On Facebook recently, a friend mentioned the wonderful Fredric March, in passing, and while he is probably most famous for The Best Years of Our Lives, I think some of the best acting he has ever done is in the pre-Code film Merrily We Go to Hell, directed by Dorothy Arzner, one of the few female directors working at that time. Merrily We Go To Hell also stars Sylvia Sidney, a favorite of mine.
Merrily We Go To Hell has superb acting (not just from the two leads, who could not be better) but from the rest of the supporting cast. It’s one of those ensemble pieces where everyone, everyone, shows up 100%. Some of these people have very small parts (including a pre-fame Cary Grant), or only one or two scenes, but everyone makes such an indelible impression that you never feel lost, you never feel like you are in some “general” atmosphere. These people LIVE, and occasionally they stroll onscreen, say a couple of lines, and stroll off, and you never forget them, even if you haven’t seen them for the last hour. George Irving, who plays Mr. Prentice (Sylvia Sidney’s father) is in the film in the beginning, and then a good hour passes before we see him again. But his character is so solidly and evocatively created (God bless those character actors, they knew what they were doing) that my response when I saw him again was, ‘Oh! Hi, Mr. Prentice – how are you? What have you been up to?”
Joan Prentice (Sylvia Sidney) elopes with journalist Jerry Corbett (Fredric March). They meet at a party and fall in love, one of those glittering urban parties so typical of 1930s films. Joan is an heiress, and is supposed to marry a rich man, but she marries for love. This is her downfall, and it’s one of the most radical things about this script, and about the pre-Code movies in general. Jerry Corbett is not a villain, but he is a childlike man, not ready for the responsibilities of marriage, and, on occasion, he hits the sauce a little bit too hard. But love is blinding, and Joan marries him anyway. During their marriage, it becomes clear that Jerry is unwilling to give up the freedom he had as a single man, and Joan suffers through his obvious infidelities and constant partying. She tries to be a good wife. But too often, she is left out in the cold. Jerry doesn’t want to bring her along on his shenanigans – of course not, she’s his WIFE, that would be no fun … and Joan, who loves him, starts to disintegrate. She starts to drink, too (something she had never been interested in), to see if she can keep up with him, maybe bond with him in an alcoholic way (love makes people desperate), but finally, it becomes too unbearable, and she leaves him. She flees home to her parents, who love her, but who were disappointed in her match in the first place. Unfortunately, Joan discovers she is pregnant. Jerry, who, like I said, is not a villain, is horrified that his wife walked out on him. He tries to sober up in time for the arrival of the baby. Will it be too late? Is there any hope that this pair could make a go of it?
Melodramatic stuff, right? But it’s played realistically, with a gritty understanding of the darkness we all have within us. And Sidney and March are so good that you ache for both of them. This is the way things sometimes go in life. Merrily We Go To Hell doesn’t blink.
The film is an example of how these pre-Code films so often had the courage of their convictions. They go to the limit. They follow the events as they would happen, not as they should happen. Even the ending (which I would not dream of revealing) is not a compromise. It may seem to be on the face of it, but to quote Roger Ebert in his review of Stranger Than Fiction, it is the characters’ compromise, not the compromise of the script. Because we, as human beings, don’t always behave in a noble fashion, and we don’t always do the right thing. “Happy” is subjective. You may look at a married couple and think, “God, I could never be happy in a marriage like that!” But to then take the leap and say, “So they must NOT be happy because I personally cannot understand the dynamic” is narrow-minded. What works for you may not work for everyone. Merrily We Go To Hell doesn’t take a simple or easy way out. It also doesn’t take an unnecessarily hard way out, the script doesn’t feel too bossy or mechanical. This is not a melodrama, although it could have been. It is a drama, end-stop.
