Le désir de chaque femme

Vilma Banky was a famous silent film star, brought over from Hungary in the mid-20s by Sam Goldwyn. She was an instant star in films like THE EAGLE with Rudolph Valentino and THE WINNING OF BARBARA WORTH with Ronald Colman. Her talkie debut was in 1929 in THIS IS HEAVEN; it was a notorious flop. A LADY TO LOVE would be Banky's final American film and her second attempt at a talkie. And it's a very good film indeed.

Banky plays a waitress in San Francisco who is spotted by an immigrant grape grower (Edward G. Robinson) who has come to the city to find a wife. He brings the waitress to Napa for an arranged marriage but she is immediately attracted to Robinson's foreman (Robert Ames). Although Robinson has fallen and broken is leg, the wedding takes place (she wants a home and things) but on their wedding night, Banky has a fling with Ames.

Ames then goes away and leaves Banky with Robinson. She nestles into her newfound safe haven and takes care of Robinson. Over a period of a few months she discovers she has fallen in love with the doting Robinson, but then Ames returns and threatens to make trouble.

Robinson (in his third talkie)is, as always, a total pro. And even with an Italian accent and a wild white white, he's a pleasure to watch. Ames is OK in the thankless part of the cad. Supporting players include Henry Armetta and George Davis as foolish workers, Anderson Lawler as the doctor, Lloyd Ingraham as the priest, and Richard Carle as the postman.

But Banky is front and center here as Lena. Much was made of her failure in talkies because of her thick accent. After this film flopped she made a couple films in Europe and retired from the screen. But I was struck throughout this film at what a nice voice she had and how much her accent resembled that of Greta Garbo in ANNA Christie that same year. THIS IS HEAVEN is apparently a lost film so we may never be able to judge Banky's talkie debut. But her second effort is solid.

The best scene in the film is where Banky attempts to give Robinson a bath while he's in bed (with a broken leg). It's a giddy and delightful scene, especially with his aversion to water.

Banky was long married to silent star Rod La Rocque. He continued in talkies as a supporting player through the early 1940s.

A beautiful story of love, that reminded me of Greta Garbo's "Anna Christie". I loved Vilma Bankee's voice and accent. I felt that the film was charming in it's "innocence" and simplicity, while dealing with a very complex issue. I hope that I may someday see it again.

There have been a few adaptations of the play They Knew What They Wanted, and if you're interested in seeing a non-musical, pre-Code version, check out the 1930 talkie starring Edward G. Robinson as the "most happy fella". Aged up as the old Italian winery owner, he's gregarious, loving, and full of energy. He's made up his mind to get married, and when he sees a waitress he thinks is pretty, he writes her a letter offering his hand and home. However, insecure about his age and appearance, he sends her a picture of his young friend instead. When she arrives for the wedding, imagine her confusion and disappointment!

Vilma Banky's performance was actually good, but it detracted from the story for her to have an accent of her own and to be a foreigner. As a pseudo-mail order bride, she's repulsed by her husband-to-be. She's overwhelmed by the foreign culture of his family and friends, and doesn't know if it was worth it to abandon her old life. However, with a thick accent and Swedish background, it made less sense for her to feel all those things.

Eddie G's performance couldn't have been any better. Fluent in Italian in real life, his natural warm screen presence made his nationality completely believable (although his accent did slip one or two times). His gestures and expressions were not only authentically Italian - but old as well! He was a young man in 1930, but no one would know it. When he's injured and whining about getting a sponge bath or taking his medicine, it both breaks your heart and grates on your nerves: exactly his intention. He completely understood the character and, as always, made it easy to root for him.

As we frequently say at the Hot Toasty Rag Awards, "What does it take?" Edward G. Robinson had so many varied talents to give to the screen, and he was never nominated for an Academy Award; yet people like Ernest Borgnine and Gloria Grahame won statuettes. Our mission is to right the wrongs, and it gave us great pleasure to not only award Eddie G. Two newspaper trophies but also bestow our highest honor and welcome him into the Hall of Fame.

Sidney Howard's 1924 play "They Knew What They Wanted" had already been brought to the silver screen in 1928 as the silent "The Secret Hour" (Paramount) which I have not seen and probably never will since I am averse to silent movies. Just two years later, it was given the talkie treatment by MGM as "A Lady to Love", originally entitled "Sunkissed".

As one would expect, everyone is very histrionic, especially Edward G. Robinson, but effectively so when one is accustomed to watching early talkies and knows what to expect. The three stars have good chemistry, no matter if they're all together or just in couples. The prolonged early scene between Vilma Banky and Leon Ames is quite amusing and well paced. Ames seems the most natural, but maybe that's because he's the only one without an accent. The character portrayed by the Austro-Hungarian Banky is Swedish, but was originally American and the writing reveals this with the numerous ain't-s and other colloquialisms which sound natural from Ames' mouth, but very artificial from hers. Just changing the character's nationality to suit the actress without revising her lines seems like a lazy fix and was somewhat irritating to me, but not enough to detract from my overall enjoyment of the film.

What can one say about Robinson as the Italian grapeg rower? This is probably his hammiest film performance, yet he is always watchable and entertaining. Seeing him fall down the stairs in a drunken frenzy or giggle like a squeamish schoolgirl when Banky is rubbing him down are particular highlights. I couldn't help but laugh at the prominently placed portrait of Mussolini on his wall considering that World War II was just nine years away at the time.

Merritt B. Gerstad's cinematography is very fluid (for an early talkie), beautiful and atmospheric, as it usually was in films lensed by him - see the talkie version "Seventh Heaven" from 1937. Apart from the creaky title music, the score is confined to source cues as was customary at the time. Max Steiner would soon set a new trend with his extensive (for its time, of course) score for "Symphony of Six Million" in 1932.

