Humoresque (1947)

BEAUTIFULLY shot. Great musical performances. Witty and humorous lines, Oscar Levant got some pretty good one-liners. Joan Crawfords was gorgeous as ever! Even though her eyebrows were a little too thick (I find her eyebrows perfect in A Woman's Face). However the story doesn't really hold up, nor does the characters. Especially the mother? probably the worst mother on earth. Gina? Her role is very ineffective. Helen? I felt this role was too weak for Crawford, also very unreasonable. The acting was also stiff and contrived. John Garfield as a violinist wasn't convincing to me (maybe he's too deadpan?), and there's no chemistry between him and Crawford.

When this film first came out in 1946, radio comics told jokes about it. The jokes centered on John Garfield, who had a filmography of nothing but tough guy parts, playing a classical violinist. These jokes were probably publicity plants, but they do point out a problem with the movie. Garfield carries with him a long established persona of a socially engaged tough guy and this history sabotages his attempt to play an ethereal, over-mothered, nerdy, self obsessed artist. I keep expecting him to punch someone. There is also the shadow issue of his sexuality. The childhood mentor with whom he lives, when asked about the nature of their relationship, answers that it is identical to the one between George Sand and Chopin. Huh? How did that one get past the censors? Joan Crawford does give one of her best performances, but it was a clearly a performance. I appreciated the effort Crawford put into it. She just misses. Part of the problem is the script. She is as much plot device as a fully fleshed out character. Why is she so over emotional? Her over-reaction at the end-and, boy, what an over-reaction- is not forecast by her earlier casual dismissals of her husband and her boy toys.But the film is very high level melodrama. The swelling music behind key scenes fits in. A compelling story is told well. Oscar Levant's one liners are great until they begin to grate. The cast does a uniform good job. Thus, Humoresque is well worth seeing, even if it falls short of being a classic.

Good gravy... they don't make them like this anymore. "Humoresque" is a dark, melodramatic romance in which everything is played as Grand Tragedy, going so far over the top that it becomes difficult to take seriously. John Garfield is Paul Boray, the violinist so gifted that he can bring every woman in his life to tears with the beauty of his solos. Joan Crawford is Helen, the nearsighted socialite in an open marriage who lusts after Paul's artistic fruits.The movie opens with a flashback: a young John Garfield has a choice between a violin and a baseball bat... being a tortured artist at heart, he grabs the fiddle and his life is never the same. Helen manipulates Paul into falling in love with her under the pretense of advancing his career. Garfield's best buddy is an obnoxious wise-cracking pianist who has a "witty" comeback for every occasion: "Call me back in an hour- I should be asleep by then."If this was a silent movie it would have been a smash… John Garfield's face is perfect: good-looking, almost brutish, with a touch of pain and sadness in his eyes that makes him a fascinating screen presence. And Joan Crawford's face was perfect here, too: halfway between the big-eyed beauty that she was and the menacing monster she would become. If the film consisted of only extreme close-ups of the two leads it would have been a wonderfully rich story... instead we get extended sequences featuring maudlin violin music and pages and pages of stylized dialogue.The unforgettable finale- featuring the longest suicide in film history- is Joan Crawford at her hammy best. As John Garfield gives his greatest stage performance Joan is at their beach house, alone and despondent, heartbroken and inconsolable, and the violin music swells as we cut back and forth between the concert and Joan's snail-paced walk into the ocean. She pauses every few moments for a close-up, enormous eyebrows arched above her contorted features. Slowly... slowly... she makes her way into the surf, which seems to sense her pain and swallow her instantly. Alas, she is gone, and Garfield learns a valuable, tragic life lesson: The violin is the instrument of doomed romance. Deeeep...Next time take the baseball bat.GRADE: B-

Humoresque (1946)This is a sticky, weepy melodrama, and power to it! If you don't like this sort of thing, or don't like classical music, you truly might still like the movie for its filming excellence, another product of the well-oiled 1940s Hollywood factory for movies. Photography by Ernest Haller, music by Franz Waxman (with assistance from Isaac Stern, who also did many of the close-ups of the violin playing), and direction by Jean Negulesco, who made a number of subtle, highly refined films.John Garfield plays his brooding part with proper broodingness, if not exactly psychological depth. It's appropriate, overall, and a kind of second fiddle to Joan Crawford, who plays her part from every angle, a great performance. Third in line is an impeccable Oscar Levant as sidekick and amazing (as always) pianist, playing his own parts. I've always loved his laconic humor, and the endless one liners he comes up with almost seem like his own. Right on.The plot will strike some people as old fashioned--a classical violinist played by Garfield, Paul Boray, comes from a lower working class family in New York and conquers the music world. With some complications, not least of which is Crawford's rich, troubled, but intriguing character, Mrs. Wright. It's all told in a giant flashback, beautifully rendered musically, and with a relentlessly beautiful camera leading us through it all. In many ways it's an amazing film, restrained mostly by a kind of plot that is tied up and packed with too much knowingness. If only they had let things hang loose, and let some twists take us truly by surprise, then the melodrama really would be melodramatic, which is my favorite thing, at least.