CARRIE: Blu-ray (Paramount, 1952) ViaVision Imprint

Despite its two Oscars, one for Hal Pereira, Roland Anderson and Emile Kuri’s art direction, the other for Edith Head’s costume design, the best that can be said of William Wyler’s Carrie (1952) is that it valiantly tries to remain faithful to author, Theodore Dreiser’s novel, Sister Carrie while infusing its cinematic equivalent with the director’s light and intuitive touch for humanity’s foibles and follies. That Carrie emerges as more of a warhorse than one of Wyler’s top-tiered entertainments is regrettable, especially since co-star, Laurence Olivier delivers a curiously off-kilter powerhouse as the prosperous restauranteur, George Hurstwood. Carrie Meeber, the appellative backbone of our story is a much tougher nut to crack, and, in the embodiment of Jennifer Jones, proves something of an intangible, never to truly materialize as a creation of flesh and blood. The downward spiral in Jones’ confidence as an actress, as well as her career in totem, can arguably be defined by two words: David Selznick.

Selznick, who wooed Jones away from her first husband, Robert Walker with veiled dreams of making her a Hollywood legend of the first magnitude in her own time, but then, repeatedly misdirected her ambitions into pictures that, more often than not, ran counterintuitive to Jones’ subtler presence on the screen, effectively took this burgeoning and 5-time Oscar-nominated (and Oscar winner for 1943’s The Song of Bernadette) potential and distilled it into a largely forgettable tenure in the industry to end with disillusionment, Selznick’s death, and Jones’ life-long struggle to redefine herself as an actress and a woman.  To be sure, there were high-water marks among the dreck, including 1944’s Since You Went Away, 1949’s Madame Bovary, and, 1955’s Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing. Carrie is not among these precious stones in Jones’ crown.

One reason, perhaps, is Carrie’s screenplay by Ruth and Augustus Goetz is rather slavishly determined to be as dignified to Dreiser’s saga about this naïve country girl whose contemporary objectives mash with turn-of-the-century slum prudery in the bustling metropolis of Chicago. Carrie is fraught with agony, gloom and despair, and, mired in tragedy, after our titular Junior Miss falls, first for travelling salesman, Charles Drouet (Eddie Albert) then, restaurant manager, George Hurstwood. Wyler’s imaginative fiction gets tainted with varying shades of impending doom. Hurstwood’s middle-aged dalliance with Carrie, leads to his ruin, first in the dissolution of his marriage to the brittle, yet refined Julie (Miriam Hopkins), then, his deliberate and aching descend into gutter depravity. It’s his own fault, however, and as such, our empathy for his demise never blossoms.

Olivier’s transference, from woe-is-me melancholy to artful passion is too phlegmatic, his advances towards Carrie so appallingly insensible one sincerely wonders – apart from her gold-digging – from whence the attraction stems. Olivier’s stodginess is marginally offset by Jones’ mercurial and nuanced grandstanding. If somehow to also fall inexplicably short of expectations, she is, nevertheless, giving her all to these waxworks. Wyler’s own passion for the work occasionally intrudes upon the story’s mounting tragedy, his subtlety to linger on a line or moment, perhaps just a tad too drawn out to successfully punctuate the drama. Mercifully, Wyler’s would-be tome to self-destructive tilt in all-consuming love hits most of its marks, if only occasionally with the earthy resonance of a dinner gong struck a tad too loudly to offend more cultured ears. Only Olivier’s bent on this self-made man, reduced to prematurely greyed pauper with his dignity in tatters, fails to impress.

Yet, Wyler’s well-crafted picture is antiseptic and intermittently slushy to a fault. Somehow, he has taken Dreiser’s mournful mélange of moral conscience and grafted it onto the Hollywood hybrid of an ersatz melodrama. Carrie’s decision to surrender hard work in a sweatshop to be the mistress of two men – one, at least, with the potential to have been ‘great’, dissolves like a sugar cube in hot water.  Indeed, the novel was considered amoral when Paramount first snatched up the rights to produce it in 1935. Assuming ownership of these ‘rights’ in 1949, Wyler sojourned to get past Hollywood’s self-governing code of censorship, by promising to create a deus ex machina to counteract Hurstwood’s depravity: the Goetz’s inventing Olivier’s morally high-minded boss, Mr. Fitzgerald (Basil Ruysdael), to fill this void in the novel. It remains questionable, just how ‘innocent’ our Carrie is, her enterprising nature and ambition to know no morality after being offered a taste of the supposed ‘good life’.