This is a portrait of a real marriage, between two real and flawed people. The deck isn’t stacked on one or the other side. When does pride become something you hide behind? When does pride force you to make self-destructive choices because you are afraid of looking weak or giving in? Love also means being able to stand up to society, who may disapprove, and say, with your actions, “Look. I love this man/woman, and I don’t care what you have to say about it.”
Another thing that is so wonderful about the acting of the two leads is the transformation they both go through over the course of the film. As we know, movies are not usually filmed in sequence. In a film, you might shoot the last scene on the first day of filming. So the actor needs to be in charge of the gradations of whatever transformation the character has to go through. “Okay, so this is the last scene – I am now a heroin addict, I am devastated … GO.” You may START the film as a fresh-faced young schoolgirl and end it as a crack whore, but it’s not a play where you can go through those transformations in something akin to real-time. Sidney and March have quite a journey to go on here, and it’s amazing to watch. Their performances are perfectly modulated. You watch them disintegrate, and because you have invested so much in both of them, it is shattering to witness.
Fredric March is an exquisite actor, and here, in 1932, he predicts the future of film acting with this performance. He is a precursor to the Method actors of the 50s. He appears to be drawing on something very real. It’s an incredibly personal performance.
Sylvia Sidney is an actress I have always loved. My first encounter with her, believe it or not, was in an episode of Thirtysomething in the early 90s. She played Melissa’s bossy grandmother who wanted to hand off her dressmaking business to Melissa before she passed. It was a fantastic performance by a little wrinkled old lady, still glamorous with her red lipstick and perfectly styled white hair, who reminded me a lot of my O’Malley grandmother: a real DAME, nobody’s fool, lives her own life, a matriarch, and in everybody’s business. I watched the episode with Mitchell, when they were re-running the series every night on Lifetime, and naturally the second she came onscreen, Mitchell said, “Oh, that’s Sylvia Sidney – she was huge in the 1930s.” Lesson learned. I have now seen most of her work in the 30s, where she played spunky working-class girls, struggling in the harsh realities of her day and age. She is luminous, brilliant.
In Merrily We Go to Hell, she vibrates with real feeling. You can see her breath catch in her throat, and spontaneous tears come to her eyes. There is always a laugh at the back of her voice. She is one of the most sympathetic of movie leading ladies. Beautiful, yes, but not in an alienating way. She looks like a real person.
There’s one painful scene where she gets drunk, and it’s awful to watch, because you know she’s making choices out of heartbreak and desperation, and you want to intervene. She does not play a doormat, let me make that clear, because it is a very important distinction. She is not a tear-soaked downtrodden little lady, just a heartbroken wife trying to survive the disappointments being handed to her. And so she gets drunk, and there’s a moment where she staggers through her apartment, laughing and weeping at the same time, an extraordinary bit of physical and emotional acting. It made me feel like I was watching Gena Rowlands. Sidney is a brave actress.
Not only was I moved by her work, I was also excited. That is my memory of what it was like to watch Merrily We Go To Hell for the first time. I actually felt excited. I can enjoy movies, get into them, even love some of them … but the movies that excite me stick out. There are scenes between March and Sidney where I got that telltale goosebumpy feeling of being in the presence of something real. To use the terminology that some people find obnoxious (but I don’t care), both actors “go there”, and when actors “go there”, it is an act of great generosity towards the audience. The story requires the actors “going there” in order to make its impact. You cannot hold back, you cannot protect yourself.
So. Actors. Do YOU have the courage of your convictions?
Can you enter a story where you might come off not looking so good or admirable? Can you, as one of my acting teachers said once, just “do what the character does”? He would say that to students when they were struggling with making this or that moment happen. He’d work with them, but eventually, he would say, “Try this. Just do what the character does. See what happens.”
Easier said than done, and many an actor, while seemingly “doing what the character does” is also kind of winking at the audience, trying to subtly give across the message, “I’m not really like this … don’t worry.” Even very good actors do this from time to time.
