Trafalgar

and the very strange Oscar win for director, Frank Lloyd, are the only reasons this film is remembered at all. Long, dull, and obvious, The Divine Lady tells the story of Emma Hamilton and Admiral Nelson and his victory at Trafalgar. Because nominations were not announced in the early years of Oscars, it has allowed revisionists to suddenly, in the last few years, proclaim that Corinne Griffith was a nominee for best actress. This makes no sense as Griffith would have been the SIXTH nominee on the list. The academy might have played around in the first several years, but they never had SIX acting nominees. Mary Pickford won for Coquette. The other nominees have always been Bessie Love for The Broadway Melody, Betty Compson for The Barker, Ruth Chatterton for Madame X, and Jeanne Eagels for The Letter. Now out of nowhere, Griffith as been added as the stealth nominee. No way. If there WERE no official nominees announced, how did Griffith suddenly appear as a nominee 70 years after the fact? Nothing against Miss Griffith, whom I liked very much in The Garden of Allah, but she was NOT nominated for an Oscar, despite the trumpetings of TCM and the revisionism of the official Oscar web pages. Check any Oscar book printed before 1995. NO GRIFFITH! Oh and I would have voted for Bessie Love.

Corrine Griffith is the ambitious young Emma Hart, daughter of a cook, who has a bit of a reputation that doesn't make her universally welcome. She does attract the attention of her employer, Charles Grenville (Ian Keith) but he soon tires of her and ships her off, under false presences, to live with his uncle Sir William Hamilton (H. B. Warner) who just happens to be the British Ambassador to the kingdom of Naples. Now this man is quite an aesthete, and when poor jilted Emma realises that her love has no intentions of joining her she accepts a proposal of marriage from her host. It's a loveless arrangement, but she has wealth, privilege and the ear of the queen. That relationship becomes especially useful when she is introduced to the visiting Admiral Nelson (Victor Varconi) whom, after his victories for Great Britain, is an acclaimed seaman. He is also fighting an outbreak of scurvy amongst his ill-nourished men, and so Emma has to use her wiles to get the queen to agree to allows the ports of the Two Sicilies to help them out - despite strong objections from the bullying French. Of course, there now follows an affair that the two are entirely engrossed in, regardless of the fact that both are married and that British society is not prepared to countenance it. Viscount and Battle of the Nile or not! Largely shunned and now back home, the couple live peacefully and quietly in a rustic setting until it comes time for the admiral to take to the seas again against the fleet of Napoleon near Cape Trafalgar. The rest of that is history, and so is the denouement of this rather good looking but lacklustre historical biopic. I didn't really notice any chemistry between Griffith and a Varconi whose glass eye might actually have been his most animated feature. It all looks suitably grand and some of the seafaring scenes deliver quite well - but it's sometimes quite brutally edited, dimly lit and somehow it all just lacks either the pace to reflect her joie-de-vivre life in Naples or even, really, the burgeoning romance upon which it all rests. It is fine to watch, but sadly disappoints.

Scottish film-maker Frank Lloyd (a would-have-been birthday celebrant on the day I watched the film under review) was one of the founding members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences – best-known for holding the annual Oscar ceremony. He was also the second Academy Award winner for Best Direction for this rarely seen historical epic which, as it turned out, was the only film in Oscar history to win that category without an accompanying nod for Best Picture (a feat which, given the current rules, is practically impossible to repeat itself). However, Lloyd was even nominated for directing two more movies that same year – WEARY RIVER (which I own a copy of but did not manage to locate in time for inclusion in this ongoing Oscar marathon!) and the unavailable DRAG. He would later emerge victorious again for CAVALCADE (1933) and received his last nomination for MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1935) which, like the latter, was also named Best Picture. For the record, his other films that have had notable brushes with Oscar were EAST LYNNE (1931), BERKELEY SQUARE (1933) and IF I WERE KING (1938) – and, although I have all three in my collection, they will have to wait a similarly-themed marathon for their first viewing. After such a distinguished career, Lloyd semi-retired in the mid-1940s and only made the occasional movie in the following decade before dying in 1960.

