January 30, 2012

18 Humoresque (1946)


***
½

Country: US
Director: Jean Negulesco


Joan Crawford has never been one of my favorite actresses of the Hollywood studio era. In the movies she made at MGM in the thirties, her driving ambition to be a movie star seemed to overshadow her acting. She always gave the impression of trying too hard—over-emoting in dramatic roles and too tense to be wholly convincing in lighter ones. And she never really seemed at ease playing the kind of upper-crust sophisticates who dominated MGM movies of the time. It didn't help that she usually got parts only after they were rejected by MGM's two biggest female stars, Norma Shearer (whom Crawford had doubled for early in her career) and Greta Garbo. Nor was she helped by being so often cast opposite flaccid leading men with whom she appeared to have little chemistry, actors like Robert Montgomery, Robert Taylor, Melvyn Douglas, or Franchot Tone (to whom she was married for several years). Still, there's no denying her popularity in the early thirties, when she was named one of the top ten box office stars for five years running.

Crawford's career was set back in 1938 when a group of theater owners included her on a list of stars they considered "box office poison," a list that also damaged the careers of Katharine Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Mae West, and Marlene Dietrich. She did make a comeback of sorts in The Women (1939), where under the direction of George Cukor she made a strong impression in what was really a supporting role as the gold-digging nemesis of the picture's genteel star, Crawford's long-time rival Norma Shearer. Then in 1941 she got a plum role in A Woman's Face after Garbo turned it down and, again under the direction of Cukor, gave an impressive performance—at least in the first half of the picture, where she played against the great German actor Conrad Veidt—as an embittered woman with a disfigured face.

But any expectations of better parts after A Woman's Face didn't pan out; after Garbo and Shearer retired, the best roles seemed to go to Greer Garson. After a few more undistinguished films, Crawford's time at MGM came to a humiliating end in 1943 when the obsessively profit-conscious Louis B. Mayer decided not to renew her contract. Quick to move forward, though, Crawford then signed a contract with Warner Bros. The reigning female star there was Bette Davis, who got first choice of the best pictures, and again Crawford found herself in the position of being offered leftovers after they were rejected by someone higher in the studio's pecking order. In fact, she got her first assignment at Warners after it was passed on not only by Davis, but also by Ann Sheridan and Rosalind Russell. The picture was Mildred Pierce, and it not only revived Crawford's career, but showed she really could act and, after twenty years in Hollywood and something like sixty movies, got her an Oscar as best actress.

She got her next two pictures at Warners after they were also turned down by Davis, Humoresque (1946) and Possessed (1947), which got her another Oscar nomination. (I wonder if her success in these films had something to do with the famous rivalry between Crawford and Davis, whose career at Warners was rapidly winding down). For my money, those three performances are the best of Crawford's career. But as much as I like her in Mildred Pierce—she really did deserve that Oscar—and as good as she is in Possessed, it was in Humoresque that Joan Crawford gave my favorite of all her performances.

In Humoresque she plays a rich socialite, Helen Wright, who fancies herself a patron of unknown artists and keeps a group of attractive, sycophantic young men hovering around her. At one of her salon evenings a gifted young violinist, Paul Boray (John Garfield), attracts her attention with his playing. After the nearsighted Helen asks one of her toy boys to fetch her eyeglasses so she can get a better look at Paul, the undisguised sexual interest on her face shows that as well as his talent, she is also fascinated by his brooding good looks and almost surly manner. At their first meeting, fireworks fly. She baits him about being conceited and he responds by insulting her musically, playing "Flight of the Bumblebee" to suggest that she is a dilettante less interested in art than in her image as a patron of the arts, and also perhaps to allude to her waspish temperament and bevy of young drones. Yet despite this rocky initial encounter, before long he has become her protégé and she is paying the bills to get him started as a professional concert musician.

