CAVALCADE: Blu-ray (Fox Film Corp. 1933) Fox Home Video
BEST PICTURE - 1933
The inevitable
passage of time and the immeasurable joys and tragedy it brings to life in
totem, served as the basis for Noel Coward’s inspiration to write Cavalcade. A mammoth Drury Lane stage
production at the Theatre Royal, Cavalcade utilized 300 performers, contained over 150 speaking parts, and, incorporated a
myriad of stagecraft special effects; lighting, smoke, fire and six hydraulic
lifts. For its sheer size and spectacle, Cavalcade
became a legendary production, immediately embraced by the British, who could
see it as a sort of sad, if very patriotic aide-memoire to their own decline in
the 20th century; not yet entirely able to surrender the sentimental
notion of ‘empire’. Britain’s dominance had once been the envy of the
world, especially during the reign of Queen Victoria. After the Boer Wars,
England was less regarded by her protectorates and commonwealths, these
mounting animosities passing into that grey dawn of the early twentieth
century. So too, was England’s impressions of its own aristocracy being
steadily eroded at home by its increasingly resentful and dwindling servants’ class.
Yet, the nation would come to terms with its own station, if not outright, then
certainly in its endless proliferation of reflections on these turbulent times,
retrospectively reviewed through rose-colored glasses. So, Coward’s rumination
for an England as it was, or rather, might have been reinterpreted for the
stage in 1931, was a not-too-distant memory that, for those who had lived it,
could now revisit from the relative safety of their theater seats with teary-eyed
reminiscence for all the heritage and traditions relegated to the dustbins of
history along the way.
For all his
laissez faire sexual proclivities – both in private life and those more readily
exercised by the erudite upper crust snobs who frequently populated his plays -
in his heart and soul, I firmly suspect Noel Coward was very much an arch
conservative. Many of his plays do more than simply poke fun at the British
aristocracy. They are, in fact, astute social critiques of the foibles of
mankind in general and British society in particular; often glib, undeniably
frank, but with kernels of truth peppered in that remain universally relevant,
mostly in their exposure if – arguably – not in their execution. Coward was a
highly literate man. Thus, the characters in his plays speak to us with very flamboyant
self-expression, not unlike the movie characters created by director/writer,
Joseph L. Mankiewicz in A Letter to
Three Wives (1949), and more proficiently in All About Eve (1950). While these latter examples arguably continue
to resonate with us nearly seventy years later, the featureless recreations
Coward evokes in Cavalcade have something
of an uphill climb to satisfy our taste for the Downton Abbey sect and their below stairs counterparts. Yet, Coward
is doing far more – and better – in Cavalcade,
than simply offering us a mirror of the times, either prior to his own, or, in
fact, more directly, those in which he toiled. His perception is keen, and his testament is
genuine, despite the posed narration and posturing of our featured players.
In his long and
illustrious career, as playwright, song writer, stage and screen performer/director,
bon vivant and all-around droll good sport, Noel Coward became the éminence
grise for an entire generation; one of the foremost wits who, along with the
likes of Mark Twain and Will Rogers, made the transition from the 19th
to the 20th century appear seamless, effortless and fascinating. And
Coward, unlike many of his contemporaries, never stood on ceremony, preferring
instead to poke fun, both at the world and himself. From this rubric, Cavalcade is undeniably one of Coward’s
weightiest tomes. Yet, it simultaneously
bids adieu to the Britain of his youth while ever so gently easing its
reputation back into the good graces of historical and popular opinion – England,
in Cavalcade, not nearly as ‘jolly’
or ‘ole’ but a fragile and fading ghost-flower, having no place within the
context of this new and burgeoning century – except as a popular entertainment.
Cavalcade is Coward’s most tragic
masterpiece, forgoing almost all of his penchant for a ‘wink-nudge’ comedy,
except in a few of the earliest scenes; though even then, remarkably subdued
when compared to his other formidable stagecraft.
