May 2, 9, 16 | 19 movies
Frank Borzage remains the supreme romanticist among Hollywood directors. Bridging the silents to the talkies, his best films are made with such deep-rooted feeling and passion that what becomes paramount for the characters becomes paramount for the audience—namely, the idea that love is supreme.
For Borzage (pronounced Bor-ZAY-Ghee), nothing is more important or powerful than love, be it the romantic love between a man and a woman or the bonds of loving friendship within a group, whether in a melodrama, musical or romantic comedy. The constant in his work is his emphasis on human spirituality, especially in the face of political, social or economic woes. Love doesn’t just conquer all—it transcends all. In so many of Borzage’s films, the inner human spirit in the state of love is shown to be strong enough to transcend any external problem or hardship. And thanks to Borzage’s sensitive, cinematic storytelling prowess, the audience also comes to value this inner spirituality as the most important driver of the story.
Borzage began his directing career with short films for the Mutual Film Corporation in the mid-1910s. By the early 1920s, he had risen to become one of the industry’s top filmmakers, with his name appearing above the title. His greatest, most fluid silent masterpieces were made for the Fox studio just before the transition to sound, but his skill at conjuring great depth of feeling onscreen carried over into his early talkies, also for Fox. After departing Fox, he made movies for several other studios, including two exceptional titles for Columbia that are included in this TCM tribute: Man’s Castle (1933) and No Greater Glory (1934).
Man’s Castle, a pre-Code love story of a penniless New York couple set amidst the hardships of the Great Depression, is a textbook illustration of Borzage’s talent, style and belief system. Gruff Spencer Tracy meets innocent Loretta Young on a park bench, and before long she’s moving into his Hooverville shanty and keeping the shack as spiffy as possible while he takes on odd jobs. Though he at times speaks to her quite harshly, Tracy’s performance allows us to see that underneath the crusty exterior he is sensitive and even fearful. The audience senses that Young sticks with him because she, too, is able to see his true, loving nature, and the story becomes centered on the idea that their love can transcend the reality of the world around them, and allow them to find an inner harmony and happiness. Their emotional link becomes the full substance of the story.
Borzage achieves this effect through subtle innovations in framing, lighting and editing. His visual approach often consists of isolating his lovers in the frame from the world around them—through soft focus and other means—thereby making their relationship, their connection, the most important element of their world. Frederick Lamster, author of a book on Borzage's career, wrote about this concept as it applies to the movie’s early restaurant scene: “They are in the frame together, the rest of the crowd being blurred, indistinct, and unimportant... It is only when the two must face the consequence of their action—Bill cannot pay for the meal and must explain his plight—that the crowd comes into focus and the couple’s world is recognized as being part of the larger world.”
Man’s Castle is also notable as one of many movies made in the 1930s that acknowledge the dire economic straits of the era, even as it suggests that true love can lift a couple of ordinary souls out of something as devastating as the Great Depression. Tracy and Young’s real-life romance certainly heightened their chemistry onscreen. The two stars fell in love during production, but there were two problems: Tracy was married, and both he and Young were Catholic. For him, that meant he wouldn’t divorce his wife; for her, it meant she was beset by guilt. The relationship was public knowledge and lasted about a year. Ultimately, Young broke it off in a heartfelt letter. They went on with their lives: Young had a romance with Clark Gable that produced a daughter, and went on to marry twice. Tracy, still married, eventually started a lifelong affair with Katharine Hepburn, but his deep affection for Young never faded.
Decades later, after Tracy’s death, his daughter Susie found Young’s break-up letter in her father’s things. It was one of only three letters he had kept, and even though it was signed simply, “Me,” Susan knew it must have been from Young, considering how her father had talked about her over the years. She returned the letter to Young, who was touched beyond words. She had considered Tracy to be the great love of her life, and perhaps Tracy had felt the same way.
