Carrie

Lawrence Olivier plays a man that's comfortably off in the high society of Chicago at the end of the 19th century. He'll risk everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) for the love of a young lady. Of course, if the young lady is Jennifer Jones then it really makes some sense. The family, the money, the social status... that's nothing compare with that angel face and the ingenuity of a country girl.

"Carrie" is a big time melodrama. If you think that Scarlett O'Hara had a rough time, wait and see the descent into hell of Olivier's character. The journey of Sir Laurence from the days of wine and roses to the misery and the wandering is just overwhelming... (what can you expect of one of the best actors ever??).

Don't you forget your handkerchief!

*My rate: 8/10

I read the book at 17 and picked it up again. I remember seeing the film many years ago and decided to buy the video. What a find. I had never realized how romantic Sir Olivier could be. Talk about how desperate love can destroy a life at any age. When George Hurstwood, a wealthy manager of a prominent drinking establishment meets naive, trusting Carrie Meeber from Columbia City he is smitten. Right from the moment he spies her entering the men's bar entrance you know from his eyes he is hooked. When he attempts to seduce her away from Charles Drouet I believe he plans to just keep her as a mistress to satisfy his need for love. When he finds she is not to be won over he must sacrifice everything to have her, including forfeiting his property and assets to a shrew of a wife, played unmercifully by Miriam Hopkins.

Olivier's eyes are captivating in every scene with Jennifer Jones, his manners are impeccable the chemistry between them is dazzling. Watch his eyes especially when Carrie declares her love for him in the park. I love this film and it is much more idealistic than the book which describes Carrie as disillusioned when Hurstwood can't support her and thinks him old and useless. In the film her love endures even in poverty. When Hurstwood's son surfaces Carrie encourages him to seek him out for help and decides to leave only for his benefit.

Carrie is not portrayed in the film as the selfish character in Dreiser's novel. You truly believe her love for Hurstwood but at what cost. Hurstwood has the class and wealth Carrie is looking for. Problem is she loves nice things and her respectability is compromised when thinking Hurstwood unmarried chooses him. Jennifer Jones is marvelous going from a poor young, innocent girl with an education but it's her looks that help her along. Eddie Albert is fine as the self assured drummer who wins her over with his charm. I also picked up on the "green acres" bit. It's Olivier who steals the film, going from a respectable gentleman to a tragic figure who holds onto his dignity to the end. For all you romantics see this film. It's fifty years old and Olivier and Jones can still burn up the screen.

This is a superb film, directed with great style by William Wyler. A tough film for romantics, it's about how following your heart will not always lead to living "happily ever after". A very mature film about becoming middle-aged but still yearning for romance - and a very uncompromising film in which love and forgiveness are sometimes just not enough. An unusual film to come out of Hollywood in the Fifties, it now emerges as one of the finest American films of that period.

Jennifer Jones, Eddie Albert and Miriam Hopkins all deliver top-notch performances - subtle, believable, multi-dimensional and real. Hopkins remains one of the most under-rated of all Hollywood stars - her reputation sadly damaged by her real-life feud with Bette Davis. But she was a brilliant actress. Jones looks stunning, and portrays her character's development from naivety to worldliness with intelligence and strength. Albert is likeable, but also quite menacing, as her salesman lover.

But towering above all is the great Laurence Olivier, in what I venture to say is his best screen performance. As the ageing restauranter who finds true love too late, he gives an unbearably moving performance. His astonishing physical transformations match perfectly his character's downward fortunes - but there is also a complete truth to his emotion here. One wonders how much he was drawing on his own tragic marriage to Vivien Leigh to find that truth.

This is a ten star film.

Based on the novel Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser, William Wyler's Carrie is a melodrama through and through, the sort of thing that recalls earlier efforts like Jezebel or Wuthering Heights. It's also something of a compromised work to fit in with the Hays Office's mandates on morality in film at the time, something that also hampered Detective Story. It's obvious that Wyler was trying to push as far as he could under the strictures that he was operating, but unlike someone like Alfred Hitchcock who was unquestionably on the top of the industry in multiple ways, including, most importantly, financially, Wyler was making more dramatic fare than sensationalist while his films rarely made Hitchcock money.