Fredrich March and Sylvia Sidney never do this. It’s tough stuff. Neither of them come off looking so great. They are so flawed, and acting under such desperation, that they miss the signals repeatedly. They wallow in misunderstanding. They forget how to talk to one another. It’s excruciating to watch (in the best way).
Fredric March has a moment at the end of the film where he says the line, “You’re lying” twice in a row.
A lesser actor would have pushed, would have shouted the words, “You’re lying”, or he would have modulated himself in a technical way, saying the first “You’re lying” in a soft voice, and then shouting the second one. We’ve all seen that kind of acting. In my opinion, it means the actor has one eye out on US, in the audience. His focus is split. He is in the scene, but he is also thinking, “Hmmm, what is the most effective way for them to ‘get’ this.” Now, that is not a bad concern, in and of itself. It is important that audiences “get” things, but there are times (and the “You’re lying” repetition is one of them) where you need to NOT worry about HOW to do it – you just need to DO it. This is what the acting teachers of yore meant when they talked about the reality of the given circumstances. Or, as David Mamet put in his book, “Deny nothing. Add nothing.”
In a big dramatic scene, don’t deny anything that happens (i.e., saying to yourself, “This emotions isn’t appropriate for this scene”) and don’t add anything (i.e., saying to yourself, “Let me see if I can pump up the emotion in this moment.”) Of course, you need talent to follow Mamet’s simple advice, and as I keep saying even very talented people miss the mark sometimes, due to poor material, or poor direction. They “add” too much or “deny” too much. A perfect example of an actor who knew how to do this instinctively was Marlon Brando, and Kazan’s story of the filming of the famous taxi-cab scene in On the Waterfront gives us a perfect glimpse of what it means to “deny nothing”. Terry’s brother pulls a gun on him. A shocking moment, right? Terry’s response, in the script, was to be shocked and scared. But Brando did it the way he did it, with a gentle sorrowful shake of the head, calmly pushing the gun away, looking at his brother – his brother – with love and sadness. Nobody envisioned the scene being played that way, and Kazan himself took no credit for how it eventually came out: “That was all Brando.” In this scenario, “denying nothing” means that Brando didn’t intellectualize the moment, and didn’t say, “My character Terry wouldn’t do that in this moment …” (So many actors hide behind such excuses. Rehearsal halls across the land are filled with actors saying, “My character wouldn’t do this or that.” Well excuse me for asking, but how do you know until you try it?) Brando allowed Stanley Kowalski to be gentle at times, even delicate. Brando didn’t decide beforehand, “My character wouldn’t do this or that.” He denied his characters nothing.
The scene in Merrily We Go To Hell is tense and fraught with emotion, and with Fredric March’s repeat of “You’re lying” – I realized that what I was watching was not just a highly effective scene in a movie, but an actor truly REACTING to something in a real and spontaneous manner. He quite literally could not take in what the other person was saying. He refused to accept it. It could not be true. No. “You’re lying.” The other person went on talking, and then Fredric March said again, “You’re lying.” He didn’t raise his voice. If you heard both of those versions of “You’re lying” on just an audio tape you might be hard-pressed to tell them apart. But you need both. One “You’re lying” wouldn’t have been enough. The second one, with the realization hitting him like an anchor at the bottom of the ocean, is essential.
Stella Adler, famous acting teacher, said (and this is probably her most well-known statement), “The talent is in the choice.”
Lots of people don’t like that statement of hers, and argue with it. People seem to resist its implications and retort that talent can reside in all kinds of things … not just the CHOICE the actor makes. But I’m with Adler on this one. Fredric March, as he was memorizing his lines, or reading the script, knew that he had to say “You’re lying” twice. I don’t know his work process or how he worked, but whatever mysterious thing he did to prepare himself for that scene led him to let it all go, and not really “play” it at all. He is IN the moment, and THAT is a “choice”. Picture another actor who might have realized, “Hm. This is my big moment in the film. Let me plan out how I will say it so that everyone will see that this is my big moment.” Fredric March’s “choice” (conscious or no) led him to say those lines the way he did.
