The Silver Screen Oasis

I'm in the process of checking out "HOLIDAY" (1930) starring ANN HARDING, Mary Astor and a really very good Robert Ames. (A little too much Edward Everett Horton telling his fanciful lifestory which stops the picture dead for me) but Harding, as usual (for me) does a good characterization of a rich girl who just wants to find some substantive meaning to her life. This looked early in Mary Astor's career 'cuz she stepped on a line or two of the self-possessed Harding. But all in all, everyone is VERY good and this is a good depiction of this tale. Hepburn's version was good too and more well-remembered, but there's nothing wrong with the 1930 version either. Pretty modern if you ask me.

JackFavell wrote:Wow, you captured that movie really well, Alison!

Thanks, I knew there was hope for me where William Powell was concerned. Now I see what others do.

I adore Powell. If I had to pick a favorite movie star, he just might be it. I think he's very good, and fairly handsome, but not the best or the handsomest - I just plain like his screen personality better than any other. I guess that's the definition of a star.

I was thinking more about Powell, sometimes I find him smug instead of charming, I suppose it's only a small shading that makes him smug sometimes for me and charming for others. I know when I watch a film with him in I'm watching a good actor, a safe pair of hands so to speak, I think some of his early performances he's ultra charming, I'm thinking Double Harness, Jewel Robbery and One Way Passage. Was he typecast? i don't know too much about him but it seems the films I've watched he does play similar types, I'm thinking here The Thin Man, My Man Godfrey, The Heavenly Body, Libelled Lady. I haven't seen his later work but have got Life With Father around here somewhere. Perhaps that will give me a better appreciation.

I think in some of his 1940's film he seems tired, and comes off a little smug, like in the Loy pictures that aren't Thin Man entries.

But then you've got Life with Father, in which he is wonderful as the bombastic Calrence Day. He absolutely makes a couple of movies for me, at the end of his career - How to Marry a Millionaire (I always watch the end - just to see how he bows out so gracefully), and Mr. Roberts because he's the best thing in it (saying a lot, considering it's Fonda's show). I don't think he stretched his screen persona much, but I still think he's wonderful and warm.

I've been watching The Flame Within which promises much but ultimately is let down by being a post code picture based on a precode story, it seems to have gaps that can only be explained by an editted script. Ann Harding gives her all to the part, she's very good as is Maureen O'Sullivan, Herbert Marshall lacks enough colour or conviction though to match the girls.

Today I saw for the first time I film that I had been searching for many years "The Fountain" (1934), which was directed by John Cromwell and released the same year than his famous "Of Human Bondage" with Bette Davis.

Unjustly forgotten, this delicate, subtle, honest story of a woman (Ann Harding) who re-encounters her love from her youth (Brian Aherne) during WWI, but also develops a deep adoration for her husband (Paul Lukas) whom she did not love in the first place, is a very adult, complex, touching and poignant drama, with riveting and multi-layered performances by the three leads. Ann is particularly luminous and sensitive as the troubled woman and Lukas gives an outstanding performance.

Sarah Haden plays a bitter woman for a change; Violet Kemble-Cooper is Ann's mother and Jean Hersholt her step-father.

This film deserves to be seen more times. People who do not appreciate good scripts or intelligent, meaningful dialogue might find it tedious.

So where can we see this film, Fernando?

Theresa, I rented it in a place where they carry a lot of DVD releases from Spain. But since it's an RKO Radio release it belongs to the Time Warner Library which TCM uses for its schedule, so it should be aired from time to time by TCM USA.

feaito wrote:Today I saw for the first time I film that I had been searching for many years "The Fountain" (1934), which was directed by John Cromwell and released the same year than his famous "Of Human Bondage" with Bette Davis.

Unjustly forgotten, this delicate, subtle, honest story of a woman (Ann Harding) who re-encounters her love from her youth (Brian Aherne) during WWI, but also develops a deep adoration for her husband (Paul Lukas) whom she did not love in the first place, is a very adult, complex, touching and poignant drama, with riveting and multi-layered performances by the three leads. Ann is particularly luminous and sensitive as the troubled woman and Lukas gives an outstanding performance.

