Customer Reviews

Craig's Wife [VHS]

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Rosalind Russell is sublime in the role of Harriet Craig, a selfish woman whose life revolves around her material possessions and her veneration of them. She married her husband, Craig (John Boles), not out of love, as he did her, but for the comfort and security that he could provide for her.

Blinded by his love for her, Craig does not see what his aunt, Harriet's own niece, and the housekeeper know all too well, until it is nearly too late. When he has the veil torn from his eyes, after Harriet demonstrates just how little she really cares about him, Craig is then able to see Harriet as she really is and as the others see her. She is then left alone among her sterile possessions, doomed to lead a lonely existence.

Ms. Russell's breakout performance in this film rightly catapulted her to stardom. She was able to take an inherently unsympathetic character and make her somewhat sympathetic, a difficult task, indeed. John Boles is wonderful as the earnest and well meaning Craig, who ultimately realizes that he had given his heart to the heartless.

Billie Burke is delightful as the neighbor. Jane Darwell, Dorothy Wilson, Alma Kruger, and Thomas Mitchell round out the strong supporting cast Based upon the Pulitzer Prize winning play by George Kelly, this play made a smooth transition to the silver screen.

This film was later remade as "Harriet Craig", starring Joan Crawford. The viewer should make an attempt to see them both, as they are both excellent. It is a film to be viewed by those who simply love a good drama. Those who love vintage films will also enjoy it.

Based upon the Pulizer Prize winning play by George Kelly, CRAIG'S WIFE is definitely director Dorothy Arzner's most successful venture and it's generally acknowledged as the picture which opened up Rosalind Russell's career in films. The brilliance of this 1936 version (it was filmed before in the twenties with Irene Rich and in 1952 with Mommie Dearest herself, Joan Crawford) comes from the star, Rosalind Russell, who was borrowed for the picture from MGM. Russell always had a talent for bringing warmth to the many cold and calculating characters she played in films; CRAIG'S WIFE made her a star in her own right for she had the rare gift of making unsympathetic characters acceptable to audiences. This film was very well received by the critics, and the post note at the end of the film lingers in the memory: "People who live to themselves are generally left to themselves".

This is Rosalind Russell's movie all the way, she's great as the selfish and self-centered woman, who worships her material possessions. All of her relationships to people (husband, relatives, in-laws,etc) are second and subordinated to her love for her house, its furnishing & ornaments. Intelligently made by the sole women director of that era, Dororthy Arzner. Great sets designed with the aid of ex-star, turned into interior decorator, Mr. William Haines. A scarcely known classic, due to the former and more well known Joan Crawford version of the story, titled "Harriet Craig".

Rosalind Russell is in danger of being remembered only for her madcap work on stage and in film as the extravagant Auntie Mame. That's a shame, for her earlier work is remarkable for its breadth -- she played everything from haughty British girlfriends to wisecracking career women to O'Neill heroines -- and it would be hard to come up with a character more different from Mame Dennis than her taut, vicious Harriet Craig.

Less wildly lunatic than Joan Crawford's, Russell's Harriet is a deeply disturbed woman who finds herself no longer able to hide her problems, so tightly wound she seems in danger of shattering. Director Dorothy Arzner marshalls an excellent supporting cast (an unusually warm Billie Burke and the marvelous Jane Darwell among them) to set off Harriet's chill with a lovely suburban normality.

All in all, it's a fine introduction to pre-icon Roz.

Wow! I had heard and read about Rosalind Russell's first dramatic "breakthrough" performance, but nothing prepared me for the impact of "Craig's Wife". After seeing Ms. Russell perform brillantly in movies such as "His Girl Friday", "The Women" and "Auntie Mame" there was no doubt in my mind that she was a gifted comedienne. But the cold, calculating mannerisms of Roz's Harriet Craig made shivers run down my spine! Ms. Russell's Harriet is so concerned with appearnaces and material possesions that she realizes too late what a wonderful life she has sacrificed to obtain them. Her husband's aunt warns "People who live to themselves are often left to themselves.". This is blatantly proven when we are left with the closing shot of Harriet cowering in a corner of her big, beautiful and very empty home. Kudos! This is Rosalind Russell at her dramatic best!

The is the first film I've seen from Dorothy Arzner, the only female feature director in Hollywood from the beginnings of sound until Ida Lupino started directing at the end of the 1940s. The fact that this important and still-relevant and moving film isn't yet on DVD certainly doesn't offer much evidence that the position of women in Hollywood is all that much better today. It was the first film toplined by Rosalind Russell and it made her a star - but not in the typical comedic role that she became known for over the next decade or so. One wonders if the film and performance were so intense and potent that Russell shied away from such roles for a while, for fear of being typecast as a villainess.

Here she's Harriet Craig, a manipulative and completely cold and unfeeling woman who spends her time controlling and manipulating her weak husband Walter (John Boles) into giving up all of his friends and family for her, because she really only cares about his wealth and name - and despite all of the testimonies of others around them, he can't help but to continue to love her. Russell is extraordinarily convincing, even frightening as a person with no apparent love or feeling, but who in reality just has it all so bound up in fear and doubt that when a crack appears, it quickly turns into a gaping hole. Mary C. McCall's script, based on a play by George Kelly, doesn't really allow her much sympathy, but when it does you may find yourself bursting into tears as the hollowness becomes apparent and the sense of loss at a life wasted overwhelms.

