Elles étaient soeurs

If you have seen "The Man in Grey (1943)" and enjoyed it, you should take the time and trouble to seek out this forgotten gem from 1945 for it again stars James Mason playing a sadistic, manipulative husband, albeit in modern dress.Alongside, it tells the story of three very different sisters at a time between the two world wars.The story also follows their respective marriages and the type of husbands they wed.

Phylis Calvert (Lucy) plays a "goody two shoes" sister who has tragically lost a daughter but has a very supportive, understanding husband.A very sexy Anne Crawford plays a promiscuous wife (Vera) who finds her husband boring and looks for affairs on the side.To be fair to her character, she did say to her fiancé that she did not love him before they wed.Nevertheless they have a daughter together.There is a brief sexy scene where Vera is putting on her stockings which is far more daring than you will see in American films of the time with the Hays Censorship Code in place.I have quite a collection of films of this vintage and the only equivalent film I can think of is the Madeleine Carroll/Robert Donat scene in the Scottish hotel bedroom from "The 39 Steps" (1935).As an aside, if you would like to see another performance by Anne Crawford, seek out "Millions Like Us" (1943).

Finally Dulcie Gray plays (Charlotte) the passive victim-type sister who marries "Geoffrey" (James Mason) at his sadistic best.They have an elder daughter and a younger son and daughter who come to despise their cruel, manipulative father.You may smile at their frightfully refined, polished accents (presumably taught at stage school) but this is one of the charms I find from films of this time.Another reviewer commented on the near incestuous relationship hinted at in the film with his elder daughter played by his later real wife, Pamela Mason. Good must triumph in these morality films of the time.No, I won't provide a spoiler.I do know that I have my wife's attention with a film such as "They Were Sisters" if I dare to speak during it and she cuts me off.This was no exception!!

Phyllis Calvert is lovely and sympathetic and, aside from the children and the dog, is the only one to really cheer for. Although most female viewers will be lured in by James Mason's disturbingly alluring cruelty, they will probably find it quite ugly by the end. Being set in the more modern day, with Mason in a suit and driving a car, instead of a period costume and a horse, makes this story all the more unpleasant. Worst of all is the casting of Mason's real-life wife Pamela as his eldest daughter (!) Unless this was a rare glimpse of him breaking character with the camera rolling, his physical affection with her in their many shared scenes surely indicated incest. Eww! Her performance doesn't give that impression, but then she wasn't much of an actress. Allegedly her character is mature, yet she calls him "Daddy" throughout. His poor on- screen wife and children suffer his endless verbal and emotional abuse. He even threatens the poor dog. The most entertaining scene for me (as an American) was when the young son is playing with a new gun, and Cruel Papa Mason says he MAY have to take that away from him. Unlike the villain you loved to hate in The Man in Grey and The Wicked Lady, here his villain is more like alcoholic pervert uncle-by-marriage who manages to ruin every family gathering. You'll applaud Phyllis Calvert's kind- hearted character but won't find any redeeming value in Mason's villain.

They Were Sisters casts Phyllis Calvert, Anne Crawford, and Dulcie Gray as three sisters who meet and marry their husbands right after World War I and the film is the story of the three marriages in those years between the World Wars. It's not unlike the Bette Davis-Errol Flynn film from Warner Brothers The Sisters. But believe me there are no characters in that one as dark and sinister as James Mason here.

Phyllis Calvert is the nice one, the real glue that holds the extended family together. She meets and marries Peter Murray-Hill who was her husband in real life. They have no children, but become everyone's favorite uncle and aunt.

Anne Crawford is a spoiled child of the Roaring Twenties who wants to have every man in a room drooling when she makes an entrance. She's an incurable flirt, but she marries Barrie Livesey who's a comfortable old soul even in his youth and who knows himself, he's as dull as drying paint. One flirtation with Hugh Sinclair does put the marriage at risk however. She also ignores her only daughter who finds her best times spent with Calvert.

