I Lived with You

I approached I LIVED WITH YOU with trepidation. While Novello had appeared in 16 silent films, where his beauty and ability to act with good direction stood him in good stead, from his RAT trilogy to his two films with the budding Alfred Hitchcock. Talkies, however, were a different ball game. He made only six. His second, THE PHANTOM FIEND, was a remake of his silent Hitchcock film, THE LODGER, and he was just awful, as was the film, over-acting and emoting all over the studio sets. His next, a turgid melodrama with Ruth Chatterton, ONCE A LADY, gave him only a brief supporting role in twelve scenes.

I LIVED WITH YOU is an adaptation of his own play, in which he starred on stage, and it is a revelation. Very funny, very well crafted, with great lines and astute observations of character and mood. Ursula Jeans is perfect as the good daughter, Gladys. Ida Lupino in her fifth film is unrecognizable, she is so fresh, minor her later mannerisms in voice and posture.

The whole cast is full of great character acting and in the middle is Novello, totally charming and totally believable as a romantic Russian prince whose involvement in the lives of a poor but happy British family, upsets their lives in many ways. Later films to use this idea of a stranger entering family lives and changing them for ever were mainly comic (MY MAN GODFREY, MERRILY WE LIVE), but often moving and thought-provoking (BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING).

Novello has lost all of his theatrical mannerisms and theatrical emoting. He is fresh, funny and ultimately very moving. Facial and vocal expressions are fit and apt to the sound film. I've never seen a better performance of his and the film is absolutely wonderful.

Seek it out!

An early feather in the cap of Julius Hagen's nascent Twickenham Films is this valuable screen record of Ivor Novello's 1932 West End hit.

There's a bit of unobtrusive opening out - notably the scene shot in Hampton Court maze where hero and heroine first meet - but the play's the thing, complete with dialogue and situations that would not have got past the Hays Office the following year; and are now a bit gamy for 21st Century sensibilities.

The predominantly female cast includes the young Ursula Jeans and Ida Lupino ("She's charming! Is she still a good girl?") and preserves for posterity the extraordinary Cicely Oates - who died the year my father was born aged only 45 not long after featuring in a much smaller role in Hitchcock's original version of 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' - as "Little Mrs Sunshine".

In his day, Ivor Novello was a beloved Welsh actor and singer. However, today, especially outside the UK, he's a pretty much forgotten man despite his having once been a star. Part of this might be because he died in his 50s. Part of it might be because times and tastes change...which is what I think of when I think about "I Lived With You".

The play was quite popular and Ivor Novello both wrote it and starred in the production. So, it's not surprising that he'd bring the story to the big screen.

Novello plays Prince Felix...who was once a rich Russian before the revolution. But now he's homeless and with no job...nor a desire to get a job. Gladys meets him in the maze at Hampton Court (a palace owned by Henry VIII which is just outside of London). She learns of his plight and invites him home to stay with her and her family.

For the most part, Felix just lies about the home and interferes with the family. For example, he encourages Gladys' father to get a mistress...with predictable results. On the positive side, however, he is able to pay for his way, as he has some gems which he's kept since fleeing Russia...and he sells them in order to help the family.

So is this any good? Well, it's okay. I think Novello overacted a bit here and there, as did Ida Lupino (Novello's real life goddaughter). As for Lupino, this was well before she came to Hollywood and had a HUGE makeover. She looks and sounds VERY little like the Lupino of the 1940s....almost like they are two different people. And, fortunately, with a new image came much better acting and she honed her craft.

Overall, this film is an oddity but one that just hasn't aged all that well. After a while, it all becomes a bit annoying and bellicose. Watchable but not all that good.

Despite the reservations one has to have when a Russian prince has a Welsh accent barely disguised and a character disappears after a couple of scenes (young Albert the son takes 10 shillings to place a deposit on a wireless and is never seen again), this film is really sweet and extremely funny. To those of us who are familiar with Novello as a composer of luscious melodies of the likes of We'll Gather Lilacs it shows a new side to his genius. Great fun, especially the ladies' tea party and the early scenes in Hampton Court Maze.

Ursula Jeans meets a very elegant, very Russian Ivor Novello. He's broke, so she takes him home to her family's middle-class house, until he gets back on his feet. That will be a problem, because he's a Russian prince, and so not fitted for anything. All he has is a few sets of jewels worth thousands of quids. Since they were gift from the late Tsar, he can't spend them on himself. He can spend them on his new family, whose settled, decent lives he turns topsy-turvy.

It's based on Novello's stage hit, and director Maurice Elvey does a fine job of opening it up, with a camera that moves, quick cuts, and close-ups. there are some wonderfully silly scenes, like the one where Novello gets the local snobs drunk on vodka-laced tea. Yet the serious segments are curiously at odds with the crazy-comic ones; they are two sets of stage conventions that do not mix well.

It's a bit odd to see this out of Twickenham. That production company had been built on a series of quota quickies, subsidized by American companies who needed British production to play alongside their imported movies to comply with British law. the larger British integrated studios found the small studio useful for providing cheap second features to run in their big houses. the problem was that owner Julius Hagen had grown weary of the thin profit margins, and aware of the immense profits from A productions. So he cut back on the bread-and-butter productions and tried for prestige... and found himself shut out by the big, integrated companies, in Britain and the U.S.