PETER IBBETSON
US, 1935, 85 minutes, Black and white.
Gary Cooper, Ann Hardin, Ida Lupino, John Halliday, Douglass Dumbrille, Virginia Weidler, Dickie Moore.
Directed by Henry Hathaway.
Peter Ibbetson is one of Gary Cooper's early star vehicles. He is teamed with the regal Ann Harding. Ida Lupino has a small role in one of her earliest Hollywood films. The film is based on a novel by George du Maurier. It had been filmed several times and was the basis of an opera. It seems a dated fantasy from the point of view of later decades ? and was perhaps an anomaly of entertainment even in the '30s. It is a period piece played with solemn dignity, it is a romance and a fantasy quite different from the ordinary run of films. It has an atmosphere of feyness and naivety, but with charm. Direction is by Henry Hathaway who directed Cooper in a number of action films including Lives of a Bengal Lancer. Hathaway was to make his mark with a great number of films but especially action films including many John Wayne features as The Sons of Katie Elder and True Grit.
1. A romantic film of the '30s? Its lack of success in its own time? From the present perspective?
2. A star vehicle for Gary Cooper? Hollywood hero, charming hero, even with moustache?
3. Paramount production values? Studio re-creation of the period, Paris and England? The musical score? The black and white photography and reality and unreality? The devices for dissolving to fantasy?
4. A Victorian novel translated for Hollywood treatment? To the '30s? The appeal to the romantic imagination?
5. The Paris chapter: the focus on the children, their age, rivalry, the use of the boards for a pram and a wagon? Love/hate? The role of the adults in guiding the children? Gogo and his mother's illness, her death, grief? The elders and their concern? The old military man telling the children the story? The two houses adjacent, the bars of the fence, coming together at the open gate? Death and change? The setting for the further chapters?
6. The English chapter: Peter and the change of his name, growing up, skill at work, success? The visit to Paris and the encounter with Agnes? Seeing the old man again? The friendship of Slade? His going to the Duke of Towers? The stable, his ideas? The Duke and his skill with horses? The Duchess and her ideas? The clashes? The audience knowing who she was, and the repeat of the arguments, the fence with the bars, the open gate? The growing of the romance and its discretion? The Duke's accusation, the scene at the table? Peter wanting the Duchess to make a decision? The violence of the Duke and his death? The bond between the two? Their expressions of love, Mary saying they were not mystics, yet their complementing each other's dreams? A sense of destiny?
7. The prison chapter: Peter in prison, in the cell, lying down, the passing of the years? Their fantasy romantic meetings ?how successful as an idea? How well portrayed? Fey, charming? The idyllic encounters? Mary and the experience of her death, invisible, her voice, taking Peter and the visualising of his death?
8. Themes of romantic love - the characters as persons or symbols?
9. The supporting cast and a sense of reality: Paris and the adults, death, the old man and his story, seeing him later walking the city, the young architects and their ambitions, Slade and his
