...and I know that people will say it's soap opera !But to make that kind of soap opera,as Stahl,Minnelli and Sirk showed it through the years,it takes some kind of genius! First the structure:first a prologue ,then flashbacks and an epilogue ,which while going back to the present,connects all the links of the chain in an awesome way.It's not unlike Leisen's previous (and remarkable too) 'Hold back the dawn" : Lord Desham plays the same part as the director in the 1941 movie ;Although Jody does not tell her secret to him ,it's finally him who makes her dream come true.
"To each his own" possesses everything that makes a melodrama great: a "tearjerker" (not meant pejoratively) subject: the well known story of the unwed mother who's forced to leave her child to another family ,it recalls "the old maid" ,another classic where Bette Davis had a fate similar to her good friend Olivia de Havilland's; and ,another permanent feature of the genre,the heroine who has lost love (or who thinks that she 's through with it )and who begins a formidable business woman career (there are plenty of examples:Stahl's "Only yesterday" and "imitation of life" ,Sirk's "Written on the wind" );and a grandiose finale with a last line (I think it is our dance ,mother) to rival the best of the last lines.
To write that De Havilland deserved her AA is to state the obvious.She actually plays three parts ,with the same talent.Like her peer Davis in "the old maid" ,she was not afraid of making herself look older or uglier .(see also "the heiress" "hold back the dawn" "snake pit" ).
"To each his own" possesses everything that makes a melodrama great: a "tearjerker" (not meant pejoratively) subject: the well known story of the unwed mother who's forced to leave her child to another family ,it recalls "the old maid" ,another classic where Bette Davis had a fate similar to her good friend Olivia de Havilland's; and ,another permanent feature of the genre,the heroine who has lost love (or who thinks that she 's through with it )and who begins a formidable business woman career (there are plenty of examples:Stahl's "Only yesterday" and "imitation of life" ,Sirk's "Written on the wind" );and a grandiose finale with a last line (I think it is our dance ,mother) to rival the best of the last lines.
To write that De Havilland deserved her AA is to state the obvious.She actually plays three parts ,with the same talent.Like her peer Davis in "the old maid" ,she was not afraid of making herself look older or uglier .(see also "the heiress" "hold back the dawn" "snake pit" ).