I am writing a lot about his acting right now, in a very technical way, but my experience of watching that scene had nothing to do with how awesome Fredric March is an actor. In the moment of watching that scene, all I thought was, “Oh my God. Jerry. I am so so sorry. I am so so sorry for what has just happened to you”
That is entirely due to how Fredric March played those two lines of “You’re lying.”
Top-notch acting. Top notch.
My gosh, Sheila, this is one of my favorite movies and I LOVED your review. Yes, Fredric and Sylvia are superb in this film, really natural, really emotive. I hadn’t noticed the “you’re lying” bit, I’ll recheck it soon. I even made a tribute for MWGTH, hope you can watch it, it was blocked in some countries because I used a song by George Michael that IMO really fitted the movie:
http://youtu.be/AG7WbFaVHCM
Thanks for this post :)
Terrif Sheila! I MUST rewatch IMMEDIATELY! Thank you. March and Sidney are magic together. Her life was just as fascinating as any character she created on screen.
Oh Clara that was so beautiful – thanks so much for making it in the first place and for sharing it here. I just saw it recently, but it was so good to see all the footage again. (And I love the dress she wears when you see her getting drunk and then pushing him out of the apartment. She looks so beautiful).
Both of them are so wonderful together. A real portrait of a marriage having some hard times, I thought.
I would love to hear your take on the “You’re lying” moment. It’s just so grounded, so UN-dramatic – it is exactly how people in hospital waiting rooms would say such a line. So good!!
Kent – Oh, I would love to hear more from you – especially after you’ve seen it again. Please go watch it IMMEDIATELY. (By the way, that’s my favorite kind of response to something I’ve written – that people go insane looking for ways to see the film IMMEDIATELY).
Sidney is so good – did you happen to watch Thirtysomething? It’s so moving to see this old dame in the late 80s, early 90s, still kicking some serious ass. Thirtysomething was just released for the first time in deluxe DVD box sets – with commentary tracks on a lot of the episodes – and the stories they all tell about Sidney were fantastic. How moving it was to be in her presence – and how practical and annoyed she was a lot of the time. Barking out at another actress, “Are you gonna say the line that way?” HAHAHAHA But they all fell in love with her.
Amazing actress, and never better than here.
Yeh Sheila, I’m gonna go insane RIGHT NOW… can’t find it anywhere… fortunately a kind, well meaning you-tuber pasted together several fantastic clips from MWGTH and poignantly set them to Wham’s Careless Whisper. I never kid about the digital age: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG7WbFaVHCM !!
Kent – Ha!!! Look at the first comment to this post! Clara, meet Kent, Kent, meet Clara. I just watched it myself – so emotional, isn’t it???
And you aren’t kidding about the digital age. I am continually amazed at how awesome it is.
It’s also so nice to put up a post like this about a supposedly obscure movie and have two people who HAVE seen it respond. THAT’S the power of the digital age. I would have been writing all this down in my private journal a mere 20 years ago, feeling alone with my love for this movie. Now we get to share it and talk about it!
Sheila.
Poor Ms. Sidney, suffering through those pre-code movies with bad men and/or worse luck.
The scenes I remember in MWGTH are when March is carried back home, early in the morning in a near drunken stupor, Sidney sets down on the bed next to him, cradles his head, hugs and kisses him, cries, – and then that look of disgust in reaction to her husband’s mumbling “thanks Claire” (finally pushing her over the edge). That scene, followed by the one with her talk with her father, followed by her taking a drink, and finally the scene where her husband tells her to prevent him from leaving by just saying so – and she won’t do it, were a masterful sequence.
As for the ending’s “it is the characters’ compromise, not the compromise of the script,” I’m not sure I get the distinction. I’d have liked Jerry suffering a longer bout of separation and sobriety but I’ll admit that’s only a minor quibble and not an all out objection.
