Peter Ibbetson (1935)
Sep. 10th, 2005 09:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
randy_byersWow! What a strange, beautiful movie! This was supposedly one of the favorites of surrealists Andre Breton and Luis Bunuel, who must have been attracted to the way in which dreams become real. Anyone who has ever had the sense that they are interacting with their lover in their dreams will want to check this one out. It's about transcendant, metaphysical love, and it's about as Hollyweird as it gets. (Well, okay, not anywhere near as weird as Lynch.)
I'm not a fan of Gary Cooper, but I picked up The Gary Cooper Collection for two of the five movies: Design for Living (1933) and The General Died at Dawn (1936), with a mild interest also in the well-known Class of '39 film, Beau Geste. Design for Living is a delightful comedy of bohemian manners, with the twist of a menage a trois without sex -- although apparently it bears only passing resemblance to the Noel Coward play it's based on. The General Died at Dawn is a visually beautiful but somewhat turgid romantic drama set in warlord-torn China of the '30s, with Akim Tamiroff playing the title character in yellowface. It's somewhat like the Sternberg/Dietrich Shanghai Express, with cruel, exotic atmosphere and fascinating secondary characters, but without the ironic grace.
As much as I liked Design for Living, the one that has grabbed me by the short hairs is Peter Ibbetson, which I hadn't heard of before. (The fifth movie in the collection is The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, also from 1935.) It has apparently never been released on home video before, at least in the US. The story is based on the novel by George Du Maurier, a Punch cartoonist who also wrote the novel Trilby, which has itself been filmed several times, sometimes under the title, Svengali. (I have a DVD of the 1931 version of Svengali with John Barrymore as the mesmerising villain. Great stuff!)
Peter Ibbetson follows its two lovers from childhood to death, in a neat three act structure that grows progressively more mystical. Gary Cooper plays Peter as an adult (the ubiquitous Dickie Moore plays him as a child), and Ann Harding plays the love of his life as an adult (Virginia Weidler plays her as a child). The first time I watched the movie, I had no idea where it was headed, and the first two thirds looked like a standard romantic story, with hidden identities and initial sparring that turns into affection. This becomes a classic three-body problem that is addressed with admirable frankness, and then the story launches off into the ether. The last third is a remarkable metaphysical fantasy, wrought to a fever pitch by an extremely melodramatic situation that is also a potent metaphor for life in the flesh as a prison.
It is a very beautiful movie visually, with wonderful, elaborate sets (something that Paramount was good at in that era) and delicate, gauzy cinematography that becomes appropriately stark and dramatic in the final act. It is well-written, the performances are good -- it's all good. I'm not sure why it isn't better known. Perhaps the mysticism is off-putting to some people? I suppose it is ludicrous, from a naturalistic or pragmatic point of view, but I love the bizarre baroqueness of it, especially the way it bursts out of the bonds of apparent normalcy.
Anyway, highly recommended, if you like this kind of thing.
I'm not a fan of Gary Cooper, but I picked up The Gary Cooper Collection for two of the five movies: Design for Living (1933) and The General Died at Dawn (1936), with a mild interest also in the well-known Class of '39 film, Beau Geste. Design for Living is a delightful comedy of bohemian manners, with the twist of a menage a trois without sex -- although apparently it bears only passing resemblance to the Noel Coward play it's based on. The General Died at Dawn is a visually beautiful but somewhat turgid romantic drama set in warlord-torn China of the '30s, with Akim Tamiroff playing the title character in yellowface. It's somewhat like the Sternberg/Dietrich Shanghai Express, with cruel, exotic atmosphere and fascinating secondary characters, but without the ironic grace.
As much as I liked Design for Living, the one that has grabbed me by the short hairs is Peter Ibbetson, which I hadn't heard of before. (The fifth movie in the collection is The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, also from 1935.) It has apparently never been released on home video before, at least in the US. The story is based on the novel by George Du Maurier, a Punch cartoonist who also wrote the novel Trilby, which has itself been filmed several times, sometimes under the title, Svengali. (I have a DVD of the 1931 version of Svengali with John Barrymore as the mesmerising villain. Great stuff!)
Peter Ibbetson follows its two lovers from childhood to death, in a neat three act structure that grows progressively more mystical. Gary Cooper plays Peter as an adult (the ubiquitous Dickie Moore plays him as a child), and Ann Harding plays the love of his life as an adult (Virginia Weidler plays her as a child). The first time I watched the movie, I had no idea where it was headed, and the first two thirds looked like a standard romantic story, with hidden identities and initial sparring that turns into affection. This becomes a classic three-body problem that is addressed with admirable frankness, and then the story launches off into the ether. The last third is a remarkable metaphysical fantasy, wrought to a fever pitch by an extremely melodramatic situation that is also a potent metaphor for life in the flesh as a prison.
It is a very beautiful movie visually, with wonderful, elaborate sets (something that Paramount was good at in that era) and delicate, gauzy cinematography that becomes appropriately stark and dramatic in the final act. It is well-written, the performances are good -- it's all good. I'm not sure why it isn't better known. Perhaps the mysticism is off-putting to some people? I suppose it is ludicrous, from a naturalistic or pragmatic point of view, but I love the bizarre baroqueness of it, especially the way it bursts out of the bonds of apparent normalcy.
Anyway, highly recommended, if you like this kind of thing.