The sheer size
of Cavalcade’s stagecraft made it
virtually impossible to do the play justice with a touring company. Thus, and
unlike most of Coward’s best-loved masterworks, Cavalcade never even made the leap across the Atlantic to Broadway.
Apart from its Drury Lane incarnation, Cavalcade
was never again attempted after its triumphant year-long run. In more recent
times there have been several modest revivals. But these have excised much of
the lavish stage trickery - for obvious budgetary constraints – that made Cavalcade such a smash hit in the first
place, and, with a severely paired down the cast. Hence, the closest facsimile
we have to that West End behemoth today is Frank Lloyd’s 1933 film adaptation –
created on a scale even more impressive than Coward’s and produced by the Fox Film
Corporation a full three years before its merger with 2oth Century Pictures
(thus creating the company we know today as 2oth Century-Fox). Viewed today,
the film version of Cavalcade is a
rather stoic, often static, and clumsily turgid drama – its narrative,
regrettably, devolving into episodic vignettes, loosely strung together with
inserted titles to document the passage of time. The years are superimposed
over a medieval cavalry of gallant knights marching on horseback – art director,
William S. Darling’s rather queer attempt to hark all the way back to ‘ye olden
days’, possibly as a comparative, if strained, reference to England’s waning
supremacy at the cusp of modernity. The film co-stars Diana Wynyard and Clive
Brook as the quintessential Victorian age, upper middle-class couple; Jane and
Robert Marryot.
Returning home
from a lavish party just moments before midnight on New Year’s Eve, Marryots
quietly toast 1900 with bright-eyed optimism, along with their two children,
Edward (Dickie Henderson) and Joey (Douglas Scott), and their devoted servants,
upstairs maid, Ellen (Una O’Connor) and butler, Alfred Bridges (Herbert
Mundin). Coward’s genuine affection for both the upstairs and downstairs
lifestyles, coexisting in this classicist culture, serves as the springboard for
a cultural divergence that will all but dismantle the time-honored traditions
of the Victorian age. This struggle over who will rule as the ruling class in a
post-war England is at the heart of Cavalcade
– the movie. For Robert and Alfred are off to fight in the Boer War – equals in
conflict, to endure the sounding death knells for this once proud and
impenetrable fortress typifying solidarity and strength under Queen Victoria’s
iconic reign.
Jane and Ellen
go to the docks to see their men off, while Ellen’s sister Margaret (Irene
Browne) stays behind to look after Jane’s boys and her own daughter, Edith
(Sheila MacGill). Margaret is the practical sort, but with a gregariousness for
acquiring handsome male suitors. Months later, she goads Jane into a night on
the town, the gaiety of their musical hall revue interrupted by the stage
manager’s buoyant declaration that the war has come to an end. The crowds
rejoice and Jane looks forward to a return to normalcy for her family. Although
Robert and Alfred do indeed come back unharmed, the world they once knew has
moved on. Symbolically, this is represented by Alfred’s announcement to Ellen,
he has decided to buy a respectable pub, thus leaving service to the Marryot
family with Robert’s blessing. Robert has, in fact, provided a considerable
stipend to help Albert with his down payment on the establishment. This,
however, will inadvertently bring about Albert’s ruination as, left to his own vices,
Albert gradually becomes his own best customer – drinking away the pub’s
profits and bringing shame to Ellen and their youngest daughter, Fanny (Bonita
Granville) who daydreams of becoming a ballet dancer. Again, time passes. Jane
and her son Edward (now played as a young man by John Warburton) decide to pay
a call on Ellen and Albert. However, during their brief visit, also to include the
Marryot’s former downstairs maid, Annie (Merle Tottenham) and her new husband,
George Grainger (Billy Bevan) Jane and Edward are accosted by a drunken/sullen
Albert, who orders them from his home. During this commotion, Fanny darts into
the streets, joining a gathering of buskers in a spirited dance. Still angry,
Albert runs after her and is struck down by a horse-drawn fire engine.
