Amor prohibido

FORBIDDEN is a passable soap opera from 1932 notable for it's pre-code bluntness about adultery and illegitimacy (the movie was not allowed to be reissued just three years later after the formation of the Hays code.) Barbara Stanwyck stars as a twenty-something young matron well on her way to spinsterhood in her dead end job as a small town librarian. After almost a decade on the job she has had Enough and closes out her savings account of its $1,200 and invests the works in glamorizing herself and a ticket to a Havana cruise. Though now chic and fashionable, her inner librarian is unable to break through and meet any men on the ship until her accidental meeting with a fairly soused Adolphe Menjou.

Stanwyck and Menjou become inseparable and soon blossom into a full-fledged affair that continues back in the states (apparently Stanwyck has moved to the city). Halloween night finds the couple with their own trick or treat - Stanwyck learns Menjou is married just as she was planning to let him know she is with child.

This soap was directed by Frank Capra who occasionally goes on board on directorial "touches" like shooting scenes with faces hidden or from unusual angles but his direction is generally admirable. Stanwyck is terrific as always and what a surprise to see Adolphe Menjou is a romantic lead. Though only 40 at the time, he always seemed older than his years and was seldom cast in romantic male leads during the talkie era. Ralph Bellamy is the third wheel as per usual but this time around he is a surprisingly unpleasant and creepy one as the coarse newspaper man who aims to bring politician Menjou down - unaware they both are interested in Barbara.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the obvious parallels between this story and the far more famous Bette Davis picture NOW VOYAGER made a decade later - a homely woman transforms herself into a beauty and goes on a cruise ship to find love only to have her beau be a married man. The "church mouse" side of Stanwyck's character is abandoned early in the story but it might have explained why she held on for decades for just a part of a man's love. (This film is one of those which while only spanning twenty years has the characters looking ready for the old age home when they would only be in their late forties.)

Viewers might be aghast at Menjou's description of his wife as an "invalid" - Dorothy Peterson gets around mighty fine, if with the help of a cane but presumably this is a discreet illusion to the fact that their relationship is no longer physical given her condition after the car wreck. Also watch for an early scene showing the meanness of Bellamy's character as he hits an office boy's head with an apple core - the kid has to force a smile since it's his boss but when turned away he clearly mouths "son of a bitch" about Bellamy.

FORBIDDEN is not one of Stanwyck's better movies but it's entertaining and has several potent scenes from the excellent character setup of an young old maid on the way to work to the timid girl dining alone on a cruise ship to her final solution for ending Bellamy's hounding of Menjou and as such is definitely worth a look.

And that includes "Stella Dallas." Another character in this movie falls her "the world's best loser." She plays it well but it's a far cry from the jazzy characters for which she is probably most famous. When one talks about range, one has only to look at this or "Stella Dallas" (a better known but, in my view, inferior film) and then at "The Lady Eve" and "Ball of Fire." Not to mention "Double Indemnity"! She begins this as a wallflower. Children taunt her as "four-eyes." Even at her most poignant, though, nobody could buy that for the hardy Stanwyck. She goes on a cruise and falls in love. And, oh boy! What a mistake that is! A married man, a child -- and lots more. (She meets married Adolph Menjou on the cruise and the child is born soon after; so this is not giving much away.) Through all of it, she is stoic. She says she's happy but we know she couldn't be.

It's very well done by all concerned.

Stanwyck and Menjou are on top form here, a real pleasure to watch, and the camera-work is exquisite; the story/pacing is weak in places but you won't mind this much (perhaps hardly notice) unless you're immune to the former. The film depicts, over a period of about 20 years, a complex clandestine love-relationship between the two leads, leaving some space for individual interpretation - not at all like most films made under the appalling thirty year tyranny of the Hayes code introduced a couple of years later. Forbidden is a serious, thought-provoking and often very moving film, with careful, 'arty' composition and psychologically-loaded lingering shots, but it also contains moments of melodrama (not in bad way) and humour (laugh-out-loud but quirky, not slapstick). Highly recommended, along with Capra/Stanwyck's The Bitter Tea of General Yen, made the following year. I give it a 7 - reluctantly, in my effort to be objective with regards to the story. I watched it on the big screen and I 'felt' it as an 8.

Be sure to bring a snorkel so you don't drown in all the soap suds. Okay, it's a weepy from beginning to end, but 30's soap opera doesn't come much slicker than this. LuLu (Stanwyck) has a tropical fling to relieve a humdrum life. The trouble is that she leaves as one but comes back as two, and the father (Menjou) is already married. So what is poor Lulu to do now that she's an un-wed mother and Dad has big political ambitions and a wife. It takes an hour and a half to find out.

Apparently, Columbia studios had the formidable Stanwyck pegged as a 3-hanky heroine since they kept casting her in these sudsy roles. On the other hand, it took hard-boiled Warner Bros. to bring out that tough-cookie inner person we all know and enjoy. Still, she runs the emotional gamut here in fine fashion, persisting from one heartbreak to the next.

Two scenes stick with me. There's an absolutely exquisite horse ride through scalloped fingers of surf filmed in incandescent b&w (Joseph Walker). Anyone doubting the continuing value of b&w should take a look here. The wonderful dreamlike quality serves as a perfect correlate to what Lulu feels during the romantic get-away, and cannot be duplicated in color, at least in my little book.

Then there's that hilarious scene in the newspaper office where the pot-bellied old "Mary Sunshine" explains his 'advice to the lovelorn' column to the new Mary Sunshine (Lulu). He's a hard-bitten old reporter who resembles the column's title about as much as Alfred Hitchcock resembles Shirley Temple. And when he tells her to read seven letters and throw the rest away, you just know the empathetic Lulu will read the whole stack.

Sure, the story hangs together about as well as a Rube Goldberg contraption, but who cares since it all goes down pretty smoothly thanks to Capra's way with a camera and a storyline. Then too, I'm really proud of myself. I got through the 90 minutes with just two hankies on the floor instead of the usual three.

What struck me about this film is the fact that although the story spans about 20 years, the hairstyles, clothes, cars, furniture and general infrastructure remain steadfastly "1932" throughout. Makes me wonder why they didn't start the film in 1912 - budget concerns over the cost of 1912 production values? Anyway, this melodrama is pretty routine for its time - contrived, fast-moving plot structure dealing with "naughty" subject matter, in this case cohabitation outside wedlock and its consequences. Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou and Ralph Bellamy are all quite arresting in their roles and there are some nice turns of dialog and at least one memorable camera angle during an emotional scene in which the only visible part of Stanwyck's face - mostly concealed behind Menjou's shoulder - is the area around her right eye, filmed through the spaces between balusters on a staircase. Whether this scene was meant to reflect the shadowy nature of the couple's relationship or just a way to make the scene more fun to watch, it's a standout.