But can anyone really blame Carrie? After all, she has born witness to the other side of life’s banquet, toiling in a dead-end sweatshop, or wed, like her sister, to a boor (Robert Foulk), and saddled with child. From this low vantage, life with loud-mouthed Charles seems pretty good, and, living off the advantages of Hurstwood’s elevated status, even better. So, Carrie trades her youth to become each man’s devoted slut puppy. That she legitimately falls in love with Hurstwood is the folly to set his penultimate demise in motion. Jennifer Jones, who was not Wyler’s first choice for the part, takes Carrie Meeber in an entirely different direction from the novel’s characterization, perhaps still cribbing on Selznick’s desire to see her cast in more wholesome roles. The chemistry between Olivier and Jones is also off here. Olivier’s stab at empathy never quite translates to Hurstwood’s supposedly inviolate avidity for Carrie perhaps because Olivier could barely tolerate his co-star behind the scenes.  

Plot wise: we find ourselves in turn-of-the-century Missouri as Carrie Meeber departs for what she perceives will be greener pastures in the windy city of Chicago. On the train, Carrie meets fast-talking salesman, Charles Drouet whom she disregards…mostly. Nevertheless, Charles is quick to point out the South Side of the city is no place for a girl like Carrie. Alas, this is precisely where Carrie’s sister and her husband reside. And thus, Carrie becomes a part of this low-class drudgery, toiling in the manufacture of shoes for ladies of highborn fashion. She loses this gig after injuring her hand, and after a particularly fruitless search for another position, decides to look up Charles instead. Suspecting his romantic luck about to change with the standoffish Carrie, Chuck squires her to Fitzgerald’s, a high-tone cafe, and ends his generosity with a $10 stipend, presumably with no strings attached. Insulted by the ‘payoff’, Carrie returns to Fitzgerald’s to give back the money, only to meet the establishment’s manager, George Hurstwood. He is instantly taken by her beauty.

Rather awkwardly, Carrie winds up moving in with Charles whom she badgers into a proposal of marriage. After all, neighbors will talk. Having no such intentions, Charles instead invites Hurstwood to their apartment, believing his respectability can quash the waggling tongues. Hurstwood takes Carrie to the theater with Charles’ permission. After all, it proves a distraction to Carrie’s marital plug. But Charles is a fool. Hurstwood and Carrie begin their affair.  Unbeknownst to Carrie, Hurstwood is married. When she discovers this, she bitterly confronts him. Hurstwood confesses. He is trapped in a loveless union. Now, for the wrinkle. Hurstwood innocently locks the restaurant’s timed safe before making the nightly deposit of $10,000. Returning home with the money, he finds his wife, Julie conversing with his boss, Fitzgerald. Unfortunately, Julie has made Fitzgerald aware of her husband’s dalliances with Carrie. In reply, Fitzgerald vows all future remunerations for Hurstwood’s employment will be made directly to Julie, to quash his ability to squire Carrie around town. Painted into a corner, Hurstwood keeps quiet about the safe and absconds with the $10,000 to set up house with Carrie.

Now, Hurstwood compounds his lustful insanity by lying to Carrie about Charles. He professes his amour aboard a train, begging Carrie to leave Charles for him. As she does have genuine affections for Hurstwood, Carrie decides to forsake Charles. For the briefest wrinkle in time, Hurstwood and Carrie are contented. But then, Fitzgerald sends a bondsman to reclaim the stolen money. As Hurstwood’s folly has preceded him, he cannot find suitable employment elsewhere and before long, he and Carrie are reduced to poverty.  Not long thereafter, Carrie learns she is pregnant. Julie demands her husband sell the home they jointly own, but refuses, to grant him a divorce. She also informs Hurstwood, should he contest her terms, she will bring him up on bigamy charges.

