THE COUNTRY GIRL: Blu-ray re-issue (Paramount, 1954) Kino Lorber

Grace Kelly took home a ‘questionable’ Best Actress Oscar for her performance in director, George Seaton’s The Country Girl (1954), the prescience of its alcoholism-themed manifesto more directly plumbed in Billy Wilder’s scathing 1945’s Oscar-winner, The Lost Weekend. Here, it’s one of cinema’s beloveds – Bing Crosby as Broadway sensation come has-been, Frank Elgin – toting a failed romance with the bottle. The bait and switch in The Country Girl is, for much of it’s runtime, we are led by Seaton’s direction and screenplay (based on Clifford Odet’s play) to believe this one-time ‘great’ man of the American theater has been brought low by his money-driven trophy wife, Georgie (Grace Kelly) when, in fact, it’s the other way around. Kelly is pulling out all the stops, including an Edith Head wardrobe, designed to mimic clothes bought off the rack at K-Mart, to transform her glacial/patrician beauty into an uncommon house frump. There are, of course, mitigating circumstances to Frank and Georgia’s mutual misery and implosion; the death of the couple’s young son, among them. None of this is beknown to Bernie Dodd (William Holden in a thankless part), the director of a new Broadway revue, The Land Around Us, designed for Frank’s big comeback, while Dodd secretly carries a torch for Georgia…well, sort of. Dodd’s relentless admonishment of Georgia masks his more passionate intensions. But then, things begin to change.

Grace Kelly’s Oscar win came at an interesting juncture; the actress, about to eschew Hollywood royalty for the real thing as Princess Grace of Monaco. And in that imminent loss to screen mags everywhere, the Academy voting members sought to bestow upon Kelly the one honor for which the industry had become famous…or rather, infamous. It isn’t much of a secret anymore. AMPAS doesn’t vote its conscience when selecting candidates for the ‘best’ performance of the year. What passes for art is politically motivated to promote certain talents ahead of others. Occasionally, the glaring embarrassments from this genuflection resulted in compensation to the obscured, or otherwise silence rumors that the little, gold, bald guy was ‘fair game’ for only an anointed few. Hence, when actress, Joan Fontaine was obscenely denied for her brilliant breakout in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) to advance the notion Ginger Roger’s had the chops for a dramatic career after her Fred n’ Ginger days at RKO - her tepid turn as Kitty Foyle (1940) both anemic and pedestrian - Fontaine was placated with Oscar gold the following year, basically for a thinly veiled reprise of the character she played in Rebecca, in another Hitchcock movie - Suspicion (1941).

Grace Kelly’s imminent ‘retirement’ from the movies placed Academy voters in a precarious position. Here was a newcomer, barely six films into her eleven-movie tenure, bidding farewell to the industry that had made her a household word. Kelly’s departure did not entirely unruffle so many feathers in the front offices of the studios. Hollywood is always more interested in ‘the next best thing’ than cultivating talent they already possess – except to exploit it to the nth degree until it burns itself into extinction. But Kelly’s star had yet to turn into a supernova even as she laid the groundwork for more palatial grounds. However, Hollywood loves its fairytales. So, the industry would pay homage…or, perhaps, restitution, to the movies’ princess about to become the real thing. And hence, 1955’s legit Oscar nominees for Best Actress became the sacrificial lambs to AMPAS’s caprice to christen Kelly as their queen of the evening.

Besides, Oscar had already lent its glitter and class to ‘the first’ black actress, Hattie McDaniel’s Mammie in Gone with the Wind (1939), making it considerably easier then, if no less embarrassing in hindsight, to snub Dorothy Dandridge’s titanic turn as the sultry Carmen Jones. As for Judy Garland’s epic comeback in A Star is Born; Garland had burned her bridges with MGM’s L.B. Mayer (one of AMPAS’s founding fathers) and a few more at Warner Bros., the studio distributing her current masterpiece. Even if she had no others in her future, Garland had made back her money and then some for her bosses. She was, therefore, expendable. As for Audrey Hepburn (nominated for Sabrina) and Jane Wyman (for Magnificent Obsession) each, had walked from the podium toting Oscar gold (Hepburn, most recently for 1953’s debut, Roman Holiday and Wyman for 1948’s Johnny Belinda). So, Grace Kelly won.

