The Madness of Joan Crawford- Possessed (1947)

The other day I was watching an old British TV interview of Joan Crawford on YouTube (as one does) when they showed a clip of the climax of the 1947 Crawford starrer Possessed. As Joan screamed out her lover's name over and over I remembered how much I love this performance. After a bottle of Chardonnay in the tub, I re-watched this classic and re-confirmed that Joan Crawford was not just a bitch in an Adrian gown. This woman could act.

Possessed (not to be confused with the 1931 Joan Crawford/Clark Gable film of the same name) was part of Joan's Warner Brothers renaissance. Following up her Oscar-winning turn in Mildred Pierce (1945) and the equally moving role of doomed socialite Helen Wright in Humoresque (1946), Crawford grabbed the part of mentally broken nurse Louise Howell with both gloved hands.

Possessed opens with a stricken Crawford aimlessly wandering the streets sans makeup and finery, calling out for a man named David. The mixture of Perc Westmore's non-makeup makeup and Crawford's vacant stare are a striking opening for the picture- and an uncharacteristic view of Crawford totally stripped of her glamour armor. I mean, she's not even wearing her signature fuck-me pumps!

The ensuing psychotropic drug flashback is a mixture of romantic melodrama and Female Gothic with Louise slowly losing her mind over the love of a man who doesn't want her (the ever-charming Van Heflin) and the new stepdaughter (Geraldine Brooks) he does want. Crawford is at her acting peak- balancing vulnerability and a hard edge as she descends into madness. One minute sweating and shaking as she tries to separate reality from hallucination, and the next slapping her step-daughter down a flight of stairs.

Crawford went to sanitariums and met with mental patients to try and give her performance an air of reality, making Louise more than just a crazed ex-lover who is one donut short of a dozen. And it works. The Crawford image is dulled and then re-shined and then torn apart, in a way, stripping this actress down into the disparate elements that made her such an interesting film star.

Crawford earned her second Oscar nom, but the rest of her stay at Warner Brothers would result in more soap-y fare like the deliciously slap-happy Flamingo Road (1949) and Crawford's least favorite movie This Woman is Dangerous (1952). Possessed is sort of a perfect middle-point for Crawford the actress- between her successful studio career, and the darker victim films she would make after the studio system lost its grip.

Learn to Speak

Sunday night, for the very first time, I saw a Joan Crawford movie that I didn't like. Yes, you read that correctly. Even amongst Crawford cinematic stinkers like The Ice Follies of 1939 (Joan and Jimmy Stewart ice skate) and  I Saw What You Did (1965) (Joan's verbal attack on a teenage prank caller is the high point) I have always been able to find moments of Joan joy to make a film worthwhile. But Sunday I stared at my television dumbfounded as I struggled to find a good reason to keep watching the 1930 western Montana Moon.

There are several things I could get snarky about (Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards and Benny Rubin, I am looking at you) but the more I thought about what was wrong with Montana Moon, the more I realized that the problem isn't necessarily the movie, its director, or its actors. The problem is when it was made.

When we talk about the Silent Era turning into the Sound Era, we often imagine a marked delineation between the two. There were silent films before The Jazz Singer (1927) and there were talkies afterwards. But it wasn't that clearcut. Studios scrambled to be technologically ready to produce sound pictures and directors and actors likewise had to figure out how to make movies with audible dialogue- while the sound revolution was happening.

Cameras became much less mobile with soundproofing, so how films were shot and looked underwent a drastic change. Actors (even the ones who had been stage-trained) had to figure out how to speak intimately with the microphone and rely less on gesture and expression so that with natural voices came a more natural acting style. None of these things happened overnight. It took the industry a couple years and many films to consistently make movies that successfully integrated sound into filmmaking and acting. Montana is one of those early sound experiments.

Montana is the story of Joan, a well-heeled flapper (Crawford, of course) who on a trip to the West with a trainful of cityfolk falls in love with a cowboy (Alabama halfback turned Hollywood leading man Johnny Mack Brown) and proceeds to commit matrimony.

But can this marriage of city and country survive tuxedos, ten gallon hats,and tangos? The plot is silly and musical numbers are squeezed in to capitalize on sound creating the first singing cowboy picture- a tradition that would later give us the likes of Roy Rogers. The look of Montana is not particularly Ford-esque with little imaginative use of the wide open vistas of Montana. Shots are fairly static and seem anchored to the minimal range of the microphone. And the acting? Well...

Crawford received top-billing for Montana because she had earned it in silent hits like Our Dancing Daughters (1928) but Montana was technically only her second sound picture. (You could count Hollywood Revue of 1929 but she doesn't really act in that. She just does the Charleston while singing "Got a Feeling for You.")

Crawford often told the story of the first time she first heard a recording of her voice. "That's not me. That's a man." So I was a little surprised to hear her voice in Montana was a higher pitch than we are used to. Crawford's type at the time was the young, carefree flapper, so it's likely that she maintained a youthful sound to match her character. Her acting seems more stiff than her previous energetic silents, with some fist pounding and hand waving filling in for more subtle acting.