The tale moves
on, to Edward’s growing love for Edith (now played by Margaret Lindsey). As
children they were frequently at odds. But as young people their love has only
ripened with time. Both the Marryots and Margaret approve. Joey (now played by
Frank Lawton) offers the one rather dandy and descending opinion on the
romance, goading his elder brother and proving that when it comes to sibling
rivalry some things never change. Ah, but it’s all in the spirit of fun. Edward
and Edith are married and set sail for America, and what promises to be the
happiest of outlooks for the future. Tragically, their vessel of choice is the
R.M.S. Titanic. The couple perishes, leaving their families distraught to pick
up the pieces at home. With the outbreak of WWI, Robert and Joey become
officers. Jane again suffers the anxiety over possibly losing the men in her
life. This prophecy is only half-fulfilled when Joey is killed in battle on the
eve of the armistice. Prior to this, Joey had begun a rather joyous affair with
Albert and Ellen’s daughter, Fanny (now played by Ursula Jeans), an accomplished
and rising music hall star. Yet, even this happiness is impeded, this time by
Ellen’s rather uppity and needless concern that such a relationship will spoil
her daughter. After Joey’s death, Robert returns home to his wife.
From here, Reginald
Berkeley’s screenplay momentarily digresses from what was a rather intimate
familial melodrama into a rather tedious montage of soldiers dying, and
row-on-row crosses marking the staggering losses incurred. We are given the briefest
glimpse into an army hospital where the blinded, emotionally and physically
crippled remnants of this gallant generation are left to rot and/or salvage
what little remains of their once-promising destiny. We regress to the Marryot
home. It is New Year’s Eve, 1933; Robert, Jane and Margaret all having entered
their emeritus years. Margaret, however, refuses to grow old gracefully. She is
still up to her old ways and departs a few minutes before midnight to meet up
with her latest beau – a doctor. As the eager crowds gather in the streets,
Jane and Robert assemble on the balcony of their family home; the scene where
so many iconic moments in the play were performed, but only the cortege of
Queen Victoria’s funeral is briefly glimpsed in the movie. Jane makes a rather
wistful and homesick toast to England in general, but also, for their lives as
we have come to experience them. Her fondest wish is that nation and family may
know prosperity, solidarity and optimism for a tomorrow that, arguably, neither
she or Robert will live to see.
At times, Cavalcade is a magnificently forlorn
masterpiece. Its chief asset remains Diana Wynyard’s poignant central
performance. Much of Coward’s prose are devoted to the iconography of that
instilled portrait of Britain’s stiff upper lip being relentlessly pummeled into
submission by the crudeness and cruelties of the twentieth century. And the
wounds are no more poetically expressed than in the far-away, careworn and
misty-eyed stares frequently given by Wynyard’s Jane throughout this film. In
her day, Wynyard was a popular star of the London stage and a strikingly
handsome woman besides. Her career briefly segued into the movies, mostly in
supporting roles. But like co-star, Clive Brooks, Wynyard’s greatest triumphs were
to remain stagebound – a tenure for which, regrettably, no record exists. Yet, Cavalcade unequivocally illustrates
what a truly stellar talent she was in her prime. There is a strange solemnity to
her stately and porcelain features, forever teetering on the brink of tears of
surrender, but staunchly refusing to tip entirely to comply with the edicts of
this coming age. While the other characters all morph and/or evolve beyond
their initial introduction to the audience, Wynyard’s Jane Marryot remains
remarkably intact – a sort of mortal time capsule for that near-forgotten
even-keeled cadence in life, too impossibly beautiful and confident to last,
yet ever more resilient and destined to never truly fade away.