Frank Borzage next spent a few years at Warner Bros., where he made such films as Flirtation Walk (1934), a charming musical that marked the fifth teaming of Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, and Hearts Divided (1936), a sweet period romance starring Marion Davies. He was also loaned out to Paramount to direct Desire (1936), and then to independent producer Walter Wanger to make History is Made at Night (1937). Desire, a sparkling romantic comedy with Marlene Dietrich and Gary Cooper, showed that Borzage could apply a lighter touch when the material called for it. This film was to have been directed by Ernst Lubitsch, but now that Lubitsch was actually running Paramount, he brought in Borzage (at Dietrich’s request) to direct it instead. Lubitsch’s name appears as producer, and as fine a film as it is from Borzage, it does feel more like a typical Lubitsch film than a typical Borzage film.
History is Made at Night, on the other hand, is one of Borzage’s own masterpieces, a sophisticated tale of a New York woman (Jean Arthur) in Paris who is divorcing her husband (Colin Clive), an insanely jealous monster of a man. Clive tries to nullify the divorce by framing his wife as an adulterer, but thanks to a fanciful plot development, she winds up being saved by a romantic Parisian headwaiter played by Charles Boyer, with whom she falls in love. When she is blackmailed by Clive to return to New York with him, Boyer and his trusty chef friend (Leo Carrillo) venture to New York to find her. Boyer’s plan is to make Arthur find him. He takes over a restaurant and turns it into the finest one in New York, a place for the rich to be seen, as a way to lure her to visit. He leaves a “reserved” sign on an empty table every evening—for the day that Arthur does walk in. This plotting is insanely romantic but also wonderfully transcendent, and audiences tend to eat this film up, luxuriating in the romance and the chemistry among its fine cast.
Borzage next moved to MGM and stayed there well into the 1940s, turning out such gems as Three Comrades (1938), starring Robert Taylor, Robert Young and Franchot Tone as disillusioned veterans in post-WWI Germany; they befriend a woman (Margaret Sullavan) who marries one of them. Based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque with a screenplay by F. Scott Fitzgerald (his only screenwriting credit), Three Comrades stands as an exceptionally touching, ethereal romance and a moving portrayal of friendship, and is also one of several anti-Nazi films made by Borzage, though the political implications are subtle given the early-1920s setting.
The Mortal Storm (1940) is more strongly anti-Nazi. Set in Germany in the early 1930s, it charts the tragic division of a family as the Nazis rise to power and is notable for another pitch-perfect performance by Margaret Sullavan, who falls in love with James Stewart as they try to escape Germany. Their chemistry (which Louis B. Mayer called “red hot”) had been honed not only in three previous films they made together, including The Shop Around the Corner (1940), but also by their real-life friendship and Stewart’s infatuation for her. They had known each other since their New York theater days; Sullavan then went to Hollywood and became a star before Stewart arrived, and she helped teach him to act for the camera and used her influence to get him some early roles.
The same year, Borzage directed one of his most strangely compelling films, Strange Cargo (1940). This eighth screen pairing of Clark Gable and Joan Crawford was certainly one of their oddest, with a story that is both a prison escape melodrama (set in a tropical penal colony, in a jungle and on a ship), and a meandering meditation on faith and spirituality. The end result is at once a gritty and lush religious allegory.
Before the prisoners plot their escape, a mysterious man (Ian Hunter) wanders into the prison, and it becomes evident that he is meant to be God. The most venomous inmate (Paul Lukas) is meanwhile essentially the Devil. The other inmates, including Gable, each have their own inner demons, and Crawford tags along with the escapees as a tough saloon singer who is simply trying to get off the island. The ocean voyage acts as a sort of baptism for everyone, through which they start to undergo spiritual transformations.
They debate issues of religion, philosophy and the notion of good vs. evil throughout their journey, even as they engage in entertaining, hard-boiled dialogue. A deglamorized Crawford delivers an excellent performance, and Peter Lorre turns up as a character named “M’sieu Pig” who lusts after her.
Despite the presence of Clark Gable and Joan Crawford, Strange Cargo is not primarily a romance picture. Instead of a couple being isolated from the world, here a group is isolated. Instead of love between two people intensified, here everyone’s own sense of spirituality is heightened. Borzage’s hand is most evident in the way that as the characters become aware of a spiritual world, the audience is made to feel something of the same. Borzage uses visuals of darkness, fog, storminess, the ocean and the jungle to lend a mysterious, otherworldly quality to the proceedings that results in his most mystical film.
