CHARLES BOYER

[JackFavell]

Oooh, la la! I loved that scene where he let her rest her head on him and sleep.....

You must see the Lucy show with William Holden.

[charliechaplinfan]

Right I'm going to make sure I see the William Holden episode, I haven't seen that one.

Has anyone here seem Cluny Brown? I think it's my favorite Jennifer role, banging away with her spanners

[feaito]

I did thanks to you and this is the review I posted when I saw it Alison:

Thanks to Alison I saw "Cluny Brown" (1946) and I loved it. It's a perfect film, full of charm, totally offbeat, with wonderful, enchanting, unforgettable performances by the marvelous cast: Charles Boyer as Belinski is superb! Jennifer Jones as the free spirited Cluny Brown is a joy to behold; Helen Walker as the honourable Betty Cream, another delight. Even Peter Lawfrod sparks as Belinski's passionate admirer and Betty Cream's number one Beau; Reginald Owen and Margaret Bannerman are deliciously funny as his lordship and her ladyship; Sara Allgood and Ernest Cossart deftly impersonate their proud servants; Richard Haydn is Cluny's pompous fiancée; lovable Una O'Connor his non-speaking (but constantly coughing) mother; Reginald Gardiner is a hoot as the host of a cocktail party; and Billy Bevan is amusing as Cluny's uncle. The film is not predictable at all, not formulaic, full of wonderful vignettes and a marvelous mise-en-scene. They just dont make them anymore like this.

It is indeed a discovered gem for me, just like "The Seventh Veil" (1945).

[charliechaplinfan]

Much as I love the Fanny trilogy and I do love it an awful lot, I'm not dissappointed by Fanny. It's the three films condensed in to one and doesn't have the same emotional impact for me as the trilogy, I do enjoy it, I think this is because of the calibre of the cast. Casting Charles Boyer and Maurice Chevalier in the same movie is a joy, both accents are a joy to listen to, one far more seductive than the other, the other still holding an impish quality, two completely contrasting screen lovers yet perfect together playing the older generation. For me Chevalier was a revelation in this movie, his perfromance stands out above the one from the original cast, I don't know why, he's very touching the way he loves Fanny. Charles Boyer is moving as Cesar, someone has mentioned that look when he's trying to tell Marius how much he means to him, it's brave standing in the shoes of Raimu but if anyone was fit to do it, it was Boyer. Leslie Caron has far more joie de vivre as Fanny, Horst Buchholz a capable Marius.

Has anyone else seen Fanny?

[mongoII]

Happy Birthday Charles Boyer


(1899 - 1978)

[charliechaplinfan]

Mongo, thank you. That's a lovely picture of him. Sigh.

[charliechaplinfan]

I watched Conquest tonight, it's unbelievable that this film lost more money for MGM than any other film between 1920 and 1949. It must have cost a lot because it's quite a good film, it's not great the script is so so but the performances by Garbo and Boyer transcend the script. I'd read that Boyer did not want this role at all, Napoleon was too big a figure for any French man to play, something must have induced him and to me he played him very well. He's not as suave as usual, in some scenes he's quite coarse as I suppose Napoleon himself was meant to be.

For superb acting watch his scene with Maria Ouspenskaya, she's living forty years in the past and doesn't believe a word he says. She thinks he's a soldier who cheats at cards and nothing more. Garbo is believable making love to Boyer, sometimes I feel she doesn't totally connect with her costar but here she does so nicely. it's a pity her performance did not get more credit at the box office.

[charliechaplinfan]

I've just read an excerpt of Ingrid Bergman's biography regarding making Gaslight. She waa talking in generla about the haphazard way movies were made out of sequence and how her first scenes always seemed to be the love scenes and how awkward it could be with actors she had never met before. She didn't want her first scene with Boyer to be a love scene, he was an actor she had a lot of respect for but yet again the love scene came first. She had to step down from a train and run to Boyer and embrace him. So he stood on a box alone on the station platform and she had to run up to him and try her best not to kick the box from under him, the scene caused much laughter between the two.

[JackFavell]

That is so funny! I can see the two making a joke out of this - they seem to have the same ironic sense of humor, laughing about the absurdity of Hollywood.

[charliechaplinfan]

I just watched Gaslight, I didn't see that scene in there, there was a different scene, perhaps they laughed so much it was decided to change the scene.

