How does one not fall in love with Margaret Sullavan? The husky calm of her unique voice could invoke so many emotional inflections that combined with her will-o'-the-wisp beauty it's a shame she is not well remembered beyond her one indisputable classic, Ernst Lubitsch's "The Shop Around the Corner" (1940) with James Stewart. Take, for example, this 1938 romantic drama based on Erich Maria Remarque's ("All Quiet on the Western Front") 1936 novel with a screenplay co-written by none other than F. Scott Fitzgerald, his only screen credit. Not surprisingly, it's about the Lost Generation who came of age during World War I, and she elevates the movie into something quite magical as Patricia Hollmann, a beautiful aristocrat fallen on hard times and dying of tuberculosis. She becomes the center of gravity for three close war buddies eking out a living fixing cars and driving a cab in a pre-Hitler Germany torn asunder by unemployment and economic strife.
The main focus of the story is on the unbridled love that develops between Patricia and Erich, the most openly naïve of the three and probably the most in need of purpose in his life. Just graduating from his glamour-boy phase swooning over Garbo in "Camille", Robert Taylor is no dramatic match for Sullavan but gives Erich enough sincerity to avoid embarrassment. Better are Robert Young as the headstrong Gottfried and especially Franchot Tone as wise Otto whose unconditional friendship is nearly as touching as the central romance. In the second of four collaborations with Sullavan, director Frank Borzage imbues the film with his trademark romanticism particularly lush in this handsome MGM production captured pretty well in the 2009 DVD. No surprise, the ending death scene may seem hackneyed by today's standards, but it compares favorably to Bette Davis's similarly heroic demise in "Dark Victory". This is well worth seeking out if only to rediscover Sullavan at her most radiant. She earned the New York Film Critics Award and an Oscar nomination and sadly made only 16 films in her career. Read her daughter Brooke Hayward's harrowing memoir, "Haywire", to find out why.
The main focus of the story is on the unbridled love that develops between Patricia and Erich, the most openly naïve of the three and probably the most in need of purpose in his life. Just graduating from his glamour-boy phase swooning over Garbo in "Camille", Robert Taylor is no dramatic match for Sullavan but gives Erich enough sincerity to avoid embarrassment. Better are Robert Young as the headstrong Gottfried and especially Franchot Tone as wise Otto whose unconditional friendship is nearly as touching as the central romance. In the second of four collaborations with Sullavan, director Frank Borzage imbues the film with his trademark romanticism particularly lush in this handsome MGM production captured pretty well in the 2009 DVD. No surprise, the ending death scene may seem hackneyed by today's standards, but it compares favorably to Bette Davis's similarly heroic demise in "Dark Victory". This is well worth seeking out if only to rediscover Sullavan at her most radiant. She earned the New York Film Critics Award and an Oscar nomination and sadly made only 16 films in her career. Read her daughter Brooke Hayward's harrowing memoir, "Haywire", to find out why.