My chief problem with the picture is not that I think Cooper is woefully miscast, as do most of the movie's detractors. It's a most unusual role for Coop certainly, but, in my opinion, he makes quite a fair fist of it. I also liked Ida Lupino, but I felt the normally ultra-reliable Donald Meek made but a poor impression with his role-admittedly small, but important. On the other hand, Douglass Dumbrille is given an elaborate introduction as the colonel, but then completely disappears! As for the children - Dickie Moore and Virginia Weidler - they are both absolute horrors, though Master Moore is far the more obnoxious of the two.
Admittedly, I hardly expected du Maurier's Mimsey to be accurately (or even half-heartedly) translated to film. But even so, Miss Weidler is surely the very opposite of the child du Maurier describes: "the reverse of beautiful, although she would have had fine eyes but for her red lashless lids. She wore her thick hair cropped short, like a boy, and was pasty and sallow in complexion, hollow-cheeked, thick-featured, and overgrown, with long thin hands and feet, and arms and legs of quite pathetic length and tennity; a silent and melancholy little girl, who sucked her thumb perpetually, and kept her own counsel." Fortunately, both Ann Harding and John Halliday are cast more in the du Maurier mold, and - what's more important - both display excellent presence and ability.
The chief problem for me really comes down to Hathaway. He seemed to me to be a bit out of his element here. Three of the players were so embarrassingly bad, it's almost beyond belief that a skillful director could allow such ineptitude to slip by. Especially with such key support players. Admittedly, two were children, but Hathaway himself was a child actor. You could understand a bit-player or a minor actor gumming up a scene. He's on the set for a few days at most - and then gone forever. But actors that a director is supposed to be guiding, day in, day out, for weeks on end!
Hathaway has stated, on more than one occasion, that actors are hired to act. It is not the director's job, he feels, to guide them with their interpretations, let alone help and succor actors who have been miscast or are out of their depth. On the other hand, Hathaway would know from his own personal experiences the particular requirements of child actors and one would expect him to rise to the challenge. But this was obviously not the case here.
If Hathaway is not the man for the players, he is also not the man for this type of story. He's an action man, not a Lubitsch who can handle fantasy and Romance. That's "Romance" with a capital "R", not sex, or even just your everyday celluloid boy-meets-girl. The two or three action scenes and the tense confrontation at the dinner-table (masterfully shot from six or eight angles, and skilfully edited by Stuart Heisler) do come across with powerful effectiveness. But elsewhere, Hathaway is obviously laboring with difficulty with unfamiliar surroundings and trappings. The fantasy material lacks tight supervision. Its effects are too obvious, too heavy-handed.
I can understand why many French critics love this movie. Sub-titles would not only disguise the inadequacies of Moore's and Weidler's performances, but allow freedom to interpret the visuals more imaginatively and romantically. In a foreign language, - and for those of us with more sensitive dispositions, - "Peter Ibbetson" would likely emerge as a profoundly moving experience.
Admittedly, I hardly expected du Maurier's Mimsey to be accurately (or even half-heartedly) translated to film. But even so, Miss Weidler is surely the very opposite of the child du Maurier describes: "the reverse of beautiful, although she would have had fine eyes but for her red lashless lids. She wore her thick hair cropped short, like a boy, and was pasty and sallow in complexion, hollow-cheeked, thick-featured, and overgrown, with long thin hands and feet, and arms and legs of quite pathetic length and tennity; a silent and melancholy little girl, who sucked her thumb perpetually, and kept her own counsel." Fortunately, both Ann Harding and John Halliday are cast more in the du Maurier mold, and - what's more important - both display excellent presence and ability.
The chief problem for me really comes down to Hathaway. He seemed to me to be a bit out of his element here. Three of the players were so embarrassingly bad, it's almost beyond belief that a skillful director could allow such ineptitude to slip by. Especially with such key support players. Admittedly, two were children, but Hathaway himself was a child actor. You could understand a bit-player or a minor actor gumming up a scene. He's on the set for a few days at most - and then gone forever. But actors that a director is supposed to be guiding, day in, day out, for weeks on end!
Hathaway has stated, on more than one occasion, that actors are hired to act. It is not the director's job, he feels, to guide them with their interpretations, let alone help and succor actors who have been miscast or are out of their depth. On the other hand, Hathaway would know from his own personal experiences the particular requirements of child actors and one would expect him to rise to the challenge. But this was obviously not the case here.
If Hathaway is not the man for the players, he is also not the man for this type of story. He's an action man, not a Lubitsch who can handle fantasy and Romance. That's "Romance" with a capital "R", not sex, or even just your everyday celluloid boy-meets-girl. The two or three action scenes and the tense confrontation at the dinner-table (masterfully shot from six or eight angles, and skilfully edited by Stuart Heisler) do come across with powerful effectiveness. But elsewhere, Hathaway is obviously laboring with difficulty with unfamiliar surroundings and trappings. The fantasy material lacks tight supervision. Its effects are too obvious, too heavy-handed.
I can understand why many French critics love this movie. Sub-titles would not only disguise the inadequacies of Moore's and Weidler's performances, but allow freedom to interpret the visuals more imaginatively and romantically. In a foreign language, - and for those of us with more sensitive dispositions, - "Peter Ibbetson" would likely emerge as a profoundly moving experience.