Ingrid nearly lost her chance to star with Boyer as David Selznick insisted on top billing for her and Boyer would not concede so Selznick decided to pull her from the deal. When she heard this she was upset, she was going to get pulled from the film because of billing? Selznick would not concede on this until Ingrid had broken down in floods of tears. She didn't want to miss starring with Boyer and wasn't in the least bit concerned about top billing, she knew a quality script when she read one and knew the quality of a good director and costar. I wonder if Boyer's objection to conceding top billing to Ingrid was more his annoyance with Selznick's insistence and memos.

[JackFavell]

Ha ha! Selznick probably caused a lot of his own headaches that way!


Did I post this one yet? I tried to on his birthday, but I don't think it took.

[charliechaplinfan]

Oh, that one's lovely

I really enjoyed Gaslight last night, he plays a mean baddie who still tries to charm his way out of his trouble in the end. He looked so harmless too bound up on that chair. I think I'd have let him have the diamonds and freed him.

[JackFavell]

I love the way he is still trying to play her at the end. Boyer manages something really great within that scene. I hate to say I love him in this movie, but I do. He rings a lot of changes before we finally see the real Sergius Bauer.

Boyer has been so coldly calculating throughout the whole movie, and then, he tries once again to rely on his cold tricks and empty charm. But there is something else - Boyer shows a pathetic animal quality when he is bound up... he would gnaw off his own leg to get away - so he could be with his lover, those maddening gems.

He is so blinded by those jewels - I mean, what man in their right mind would not want Ingrid over a few crummy jewels? We know he can't possibly get away with it twice, but....he....is so very persuasive, playing the pathetic victim, we aren't sure! And he's Charles Boyer! Can he possibly get her to cut him free?!!! There's a lot of doubt in our collective audience mind. How will he get out of this jam? Can he really be so evil as to expect his wife to forgive him? Does he really think she is so stupid and gullible? Is she?

Then she lets him have it and we think we see for the first time, the real man - Sergius Bauer - deluded, truly pathetic, as bound by his love to those jewels as she was bound by her weakness to him... and he is driven just as mad by those jewels as he wanted her to be. They are a fickle, cold hearted lover, those pale diamonds, dancing just beyond his grasp - with no thought of him at all. He was so close..... I think Boyer's brilliant, because we still don't see Sergius. He is so cold, like a diamond himself, one that cuts without a thought. He is shut down, hiding his true nature in the manners of a proper gentleman. Even as he pleads with Paula, he is acting.

And then, at the last moment of his capture, Boyer, incredibly, opens himself wide - his eyes open ecstatically as he talks to Joseph Cotten about how he has wanted those gems his whole life. He shows us the true gleam of love and madness in his eye, the reality of his whole existence in just one half a sentence -- then, just as quickly, he shuts the light in his eyes down, crushes it under a dull eyebrow, and we see the struggle to hide himself once more, to hide behind the cold stare of a methodical man.

I watched the earlier Anton Walbrook version the other night - it was brilliant in it's own way, but Boyer's version allows him complexities that are nowhere in the other film. I would much rather be tormented by Charles Boyer! Walbrook was just mean! Like a little Hitler. Although I think Diana Wynyard makes one realize how trapped a woman could be in a marriage back in that time period. However, in the long run, the 1940 one just makes me appreciate the 1944 version that much more.... I know there are those who hate the Cukor version, but I think it's great, and they spent time correcting any loopholes in the plot before they filmed the Boyer/Bergman version. They examined character rather than just making a standard mystery. This makes it a pretty perfect film in my book, with a really great performance by Boyer.

HA! I GOT THIS POST BACK! I am ecstatic. I knew I could never recreate it!

[charliechaplinfan]

I wholeheartedly agree with you. It's a tremendous performance and just when the audience is convinced that he his the biggest cad ever to marry a beautiful lady, he gives a performance that makes you want to cut him free or at least doubt action Paula is going to take. And I feel sorry for him because of those darn jewels, they've mad him miserable and he's made Paula miserable, he makes us feel that it is an illness, something he can't help.

There's no doubt that his perfromance is enhanced by Bergman, she plays her part so perfectly, so that we doubt what we believe, we believe it to be his manipulations and control, yet at some points in the film we doubt, it's quite possible she is going mad, if not gone mad. How scared is she of him and the madness when they attend the concert? She is fantastic and her waist, so thin, I was very envious.

I saw Private Worlds on Saturday. It's very good, more of a vehicle for Claudette Colbert, she wanted Boyer for the role of the head of the hospital and here in one of his first Hollywood films he's very good, no wonder his Hollywood career looked up from this point. Plus the film has Joel McCrea to recommend it too.

[JackFavell]

I can't imagine being surrounded by Boyer and Joel McCrea. I would faint!