Cavalcata

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.

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.

Unlike the big Oscar winners of later decades, the Best Pictures of the 1930s have largely been neglected (the only notable exceptions being It Happened One Night and Gone with the Wind). Of them all, Cavalcade is perhaps the most rarely remembered, and if remembered at all frequently dismissed as a dated, stagy melodrama, a product of an embarrassing era in cinema's history that even film buffs tend to shy away from, without even the added attraction of some pre-code naughtiness. But are bare legs, innuendo and mean-faced gangsters the only things worth salvaging from this era? The accusations of staginess are not surprising, Cavalcade being adapted from a Noel Coward play. But while Coward may have been a bit of a theatre snob with a naively upper-class attitude, he is not as impenetrably British as he may appear at first glance. Although Cavalcade focuses ostensibly on the concerns of a typical well-to-do English family, Coward strings together his story from universally emotional events, many of which would have related to the lives of people all over the world, and most of which still bear a kick today. Granted, Cavalcade's social conservatism and stiff-upper-lipped fustiness can be a little alienating, but this is not a preachy movie and nothing is forced home or laid on too thickly. Besides, Coward's warm humanism pervades even the most clichéd of characters.

The director is Frank Lloyd, himself an unfairly forgotten man of old Hollywood. Many will not understand why Lloyd one an Oscar for his work on Cavalcade, because he does not use any overt camera tricks, but the truth is Lloyd is too much of a master to need any tricks. Many of the claims of stiltedness probably stem from the fact that Lloyd uses a lot of long and often static takes, but there is still subtle and clever technique at work here. Take that first scene of Diana Wynyard and Clive Brook making their preparations for New Years Eve. A large chunk is done without a single edit, yet with a few simple panning manoeuvres Lloyd's camera is smoothly changing the focus and keeping things feeling fresh, at one point having Brook's face appear in the mirror, then following her over to the table where the two of them stand with a garland of flowers framing the lower edge of the shot. Another director might have used a dozen cuts in the same scene, but Lloyd does it with just one or two. And the great thing is you don't notice. Often he will shift our attention from one place to another, but do it by having the camera follow a walking character to disguise the movement, such as the father carrying off a crying child on the beach. In spite of this unostentatious approach, the style is purely cinematic.

To be fair however, most of the accusations of theatricality fall upon the cast. I would however describe the performances here as being stereotyped rather than grandiosely hammy. Diana Wynyard was the only Oscar nominee for acting, although she does little here but emote rather wetly. In her favour she does put a lot of expression into her small gestures, and as the picture progresses she ages her character convincingly. More realistic turns however are given by Clive Brook and Irene Browne. The real surprise performance of the lot though is Herbert Mundin. In his many supporting roles Mundin typically played a bumbling yet lovable comedy character, but here he is forceful, passionate and rather moving. Had such a thing existed in 1933, he could have been in line for a Best Supporting Actor award.

But, aside from all these qualities, why did Cavalcade of all things appeal to the Academy, which was not exactly cosmopolitan in those days? The answer may be that the mood of the picture was very apt for the times. This was of course the height of the depression, and despite appearances Cavalcade is a rather downbeat affair. The gung ho optimism of the Boer war is replaced by the bitter folly of the World War; characters disappear from the narrative, everyday life becomes increasingly impersonal, until the final scenes are almost despairing. And yet this is not some tale of personal tragedy. Crowds are a constant presence in Cavalcade, with Lloyd using them as a backdrop to a teary farewell, the bookends to a scene or even just a noise heard through a window. In Coward's play characters are killed off in significant events making them symbolic of the losses of a nation. This is a story of great suffering, but it is a story of collective suffering, and this makes it comparable to the most poignant and affecting pictures of depression-era Hollywood.

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.

The Marryot family is the focus of Noel Coward's antiwar film, "Cavalcade," made in 1933 and starring Diana Wynyard, Clive Brook, Una O'Connor, and Margaret Lindsay.

This is an upstairs-downstairs look at the effects of war, and war's effects on society as we see what happens to the Bridges family, the servants, and the Marryots, during the years 1899-1933 in Great Britain.

Not in any way snobbish, the Marryots in fact have a very close relationship with their servants. But class is class, and the class system declines to the point where the daughter (Ursula Jeans) of Ellen and Alfred Bridges (O'Connor and Herbert Mundin) becomes involved with her childhood playmate, Joe Marryot (Frank Lawton), a sign that the world the Marryots knew is fading away.

All three Marryot men are involved in the Boer War, and two fight in World War I, to the distress of Jane Marryot (Wynyard), who is the representative of the antiwar sentiment.

There are other world events that touch the family as well: the death of Queen Victoria, and the sinking of the Titanic.

The film is a bit on the slow side and spends more time on the early period than the later. Coward, however, with shots of men blinded in the Great War, young men being shot, etc., makes his point very well.

My big quibble with this film is that it goes for 34 years. At the beginning, the Marryots have young children. Even if the Mr. And Mrs. Marryot were 30 years old at the beginning of the film -- why at the end of the movie did they look and act 90? It was hilarious as they're probably in their sixties. It goes to show how the concept of age has really changed.

This film is okay but somehow not as involving or as good as David Lean's This Happy Breed which concerns a middle-class family post World War I to World War II - also written by Noel Coward. I think This Happy Breed has a better cast; some of the acting in Cavalcade is a little stiff. Still, there are some striking scenes.