JohnHowardReid Review of Forbidden

Forbidden (1932)

A highly accomplished and moving piece of film-making!

[10/10 · 12 February 2018]

Acting by the four principals is so convincing, and the backgrounds to the story are so realistically and sharply observed that any reservations the viewer might have about the familiarity or melodramatic nature of the plot are soon swept aside. In a totally unsympathetic part, Ralph Bellamy gives the most memorable performance of his career. He was soon to be typecast as a prissily comic "other man", but there's nothing but the most cynical humor to be derived from his "other suitor" role here. He's a supremely vicious, thoroughly nasty muck-raker who sadistically revels in his "job". Commendably forsaking Hollywood glamor, Barbara Stanwyck plays the "Plain Jane" librarian with subtly involving skill. Even Adolphe Menjou who is characteristically yet suitably snappy in his early scenes, so warms into the character that we genuinely feel for him when he literally and symbolically takes off the mask, when he finds his love again, when he is confronted by Bellamy in the park, when he chases after Stanwyck, bundles her into a cab and is then left despondently sitting in the rain. His deathbed scene is as heartfelt as they come. And the movie's final shot as Stanwyck's insignificant and unnoticed figure is swallowed up in the scurrying crowds is easily the most shatteringly intense Capra ever achieved, - more memorable even than that final cut of Margo's aging face in Lost Horizon. Aside from Dorothy Peterson's duped wife and Myrna Fresholtz's remarkably naturalistic toddler, the other players have little to do, though Harry Holman impresses in his cameo as the retiring lovelorn columnist. Capra has directed with flair, skill, imagination and consummate expertise. His compositions and camera movement are never less than desirably dramatic. And he has wrung appealing portrayals from nearly all his players, no matter how high or humble. Perhaps Henry Armetta over-caricatures the "romantic" waiter, but Mr Armetta was never noted for his subtlety. In short, an intensely moving experience that seems even as I write these lines at the end of January 2018 to be cutting mighty close to the American political bone.