By the way, I’ve been waiting a long time for the DVD of the movie, made immediately after MWGTH, of Madame Butterfly with Sylvia Sidney as Cho-Cho San and Cary Grant as Pinkerton.
George – You know how sometimes scripts manipulate their characters – and you can feel the puppet strings? That’s really what I mean. And so characters behave in what seem to be incomprehensible ways because the script hasn’t hidden the strings, the script hasn’t let us see that it’s the characters who are actually LIVING – rather than a writer trying to make his name. Does that make sense?
Endings are hard in movies and often the desire to tie all the ends up neatly leads to very false conclusions, and false behavior. Roger Ebert kind of said it better than I did … what happens at the end of Stranger Than Fiction (a movie I love) is, yes, neat – which goes along with the theme of the movie – where a character in a book is actually alive and living in the world. But what happens at the end doesn’t feel to me like a writer trying to tie up all the loose ends – but the characters actually coming to some resolutions (like Emma Thompson’s choice to change the ending of her book) based on where they have come from. She makes a compromise, but not because the script demands it, but because that’s what she as a character needs to do.
Maybe it’s a fine distinction – but the ending of Merrily We Go to Hell is still surrounded in darkness and you always get the sense that this couple is going to have a very rough road … but they seem like autonomous beings, making choices – not fictional characters behaving this way because the script demands it.
Your words about the “masterful sequence” make me want to see it again right now. It’s kind of a brutal movie. God.
And yes, poor Sylvia Sidney, with that open shining face, and the struggle ahead of her. She really seems like a real person to me. Never really catch her acting.
And I’m with you on Madame Butterfly.
Looks like I’ll be next in line behind Kent. This is one of the few Frederic March films I haven’t seen yet, and now I’m even more frustrated at how difficult it can be to find his work. I think you hit it on the head when you described him as “a precursor to the Method actors of the 50s.” March, I think, more than any other actor of his era radiated a naturalism that holds up well even a half century later. Each time I watch one of his films I find some new nuance that perks me up and forces me to watch him even more closely. A rare and powerful talent.
Donald – you’re in luck, it’s part of a recently released box set of Pre-Code movies – easily find-able now!!! It’s a real gem! I agree: he is so so good.
Hi Clara! Nice to meet you! Love your clips… better than a trailer, and a great stop gap ’till the complete movie shows up. Thank you!
Agreed, Sheila, it’s been a really nice part of fb and the internet to “hang out” and share with people who have the same interests all over the world.
Can’t find 30 Something… though I did watch it back when I was 30 Something. Fortunately, there are some choice Sidney moments from “Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams” available… and as another you-tuber says ” hard to believe SS lost the Oscar to Tatum O’Neal!
Also… with March, he really grounds the 30s Star Is Born… the production and Gaynor are a lot more Selznick fluffy than Garland/Warners/50s… and March makes it work believably, I’ve always thought! AND, for such a GREAT actor (and profile)… his comedy gift was enormous… so hilarious with Lombard in Nothing Sacred, and as perfect for her as William Powell in Godfrey!
Oh, he’s so wonderful in Nothing Sacred. That is such a funny movie.
Why is this man such a forgotten actor?
I love it when Margaret Hamilton says to him “you’ve tooken up mah tahme”. His neglect is inexplicable. He worked for nearly 50 years, made beloved classics, and was fantastic. As Joe Gideon says: “it’s a freaky business”.
Kent – Yes, a freaky business. I suppose, when you get right down to it, it’s always about the work. He worked hard. He was famous in his day – and not so much now – but there’s so much there for future generations to enjoy and re-discover. He was an actor, doing his work.
I mean, my sadness is that there wasn’t video back in the day to capture Eleonora Duse or Laurette Taylor or Ellen Terry and Henry Irving – the great great actors of the pre-modern age. These people touched people, Ellen Terry’s Lady Macbeth is still referenced as a standard bearer – and her Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing … but I’ll never see it. Just have to imagine it, I guess.