Helen becomes increasingly infatuated with Paul, and he seems to return her feelings—to a point. As she grows more possessive and he finds his career taking off, cracks begin to develop in the relationship. As the power dynamic in the relationship begins to reverse, she becomes more clinging and he begins to look for ways to assert his independence. There's a wonderful scene in the film where she takes out a cigarette and waits for him to light it for her, and he pointedly turns his back on her and pours himself a drink. When she begins to see that Paul will never be as devoted to her as she is to him, that his object of devotion is his music, it's clear that this is a love affair fated to end badly.

The role of Helen Wright gives Crawford the opportunity to show everything she is capable of, and she does so using an artfully judged balance of intensity and restraint. Helen may be a socialite now, but when she tells Paul about her first two marriages, it's apparent that her current social position is the result of her third marriage to a wealthy older man whom she dominates completely. It's also apparent that she intentionally surrounds herself with men who pay court to her like an imperious queen but whom she can keep at an emotional distance. Paul's resistance to being controlled by Helen just makes him all the more attractive to her; as her husband tells her, Paul has "a touch of the savage" about him.

This is a woman accustomed to being in control, to using her allure, money, and influence as instruments of power. Suddenly she finds that these things don't work on Paul in their usual way. Worse, this cool, manipulative woman finds herself losing her own self-control as she becomes increasingly enthralled by her younger protégé. Helen may give the impression of being a self-contained, almost overly confident woman, but her inability to keep in check her sexual feelings for Paul brings to the surface her repressed vulnerability. She is in actuality a profoundly unhappy woman hiding her unhappiness behind wealth and booze, an insecure, emotionally unfulfilled woman who has built emotional barriers between herself and the rest of the world and now suddenly finds herself susceptible to the power of her own feelings. When she sees the possibility of happiness with Paul, she seizes the opportunity with such ardor that she ends up smothering it.

John Garfield, who was just entering the peak years of his career, may seem an unlikely match for Crawford, but his moody, strongly masculine presence is exactly what is needed to bring out Crawford's strengths. Crawford herself had such a forceful screen presence that she tended to overpower her male costars. That certainly isn't the case here with Garfield. Actually, the movie at first seems really more his story than hers, the first half-hour of the picture taken up with establishing his backstory before she even appears. Once she enters the scene, though, hers becomes the dominant presence. A movie whose focus at first seems Paul's conflict between his art and love quickly becomes the story of a woman who falls in love with a man who can never feel as intensely about her as she does about him.

Oscar Levant is on hand not only to play the piano, but also to serve as Paul's cynical, wisecracking friend and mentor, Sid Jeffers. The screenplay by Clifford Odets and Zachary Gold is filled with articulate, well-crafted dialogue, and Levant gets the most attention-grabbing lines. Sounding as if they might have been written for Groucho Marx, his quips are at times so clever that they almost threaten to divert attention from the main plot of the film. Then there is the music. As in many films of the forties, the combination of passionate symphonic music of the Romantic era and big emotions is an unbeatable one, and Humoresque makes the most of it, using the music to underscore the emotional tone at key points. (The film also makes good use of popular standards by people like Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, and the Gershwins, a particular standout being Crawford's drunken rendition of "Embraceable You.") The music almost becomes shorthand for Helen's sexual attraction to Paul.

One of the best sequences in the film happens during a big concert. As Paul plays the dramatic first movement of Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole, Helen sits alone in a box in the concert hall. Oblivious of the embarrassed and disapproving glances of his family sitting in the front row, she concentrates on him completely. Crawford plays her scenes in close-up without speaking a word, occasionally leaning forward or briefly closing her eyes or making the slightest movement with her lips. (At one point she seems to be muttering something, and I couldn't help wondering if it was "I love you . . . I love you.") Her performance is in the expressions on her face as she gazes at Paul as though hypnotized, with a mixture of adoration, lust, and surrender. Crawford's control of her facial expressions in these scenes is absolute and without even a suggestion of calculation, on a par with Garbo's in her greatest silent films.

