5/31/2023 0 Comments Storm in a teacup 1937The old fellow was really capable of quite an alluring wink before the eternal sneer entered his repertoire of expressions. Once again, Leigh doesn’t get to do much as the famed thespian, in his first role, steals whole scenes with his unassuming charm. Everything else unfolds in a rather perfunctory fashion, including the serviceable plot, with a grandiose finale at sea that should be keyed up for higher catharsis but comes off as more of a whimper.īut what a contrast between this pairing and Storm in a Teacup (1937), in which Leigh falls for the charms of a journalist played by Rex Harrison. The scene in which the lovers finally acknowledge that each has known the other’s secret all along is the perfect encapsulation of this romance between two superhumans, each performance perfectly calibrated to allow only tiny flashes of vulnerability to escape. A leading German agent posing as a retiree, Veidt flirts with local women shamelessly before spying Leigh from afar and turning his efforts, single-mindedly, toward winning her over. There are no melodramatic, flibbertigibbet flourishes in her performance here, all steely confidence and quiet calculation, a perfect match for costar Conrad Veidt. Olivier plays a pretty tepid, blandly handsome hero, however, and Leigh would get perhaps her ideal romantic match with her very next film, Dark Journey (1937), which sees the actress as a dress shop owner and double agent selling secrets to the Germans while reporting back to her French handlers. The urge to reach through time and smack the cameraman around for a closer shot may very well have pushed Selznick to prove what a capable producer could do with the young actress. After a period spent in convalescence at the estate of Spanish enemy Don Miguel, he returns and sweeps up his Cynthia in an embrace that’s kept, maddeningly, to the bottom left quadrant of a screen otherwise occupied by empty palace walls. The one scene in which viewers might see where Selznick was coming from reunites Leigh with her dashing love interest and the picture’s real hero, played by Laurence Olivier. Utterly lifeless, the film seems intent on embodying all the worst stereotypes of costume dramas, not least at the expense of Leigh herself, who fully earns a crack from Flora Robson’s Queen Elizabeth I calling her a “fluttering flibbertigibbet”. It is difficult to watch Fire Over England and feel any sense of inspiration at all. Selznick to bring Leigh to American shores for a massive studio epic called Gone With the Wind. They make one wonder whether Leigh is really a main selling point of these pictures at all.įire Over England (1936), the first and most deeply regrettable selection of the entire set, is said to be the picture that inspired David O. ![]() Yet it’s those very same collaborators that prove fatal to this collection’s sense of purpose, if such a thing exists. One could begin by waxing poetic on those big green eyes (which is already difficult, since all the films are in black-and-white), the jut of her chin, her ability to project a shrewd, implacable intelligence opposite actors like Laurence Olivier, Conrad Veidt, Rex Harrison, and the great Charles Laughton. It would be so much easier to talk about Cohen Media’s Vivien Leigh Anniversary Collection if the films contained therein actually made a convincing case for Leigh’s deserving of such a four-film set.
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