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Only Yesterday (1933) : Brief Review -

Goes through the same mistakes as Max Ophüls's official adaptation "Letter from an Unknown Woman". Stahl's soap is relatable but absurd. When I saw the 1948 film version of Stefan Zweig's novel, I couldn't resist slamming it in my review. I don't know what critics and even some moviegoers liked about it, but for me it was an absurd idea completely. John M. Stahl's film is almost the same with a few changes, such as the positive climax and World War I conflict, but it couldn't score passing marks for me. I would like to mention those blunders so that the people who liked them should understand that they were fools. First, the film doesn't show you any concrete reason why and how the man forgot the girl. It doesn't even show when those two got time to make enough love to get a girl pregnant. I remember Mervyn LeRoy's "Random Harvest" (1942), starring Ronald Colman and Greer Garson, which had the same basic idea in its script. But the film explains the man's condition as being an amnesiac patient. Here you have a man who is completely healthy physically and mentally. How can he forget the girl after sleeping with her and making so many promises? The second big flaw is the girl's thinking about her life. At one moment, you know she has left it all behind and is ready to move on, but then suddenly she goes on to spend a night with the same man who has made her life miserable, and he is a great playboy too. She knows that he has had many girls in his life as he tries to seduce her despite being a married man, yet she is okay with kissing him. Wow, what a characterless woman. Suddenly, she is ill, and all of a sudden, one letter makes the man remember everything. Hands down for such intelligent writing. The only reason why I watched it was Margaret Sullavan, and she was good, and so was John Boles. Rest, it was a childish affair. I even doubt if children will find it logical. If I had seen it yesterday, I would have had it fade away from my memory right before going to sleep.

RATING - 5/10*

By - #samthebestest.

***SPOILERS*** *SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** Full bore melodrama!Everything you expect from the genre is here!You will cry a river,feel for the heroine and her little boy,Stahl was the prince of the melodrama during those days.

This movie is a long flashback:It's black Thursday,the hive of activity is blighted,people are crazy,it's going all over the place.Posh people are throwing a party in a luxury flat:jewels,furs,champagne and caviar.They're dancing on a vulcano.Pretty soon,all of them will be broke.Among them ,a man who thought he got it made:he married a woman he does not love anymore,and now all what's left to him is suicide.But there's this letter.Then begins a journey through the past.

A woman he forgot tells him about her life,after the evening of their love atr first sight,the only evening,only yesterday...Then ,the movie focuses on the heroine(touching Margaret Sullavan).He goes to war,she 's pregnant -it's not a shame anymore nowadays,her optimistic aunt tells her-.THe soldier's return scenes are perhaps the best ones in the whole movie.It seems that they may have influenced M.Kalatozov for "The cranes are flying".The parade on the street,with Sullavan trying to catch her lover's eye,her despair when he does not even recognize her are heart-wrenching.

As often in melodrama (check "imitation of life" or "back street"),a woman without a man is nothing at all.So the only way left for her is the business one.And generally she succeeds (such is the case of the heroine of "imitation of life").So,Margaret Sullavan makes her way of life ,and becomes the owner of a very chic shop .We only steal a glance at it,the social elevation interests Stahl only because it will allow her heroine to enter her former lover's wealthy world.Her son,now a student in a military school,is what you call mother's pride.so she meets again the man,now married,but,again,he does not know her.Sullavan throw him a line,by telling him she was overjoyed twice in her lifetime,the second time this very evening."And the first time? " the clueless man whispers..She leaves..

SPOILERS BEYOND THAT POINT*SPOILERS BEYOND THAT POINT Now we enter the heart of melodrama.No melodrama without a death,generally caused by a fatal illness.Poor Sullavan is about to die,and pretty damn quick.Harrowing last scene mother/son. Now we've gone full circle.Back in the present.The lover has finished his letter.He has understood his wife does not mean the slightest thing for him.He rushes to Sullavan's house,just to learn she 's dead.Then comes a very very strooooong scene.He meets the boy,they begin to speak,the boy shows his medals,and after a conversation about these foolish things that make a life worthwhile,the man says :"I am your father".End of the movie.Sublime!AND END OF SPOILER.END OF SPOILER.

