Perfectly adorable

Admirable film.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

I watched this right after the 1932 version of the same story (there titled "Vanity Fair"). The one big difference is that the 1932 film was a drama, this is a comedy. The other important difference is that this was made in 1935 and therefore the material is defanged by the Code. Miriam Hopkins is miscast (she looks too old for a girl just starting out), but she is attractive and energetic; some of the supporting players overact appallingly. The story is aimless; at least the 1932 film (which is superior) made a point, with which you could agree or disagree. Even the colors don't look very vivid - though that might be a fault of the DVD print I watched. ** out of 4.

Thackeray's novel, "Vanity Fair," published during the same period as Dickens' work, runs about 800 pages. It's a long, difficult slog. The writers here have cut the story down to less than an hour and a half and the result is a kind of "Classic Comics" version that I doubt loses much in the transposition.The nice girl, Amelia, brings home a guest for Christmas, her school chum Becky Sharp (Myrna Loy). It's apparent in the first few minutes that Becky is pretty sharp alright, although "pitiless" might be a more apt modifier. She can smell money and aristocracy. She puts the moves on just about all the men -- old, young, married, engaged to Amelia -- it doesn't make any difference.And that, basically, is the whole of this dismal tale. The men, of course, grovel at her dainty feet the moment she glances at them. Although, to be honest, unless these guys are complete dolts, they must realize that she's a piece of hazardous material, throwing her perils before swains.By borrowing, cheating, and seducing, she works her way close to the top before everything falls apart. She's even cheated her loyal housekeeper, Polly. Becky winds up alone and debauched in a dingy apartment.None of the performances are memorable and Myrna Loy, though a fine actress, is limited by the technology of the time. It has to be admitted, though, that the attraction she has for men is understandable, especially when we see her modeling this backless gown, cut almost to her sacral dimple. Her figure blends glowing ivory flesh with vulnerability. Yum.The director is Chester Franklin and he's put some thought into the job, not startling by today's upside-down standards but a novelty in 1932. Myrna Loy is at a dressing table looking into a mirror at the end. Her face is that of a spent whore. She remarks that it's odd how sometimes one can look as young as she once was, and her features brighten, the dark circles fade, and she's young and beautiful again before the present reasserts itself.And, again, she's looking down from her window at the departing Amelia, ex friend, who climbs into an open carriage with her fiancé, who tenderly lays a robe over her lap. The scene is shot from directly overhead. There are a couple of nicely seamed visual transitions from one scene to the next. A running kitchen faucet dissolves into a filling bath tub, for instance.But it's hard to overcome the old-fashioned soap opera aspects of the story. Frankly, it's a little dull.

"(...) Director Rouben Mamoulian did a remarkable job with color experimentation. He decided to use color thematically to express character mood, and added more and more color as the film progresses and the plot thickens. Every shot looks color-coordinated. The most famous sequence is the panicky exit of the quests at the Duchess of Richmond's gala in Belgium on the eve of the battle of Waterloo (...) Mamoulian had quests leave according to their color group so only the one in red remained in the ballroom." (Danny Peary in GUIDE FOR THE FILM FANATIC 1986).I have decided to entail this long quotation at the beginning of my review because I think that it best reflects the multiple significance of the feature film BECKY SHARP which won the color prize at the third Venice Film Festival. While discovering the uniqueness of Rouben Mamoulian, a pure follower of Moscow Art Theatre, a great admirer of Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863-1938) and a follower of the famous Stanislavski's system, I have found out how truthful he was to the emotions in cinema and how much focused on every single detail of images and acting techniques. Who could better introduce cinema to the three strip Technicolor in the 1930s than him? Mamoulian with his unbelievable flair for artistry on screen and sophisticated experimentation with the camera could effectively capture the essence of color.Here, it is necessary to mention some unforgettable scenes from this movie that, for long, remain in one's memory. Except for the aforementioned ball scene that constitutes a sort of 'special pearl' on its own, the film entails a striking image of Napoleon's shadow over the map of Europe. What impact it has on the vision in a color feature film! What impact it must have had those days! The costumes with a special emphasis on red (which Mamoulian considered the most exciting color, a sort of climax) constitute another merit of the film's visual significance. The interiors appear to be lavish as well.Yet, BECKY SHARP was quite neglected for years and available on weak copies. Although it was considered an important movie in the history of cinema (being the first feature in three-color Technicolor process - the period which lasted till 1953), it was forgotten for years and in no way considered a must-see. Fortunately, the film has been recently restored and is growing in popularity among classic buffs. Strange phenomenon...yet, it is not the color experimentation that makes it exciting nowadays, it is neither the source novel VANITY FAIR by one of the most respected British novelists William Makepeace Thackeray. It is, unfortunately, not Mamoulian whose name is today associated with totally different titles. I think it is Miriam Hopkins in the lead who still amuses our imagination, rouses our senses and has the power to make the film enjoyable. Having had experience with the director and his special treatment of actors' techniques (part of psychological realism) in DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE a few years earlier, she does an almost flawless job here. Let me broaden this point a little bit.Ms Hopkins, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, crafts her role very well with a heartfelt attitude towards her audience. She has quite a difficult role to portray, the role of the foxy young lady who climbs up to the highest ranks of the society using pretty unconventional means, deceitful means. Nevertheless, she catches the glimpse of the 'unreachable' (for many). A bad tempered girl to face the world, a sort of woman no one knows what she is about, a chit-chatting maiden for whom war is amusing, a ruthless Becky who does not give up her plans. Many scenes from the beginning scene when she leaves school through various moments, including her witty role of a governess, her serious role of a wife and a delicious role of a mistress. Miriam Hopkins is unforgettable and stands out from the supporting cast, some very good actors of the period including the distinguished Cedric Hardwicke as Marquis of Steyne.In all the analysis of the first three strip Technicolor movie, the following adjectives will best describe it after all these decades: innovative, memorable, significant, rousing. INNOVATIVE color experimentation, MEMORABLE production in the history of cinema, SIGNIFICANT direction by Rouben Mamoulian and ROUSING performance by Miriam Hopkins. Worth seeing!

