Disperato d'amore

Ida Lupino (Libby) plays the socially isolated daughter of Henry Hull (Cliff) and Fay Bainter (Ellie). They live in the middle of the nowhere and Lupino is the glue that keeps the family together as her parents don't speak to each other and live on separate floors. She acts as a go-between. One day, after wandering through the woods, which is her only enjoyment in life, she stumbles across some convicts who are building a road. One of them, Dane Clark (Barry) takes her fancy. Can these two misfits get together? Wayne Morris (Jeff) also takes a shine to Lupino and her father wants to encourage this relationship. Lupino has other ideas.

The cast are good with the central performance of Lupino leading things along as she develops a relationship with Clark and we see her change into a happy girl. However, this is ultimately an unhappy story that you will probably be able to predict. It does provide tense moments, though. Personally, it was too obvious for me and I would have preferred a different ending. It's still worth keeping onto.

I unfortunately caught only a part of this film on TCM and I will look for it again to see the beginning. But I was stunned by its beauty and especially the cinematography, so I wanted to add my comments as a "Hear! Hear!" to the comment above.

Thank goodness there's a Turner Classic Movies. These Warner Brothers classics are gems I'd never have known otherwise. This film is visual poetry.

I had to turn to imdb.com in order to find out who the cinematographer and director were. Beautiful. One doesn't realize often enough what there was at Warner Brothers. Personally I get a thrill when I hear that introductory music.

Ida Lupino was nearing the end of her Warner Bros. career when she did 'Deep Valley' with Dane Clark, Wayne Morris, Fay Bainter and Henry Hull. Sensitively directed by Jean Negulesco (who did 'Johnny Belinda'), she is a repressed farm girl with a speech impediment who befriends an escaped convict (Dane Clark). She blossoms as romance slowly develops, his love helping her to emerge from her shell, away from her bickering, embittered parents (Hull and Bainter).

A forgotten film, it derives much of its power from Ida Lupino's intense, believable performance in a strongly sympathetic role as the girl who is cured of her affliction by the love of a convict. It has the same kind brooding atmosphere that director Jean Negulesco would bring to 'Johnny Belinda' the following year. Variety called it "a first-class melodrama marked by distinctive performances". Jack Warner was so impressed, he wanted Lupino to extend her contract but she refused, tired of being treated as a second-class Bette Davis. She turned her back on the studio, intent on finding artistic freedom elsewhere.

Unfortunately, the film itself has become one of those "lost between the cracks" kind of things instead of being released to video. It was a bit too bleak and perhaps too downbeat to achieve any sort of popularity at the box-office and it's really too slim a story to sustain a one hour and forty-four minute running time. However, Ida's luminous performance makes it worth catching. Wayne Morris is wasted in a supporting role but Dane Clark does well with the male lead.

Why this isn't on tape is a mystery. I saw this movie in first-run as a teenager. My friends and I sat in the theatre for 15 minutes afterward, crying our eyes out. The love story and the struggles of the two main characters are heart-wrenching. So well acted, Ida Lupino was an actress who never was truly recognized. She was perfect in this role. My friends and I had a movie-star crush on Dane Clark afterwards. He too was a better actor than he was credited for.

Try to see this movie! You'll never forget it.

How can we get this on VHS (or DVD)?

A touching story of people finding (or re-discovering) within themselves a capacity for love: low-keyed, underplayed, and presenting an extraordinary challenge to Ida Lupino as a young woman totally lacking in confidence or a sense of self-worth, an emotionally stunted creature whose needs and aspirations are internalized, until.....

Her marvelous performance must rely on nuance to acquaint us with what is going on within the character: a lowering of the eyes, a tilt of the head, an ungainly walk without swinging her arms, a halting, inarticulate stammer, and more - much more - the types of things that define excellence in acting, absent of any opportunity to chew the scenery.

Long acknowledged as a first-rate talent who never received her due (and whose career was never properly promoted), Ida Lupino demonstrates in this film just how much she was capable of achieving, if given the opportunity.