Unlikely trio

Even a random sequence of films begins to reveal odd connections.  Here are three I watched in succession that seem strangely related, though wildly disparate in most respects.  The first two come through Turner Classic Movies by means of my TiVo “wishlist,” and the third from a new dvd of a recent foreign release.

Latterly coming to some appreciation of Olivia de Havilland as one of the great ladies of the classic Hollywood screen -- for a long time I’ve admired her in The Heiress, but recently was impressed by The Snake Pit -- I set out to see her other Oscar-winning performance in To Each His Own (1946, not on dvd). Ah yes, the Academy loves to see an actress age through make-up.  But Olivia does do a creditable job, as a middle-aged businesswoman in London during the Blitz, and in flashback as a teenager in a small Upstate town during the First World War, where she falls for an aviator on a bond tour.  Soon after, he dies in France, and Olivia is forced to deal with an out-of-wedlock baby in a censorious small community.  Her approach is novel, not to say implausible.  But it sets up the return to the train station in London where she comes face to face with that baby grown up to be an American flyboy himself (and played by the same actor).  As a woman’s weepie, this does not quite rank with Stella Dallas, but Mitchell Leisen’s intelligent direction keeps it interesting.

I wish I could say the same for William Wellman in The Great Man’s Lady (1942), but the only interest here is in the performances.  Barbara Stanwyck (the reason I watched, if you are aware of my recent obsession with her) outdoes Olivia by aging from Philadelphia maiden to frontier wife to centenarian teller of the hidden truth of America’s westward expansion.  Joel McCrea is the great man in question, but Brian Donlevy is the more interesting character as the gambler with a heart of gold, which he gives to our girl Barbara.  Again she is faced with babies of questionable parentage, though this story takes quite a different turn.  In an odd way, this film prefigures Liberty Valance in its balancing of fact and legend in the development of the West, but a wartime piety about American history takes any sting out of the story.

From an entirely different era and culture comes another story of a woman abandoned with child by a supposed great man.  In the case of Vincere (2010, MC-75), the “great man” in question is Mussolini, who seduces women, before he seduces the nation of Italy, with his presumptions of greatness.  It turns out Marco Bellochio, bad boy of Italian cinema -- best known for his debut Fists in the Pocket (1965) but best remembered by me for China is Near (1967) -- has been making films all these years, though rarely seen in the U.S.  He still pulls out all the stops, including documentary footage, animation, and other camera tricks, but this film too comes down to the riveting performance of its female lead, Giovanna Mezzogiorno, as the woman who gives all to the dashing blowhard, played with smoldering monomania by Filippo Timi, only to be abandoned when the erstwhile Socialist comes to power as a Fascist, who must clean up his past by sending his lover and then their grown son to mental asylums.  To me, Mezzogiorno seemed a dead ringer for Debra Winger, but she certainly has a passion all her own.