The film that launched the Gainsborogh costume cycle and deservedly so, because it still holds up well down the track. Of course at the time there were special reasons for its success - namely, the war, which made a tale of sexual rebellion, passion, oppressive societies and traumatic life all the more resonant.
They were spot on with the casting, though - Margaret Lockwood had been around for a while as a "nice" heroine, but playing a bad girl she really came alive (the black hair, the peaked nose and the eyebrows, I think); James Mason makes a glowering intense villain (Mason was one of those really unique individual actors who, like Bogart and Wallace Berry, executives seem to think are too unique and individual to be stars - but then become stars because they are so unique and individual), and Stewart Granger, all height and booming voice, also makes an impressive hero debut (he holds his own with the others). Phyllis Calvert, an Elisabeth Shue look-alike, is perhaps less memorable (I would always get her confused with Pat Roc) but she's still very good.
Has any film ever launched four stars with one stroke and prompted a whole genre?
Although it feel a bit short on plot, the whole construction of the film is very clever: the really good girl and the bad girl (Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny characters) to give the female audience an option to decide who they want to relate to: beautiful, cheery Calvert who everyone likes and whom Granger loves, but who nonetheless has a horrible life and dies miserable, and Lockwood, who is born poor and resents and fights her way to almost the top only to be denied the love of a man who loves her because of society.
It's good how Lockwood isn't totally evil, she is totally empathetic (you understand why Clavery wants to be her friend, too - she simply has more life than other girls at the time) and I think a lot of the audience would have identified with her. You've got James Mason for the Bad Boy, but also Granger as a bit of a bad boy, too (kicked off his slave plantation in the West Indies by the locals who were encouraged to riot by those pesky French).
On the topic of race relations, a key character is a little boy Toby - with black boot polish painted on his face - who is Calvert's servant. No wonder this film is beloved by academics - you can look at it in terms of relations between the sexes, the war, race, British cinema, stardom, etc. Its done with flourish and sincerity, with a great climax.
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