MADAME X
US, 1965, 100 minutes, Colour.
Lana Turner, John Forsythe, Ricardo Montalban, Constance Bennett, Burgess Meredith, Keir Dullea, Virginia Grey, Warren Stevens.
Directed by David Lowell Rich.
Madame X was originally a stage melodrama with an emotional and sentimental impact that earned the name 'tearjerker'. It has been film several times: with Ruth Chatterton, Gladys George, then Lana Turner and a television remake with Tuesday Weld. It is easy to criticise this kind of contrived melodrama with all stops out. Nevertheless, it touches so many basic emotions, husband and wife, career, measuring up to standards: class antipathy, fall from grace, degradation, integrity in weakness, refusal to betray, motherly love, death ? that it has a perennial popularity. It aims at an emotional response and gets it.
This version is given the lavish Universal Studios touch by producer Ross Hunter (Magnificent Obsession and the Jane Wyman/Rock Hudson films, many of Douglas Sirk's melodramas with Lana Turner etc.). Lana Turner acts well towards the end of a successful quarter century of filmmaking. She has the Hollywood type glamour to carry the role. John Forsythe is somewhat stolid in an underwritten role and it is the character actors, Constance Bennett, Burgess Meredith, who have the best parts. Keir Dullea, in an early role, is persuasive as the sensitive lawyer son.
Direction is by David Lowell Rich who directed many competent entertainments and telemovies for Universal over several decades. Easy to criticise, but an emotionally enjoyable wallow nonetheless.
1. The appeal of soap opera? Emotional situations, characters is relation to emotional situations, crises and tragedies? Perennial themes and response? The film as an old-fashioned melodramatic play, filmed many times? The reason for its continued appeal?
2. Ross Hunter and his lavish and glossy production values? The soap operas of the '60s? Colour photography, affluent society, political background (in the immediate post-Kennedy era), society,, Connecticut, Europe? The lush treatment? The contrast with Mexican decadence, also given the lush treatment? A vehicle for Lana Turner, her hair and gowns etc.? The romantic score? A technically competent soap opera?
3. The conventional material and characterisations, audience expectations of characters and themes. sympathies? The heroine becoming victim, her fall, pain, suffering? The importance of coincidences and the heightening of drama to melodrama? The emotional ironies, especially at the end with her son defending Madame X?
4. The melodramatic title. the element of mystery? Lana Turner and her ability to sustain the role? The younger Holly and her marriage, love for her husband, delight in her new home, fitting into society, newspaper reports, the birth of Clay Jnr, her role as mother? The relationship with Estelle and her implied criticism? Christmas sequences and decorations and angels? Clay's absences and her having to cope? Her friendship with Phil? How persuasive was her loneliness? Her going out, enjoying Phil’s company? The implications of the affair, without their being visualised? The screenplay's building up pressure? Clay's return home? The appointment to Washington? The possibility of a house? Holly's finally going out with Phil, the accident and her cover up? Estelle having her followed? The possibility of a happy future and Estelle's destroying it? The phone call to Clay and Holly's composure? Farewell to her son? The arrangement of the disappearance? Audience involvement with her suffering?
5. Holly as victim, Europe, mistaking the child in the street, changing her hair and appearance, seeing the information about her disappearance in the paper, her letting herself die? The rescue, her recovery, the kindness of Christian, her recovery, the proposal and her decision to go away?
6. Mexico, the sleazy atmosphere, picking up men, the addiction to absinthe, the encounter with Danny Sullivan, her telling her story, wanting to backtrack when sober, his hatching his plot, persuading her to go to New York, her overhearing his plan and her spoiling the plan by pretending he had put her up to it, sending him off and shooting him? The emotional draining ? her confessing and signing her name as 'X'?
7. The irony about her son defending her? The audience knowing it and Holly not knowing it? The court case and her impassivity in the cell with the interview with Clay, her behaviour in the court, her growing more desperate, the court spinning and her collapse? Her encountering Clay and her realising the truth? The importance of her speech and her principles of not betraying her son given to the jury? Clay Jnr seeing her in the cell and her bequest for him to be happy? Her death? Guilt, responsibility, love and self sacrifice, her finally being recompensed?
8. Estelle as mother? an inverted Holly? Each mother protecting her child? Estelle and her snobbery, ambitions for her son, watching Holly, setting a detective on her, her cruelty, the plan, the financial support? Her son's career? Her reaction at the trial?
9. Clay as conventional hero: the marriage, busy with his career, his neglecting Holly, the plans for Washington? The impact of his son's performance in court, realisation about Holly, wanting to see her, the repercussions of the truth?
10. Clay Jnr and his success in court, interviewing Madame X, his performance during the trial, plea to the jury, listening to her final speech, speaking to her in the cell? Her bequest to him?
11. Danny Sullivan as evil, listening to Holly, the plan, his contacts, the record read out in court, his meriting Holly shooting him?
12. Phil as the smooth-talking playboy and the comment on high society?
13. Christian and his kindness?
14. The American dream, its being spoilt? Clashes of class and expectations? What doth it profit to lose the world?
15. Classy soap opera? Audiences being critical of soap opera conventions, yet being in touch with the sentiments and enjoying a wallow in such stories?
