Strange Interlude

Eugene O'Neill's nine-act theatrical experiment created quite a stir in 1928, so it was inevitable that Hollywood would snap it up. The play's novelty was that the characters spoke their thoughts aloud in the manner of asides. On the stage, some of these speeches went on for quite some time while the other actors in the scene froze in place; on film they are reduced in length and pre-recorded so that while we hear the words we see the appropriate facial expressions on both the speaking and the listening actors. Nothing about these spoken thoughts expands our understanding of the thinkers in ways that good acting or deft direction couldn't have done just as well. The story, actually a saga, concerns a woman (Norma Shearer) unhinged by the death of her dashing aviator fiancé in the World War; she sets out to salvage her connection to this lost ideal man by marrying a lesser specimen, bearing his male child and naming it after the deceased. Along the way she learns from her mother-in-law (May Robson) that insanity runs in the husband's family. Convinced that this undesirable genetic trait will show up in her offspring, she aborts the child she is carrying and mates with a virile doctor friend (Clark Gable, who else?) to produce a healthy son which she then passes off as the husband's. Hard to believe? You bet. But it worked fascinatingly on the page, and perhaps even on the stage, but not on screen where it becomes just a series of mostly attractive talking heads. It is dramatically effective only in spots. Shearer is by turns compelling and strained. Clark Gable handles the material well until he encounters some overwrought plot contrivances near the end whereupon he is further hobbled by unconvincing old age makeup.

Norma Shearer, still carrying torch for handsome Gordon, who died in WW1, marries another guy on the rebound, only to find that insanity runs in his family and she can't have children with him (but how will she ever be the mother of a son as handsome as dear, dead Gordon?), and she can't leave him because the shock would certainly send him over the edge into terminal wacked-out nuttiness. What to do? Gimmick here is that, along with the spoken dialogue, we share the inner thoughts of the characters -- presented as V.O. while the actors stand around mute, making faces as if somebody just broke wind on the set. Did anyone watch this with a straight face in 1932? Film goes on long enough that the sanity of the audience is tested much more severely than that of Shearer's husband, but was reportedly 5 or 6 hours in theatrical production. (Any cries of "Author! Author!" at that premiere came, no doubt, from a lynch mob.) It's an MGM, so of course the cast is first-rate, but is it their fault the act is a louse?

It would be all too easy for the immature film goer to dismiss this fascinating film as soap opera, but Eugene O'Neill's mammoth 1928 play (revived on Broadway in 1963 and 85) - his third after BEYOND THE HORIZON (see THE LONG VOYAGE HOME for a film of his "sea plays") and ANNA Christie to win the Pulitzer Prize - sprang from a period when the great American author was experimenting with forms which would become standard in film. In this case it was the interior monologue that Hollywood would use as the voice-over.

For the discerning viewer, recognizing the importance of the play (that the Marx Brothers found it grist for their satirical mill in their contemporary Broadway and film musical ANIMAL CRACKERS is testimony to that importance) and the solid performances of the movie cast, O'Neill delivers. He is examining serious adult issues - not just the form he is experimenting with - as he dissects the obligations people have to those they love.

While O'Neill claimed his play was suggested by an ancient Greek play, this classic love triangle (quadrangle actually, even more when one factors in Nina's chillingly named son) rings remarkably true even with the demands of 1930's Hollywood censorship (Nina's psychologically important abortion is merely hinted at) and the heavy editing (that O'Neill somewhat disingenuously railed at) demanded to bring the film down to an acceptable playing length for the average movie theatre which played more than the theatrically standard 8 performance week.

If Norma Shearer's central Nina can occasionally be accused of overacting, the script demands it; hers is the central emotional roller-coaster. Second billed Clark Gable as Dr. Darrell, who does not arrive for nearly a quarter hour into the film, gives the most naturalistic performance (it was one of the ways he stood out in all his films - in style a generation ahead of his peers), but for the true film connoisseur, Alexander Kirkland's Evans and Ralph Morgan's Marsden are no less impressive, and Robert Young, seven films into a 40 year career is fine as Nina's college age son.

In the 1930's the causes of mental illness OTHER than "bad blood" (a plot driving device here, as in Katharine Hepburn's debut vehicle from the same year - also from Broadway - A BILL OF DIVORCEMENT) were far less understood than today, and the Catholic Church's ban on the rational use of contraception was far more pervasive - both of which may make the context of the film difficult for younger viewers to understand.

If they give the film their attention though, and recognize that the concerns of the characters go beyond these technicalities to the personal relationships that remain troublesome even today, the film - stylistic experiments and all - is ultimately not only important but deeply fulfilling.

I don't know exactly why, but I really got caught up in this movie. At first hearing everyone's thoughts is kinda strange, but it really helps you understand the characters and their motivations. By the end of the movie, you feel sorry for just about everyone in it, that they all lied and deprived themselves of happiness so that Sam could be happy. The great thing about this movie, is that you keep waiting for the payoff at the end where everyone finds out the truth of the strange 4 way love triangle (I guess that would be a love square). But it never really fulfills itself and not all the characters learn the truth.

I guess the thing I like about this movie the most is that the suspense is like a pot of boiling water. You keep waiting for it to overflow and have a kind of epiphany when it does overflow. But the movie never gives that epiphany because Sam and Gorden never find out the truth and I think the movie is better for it.

This movie was panned back in 1932 when it came out, and I just don't get it. It's a very intelligent and emotionally moving film. I wish Hollywood of the modern era could make films like this instead of all the cardboard junk with a happy ending that they have these days.

I guess most people just don't get it. But those that do will be gratetful for films like this.

Great acting all around, especially for Norma Shearer, Clark Gable, and all the main characters. The kid Tad Alexander who played young Gordon was great. Ahh he's 77 years old now. MAN

I've never seen a Norma Shearer movie that I didn't adore. Ha, all those old Hollywood Queens are nothing compared to Norma.

Horrid. Truly, stultifyingly, wretchedly horrid. The "idea" (of having the inner thoughts of the characters spoken aloud for the audience) is a stilted one which doesn't work on stage either. But in a movie, where the voice-overs are added later, it forces the actors to create responses to feelings they are not having, and also prompts the actors into providing rather charmless and ugly facial "clues" to their inner thoughts. It makes for a bad cinematic experience. The story itself - adapted by Eugene O'Neill from a Greek play)is the purest "eternal triangle" tripe, and tripe which never really explores any true psychological impetus, but only deals with the thinnest of human motivations, so being "let in on" these great human secrets is no grand privilege. Norma is at her worst here; stagy and melodramatic, and most of the cast comes off equally badly. An experiment gone horribly wrong. I felt - at times - like slapping any or all of the characters, just to awaken them from their banal self-pity and deep delusions. And the only fun to be gotten from it is to replace the "inner speech" with phrases of your own. Otherwise, a very bad film.