Dulcie Gray when she's on steals the film. Before the term was invented Gray is the perfect picture of a battered wife. She marries James Mason who systematically lowers the self esteem of a kind and generous person, even in the eyes of the three children they have. Of course Mason also starts on them as well and the other sisters soon notice it.

Mason is also at his nastiest in They Were Sisters. Without ever doing anything really physical to Gray, his voice inflections and body language suggest a truly evil man. His oldest daughter is played by Pamela Kellino who soon afterwards became Mrs. Mason in real life.

They Were Sisters explores some themes that Hollywood was not touching on at this time. Very similar to that other Gainsborough film, Fanny By Gaslight which also starred Mason and Calvert. It's a strong and disturbing film even with child characters, not necessarily for kid's viewing.

"They Were Sisters", a lush, Black and White studio film, has the cream of post-war British acting talent (Phyllis Calvert, James Mason, Anne Crawford.) You will need to get over the hurdle of tolerating that late 1940s bright, British way of talking, only nowadays to be heard in reduced form from the Queen. Also, accept and get used to the slightly wooden "Peter and Jane" style child actors - then you'll see a great weepy melodrama.

James Mason is deliciously malevolent and controlling of his drippy, sweet, doormat of a wife, the fragile Dulcie Gray. This sister's marriage troubles are timeless - what we would nowadays see as coercive control, or "gaslighting". Her sister Vera, played by that specialist of a high-maintenance woman, Anne Crawford, has a marriage more particular to the upper middle-class of the middle years of the century: a spoilt trophy wife, like a character from Noel Coward who's strayed into a melodrama, but still highly entertaining for it. The perfect, third sister Lucy has the perfect marriage, except she cannot have children, and so dotes on her sisters' neglected children. We're not great ones for family dramas like this nowadays, being rather individualistic and focussed on our ability to choose whether we marry and whether children quite fit our modern, choice-filled lives, so it is a refreshing pleasure to see this sisters' family drama, let's say from a "family" era.

Interestingly the wicked James Mason character's seventeen year old daughter is well played by Pamela Kellino, his future wife and already thirty in this picture - one of those actresses like Alicia Silverstone who seem able to play teenagers into their thirties. James Mason seems to have shown up as his smooth self in so many anonymous films that I'm inclined to avoid him; that's a bit absurd, because he's in so many good ones, in particular this one: see what he's made of here.

Give this great film a chance: if you can accept the accents and jauntiness and stop noticing them, it's a great melodrama, and the softer amongst you might finish up blubbing - maybe not quite "Wonderful Life" territory, but could be tear jerking.

This is a truly shocking film, and it is certainly not a weepie. Usually Gainsborough films have left me cold, indulging mostly in a fake delirium of both plots and characters. There are exceptions and this is one of them. It shows in tragic detail the details of false marriages, and the pain that children feel watching helplessly and not being able to escape or react. The plot is not melodramatic, and the suffering, intensely portayed by the three sisters of the title, and how only one of the three is happy with her husband rings true. To give away the plot is unfair, because the unravelling of the three marriages is so meticulously done. Dulcie Gray is the most tragic of the three and acts very well, and so does Phyllis Calvert but the third sister played by Anne Crawford ( who died far too young ) gives an extraordinary performance. Her coldness towards her husband almost equals the cold male brutality James Mason portrays as a real emotional killer. I also think in watching this film that viewers of our era should not find the mannerisms of the first half of the 20th C. to be out of date or ' funny ' in any way. Each period has its social mannerisms and if time allows at the end of this century people may look back and laugh. I do not find the film dated, and the subject matter of marital abuse and cruelty is as important today as then. Watch the scene where a father threatens to take away a loved dog from his child, by either giving it to a woman who does not want it or have it ' put down '. The devastation on the child's face is terrible to watch, and the director Arthur Crabtree excels in showing human tyranny and human suffering without sentimentality. Only the final scene nearly ruins what went before, but I guess after WW2 in 1945 an audience could only take so much. I would give it a 10 if that scene had not ( perhaps ) been tagged on.