Orages

There was no way for me to go back in time an hour and tell myself not to watch A House Divided, since time travel doesn't exist. How I wish it did, because then I wouldn't have had to watch this very upsetting movie. If you're renting it because of the interesting title, I'd tell you to rent Walter Huston's Abraham Lincoln instead to hear him say the famous phrase, but after sitting through that lousy movie, I can't recommend it in good conscience.

In A House Divided, Walter Huston is made out to be a royal jerk in the opening scene. He and his son, Douglass Montgomery, attend his wife's funeral, and as soon as it's over, he drags them to the local bar and gets rip-roaring drunk. He sings, dances, starts fistfights, and encourages his son to do the same. He has no intention of grieving or letting his son feel his feelings. Then, he sends away for a mail order bride so he can get someone to do the chores around the house for free instead of hiring a new housekeeper. When Helen Chandler shows up, nineteen years old and afraid, Douglass feels he has a bond with her because they're close in age and don't particularly care for Walter. It's very clear it's only a matter of time before they fall in love.

Now here's the problem with the movie. Everything bad that happens, with the exception of the funeral scene, is Douglass's fault. Walter is gruff and a little crude, but he never does anything really wrong. Helen answered a mail order bride summons; she expects the guy who sent for her to not want to marry her? What is she complaining about anyway-her husband-to-be could have been a sadistic monster or someone enormously ugly. She gets Walter Huston! I don't understand. Her first impression of him is that he's handsome, a hard worker, generous with his money, well-liked in town, and prepared to give her a fancy wedding reception. He says, "I'll make you happy," and her response is, "I'm afraid." Do you understand her?

So, if you're a masochist and want to watch a movie where tons of bad things happen and for no reason Walter Huston is supposed to be the bad guy, be my guest. He does put his heart and soul into his performance, and under normal circumstances he might have gotten an Oscar out of it. Of course, he wasn't nominated by the Academy, which begs my famous question of, "What does it take?"

Reminding me on some aesthetic and general level of Fritz Lang's later Clash by Night, William Wyler's A House Divided is a work in yet another genre for the young, talented filmmaker: drama. We get a dose of special effects at the end while Wyler continues to demonstrate how much he do with the earliest of sound technologies to keep his filmmaking as much his own until sound caught up with the freedom of movement of silent film, and it's a solidly built film, anchored by a trio of dedicated and strong performances while never letting Wyler lose his strong eye, though the obviously increased reliance on capturing sound on set does limit his visual options at the same time.

Seth Law (Walter Huston) and his son Matt (Douglass Montgomery) bury Seth's wife in their seaside cemetery. Seth is the richest man of the fishing town, his family being the first to settle on it and owning the largest house. Seth is also a man of large appetites who mourns the loss of his wife by taking Matt to a bar, drinking heavily, dancing, and getting into a wrestling match with another man for the company of a woman. Matt cannot partake, watching his father's display with a measure of disgust. Matt feels like he doesn't belong on the sea fishing with his father and dreams of going inland to work on a farm.

The running of the household is too much for the two of them alone, and when their housekeeper leaves after a mere two weeks, Seth decides to write for a wife using a magazine where women present themselves as potential wives for lonely men. He decides on a middle-aged, well-built woman who could work and sends off the letter. The girl he wrote to, though, had already married by the time the letter arrived, and Ruth (Helen Chandler), a nineteen year old farm girl, one of six daughters to a widowed father, arrives in her stead.

The drama of the film is how the three main characters all have mutual and exclusive desires, interests, and needs. Ruth, having spent her life on a farm in Montana, has never seen the sea and took the opportunity to get away from the remote, futureless existence she had been living. Seth wants a housekeeper he doesn't need to pay, and he grows to appreciate Ruth's youth, beauty, and skill in the kitchen. Matt wants to escape his father and life of fishing in the seaside town, but he also falls for the pretty girl suddenly at his door looking for marriage who happens to be his own age. The two younger people are up against a strong and controlling man, the wealthiest man on the island who can throw together a giant wedding celebration for the entire town at the drop of a hat.

