6. Cavalcade (1933)

Cavalcade Movie Poster

Cavalcade won the Academy Award for best picture in 1933. Before today I knew nothing of the movie more than its name. However, I love Noel Coward, and this was based on a play he wrote in 1931. What I didn't expect is that I would be watching a precursor to Downton Abbey and its upstairs/downstairs dichotomy. Ironically, Cavalcade even includes the Titanic disaster, just as Downton. I wonder if Julian Fellowes was in any way affected by this tale. 

Cast of Downton Abbey

Cavalcade follows the story of two families in England: One the wealthy owners of a home in London and the other their servants. It starts on New Year's Eve, 1899. Interestingly, we can now relate in some ways to the feelings of those who brought in the change in the millennium. And that is what this movie is really about: how the world changed from 1899 to 1933. The movie does not present the changes as pretty or nice in any way. We encounter a world of increasingly dangerous wars, changes in the social order, the evils of alcohol, and the movement away from God.

SPOILERS AHEAD

Herbert Mundin as Alfred Bridges, Diana Wynyard as
Jane Marryot, Clive Brook as Robert Marryot, and
Una O'Connor as Ellen Bridges in Cavalcade

This moral tale builds slowly. At first, it is just the story of two women, both whose husbands are going away to serve in the Boer War. The master and servant are both shipping out at the same time. They leave behind their wives and children. However, they both return and do not seem that changed by the war. However, the servant, Robert Bridges, has bought himself a pub from someone who decided to stay in Africa. He and his wife, mother, and daughter move to the pub.

The story fast forwards and Bridges is now a drunkard who rarely pays his bills. His wife sends him away so that he won't embarrass her when 'her Ladyship', Lady Jane Marryot, comes to visit. He comes back early and interrupts, causing a scene. He leaves the house, gets in a fist fight, and then is killed by a coach and four.

Margaret Lindsay as Edith Harris and
John Warburton as Edward Marryot on
their honeymoon aboard the Titanic.

The next scene has the two families meet up at Brighton Beach. Bridge's daughter, Fanny, is a young but considered a wonderful dancer. The Marryots are all there, and the elder son, Edward, is going to marry a woman named Edith. This scene quickly follows with them standing together on a ship, talking about first their love. Then they move into more serious territory with Edith saying that she doesn't think that their relationship will be happy in the long run, that things are different than they were in the past. They step away to reveal they are on the Titanic.

Later, World War I begins, and Joey can't wait to join. Before he does, he rediscovers Fanny and they start an intimate relationship which continues each time he has leave. He returns to the front one last time after asking her to marry him. She basically says that even though she loves him, that she will not. That their lives are just too different. On the front, he sees his father one last time. The armistice is called for, but Joey dies before it takes effect.

This is where the filmmakers throw the issues of the day in our faces. They start by showing the men injured during the war, even weaving baskets - a scene that today would be seen as sarcastic but was completely believable at the time. Then we break to a number of short scenes with discussions about disarmament followed by talk of keeping stores of mustard gas. We see a man speak out against the existence of God followed by a priest proclaming from Luke 9:25: "For what is a man profited, if he gain the whole world, and lose or forfeit his own self?" This is followed by Fanny Bridges singing the "Twentieth Century Blues," which includes the theme of the movie, "In this hurly burly of insanity, our dreams cannot last long." I'm including the scene below to show what I mean:



Finally, the film ends on another New Year's Eve in 1933 with Sir Robert and Lady Jane Marryott together toasting the future. However, even though Robert is still positive about it, Lady Jane is more realistic. She states, "[Let's] drink to the hope that this country of ours which we love so much will find dignity and greatness and peace again."

What I Learned From the Movie

1. The filmmakers needed to a do a little more showing and a little less telling. I don't believe I've ever had a theme or these type of moral messages thrown in my face quite as obviously as what happened in the last third of this movie. Even though I think that most of the message was quite good, it should have been incorporated within the framework of the movie and not as a sequence in and of itself. Instead of feeling preached to, I would have felt that I was experiencing the changes along with the characters. 
2. Transitions are so important to keeping a movie flowing. In these early days of film, they still hadn't gotten scene transitions down. There were many abrupt scene changes that were jarring to the viewer and broke the 'fictive dream' that the story was attempting to tell. 
3. Some scenes dragged on too long. There was too much exposition and not enough movement. This was especially true during some of the song numbers. This was not a musical, yet at least three times in the movie we listened to entire songs. Even though these included commentaries on the time, they made me as a modern movie goer a little frustrated. Important lesson for me in my own writing endeavors. 
4. As a way to show the tragedies of the war, the filmmaker juxtaposed images of soldiers marching and  singing songs like "Smile, Smile, Smile" while women back home were singing to inspire men to enlist while men were falling over dying in front of the same church. If this sounds like a jumbly mess, it was. The sounds were dissonant, but not in a way that added to the drama. Instead, they made me wish for a better sound mixer. The images were repetitive, and the fact that they all died in the exact same spot even though new years (1915, 1916, 1917) were being shown on the screen was just silly. 
5. Throughout the movie, the women are portrayed as realists, and the men are children. The women understand that war means death, and the men are jumping to go fight again and again. The men talk of love, and the women talk of the uncertainties of the future. It seems like in many of these early movies, the screenwriters picked sides in the battle of the sexes. Women were either silly or smart, men were either in control or oblivious. 
6. While we might think all things change, in reality life just seems to repeat itself. Here is a generation back in 1933 writing about the 'good old days'. Today, many look back at the 50's in the same way. Someday soon, the 80's will be the time to remember. I can see myself in my old age railing about the way kids behave. Someday. 
7. I loved the relationship of the Marryotts throughout the film. It was gentle and loving and rarely seen in movies. 

In the end, I enjoyed the movie despite its shortcomings. Of course, that could be chalked up to me being an anglophile and loving all things Downton and Mr. Selfridge!