I have a soft spot for Yvonne de Carlo - she was clearly an old pro, has been around forever, and made a lot of films which I enjoy: Easterns, film noir, Westerns, comedies. She was never considered a top rank star but being cast in The Ten Commandments made Hollywood spark up and earned her a plumb role in this, a Civil War melodrama. Although the film stars Clark Gable, who has a juicy role, it's really de Carlo's story.
The central concept of the film is strong: a woman (de Carlo) is raised in the old South on a plantation, but discovers on her father's death that she's part black and is "owned" by a slave trader. That's a great set up - a privileged woman whose position in the world is pulled out from underneath her, who has to fight to survive. Gone with the Wind with a black heroine - that's awesome.
But given this the filmmakers - I haven't read the original novel, but they could have changed it - make a whole lot of mistakes.They invoke Wind a lot - Clark Gable's casting as a buccaneering southerner, a Southern heroine, balls, raping Yankee soldiers, kindly slave owners, a dim black slave like Butterfly McQueen - but never get close to that film's quality.
De Carlo isn't given much of a character to play - she's pretty and that's it. Scarlett O'Hara had drive - she was selfish but active, she wanted Ashley, ignored Rhett. What does De Carlo want? Gable? But Gable pushes her away and she doesn't seem to care. She has easy going relationships with Rex Reason and later Efrem Zimbalist Jnr; Patric Knowles tries to molest her, Gable wants her, Reason tries to rape her once he finds out she's black, Sidney Poitier seems to want her (de Carlo often played women who were pawed). But she's passive. They needed to give her something to do - fight for the blacks, escape, make money, chase after a guy, something. But the film can't make up its mind.
I think they should have given her the goal to be free - and structured the film around that. Or at least just have her love Gable all the way through and constantly try to get him instead of just accepting him pushing her away. But they don't
The film feels compromised by pussy footing around - "Oh we don't want to offend people in the south so lets have kindly slave owners and some rapey Yankees", "lets have Sidney Poitier hate whites justifiably but then slap de Carlo".
Gable's character is flat. A slave owner who buys women but does nothing with them - okay, yes, well, de Carlo sleeps with him But Only Because She Wants To. Then he turns her away because he - gasp - used to be a slave trader (why is this meant to shock when Gable meets De Carlo by Buying Her????). Gable looks bored and ill. He's got none of Rhett Butler's dash and swagger. What does he want? I mean if he's guilty, that's fine... have him want to kill himself, to self destruct, or to set black people free. But he just sort of mopes around.
The film's attitude to race is consistently dodgy. The film is full of kindly slave owners, like de Carlo's father, who never whips his slaves and is nice to them (when he dies all the blacks turn out to sing), and Gable who is nice to his slaves (they sing for him too). Everyone pats Gable on the back for raising Poitier so well... and Poitier is so touched that Gable raised him after rescuing him on a slave mission (!) that Poitier helps him escape.
Ugh. This film is awful. It starts off okay and gets worse. It's unfocused, and confusing, and offensive, and dramatically messy.
You could make the material work, easy. Have de Carlo find out she's black, get sold into slavery, be rescued by Gable to who is working off his guilt by setting slaves free, he frees her but she loves him so goes back.
Sidney Poitier comes off best because his character is the most consistent - he's a black who hates whites (until the end when he feels sorry for Gable).
De Carlo isn't very good, I'm sorry to say. Part of it is her character, who is passive, but a more charismatic star would have worked better - like Ava Gardner, say.
No comments:
Post a Comment