Things take a turn when, at the end of the wedding celebration, Ruth expresses distress at her situation, wanting space from Seth, but Seth wants what's his due on his wedding night. Matt tries to protect Ruth, leading to Seth falling from their stairs and crippling himself from the waist down. What do Matt and Ruth do? Their actions are determined by their characters. Ruth is a good woman dedicated to her promises, so she stays. Matt is in love with Ruth and feels guilty for having convinced her to stay in the first place, so he stays. Seth is a strong man and determined to gain his legs back, all while feeling owed Ruth's love in the first place.

This final act is where the meat of the film is, and it's really helped by the film's almost myopic focus on the events in the house with the three characters. There are virtually no other characters, and the singular view on the events in the house give the film a play-like feel, making it all the more surprising that this wasn't based on a pre-existing stage production. This gave Wyler a smaller canvas to paint on compared to Hell's Heroes, which tied him more to the more standard sound capture technology of tied down microphones hidden on set which, combined with the need to eliminate the sound of the camera which necessitated the camera being in a box, limits the movement of the camera, where he could put the camera, and the kinds of expertly constructed and complex compositions he had shown so capable of creating in his silent films. When he does film silent, like the opening at the cemetery, he can find the three-dimensions to the image he's so good at, but on the house set, where most of the film takes place, he's far more limited and the film looks far more generic.

The finale is a big special effects sequence on the sea, at night, and in a storm, and it looks great as the three characters run together in different ways and for their own purposes. I admired this ending more than I actually felt it, feeling that despite the film's laser focus on its core characters, we needed more time with them, particularly Ruth and in regards to the relationship between father and son, to make it play out as well as it should. I would have really liked to see Ruth's reading of the letter and convincing to go to the seaside town back in Montana, as well as some of the train ride to more firmly establish what she was running from. I would have also liked to see more dimension to the father/son relationship beyond antagonism.

Still, as a whole, it's an effective little drama. It could have used some more meat on its bones to give the characters a bit more depth so that the actions of the finale played out a bit more emotionally, but it's still an accomplished and well-written little piece early in the sound era.

I've never seen Walter Huston in anything in which he's not brilliant and this doesn't disappoint either. This dark and moody drama isn't particularly fun but it's a satisfying watch.

This is another great example showing what a great actor Walter Huston was. His character evokes the sense of a volcano just about to erupt but restrained by an impermeable layer of pure cold granite. He's a right nasty piece of work in this, a horrible thug without any likeable qualities whatsoever. But Huston being a proper actor still manages to captivate your imagination. He makes you want to know if he's really that unpleasant, whether under that rough stony exterior is a heart of gold but he only shows you that he's not hiding his feelings, he just doesn't have any. Even getting married by Emperor Ming doesn't cheer him up! Like his performance in KONGO, he's a cold hearted monster but he's also a believable damaged human being.

This isn't a typical 1930s picture. The only thing which dates it to that period is its early talkies style. It's set in the early 30s but it's not the 1930s we are familiar with. We are in a remote fishing village where gangsters and gold diggers are as alien to them as they are to us now. Places and macho societies like this were probably unchanged since the time of Moby Dick. The concept of a mail order bride, for woman to enter a life of serfdom in exchange for somewhere to live seems dumbfounding to us in our comfortable modern world but these were very desperate times. It's fascinating to get a glimpse into how we lived.

This is only William Wyler's third ever talkie so it's not going to be his best work but this is from the man who seven years later would make the best film ever, WUTHERING HEIGHTS so it's still superbly made. Although made by Universal, who weren't known for splashing the cash on their pictures, the production standards, for 1932 anyway are pretty good. The finale in the storm is quite impressive.

It's not particularly uplifting nor does it make you feel happier after you've watched it. It's a very serious dark drama so you need to be in the right mood for this. It is however a great story, a jaw-dropping insight into another world and if you want to see some great acting, you can't go wrong with this.

