BACK STREET

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 92, 28 March 1941, Page 16

BACK STREET

(Universal)

ACK STREET is a Fanny Hurst story about a woman who was "the other woman" in a man’s life for 25 years. It was made into a film with

Irene Dunne and John Boles a good many years ago, and now, in keeping with the current vogue for remaking past successes, Universal have produced it again with Charles Boyer and Margaret Sullavan. I regret to say that I have neither read Fannie Hurst’s story nor did I see the original film version; at least I can be absolved of any suspicion of prejudice concerning the present film. The picture is strong meat, and will be appreciated most, I think, by the emotionally mature — particularly by women. The tale opens at the turn of the century with a carefree maiden of Cincinnati falling in love with a young banker from New Orleans who has a French accent and a winning way with him. After an idyliic week spent in hayfields watching clouds, the banker decides to marry the Cincinnati maiden, but she, having been rudely taken for a buggy ride by a _ presumptuous drummer (American for commercial traveller) misses the boat-literally. The banker from New Orleans consoles himself, evegtually marries another, and has two children. When he stumbles across his old sweetheart five years later in New York, however, the old love flares up again. Both realise that divorce would ruin a promising career in banking, and seek consolation with love in a flat. This becomes a permanent arrangement, and the girl from Cincinnati (Continued on next page)

(Continued from previous page) becomes the mysterious second woman in the banker’s life, content with a small corner of his life. Twenty years pass (hair having turned to silver and the banker’s two children having grown up to awareness of the mysterious woman in their father’s life) and’a long overdue crisis arrives. The son confronts the two elderly lovers, charges them cruelly, as young people do, with "rottenness." By a Strange Blow of Fate father has a stroke and dies, His mistress ‘cannot go to his side, hears his death rattle only by telephone, goes into a decline, and dies herself. Margaret Sullavan sweeps effortlessly from laughter-loving girl to slightly pathetic middle-aged lover. It is a performance which will demand sympathy from most men, who will be repelled by the element of selfishness in Charles Boyer’s characterisation of the banker, Boyer makes him no frail human caught in a web of passion, as the novelettes put it; rather a self-gratifying man trying to live in two worlds at once and in neither with much success. But, however selfish the banker, however weak and self-sacrificing the girl from Cincinnati, the performances of Boyer and Margaret Sullavan are emotionally. satisfying, as indeed both artists usually are. ; I don’t know what the moral of it is. But currency reformers may find in it another argument against banks.