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| Words cannot express my love for this tagline... |
Dir.: William Wyler
Plot: A Quaker family in the 1860s try to reconcile their pacifist beliefs with the danger of the approaching Confederate forces.
You'd really have to have a heart of stone not to like this simple but accomplished picture about a Quaker family trying to cope with the Civil War in rural Indiana. Gary Cooper and Dorothy Maguire turn in career-best or near career-best performances as the father and mother of the house. Maguire is an actress I've never really cared for, but she really sells the primness of her character without losing her likeability. Cooper, on the other hand, I've always liked and he has some of the best scenes of his career here - the battlefield sequence in particular stands out as a beautiful piece of acting from the often unfairly-maligned Coop.
What I've always liked about Cooper (if you'll allow me a brief digression) is that he stood in contrast to almost every other leading man of the time in that he was not always the dominant half of a couple. You take a look at great stars like Gable, Bogart, Wayne etc. and they were always the sane, stable one in a relationship. The women, even the stronger ones, were always either a touch madcap/flaky (in comedy) or fragile/emotional/irrational (drama) to some extent. However charming or awesome they were, they always needed to learn their lesson at some point, thanks to the guidance of the man - think Bergman in Casablanca, Hepburn in Woman of the Year, shucks, even Roz Russell in His Girl Friday cracks a bit at the end. In the right style, this can be done quite romantically, but sometimes it becomes overbearing, patronising and slightly irritating. Cooper was a whole different attitude to life - he was mellow, even meek at times. He didn't try and 'straighten out' the object of his affections with his manly wisdom - in fact, he was often led around by the nose (Mr Deeds..., Ball of Fire) by them until they have a change of heart all of their own accord. He wasn't weak, he just let women be and didn't trample all over their personality - you get the impression that if he didn't like a girl as she was, he just wouldn't take up with her.
Anyhow, digression over, Cooper and Maguire are very sweet as husband and wife, she with her strict principles and he with a more mischievous attitude. They have great chemistry - in fact, it's probably about as sexy as 1860s Quakerism gets (look out for the barn business, it's cute and sexy and it made me laugh). Anthony Perkins is absolutely luminous as their oldest son, tempted by the desire to fight the rebels, and well deserved the Oscar nomination he received - you can tell he's heading for stardom, he's so arresting every moment he's on screen. He has the perfect look, too - long and lanky with a sombre countenance, fitting for a worried young believer. Phyllis Love as the daughter of the family and Peter Mark Richman as a local Union soldier have one of the least annoying romantic subplots in history (if you can't tell, I'm not usually a huge fan of 'meanwhile, those two crazy kids...' as a plot strand, but here it's actually quite touching), and little Richard Eyer is suitably cute and non-grating as the baby of the family, Little Jess.
Tonally, I was pleased to find that it was very reminiscent of Jacques Tourneur's masterful Stars In My Crown... both of them being stories intertwining religion and small-town life, with the darker side of the world looming unmissably overhead. Like Stars In My Crown, Friendly Persuasion is one of those fairly rare films about simple, moral people where you actually feel the moralising is doing you good and goes down awful easy, rather than sticking in the throat. It's something which I think is much easier to achieve in writing (I ought to know, I drank down those preachy Victorian books as a child), and getting it right on film is a tricky business - when it's done wrong, it's terribly tedious and sickly; but when it's done right, it's one of my favourite kinds of film. Marjorie Main pops up briefly as some kind of ludicrous comic relief, but luckily we escape this involuntary excursion into a Pa and Ma Kettle feature in a matter of minutes.
The pace is as gentle as you'd expect, but never becomes boring because the movie isn't complacent, content to lull you with tranquil scenery and folksy mannerisms. Every character has a rigorous narrative and moral journey to undertake over the course of the film, and the family is so well-drawn that watching their personal drama unfold is more engaging than the low-key subject matter would suggest. That isn't to say that it isn't enjoyable from a cinematic point of view as well - the colouring is delectable and the use of deep focus extremely gratifying, although this shouldn't surprise anyone given that the quiet genius of William Wyler was behind the camera. He works his magic here with the confidence of a man who didn't make bad films, the camera drinking in the rich pastel landscapes of
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| Not many Quaker cabins can boast a location so close to the Hollywood sign. |
Engaging characters, a strong premise and an even stronger script with the cinematic prowess of a true professional shaping it all makes this a highly rewarding, uplifting experience. There is something uniquely American about the film - it has something of both the old Western and of the Puritan colonists lingering around its finely-crafted serio-comic tale of moral turmoil.
The title song is horrible though, I don't care how many copies it shifted...
9/10
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