Black as the Pit from Pole to Pole

Funny how stereotypes change over time. Back in the first century A.D., Germans were considered synonymous with chaos and barbarism. Today they are more often identified with order and efficiency. The Scandinavians horrified Western Europe with their Viking raids back in the Middle Ages but nowadays, they are known primarily for their pacifism. The Englishmen of the Elizabethan era were considered to be rude, crude individuals as were the Spaniards of Cervantes's time. Yet by the Victorian era, Englishmen were known for being anything but rude and crude and today we are more likely to associate Spaniards with foppish mannerisms than with the rude behavior they displayed in Cervantes's day.

In short, stereotypes are not engraved in stone and they tend to change over time. The average historian knows this quite well. The average chauvinist should know it as well but he tends to deny it -- even when the popular culture proves him wrong time after time.

Consider the way Poles were portrayed in the 1935 movie The Wedding Night. If you were to ask the average American nowadays what ethnic groups they most associated with arranged marriages, agricultural labor and domestic violence, neither Poles nor Polish Americans would be among the first few ethnic groups to come to mind. Ironically, they would be more apt to associate Mexicans or Mexican-Americans with these traits -- and yet, in this movie, there were no characters of Mexican descent that I could see. Instead it was the Polish characters in this movie who acted out the type of stereotypes that most people today would associate with Mexican immigrants. Indeed, the Poles in this flick were depicted as rural folk who are hot-tempered, prone to arranging marriages and obsessed with controlling women. Moreover, they were also depicted as being so different from mainstream Americans that one would hardly associate them with today's Polish-Americans.

So is this a good thing? Not necessarily. Then again The Wedding Night told its story so convincingly that it never occurred to me, the son of a Polish-American woman, to question its image of Polish-Americans. If anything, I found the movie quite convincing in its heartbreaking portrayal of the problems faced by a young immigrant woman named Manya Novak (played by Ukrainian-born actress Anna Sten) who struggled to reconcile her loyalty to her Polish roots with her attraction to the modernity of the American way and I could not help but wonder how often the same story could be told today about many non-Polish immigrants.

But enough about that.

The movie started out in New York City as bored author Tony Barrett (played by Gary Cooper) found out that his latest novel was such a flop that even his best friend and publisher chose to have nothing to do with it. He talked his wife Dora (played by Helen Vinson) into vamoosing back to his family homestead in Connecticut where he discovered that he had a family of Polish immigrants as neighbors. He became intrigued by their quaint ways and in return, the family's oldest daughter (the above-mentioned Manya) became intrigued by him and his quaint ways. Nothing came of it though until Dora departed for NYC and Tony was forced to rely more and more upon his Polish neighbors for supplies. Along the way, he learned something about the work ethic from Manya and before long, she was performing as the unofficial muse for his new novel.

Then Manya's father caught on that Manya was spending a little too much time at the Barrett household for an engaged woman. Tony found out that Manya did not love the man she was engaged to marry and that the engagement was part of an arrangement between her father and her husband-to-be. However, Tony was powerless to stop her from going through with it.

Things got worse when a snowstorm stranded Manya at Tony's place and she was forced to stay the night. Even though Manya and Tony spent the night in separate bedrooms, that fact did little to spare Manya from the wrath of her father the next morning. Then the audience discovered that Manya was not necessarily going along with her father by choice. At the first sign of defiance, Manya's father showed no hesitation in slapping her and reminded her that she did not have the same freedom as an American girl. After all, she was a Polish girl, which meant Manya had no choice but to obey her father's wishes -- whether she liked it or not.

Then Dora returned and learned of the relationship between Manya and Tony. Though Tony insisted that everything was innocent and that Dora was the one who should be explaining her social activities in his absence, Dora suspected differently. She read Tony's unfinished novel and realized from his written words just how strong the bond between writer and muse had become. But Dora was not yet ready to step aside from her marriage and poor Manya was already in enough trouble with her father as it was. Once Dora spoke to her, things just got worse.

Soon afterward, Manya got married and it looked as if everything would be finally settled. But, alas, Manya's wedding night had one last nasty surprise left for the Novaks and the Barretts. And someone ended up paying a big price for said surprise...

I don't know what I expected from The Wedding Night but I found myself far more moved by it than I had expected. Perhaps it was because I identified a bit with Manya. Perhaps it was because I identified a bit with Tony (though I hate to admit that). But most likely it was because I liked the rather complex relationship it depicted between Tony and Dora. Dora was hardly the ideal wife but she was not unsympathetic either. A bad movie would have portrayed her in shades of black, but this film just settled for portraying her in shades of gray and as a result, I actually felt for both her and Manya. Tony had his moments too but I could not help thinking that if he had been a more responsible person and not so intent on putting Manya in an impossible position, things would not have gotten so bad.

It said a lot about the movie that although Gary Cooper played Tony as a sympathetic character, he too had scenes in which he was less than sympathetic. For example, the time he acted so priggish to his returning wife was not one of his better moments. Nor was his attempt to hit on Manya as if she were just a woman whose sole reason for existence was to please him and only him.