It's a pity that this film should be forgotten.Maybe "magnificent obsession" and" imitation of life" have taken advantage of Douglas Sirk's brilliant remakes.If you love these works,you will love "only yesterday " too.And not only yesterday or today but forever.

This was the first film of Margaret Sullavan, then aged 24. As the story requires her to age by eleven years, she does that very well in the film. She only had 26 more years to live, as she died aged 50 in 1960, having made no more than 21 films. Despite this restricted ouevre, her vivacity, charm, warmth, and wonderful smile have rendered her memorable to all lovers of the history of the cinema. She was what is called today 'authentic', a real person rather than just a screen goddess. In 1931 she married Henry Fonda, and was later married to William Wyler. But a series of family tragedies, including the suicide of one of her children, meant that she had a breakdown and an early death by 'accidental barbiturate poisoning'. She was the mother-in-law of Peter Duchin the pianist, who is still very much around, and it is difficult to find 'anyone who is anyone' in Manhattan who has not met him and been enchanted by his playing. Another son-in-law was Dennis Hopper, who together with Peter Fonda revolutionised American films with the famous EASY RIDER in 1969. In this film, directed by John M. Stahl, Sullavan plays a romantic young girl who falls in love with John Boles in 1918, they intend to get married, and have a night together, and then he is sent off to war in Europe with only a few hours' notice, so that the marriage is postponed indefinitely. Meanwhile, she had become pregnant and has a son. The social disgrace is too great for her Southern family, and she moves to New York, where she lives from then on with her free-wheeling and more broad-minded aunt, played by Billie Burke. Reginald Denny, the British actor, surprisingly appears in this film and plays Billie Burke's male friend whom she eventually marries. I never saw him do better with humour and comic banter than in his scenes with Burke, which are very effective. John Boles is very good as the leading man, who for so much of the film is absent. In the story, he forgets about Sullavan, and when she meets him after a victory parade through the streets of Manhattan, he does not recognise her. He has no knowledge of her having had a son, and she is so hurt by his not knowing her, that she goes away. We then see a title which says: 'Ten years later' and the story resumes. The ten year-old son is played excellently by Jimmy Butler, who is a natural on screen, and this was also his first film. But he was to have a tragic early death at the age of only 23, just before the end of World War Two, as a soldier in France. The story of the film gets sadder and sadder, and I do not wish to ruin any viewer's experience by commenting upon the events which follow. The film shows 'true love which lasts through the years', a theme largely forgotten today, when partners and spouses are thrown away like rag dolls. Just think, love did once exist, before sex completely took over and love got pushed aside as no longer being relevant.

Unlike so many matinee weepers that were churned out during the depression about women brought to ruin through their attachment to handsome cads, this beautifully calibrated film offers so many treats in addition to a saccharine plot that it moves beyond matinee fluff; simply the opening scenes establishing the damage done to human lives in the 1929 are handling with persuasive dispatch, drawing the viewer into the shattered world of the wealthy and to the insensitivity that some show to others, setting the stage for the young woman who is drawn into a tragic life-changing romance. So many familiar faces grace the screen, from Franklin Pangborn as a few art dealer to Jane Darwell as the mother who keeps a good table; a pleasant surprise is the romance between Billie Burke, for once not merely an addleheaded silly, but an older woman in love with a younger man who annoys her when he whistles. And while John Bowles may strike some as a bit wooden, star Margaret Sullavan in her first major role lights up the screen with genuine warmth and humanity, making her tragedy all the more touching. Some keepers of the current film archives need to get ahold of a pristine print and share it with the public--perhaps it could be the next addition to the Criterion Closet!

This is a great film with an absolutely amazing script. While Margaret Sulivan has a tremendous break out performance, in my opinion it is John Boles as the philandering Jim and Billie Burke as the suffragist aunt that really make the film. John Boles in particular has some really great lines. My favorite line of the film was when the married Jim is trying to seduce Margaret on New Year's Eve and he takes her to his secret bachelor pad and tells Margaret that this is where he lives. Margaret says something like, `Strange it doesn't have a woman's touch.' And Jim replies that while he doesn't eat, sleep, or hang out with his family here, this is where he LIVES. Jim is just a pimp. While this film is difficult to see since they don't have it on video or show it on cable, it is really a must see movie for anyone interested in pre-code film. It is an absolutely wonderful movie.