La flamme qui s'éteint

I have seen many films of this theme a la dying of incurable illness.. Bette Davis made her dynamic imprint with Dark Victory. Lana Turner moved beyond soap opera and made Madame X impossible to not weep in her demise.. Margaret Sullavan simplifies and shines in a glowing performance in this film.. With her incredibly unique speaking voice,her subtleties that are hers alone,this is an experience to marvel and weep over time and time again. An undervalued jewel!

I do like sad movies, ones that tugs at your heartstrings, I do love the movie Somewhere in Time by the way. However this movie is the most frustrating movie I have watched in a long time. What I don't like about this so-called tearjerker is that the wife, played by Margaret Sullivan, never tells her husband she is dying. He only finds it out at the very end of the movie by error when he sees a pill bottle on the bedroom table and calls up the doctor who tells him. Even the doctor doesn't tell him. She thinks she's saving him grief by not telling him, but to me she's just selfish. This was six months after she knew she had cancer. The first half an hour was okay, but when her husband is having an affair with his co-worker, even then she tells no one. Nothing in this movie seemed genuine. They even played a melody from a Brahm's symphony which I love, over and over to the point where I couldn't stand to listen to it any more. The acting was artificial from everyone. If you like soap operas this might be enjoyable, but for people who like sad movies every once in a while, this was disappointing and a waste of my time. Margaret Sullivan's last movie was not her best

Too bad the early reviewer could not appreciate this beautifully acted melodrama. This movie is a lovely swansong for Margaret Sullavan's career - she always excelled at this kind of material(as well as wry comedy)and she is pitch perfect as the dying wife & mother . All the performers do exemplary work - Wendell Corey is winning and sympathetic as Brad; Viveca Lindfors makes a very difficult role as the other woman understandable & touching; and Natalie Wood makes young Polly a very lovable daughter. Only the hardest of hearts can watch the last scene without shedding a tear - "Polly, do you remember what your mother said when she left?" "No... I only remember she smiled" ! ---highly recommended

I fail to see how the movie was sexist or racist considering the timeframe. In fact, the movie shows a woman can perform well in a position tradionally held by men. Only recently up into the 70s were women being comepletely accepted in male dominated positions. Only recently were MDs required to give honest brutal but truthful information to their patients. They would withold some information if they felt is was beneficial to their patient. As far as patient confidentiality goes. HIPAA was not around then and a husband just as entitled to know about his wife's medical condition as she was. As far as a husband developing an affair with a coworker. Where and when does that not take place today? In fact, this movie may have predicted a complication of coed workforces that were not too common back then. It doesn't take much of a brain and a tiny bit of history to understand the setting of this movie. Now speaking from a medical professional, I can say the death was a little too clean for a person dying of cancer, but back then showing such misery and horror was frowned upon. Look at how people died in war movies back then. She would have shown progressive weight loss, signs of anemia, growing weakness, etc. But, even now I see people who seem to be doing fine, get hospitalized and are dead within a week or two. In the end, the movie was one of the pioneer movies to address the depressive and taboo subject of dying of cancer, something really only as recent as the late 60s and early 70s was able to be more open about. Though it is not a classic tearjerker, it is a sad and depressive movie about the real threat of carncer and I would recommend it to classic movie buffs and those wishing to study how Hollywood tackled death and dying in the films.

Although it's sometimes difficult to do, judging a 1950's film with 2000's social mores and sense of letting it all hang out is probably not the best way to view this film, a sensitive and understated tale of a woman with cancer. Having lived through a time when the word was usually whispered rather than stated, and was usually not talked about in polite company, I know that Sullivan's horror at discovering not only that she cannot have a child but that she is also stricken with a killer illness is quietly realistic for the time (this is not a spoiler, such information revealed with the first ten minutes of the film). Sullivan delivers an amazing subtle performance, understated in her refusal to stage hysterical scenes of unhappiness, quietly demonstrating strength in attempting, as many people do, to not "become a burden." Underrated Wendell Corey, who is a powerful player in such melodramas as Harriet Craig and Desert Fury, is Sullivan's Mr. Average Guy, an amiable husband who loves his wife, kid, and work--and it is at work he meets a young woman who tempts him, a woman whose history reveals some hidden strengths. Enough said. Sure it's a weeper, supremely so as it gathers steam, but unlike a Crawford or Davis film, Sullivan's heroine is all about self-effacement and loving no matter what the cost, and thus appears to many contemporary viewers as a dated woman; the Oscar-nominated music score George Dunning (with plenty of help from Brahms) constantly underscores the film with a quiet persuasiveness; the supporting cast, including a delightfully thoughtful Natalie Wood deliver the goods.