Humoresque may deal with many issues—the class divide between Helen and Paul, Paul's conflict between the demands of his career and the emotional demands of Helen, the compromises necessary to establish a career in the arts. But when the focus of the film is Helen's feelings for Paul and Crawford is onscreen, it's impossible to take your eyes off her or direct your attention to anything but the emotions she projects. Hers is a presence saturated with that indefinable quality known as star power, but here grounded in real acting ability and for once transcending ambition with genuine feeling. I may have reservations about the totality of Joan Crawford's acting career, more that of a movie star than a real actress. But when a movie star is this good, it's easy to see why she was such a powerful screen presence for so long.

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This post is part of the LAMB Acting School 101 event on Joan Crawford. To learn more click here.

18 comments:

  1. I agree, this film, and the 1947 'Possessed,' contain her best performances. She uses the totality of her instrument here, eyes, voice, body (note how she suggests intoxication by just how she walks). She was a hard-working, gutsy, and committed actress. An interesting sidelight is that the same year 'Humoresque' came out (1946) there was also Davis' WB film 'Deception,' which, like Crawford's film, takes place in the classical-music world and deals with possessive love and artistic integrity. Supposedly the rivalry between Bette and Joan flared up here, with Bette demanding Ernie Haller, who photographed Joan in 'Humoresque,' to also film her in 'Deception'; Bette also demanded as many costume changes in her film as Joan had in hers.

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    1. GOM, some interesting details about the "Humoresque"-"Deception" connection. I saw the latter a year or so ago and liked it very much. In fact, I put it in my list of my ten favorite Davis performances--and she's my favorite film actress! As you suggest, there are definite similarities between the two pictures. The biggest difference is that Paul Henreid (I know he and Davis were friends and he later directed her in "Dead Ringer") is a rather limp leading man in comparison to Garfield, who's one of my favorite studio-era film actors.

      I've heard Davis mention how much she admired Haller's work. The actresses of those days seemed to know who could make them look good, and the most savvy apparently observed how the cinematographer did this--particularly with lighting--so closely that they could tell how the shot would come out on screen. I've heard this about Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn, and Garbo as well as Davis and Crawford. On one of those TCM bytes, Virginia Grey, who played Crawford's shop assistant in "The Women," tells how everyone had to come back for their close-ups after the main shooting was done, and each of the major actresses demanded her own favorite cinematographer for these. She tells about mostly standing around for a whole day while Crawford made sure the makeup, wardrobe, camera placement and lighting met with her approval.

      I always thought that Crawford made a big mistake dropping out of "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte," because even though the character she was set to play was a villain and died at the end, it was the glamor role and Bette was the harridan. If she had stayed with it, she might have had a better end to her career. But she was so insecure that I suppose she couldn't face Davis's put-downs of her acting. I actually think she comes off well in "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane" because the nature of the role forces her to be subtle, whereas Davis chews the scenery with gleeful abandon. I also thought Crawford was quite good reunited with her "Humoresque" director Jean Negulesco in 1959's "The Best of Everything," in a supporting role as an aging career woman. Maybe Crawford was best when there was something of herself in her character. I did find watching her in "Harriet Craig" after seeing "Mommie Dearest" quite spooky, though.

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  2. Oh, I can only stomach Crawford in Mildred Pierce--sorry. Liked reading your review of the film, though.

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    1. Kim, as I wrote, Crawford has never been a real favorite of mine. Unfortunately, I first came to know her in her trashier films of the fifties and only saw some of her earlier and better work later on. But I have come to appreciate her more than I used to. I know that for a lot of people she is one of the love her or hate her actresses. For me it's more a matter of love her in one film, hate her in another. Even more so than most, she seemed dependent on good roles and firm, sympathetic direction to put her across. I know that the book and movie "Mommie Dearest" treat her almost as an object of fear and derision, but the more I learn about her, the more sorry I feel for her. She seemed to have a lifelong battle dealing with insecurity and feelings of inferiority, constantly trying to prove--and improve--herself to the point of going overboard.

