MOVIE OF THE DAY: "STRANGE INTERLUDE" (1932)

Strange Interlude is another of those Eugene O'Neill dramas where self-destructive people do stupid things while avoiding the truth about themselves. As if real life doesn't give us enough of an opportunity. The difference here is that we get to hear what everyone's really thinking as they lie their way to misery. It's double the fun!

These kids sure know how to have a good time.

Classy but slutty Nina Leeds(Norma Shearer), still in love with her late lover Gordon, marries the immature Sam Evans (Alexander Kirkland) despite having the hots for the cold Ned Darrell (Clark Gable). Learning that insanity runs in Sam's family, Nina gets knocked-up by Ned in order to pass it off as Sam's. Watching all of this is mama's boy Charlie Mardsen (Ralph Morgan), who has always been too spineless to tell Nina that he's madly in love with her. 

Pretend you're Norma Shearer -- which
one of these guy's kids would you
prefer to pup?

Question for the court: Would you be friends with any of these wackos? Of course not. That's why they have no one to hang out with but each other.

Ned and Charlie drift in and out of Nina's life for the next two decades, solely to torture themselves and each other. Oh, and to get rich, thanks to Sam's smart investing skills. Nina's son Gordon (yes, named after her dead boyfriend) has always hated "Uncle" Ned, because he can sense something other than friendship in their relationship. Had he really been Sam's son, Gordon wouldn't have been this smart.

"If  my son is named after my boyfriend,
that means I can sleep with him, right?"

Nina has transferred her love for her dead ex to her son -- so much so that when Gordon announces his engagement, she intends to tell his fiancée that he comes from a long line of maniacs. (Frankly, they all seem nuts to me.) Ned stops her, just before Sam has a stroke, perhaps from all the bombastic dialogue everyone's been declaiming. 

"Why spoil our misery by
being happy for once in our
lives?"

After Sam's funeral, Gordon's anger dissipates as he accepts the fact his mother and Ned were always in love -- but she still refuses to tell him the truth about who his father really is, allowing him to live stupidly happy like Sam did. 

Now Nina and Ned are free to marry! Unless Eugene O'Neill is calling the shots. Instead, she winds up with the still-timorous Charlie, because who wants happy when depressing is so much more interesting?

Let's recap. Three of the lead characters spend half their lifetimes lying to each other in order to make the fourth happy -- and to keep him from going crazy (remember that genetic trait?) if he knew the truth. All of them hang out together in order to continue to be miserable. Except for the clueless husband. He's happy as a clam at high tide. Now imagine seeing the original 1929 stage version of Strange Interlude when it was five hours long. Shoot me now.

All-talking! All-thinking!
All-depressing!

Audiences in 1932 unfamiliar with the stage play must have found it rather shocking that people didn't always say what they really think. The flip side is that several seconds have to elapse between lines of dialogue in order for the characters' thoughts to be heard. While people often say one thing while thinking another, they usually don't pause and look sadly to one side as they do. And because this is Eugene O'Neill (even if he didn't write the screenplay), the characters' emotions usually spill out like a tea kettle that's been on high for too long.

"Excuse me while I think
out loud."

But I blame director Robert Z. Leonard for making the cast going all histrionic with a capital H. Anyone familiar with Norma Shearer's early pre-code performances -- slick, natural, and often astonishingly sexy -- will find only artificiality here, her voice stuck on vibrato, and eyes always on the verge of tears. Clark Gable, on the cusp of superstardom, had done far better supporting work before Strange Interlude. In real life, he likely would have had no patience for this passel of weaselly dingbats.

 

 

Sam's smiling because he's the only
one stupid enough not to realize
what's really going on.

Poor Ralph Morgan (brother of Frank, a/k/a the Wizard of Oz) has nothing to do but moon over Shearer while babbling about his mother and berating himself in voice-overs. Alex Kirkland is actually quite good as Sam, but his character is so clueless that when he finally keels over in the 10th reel, it's a relief.

 

The Brits preferred their interludes
as intervals.

Despite my snark, one has to commend M-G-M for releasing what was for them both a daring and experimental movie. Daring in that sex, insanity, and depression are the driving forces in Strange Interlude (and my own life, come to think of it). Experimental by having its characters all acting as a jumbo Greek chorus. 

But braver still --or foolhardy -- on the studio's part was that Groucho Marx had already parodied Strange Interlude in Animal Crackers two years earlier. You can't expect people to take a drama seriously when it's already been made fun of so easily.

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The only pop song inspired by Eugene O'Neill: Rudy Vallee & His Connecticut Yankees perform "Strange Interlude"