Peter Ibbetson (1935) Film 1935, directed by Henry Hathaway (USA)
Based on the novel by George Du Maurier
"Peter Ibbetson"
With Gary Cooper (Peter Ibbetson), Ann Harding (Mary, Duchess of Towers), John Halliday (Duke of Towers), Ida Lupino (Agnes), Virginia Weidler (Mimsey Mary to 6 years), Dickie Moore (Gogo-Peter to 6 years).
Peter Ibbetson, a young architect in volatile temperament, is sent from the Duke of Towers to renovate its dependencies. He met his wife, Mary, and immediately binds friendship with her, despite their many differences.
The young man thinks to find in her reminiscences of her childhood sweetheart, Mimsey, which he had been separated for over 20 years ago.
***
Peter Ibbetson, before being a movie, is a novel by George du Maurier (grandfather of Daphne), the author of Trilby
- novel famous across the Channel - famous for inspiring, they say, The Phantom of the Opera Gaston Leroux ... Peter Ibbetson
experienced a much more modest success, while Trilby was acclaimed by critics and readers (and was the subject of a stage adaptation that ran for many years). On a very personal view, I think the novels of George du Maurier have enough trouble passing the test of time. If the frames are beautiful, you can blame the pen getting lost in the details of low importance, which tend to anarchist story structure. We must let them they are filled with humor rather ahead of its time, but the tone, if he wants removed
, robs the story of his somewhat serious and thus its credibility.
The film that made Henry Hathaway in 1935, although it contains the essential elements of the work focuses on the true about never getting lost. The story traces the fate indeed Mimsey and Gogo, reared together in Paris in 1850, then forcibly separated after the death of the boy's mother. Party in England, Peter alias Gogo will never return to Paris and will never see Mimsey, although he had promised him one day to come and look ... Peter is haunted, more than 20 years later by the memory of this brutal separation, and is inhabited by a feeling of isolation, loneliness and almost guilty, who continues as a burning obsession. The death of his mother, his departure from France, the separation from her childhood friend, as many rifts that make Peter Ibbetson a being broken.
It is a romantic, but not in a pejorative sense: it is dark, even unstable, full of contradictions. In short, the character has largely expanded to its adaptation to the screen ... Gary Cooper, is expected shortly in a book as particular, had probably been there one of the best roles of his impressive career.
His meeting with Mary, Duchess of Towers, suddenly it dissipates all the torments that connect to his childhood ... Just because Mary is the symbol of his lost childhood.
Ann Harding, a distinguished, determined, but a splendid sweetness, interprets his role to perfection. A set of unadorned beauty and delicacy and elegance that remain etched in the mind ... The character of Mary-Mimsey is not an ingenue, naive and passive, as we can both find romance in the frames. The strength and emotion combine with a touching simplicity in this figure, which remains a model of stability and courage throughout his tragic fate. An honest soul, alive, and yet haunted by a tragic sense of abandonment which the viewer has unfortunately a short preview ...
Changes scriptwriting (the intervention of the Duke of Towers in the plot, which limits the dispersion of the characters and the action), reinforces the dreamlike universe of this film is its element The most unconventional and stronger. A work which is much point of view very singular and rather ahead of its time.
added that photography, almost expressionist, this film brings a simple beauty that accompanies the story perfectly.
A forgotten masterpiece to (re) discovery, published in the Collection Introuvables (available at FNAC)!
