I realize that this is a well-known movie and was hoping to get through it, though I knew it was the story of a loving mother who sacrifices everything for her child. I was mistaken -- for the first time in my entire life.
Stanwyck has grown up in a home that looks like a depression-era shack, with a blanked-out mother and a stern puritanical father. She's happy to marry the pudding-faced but rich John Boles just to get away from the smell of cabbage boiling on the stove.
However, as that great old Greek philosopher, Testicles, once told us, you can take the girl out of the shack but not the shack out of the girl. Stanwyck now wants to hit all the night spots with jazz and dancing, where the "swells" hang out, while the husband, Boles, always wants to cut out early. "I'm sorry, dear, we must leave." In the fullness of time Stanwyck gives birth to a baby girl whom she adores. That would be little Laurel, Anne Shirley, who grows up into a cute and cunning post-adolescent before you know it. By this time, Boles has removed his animatronic self to New York to run his business and only visits Stanwyck in her declassé cothes and less elaborate digs on rare occasions.
Boles finds a new, more proper, woman in the city, a woman who doesn't use double negatives like Stanwyck. Pretty little Laurel is attracted to their urban and urbane life style and -- well, it goes on from there.
I managed to grasp the point early on and watching the rest of the narrative play out was dull, like filling in the dots on the back of a café's paper menu to wind up with a drawing of a clown or an elephant. Stanwyck struggles with her emotions. Some viewers will find watching the movie a struggle too.
It's not Barbara Stanwyck's fault. In fact she's pretty good, although not good enough to keep afloat a film in which Boles is such a heavy weight. His presence alone could sink a battleship. Alan Hale has a good turn as an affable friend who lurches into drink as his fortunes decline. And the movie is fast paced, as a lot of 1930s melodramas were.
Production values are pretty good and although I'm made fun of it I can imagine that many people would find the movie involving.
Stanwyck has grown up in a home that looks like a depression-era shack, with a blanked-out mother and a stern puritanical father. She's happy to marry the pudding-faced but rich John Boles just to get away from the smell of cabbage boiling on the stove.
However, as that great old Greek philosopher, Testicles, once told us, you can take the girl out of the shack but not the shack out of the girl. Stanwyck now wants to hit all the night spots with jazz and dancing, where the "swells" hang out, while the husband, Boles, always wants to cut out early. "I'm sorry, dear, we must leave." In the fullness of time Stanwyck gives birth to a baby girl whom she adores. That would be little Laurel, Anne Shirley, who grows up into a cute and cunning post-adolescent before you know it. By this time, Boles has removed his animatronic self to New York to run his business and only visits Stanwyck in her declassé cothes and less elaborate digs on rare occasions.
Boles finds a new, more proper, woman in the city, a woman who doesn't use double negatives like Stanwyck. Pretty little Laurel is attracted to their urban and urbane life style and -- well, it goes on from there.
I managed to grasp the point early on and watching the rest of the narrative play out was dull, like filling in the dots on the back of a café's paper menu to wind up with a drawing of a clown or an elephant. Stanwyck struggles with her emotions. Some viewers will find watching the movie a struggle too.
It's not Barbara Stanwyck's fault. In fact she's pretty good, although not good enough to keep afloat a film in which Boles is such a heavy weight. His presence alone could sink a battleship. Alan Hale has a good turn as an affable friend who lurches into drink as his fortunes decline. And the movie is fast paced, as a lot of 1930s melodramas were.
Production values are pretty good and although I'm made fun of it I can imagine that many people would find the movie involving.