Steineded How sad is this?

Executscan Expected more

Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Ginger Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

jacobs-greenwood Fifty years before Woody Allen's Zelig (1983), which preceded Robert Zemeckis's Forrest Gump (1994) by more than a decade itself, this sprawling spectacle of a drama features its characters in (or during) various real life, historical events (the Boer War, the Titanic, World War I, etc.) to help tell its 33 year story. It earned director Frank Lloyd his second and last Best Director Academy Award (on his second to last nomination). The film also won the Best Picture & Art Direction Oscars, and lead actress Diana Wynyard earned her only recognition from the Academy with a Best Actress nomination.If you haven't heard of Wynyard before, don't be surprised - primarily known as a London stage actress, she appeared in only half a dozen films in the 1930's (her debut in Rasputin and the Empress (1932), the only film featuring all three Barrymore siblings, directly preceded this one) and only twice that number in her career (most notably, in the British version of Gaslight (1940) opposite Anton Walbrook). In this film, she reminded me of Norma Shearer, whom she resembles, except for the fact that Wynyard under plays her character (at least, relatively).Many film fans won't recognize all of the other names in the cast either, which includes: Clive Brook, Una O'Connor, Herbert Mundin, Beryl Mercer, Irene Browne, Frank Lawton, Ursula Jeans, Margaret Lindsay (her sixth film), John Warburton and Bonita Granville (their third films), among others. It's a British story with an "upstairs downstairs" subplot, from Noel Coward's play, which was produced by a Hollywood company (20th Century Fox). Reginald Berkeley wrote the screenplay, and Sonya Levien provided continuity.It's New Year's Eve, 1899! Upstairs, Jane (Wynyard) & Robert (Brook) Marryot are toasting the coming century before he must go and serve as an officer in the Boer War (Africa). Downstairs, their servants Ellen (O'Connor) & Alfred (Mundin) Bridges can appreciate their bittersweet celebration because he too must soon leave, as an infantryman. Mercer plays the cook; Tempe Pigott plays Alfred's disagreeable mother-in- law.The Marryots have preteen two sons, Masters Edward (Dickie Henderson) and Joey (Douglas Scott), who play with Edith (Sheila MacGill), the daughter of Jane's lifelong (and film-long) best friend, Margaret Harris (Browne). The Bridges have a new baby named Fanny. After both soldiers return uninjured from the war, Robert helps Alfred go into business for himself, lending him the money he needs to buy a pub. Merle Tottenham plays the Marryot's newest servant (later, she marries, Billy Bevan).Ten years later, Fanny (now played by Granville) is a dancing prodigy. Alfred, who has been drinking away his bar's profits, is killed when he struggles away from some friends and staggers into the street in front of a speeding fire engine. Five years later, newlyweds Edward (now Warburton) and Edith (now Lindsay) wonder about what their future holds on the decks of their honeymoon cruise ... on the Titanic! When (WW I) war breaks out, Joe (now Lawton) is as excited to be joining the conflict as he was for his father 15 years earlier. Near the end of the conflict some four years later, he's predictably weary. But his spirits rise when, by chance, he sees dancer Fanny's (now Jeans) name in lights, and the two of them begin an affair unknown to their parents of differing classes. On armistice day, working class success Ellen Bridges, gaudily dressed and looking uncomfortable in high heels, visits Jane to tell her about their "children's" affair. But they're interrupted by a telegram that tells Mrs. Marryot about Joe's death. Fanny sings the "Twentieth Century Blues" about it in her nightclub.After a series of montages (like those included which signified the length of the so-called Great War) including newspaper headlines spanning more than a decade, the film ends as it began with an elderly Robert and Jane, after Margaret has left, toasting the coming of 1933 on New Year's Eve.

ActionFigure CALVACADE "1933"Calvacade needs to be a necessary film for anyone into film history. Starting off with a Vaudville story-line it quickly becomes a lesson in film and screenplay history. Originally a story by Noel Coward, the screenplay is sharp and directive. Scenes are well-thought out and dialogue becomes a crucial focus. The performances age with all the makeup, but it's charming. I'd watch it again. Many times.TCM brings it again. Highly recommended.