Una O’Connor’s
toffee-nosed maid, who fancies herself a middle-class lady by the end of WWI –
enough to suggest to Jane that her daughter, Fanny would do better to marry
anyone except Joey – remains the transitional figurehead of the piece; the
physical embodiment of that rising middle-class slum prudery that would
eventually eclipse the faded primerose of England’s diminishing
aristocrats. Irene Browne’s doting
sister is really quite marvelous too, maintaining a sense of balance and
understanding; moving with the times, and yet, able to treasure all that has
gone before - clear-eyed, but without any sentimentality ascribed to these
discarded traditions. Cavalcade also
has some marvelous set pieces. Even so, the film never entirely escapes the withdrawn
trappings of its stage origins. Frank Lloyd’s direction is not terribly
engaging. Given such formidable resources at his beckoned call, Lloyd seems
rather intent on photographing Cavalcade
– the movie - as the play imprimatur. The camera rarely dollies or pans, the
cast mostly photographed from the waist up in well-placed stage groupings or in
pairs; the close-up, never utilized to heighten the drama or bring the audience
nearer to the performances. Cavalcade
has been obviously mounted with considerable expense and care. The crowd
scenes, war-time marching, and nightclub and ballroom sequences are a mind-boggling, logistical nightmare and utterly lavish. And yet, on the whole, Cavalcade
emerges with a faint whiff of embalming fluid about its peripheries. There
are nuggets of exceptionalism to be had, but one really has to concentrate on the
story – and particularly, Diana Wynyard – to find the true spirit of Noel
Coward’s masterpiece in the movie version.
Our appreciation
for Cavalcade – the movie – is
further impeded by its less than stellar presentation on Blu-ray from Fox Home
Video. I suppose we shouldn’t be too surprised. Long ago, the original camera
negatives and fine grain masters were junked, leaving only dupe negatives and
first-generation prints used to cull a passable master. Cavalcade’s overall image quality is tired and weather-beaten. At times,
the image is exceptionally grainy too. Owing to mitigating factors – first,
imperfect film stock, second, less than original elements used in the
remastering effort, and finally, the preventative cost of performing a full-on
restoration on less than perfect archival elements with all of the digitally
corrective tools to eliminate inherent flicker and age-related artifacts, Cavalcade on Blu-ray reveals the grotesqueness
of time, and, studio shortsightedness and what it can do to movie art when
improperly stored and mismanaged. Contrast is weak. Whites tend to bloom and
fine detail meanders between passable sharpness and an overall haze –
particularly during the process shots used to create the various montages.
Age-related dirt and scratches are everywhere. No fault – or perhaps very
little – should be ascribed to the present regime at Fox Home Video for the
resulting lackluster image quality herein. Schawn Belston and his crew have performed
some work to remaster Cavalcade in
hi-def.
While some may
poo-poo the effort, citing that in a perfect world a year-long search for
alternate materials and painstaking frame-by-frame restoration would have
yielded far more impressive results, considering the niche market for very deep
catalog titles, the rest of us should be grateful Fox deigned to release Cavalcade at all. Despite its
Oscar-winning Best Picture status (an award granted the year of its release
1932/33, though not actually bestowed upon its filmmakers until 1934), Cavalcade is not a movie that many
today will remember with rekindled fondness if, in fact, they remember it at
all. That’s a pity. Hell, it might even be an artistic tragedy. It is, however,
a fact. The DTS mono is in very good shape and has been tweaked from the DVD
release. Hiss and pop that appeared on the DVD have been almost eradicated on
the Blu-ray. Apart from a somewhat
waffling audio commentary by film critic/historian, Richard Schickel previously
recorded for the DVD release, and, a truncated Movietone Newsreel marking its
Oscar-winning victory, no other extras are included on this disc. Bottom line:
for its sheer celebration of early 20th century picture-making
craftsmanship, also, Diana Wynyard’s performance, Cavalcade is deserving of a second spin on Blu-ray. The movie represents another epoch in
picture-making entirely; its’ plot - another generation, even more bygone than
that.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
3.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
3
EXTRAS
1
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