Creaky but interesting melodrama powered by Walter Huston's performance as a brute and a dynamite action ending. Although Wyler's direction is not as sure as it would be later, it is interesting to note that, for the most accomplished studio director of all time, a man said to operate without a style of his own, a lot of images that show up in his later films (particularly WUTHERING HEIGHTS and THE LITTLE FOXES) also show up here.

'A House Divided' is an excellent film from early in the career of underrated director William Wyler. It features a first-rate performance by Walter Huston. (His son John Huston gets a dialogue credit.)

In 1926, Walter Huston starred on Broadway in 'Konga', a melodrama that became Lon Chaney's silent film 'West of Zanzibar', which in turn was remade as a talkie under its original title, with Huston playing Chaney's role. Walter Huston and Lon Chaney were very similar actors: they both started in vaudeville as song-and-dance men but achieved success in dramatic roles. They were similar types and often played similar roles. Coincidentally, both had sons who achieved success as character actors. Although Chaney is best-known for playing deformed or crippled men, he more typically played a coarse villain who sacrificed himself for a younger woman who spurns him in favour of a younger and more callow man.

'A House Divided' stars Walter Huston in a role that seems tailor-made for Lon Chaney. Huston plays Seth Law, a widower in a Pacific fishing village. Law's son Matt (played by Kent Douglass, who later became better known as Douglass Montgomery) is a sensitive type who longs to give up the hard life of a fisherman in favour of an easy job as a farmer(!). Seth despises his son, whom he considers a weakling. Seth sends away for a mail-order bride, intentionally choosing a plain-looking woman who's built for hard work. What he gets instead is the delicate and pretty Ruth Evans (played by Helen Chandler, in a much better performance than she gave in 'Dracula'). Seth gallantly offers to pay Ruth's way back to where she came from, but Ruth is determined to make a life for herself here. To give Ruth his protection, Seth marries her ... but it's clearly a marriage in name only. Charles Middleton plays the minister who presides at the marriage, but Middleton's fans will be disappointed at how little he gets to do here.

Inevitably, Seth gradually becomes attracted to pretty Ruth and decides to consummate the marriage ... but just as inevitably, a romance evolves between Ruth and sensitive young Matt. I was watching this movie with no idea of where its plot would go, and I found myself thinking this was really a Lon Chaney vehicle ... and then suddenly the movie leaps directly into the heart of Lon Chaney territory. One dark night, Seth and Matt have a fight in Seth's house. Matt knocks Seth through the upstairs railing, and the fall breaks Seth's spine. (Just as Chaney's character was crippled in 'West of Zanzibar'.) Seth is now a paraplegic. From this point to the end of the film, Walter Huston literally drags himself across the scenery, as Chaney did in 'West of Zanzibar'.

I shan't tell you the ending, but it's a two-fisted climax with lots of melodrama, very much in the Chaney tradition. The art direction for this movie is excellent: it was filmed in a real fishing village, and the set dressing reeks of authenticity. There's one very good line when a boat returns to harbour, and a fisherman onshore can tell from a distance that the boat hasn't caught any fish because it isn't shipping water: this is exactly the sort of thing that a real fisherman would notice.

Gibson Gowland (a major actor in silent films) gives a good performance as the bartender, and there's one very funny gag involving a (genuine) one-legged man in a barroom brawl. In the early scenes of this film (before he gets crippled), Seth sings and dances. Walter Huston was an expert singer and dancer, but here he wisely (and bravely) restrains his own abilities, so that Seth Law sings and dances in the clumsy and untrained manner which is exactly appropriate for a coarse fisherman. I'm always annoyed by scenes in non-musical dramas in which an actor or actress playing a 'normal' person suddenly bursts into song or dance and uses the opportunity to show off a trained singing voice and years of dance lessons. Walter Huston was too good an actor to indulge in such ego trips.

I'll rate 'A House Divided' 8 points out of 10. Huston is excellent, but I wish I could have seen (and heard!) Lon Chaney playing this role.