Cavalcade

Widely considered, on the IMDB at least, as one of the least deserving Best Picture winners ever. And I disagree. Yes, there were other great films in 1933: Dinner at Eight, Gold Diggers of 1933, Duck Soup, State Fair, to name a few. This one is, first of all, unusually lavish, in the way Academy voters then tended (and still do, to an extent) to admire. It's from a stage success by a major playwright, and offers spectacle and crowd scenes even the Drury Lane never could have contained. It has a lively, Upstairs Downstairs/Downton Abbey vibe, and the reliable Una O'Connor and Herbert Mundin making the most of the downstairs couple. Clive Brook is a solid patriarch, and if Diana Wynyard tends to play to the second balcony more than she ought, she has some fine quiet moments, too. There are some very well-written scenes (the young couple on the Titanic, Wynyard telling O'Connor off late in the proceedings), some very accurate depictions of what was considered mass entertainment at the time, and some good montages. The constant passage-of-time device of those people and horses parading across the screen does get tired, and one can detect a certain self-congratulatory air in Frank Lloyd's direction; oh, look how capable I am at handling the sheer volume of this. But I'm interested throughout, and can see how it may well have been the most impressive of the Best Picture nominees that year. Give it a break.

I suppose you don't have to be an Anglophile to like Cavalcade, but it certainly helps.

The film it seems to be most like to me is Giant. Just as the Edna Ferber based film is some 25 years of the second quarter of the last century as seen through the eyes of the Texas Benedict family, Cavalcade is a British social history through the Marryots, Robert and Jane played by Clive Brook and Diana Wynyard. Though the Benedicts have their problems, they don't go through near the tragedies that the Marryots do.

Cavalcade was presented on the London stage a few years earlier and it never made it to Broadway unlike most of Noel Coward's works. It was an expensive production with revolving kaleidoscope like sets that probably made American producers on Broadway shy away from it.

A lot of standard English Music Hall numbers were used instead of Coward writing an original score. He did contribute one number however, 20th Century Blues which was a whole commentary unto itself of the roaring twenties.

Although at that point in time our history in the USA certainly does connect with the United Kingdom's during World War I for the most part Cavalcade deals strictly with British subject matter. I'm afraid unless one is a fan of Noel Coward or is familiar with 20th Century British history, it's hard for today's audience to appreciate Cavalcade.

Cavalcade however was the Best Picture of 1933 and Frank Lloyd won for Best Director. He'd win another Oscar for Best Director on another, but far different British subject in Mutiny on the Bounty. Diana Wynyard was nominated for Best Actress, but lost to Katherine Hepburn for Morning Glory.

Two other good performances are Una O'Connor and Herbert Mundin as Mrs. and Mr. Bridges. They are the downstairs in service couple to the upstairs Marryots. Both play far different parts than what we normally see of them. Most film fans remember Herbert Mundin as the meek mess man from Mutiny on the Bounty and Much the Miller from The Adventures of Robin Hood where he's paired with Una O'Connor. He's quite different here.

Cavalcade is good, but terribly dated. Still it should be seen and evaluated as a commentary of how the British saw themselves at the beginning of the Great Depression.

I enjoyed this film, not so much as a piece of entertainment that still holds up today, but as a moment frozen both in time and geography. Unlike "42nd Street" and "Dinner at Eight" which are other films from 1933 that I think most Americans would find very accessible today, you might not care for Cavalcade if you don't know what to look for.

This film is totally British in its perspective and it is also very much in the anti-war spirit that pervaded movies between 1925 and 1935 as WWI came to be seen by nearly all its global participants as a pointless war and caused everyone to lose their taste for fighting another.

The British perspective that you have to realize is that the Marryotts are accustomed to being on top - both in the world as England had dominated the globe for centuries, and socially, as they were part of the aristocracy. That didn't mean that they were snobs - they were very friendly and compassionate with their servants. But the point is, they were accustomed to the relationship being their choice and under their control. Suddenly England appears to be on the decline on the world stage and the servants they were so kind to are coming up in the world on their own and don't need their permission to enter society. Downstairs is coming upstairs, like it or not.

