Woman to Woman

This is in many ways Michael Balcon's first serious assault on the US market, in concert with his producing/directing partner, Victor Saville, and the offices of the ambitious Tiffany-Stahl Studios in Los Angeles; at this stage, the most likely of the Poverty Row studios to break into the Majors, until the following three years destroyed the studio and sent most of the majors into some form of receivership.

George Barraud is an English officer during the Great War, in love with French entertainer Betty Compson. They are to be married, but he is ordered back to the Front... and suffers shell shock to such an extent that he can't remember anything about his war years. After the War, he marries Juliette Compton in a distant sort of marriage. One evening, he is at the theater and sees Miss Compson performing. He remembers all and discovers they have a son.

It's the complicated sort of womanly suffering that worked all right in RANDOM HARVEST, solely because that movie starred Ronald Colman and Greer Garson. If this movie almost works, it's because Betty Compson gives a magnificent performance; but despite some great camerawork by Benjamin Kline (including shots that Balcon would have Hitchcock use in the concluding sequence of THE 39 STEPS), the over-the-top plot and other performances make this one only intermittently watchable.

Still, when it's Miss Compson alone on the screen, it's mesmerizing.

The widespread introduction of sound in 1928-29 caught all the European film-makers unawares, as it was intended to. It was, in certain respects, simply a ploy on the part of the US industry to dish its rivals. In fact it did not quite go according to plan. The US industry itself was not so well prepared as it might have been and the far more technically advanced German industry wad rapidly able to turn the change to its own advantage. The major sufferer was in fact France which was hopelessly unprepared for the change. As far as Britain was concerned, it had been working independently on sound systems and was in fact relatively well prepared (the same year saw Hitchcock's Blackmail) and, since the British industry was also co-operating quite closely at this time with the German industry, its early talkies are generally of a much better quality than their US counterparts even if the dialogue was sometimes, as here, far too slow-paced.

Those who were sceptical about the advent of sound were not simply convinced that it was a fad; they believed that it was a regressive development that would tend to further trivialise film as a medium. When it became clear that "silent" films were not only dead but damned, all those sceptics made their mea culpas but they were quite wrong to do so. Now, as we are beginning, after decades of neglect, to rediscover "silent" cinema, we can at last see that in many respects the analysis of the sceptics was very largely correct and that "sound" has been something that the more serious end of cinema (generally outside the US) has struggled to recover from ever since. One might for instance regard the "neo-expressionism" of the forties and fifties, post-war "neo-realism", the "new wave" cinemas of the sixties and seventies and even the current interest in the digital, as all being means of compensating for the trivialisation of cinema that accompanied the introduction of the talkies. Each of these phenomena in its turn coincided with a rise in interest in silent cinema (or what little was then known of silent cinema).

What is interesting to note is that this film, like so many British films of the period, shows at moments - but alas only at moments- clear German influence in it style of direction but the cinematographer Benjamin Kline, a throughly conventional product of the US "glamour" school, has difficulty in doing it justice (relying on occasional exaggerated close-ups to create "atmosphere"). Nevertheless the style is often interesting and one suspects it was probably even more so in the lost Cutts/Hitchcock 1923 version. Unfortunately the story itself is unoriginal and over-melodramatic, the ending pathetically and here rather incomprehensibly conventional,and the dialogue poor. The child is unbearably whiney and Compson's apology for a French accent is a horror.

One does not really need to apologise all the time for films of this transitional period (The Cocoanuts, Applause and Piccadilly, all talkies made the same year, are superb films and Blackmail and The Dance of Life are also good). This film was itself remade in 1946 but remains by common consent the better of the two versions. But the best of all may well be the one that got away. Should the 1923 film re-emerge it may afford a very interesting comparison both between silent and sound and between the European and US style of filming.

Betty Compson reprises her role from the silent 1923 version of this rather sad tale of a young girl ("Lola") who meets and falls in love with British soldier "David" (George Barraud) in Paris. He is swiftly sent to the Western front where he suffers injuries that cause him severe amnesia. Both proceed with their lives - she believing him killed, he having no memory of her at all - until, one night at the theatre he sees her sing a song and his memory quickly restores. Sadly, though, they cannot simply pick up where they left off. She has a young son (his) and he is stuck in a loveless marriage. Add to their predicaments the fact that she has a weak heart and... I much preferred the silent version. Though this is adequate, the production is really quite static. The camera never moves - even when there are theatrical numbers on screen, and the dialogue is a bit block and tackle. Still, Juliette Compton is quite effective as his wife "Vesta" and the ending would bring a tear to the eye of the most hardened cynic.

