The False Madonna

Odd and moving film that stars Kay Francis as a grifter who poses as a dead woman to cheat the dead woman's son out of his money.

The film starts out as a bus races alongside a train on a rainy night. It seems Francis and her fellow cheats (William "Stage" Boyd, Marjorie Gateson, and Charles D. Brown) have been thrown out of a hotel and must get out of town. On the train Boyd (a defrocked doctor) is summoned to the room of a dying woman. As she blurts out her story of abandoning her husband and son 14 years before, Boyd hatches the plan for Francis to impersonate the woman and get money out of the kid.

Their research shows that after the woman abandoned them, the father and infant son moved from Chicago to Long Island. None of the family friends or servants had any connection with the woman, so it becomes plausible that Francis swoop in and get money.

Francis has misgivings and wants to quit the rackets but agrees to this one last scheme. When she arrives at the mansion she is greeted by the boy's guardian (Conway Tearle) and learns that the boy (John Breeden) is ill. She is accepted as the mother (or is she?) and after a week everything is resolved—Hollywood fashion.

Francis and Breeden are quite good together, and Francis gets to sing in her low throaty voice. Tearle is solid as the guardian, and Boyd (not the William Boyd of Hopalong Cassidy fame) makes a nice snarky crook.

What starts out as a typical pre-Coder about conniving thieves turns, thanks to Kay Francis, into a surprisingly moving film about regrets and redemption.

It took brave souls to attempt filming this moth-ball ridden story. Poor Kay Francis at 26 plays the long lost impostor-mother of a blind teenager in order to inherit the boys fortune! She's part of a gang of crooks and agrees to be the "false madonna" as a final fling with crime. The teenager (John Breedon) is so terribly earnest and sweet that Kay feels her "mother love" instinct and can't follow through with the machinations. The boys caretaker (Conway Tearle) is on to Kay, but keeps her secret as the boys health is on the wane; the boy couldn't stand the "shock" of knowing his new found mother is a phony. The actors do what they can with this off-the-wall story-line. Scenes between Kay and the boy are actually quite moving and when Kay takes a second look at the life she's been living, the effect is quite poignant. If you're a fan of Francis you'll enjoy watching her almost get away with the impossible.

The story in "The False Madonna" is very, very difficult to believe. My advice is just to suspend your sense of disbelief and watch it, as it is well worth watching.

When the story begins, four flim-flam artists are leaving town just ahead of the authorities. Aboard their train, something really bizarre occurs--there is a dying woman and the conductor is looking for a doctor. Well, Ed was once a doctor and since no one else is available, he tells them he's Dr. Marcy. Unfortunately, he cannot help the dying woman...and as she lies there dying, she tells him her story. It seems that she was married into a very wealthy family but she disappeared 14 years earlier--abandoning her husband and son. She was on the way to see the son when she became mortally ill. Being a crook and all around jerk-face, Ed decides to take the dead woman's trinkets and the information he gleaned from her and create a fake mother. He gets Tina (Kay Francis) to imitate the woman when the train arrives. The plan is to fleece the family and run, but the plan runs afoul of Tina's conscience. Although a crook, there are limits to her villainy and stealing from a sweet and blind teenager is just too much. What's worse is that the kid is dying and she doesn't want to be the one to kill him! What's next?

There's a lot going for this story despite a very difficult to believe story. The cinematography is great (especially in the garden scene) and the story works very well...though the speech by Ed at the end of the film and his turnaround makes zero sense. Good but far from perfect and a bit dated.

Yes it is and that's what makes this insane film fantastic. Paramount pulled out all the stops with this: a plot with every single cliché ever, the melodrama rating set at level 11 and the most over the top overacting you'll ever see. Gloriously corny!

Some films are so bad they're good - this is actually so very bad, it's actually very good....or maybe I should say entertaining. 'Bad' is a lazy description because this is professionally produced, it looks and sounds classy, it's not some trashy poverty row b-picture. One thing this definitely is not is boring.

The plot might sound like a typical early thirties melodrama but seriously, how mad is this? To fleece a young millionaire, Kay Francis pretends to be his mother - even though she's one year younger than the actor playing the boy! Although she's been estranged from the family for 14 years, she doesn't think 'her son' or her family and friends might wonder why she looks so different! It's not just acted with such sincerity, they all take this so seriously. None of them seem to think any of this is at all odd.

In addition the making many dreadful films, director Stuart Walker also made one exceptionally good one: WHITE WOMAN. Besides benefiting from Charles Laughton and Carol Lombard, that had a lava flow of brilliant subversive humour running through it. I am wondering whether Mr Walker thought that because this picture could end up being so abysmal, surreptitiously he'd make it so deliberately insane that at least it would give him and those in the know, a good laugh?

The crazy acting compliments the nonsensical plot perfectly. The actor playing the blind son is an example of absolutely inspired casting! He is so utterly awful he makes Kay Francis seem like the greatest thespian the world has ever known. Watching a grown man pretending to be a a 17 year old had never been so hilarious.

But of course nobody can overact quite like Kay Francis and she doesn't disappoint here. Forget those rare occasions when you've thought: She's actually not too bad in this one, she's almost natural. No - you'll not think that with this one - this is Kay Francis at her best....or is it worst....no, definitely best. It's her utter unflinching sincerity which she puts into everything she says which gets funnier and funnier as the film progresses. You might think you've seen her overacting before but really, you ain't seen nothing yet! She's so wonderfully awful, she's wonderful. Somehow as much as you find her performance hilarious, you actually engage with her. You start to believe in her! It feels normal when with quivering bottom lip and tears welling up in her eyes she whispers: 'Every woman wants love'....pause and stare wistfully into the distance for a few seconds....'love, in their heart.'....stare even more wistfully into the distance again.

If you love that bizarre unreal Hollywood universe where nothing needs to make sense, an alternate reality populated by Kay Francises and where people only need to meet each other for a couple of minutes before deciding to get married watch this.