That Certain Woman (1937) TVRip Sub Fra (SiRiUs sHaRe)

That Certain Woman (1937)

Mary Donnell was married at sixteen to a gangster and soon widowed. She works for unhappily married lawyer Lloyd Rogers. A client's son Jack elopes with her, but his father tracks them down and has the marriage annulled. Mary has a son. Unaware of this, the father remarries; his new wife is crippled in an auto accident. The lawyer, now dying, tells Mary he has left her money for her and her son, Roger's widow suspects her husband may have been the father. When the courts threaten to take her son, Mary Jack and his wife to adopt him.

Bette Davis ... Mary Donnell, aka Mrs. Al Haines
Henry Fonda ... Jack V. Merrick, Jr.
Anita Louise ... Florence 'Flip' Carson Merrick
Ian Hunter ... Lloyd Rogers
Donald Crisp ... Jack V. Merrick Sr.
Hugh O'Connell ... Reporter Virgil Whitaker
Katharine Alexander ... Mrs. Lloyd Rogers (as Katherine Alexander)
Mary Philips ... Amy (as Mary Phillips)
Minor Watson ... Clark Tilden
Sidney Toler ... Detective Lieutenant Neely
Charles Trowbridge ... Dr. 'Doc' James
Norman Willis ... Fred, Man on Bus
Herbert Rawlinson ... Dr. Hartman
Tim Henning ... Kenyon

Director: Edmund Goulding

Runtime: 93 mins

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029650/

Codecs:

Video : 614 MB, 934 Kbps, 25.0 fps, 528*400 (4:3), XVID = XVID Mpeg-4,
Audio : 84 MB, 128 Kbps, 48000 Hz, 2 channels, 0x55 = MPEG Layer-3, CBR,

Audio: English
Subs: Francais (hard-encoded)

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I actually liked this picture. The story loosely parallels that of Madame Butterfly...and if you see it in that light, it doesn't seem all that over the top. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the writer had the idea of updating Madame Butterfly...I visually these guys in wrinkled shirtsleeves bending over their old Royal typewriters chomping on cigars..."Yeah...Madame Butterfly...that's the ticket...only she's not a prostitute, that won't work....but a fallen woman...but a noble one....she's a bootlegger's widow...yeah! that's the ticket...she marries a playboy, he dumps her, marries someone else...she waits for him....keep the faithful maid in the plot...has a kid....the husband comes back...remarried....she sends the kid off to live with her ex and then offs herself....yeah! It'll be a hit! Not a dry in the house."

I actually realized the similarity only in the last 15 minutes of the film when I got that awful yet familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach which always anticipates a mother's pending self-sacrifice. When Butterfly sees the American wife for the first time standing outside her little house on hill in Japan and realizes who she is and why she's there...it's really heartbreaking.

Anyway, despite the melodrama, the performances That Certain Woman are really very good, especially Davis's. She was a very intelligent actress, and understood what the camera would catch.

So, maybe you don't need to OWN this video, but I wouldn't disregard it entirely. Then go out and rent Frédéric Mitterrand's beautiful 1995 film of the opera. Heart-wrenching...

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This is exactly the sort of movie that must have infuriated Bette Davis. After all, her acting was stupendous--with an incredible emotional range and fantastic acting--it was just so realistic she carried the film all by herself. AND, despite all her great acting, the film was a sappy, soggy, soapy mess! It's because the writing, to put it charitably, stunk! The film was stylistically dated when it appeared in 1937--and was just way too melodramatic and soap-opera-like.

Bette is a sweet lady who was unfortunately married at a very young age to a gangster. When the movie began, the thug had been dead for years and Bette had tried very hard to put this past behind her and create a whole new life for herself. You could tell that despite this early experience, she was a real decent lady. So decent that her boss (Ian Hunter) and a rich immature brat (Henry Fonda) fell for her.

Well, she eventually elopes with rich-guy Fonda, but on their wedding night Fonda's overbearing father Donald Crisp confronts them and demands they have the marriage annulled. Bette could see that she was about to lose Fonda and so she makes a hasty retreat. Fonda NEVER tries to follow her or get her back.

Several years pass. Bette now has a child that was conceived during their honeymoon (that only lasted a few hours--barely enough time to even hope to conceive a child!) and Fonda has remarried to some rich society lady. Bette doesn't bother trying to get in touch with Fonda because she logically reasons that if he didn't return for her, it wasn't worth telling him about the kid and getting him to return.

Now at this point, the movie has been pretty good and not too sappy. Unfortunately, this was a synopsis of only the first half of the film. Later, Ian Hunter dies and Bette is accused of causing this death or having an affair with him, Fonda FINALLY returns and his father tries to steal the baby, and you find out Fonda's wife is in a wheel chair and Bette decides to give this other woman the baby?!?!?!?!?!?!? This didn't make any sense, but considering there were MANY more plot elements that all took place in the last half of the film, it's not worth trying to figure any of this out! Giving away the baby when she loved it? Hmmm. This sounds highly reminiscent of STELLA DALLAS and countless other soapy films. Bette Davis playing this super-martyr isn't very attractive or interesting.

THEN, after giving up the baby, she finds out some time later that Fonda's wife has died (that was nice of her) and she and Henry and the baby are all reunited for a sappy,....I mean "happy" ending.

The movie was lousy but still gets a 5 for Miss Davis' wonderful performance and that's about all. Everyone else, frankly, stunk--including milquetoast Fonda in his most forgettable role. And, the writers should be ashamed of themselves.

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Audiences will groan at the character of Mary Donnell. Bette Davis is normally looking out for number one--and she's definitely her good old self in the first half of the movie. The widow of a gangster, Donnell has become a super-competent legal secretary for a respected attorney in a big firm. She fends off unwanted press attention and generally handles herself quite well as a tough single girl in the big city.

She becomes the mistress of her married boss at the law firm (although the Hays Office undoubtedly required the removal of any breath of sexual content here, it should be pretty obvious to all what is going on). In the second half of the movie, which focusses on Jack Merrick (Henry Fonda), whom Donnell has always loved, she achieves peaks of self-sacrifice that will send you staggering to the bathroom to throw up.

This is the sort of film that gives soap opera a bad name.

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This is a superior and under-rated "woman's picture" that really has all the elements of the classic weeper: star-crossed lovers, twists of fate, and self-sacrifice. It also has a sterling performance from Bette Davis which gives a strong indication of why she would soon be a superstar and regarded as the screen's best actress: Her belief in a character could suffuse it with passion and poignancy and transcend the shallowness of the accompanying story. She's supported by an excellent cast - Henry Fonda (in a basically thankless role), the ever-reliable Donald Crisp (her showdown scene with him oddly foreshadows similar scenes with Gladys Cooper in NOW, VOYAGER), Mary Phillips (in a role that in a later version would obviously have gone to Thelma Ritter), who was, at the time, Mrs. Humphrey Bogart (in the same year's MARKED WOMAN Davis would appear with Mayo Methot, the next Mrs. B., and Ian Hunter. Edmund Goulding, who excelled at this kind of thing, wrote and directed it - he would later direct Davis in two other notable soapers, DARK VICTORY (one of her most celebrated performances, as Judith Traherne), and THE GREAT LIE (for which Mary Astor won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar). It's all served up in the best Warner Bros. tradition, but doesn't seem to be as well-remembered as other such films of the era, such as MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, STELLA DALLAS, or MY FOOLISH HEART.