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  3. R.D. - I have generally put Crawford in the category of MOVIE STAR rather than great actress I believe her screen presence is bigger than life, she fills the screen, like Monroe or Cooper or Wayne, all great movie stars but none of them are Laurence Oliver or Marlon Brando. I saw this film too many years ago to comment but I am a big fan of John Garfield and I do remember thinking that this was a really different role for him. You superb piece does make me want to catch this again!

    BTW I did like Crawford in DANCING LADY, SUDDEN FEAR and Nick Ray's JOHNYY GUITAR. She was good in MILDRED PIERCE but after seeing the recent Todd Hayes HBO film with Kate Winslet, the Curtiz film while still good is outclassed by this new version which I recommend.

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    1. John, I too liked her in "Sudden Fear." It's the best of many similar movies she made in the fifties--woman in distress menaced by psycho younger boy friend--and Jack Palance and Gloria Grahame certainly add interest. Also "Johnny Guitar," although I think of it as more a Nicholas Ray film than a Crawford vehicle. I've read that she wanted Bette Davis to play opposite her but the film's budget would only run to Mercedes McCambridge, who was very good as her nemesis. One can only imagine how effective Davis would have been in such a butch role!

      I've been watching the HBO "Mildred" and will watch the last episode tomorrow evening. It's so different from the 1945 version that I find it almost impossible to compare the two. I assume the new version follows the novel more closely and that the earlier version recast it in the film noir mold that was the dominant style of the time. I think of it as soap noir. I'm a huge fan of Kate Winslet and love her as Mildred. But again she is so different from Crawford that it's impossible for me to make comparisons. I must say what a pleasure it is to see it in the form of a traditional mini-series, where time is taken to develop the characters and situations so that we really get to know them. It reminds me of the Fassbinder versions of the "woman's picture" of the seventies and eighties, no surprise I suppose after seeing Haynes's "Far from Heaven." I especially like the way the Depression is used as a background to Mildred's story, and the great period music adds a lot.

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    2. It does follow Cain's book more closely, and Kate Winslet is magnificent in the film, then she is in just about everything. I also liked Evan Rachel Wood's performance as the daughter. Yes, the music adds quite a bit to the atmosphere of the entire film.

      Hayes is a fine director. You mention, FAR FROM HEAVEN who our friend Sam Juliano is a big, big fan of. Also, his DYLAN film, I'M NOT THERE is very interesting with a great performance from Cate Blanchett.

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  4. R.D., a great review of a film I saw a few years ago and remember liking. I have tended to think of this mainly as a John Garfield film, although he got second billing... I suppose because he is one of my favourite actors and the almost rags to riches role he has here seems typical of his screen personality. But I must agree with you that Joan Crawford does give a great performance in this and her self-destructive character is riveting to watch. I find myself thinking of 'Humoresque' as a sort of remake of 'A Star Is Born' with the sexes reversed - Crawford's character is a socialite/patron rather than a performer herself, but there is the same gradual power reversal combined with suicidal drinking, and then the similar endings. I must agree that Oscar Levant is great in this and has a lot of the best lines.

    There are quite a few Crawford films I like - I agree with you and John that she is great in 'Mildred Pierce' and the weirdly wonderful Western 'Johnny Guitar', and I also like her in Curtiz's 'Flamingo Road', where she plays an ageing working girl persecuted by Sydney Greenstreet. She's also good in early 1930s films like 'Grand Hotel' and Hawks's 'Today We Live', where she plays a British nurse in the First World War complete with a clipped 'Brief Encounter' type accent, though it is a pity she wears Adrian gowns in some of the battlefield scenes!

