...usually I find such films icky sweet, but this one I would give an 8/10 if not for one particularly impossible thing we are expected to believe. But I'll get back to that later.
Often I'll run across a film I didn't expect to amount to much and be pleasantly surprised, and this is one of them. Then I see the director is Michael Curtiz who was saddled with directing such diverse films - and quite frankly challenged plots and actors - during his Warner Brothers career, and some of the mystery is unraveled.
The film is about the family of Adam Lemp (Claude Rains), Dean of the Briarwood Music Foundation (nice work if you can get it during the Depression), who apparently makes so much money that he can afford a house that would go for half a million these days, can support four grown daughters, and his sister who never married (May Robson as Aunt Etta). In fact Rains is thirty years younger than Robson, so that would be some age difference for siblings, and what is an esteemed music foundation doing out in Pleasantville, USA?...but I digress.
So the film goes into the relationship between the four sisters - actually three of them ARE sisters - in particular, Emma (Gail Page) and Ann (Priscilla Lane). They vow to be "old maids" together and seem to have a very strong bond. But then enters upbeat composer Felix Deitz (Jeffrey Lynn) into their lives, along with his downbeat friend Mickey Borden (John Garfield), who is doing orchestration for him. That impossible thing we are expected to believe? That Ann falls head over heals for Lynn's character when he projects all of the romantic appeal of a workboot. She seems to feel like Mickey is a work in progress as she tries to lift his IMHO justified downbeat view on life, particularly, his life. So I am expected to believe a vibrant young woman would prefer Lynn's scarecrow like demeanor over the dark brooding Garfield? Well, this was Garfield's first film, so who knew what kind of charisma he would have.
Mickey falls for Ann, Emma falls for Felix (again, why??), and then on the day of her wedding to Felix, Ann finds out Emma loves Felix. Complications ensue.
This film is saved by some really good warm moments between the characters, and Robson always entertains, although it does waste the talents of one of the great actors of the 20th century, Claude Rains. Anybody could have played this part as little as he has to do. It does give you an idea of the kind of burden women had before the 1970s - that it was only acceptable to first live with your parents and then a husband, and if you never married you are forever fifth wheel and housekeeper in your brother's household, and if you temporarily have a career it has to be in something "lady like". How would this film have turned out if the girls had wanted to put on a hard hat and design buildings rather than sing and play instruments? You'll have to wait until the 1970s for THAT kind of film!
Recommended and well acted in spite of it all. And why are the top three billed actors in a film entitled "Four Daughters" all men? Inquiring minds want to know.
