JOHNNY BELINDA
US, 1948, 102 minutes, Black and white.
Jane Wyman, Lew Ayres, Charles Bickford, Agnes Moorhead, Stephen Mc Nally, Jan Sterling, Dan Seymour.
Directed by Jean Negulesco.
Johnny Belinda is a classic of 1948. Jane Wyman portrays the deaf mute, Belinda, who gives birth to an illegitimate child called Johnny. The film is powerful in its presentation of human nature, the oppression for the mute woman, the harshness of her family and neighbours. Jane Wyman won the Academy Award for this performance.
The film has a strong character supporting cast including Lew Ayres as the doctor and Charles Bickford and Agnes Moorhead as the Mc Donalds. Stephen Mc Nally and Jan Sterling are the Mc Cormicks.
The film was directed by Jean Negulesco who was directing rather more hard-hitting action films at this time including The Mask of Dimitrios but he was to move with the coming of Cinemascope to rather flashy and lightly entertaining films like Three Coins in the Fountain.
The film was remade in the 1980s with Rosanna Arquette as Belinda and Richard Thomas as the doctor, directed by English director of stage and telemovies, Anthony Paige.
1. The highlighting of the child’s name and the reference to Belinda? Pathos and the themes of the film? Indication of its appeal to audiences?
2. The film as a classic of 1948? Its qualities in production, photography, performances and themes? Jane Wyman’s Oscar?
3. The emphasis on subtlety of communication? Black and white photography and landscapes? The archetypal story?
4. The importance of the visualising of Nova Scotia, the atmosphere for this kind of story? The island and isolation? The portrayal of the sea, portrayal of earth and the working of the earth? The town, fishermen and boats, houses and farm? The trade and people? People who are pleasant gossips and curiosity seekers? An enclosed world? The outsider doctor entering into this enclosed world? The need for broadening of horizons? How important was this evocation of the atmosphere?
5. The values held by such a community? Sense of right and wrong and integrity? Yet the narrowness of the enclosed community and its outlook? The judgmental aspects? The effect on its victim? As highlighted by the court case and presuppositions?
6. The Mc Donalds within this setting? People of the earth? The father and his hard life? Soft, eventually because of Belinda? Aggie and the hardness of her life? Her dour personality? Her capacity for fighting and surviving by fighting? Her being softened by the doctor? Belinda within this atmosphere? Her affliction? Her deprivation? Her drudging work? The enclosed world? The possibilities of her life being transformed by friendship communication, learning? Her life transformed by the wonder of birth and motherhood?
7. The pregnancy: the fear and anger on the part of her father and Aggie? The help of the doctor? Her acceptance of the pregnancy? The memory of the birth of the animals on the farm? Her forgetting the rape? The pathos of her pregnancy and the birth?
8. The importance of Belinda’s character? The quality of Jane Wyman’s performance? Her ears blocked so that she performed as really deaf? The nature of the deafness and the muteness? Her happiness and not knowing another world? Her capacity for learning and the wonder of communication? The rape and its effect? Her sadness yet ability to forget? The wonder of birth? her reliance on the doctor and the growth in love for him? Her protection of her child instinctively even to kill?
9. The counterpoint of the character of the doctor? The background of his academic career, his disappointment In love? Exiling himself to the island? People being suspicious, for example, the opening accident? His earnestness? His lack of religion? Going fishing? The butt of religious gossip? The motives for helping Belinda? The effect on him and her? Her taking him to the chapel? The visit to the doctor in the city? His protection of her at the birth, from the gossip, in the court case? The complications of his letters in the court? How admirable a character?
10. The importance of Stella for the plot? Her admiration for the doctor, her marrying? Her bitterness, her feelings? The melodrama of the adoption of the child? The death of her husband? Her breaking down in the court? How realistic and important for the plot?
11. The character of Mc Cormack? The ordinary fisherman, the drink, the rape and lust? The importance of being in Church, the banns and the marriage? His fatherhood and wanting to see his son? His fight with Belinda’s father? The irony of the murder? Belinda killing him? How evil a character? How accidentally evil?
12. The court case and the hardship for Belinda, for the doctor? The curiosity of the people especially the gossipping women?
13. The humane scenes of learning, the chapel? The contrast with the court scene?
14. The film as a document of human dignity, motherhood and love? Of communication and friendship, of achievement?