Sarah Haden plays a bitter woman for a change; Violet Kemble-Cooper is Ann's mother and Jean Hersholt her step-father.

This film deserves to be seen more times. People who do not appreciate good scripts or intelligent, meaningful dialogue might find it tedious.

I watched the film yesterday thanks to Fernando. Like he says, it's a very soft gentle film. I read that the audience in 1934 didn't like it. I'm not surprise. The story line on paper sounds quite obvious: the wounded husband, the wife and her lover. But the treatment is very subtle. The actor often are whispering their text and it's very effective. Ann Harding gives a devastating performance as the wife torn between her husband (whom she didn't love at first) and her childhood sweetheart she cannot stand to leave. It's very slow-moving and could have been made (to some extent) by Antonioni. Quite an astonishing film in the John Cromwell filmography. Thanks again to Fernando for allowing me to discover this great Harding opus!

You are very welcome Christine. I knew you were going to like it. So, how could I not share this pivotal Harding film with her namesake?

Apparently it hasn't been aired frequently by TCM; Has it?

I liked this statement of yours: "Ann Harding gives a devastating performance". It is so true!

Thanks to Fernando I got to see The Fountain too . I'm absolutely mesmerised by how beautiful Ann Harding is and I love how her hair is tied up at the bottom of her neck, leaving her face free, illustrated here but unfortunately, we can see the intricate patterns that the studio stylists can do with her hair, we have the films for that.





Did anyone else notice that part of the score would be reused in GWTW? Max Steiner didn't waste his material. I'm split on my opinion of this movie, I struggled to hear it (darn builders working at the back) and I think Brian Aherne is a weak leading man, maybe if I could have believed in her attraction for him but I couldn't, he's insipid and it skewed the movie for me. Once Paul Lukas entered the picture I thought it picked up tremendously, his character being noble (and me the Brit) and felt that Julie was far better off with him and I felt that was the way the film should have gone but didn't, do we know why she married Lukas? I might have missed this on the soundtrack. Ann Harding gives a good performance and it's set in an interesting time, in Holland during the war, I didn't know about the British soldiers not being able to leave the country, it seemed a bit of a gentleman's agreement, trusting them not to try to get home to rejoin the fight and the opening scenes when they plan a break out funny 'we're planning an escape'. I loved bot hher hairstyles and her costumes, she looks good in modern and in soft, floaty outfits and I love her hairstyles. I'm glad I've had a chance to see it Fernando.

I am glad to read that you liked it so much Alison and I agree that she and Lukas gave the best performances; complex and multilayered. I did not find Aherne weak as you, but in a way his character ends being less interesting than Lukas' character and it serves well the film IMO, ***spoilers*** because at the beginning she had this kind of remembrances of "what would have been", had she married the love of his youth, but then when the husband comes back and she actually "compares" them, she ends realizing that she adores Lukas instead...very complex and not stereotyped relationships and feelings. Aherne has a physical presence that makes one believe why this young lady should still carry of torch for this gentlemanly and handsome man, "idealizing" him while married to her older German husband (an arranged marriage it seems), but after Lukas man comes back wounded, she gets to know the human being deep inside and falls in love with him. That's how I read it.

Me too, I wonder if I suffer from the woman's perspective, I couldn't imagine falling for Brian Aherne and in this movie he did nothing to convince me, but I can see how she could have idealised him but he had little life about him, I see how our childhood and teenager remembrances can colour our feelings especially when there are traumatic times like during the War. If he had been dynamic, dashing and full of derring do it would have skewed the film against Lukas and I do admit if I could see in Brian Aherne what Ann Harding could see in him the balance would have been fine. The fault is mine and my preferences, yet again I did like that she was in a pro German household and married to a German but felt every defeat that the British suffered. How noble Lukas's character was, I liked that.

charliechaplinfan wrote: If he had been dynamic, dashing and full of derring do it would have skewed the film against Lukas and I do admit if I could see in Brian Aherne what Ann Harding could see in him the balance would have been fine.

I bet that Ann's character preferred his men to be quiet, soft-spoken and introverts