blanche-2 The Marryot family is the focus of Noel Coward's antiwar film, "Cavalcade," made in 1933 and starring Diana Wynyard, Clive Brook, Una O'Connor, and Margaret Lindsay.This is an upstairs-downstairs look at the effects of war, and war's effects on society as we see what happens to the Bridges family, the servants, and the Marryots, during the years 1899-1933 in Great Britain. Not in any way snobbish, the Marryots in fact have a very close relationship with their servants. But class is class, and the class system declines to the point where the daughter (Ursula Jeans) of Ellen and Alfred Bridges (O'Connor and Herbert Mundin) becomes involved with her childhood playmate, Joe Marryot (Frank Lawton), a sign that the world the Marryots knew is fading away. All three Marryot men are involved in the Boer War, and two fight in World War I, to the distress of Jane Marryot (Wynyard), who is the representative of the antiwar sentiment.There are other world events that touch the family as well: the death of Queen Victoria, and the sinking of the Titanic.The film is a bit on the slow side and spends more time on the early period than the later. Coward, however, with shots of men blinded in the Great War, young men being shot, etc., makes his point very well.My big quibble with this film is that it goes for 34 years. At the beginning, the Marryots have young children. Even if the Mr. and Mrs. Marryot were 30 years old at the beginning of the film -- why at the end of the movie did they look and act 90? It was hilarious as they're probably in their sixties. It goes to show how the concept of age has really changed.This film is okay but somehow not as involving or as good as David Lean's This Happy Breed which concerns a middle-class family post World War I to World War II - also written by Noel Coward. I think This Happy Breed has a better cast; some of the acting in Cavalcade is a little stiff. Still, there are some striking scenes.

Steffi_P Unlike the big Oscar winners of later decades, the Best Pictures of the 1930s have largely been neglected (the only notable exceptions being It Happened One Night and Gone with the Wind). Of them all, Cavalcade is perhaps the most rarely remembered, and if remembered at all frequently dismissed as a dated, stagy melodrama, a product of an embarrassing era in cinema's history that even film buffs tend to shy away from, without even the added attraction of some pre-code naughtiness. But are bare legs, innuendo and mean-faced gangsters the only things worth salvaging from this era? The accusations of staginess are not surprising, Cavalcade being adapted from a Noel Coward play. But while Coward may have been a bit of a theatre snob with a naively upper-class attitude, he is not as impenetrably British as he may appear at first glance. Although Cavalcade focuses ostensibly on the concerns of a typical well-to-do English family, Coward strings together his story from universally emotional events, many of which would have related to the lives of people all over the world, and most of which still bear a kick today. Granted, Cavalcade's social conservatism and stiff-upper-lipped fustiness can be a little alienating, but this is not a preachy movie and nothing is forced home or laid on too thickly. Besides, Coward's warm humanism pervades even the most clichéd of characters.The director is Frank Lloyd, himself an unfairly forgotten man of old Hollywood. Many will not understand why Lloyd one an Oscar for his work on Cavalcade, because he does not use any overt camera tricks, but the truth is Lloyd is too much of a master to need any tricks. Many of the claims of stiltedness probably stem from the fact that Lloyd uses a lot of long and often static takes, but there is still subtle and clever technique at work here. Take that first scene of Diana Wynyard and Clive Brook making their preparations for New Years Eve. A large chunk is done without a single edit, yet with a few simple panning manoeuvres Lloyd's camera is smoothly changing the focus and keeping things feeling fresh, at one point having Brook's face appear in the mirror, then following her over to the table where the two of them stand with a garland of flowers framing the lower edge of the shot. Another director might have used a dozen cuts in the same scene, but Lloyd does it with just one or two. And the great thing is you don't notice. Often he will shift our attention from one place to another, but do it by having the camera follow a walking character to disguise the movement, such as the father carrying off a crying child on the beach. In spite of this unostentatious approach, the style is purely cinematic.To be fair however, most of the accusations of theatricality fall upon the cast. I would however describe the performances here as being stereotyped rather than grandiosely hammy. Diana Wynyard was the only Oscar nominee for acting, although she does little here but emote rather wetly. In her favour she does put a lot of expression into her small gestures, and as the picture progresses she ages her character convincingly. More realistic turns however are given by Clive Brook and Irene Browne. The real surprise performance of the lot though is Herbert Mundin. In his many supporting roles Mundin typically played a bumbling yet lovable comedy character, but here he is forceful, passionate and rather moving. Had such a thing existed in 1933, he could have been in line for a Best Supporting Actor award.But, aside from all these qualities, why did Cavalcade of all things appeal to the Academy, which was not exactly cosmopolitan in those days? The answer may be that the mood of the picture was very apt for the times. This was of course the height of the depression, and despite appearances Cavalcade is a rather downbeat affair. The gung ho optimism of the Boer war is replaced by the bitter folly of the World War; characters disappear from the narrative, everyday life becomes increasingly impersonal, until the final scenes are almost despairing. And yet this is not some tale of personal tragedy. Crowds are a constant presence in Cavalcade, with Lloyd using them as a backdrop to a teary farewell, the bookends to a scene or even just a noise heard through a window. In Coward's play characters are killed off in significant events making them symbolic of the losses of a nation. This is a story of great suffering, but it is a story of collective suffering, and this makes it comparable to the most poignant and affecting pictures of depression-era Hollywood.