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    1. Judy, I tend to think of Crawford's later films as primarily Joan Crawford movies rather than movies starring Crawford, and I think that attitude on the part of the people making the movies probably compromised their quality and also affected Crawford's acting. I'd never thought of the parallels between "A Star Is Born" and "Humoresque," although now that you point them out, I can see them. It's odd how in the forties especially the actress often got top billing even if her role was smaller. I don't know if this was a courtesy or an acknowledgement of greater box office appeal. One extreme example that comes to mind is Myrna Loy getting top billing in "The Best Years of Our Lives" even though Fredric March and Dana Andrews had much bigger parts and far more screen time. Another is Ida Lupino getting top billing over Bogart in "High Sierra," which is his movie all the way! I'm going to rewatch "Grand Hotel" in a week or so when TCM shows it. My recollection is that Crawford was better in this than in some of her earlier roles because she was playing a working-class character, and she always seemed most convincing to me in those parts.

      The mid-late forties were a great time for Garfield--"Pride of the Marines," "The Postman Always Rings Twice," "Humoresque," "Body and Soul," even in a secondary role in "Gentlemen's Agreement," and in "Force of Evil"--one great performance after another. If he hadn't demanded too much money, he would have gotten the part of Stanley Kowalski in "A Streetcar Named Desire" even though Elia Kazan really wanted Brando, whom he had directed in the part on Broadway. Also saw him recently in "The Breaking Point," and he was quite good, as was Patricia Neal in one of her most interesting early performances. It's too bad that ill health (he had a congenital heart condition) and the strain of the Hollywood Red Scare ended his career prematurely, at the age of only 39.

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    2. R.D., I've read that Bogart was originally supposed to get top billing for 'High Sierra', but it was changed at the last minute because Lupino had just had a big success which the studio wanted to capitalise on - if I remember rightly, Bogie was a bit disappointed but agreed to it. I think sometimes giving a woman top billing even if her part wasn't the biggest was supposed to signal that it was an 'emotion picture' - this wouldn't have applied to 'High Sierra', though.

      I love 'Grand Hotel', so hope you enjoy rewatching it. Apparently some of Crawford's scenes were cut, but even so I think she gives a great performance in it, along with the Barrymores and Garbo. Must agree with you on Garfield giving a series of great performances in the 1940s and through to the start of the 50s before his untimely death - as well as the films you've mentioned here, I also really like him in 'Under My Skin' and 'We Were Strangers' and another favourite is his very last film, the great noir 'He Ran All the Way'. My husband gave me a biography of John Garfield for Christmas, so I will soon be finding out more about his life and hopefully catching up with the films of his I haven't seen yet.

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    3. PS I should have said that Crawford seems convincing as an upper-class English girl to me in 'Today We Live' - to my British ears she has the cut-glass accent spot on, though I do take your point that she is very good in working-class roles. I think her performance as the angry, aging "shop girl" is the most memorable thing about 'The Women', even though Norma Shearer, who I also like, has a lot more screen time.

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  5. Another great essay, R.D. I find Crawford a fascinating figure in many ways. Agree with pretty much everything you wrote. I prefer Crawford in the 1940s than the 1930s, yet feel she gives the best performance in "Grand Hotel", even amidst Garbo and those Barrymores. She's the most grounded and centered character in the film, and I find myself looking forward to her scenes than those featuring her more highly regarded co-stars. I watched "Grand Hotel" recently and felt it dated badly, but Crawford's performance didn't.

    As movie fans, we all like to play what if, and I've thought about what if Joan Crawford, with her poverty-stricken background,had worked at a more working class studio like Warner Bros., rather than M-G-M, in the 1930s. Not too well I think. She would have been up against Stanwyck, Bette Davis and the divine Ann Dvorak for many of the same working girl roles.

    At least at M-G-M, where the competition was actresses like Shearer, Garbo and Loy, who got assigned more (for want of a better word) cosmopolitan roles, she was able to make her mark and find her success in the hard scrabble working girl category, where the only competition was Jean Harlow.

    Another good role for her at Warners was "The Damned Don't Cry" (1950), which plays like a Joan Crawford career reel. It's every Joan Crawford movie you've ever seen crammed into one movie. One may not like it, but it's not boring, that's for sure.

