Failing to acknowledge the fact that the script is based on Stefan Zweig's "Letter from an unknown woman" notwithstanding, Stahl's "Only yesterday" is a jewel of a film.
Beautifully written, directed and acted - it is refreshing to see how real films of the golden age of pre-Hayes Code could be. Absolutely no moral judgment is made of the unwed pregnancy of the character after her one night stand with the man she is fascinated with. Leaving Virginia and her crying mother behind for New York and her suffragette aunt (delightfully played by the talented and often typecast Billie Burke) who basically puts it down as a "biological occurrence", something to be lived through - something that happens. The film is full of little touches of real emotions and actions despite the heavy cinematic conventions of the era.
A comparison with Max Ophuls' masterpiece "Letter from an unknown woman" (1948) is too thrilling to resist. In Stahl's more "realistic" version the character played by Margaret Sullavan goes from wide eyed ingénue to become the sophisticated witty Mary Lane - a woman who's been through it and kids herself no longer. Beffiting Ophuls' dark and moody amour foux fable - Liza Berndl (Joan Fontaine) though also going from naive to sophisticate (with some hints of prostitution) never gets over the romantic -almost neurotic- obsession with Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan - the doomed don Giovanni of "Letter" as opposed to "Yesterday"'s regular Wall Street dilettante played by John Bole). Their reaction to a second chance with the object of their desire is as different as their characters...
If you should come across this film in a midnight television screening or at your local cinemateque DO NOT MISS IT. Unfortunately you will not be able to find it in VHS or DVD. Time has been kinder to Ophuls' amazing film - if not quite fair either. Maybe one of these days the guys at the Criterion Collection will see to it...
Beautifully written, directed and acted - it is refreshing to see how real films of the golden age of pre-Hayes Code could be. Absolutely no moral judgment is made of the unwed pregnancy of the character after her one night stand with the man she is fascinated with. Leaving Virginia and her crying mother behind for New York and her suffragette aunt (delightfully played by the talented and often typecast Billie Burke) who basically puts it down as a "biological occurrence", something to be lived through - something that happens. The film is full of little touches of real emotions and actions despite the heavy cinematic conventions of the era.
A comparison with Max Ophuls' masterpiece "Letter from an unknown woman" (1948) is too thrilling to resist. In Stahl's more "realistic" version the character played by Margaret Sullavan goes from wide eyed ingénue to become the sophisticated witty Mary Lane - a woman who's been through it and kids herself no longer. Beffiting Ophuls' dark and moody amour foux fable - Liza Berndl (Joan Fontaine) though also going from naive to sophisticate (with some hints of prostitution) never gets over the romantic -almost neurotic- obsession with Stefan Brand (Louis Jourdan - the doomed don Giovanni of "Letter" as opposed to "Yesterday"'s regular Wall Street dilettante played by John Bole). Their reaction to a second chance with the object of their desire is as different as their characters...
If you should come across this film in a midnight television screening or at your local cinemateque DO NOT MISS IT. Unfortunately you will not be able to find it in VHS or DVD. Time has been kinder to Ophuls' amazing film - if not quite fair either. Maybe one of these days the guys at the Criterion Collection will see to it...
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