In 1929 many of the British film producers,such as Michael Balcon and C.M.Woolf had the idea that talking pictures were just a fad and were therefore left rather with egg on their faces when the public demanded talkies.As the industry had not constructed sound stages the only alternative was to go to Hollywood to hire the facilities there.This happened with Herbert Wilcox,George Pearson,and in this case Victor Saville.He decided top remake the 1923 silent with Betty Compson who was just approaching the peak of her career.Compson is a true delight and clearly adapted well to the demands of sound.This cannot be said of other members of the cast who sound extremely stilted by comparison.The film is a 4 hankie weepy which was of a type that was popular at the time.Nevertheless worth a viewing.

There were a few really fabulous films made in 1929 but most were dreadful. This is not one of the worst but it's still one of the dreadful ones. Only if you like cringingly sentimental Victorian melodrama made by people who don't know how to make pictures should you brave this one.

To be fair, this was Victor Saville's first full talkie and only the fifth film he'd ever directed so he was still finding his feet - Gainsborough's head of production had clearly not fully developed any directorial skills yet. To learn the ropes, he'd set up yet another company where he'd produce and direct talkies in collaboration with the equally ambitious Tiffany-Stahl company over in America.

Unfortunately for all concerned, T-S's sound recording system was RCA Photophone. Like Warner's Vitaphone, this was a cumbersome sound on disc system which meant that the film's dialogue had to be delivered at a glacial pace giving the film a horribly stilted feel. The sound on disc system also didn't allow for any editing or re-takes so once it was shot, that's what you got.

So this picture isn't terrible simply because of poor direction and poor acting - although the direction and the acting were exceptionally poor! Curiously however the first half hour of this, the scenes set in France aren't too bad - in fact I'd go as far as saying, quite impressive and even engaging. I was actually thinking: Hey, this is quite good for 1929. Were this just my review of the first half hour I'd say that Betty Compson is lovely and I can understand why George Barraud would fall head over heels for her. I'd say that the picture cleverly shows how his feelings develop and loads the screen with tension for the inevitable catastrophe.

Unfortunately you get the impression that Mr Saville went back home to England half way through this picture because once the story has moved on to London, that lively style of delivery, that interesting and imaginative camerawork and that empathy with the characters completely vanishes. It feels like a different film all together - a really bad one! Everyone suddenly starts speaking like they've some horrible disease and Betty Compson forgets she's meant to be doing a French accent.

If you can overlook the awfulness of the production (of the last 2/3 anyway) what is quite interesting is to note that whereas in the original wrote just after the war, soldier David was already married and playing away from home with Lola whereas in this film, such immorality could never be shown - certainly not with a British officer. It's also fascinating to see that the whole crux of the sad denouement relies on the almost impossible to accept today fact that the future of a child born out of wedlock could be so awful that you'd sacrifice your life to avoid it! I'd imagine crowds would have burned down London and hanged Ramsay MacDonald had the original story been filmed! (Or does the example of that beloved Prime Minister disprove this?)

It's weird how in the late twenties a handful of silent movie stars and theatre luvvies suddenly made it big in to the talkies - they were for a few years at the top of the tree, but within a couple of years they were history. Those big new superstars of 1929 of that transition stage between 1929 and 1931 when some great movies were made but most filmmakers were just learning on the job, just vanished. Even the sexiest, cutest and prettiest woman in the world, Alice White who came from nowhere to be absolutely massive in 1931 but was virtually forgotten by 1933. Unlike the divine Alice, Betty Compson was a big silent star - one of those who became a superstar of the talkies. She was perfect for them but as the talkies of 1929 evolved into the talkies of 1931, as they became films we'd recognise as films today, she just couldn't adapt. Most (but not all) of the moving pictures made before about 1931 were essentially silent films with sound. It wasn't really the advent of sound which somersaulted filmmaking, like life in general, the massive social changes in the early 30s were the main driver....... but back to this film - I think I'd prefer George Barraud's amnesia than remember this.