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    1. Kevin, thanks for leaving a comment. I saw "The Damned Don't Cry" quite awhile ago and recall it as one of Crawford's trashy but fun movies of the 50s--like "The Woman on the Beach," "Autumn Leaves," and the outrageous "Queen Bee." An interesting point you make about Crawford and Harlow at MGM, and also your speculation about how she might have fared at Warner Bros. It's interesting how each studio had its own "brand" of product--Paramount for sophisticated sex, Warners for gangsters and working-class melodramas, MGM for, as Louis B. Mayer tole Elia Kazan, "beautiful movies about beautiful people." I can't help thinking that Crawford's movie career in some ways mirrored her life--working-class woman of humble origins desperately wants to be a lady. I've heard the same thing about her in "Grand Hotel" as you say but don't remember the movie that well (except thinking it was a bit of a character hodgepodge and didn't live up to its reputation) but will see when TCM shows it again next week. Stanwyck, Davis, and Dvorak--quite a trio. Too bad Dvorak didn't become the big star she deserved to be, maybe because she didn't have quite so identifiable a screen personality as Davis and Stanwyck.

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  6. R.D., initially you scared me with that earlier dismissal of Crawford, though in the end I would have to agree that her work in HUMORESQUE, MILDRED PIERCE and POSSESSED is the best in her career. Yes she did sussessfully negotiate some fine camp work later on for Robert Aldrich and William Castle, but nothing to match the maturity of these three mid-period films. I absolutely adore Frantz Waxman's orchestration of Dvorak, Wagner, Rimsey-Korsakov and Lalo in the film, and I agree the playing of the latter's big composition in the concert scene allows Crawford to deliver some of her most arresting silent era-styled acting. For all the film's craftsmanship you are right to point to Crawford as the most vital component of all.

    Splendid essay!

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    1. Sam, I wouldn't entirely dismiss Crawford's early career. It's just that there are more accomplished actresses whom I like better. In "The Shining Hour," for example, she appeared with Margaret Sullavan, who as you know is a particular favorite of mine. Sullavan easily outclassed Crawford, largely because she was able to disguise whatever calculation there was in her performance so that nothing seemed to stand between the actress and the character--definitely not the case with Crawford. In her 30s films, she always struck me as being earnest, but succeeding more on careerism than on talent. Something seemed to happen to her in those mid-period films, though, and she seemed to find an openness that when combined with her thoroughly professional attitude and her great experience--as I said, by the time of "Mildred Pierce" she had made 60+ movies--made her a formidable screen presence. Garfield's should be the focal performance in "Humoresque," but as good as he is, it's Crawford's show all the way.

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  7. I'm not a huge Joan Crawford fan either, but agree that she's in fine form here and plays well with the brooding Garfield. However, what I remember best about HUMORESQUE is the music...not just the classical pieces, but also Waxman's score. I was always disappointed that HUMORESQUE was omitted when Charles Gerhardt and the National Philharmonic did a Waxman album as part of its excellent 1970s film score series on RCA records.

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    1. Rick, I certainly agree that Crawford and Garfield are great together. In theory it sounds like an unlikely pairing, but somehow it works quite well. Maybe they were just the right choices for their roles. But they mix it up in a way I can't see Garfield and Bette Davis, for example, doing, even though apparently he and Davis were friends and started the Hollywood Canteen together. Garfield and Crawford have a curious onscreen chemistry, the kind where you mix two chemicals together and get a bang and a lot of sparks. My favorite music is when Levant is sitting at the piano and just offhandedly plays one of George Gershwin's bluesy little piano preludes, one of my favorite pieces of music--and I love everything Gershwin ever wrote--ever since I first heard it years ago.

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  8. I will have to revisit this film based on your review, R.D. I rarely respond to Joan Crawford for all the reasons you touch upon, but you remind me that she did have something more than star power, though it did not surface often.

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