Sogno di prigioniero

Odd semi fantasy film has a good performance from a dashing Gary Cooper to recommend it but the pacing is off. The mood is too earthbound to make it haunting and too celestial for a standard telling. Part of the problem is in the female lead. Ann Harding while a fine actress is miscast as the object of Gary's lifelong desire, a more ethereal performer was required, Merle Oberon would have been perfect. The film drags in parts and feels stilted in others, a defect in the direction more than in the story. The appearance of an almost unrecognizable Ida Lupino as a bit of Cockney baggage is a treat but she's in and out of the film in under fifteen minutes.

To think that Henry Hathaway made the same year "the lives of a Bengal Lancer" and "Peter Ibbetson"!Both are classics in their genre :the first was an adventures film no one could do today;the second one is simply my favorite Hathaway movie.I know it was his favorite too.

"Lancer" and "Peter" could not be more different,they are worlds apart,and who could believe the same director (and actor) made the two works?

"Peter Ibbetson" had a strong influence on the French cinema of the thirties/forties ,particularly those of Marcel Carné ("Les Visiteurs du Soir""Juliette ou La Clé des Songes" ) Marcel Lherbier ("la Nuit Fantastique" ) and Cocteau/Delannoy ("L'Eternel Retour").Henry Hathaway's film spawned a whole school of "escapism" cinema.

The first part deals with childhood and depicts the worst misfortune a young boy can know:the death of his mother.It takes place in the chic suburbs of Paris ,where,we are told,wealthy English people own their town house.After his mother's decease ,"Gogo" is separated from the little girl with a white dress...and returns to England where he will live with his uncle.

Peter/Gogo's only desire (and it's everyone's desire ) is to come back to this lost paradise ,to the place he was a child ..Early in the movie,we have a first pilgrimage with a girl (Ida Lupino ,a future great actress/director in one of her first parts)who does not care (she cannot share his memories)and whose only interest is the swing.

Although he briefly appears ,Slade is a very important character.He is a blind man,but he can see;his words are not different from those by Saint Exupery in "Le Petit Prince" -which was yet to come for it was published in 1943) ("It is only with the heart that one can rightly see;what is essential is invisible to the eyes") If the heart can give eyesight to the blind ,then what can true absolute love do?When you are in jail,a paralyzed prisoner ,what can you expect from life?

The last part is one of the peaks of the American cinema of the thirties ,predating dozens of films not only the French escapism movies from the German Occupation but also such works as "Stairway to Heaven" (Powell) or "Portrait of Jennie" (Dieterle) and "Bid Time Return" (Swarc) These dreams when the lovers meet up are the impossible return to childhood man longs for in his whole life;but these dreams are fragile:the castle Peter built for his beloved one is nothing when the storm set in.A surrealistic film,"Peter Ibbetson" is love's triumph over everything:the laws that man made,our Cartesian spirit ,even death itself.Just make your dream longer than the night.

Gary Cooper and Ann Harding have become legendary hearts.

Sometimes you watch a film which is so good that you wonder why it isn't better known. Peter Ibbetson is such a film. It takes a concept which is highly original but undoubtedly 'out there' and makes you believe in it for just under an hour and a half. It also manages to be a truly moving love story whose basic concept,a man and a woman who are apart for most of their lives meet in their dreams,and it's message,that love does indeed conquer all, should warm the hearts {and shed the tears}of die hard romantics everywhere.

It's a bit stilted as many 30s films are,especially at first,but Charles Lang's expressionistic photography immediately creates a fairy tale feeling. The growing love between the young boy and girl is extremely touching. When they meet again as adults,it seems like the film is going to settle down into being a conventional love triangle tale {she's married}. Then the film suddenly changes,and although separated the two lovers carry out their relationship in their dreams. The film is quite subtle is depicting the dream world,although there are wonderful touches,such as the fairy tale castle that she creates with her imagination,only for it to crumble when he fails to believe in it. As for the ending,well,you would have to be very strong not to shed a tear. Like much of the film,it's almost underplayed,and is all the more moving for not being over the top.

Gary Cooper shows once again what a great actor he was in his early days {as in A Farewell To Arms},really making us feel his character's pain and joy,although Ann Harding is perhaps a bit too earthy for her role. Director Henry Hathaway was generally a solid craftsman,but here he shows real engagement in his story.A great deal of attention is paid to set design,look at the way for instance the pair are often separated by bars of some sort in the 'real'world. Also notable is the music score by Ernest Toch,suitably romantic,but quite low key and sparse-Max Steiner would have plastered the film with music,but would it have really been as effective?

Peter Ibbetson is a wonderful movie, and deserves to be ranked with some of the more better known fantasy romances of Hollywood's Golden Age. I'd actually like to see a remake of this,as it's such an amazing idea. But before that let's have a DVD release,please!

A very sensitive and beautifully photographed film, with some strong performances. I had looked forward to seeing it for quite a time, as I had seen it recommended in print a few times. Last Christmas I missed it, but I caught it this time round (even though - again - it was put on at a very early time by the BBC). Basically it's a romance - but one which has a great deal of feeling to it. It's aesthetic appeal reminds me of Letter From An Unknown Woman. Yet when I viewed that one again recently it disappointed me. This one though had even more of an emotional impact (like when I saw La Strada a few years ago). It isn't really surrealistic, but it does have a power and is likely to linger in your memory. The ending is actually positive as well. It has a remarkable ability to make you believe in it, and to therebye become involved.

Peter Ibbetson (1935)

An un-repenting romance, and I mean romance in the sense of two people being in true love for ever and ever no matter what. There is almost nothing less going on here, but who needs anything else? The best of it, in a way, is the fantasia near the end, some remarkable dream and surreal scenes with great effect. Also a great treat is seeing a young Ida Lupino as a sweet and somewhat self-absorbed young woman who is interested in our hero, played by Gary Cooper.

But Lupino is secondary, and once things get fully in gear in the present, it is Cooper's romance as Peter Ibbetson with Ann Harding, playing his childhood girlfriend, that makes it click. And no romantic stone is left untouched. By the time the movie gets to its final third you know what is happening, and then it takes a huge turn and things get both crazy and sentimentally moving. A romance turns violent, and then a crime turns first dark and then bright and almost religious (though never actually religious) and a sense of winning against all the odds is the final theme. This may strike some viewers as just wishful thinking and directorial excess, but it's so well done this isn't fair. The special effects are stunning, better than many recent effects, for sure.

And what about the filming and acting? All quite first rate. You might pigeonhole this as some kind of Depression-era escapist dream come true kind of film, but it really rises above that. It's about an impossible but not quite impossible ideal of absolute love, something that rises even above having a young Ida Lupino want you in your youth, or above giving up when chained to a wooden plank with a broken back. It's about hoping when it seems there is no hope.

But then, that's what people were doing everyday in the mid 1930s, after half a decade of terrible economic times (and without even knowing that another half a decade lay ahead). It's not a great film, but it's a great theme handled well enough to make you perk up. Someone else might have played Cooper's part with more subtlety or sophistication, but Harding is terrific in her role as rich kid turned angel. And Henry Hathaway, directing his heart out for a change, pulls off some great shifts in tone and temperament form one section of the film to the next, and narrowly avoids the sickly sweetness or downright camp that might have trapped another director. He may not have had a really classic film to his name, but among a good dozen very very good ones, from these 1930s dramas to some post-war film noirs, this is one of his best.