LYDIA (1941)

The elderly, wealthy Lydia MacMillan is being honored for her life's work with children, culminating in the opening of an orphanage for the blind and crippled. Her old friend Michael Fitzpatrick is honoring her in a more private way, hosting a small gathering of the four most important men in her life, though only three have shown up. As they chat, they all reminisce about their relationships via flashbacks. Michael, son of the family butler, was the doctor to Lydia's grandmother Sarah, and the only one of the four to be a constant presence in Lydia's life. As a young woman, Lydia was a bit rebellious--Sarah berates her for wearing a dress with bare shoulders to her first ball, complaining that she's going out "in the nude." When Lydia recalls that ball, she remembers hundreds of harpists, a huge orchestra, and dozens of chandeliers (and her flashback is presented in slow motion), but Michael corrects her, bringing her memory down to earth a bit, with a small band of musicians and a couple of chandeliers. There, she meets Bob, a beefy football player with a tendency toward drunkenness. The two try to elope but things don't work out. After an encounter with a blind child, she devotes her life to working with children, and at a school for the blind that she opens, she meets the third man, Frank, a blind pianist who teaches there, and who eventually writes her a concerto. Despite the love of Frank and Michael, Lydia proclaims that she will remain a spinster, that her work is her life. But soon, she meets the fourth man, Richard, a handsome and earthy sailor (and the only man not currently present), and the two take off to live together at MacMillan Point, an isolated family home on a windswept coast. Their days together end when Richard leaves to fulfill an obligation to another woman (we assume it involves a child) and despite a promise to return, he never does. Lydia claims that Richard was the love of her life, but when Richard finally arrives, he doesn't even remember her, an outcome that she accepts as punishment for her "sins."

This is French director Julien Duvivier's reworking of his 1937 Un Carnet de Bal (which I have not seen) and though it's an American film, produced by the British Alexander Korda, it has the feel of a French film, especially in its direct presentation of Lydia and Richard living "in sin," something that one would not likely see in the typical Hollywood movie of the time. It has great sets, a hazy nostalgic feel, and the old age makeup on all the actors in the present-time scenes is very good (see Oberon as an old woman above). Merle Oberon is Lydia, and this is her movie all the way. I'm not a big Oberon fan, but she is quite good in this, being believable as a headstrong young debutante, a social reformer, a passionate lover, and an old lady. Joseph Cotten is equally good as Michael, who pines away for her, though not in a self-pitying way. Alan Marshal makes a very likable character out of the carefree Richard. The other two men, George Reeves as Bob and Hans Jaray as Frank, don't have much time to make their impressions. But the film is frequently stolen by the fabulous Edna May Oliver as the grandmother—it's a grand Oliver performance through and through, as she plays an irascible but ultimately loving woman, and seems to be having fun doing so. Sadly, this was her last film as she died the next year. Critics aren't crazy about this movie, but I found it fun and compelling. [TCM]