Oscars Retrospective: Cavalcade (6th Academy Awards Review)
Cavalcade is a movie that I really don’t want to review. This is one of the most bore-to-tears-inducing pictures I have ever seen in my entire life. And, because it won Outstanding Production, that means I must now wrack my brain to remember what the Hell it was about. Upon watching it, my initial reaction was just a general, “Well, that was pretty dull,” but as I thought about it more and more, the more and more it falls apart. Now, having fully looked at this and compiled my thoughts, this is a really awful movie, even for 1930s’ standards. In fact, this is still early in this series to call this and I may eat my words down the road but, at least for the Golden Age of Hollywood, this may very well be the absolute worst movie to have ever won the Oscar for Best Picture.
There’s not really anything in it that’s offensive like in The Broadway Melody (1929) or Cimarron (1931) but there also isn’t anything somewhat great in it like those two movies. Or good. Or even remotely interesting. Cavalcade opens up at the turn of the 20th Century in England and revolves around an upper-class British couple called the Marryots: Jane (Diana Wynyard) and her husband, Robert (Clive Brook). They are accompanied by their servants, the Bridgeses… Bridgeseses… Bridgesai…?
…They are accompanied by their servants, the Bridges family: Ellen (Una O’Connor) and Albert (Herbert Mundin). Robert and Albert enlist in the army to go fight the Second Boer War which puts their wives on edge as they worry about their safety. Rather than doing something cool like showing the war and the Hell that the husbands go through, the movie spends the bulk of this subplot on Jane and her fear of her husband’s wellbeing, which is only made worse by the British Empire’s constant celebration about how awesome the war is.
Ok, this is a good set-up. Seeing the grief of a potential widow being offset by the obnoxious propaganda of a country that her husband could potentially die for does make for some smart commentary. Eventually (and by eventually, I mean within the first half-hour of the movie) though, the war does end and the husbands do come back. Not with missing limbs or with shellshock or really any change whatsoever, they’re just… back. So, in other words, that commentary about the British propaganda machine was totally pointless and Jane just seems like an annoying whiner.
So, now that the war is over, where does the movie go? Well, the Marryots get to see the funeral procession of Queen Victoria. No big conflicts or developments, it just happens. Then Robert becomes knighted. No big conflicts or developments, it just happens. Then Albert Bridges opens up a pub. No big conflicts or developments, it just happens.
Are you starting to see the problem with this movie yet?
As you can probably figure out by now, Cavalcade is basically a Victorian/Edwardian era Forrest Gump (1994) detailing the lives of these two families; or really, just the Marryots, the other family gets phased out in the second half of the movie; over the course of about 30 or so years, interacting with all sorts of historical events that occurred in Britain during that time. An ambitious goal, to be sure, but while Forrest Gump properly contextualizes the historical events to deliver a fun punchline, Cavalcade doesn’t.
You don’t even get to see the Second Boer War, the death of Queen Victoria comes and goes, there’s a scene where they see Louis Bleriot flying over the English Channel but no one talks about why it’s important or why they’re all gathering there. Because you don’t give a crap about the characters, you don’t give a crap about seeing their reactions to these historical events. It’s about as riveting as reading about them in a textbook.
Probably the most bizarre example happens about halfway through the film. A newlywed couple spends their honeymoon aboard a cruise ship and have a very (needlessly) long scene talking about how much they love each other and then the camera pans over to reveal that the ship they’re on is the RMS Titanic. I know that this is meant to be tragic but the way the scene is handled is legitimately hilarious. Seriously, I could practically hear the Seinfeld bass riff in my head when they revealed the life preserver saying Titanic.
Is it even worth mentioning at this point that you don’t even see the ship sink or the characters die? Or, for that matter, the families’ reactions to their deaths? Yeah, what the Hell gives with that?! At the beginning of the movie, they spend a very long time developing Jane’s reaction to just when one of her family members is in danger. Now that someone actually dies, they completely ignore her finding out the news. This should be one of the biggest moments in the movie, where’s the pay-off? Why would you include that plot thread if you’re not going to pay it off later?
The character development sucks across the board too. A few are okay, I guess, but others will have their personalities completely and totally change between scenes. Granted, I know that happens in real life as people can and do change but this is a movie. There needs to be some context given in prior scenes for these changes to happen.
For example, at one point in the movie we find out that Albert has become a violent, raging alcoholic. Well, where did that come from? He seemed like a nice guy early on. We never see him drink or act like a little bit of a jerk. So why all of a sudden has he become this monstrous drunk? It doesn’t add up.
The film ends with an elderly Robert and Jane cheerfully sharing a toast, contemplating the future of Britain and reflecting on their lives in a nostalgic manner. Pretty disturbingly so, I might add. What happens to these two at the end of the movie is a pretty awful fate and they seem to take it entirely in stride. This is how psychopaths react to the film’s events!
They give one final preachy lecture about how Britain will continue to develop and may one day be a truly great empire but, again, aside from the opening subplot about the Boer War, the film does not support this conclusion. If Cavalcade is supposed to be about the dangers and hypocrisies of British culture, why couldn’t it have been about the widow of a soldier lashing back at society for glorifying the war that her husband died in? Why couldn’t it be like All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) where the characters are brought up their whole lives being told how great war is only to be given a rude awakening once war is actually declared?
I’d really hate to say this but Cimarron did this story better than Cavalcade. Now, Cimarron isn’t a good movie either but you still see the characters develop over the years (even though I know I complained about that in my Cimarron review, believe me, it’s done somehow even worse in Cavalcade), it establishes the setting of history and there is ultimately a point that the whole film builds up to. It’s a hypocritical and racist point, but it still feels like it was written for a reason.
Cavalcade, on the other hand, has no point, no conflict and is so boring. It’s more like a documentary about life in early 20th century Britain but it doesn’t even do that right. The only thing about this movie that’s worth mentioning is the film’s transitional scenes which details a British marching cavalcade that dissolves and fades. This was a cool new film technique at the time though it’s not enough to make a movie.
Now that I’m finished lambasting Cavalcade, it does beg the question: why on Earth did this even win the Oscar? Somehow finding the answer for that proved to be an endeavor unto itself. Even most crappy films that are successful usually have a reason that you can pinpoint even if you don’t agree with it (e.g. Cimarron being a large Western epic). Cavalcade isn’t like that. I’ve done my best to try to find the answer and just about every article or old letter I pulled up tends to be reviews like this bemoaning about why it didn’t deserve to win. So, we can only speculate on this one.
My guess, supported by the fact that this was somehow the second-highest-grossing movie of 1933, is that Americans at the time had a hard-on for Imperial Britain. While pro-imperialism kinda became a much more taboo political topic post-World War II, back then it was considered more trendy (i.e. annexing Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, Panama etc.) In this regard, the British Empire was held as a shining statute of what any up-and-coming empire should aspire to be. So, a movie about the Edwardian Era with the two classes of British society would be adulated.
That’s all well and good but the film is still terrible. It’s not even like a passing craze or the film’s poorly-aged: it just takes everything they teach you day 1 at writing school on what makes stories engaging (e.g. all drama is conflict, Chekov’s Gun etc.) and tosses it out the window. Even the positive critical reviews I dug up say nothing more beyond great cinematography or loving portrayal of Britain. Both may be true but they do not make for a good movie. Not in the slightest.
But, hey, maybe that’s just me, isn’t it?
In case you missed it:
1st Academy Awards (1927/28): Wings/Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans: Part 1, Part 2
2nd Academy Awards (1928/29): The Broadway Melody: Part 1, Part 2
3rd Academy Awards (1929/30): All Quiet on the Western Front: Part 1, Part 2
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