Actors are brave creatures. :)
The tiny shred of silent film of Duse in the teens is fascinating for a slight hint of her body language and physical expression. The silent work of Bernhardt conveys very little, it is so poorly shot.
Forever a mystery how much the effect of the actors you name was due to the magic of live theater. It was fun to explore this question in relation to Max Reinhardt while I was researching Ann Savage. While Midsummer Night’s Dream on film is truly breathtaking and beautiful, it must be the merest shadow of Reinhardt’s epic live presentation which devastated audiences of 5,000 and up.
With Laurette Taylor and Ellen Terry one can only dream. With a theater legend like Maurice Evans who lived into the TV age, I’ve often wondered if I could appreciate the power of his Hamlet without it being clouded by his portrayal of Endora’s husband on Bewitched or his unforgettable turn in Planet of The Apes as Dr. Zaius.
Sheila,
I get your take on scripts manipulating character and it certainly does make sense.
It’s just that in MWGTH I felt there was a bit of a happy (happier) ending suggested by the script – a neat little package – telling off the lover, sobriety, the “I Love You” to his wife (finally), the tragedy of their loss, – Jerry’s come to terms with being a real grownup. Of course I may be reading too much into it. And as I said it’s a minor quibble, either way a most enjoyable movie.
George – In a way, his character really does go beyond the pale. When he kisses that broad in front of his wife? Somehow I get that it is not because he doesn’t love his wife – but that he doesn’t want to grow up. A really fine line to walk there.
I felt that her compromise came out of her understanding that he had finally realized what he HAD … as opposed to what he hoped he could have, as opposed to running like hell from commitment.
But like so many Pre-Code movies, I am left wary about their future. I don’t think they have a chance in hell of making it, despite the (SPOILERS) momentary resolution. That’s the darkness I mentioned in the review … there are so many pre-Code endings that seem to end happily, but you still wonder, “Huh? Now how the hell is THAT gonna work???” I definitely felt that here very strongly.
Do you teach acting? Your analysis of Fredric March & Marlon Brando in his well known Waterfront scene is marvelous. To me acting is one word:belief. In your insight we see two great actors who believe, for a couple of shining hours, they are Jerry and Terry. And, as a result, we believe they are not Fredric March & Marlon Brando, but Jerry & Terry. Terrif.
Sheila,
“I don’t think they have a chance in hell of making it, despite the (SPOILERS) momentary resolution.”
Wow! I could buy that they possibly won’t make it – just on his character alone- but not a chance in hell? Though with the pre-Code subject matter and as it’s presented I guess there’s really no reason to believe the viewer shouldn’t be just as realistic in making conjectures about the characters’ futures.
Sheila,
Might I impose on you?
I’ve been trying to find a post of yours about a book reviewed by you some three years ago. I’d made a note of it but lost it and now have only an erratic memory to rely on. Author’s name was Sailer (?) or some simple variation, the title had some allusion to baseball, (field, outfield ?), and the novel was about a young American in France and an intense but ultimately loveless affair with a French woman – not bad for early onset Alzheimer’s, ‘ey. I hope you remember it, if not, please don’t go to any trouble tracking it down – I’ll rely on serendipity.
George – I may be overstating my cynicism about their chances as a couple … I am cynical like that. The ending to me feels very chastened, like a momentary respite before things get bad again.
Oh, and yes! The book you are talking about is A Sport and a Pastime, by James Salter – wonderful book. (Ironically, it’s “James Salter Month” at the Paris Review blog right now). Serendipity indeed!
Hi, Kent :) Thanks for your kind comments, I’m glad you liked my videos!
Wonderful shot choices Clara – favoring those incredible movie stars! Thanks again!
Sheila,
Thanks much for the info on the Salter book.