Claudette Colbert

COLLIDING WITH MADAME COLBERT

I once encountered Claudette Colbert in a small grocery store in Westwood.  I am still sorry that it was an unpleasant meeting because I had admired her for years.  I still do.  She had an unusually long career because it was a successful one, continually  —  from film to stage and back again.  She had little versatility, but she also had few betters in sophisticated comedy.

Moral of my encounter:  One did not get in madame’s way in the store.  Wow!  Did we know who we were!  Actually, I started it so must take part of the blame.  And I am still sorry that I didn’t say, “But I’ve admired you all my moviegoing life.”

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PRIVATE WORLDS        Gregory LaCava        1935

I went prepared to laugh at the idea of Claudette Colbert  as a psychiatrist  —  Charles Boyer and Joel McCrea too.  My collaborator said that she was prepared to laugh at the paradox pf Boyer and McCrea in the same movie.

I had to eat my laughs.  All three are excellent, Colbert especially in a very subtle change of pace from her Academy Award-winning role the year before in It Happened One Night.

She and McCrea are doctors in a mental hospital to which comes stern misogynist Boyer as new supervisor.  He will (SPOILER ALERT) end eating humble pie in the face of Colbert’s excellence  —  and extraordinary compassion.

The script eventually descends into melodrama and loses its strength despite LaCava’s dramatic camera angling and perhaps too much music, and (S A again) the audience must have its romantic happy ending.  But this is a surprisingly sophisticated film for 30s Hollywood, and its psychology may hold up better than all that talk of complexes in Hitchcock’s memorable Spellbound and the glib jargon at the end of his Psycho.

NEXT Friday POST November 24

Until then,
Enjoy a movie,
Rick