Some great supporting work from all concerned, especially Billie Burke as the somewhat ditzy and too-nice next-door neighbor and Jane Darwell in a typical role as the housekeeper. John Boles is excellent as well in a somewhat thankless, "weak" role, and the great Thomas Mitchell has a small role as his (what else?) drunken friend. Solidly and smoothly directed, if a little stagy and too readily betraying it's theatrical origins, the film builds powerfully for an hour and unfortunately wraps up a little too quickly, and some of the more obvious thematic possibilities involving a woman's place and power in society are given short shrift. The second of the three films based on the then-popular play - Irene Rich starred in the silent version eight years previously and Joan Crawford, a performer much more typically associated with such characters than Russell, took on the role in 1950 in HARRIET CRAIG.

Though I wouldn't call this a masterpiece, it's certainly an important film in Russell's career, and in the history of women in Hollywood, and it's crying out for a DVD release. Criterion, or some other enterprising company, could do worse than to put out a "Films of Dorothy Arzner" set. In the meantime, catch this VHS which is of decent, very watchable quality.

I can't really add much except to say that not only is this one of the black & white films that really holds up, but Rosalind Russell is very powerful and so convincing in the role that I cried! Interesting to compare to the later Joan Crawford vehicle. Joan was great too but hers was a wonderfully angry interpretation. Russell's is way more nuanced so that the very ending is really touching. I'm a huge Joan Crawford fan but if I had to say which was better...well, Joan's is really good but Russell's is awsome. Also, as a screenplay the Russell version is much more textured and worldly. Joan's version much more insuler.

Rosalind Russell acting. *Imagine*. The very woman for whom the word "madcap" was coined, the woman whose giddy portrayals of fast-talking, double-dealing dames with machine-gun delivery -- *acting*! Well, she *could* act, she just didn't get the chance very much, once she'd been typecast as the motor-mouthed madonna. And in this movie, she acts her little heart out in playwright George Kelly's (mysteriously) Pulitzer prizewinning story of an overbearing, scheming matron who is a little *too* involved with her possessions. Mr. Kelly, uncle of Princess Grace, and by all accounts a big queen, has written one of the all-time great female roles, one that any actress would give her eyeteeth to play. Along with a host of meaty supporting roles, Kelly's sculpting of the role of Harriet Craig is masterful, though at times, it *does* seem a bit dated, now (IMDb.com lists a silent 1928 version, presumed lost, that would be a treat to see). The sensitive and well thought out, yet cold and detached qualities in the movie are a gift from pioneering director and avowed lesbian Dorothy Arzner, who also directed -------. Harriet, to whom appearances are *everything*, rules her adoring husband and their house with a velvet fist. When a well-meaning neighbor bring over fresh flowers as a gift, Harriet immediately disposes of them, saying "I can't go around picking up rose petals all day." But her wealth, through marriage, has brought her (*bought* her?) all the things most important in life - a beautiful home and social respect, and she's determined to remain in control of that as long as possible. But all good things must come to an end. After Harriet has isolated her husband, alienated their friends, and lost all her servants, she gets caught up in some ridiculous plot contrivance (that Joan Crawford *completely* does away with in *her* version *Harriet Craig), that serves to bring all her manipulations and machinations to light. Predictably, her husband leaves her, and we see her crack, and realize she's lost everything and that the thing that ostensibly means the most to her - the house - is cold consolation. But the last scene, where her sanity dissolves before our eyes is a glorious and delirious spectrum of emotions in which we see all her defenses and fantasies crumbling before her, as she just as quickly, installs new ones. An overlooked tour-de-force, and jewels in the crowns of Rosiland Russell *and* Dorothy Arzner.

In a way, CRAIG's WIFE, directed by the insanely intelligent Dorothy Arzner, tells the story of a young, terrified girl, Ethel Landreth, whose mother has been in decline for many years and is always staging deathbed scenes that have left poor Ethel on the verge of a nervous breakdown for many years.

Ethel is consoled by her mother's sister, Harriet Craig, played capably by a youngish Rosalind Russell. Aunt Harriet invites poor Ethel to come away from Albany and the hysterical deathbed scenes of her mother, and come stay with her and husband Walter Craig. It will be good for Ethel to get away from her drama queen of a mother. The Craigs live in a beautiful suburban estate and they have a lovely rose-growing neighbor (a widow) called Mrs. Frazier. She is played by the charming Billie Burke, who can be irritating as all get-out in some movies but whom, when carefully handled, shows herself capable of some sympathetic playing.

What Ethel fails to notice is that her boyfriend from back home, Gene Fredericks, is actually much more passionate about her than she had thought and he will do just about anything to get her back, including pestering Aunt Harriet and demanding that Ethel be put on the phone. He exhibits the behavior of what we would call in the modern era, a "stalker," even though he is a college professor in the local university--of "Romance languages," which makes him more romantic.

For young Dorothy Wilson, who plays Ethel, CRAIG'S WIFE was a professional highlight. She is by turns heartbreakingly naive, ironic, cold and distant, finally furious and determined. She makes a believable ingenue, a touching lover, and a formidable enemy. Only two films remained in Wilson's career after this one. Of course she had been the star of the epic LAST DAYS OF POMPEII, playing Clodia, but in some ways I feel this is a grand finale for her as an actress and a forgotten star (she lived until the age of 89, a grande dame till the end!)