Carrie Meeber (Jennifer Jones) is a hayseed who decides to go to Chicago to make her fortune, following after her sister who married a stockyard worker and is making her living in a hovel in the slums of the major Midwestern city. On the train in, she meets Charles (Eddie Albert), a slick operator and traveling salesman based in Chicago who gives her his card in the hope of further contact. After she loses her job at a boot manufacturers sweatshop, she calls up Charles in the hope of finding a job, but he quickly captures her into his illicit web by getting her to live in his apartment with her without marrying her. She also meets a man who runs a high class establishment, George Hurstwood (Laurence Olivier).

The whole dramatic angle of the first half of the film is Carrie moving from one illicit situation to another because while Charles dotes on her in his own skeevy way (he may even love her in a way that's not terribly standard), Carrie falls in love with George who immediately falls in love with her back. The problem is that George is already married to Julie (Miriam Hopkins) with two grown children. However, through some machinations on Julie's part, she is the effective owner of every major piece of his property, and she won't divorce him. She'd rather seem him squirm than happy, and George is desperate for his own happiness.

It's about here where the film becomes George's, and he doesn't let go until the final twenty minutes or so. It's a good thing that Olivier is a really good actor because he makes this section, which does feel a mite overlong, work as well as it does. It's a portrait of a man on a self-destructive course because he simply wants to be happy, so he's willing to throw everything away to be with the one woman he loves. It's a downward spiral that involves theft, lying, and deception. Combine that with the thinly veiled prostituting of herself that Carrie goes through, and you have some basic elements of a Billy Wilder movie, a comparison I was actually considering early in the film.

I suppose I was slightly thrown by the change in focus as Carrie became a minor character in the movie named after her, sitting at home while George goes out and tries to make a new living in New York, his recent history following him wherever he goes so he can't keep a job. It's a showcase for Olivier in one of his more subtle performances, a marked contrast to some of his bigger moments in Wuthering Heights, and his tragic downfall, brought on by his own choices, is carried entirely by Olivier. There's little else to hold it up since it becomes an almost episodic series of events that relay that downfall.

Carrie reasserts herself towards the end when she gets confronted with the fact that George never actually got a divorce from Julie, making him a bigamist, and that they just keep getting poorer and poorer. So, she makes her own way, and that her rise to her own fame is covered in a quick montage feels like it's a cheat to her, since this is nominally her story. It ends on a tragic note, and that note ends up being George's (changed from the novel to make it less explicit in how he ends).

I found the film a small success, probably the least of Wyler's work. It keeps demonstrating how Wyler could make something out of very little through his sheer talent and ability with the technical sides of filmmaking in addition to his management of actors. Jennifer Jones might have been more of a plaything for her husband David O. Selznick than a serious actress (though, she definitely had some good performances in her like in The Song of Bernadette), but she holds her own well enough here. The show really belongs to Olivier, though, and combined with Wyler's direction, he delivers a surprisingly nuanced performance of self-destruction. He's the main joy of the film because the actual story is straight up melodrama given no real dimension to latch onto. That I feel the film succeeds despite that is a surprise to me.

Still, this is probably Wyler's least film. It's something that feels compromised by needs of the studio to push forward a big actor and clean up the action for the Hays Office. I'm reminded of The Plough and the Stars by John Ford, a work that was also diminished by studio demands but still managed to work despite them.

This is a curious little sleeper from 1952, a grim, objective look at the upward mobility of a country girl who first adapts to the needs of the men around her, and then moves on to a successful stage career on her own, leaving one of the men in abject poverty.

Today Carrie succeeds not only because of it's splendid recreation of a time, but as one of the few American vehicles where the legendary Laurence Olivier, (who often walked through a character role for the paycheck) performs to his best advantage, evolving from an assured man of the world to a pathetic morsel at the bottom of the heap, a restrained and beautifully measured performance given 13 years later than his dynamic Heathcliff for the same directer in 1939's Wuthering Heights.

Jennifer Jones, too, is a good deal less hysterical and florid than usual; the music score by David Raksin underscores without bombast, and the supporting cast provide excellent contrast. This is definitely not a cheerer-upper, but a picture neatly tuning into it's original author's concerns. It deserves another look, and as time goes by, will be considered one of Wyler's significant contributions.