But there are moments when we see the confident, future Crawford- her eyes big, her mouth laughing or defiant, her jaw set. Crawford is working out her sound film persona- and in just a year in Possessed she would successfully evolve beyond the flapper to the next stage of her career- the plucky shopgirl who fights her way up from the bottom. By then, her designer for Montana, Adrian, would transform Crawford's look and she would become one of the top box-office draws of the '30's.



So maybe I don't dislike Montana Moon as much as I thought. Just don't make me listen to "Montana Call" again.

The IT Girls

For the next two weeks, Film Forum is hosting a film series called It Girls, Flappers, Jazz Babies and Vamps. It's an amazing collection of movies from an era where women were able to star in roles that showed-off the power of female sexuality. Women played characters with a passion for life, love, and good bathtub gin. This female freedom mirrored the advances women were making politically and socially in this country. Unfortunately, the introduction of the Production Code Administration and the Legion of Decency turned Hollywood movies into a celluloid cage for women. Open sexuality was frowned upon and could only be shown if the woman who displayed it was properly punished by the end of the film. But before 1934, women were able to grab ahold of fast roles and run with it. Here are some of my favorite screen sirens from that era:

Joan Crawford

Most people think of Crawford in her Mildred Pierce (1945) phase where she was all shoulders, eyebrows, and slaps. But Crawford got her start two decades earlier in silent film where she played a definitive flapper, rolling her shoulders and kicking up her heels. The young Crawford's energy is electric and those big eyes shown with an unrestrained love of life. As sound came in she was able to transition to talkies with ease, and also survive the changes of the Code by turning her flapper persona into a girl who comes from nothing and fights her way to the top. You can see the two ends of this evolution by watching Our Dancing Daughters (1928)- the film that made Crawford a superstar and Possessed (1931) where she plays a factory girl who sees a better life with wealthy wheeler and dealer Skeets Gallagher (Clark Gable in his first film-pairing with Crawford.) If you haven't seen this era of Crawford's career, you don't have the full story of this Hollywood icon.

Marlene Dietrich

There has never been a screen image like Marlene Dietrich's. The German sex goddess first came to prominence in 1930's The Blue Angel where she played a heartless cabaret singer who ruins the life of a school professor who falls in love with her. She would continue in her next few films to play chanteuses or prostitutes who left destroyed men in their wakes. Dietrich's beauty is beyond question, but what made her unique was her ability to inhabit the image that was being so carefully sculpted around her by director and lover Josef von Sternberg. Von Sternberg's use of lighting to capture Dietrich's face is genius, and with her sly, sexy glance, Dietrich was able to breathe life into that image. Film Forum is showing two of her best from the beginning of her career: Blonde Venus (1932) (you can't miss the "Hot Voodoo" number) and Shanghai Express (1932) (with the equally sexy Anna Mae Wong).

Barbara Stanwyck 

I love Barbara Stanwyck. No matter what she played- whether it was a golddigger, a blousy mom, or a western matriarch, she always felt so authentic. Stanwyck never appeared to be acting, she just was- and if you didn't like it- you could take a flying leap. Early on she was able to play characters who used that sort of brashness to put a dent in the man's world by any means necessary. Stanwyck is the definitive social climber in Baby Face (1933) and even if the ending was changed, this film still shows off Stanwyck's ability to play a shysteress that we want desperately to get ahead.

Louise Brooks

There are many who consider Louise Brooks to be one of the best actresses of the silent era. What makes Brooks stand out is the naturalness of her acting during an era where naturalness was not a common feature in film performances. Brooks came to Hollywood by way of the celebrated Denishawn dance troupe. Her bob hair cut and impish gaze made her an instant celebrity. But Brooks hated Hollywood. She was easily distracted by life and had no desire to waste her time standing around film sets or playing the Hollywood game to get parts in unremarkable films. So when she got a chance to go to Germany and shoot with the legendary G.W. Pabst, she flipped Hollywood the bird and left. The result is a wonderful silent film that perfectly shows why Brooks was so exciting to watch. Pandora's Box (1929) shows the adventures of a young woman who plays with men (and women) at will, with little care for the repercussions. Brooks would be done with the movies by 1938, but would re-emerge decades later as the poster girl for the Silent Era.

Joan Blondell

Joan Blondell had a fresh mouth. Sure she was a cute blonde who knew how to sing and dance her way into your heart. But it was her ability to deliver the best wisecrack that made her the perfect co-star in movies throughout the '30's. No matter whether she was sharing the screen with Ginger Rogers, Ruby Keeler, or James Cagney, Blondell always walked away with the film. She's a perfect example of the actress that was built for the sound era. A line like "Hello, you great big, beautiful heel!" rolled out of her droll mouth effortlessly- and it made her a joy to watch. Check out two of her most fun musicals at the festival: Goldiggers of 1933 (1933) and Dames (1934).

So, who's your favorite IT girl?