Devotion, 1946Starring Olivia de Havilland, Ida Lupino, and Paul Henreid
This is a film about the Brontë sisters with Olivia as Charlotte and Lupino as Emily. It is rather melodramatic and it offers up sisterly rivalry over a man as a central conflict for the sisters, which goes against the two books I've read about them. Paul Henreid (Casablanca!) plays that man Arthur Nicholls who marries Charlotte. I quite like him here.
Then there is poor Anne, who is marginalized and cut out of the story a lot. I feel very sympathetic to her, always been overshadowed by her older sisters especially when I don't think much of Emily's "talents."
Overall I would not recommend this film unless you were a hard-core Brontë fan (I am not) or an Olivia de Havilland film completist (I am).
I am a hard-core Bronte fan, but I wouldn't watch it because the Bronte sisters never fought over a man and the idea is blasphemous to a hard-core fan like me, haha. But maybe I will give this a try one day. I'm so contradictory.;) Thanks for pointing this one out!
ReplyDelete+JMJ+
ReplyDeleteOh, dear! I don't like it when biographical movies put in things that not only weren't true but wouldn't have been plausible. =S
I remember a book making the case that Charlotte didn't like Anne's choice of subjects so much that Charlotte might have ended up poisoning her own sister so she forbid future printings of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall! Very sensationalist, yes, and I don't know how plausible that was, but at least there was more to it than Hollywood's trying to be more dramatic.
And it's not just this movie that pushes Anne into the sidelines so much. There is a biography of hers which is entitled The Other One, precisely because she is the most overlooked Bronte sister.