Towards the end of the movie, it became obvious that Tony felt strongly about Manya and that Manya felt strongly about him. But ultimately his feelings for her appeared to do her more harm than good. While it would seem naive to believe that Manya's life would have been happier had she never met Tony Barrett, it seems equally naive to believe that Tony bore no responsibility for Manya's fate. Perhaps this last part was why he was so quiet at the end of the movie. And why he was so eager to remember Manya as she had been in the comparatively happy past -- and not as she was in the present.

God Rest These Merry Gentlemen

Stop me if you heard this one but once upon a time, there were these three ghosts and they were haunting this guy, you see... No, I'm not talking about A Christmas Carol. As much as I love Dickens, I'd like to think that he would prefer that I not mention his name every December. And anyway, I'm talking about yet another story -- the 1940 film Beyond Tomorrow.

Beyond Tomorrow can be described as one of those old-fashioned holiday movies that really should not work but end up doing so anyway. Of course, it helps your appreciation of this movie if you actually like people and have gotten sick and tired of holiday movies that seem perpetually obsessed with gloom and misery. As much as I appreciate social realism, I cannot help but wonder if it's always a kindness to continually remind people of the down side of life at a time when most folks are getting all too many real-life reminders of such a side, especially when said movie does not really have anything novel to say apart from “Life really stinks sometimes, doesn't it?”

Anyway, Beyond Tomorrow does have enough dark scenes toward its end to satisfy the most determined pessimist but it also has a lot of likable characters and a genuine love for humanity. It may lean a bit too heavily on certain character types but it is never eyerollingly bad.

The movie begins in the mansion of three eccentric millionaires. One is a pessimistic Okie named George Melton (played by Harry Caray). Another is an optimistic Irishman named Michael O'Brien (played by Charles Winninger). And the third is an Englishman named Allan Chadwick (played by C. Aubrey Smith) whose temperament falls somewhere between Melton's and O'Brien's. Playing housekeeper for them is a White Russian refugee named Madame Tanya (played by Maria Ouspenskaya) who generally plays mother hen to the three aging bachelors.

The three men are awaiting guests for a Christmas Eve dinner, only to find that the guests have canceled at the last minute. Melton believes it had something to do with an old unnamed scandal he was once associated with; O'Brien tries to persuade him otherwise. When such persuasion fails to lift Melton's spirits, O'Brien decides to conduct a Twainian experiment by going to the window and throwing out three wallets containing only ten dollars and one of the millionaires' business cards. The idea behind the experiment is to select the ideal stranger to be a guest for dinner by seeing who among the passersby is honest enough to pick up a wallet and return it to its rightful owner.

One woman named Arlene Terry (played by Helen Vinson) blatantly flunks the test by taking the ten bucks and tossing the wallet aside. But a visiting young gentleman from Texas named James Houston (played by Richard Carlson) and a female refugee from New Hampshire named Jean Lawrence (played by Jean Parker) prove more honest and return their wallet to their rightful owners. The two honest folks get invited to dinner, get acquainted afterward and celebrate Christmas Eve with the three millionaires and their servants.

Pretty soon it becomes obvious to even the slowest observer that Houston and Lawrence are falling in love with each other and the three millionaires do their part to ease the path of Cupid. But then tragedy strikes and despite a warning from Madame Tanya, the three millionaires end up dying in a plane crash.

The two young people get an inheritance from the late gentlemen and do their best to honor their memory. But the path of true love is never all that easy and pretty soon the two lovers are parted by the above-mentioned Terry. Terry uses the promise of a singing career and her own rep as an entertainer to lure Houston away from Lawrence. At this point the movie enters rather questionable territory by modern standards because even though the movie has already established that Terry is hardly an honest person, it seems a bit much to believe that Houston bears absolutely no responsibility for allowing himself to be seduced by her. Indeed, for such an honest fellow, he seems to forget Lawrence -- his one true love -- remarkably fast.

The three old gentlemen return from the dead and witness all these goings-on but prove powerless to stop them. For a long time, O'Brien remains in denial about the situation, continually insisting to Melton that Houston is a good lad who will eventually see the light. But then Melton is called away to face his own version of the afterlife and it does not seem likely that he will be meeting St. Peter. Then Chadwick is called away to a happier fate and O'Brien alone is left to try to mend matters on the mortal plane. So obsessed he becomes with fixing things that he forgoes a chance to go to Heaven in order to stay on Earth and bring the two lovers back together. But, alas, Terry appears to have a jealous ex and he has other plans...

It is tempting to dismiss this film as yet another predictable soap opera from those thrilling days of yesteryear but I found it quite entertaining. Granted, I wish Lawrence and Houston showed a little more backbone toward the end but then there probably would not be much of a story. Besides, the best part of the movie occurs towards the beginning when we are being introduced to the main characters. Not every movie can make good people interesting and it seems ironic that despite all the palaver from critics about how bad guys are always more interesting than the good guys, this appears to be one of those rare movies in which the good guys are actually more entertaining. I'd rather rewatch that multilingual session of “Jingle Bells” that our heroes take part in during the Christmas Eve party than any scene Terry appears in. And though it's tempting to declare the fate of our characters to be hokey and corny, I kinda like the fact that for all its darker scenes, the movie actually ends on a happy note. Besides, my inner Catholic relishes the thought of an afterlife in which a heavenly messenger can be forced to change his plans because of an especially feisty deceased matriarch -- and I cannot help but wonder my own mother would think of this flick. Somehow I doubt she would hate it.