Dreadfully Boring

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The Shining Hour was adapted from a Broadway play that ran for a few months in 1934. Not one of the better works I've seen but at that time the studios were still buying anything they could to have words for talking pictures.Joan Crawford plays a dancer and one good thing about The Shining Hour is that we get to see her dancing which is how she started in film. She's just married prosperous Melvyn Douglas of the Linden family of Wisconsin. The Lindens are farm folk, in fact Douglas is a lobbyist for said interest. Taking the new bride home to Wisconsin, Crawford arouses the interest in brother Robert Young, develops a friendship with Young's wife Margaret Sullavan and gets on the wrong side of the eldest, spinster sister Fay Bainter.Bainter's character rang true for whatever reasons she just dislikes Crawford and throws her the needle on all occasions. She's one of those miserable characters who minds everyone's business but their own.Sullavan's character is a lot like Melanie Hamilton in Gone With The Wind. Olivia DeHavilland made Melanie work in her film, but try as she may Sullavan's character came off as an unrealistic goody two shoes. In fact The Shining Hour in its dynamics comes off as the quadrilateral romance that Gone With The Wind does, but far far less effectively.Raymond Massey played Robert Young's part on Broadway. I really couldn't see that.Fans of the four stars should like this, but it's Fay Bainter who comes off best.

High class soap opera with the MGM sheen and a cast of great actors. Joan's a respectable if restless performer who marries Melvyn Douglas on a whim and goes back to his family home where trouble awaits and that's when the fun begins. The story of family animosity and dangerous attraction isn't anything new but as presented here by these super professionals and director Borzage they find ways to make it compelling. Joan is unquestionably the star of this enterprise and she holds her own with the strong cast that surrounds her while looking glamorous and suffering nobly.Fay Bainter turns her usual warm and understanding persona on its ear as a harridan twisted by jealousy and bitterness. Robert Young turns in good work as a bit of a weasel and Melvyn Douglas although Joan titular co-star really doesn't have much to do and is absent from a good deal of the film but he does what is required of him with his usual skill. The marvelous Hattie McDaniel has a tiny role as Joan's maid with the improbable name of Belvedere and injects a small dose of levity into the heavy going dramatics.Good though they may be and Joan is the queen of this little opus they are all outshone by one of their fellow actors. Margaret Sullavan as Young wife gives a performance of such quiet beauty she wipes anyone else off the screen whenever she's on it. An actress of great skill and subtle intensity she makes her Judy a character that seems far more real and relatable than anybody else on screen. Her output was small, only 16 films in total, but she always had a vivid and alive presence on screen. If you enjoy dramas with an adult, if a tad melodramatic, outlook enacted by talented performers this is for you.

Contrary to most of the opinions I read here, I did not find this film "soapy." I found it, refreshingly, a film for adults. For me, that's all too rare. I think it's about what relationship is, what love is and isn't, and most of all about the experience it takes and the resulting wisdom to build relationship beyond an adolescent understanding of love and attraction. And the great value of the self-knowledge that results. For me, that adult perspective was so refreshing and so rare that it beats out every other consideration. (Especially given the idiotic popular fare we're used to these days which substitutes a junior high school age cynicism for the difficult work of love.) Along with, say, "Dodsworth," for some reason Hollywood in this period was capable of some genuinely mature work for adults. The popular culture could use a little more. With Ogden Nash in the writing credits, I shouldn't be surprised at what I found valuable in this film.

A perfect example of the Thalberg/Selnick/MGM high-style at its most polished. Flawlessly directed by the under-rated contract director Frank Borzage, the film features superb ensemble work from the entire stellar cast plus an unusually malicious turn by Fay Bainter who never quite showed her lady-like fangs like this before. Adapted from a well-made Broadway play of 1934, the sexual tension between the two unloving couples could never be realized as it might have been had there not been censorship so instead of a little explosive adultery and fiery hanky-panky, as the plot seems to suggest, we end up with a hot summer night instead with everyone complaining about the heat until the "burning" resolution --but not the one you might think. (Had Tennessee Williams been around in those days we might have had an entirely different ending.) Yes, it is definitely a soap opera but MGM always gave us the best soap money could buy!