After watching the previous version which is called THIS LOVE OF OURS and was produced by Universal in 1945, I watched NEVER SAY GOODBYE last night. I can see how they updated the script to work in Cornell Borchers' Eastern European culture. Miss Borchers is fantastic at doing melodramatic close-ups on camera, but I think I favor Merle Oberon's interpretation in the original.
Miss Oberon is substantially more aloof, not as warm as Borchers, and since this is a story about how a mother abandoned her little girl, I would say it plays better if the mother is still standoffish when she first reunites with the daughter seven years later. It makes sense if she doesn't fully warm up to motherhood until the end. Because Oberon remains cold and detached for most of the story, it is much more powerful when she finally caves in and embraces her daughter. Whereas with Borchers' interpretation, she comes across too warm and fuzzy and registers less inner emotional turmoil than Oberon does who masters the role with her smart performance.
I definitely think Charles Korvin outshines Rock Hudson in the leading role. For the first time, I realized what limited range Rock Hudson had as a performer. In the third-billed role, George Sanders is decent, but I feel Claude Rains adds more flair in the original and Rains' part was expanded in a key scene which gives him a significant advantage over Sanders.
The one thing that I do not like about the remake is how tight and confining the sets are. The original uses much more spacious sets, and we really get a feel that the lead doctor (Korvin/Hudson) is quite wealthy and that he is hiding his daughter on the estate from the pain of the outside world. The home in the remake looks like something the Cleaver family lives in, a suburban type home on the Universal backlot, which was probably a deliberate choice to make the story appeal more to middle-class viewers. I don't think the use of Technicolor helps and actually prefer the black-and-white shadings of the original.
Miss Oberon is substantially more aloof, not as warm as Borchers, and since this is a story about how a mother abandoned her little girl, I would say it plays better if the mother is still standoffish when she first reunites with the daughter seven years later. It makes sense if she doesn't fully warm up to motherhood until the end. Because Oberon remains cold and detached for most of the story, it is much more powerful when she finally caves in and embraces her daughter. Whereas with Borchers' interpretation, she comes across too warm and fuzzy and registers less inner emotional turmoil than Oberon does who masters the role with her smart performance.
I definitely think Charles Korvin outshines Rock Hudson in the leading role. For the first time, I realized what limited range Rock Hudson had as a performer. In the third-billed role, George Sanders is decent, but I feel Claude Rains adds more flair in the original and Rains' part was expanded in a key scene which gives him a significant advantage over Sanders.
The one thing that I do not like about the remake is how tight and confining the sets are. The original uses much more spacious sets, and we really get a feel that the lead doctor (Korvin/Hudson) is quite wealthy and that he is hiding his daughter on the estate from the pain of the outside world. The home in the remake looks like something the Cleaver family lives in, a suburban type home on the Universal backlot, which was probably a deliberate choice to make the story appeal more to middle-class viewers. I don't think the use of Technicolor helps and actually prefer the black-and-white shadings of the original.