A German language version for foreign distribution was filmed in parallel on the same sets. This was not unusual in the pre-dubbing era of the early 30's - Dracula was filmed in both English and Spanish in 1931. Nevertheless, "Die Sehnsucht jeder Frau" (Every Woman's Passion), as it was retitled in German, was unusual in that it retained the English version's director Victor Seastrom (a Swede) as well as two of its stars - Banky (Austro-Hungarian) and Robinson (Romanian), while the American Ames was replaced by Joseph Schildkraut. I would personally love to see this version out of curiosity - who would have guessed Edward G. knew German? - but it seems to be lost.

The play was eventually filmed in English for the third time in 1940 under its original title, released by RKO and starring Charles Laughton and Carole Lombard. I have yet to see this version since I am also somewhat averse to both stars, but I may give it a chance one day since I moderately enjoyed their previous collaboration - Paramount's "White Woman" from 1933. None of those four film versions of the play has been officially released on DVD, let alone Blu Ray, but I hope this 1930 version gets released by the Warner Archive Collection since I would gladly make it part of my own.

Swedish filmmaker Victor Sjöström made many outstanding, artful silent films in both his homeland and the United States before the advent of talkies. Given the many differences in production between styles, one can understand why he was perhaps less than enthused about the new trend, and ultimately gave up direction. As if to illustrate the point, as 'A lady to love' progresses it looks and feels very different from any of the man's prior works. By all means, it's fairly solidly made, and an entertaining, relatively lighthearted drama. Whether it's a question of the content, however, and/or being Sjöström's first foray into new techniques, what also comes across is that this seems peculiarly common compared to the likes of 'The wind' or 'The outlaw and his wife,' if not altogether unexceptional - and less than stellar.

Some early sound films haven't fared well with the passage of time and struggle with noticeable deficiencies of audio or image quality. Gratifyingly, this is not one of those. Perhaps with the resources of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on hand, recording engineers James Brock and Douglas Shearer were able to capture the sounds and dialogue of this 1930 picture with swell clarity. Only in sparing instances of especial cacophony is the audio troubled, and in fairness, this isn't a problem that's exclusive to early sound features. Likewise, taking advantage of the best equipment the studio's money could offer, cinematographer Merritt B. Gerstad demonstrates fine skill with smart, mindful camerawork, and there's no loss of fidelity in what we see. To that point, the carefully crafted sets and costumes are also fantastic, further demonstrative of the hard work of all those behind the scenes.

Things get a little more thorny from there. Edward G. Robinson was a very highly regarded actor active across several decades, and he showed again and again why he was so beloved. Here, his performance comes across as weirdly halfhearted and inauthentic, like something is holding him back such that the contrivance of the acting rises to the surface. Vilma Bánky, similarly, enjoyed great success in silent movies, and though by whatever combination of factors her career didn't extend far into the sound era, I don't doubt she could have made a go of it. In this instance her acting quite seems to split the difference between styles; it's mostly fine but sometimes feels forced, and I wonder after all if she wouldn't have been more comfortable if this weren't still a silent picture. Those in smaller supporting parts are less noteworthy all around, though incidentally, Robert Ames seems to be the one person on hand who by this point already had a firm grasp and sense of ease with weaving speech into his acting - yet even that's not true across the board.

How much of this can be chalked up to the efforts of the cast, however fruitful they are or not? How much of it can be accounted for by Sjöström's own misgivings about the new paradigm? Maybe I'm reading too much into it all, or projecting the trajectory of the filmmaker's career onto this singular title. Be that as it may, I swear I see a distinct stiffness in his direction that's a far cry from the absolute expertise and finesse that he illustrated in 'He who gets slapped,' or 'A man there was.' I discern a measure of discomfort, and unnatural blockiness, in the orchestration of shots and scenes, and in the guidance of those in front of the camera - that is, movement, comportment, and progression that's unnatural compared to real life, and the nuance that viewers are broadly accustomed to in sound cinema, and even somewhat unnatural compared to the fluidity of silent features. Everything about the execution feels strangely off-kilter, as though those involved - primarily either Sjöström and or the cast - couldn't figure out the precise needs of the medium moving forward, and what worked best. And I feel all this is cemented by the fact that Sidney Howard's screenplay, based on his own stage play, seems wholly robust and ripe for cinematic treatment. This presents the early twentieth century version of catfishing, and of two principles learning to love each other nonetheless. It's a terrific story, honestly, with strong scene writing, characters, and dialogue. Somehow, its translation into the audiovisual format in 1930 just rather feels like a series of fits and starts.

This isn't to say that 'A lady to love' is bad. Far from it! This is enjoyable, and more well made than not. Some scenes are done particularly well, and in the last third of the runtime it really seems like Sjöström, Robinson, Bánky, and the rest have at last found their proverbial feet. All the same, it remains true that for most of these ninety minutes, most everyone involved is grappling with the shift to sound, and they've not yet discovered how to navigate that space. With one last damning emphasis of these difficulties, the climax is sadly perhaps least convincing of all as it presents. Robinson seems to be plainly overacting, Bánky is weak, and Sjöström is just scattered. Right when it matters most is when the execution falters the most.

Whether one is a big fan of one participant or another, or just an ardent cinephile generally, this is still worth checking out. It's enjoyable on its own merits, and interesting for a peek at the state of a few chief figures at so significant a point in their careers. It's also well removed from the tremendous heights that all have achieved elsewhere, and in my opinion is an unmistakable exhibition of how the film industry had a hard time making peace with such huge changes. Watch 'A lady to love,' but don't necessarily go out of your way for it, and keep in mind the contemporary circumstances of its production.