Two Classic Movies: My Man Godfrey and The River
by Rich Horton
Here's an informal look at two movies I watched recently, both classics. These are My Man Godfrey, from 1936, and The River, from 1951. Both are very highly regarded films -- for example, both are featured on Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" list.
The movie is directed by Gregory LaCava and stars William Powell and Carole Lombard -- and I'll always watch a William Powell movie. (I'm less familiar with Lombard, who died tragically early in a plane crash flying home from a War benefit event in 1942.) Both leads were nominated for Oscars, and they are both good, but I also really liked Gail Patrick, who played the nasty sister of Carole Lombard's character. (Patrick apparently became typecast as the mean rival to the top-billed women -- she said she was so afraid on the set that it came out as haughtiness or meanness. (Her sister in this movie is named Irene, mildly ironic in that she played a rival to another Irene (Dunne) in My Favorite Wife.) She also became a significant television producer (notably for Perry Mason) after retiring from acting.)
My Man Godfrey is very explicitly a Depression film. We meet Powell's character, Godfrey Smith, while he's living in the city dump. Both Cornelia Bullock (Patrick) and her sister Irene (Lombard) try to hire him to help them win a Scavenger Hunt. He picks Irene, who is immediately intrigued by him, and who hires him as a butler for her family -- herself, Cornelia, her mother Angelica, and her father Alexander are each in their very different ways extremely hard to deal with so servants are leaving all the time.
The plot is predictable -- it's obvious that Godfrey knows too much about how to act in a fashionable home to be of the social class they think, so he's actually wholly eligible (except for his age) for Irene, and she doesn't care anyway. (Though he does.) He puts up with the family's eccentricities, helps the much put upon maid/housekeeper, tries to help Alexander with his business (which is in serious jeopardy), and is fiercely opposed by Cornelia, who both wants to mess with her sister's life and (I believe) is also very attracted to Godfrey.
Godfrey quits once he realizes that Irene is getting too attached to him, at the same time as Mr. Bullock's business finally collapses. The resolution is economically a fairy tale, with Godfrey not only saving the Bullock family but lifting dozens of destitute men from poverty. But it's a screwball comedy, not a serious movie of social criticism, and the screwball and comedy aspects really work. It's a true ensemble -- all the lead characters are funny in very different ways. It's really a delight, one of the great comedies of the 1930s.
It was something of a lesson for me in watching an adaptation, however. Having just read Godden's novel a couple of weeks ago, I was looking for a pretty straight adaptation. But there are really significant differences, which distracted me for a while. I finally had to accept the obvious -- both pieces need to be appreciated on their own.
Both the movie and novel are about a young woman, Harriet, on the cusp of adolescence. Harriet is the son of an English man who runs a jute factory on the shores of a very large river in what is now Bangladesh. (I'm pretty sure the river is the Padma -- which is called the Ganges in India. Bangladesh was part of India at the time of the action in both the novel and movie, though in 1948 it became East Pakistan.) In both book and film Harriet has sisters and a brother, and her mother is pregnant. She has a frenemy named Valerie, from another slightly richer English family. The action takes place over a few months, and key aspects are one shocking death, and Harriet's attraction to a wounded soldier, Captain John, complicated by a feeling of rivalry with two slightly older girls.
But the film does make significant changes. Harriet is the second child in the novel, and her older sister Bea is a rival (along with Valerie) for Captain John's attention. In the movie, Harriet is the eldest, and the "Bea" character is sort of replaced by Melanie, the biracial daughter of their neighbor Mr. John (another new character, presented as the much older cousin of Captain John, who had married a local woman, since deceased.) Melanie is a fascinating character, and to be honest I think the movie could have done a bit more with her. Along with this, the whole plot surrounding Captain John is a greater focus in the movie, and the romance of sorts that he has with all three girls (Harriet, Valerie, and Melanie) is more significant, and more serious. (Harriet is clearly too young for him -- and he acts appropriately in both book and movie -- and my sense was that both Valerie (in book and movie) and Bea (in book) were a bit on the young side -- 16 maybe? -- but Melanie in the movie is probably of age (maybe 20?) for a man in his mid 20s (I assume?) to be with.) Captain John is also an American in the movie -- I'm honestly not sure why -- while he seemed likely to be English in the book. And the movie seems to be set during World War II, while the time frame of the novella is more ambiguous -- possibly purposely so, though I myself lean towards WWI.
Having said all that, both the book and movie really work. They are lovely and honest portrays of a near-adolescent girl coming of age. India is (to my ignorant eyes) honestly portrayed. The lovely prose of the book is parallelled in a sense by the beautiful color portrayal of the setting of the movie. (The color palette is remarkable, very bright, very striking.) It's not a plot-centric story, in either version, but that's OK with me. Both are recommended -- though, perhaps not surprisingly, I prefer the novella. (I review it here.)
(I should note that Rumer Godden collaborated on the movie's screenplay with Renoir, so it should be assumed she approved of the changes to her story. And apparently she did like this movie -- she famously hated the adaptation of her novel Black Narcissus, though that movie too is considered a classic.)
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