OVP: Conquest (1937)

Film: Conquest (1937)
Stars: Greta Garbo, Charles Boyer, Reginald Owen, Henry Stephenson, May Whitty, Maria Ouspenskaya
Director: Clarence Brown
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Actor-Charles Boyer, Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

One of the most popular posts in the run of the Oscar Viewing Project thus far has been that of the Garbo/Brown collaboration in Romance, so when I saw that Conquest was buried in my TiVo, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to unearth another Garbo/Brown collaboration and make it my Saturday Morning Movie, and the next OVP film.

The movie, for those unfamiliar, is about Napoleon Bonaparte (played by Boyer) and his mistress, Countess Walewska (played by Garbo).  The film follows the first meeting between Bonaparte and Walewska, where she shows that she adores him as if like a God because she believes he will liberate her beloved Poland.  As the movie goes on, she grows disdain for him as he's clearly interested in her for "only one thing" and proves that he is just a man.  Then, quite suddenly (too suddenly, if you ask me), she decides she is back in love with him (but first she is abandoned by her husband for betraying him by trying to free Poland with her feminine whiles).  We see her by his side as he first becomes the great Emperor of Europe, and then when he is banished to Elba and defeated at Waterloo.  Throughout, she remains devoted even as he strays and marries another woman.  All-in-all, an exhaustingly epic story, and very ambitious for its time period (the film cost an exorbitant amount of money, and was actually a sizable flop at the Box Office when it first came out).

Because this is Clarence Brown, and because this film is made in 1937, Garbo's character is as saintly as can be, and her intentions always look noble, even if on the surface they are not.  My biggest problem in the film had to be the quick-turnaround for Walewska about her love for Napoleon.  While it's certainly believable that she fell in love with his power or developed some Stockholm Syndrome, since this is 1937, we don't get to see that and considering Brown's rather sexist treatment of women, I'm not willing to give him the benefit of the doubt; the Countess's unwavering devotion to Napoleon, and so suddenly, makes it hard to swallow the role and the film's love story.  This is a woman he basically forced into being his mistress, and yet we get little indication that Garbo resents him for it, even though she almost certainly would have.

I rather enjoyed the supporting parts played by Whitty and Ouspenskaya, both strong character actresses of the 1930's and both with far more realistic reactions to this egotistical emperor.  Whitty, his mother, acknowledges his weaknesses even when Garbo doesn't, and Ouspenskaya, a Countess Dowager whose mental capacities are gone (she still thinks that her friend Louis XVI is ruling France when Napoleon enters the picture), are strong character bits that the film probably needed more of-by far the best acted scene in the film, in my opinion, is the wry scene with Ouspenskaya and Boyer while they are playing cards.  Ouspenskaya thinks Napoleon is mad because he is an emperor, even though she is obviously the mistaken one.  This sense of fun is missing severely from the rest of the film, and with an actor with such an eye twinkle as Charles Boyer, that seems like a wasted opportunity.

Boyer received one of the film's two Academy Award nominations, his first of four nominations for Best Actor (he would never win, though he would win an Honorary Oscar certificate in 1942).  There's definitely a lot one can say about Boyer-he has presence, for certain, and he has the onscreen chutzpah to pull off a character like Napoleon, but his tendency toward the overcooked, and his ability to constantly be switching from love to anger and nothing in-between is a pale comparison to, say, the haunted work that Fredric March does as a fading movie star/alcoholic in A Star is Born from the same year.  The film's other nomination, however, is far more up my alley-the millions of dollars that they spend on the budget to create the elaborate castles and houses that litter the continent of Europe were well spent, as every scene creates that decadent luxury that one associates with this period in European culture.  Bonus points go to the film's opening scene, when we see a gorgeous and stately manor torn asunder by horses braying around the foyer (it sounds weird, but totally works on-screen).

All-in-all, I gotta say I'm still not impressed with Brown, and am starting to lose a little bit of hope that I ever will be (though with five more of his Best Director nominations to go, I'll have ample opportunities to change my mind).  The film's complete lack of character development, and the overwrought performance by Boyer move this to 2-stars, though the handsome production design, strong (female) supporting work, and the luminescence of Garbo keep it from falling into the 1-star column.

And, as always, we end with some food for thought-what'd you think of Conquest?  Is there a Clarence Brown film that would win me over?  And which Garbo film shall we take a journey to next?  Don't be shy-comment away!