You see, it's not so much the stories that count, it's the way they're told. Becky Sharp, the motion picture, came to be by a convoluted route. William Makepeace Thackeray's mid-19th century novel Vanity Fair was used as the basis for Langdon Mitchell's late 19th century stage play, which was in turn adapted for this 1935 movie. What have we lost and what have we gained? Of course, books, plays and pictures are very different things, and certain changes have had to be made so that each adaptation works for its particular medium. Becky Sharp bears all the hallmarks of a lengthy novel reworked for the stage. A play can't be over a certain length because it has to be seen in a whole evening, and yet individual scenes tend to be fairly long because of the disruption of having to change sets. Becky Sharp, perhaps surprisingly, changes very little of the basic plot, but it condenses the entire (900+ page) tome into a series of dramatic vignettes. Because the novel tends to tell of many important events in a by-the-by fashion, Mitchell was also forced to come up with a lot of his own dialogue. Finally, the play differs from the novel in that every episode is told from Becky's point-of-view, whereas Thackeray's narrative travels with a range of characters.So far, so disappointing (perhaps). But what was most important here was not that the story survived intact, but that the tone of Thackeray's masterpiece carried through. What is so special about Vanity Fair is the author's cynical, sarcastic tone, which makes a comedy out of these unpleasant goings-on. This is not an easy task in a motion picture, unless you were to resort to voice-over narration with passages from the novel (not especially en vogue in the 30s). But as it happens this motion picture does not do a bad job.Firstly, we have the right cast. Miriam Hopkins's Oscar nomination has raised a few eyebrows here and there, and it's true her performance is hysterically hammy. But that is Becky Sharp, a cheat and a liar whose entire life was an act. When she breaks down in false tears over her late mother's possessions, the moment seems silly, but it is supposed to be funny. The bulk of the cast are overblown caricatures, but again this is faithful to the novel. Thackeray wasn't subtle. Look at those names – Pitt Crawley, Lord Steyne… even a minor character who didn't make it to this version called Sir Huddleston-Fuddleston. And most of the players are spot-on. Nigel Bruce simply is Jos Sedley, and George Hassell is perfect in his unfortunately brief appearance as Sir Pitt.Then there is Rouben Mamoulian's direction. His flamboyant visual style could be disastrous in the wrong picture, but here all his extroverted camera moves and trick shots pay off. With the condensed storyline, the overt technique helps to keep the flow. We are brought closer to the spirit of the original text by the fact that we are constantly aware of the director's touch, just as Thackeray constantly addresses his reader with a sly wink. This again highlights the fact that Becky Sharp is more enjoyable if it is taken as a comedy, not as a drama. It's just as well – Mamoulian let loose on a pure drama could be awful.This was famously the first picture in three-strip Technicolor, and as the use of colour here is especially good I'll devote a few lines to that too. Whereas some early colour pictures used blaring shades, Becky Sharp is filled with subtler tones – for example those rusty browns and greyish blues in the opening scene, much more effective than bold blue and red. And rather than simply colour-coding a character's costume or a set, we here see the tones flowing on and off the screen. To again take that opening scene, we begin with the warmer hues of Amelia and her friends, and then slowly move, via various different shades of dress and the growing amount of the stark wall that can be seen, to the cold blue-grey of Becky. Later in the first scene at the Crawley residence, all the colours are very plain, which gives more impact when Rawdon walks in in his bright red uniform. It's hard to say who is responsible for this smart handling of colour. Production designer Robert Edmond Jones is the celebrated inventor of "simplified realism", whereby sets complement action, but Mamoulian appears to have done a very similar job with the colour on the 1941's Blood and Sand. We'll assume it was a joint effort.Really, the only major flaw in Becky Sharp (and it is, I'm sorry to say, a very major one), is that the paring down of the narrative to 84 minutes without actually cutting much of the plot makes for somewhat confusing viewing. It's difficult to keep up with time and place, and the novel's legion of characters pop up then disappear before they have made an impression. Personally, I found Becky Sharp fun to watch because I am familiar with the novel and it was nice to see these figures brought to life so accurately. However, I first saw it before I read the book, and recall finding it bizarre and boring, as I suppose would the majority of viewers. For this reason, it fails in itself as a motion picture.