Hurstwood strikes a bargain with his wife. If she will divorce him, he will sign away his rights to his half of the proceeds from the sale of the property. Carrie loses the baby.  Hurstwood learns his adult son (William Regnolds) is in town on his honeymoon. The men meet at the docks. Only Carrie misperceives this as Hurstwood attempting to re-enter his family life. Preemptively, she decides to end the humiliation by leaving Hurstwood to try her hand on the New York stage. Time passes. Hurstwood descends into abject poverty – a destroyed shell of a man, living in flophouses or on the street. Meanwhile, Carrie’s career as an actress garners her fame and fortune. Discovering from Charles how Hurstwood sacrificed everything to be with her, Carrie is eager to restore her lover to her bedside. But Hurstwood, ever the proud man, elects not to accept her love or money now – both of which he perceives as mere charity. After a brief, and polite reunion, Hurstwood walks out of Carrie’s life forever, presumably, to his inevitable demise.

Carrie was neither a critical nor financial success. Its disastrous reception with audiences caused Paramount to shelve it for decades thereafter. Curiously, none of this impacted William Wyler’s ability to remain a top-tier director. And Wyler’s reputation for hitting box office gold was reaffirmed the following year with the mega-popular rom/com, Roman Holiday (1953) providing a springboard into two more decades of solidly crafted picture-making. Viewed today, there is so much to admire about Carrie that its shortcomings seem ambiguous at best. Yes, the romantic melding of Olivier and Jones is an ill fit. And yes, the story is so dour and depressing it rarely allows for Wyler to perforate its gloom with at least a modicum of hope intermittently sprinkled into Hurstwood’s increasingly pie-eyed desire. But then, there is David Raksin’s plush score to consider, and, Victor Milner’s exquisite B&W cinematography, always to provide something interesting to look at, even when the plot intermittently stalls. If the story becomes diluted, it is usually in service of Hollywood’s sanctimonious self-governing sense of propriety and decorum. Dreiser’s sociological study gets dampened, but Wyler compensates with a mostly engrossing melodrama to rise above these shortcomings and even, on occasion, to stir our hearts to respect the formidable balancing act in cinema craftsmanship he has wrought.

In hindsight, Wyler’s reluctance to cast Jennifer Jones is well-founded. She is the weakest part of this play. While some critics have since cited other behind-the-scenes chaos inflicting itself on what materialized on the screen - Jones’ real-life pregnancy (which she kept secret), the death of Wyler’s infant son, Olivier’s gout to amplify his disdain for Jones, and, the industry reeling against Senator Joe McCarthy’s witch hunt against some of its top-tiered talent – the reality is Dreiser’s Carrie proved too dark and depressing for the ensconced traditions of Hollywood film fare of its day. Even without Hurstwood’s suicide in the novel, and, Wyler trimming some of the novel’s other darkly purposed moments – again, to placate the ‘code’ – the literary Carrie is too perverse and severe for audience’s movie tastes.  Wyler’s attempt to offset this tone was misperceived as adding unnecessary treacle to tripe to the story, perhaps further to color audiences’ expectations and taint the picture’s reputation, even in advance of its nationwide release. Whatever the reasons, Carrie would not be considered among Wyler’s greatest accomplishments, despite the director’s wholehearted investment of time and energies to make it, arguably, as hauntingly memorable, and shockingly sad as his irrefutable classic, The Heiress (1949).

Carrie arrives on Blu-ray via Aussie/indie label, ViaVision in a hi-def transfer on loan from Paramount Pictures. In keeping with Paramount’s usual skin-flint treatment of its deep catalog, virtually nothing has been done to clean-up age-related artifacts. Worse, this looks suspiciously like a DVD upconvert. Clarity over the DVD is marginally improved, but contrast remains distractingly boosted throughout.  Film grain appears more gritty than indigenous to its source. Blacks are deep, but whites bloom. Speckling, scratches, etc. distract.  I hesitate to suggest this, as a barely passable effort, but will hold to that assessment. The 2.0 mono is infinitely more pleasing than the image, with zero pop, and only intermittent and subtle surface hiss during the quiescent moments. Imprint has shelled out for an impressively informative audio commentary from professor, Jason A. Ney. There is also nearly a half-hour with Brit-scholar, Neil Sinyard who offers some well-informed insights of his own on the differences between the novel and the movie. Lastly, a theatrical trailer, looking even worse for the wear and brutally self-laudatory. Bottom line: Carrie is not a Wyler masterpiece, though it contains many of the director’s well-regarded touches. It aspires to greatness but never achieves it. This Paramount-based/slapped dreck to disc has no such grand delusions. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

2

EXTRAS

2