Peter Ibbetson

To think that Henry Hathaway made the same year "the lives of a Bengal Lancer" and "Peter Ibbetson"!Both are classics in their genre :the first was an adventures film no one could do today;the second one is simply my favorite Hathaway movie.I know it was his favorite too.

"Lancer" and "Peter" could not be more different,they are worlds apart,and who could believe the same director (and actor) made the two works?

"Peter Ibbetson" had a strong influence on the French cinema of the thirties/forties ,particularly those of Marcel Carné ("Les Visiteurs du Soir""Juliette ou La Clé des Songes" ) Marcel Lherbier ("la Nuit Fantastique" ) and Cocteau/Delannoy ("L'Eternel Retour").Henry Hathaway's film spawned a whole school of "escapism" cinema.

The first part deals with childhood and depicts the worst misfortune a young boy can know:the death of his mother.It takes place in the chic suburbs of Paris ,where,we are told,wealthy English people own their town house.After his mother's decease ,"Gogo" is separated from the little girl with a white dress...and returns to England where he will live with his uncle.

Peter/Gogo's only desire (and it's everyone's desire ) is to come back to this lost paradise ,to the place he was a child ..Early in the movie,we have a first pilgrimage with a girl (Ida Lupino ,a future great actress/director in one of her first parts)who does not care (she cannot share his memories)and whose only interest is the swing.

Although he briefly appears ,Slade is a very important character.He is a blind man,but he can see;his words are not different from those by Saint Exupery in "Le Petit Prince" -which was yet to come for it was published in 1943) ("It is only with the heart that one can rightly see;what is essential is invisible to the eyes") If the heart can give eyesight to the blind ,then what can true absolute love do?When you are in jail,a paralyzed prisoner ,what can you expect from life?

The last part is one of the peaks of the American cinema of the thirties ,predating dozens of films not only the French escapism movies from the German Occupation but also such works as "Stairway to Heaven" (Powell) or "Portrait of Jennie" (Dieterle) and "Bid Time Return" (Swarc) These dreams when the lovers meet up are the impossible return to childhood man longs for in his whole life;but these dreams are fragile:the castle Peter built for his beloved one is nothing when the storm set in.A surrealistic film,"Peter Ibbetson" is love's triumph over everything:the laws that man made,our Cartesian spirit ,even death itself.Just make your dream longer than the night.

Gary Cooper and Ann Harding have become legendary hearts.

This 1933 Gary Cooper film is highly regarded and mentioned in many film books. It was a serious film in tone and content, and also in it's techniques. Initially, it seems a rather bland melodrama about two childhood sweethearts who are parted then reunited. The blandness is somewhat heightened by the visual blandness of Ann Harding, the female star. (She is blonde, but very visually monochromatic… minimal eyebrows or eye make-up, which makes her seem very very plain, even though she is pretty.) This was the "taste of the times" for a serious "good" woman, and the reason I have this listed as an 8 is that it is definitely dated, and will be much too slow for many viewers.

The story is about dreams and architecture, so keep an eye on the buildings, there are really inventive and beautiful buildings. The stable that is supposed to be "horrible" is like a forest cottage in a fairy tale. The child casting at the beginning is funny by today's standards of continuity. These actually are pretty good child actors for the time – not cloying or overly precious - but the boy's coloring is quite dissimilar to the adult. Big brown eyes of the boy becoming the famous baby blues of Cooper. But let these things go, and the early scenes are an effective and emotionally effective set up for the payoff.

The best part of the film comes in the last third. Suddenly, we are in an expressive fantasy – completely grounded in the earlier part, but also completely different. Not only are the effects here still magical, reminiscent of Durer etchings, but they are also really overwhelming when we think about how difficult it was to achieve these effects in this time period. (Any thing that fades in or out - this had to be done by re-filming with the same piece of film, etc.) While never named, it is clearly colored by the "astral body" theories of the Eastern religions that were popular in Hollywood at the time, having a strong influence on art, architecture, and design during this period.

Ultimately this is a beautiful and memorable film about the strength of love, dreams, and the triumph of pure heart. This makes for a very quiet but powerful film. (Quiet and powerful became the hallmark of Cooper's screen character.) The strength of this film is its simplicity of message, and the really memorable and soulful performance of Cooper.

Peter Ibbetson (1935)

An un-repenting romance, and I mean romance in the sense of two people being in true love for ever and ever no matter what. There is almost nothing less going on here, but who needs anything else? The best of it, in a way, is the fantasia near the end, some remarkable dream and surreal scenes with great effect. Also a great treat is seeing a young Ida Lupino as a sweet and somewhat self-absorbed young woman who is interested in our hero, played by Gary Cooper.