THE DIVINE LADY – not to be confused with the contemporaneous Greta Garbo vehicle THE DIVINE WOMAN (1928) only a fragment of which exists today – tells the oft-told tale of the controversial affair between Lady Emma Hamilton and Lord Horatio Nelson; I am already familiar with the Alexander Korda version of events entitled THAT HAMILTON WOMAN (1941; the only on screen pairing of then husband-and-wife team of Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier) and also have the Glenda Jackson/Peter Finch- starring A BEQUEST TO THE NATION aka THE NELSON AFFAIR (1973) in my unwatched pile; for the record, I would love to catch Richard Oswald's even earlier LADY HAMILTON (1921), in which the ubiquitous pair of Conrad Veidt and Werner Krauss played Nelson and Sir William Hamilton respectively, and Christian-Jaque's international version EMMA HAMILTON (1968) – with Michele Mercier, Richard Johnson and John Mills.

The narrative here starts out with an 'impoverished' aristocrat (Ian Keith) dismissing a newly-engaged cook (Marie Dressler) because of the "vulgar" antics of her daughter Emma Hart (an Oscar-nominated Corinne Griffith, though her name is bafflingly omitted in Roy Pickard's "The Oscar Movies From A-Z" and seems to be disputed elsewhere too!); her entreaties to rethink his harsh decision win him over and impress his artist friend who wants to paint a portrait of her. Before long, she is accompanying her employer on social occasions, until she embarrasses him by bursting into song at a fair thereby attracting the attentions of every male within hearing distance. He is convinced to dispose of her by thrusting her into the arms of his aging womanizing uncle Sir William Hamilton (H.B. Warner!) even though she had fallen for Keith himself in the meantime. He soon gets to regret his actions when the wealthy relative (whom he had hoped to inherit) marries the wench and turns her into Lady Emma Hamilton, Ambassadress to Sicily! Although that island is ostensibly neutral to the ongoing conflict between England and France, the king sides with France while the queen (sister to the deposed Marie Antoinette) secretly sides with Britain. When Lady Hamilton decides to intervene, the latter's allegiance is instrumental in overturning a Royal decree not to help the ailing British fleet headed by Admiral Horatio Nelson (Victor Varconi – who is not shown wearing a black patch over his blind eye but does get to lose a hand!). Apart from helping the British repel the enemy, this fateful event brings Emma and Horatio together for the first time and, as they say, the rest is history...

The understandably battered print – culled from the "Warner Archives" DVD-R – does not really do the film much justice but remains reasonably watchable throughout. Indeed THE DIVINE LADY is a handsomely mounted and well-crafted production (cinematographer John F. Seitz also received an Oscar nomination for his work here), with Lloyd's solid direction smoothing over the crude sound sequences interspersed throughout where we hear Emma Hamilton sing, and only calling attention to itself intermittently, as in the aforementioned fairground sequence.

Divine Lady, The (1929)

*** (out of 4)

Director Lloyd picked up the Best Director Oscar for this film, which is the main reason why anyone remembers or talks about it today. While that might be the reason the film is remembered today, the film itself is still pretty good and holds up fairly well. The film tells the story of the doomed love affair of Lady Emma Hamilton (Corinne Griffith) who married Sir William (H.B. Warner) only to cheat on him with Captain Horatio Nelson (Victor Varconi). I'm not overly familiar with the true events but I've been told this movie isn't too close to the truth but that's to be expected. Whereas Hamilton is shown as a rather cheerful and charming person here, apparently in real life she could be twisted and cruel and those sides aren't on display here. With that said, I found the movie to old up fairly well in certain fields but the melodrama has dated quite badly. The entire love story really isn't all that interesting even though the performances carry it for the most part. I found the love triangle to be rather forced as I never really bought into why Hamilton would marry Sir William in the first place. The money might be obvious but I felt that the film really rushed their relationship and that William's entire motivation and feelings are overlooked. The ending is pretty tacky and unemotional, although I'm sure many fell for it back in 1929. The entire look of the film from the cinematography to the amazing sets are a reason to watch the film as are the performances. I found Griffith to be quite charming and she certainly carries the film on her own. The two men turn in fine performances as well. Marie Dressler is pretty much wasted in a thankless role. What really makes this film worth watching is a battle sequence out at sea that happens towards the middle of the picture. The action sequences are very exciting and the stuff dealing with the ships being torn apart look very realistic.

I finally was able to see this early Oscar silent winner: Frank Lloyd was the 1928-29 Best Director Oscar winner. The occasion for showing film was that TCM is honoring Marie Dressler in a series of her movies, and she had a small humorous role in this film.

This movie is based on the semi-true story by E. Barrington. It centers on the affair between Emma, Lady Hamilton and the British naval hero, Admiral Horatio Nelson, during the Napoleonic Wars. Both were married to other spouses at the time of their affair.

The same general story was later made into the 1941 Kora-directed movie, That Hamilton Woman (1941) with Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier as the two main characters.