OVP: The Dark Angel (1935)

Film: The Dark Angel (1935)
Stars: Fredric March, Merle Oberon, Herbert Marshall
Director: Sidney Franklin
Oscar History: 3 nominations, 1 win (Actress-Merle Oberon, Art Direction*, Sound-Recording)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

After a few days off from movie-viewing, I have returned to what will hopefully be a long weekend of Oscar-watching (my TiVo is fuller than Chris Christie at the moment, and I make that joke not because he's overweight, but because of the inordinately high amount of hot air he seems to be constantly spouting).  So I decided to get back into the groove with one of those early 1930's films that the Academy seemed to so love at the beginning of its inception-a long, tender, occasionally overwrought melodrama called The Dark Angel.

Written by Lillian Hellman, which should be indicative of exactly what direction we're about to take, the film is the story of a woman (Oberon) drawn to two men, one strong and silent (Marshall), the other literary and debonair (March).  In later years, when movies were made more formulaic, the strong and silent Marshall would have gotten the girl, but it doesn't take much of a spoiler to tell you that 2-time Oscar winner and movie star par excellence Fredric March is going to end up with Oberon, which is apparent from the beginning scenes, with Oberon as a little girl tormenting him into marrying her.

The film drags quite a bit at the beginning, before World War I comes, and without the charm of March to carry it through its slower, "do you love me?" sorts of scenes, it would likely fall on its face.  However, March shows both his serious and playful sides throughout the film, and this gets you to the best parts of the film, the tough war scenes.  It's always puzzled me that filmmakers in the latter half of the century have found most of their wartime inspiration in World War II, when World War I with its iconic trenches and its start-of-war naivete is more suited to the silver screen.  Luckily, Richard Day, who won a stunning seven Oscars for Art Direction, knows a thing or two about design and makes a deeply intimate trench that adds a claustrophobic element to the film's middle.  It is in this part, that Marshall, angry because he believed that March had had an affair after announcing his engagement to Oberon's Kitty Vane (what a moniker!) sends March off to a seemingly impossible mission, and March's character is assumed dead, though is really just blind and taken to enemy camps.

I don't need to tell you the rest, because you already know it (story short: March's character is ashamed of his disability, doesn't return home, Oberon mourns but then becomes engaged to Marshall, the day before the wedding they discover that March is really still alive, and Oberon comes running back into his arms).  I toyed with a 2-star rating, but couldn't quite bring myself there-the art direction is terrific, though not quite up to the Art Deco that Top Hat also brought that year, and the Sound work, especially in the stilled night silences, is also top rate, and I personally loved some of the cinematography.  March didn't receive an Oscar nomination, and considering who did that year (basically all of the Bounty sailors), it's easy to see why, but he's a weirdly underrated actor, and it seems odd that his star has gotten so horribly lost considering his career longevity and his place at the head of one of the great American classics, The Best Years of Our Lives.  Oberon did, however, get nominated, her first and only nomination, and while she's terribly beautiful, she doesn't add the layers that say, Vivien Leigh would do in Sidney Franklin's later melodrama (and a personal favorite), Waterloo Bridge.  Oberon would be considerably better, though not nominated, four years later for her most iconic of roles, Catherine Earnshaw, in Wuthering Heights.

What about you-do you find the works of Lillian Hellman captivating or plodding (or perhaps a little bit of both)?  Do you think that Oberon deserved the Oscar over Bette Davis this year (or are you in the camp of say Katherine Hepburn in Alice Adams?) And what of Fredric March-why is it that he never became the iconic Hollywood star that his peers, the likes of Gable and Bogart did?