Happy Birthday, Frank Borzage (pronounced "Bor-ZAY-gee")! Born today in 1894, this Academy Award-winning American actor and film director is noted for his romantic transcendentalism and technically impeccable filmmaking.
Borzage was a Hollywood melodramatist with absolutely no interest in the workings of everyday life — the world around his lovers and believers was a procession of interchangeable amorphous abstractions.
An arch-symbolist with a deep belief in the communion of souls, he woefully lacked any of the credentials necessary for worship by modern audiences (precious little in the way of irony, no cynicism to speak of, never made a film noir).
His films don’t even work as satisfyingly snotty postmodern experiences, probably due to the fact that they are almost all structurally identical.
Among his credits, however, Borzage is best known for co-producing and directing the 1940 American black and white drama/war film 'The Mortal Storm'. The feature was released by MGM.
Professor Victor Roth (Frank Morgan) enjoys a tranquil life with his family in Germany. His daughter Freya (Margaret Sullavan) is courted both by Martin Breitner (James Stewart) and Fritz Marberg (Robert Young).
However, when the Nazis take control of the country, all their lives are shaken. Martin must flee to Austria because of his political stance. Victor loses his job and is sent to a concentration camp when he speaks out against Hitler. Meanwhile, Fritz joins the Nazis and is obliged to hunt down Freya.
Many modern viewers claim to find even Borzage's greatest films are moth-eaten, penny-ante affairs; the cinematic equivalents of long-forgotten Tin Pan Alley tunes or 1909 Christmas cards.
“He never stopped looking for the natural and the simple,” it was once said of Borzage, and at the end of his career, on a half-hour television show, he found them.
Borzage held the dubious distinction of having adapted three of American minister and author Lloyd C. Douglas novels); his eminently centrifugal films all feature domelike constructions.
These include the lovers and believers of whom occupied the enormous and exquisitely detailed center while everything around them is hazy and indistinct (war, the Great Depression, strikes, local color, parties, other people).
These include the lovers and believers of whom occupied the enormous and exquisitely detailed center while everything around them is hazy and indistinct (war, the Great Depression, strikes, local color, parties, other people).
Perhaps Borzage really is nothing more than the cinema’s Great Romantic — a compliment that has the stale aftertaste of day-old beer since, in contemporary terms, it places him so far outside of the strange jumble of neurosis, solitude, and disillusionment that we currently refer to as reality.
Borzage had been active from 1912–1961.
#borntoact
#borntodirect
@tcm
@tcm
@nytimes
@slantmagazine
@UCLAFilmTVArchive
@filmcommentmagazine
@letterboxd
@Britannica
No comments:
Post a Comment