Downstairs is personified in this film by the Bridges family, Marryot servants that eventually strike out on their own and into business. Eventually the daughter, Fanny, enters into a romance with the Marryot's younger son. When Mrs. Marryot learns the news she is not so shocked as she is resigned to the fact that this is another sign that her world is slipping away. As for Fanny Bridges, she seems to personify post-war decadence as she grows from a child to full womanhood in the roaring 20's. At one point in the film, as a child, she literally dances on the grave of a loved one. This is not a good sign of things to come.

If the movie has a major flaw it is that it goes rather slowly through the years 1900 through 1918 and flies through the last fifteen years. Through a well-done montage you get a taste for what British life was like during that time - in many cases it looks like it was going through the same growing pains as American society during that same period - but it's only a taste.

Overall I'd recommend it, but just realize that it is quite different in style from American films from that same year.

CAVALCADE is an extremely good example of films made in the first few years following the advent of sound, an era in which actors, directors, writers, and cinematographers struggled to find a new style that could comfortably accommodate the new technology. During this period, many actors and writers were drawn from the stage--only to discover that what seems real and natural in the theatre seems heavily mannered on screen.

This is certainly the case with CAVALCADE. The film presents the story of two London families whose lives intertwine between 1900 and 1933. The film begins with the upperclass Marryot family and their servants, Mr. and Mrs. Bridges, facing the Boer War--and then through a series of montages and montage-like scenes follows the fortunes of the two families as they confront changing codes of manners and social class and various historic events ranging from the sinking of the Titanic to World War I.

From a modern standpoint, the really big problem with the film is the script. CAVALCADE was written for the stage by Noel Coward, who was one of the great comic authors of the 20th Century stage--but the sparkling edge that seems so flawless in his comic works acquires a distastefully "precious" quality when applied to drama. Although the play was a great success in its day, it is seldom revived, and the dialogue of the film version leaves one in little doubt of why: it feels ridiculously artificial, and that quality is emphasized by the "grand manner" of the cast.

That said, the cast--in spite of the dialogue and their stylistically dated performances--is quite good. This is particularly true of the two leading ladies, Diana Wynyard and Una O'Connor (best known for her appearances in THE INVISIBLE MAN and THE BRIDE OF FRANKESTEIN), both of whom have memorable screen presences that linger in mind long after the film ends. The material is also quite interesting and startlingly modern; although it is more covert than such films as ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, CAVALCADE has a decidedly anti-war slant, and the characters in the film worry about where technology (which has produced such horrors as chemical warfare by World War I) will take them in the future.

I enjoyed the film. At the same time, I would be very hesitant to recommend it to any one that was not already interested in films of the early 1930s, for I think most contemporary viewers would have great difficulty adjusting to the tremendous difference in style. The VHS (the film is not yet available on DVD) has some problem with visual elements and a more significant problem with audio elements, but these are not consistent issues. Recommended--but with the warning that if you don't already like pre-code early "talkies" you will likely be disappointed.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

If you want to know what the twentieth century looked like to people in the early thirties, this is the film to watch. Two families - upstairs and downstairs - go through the events of the Boer War, the Edwardian age, the First World War and its aftermath, ending in the "chaos and confusion" of the depression. The film seems to be fairly closely based on the original Drury Lane theatre production (many of the cast are the same). So when Binnie Barnes delivers "Twentieth Century Blues" (excellently) this is presumably how Coward wanted it sung. Noel Coward's clipped dialogue can't always carry the weight of the themes, and the nobility of the upper-class couple gets a bit wearing, but there are fascinating glimpses of a music hall performance and an Edwardian seaside concert party. The film races through thirty eventful years, and one or two of the tragedies are predictable, but the period detail is terrific. The film is well worth catching.