BACK STREET
US, 1961, 107 minutes, Colour.
Susan Hayward, John Gavin, Vera Miles, Charles Drake, Virginia Grey.
Directed by David Miller.
Back Street is the third version of Fannie Hurst’s popular novel. Its focus is on the illicit love between a married man and a woman – whom he relegates to the back streets of his life. The film’s focus is on how the woman makes good despite the relationship and the seeming rejection.
The stars of the film in 1932, directed by John M. Stahl, were Irene Dunne and John Boles. In 1941 there was a further version, directed by Robert Stevenson, with Margaret Sullavan and Charles Boyer. This version has Susan Hayward (not long after her Oscar-winning performance in I Want To Live) and John Saxon. The film was produced by Ross Hunter whose glossy romantic films from the mid-50s to the mid-60s have caught popular attention in retrospect: The Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows, Imitation of Life.
This version was directed by David Miller who began directing in the 1930s (including a film about Father Damian of Molokai, The Great Heart, in 1938. He directed the Marx Brothers in Love Happy and then had a success in the 1950s with such strong films as Sudden Fear and The Story of Esther Costello with Joan Crawford. During the 1960s he had a succession of hits with Midnight Lace, Lonely Are The Brave and Captain Newman MD.
1. The status of this story as a woman's soap opera novel, the traditions of soap opera films from the thirties to the sixties? (How well did it fit into the tradition of 'women's pictures'?)
2. The production values of the film, colour, music, the importance of decor, the colour of the furnishings and the fashions? The blend of story and decor? What kind of Hollywood world is this? How much real, how much fantasy, how much wishful thinking? towards the character of Rae?
3. The title and the implication of the affair with Paul? The change of emphasis to a more glossy back street?
Appropriate?
4. Audience enjoyment of soap operas? Escapism, some kind of understanding of human nature? How realistic do they intend to be? How symbolic of wishful thinking dreams?
5. The importance of emotional response from the audience, involvement with the characters, happiness and especially tears? The relationship between emotional response and judgment about characters and behaviour?
6. The opening and the involvement of the audience in the war situation, airport, a place for chance encounters? Paul and Rae and the details of their meeting? The build up of the relationship between the two? The credibility of Rae falling in love? Paul and his love and yet his attitude towards his wife and children? Their time together? The irony of the missing of the plane, the car? Accidents and the extraordinary way of controlling destinies? How credible this separation and Rae's reaction?
7. The effect of the passing of the years, the mutual bitterness? The style of the passing of time and the focus on Rae's career, Paul getting older?
8. Susan Hayward's style as Rae? Her origins, her talent, work in the shop, ambitions? Her impact on the world of fashion, collaboration with Dallan? Audience interest in this world of fashion and glamour? Dictating fashions, wealth, international trips etc.? Her prospering yet her loneliness?
9. The encounters with Paul and the effect on each of them? Rae's bitterness, Paul's exasperation? The mutual love still remaining?
10. How fair was the screenplay in presenting Liz as so hysterical? Her behaviour, dialogue, cattiness, suspicions, violence and drinking? Was it inevitable that Paul would turn away from her? Did he love her? His devotion to his children? The effect of this upbringing on them? What made them decide to begin the affair? The back street aspect of the apartment? The pros and cons of their relationship? How did it change each of them?
12. The effect on Paul Junior? On a young boy and his reaction to his parents, to Rae?
13. Liz and the growing hysteria and drinking? Comment on the melodramatics of her public denunciation of Rae? The effect on Rae? Audience sympathies?
14. The build up to the crash, how credible was the screenplay not taking the easy way out by letting Paul live?
15. The dramatics of the final phone call, Paul Junior hearing his father? effect on Rae?
16. The impact of the ending with the children with Rae? Their future?
17. How valuable is the immersion in this kind of soap opera world? Tears, sympathies, emotional values, judgments?