There is, to be certain, competency in Kelly’s performance in The Country Girl. More than that. It is a finely wrought gesture, if slightly enfeebled attempt to unearth the ‘inner’ Kelly, more natural/down-to-earth and far less goddess-like. Yet, despite the store-bought dowdiness, Kelly’s deeper radiance as a bona fide movie queen shines beneath the make-up designed to prematurely age her glycerin façade. She isn’t a girl plucked from the country, rather a Park Avenue princess gone slumming. And as for co-star, Bing Crosby’s gentle lush, it seems an even more token gesture on AMPAS’s part to legitimize not only Kelly’s comparative nomination, but also, to justify her win against Crosby’s deserved loss to Marlon Brando for On The Waterfront. Retrospectively, and despite stiff competition from James Mason (nominated for playing a suicidal drunk in A Star is Born) and, Humphrey Bogart (as a mentally unstable sea captain in The Caine Mutiny), and the barely remembered Dan O’Herlihy (for Adventures of Robinson Crusoe), Crosby didn’t have much of a hope to win this one.

The Country Girl opens with auditions held by director, Bernie Dodd for his new play, The Land Around Us. Dodd is blindly enthused by has-been Frank Elgin’s rendering of the title song for his show. His decision to cast Frank meets with adamant opposition from the play’s producer, Philip Cook (Anthony Ross). Elgin was a big deal ten years ago, before booze took over and crippled his confidence. Dodd, however, takes pity on Frank, who shares his squalid apartment with frumpy wife, Georgie. While both Dodd and Georgie rally for every different reasons, to bolster Frank’s conviction, secretly, each has doubts he is up to the grueling task of staying the course in a big Broadway show. Rather insidiously, Frank hides his chronic alcoholism from Dodd, suggesting in private, Georgie has pushed him to succumb to the bottle, and worse, is directly responsible for his failing career. With nothing to go on, Dodd briefly suspects as much, critical of Georgie’s handling of her husband during rehearsals, especially after cracks begin to appear in Frank’s dutiful promise to remain clean and sober for the run of the show.

But then, Dodd begins to realize he has been led astray by Frank’s assumptions about Georgie. After Dodd discovers the couple lost their 5-yr.-old son, Johnny (Jon Provost) in a car accident, for which Frank forever after blamed himself, Dodd begins to piece together the truth. It’s Frank, not Georgie, who is suicidal, depressed and consumed by fear of failure. It’s Frank who has been slipping, even as Georgie has worked like hell to remain his dutiful and compassionate wife. Knowing this, Dodd begins to fall in love with Georgie.  Or is it only her martyrdom he finds so gosh-darn appealing? Despite various setbacks during rehearsals, the opening of The Land Around Us is a colossal success. The papers, having reveled in Frank’s fall from grace, now laud his triumphant comeback. And although Frank is elated, at the wrap party afterward, he informs Georgie and Dodd he suspects they are in love. Previously, Georgie suggested to Dodd that if only Frank could pull himself up, she would divorce him and move on. Alas, now, perhaps more than ever, Georgie realizes whatever Frank is, her life is with him. After Frank has left the party, Georgie informs Dodd of her decision to remain Frank’s loyal wife. He respects her decision, and she, after gingerly bidding Dodd goodbye, rushes to catch up with her husband.

The Country Girl is an adequate, though hardly engrossing entertainment. In the intervening decades, it hasn’t held up, despite the top-tier talent poured into its creation. Bill Holden is the wrong ‘type’ here. He’s big and beefy – the antithesis of Crosby’s withered drunk. While the physical contrast between these two men is, at times, striking, does anyone really believe Georgie is better served by remaining at Frank’s side? The rest of the cast, to include Gene Reynolds, Jacqueline Fontaine, Eddie Ryder, Robert Kent, and, John W. Reynolds are mere window dressing for what is essentially a 3-person melodrama with a little music slipped under the radar to take advantage of Crosby’s formidable skills as a musical/comedy star. In his day, there was no one quite like Bing Crosby. That his career would steadily morph with the times into a more dramatic bent as musicals fell out of favor is also a testament to how amiable and diverse Crosby was as an actor, even with the big-band turned off. If only Seaton appreciated as much. But, no. Der Bingle sings four ditties penned by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershin: It's Mine, It's Yours, The Search Is Through, The Land Around Us, and, Dissertation on the State of Bliss (the latter, accompanied by Fontaine) – all of them, forgettable. And, as The Country Girl is decidedly not a musical, the songs bring the story to a screeching halt.

Remarkably, reviews of the day for The Country Girl were solid. Odet’s monologues are potent, but often overshadowed by overwrought delivery, presumably encouraged by Seaton to trademark their thematic severity. Even as an early analysis of co-dependency in drug/alcohol abusive relationships, The Country Girl fades from view to the more impressive The Lost Weekend, Man With The Golden Arm (1955) or Days of Wine and Roses (1962). It’s just not that good of a movie. Kelly’s inability to completely regress into the background as the put-upon wife, Crosby’s lack of abject downtrodden-ness to compensate for his trademarked sedateness and warmth, and Holden’s chronically incensed/spurned wound-be love interest are a twittering trio of magpies. It’s all too-too on the nose to be believed. And Seaton, seemingly enamored with the work, directs with zero flair, relying on bland B&W cinematography from John F. Warren to infer, though never convince, we are in the thick of that stagecraft netherworld quaintly known as off-Broadway at the movies.

