Has there ever been another Hollywood story quite like Marie Dressler's?
Is it even imaginable that in today's world an overweight, late middle age, and let's face it -- not very attractive -- woman could be the number one box office draw among movie audiences? But that's exactly what Marie Dressler was for two years running in the early 1930s. She won an Oscar for the 1931 film "Min and Bill" and received her second and last nomination for "Emma," the story of a nanny in a wealthy household who marries the father years after the mother has died in childbirth, and then sees the children turn on her when they become jealous of her inheritance. It's a short film (about 70 minutes or so) but nevertheless packs in a lot of plot. It covers decades and manages to work in a murder trial among everything else, and still manages to have moments that feel like padding. Poor Dressler is really put through the ringer. Everyone she likes best ends up dying, and she never gives us the catharsis we are begging for, which is to see her punch the spoiled brat children who accuse her of murdering their father in the face. No, Dressler stays good and true, choosing to see the best in them and never thinking of herself.
Dressler is a bit of an acquired taste. I found her Oscar-winning performance in "Min and Bill" to be tiresome. She mugs and grimaces, and that film gave her several "comedy" bits that were played up in an exaggerated, yuck-yuck vaudeville style. "Emma" has a couple of those moments as well, but overall her performance in this is much more varied and nuanced. I can see why she seemed unique at the time. So many actors in early sound films planted themselves in place on the movie set and delivered their lines like they were reading them off of cue cards. They didn't seem to be able to both move and speak at the same time. But Dressler is always doing something while she's talking -- she fidgets and dithers, and when she's not delivering actual lines, she's muttering and ad-libbing.
"Emma" is certainly guilty of being one of those sentimental melodramas so popular at the time, but for all that it does have some emotional force, and I found myself lingering over it for a little while after I watched it. There's a scene in which Emma walks through her house seeing the ghosts of the young children that once were, before they all grew up to be vile adults. It's a bit corny, but also strangely moving, and the whole movie is kind of like that.
Grade: B+
