Une vie secrète

Here's Forbidden in a nutshell: one-third Back Street, one-third Stella Dallas, and one-third Always Goodbye. And, considering that it came out the same year as Back Street, it doesn't seem to be the most original story in the world. On the other hand, if you like those three movies, you're almost guaranteed to like Forbidden!

Barbara Stanwyck starts the movie as an old maid, bespectacled librarian. Then, in the style of Queen Latifah in Last Holiday, she gets a makeover, quits her job, and closes out her bank account to spend her nest egg on a lavish vacation. While on that vacation, she meets and falls in love with the charming Adolphe Menjou. Their romance in the first part of the movie is so adorable! They have a wonderful natural chemistry with each other, and their situations are sweet and playful. For example, they each take turns miming their gifts of love while the other one claps; Adolphe presents a bouquet of flowers, and Barbara shows him the dinner she's made.

Since that's the beginning of the movie, the audience can expect a conflict. When Adolphe gives her the bad news, it's a tearful scene, but it isn't the end of their romance. The rest of the movie shows how they deal with the obstacle and how through it all, true love is the most powerful force. Sentimental folks will love this one. Film students will also want to check this one out, since director Frank Capra shows off his impressive framing skills in several scenes by placing the camera in interesting places.

Stanwyck and Menjou are on top form here, a real pleasure to watch, and the camera-work is exquisite; the story/pacing is weak in places but you won't mind this much (perhaps hardly notice) unless you're immune to the former. The film depicts, over a period of about 20 years, a complex clandestine love-relationship between the two leads, leaving some space for individual interpretation - not at all like most films made under the appalling thirty year tyranny of the Hayes code introduced a couple of years later. Forbidden is a serious, thought-provoking and often very moving film, with careful, 'arty' composition and psychologically-loaded lingering shots, but it also contains moments of melodrama (not in bad way) and humour (laugh-out-loud but quirky, not slapstick). Highly recommended, along with Capra/Stanwyck's The Bitter Tea of General Yen, made the following year. I give it a 7 - reluctantly, in my effort to be objective with regards to the story. I watched it on the big screen and I 'felt' it as an 8.

Be sure to bring a snorkel so you don't drown in all the soap suds. Okay, it's a weepy from beginning to end, but 30's soap opera doesn't come much slicker than this. LuLu (Stanwyck) has a tropical fling to relieve a humdrum life. The trouble is that she leaves as one but comes back as two, and the father (Menjou) is already married. So what is poor Lulu to do now that she's an un-wed mother and Dad has big political ambitions and a wife. It takes an hour and a half to find out.

Apparently, Columbia studios had the formidable Stanwyck pegged as a 3-hanky heroine since they kept casting her in these sudsy roles. On the other hand, it took hard-boiled Warner Bros. to bring out that tough-cookie inner person we all know and enjoy. Still, she runs the emotional gamut here in fine fashion, persisting from one heartbreak to the next.

Two scenes stick with me. There's an absolutely exquisite horse ride through scalloped fingers of surf filmed in incandescent b&w (Joseph Walker). Anyone doubting the continuing value of b&w should take a look here. The wonderful dreamlike quality serves as a perfect correlate to what Lulu feels during the romantic get-away, and cannot be duplicated in color, at least in my little book.

Then there's that hilarious scene in the newspaper office where the pot-bellied old "Mary Sunshine" explains his 'advice to the lovelorn' column to the new Mary Sunshine (Lulu). He's a hard-bitten old reporter who resembles the column's title about as much as Alfred Hitchcock resembles Shirley Temple. And when he tells her to read seven letters and throw the rest away, you just know the empathetic Lulu will read the whole stack.

Sure, the story hangs together about as well as a Rube Goldberg contraption, but who cares since it all goes down pretty smoothly thanks to Capra's way with a camera and a storyline. Then too, I'm really proud of myself. I got through the 90 minutes with just two hankies on the floor instead of the usual three.

What struck me about this film is the fact that although the story spans about 20 years, the hairstyles, clothes, cars, furniture and general infrastructure remain steadfastly "1932" throughout. Makes me wonder why they didn't start the film in 1912 - budget concerns over the cost of 1912 production values? Anyway, this melodrama is pretty routine for its time - contrived, fast-moving plot structure dealing with "naughty" subject matter, in this case cohabitation outside wedlock and its consequences. Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou and Ralph Bellamy are all quite arresting in their roles and there are some nice turns of dialog and at least one memorable camera angle during an emotional scene in which the only visible part of Stanwyck's face - mostly concealed behind Menjou's shoulder - is the area around her right eye, filmed through the spaces between balusters on a staircase. Whether this scene was meant to reflect the shadowy nature of the couple's relationship or just a way to make the scene more fun to watch, it's a standout.

And that includes "Stella Dallas." Another character in this movie falls her "the world's best loser." She plays it well but it's a far cry from the jazzy characters for which she is probably most famous. When one talks about range, one has only to look at this or "Stella Dallas" (a better known but, in my view, inferior film) and then at "The Lady Eve" and "Ball of Fire." Not to mention "Double Indemnity"! She begins this as a wallflower. Children taunt her as "four-eyes." Even at her most poignant, though, nobody could buy that for the hardy Stanwyck. She goes on a cruise and falls in love. And, oh boy! What a mistake that is! A married man, a child -- and lots more. (She meets married Adolph Menjou on the cruise and the child is born soon after; so this is not giving much away.) Through all of it, she is stoic. She says she's happy but we know she couldn't be.

It's very well done by all concerned.