Clifford Odets was one of America’s prestigious playwrights. Yet, curiously, he made no comment on the picture, much less its critical and box office success. Even Hitchcock, whose admiration for Grace Kelly as his ‘go to’ cool blonde was second to none, was uncertain whether her talents could be stretched to accommodate the dramatic requirements of The Country Girl. On stage, The Country Girl won a Tony (the theaters’ highest honor) for Uta Hagen, perhaps, another reason why Kelly’s reprise on film was destined to take home the Oscar – Hollywood’s highest award proving movie stars had the upper hand on ‘legitimate’ actors in the American theater. Hagen was not Hollywood. So, she was never considered by Paramount. Oddly, Jennifer Jones was, before pregnancy forced her out of the running, despite assurances from Jones’ husband, producer, David O. Selznick, the picture could be in the can before his wife’s condition began to show. Kelly’s involvement with The Country Girl was problematic at the outset, in that her contract belonged to MGM. Ironically, with L.B. Mayer no longer running the studio, no one could quite decide how to market Kelly’s rise to stardom. And thus, she was repeatedly loaned out to kick-start her career. After Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), MGM had a change of heart. They would groom Kelly on home turf. The problem: minus Mayer’s dominion over that vast kingdom, MGM was largely rudderless in the fifties, and adrift in newly appointed President, Dore Schary’s scheme to dismantle its star system, transforming its resident glamor to grittier, low-budget fare, directly at odds with MGM’s galvanized in-house style.  

To break the stalemate, producer, Bill Perlberg slipped Kelly a copy of the script for The Country Girl, plying her with plaudits. An apocryphal story has an adamant Kelly storming Schary’s office, demanding to be loaned out for The Country Girl or refusing to ever again appear in pictures; a tale denied by Kelly as pure Hollywood hokum, designed to bolster public interest in what was being marketed as her ‘break out’ role. There is little to deny, if Kelly’s agent, the insatiable star-maker, Lew Wasserman, had not intervened on her behalf, her career opportunities at MGM would have led to an abysmal spate of middling projects, likely to sink her meteoric rise to prominence. Indeed, the picture Kelly agreed to make for MGM – Green Fire – a woeful tale of emerald smugglers, in order to be loaned out for The Country Girl is about as entertaining as watching fresh pain cure. And of her remaining two efforts for her alma mater, only 1956’s champagne cocktail of a movie musical, High Society – for which she again shared the screen with Bing Crosby – is noteworthy.  For Kelly’s services on The Country Girl, Metro dinged Paramount a cool $50,000 plus $5,000 per day for any overages that might prevent Green Fire from going before the cameras on time. Paramount also had to win Crosby’s approval for Kelly’s participation. Initially, Crosby had his doubts. However, after the first week’s shoot, he recanted, singing Kelly’s praises, and, production ran smoothly for the remainder of the work.

The Country Girl’s 7 Oscar nominations were offset by its loss in 5 competing categories to On The Waterfront. Only Kelly and Seaton were thusly crowned, arguably, neither deserving of the honor. And now, Kino repackages The Country Girl for Blu-ray state’s side. As with The Rose Tattoo and Come Back Little Sheba, The Country Girl was previously made available world-wide from Aussie indie label, Via Vision. Unlike either of those aforementioned titles, the new Kino is cited as being from a 2023 4K remaster. And in comparing it to the old Via Vision, there are discrepancies in image quality to suggest some work has been done to present The Country Girl in its best possible home video incarnation to date. This 1080p image is framed in 1.66:1 – an odd aspect ratio for a picture originally shot in 1.37:1 with a projected crop of 1.85:1. Otherwise, the B&W image exhibits deep blacks, clean whites, solid contrast, and the subtlest of improvements in overall image stability over the Via Vision release, which contained minute traces of edge enhancement and sharpening.  The DTS 2.0 mono is solidly rendered and sounds just fine. Kino has regurgitated Professor Jason A. Ney’s audio track, previously on the Via Vision, but jettisons the nearly hour-long bio on Grace Kelly from 1987. While the doc features many who worked with Kelly, its overall gloss-over of Kelly’s private life is disappointing, as was the lackluster quality of its transfer. Nevertheless, its total loss here is inexcusable. Bottom line: The Country Girl is so-so entertainment. Despite Ney’s exaltation of its importance, there is a reason why it continues to lag behind in public notoriety and overall audience appreciation. Kino’s Blu bests Via Vision’s for overall transfer quality. But if you own the Via Vision, you’ll want to hang on to it for the Kelly doc. Recommended, with caveats.

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

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

4

EXTRAS

1