But Lupino is secondary, and once things get fully in gear in the present, it is Cooper's romance as Peter Ibbetson with Ann Harding, playing his childhood girlfriend, that makes it click. And no romantic stone is left untouched. By the time the movie gets to its final third you know what is happening, and then it takes a huge turn and things get both crazy and sentimentally moving. A romance turns violent, and then a crime turns first dark and then bright and almost religious (though never actually religious) and a sense of winning against all the odds is the final theme. This may strike some viewers as just wishful thinking and directorial excess, but it's so well done this isn't fair. The special effects are stunning, better than many recent effects, for sure.

And what about the filming and acting? All quite first rate. You might pigeonhole this as some kind of Depression-era escapist dream come true kind of film, but it really rises above that. It's about an impossible but not quite impossible ideal of absolute love, something that rises even above having a young Ida Lupino want you in your youth, or above giving up when chained to a wooden plank with a broken back. It's about hoping when it seems there is no hope.

But then, that's what people were doing everyday in the mid 1930s, after half a decade of terrible economic times (and without even knowing that another half a decade lay ahead). It's not a great film, but it's a great theme handled well enough to make you perk up. Someone else might have played Cooper's part with more subtlety or sophistication, but Harding is terrific in her role as rich kid turned angel. And Henry Hathaway, directing his heart out for a change, pulls off some great shifts in tone and temperament form one section of the film to the next, and narrowly avoids the sickly sweetness or downright camp that might have trapped another director. He may not have had a really classic film to his name, but among a good dozen very very good ones, from these 1930s dramas to some post-war film noirs, this is one of his best.

If you are at this site and reading about "Peter Ibbetson"-----congratulations on having an exotic taste in films coupled with a deep-seated fascination with romance, fantasy, destiny and the power of love to conquer the most formidable of difficulties! We have seen a number of films from Hollywood's Golden Age that touched upon similar themes. From "Death Takes a Holiday" (1934) to "Here Comes Mr. Jordan" (1941), we suffered along with sympathetic lovers whose path to true fulfillment was strewn with seemingly insurmountable obstacles. But in the end---somehow-----the force of love overcame every problem to ultimately allow for what was meant to be.

These stories are ageless and have appeared as recently as "Somewhere In Time" (1980) and "Meet Joe Black" (1998)---itself a reworking of "Death Takes a Holiday." "Peter Ibbetson" may be one of the very best films to explore the force of destiny on young lovers linked from childhood to be together "forever." The beauty of this film is in its design, execution and performances.

Henry Hathaway, the director, worked with Gary Cooper earlier in 1935 in the rousing action adventure "Lives of a Bengal Lancer." Are there two more dissimilar films than these? It is a tribute to Hathaway's skill and artistry that he could make both stories work so well when they were completed almost at the same time.

Cooper excelled in portraying sensitive characters ("Pride of the Yankees" (1942), "Sergeant York" (1941), etc.) and Peter Ibbetson was well within his range of projecting an introspective romantic hero whose great love must be found in the world of dreams. It is a fine, deeply felt performance.

Ann Harding, not well known today as a romantic actress, captures the complexity and subtlety of the story. Her ability to will the Cooper character into believing that their love must persist even if it exists only in their own imagination is both powerful and enduring.

When contemporary critics take shots at the old Hollywood Studio System as nothing more than a glorified factory grinding out entertainment fodder for the masses, they ought to take a look at this strange, moving and truly unusual film. Its creators probably knew going in that it was not likely to be a box office hit given the nature of the subject matter. The fact that it was made at all and in such a sumptuous manner is an excellent tribute to the taste of the powers that be at Paramount.

Seek out "Peter Ibbetson," You will be transported to a world that no longer exists---and into a story that requires the viewer to be a real romantic with great imagination. It will reward you with a deeply touching tale where true love finally wins out under the most extraordinary of circumstances. What more need be said?

Odd semi fantasy film has a good performance from a dashing Gary Cooper to recommend it but the pacing is off. The mood is too earthbound to make it haunting and too celestial for a standard telling. Part of the problem is in the female lead. Ann Harding while a fine actress is miscast as the object of Gary's lifelong desire, a more ethereal performer was required, Merle Oberon would have been perfect. The film drags in parts and feels stilted in others, a defect in the direction more than in the story. The appearance of an almost unrecognizable Ida Lupino as a bit of Cockney baggage is a treat but she's in and out of the film in under fifteen minutes.