Girl from Trieste by Ferenc Molnár .

action

The film begins in a casino in Trieste, where the cynical Baron Armalia makes the claim that only the luck of the right birth would distinguish the aristocrats from the common people. Some time later, Baron Armalia decides to prove his thesis by transforming the poor and uneducated nightclub singer Anni Pavlovitch into a highborn lady with a lot of money and a new wardrobe. Anni, who now calls herself Anne Vivaldi, accompanies the baron for two weeks in a luxurious hotel in Tyrol. As soon as she arrives, Anni, alias Anne Vivaldi, meets the local postman Giulio, who leads a life in great harmony, but pays for his inner peace with material poverty. As soon as she enters the door, Anni meets her old friend Maria, who happily works as a maid in the hotel. Maria warns Annie urgently against relying on Armalia and wanting to rise above her innate status in society.

Later that evening, Anni made the acquaintance of the wealthy playboy Rudi, who also stayed at the hotel with his fiancée Maddalena Monti. Rudi falls in love with the supposedly well-born Anne Vivaldi, who in turn feels drawn to Giulio. Blinded by the prosperity around her, Anni tries to persuade Rudi, who is in love, to propose marriage. She therefore extends her stay in the hotel beyond the two weeks on her own initiative. Just when Anni seems to have reached the goal of her wishes and she wears the eponymous dress, the truth comes to light: She is exposed as a cheat in front of all Maddalena Monti's guests. Outwardly humiliated, but inwardly matured, Anni comes to the certainty where her place is in society and she returns into the arms of Giulio.

background

Joan Crawford's career had been stagnant since the middle of the decade and was now approaching a serious crisis. Under the influence of her second husband, the actor Franchot Tone , Crawford tried to establish herself as an actress of serious roles in high-quality films. The fans, who preferred the actress to shallow romances and opulently produced triangular stories such as In Golden Chains or Love on the Run , avoided these forays into the dramatic field. In particular, the financial failure of The Bride Wore Red was responsible for Crawford being labeled a box office poison in early 1938 because her films no longer made it to full cinemas. The failure of the film became apparent even before filming began. Originally Luise Rainer was supposed to play the main role of Anni in the film adaptation of The Girl from Trieste by the author Ferenc Molnár . However, the actress fell out of favor with those in charge of the studio, not least because she married Clifford Odets , an avowed communist. The role then went to Joan Crawford and the entire script was completely rewritten. The prostitute, desperate for life, has now turned into a somewhat disaffected cabaret singer. The original aim of the play to show social upheavals in society and to expose the sometimes dubious morality of the so-called upper class has been completely emphasized. It ended with a typical Crawford story of a poor woman's rise to high society, complete with eye-catching costumes and two admirers. The financial failure was also due to the fact that, in contrast to almost all previous films, Crawford was unable to improve her social position permanently in the end, but instead stayed with the status quo ante. The female fans, however, expected a Crawford film to portray the rise of a woman from sometimes the poorest of backgrounds in the social hierarchy, combined with material security. In a comparable way, only Laughing Sinners from 1931 denied viewers the usual expectations and this film, too, fell short of expectations in terms of box office results.

It was directed by Dorothy Arzner , one of the few female directors in Hollywood . The initially friendly atmosphere between Arzner and Crawford, who had already met on the set of The Last of Mrs. Cheyney , where Arzner directed some scenes, clouded over during the course of filming. In the end, the two women stopped talking to each other. Arzner's contract with MGM was terminated immediately after the film was over, and Arzner was not to return to directing until 1940. The head designer Gilbert Adrian designed the eponymous dress for Crawford, which was tailored to the actress's body from hundreds of thousands of metal sequins. The dress weighed 25 kg and cost over $ 10,000 to make. In her biography, Maria Riva reports in detail about her mother Marlene Dietrich about how much Dietrich admired this creation. In mid-1939 it was worn , only slightly reworked, by Jeanette MacDonald in a Broadway Serenade .

Theatrical release

A budget of $ 960,000 made up The Bride Wore Red an above-average MGM production. The film ended up grossing $ 1,200,000 worldwide, a smaller amount than Joan Crawford's previous films. In the end there was a clear loss for the studio.

Reviews

Most critics emphasized the contrast between the banality of the script and the opulent setting of the film.

Howard Barnes found in the New York Herald Tribune :

“Joan Crawford has a glamorous day in 'The Bride Wore Red' […] With a new hairstyle and wide-open eyes, she first plays a drift, a fine lady and a village beauty with the well-known Crawford manner. It is not entirely her fault that she always ends up being herself. [The film] has no dramatic conviction and little of the comical flair that would have made the film amusing and easy. Your enjoyment of the film depends on how much Miss Crawford you can endure all at once. […] Dorothy Arzner's direction is consistently interesting and at times ... even extremely innovative, but overall she is unable to match this empty Cinderella Dream to give more than a pretty facade. "

literature

  • Roy Newquist (Ed.): Conversations with Joan Crawford . Citadel Press, Secaucus, NJ 1980, ISBN 0-8065-0720-9 .
  • Lawrence J. Quirk : The Complete Films of Joan Crawford . Citadel Press, Secaucus, NJ 1988, ISBN 0-8065-1078-1 .
  • Lawrence J. Quirk, William Schoell: Joan Crawford. The Essential Biography . University Press, Lexington, KY. 2002, ISBN 0-8131-2254-6 .
  • Alexander Walker: Joan Crawford. The Ultimate Star . Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1983, ISBN 0-297-78216-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joan Crawford has a glamorous field day in “The Bride Wore Red” […] With a new hair-do and more wide-eyed than ever, she plays at being a slattern, a fine lady, and a peasant with all of the well-known Crawford sorcery. It is not entirely her fault that she always remains herself. [The film] has no dramatic conviction and little of the comic flavor that might have made it amusing though slight. Your enjoyment of it will depend on how much of Miss Crawford you can take at one stretch .... The direction of Dorothy Arzner is always interesting and sometimes ... is extraordinarily imaginative, but here she has not been able to give a vapid Cinderella pipe dream more than a handsome pictorial front.