**Magnificent Obsession

Magnificent Obsession

Alfred Hitchcock, when discussing a key plot point of The Lady Vanishes (1939) with François Truffaut, mentions “the plausibles”,1 a reference to those people looking for absolute believability in films. This refers to an earlier exchange between the two directors in relation to The 39 Steps (Alfred Hitchcock, 1935), when Truffaut remarks: “…I realized that it’s approximately at this period that you began to take more liberties with the scenarios, that is, to attach less importance to the credibility of the plot, or at any rate, whenever necessary, to sacrifice plausibility in favor of pure emotion.” Hitchcock’s response? “Yes, that’s right!”2 Why was plausibility dismissed by these two directors? Hitchcock explains: “Let’s be logical if you’re going to analyze everything in terms of plausibility and credibility, then no fiction script can stand up to that approach, and you wind up doing a documentary.”3 Coincidence and contrivance are prevalent in cinema. To filmmakers, it may be a necessary evil of storytelling, a flimsy narrative element that is needed to move things along but that also needs to glossed over in order to arrive at the next big sequence; to critical viewers, however, these elements can be the bane of their moviegoing experience, a glaring example that shows the lack of plausibility (such as illogical character behaviour or ludicrous plot twists) that riles them and breaks their immersion in a drama.

Magnificent Obsession (John M. Stahl, 1935) is one of many examples of a film seemingly disregarding plausibility for emotional effect. The plot full of happenstance, concerning carefree and selfish playboy Robert “Bob” Merrick (Robert Taylor) who needlessly and recklessly gets into an avoidable accident. Merrick’s mishap requires him to receive treatment with a piece of medical equipment that just so happens to be needed at the same time by an unseen Doctor Hudson, a beloved man who subsequently dies. The doctor’s wife Helen (Irene Dunne) hears that Merrick’s reckless behaviour inadvertently resulted in her husband’s death. By chance, Merrick later meets Helen before either of them realises whom the other actually is. When both discover the truth after meeting again, Merrick is shocked and awed by the revelation, while Helen leaves, the truth upsetting her. Later, a chance meeting with Randolph (Ralph Morgan), a sculptor and friend of the late Doctor Hudson, introduces Merrick to the doctor’s guiding philosophy of life – to use his money and skills to help others anonymously and selflessly. On hearing this, Merrick does one good deed easily and quickly, which makes him feel better about himself. He then tries to impress Helen, who is shown gradually warming to the charmer, if still understandably reticent. However, following a talk with Merrick in his car, Helen is hit by another vehicle and blinded. While Helen adjusts to her radically altered life and tries to maintain hope, Merrick diligently applies Hudson’s philosophy to seek a cure to Helen’s blindness.

Magnificent Obsession, both the glossy 1954 Technicolor remake directed by Douglas Sirk and Stahl’s more reserved 1935 original, are key examples of romantic melodramas, films as emotional rollercoasters. As George Morris notes: “They are called women’s films, weepies, tearjerkers, soap operas, and (less pejoratively) melodramas. They are films revolving around women, often written by women, and aimed at specifically female audiences.”4 What is the appeal of this type of film for certain film directors? Morris argues:

…the romantic melodrama is one of the richest sources of aesthetic expression in cinema. Much has been written on such directors as Frank Borzage and Douglas Sirk who operated within this genre for most of their careers, but there are other directors of melodramas whose films have been largely forgotten or ignored. Such a director is John M. Stahl.5

Morris elaborates on what makes Stahl special when directing films aimed at women and how the filmmaker uses romantic melodramas for artistic expression:

Stahl’s approach to the woman’s film is as unique as it is personal. In lieu of Borzage’s transcendent romanticism and Sirk’s subversive irony, Stahl confronts his unlikely narratives with quiet directness. There are no undue frills or stylistic flourishes in a Stahl film… Throughout a career that began in 1914 and ended with his death in 1950, Stahl’s unadorned sincerity toward any and all subject matter remained consistent. Thus, in Stahl’s MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION (1935) the wilder reaches of Lloyd C. Douglas’s imagination are nakedly exposed, devoid of the directorial comment that informs Sirk’s 1954 remake.6

Tom Ryan summarises Stahl’s directorial approach to Magnificent Obsession:

It’s as if he has set out to drain the material of as much of its melodrama as possible… Comic bits of business are frequently deployed to provide a counterpoint to the emotional intensity of unfolding events; composer Franz Waxman has designed a soundtrack that is largely devoid of the emotive force that was de rigueur for dramas of the 1930s; and Stahl’s visual style rigorously eschews the big, glowing close-ups that are characteristic of the melodramas of the time.7

Ryan goes on to identify a key technique that Stahl uses in the place of close-ups:

…he relies heavily on master shots, with exchanges between the characters repeatedly filmed as unbroken two-shots and three-shots. The effect is to draw our attention to the flow of an interaction rather than to the individuals’ particular contributions to it – to make it not about one or another, but both or all – a visual approach which is subtly distancing and, arguably, at odds with any melodramatic impulse.8

Ryan contrasts this with the approach to the same material taken by Sirk:

If Stahl set out to drain much of the melodrama out of Douglas’ novel, Sirk’s goal appears to have been to put it all back in, and then some. Much of the commentary on his version over the years has correctly drawn attention to its use of the stock features of melodrama: the exaggerated use of coincidences in the plotting, the broadly drawn characters, the full-on score (by Frank Skinner), and so on. Sirk drew extensively on these elements throughout his career, but it’s probably accurate to say that, of all the films he made, Magnificent Obsession is where he takes them over the top.9

In contrast to Sirk’s remake, Stahl’s original comes across as more restrained, almost austere in places. Even in the intimate climatic moments of the film, Stahl exercises restraint. This includes only a brief closeup of Helen, presenting Dunne in a similar way to how Carl Theodor Dreyer framed the face of Renée Jeanne Falconetti in La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (The Passion of Joan of Arc, 1928). This example seems to contradict Ryan’s earlier point about the distancing effect of master shots in Stahl’s version. However, the closeup of Dunne is not just employed for maximum emotional effect but also frames Helen’s face serenely, using the most direct means possible to show a heroine in repose after enduring great hardship. This austere method is not a surprise – Morris notes that a spare style was evident in Stahl’s earlier film Back Street (1932), and references Dreyer to underline his point:

Stahl’s style has never been sparer than it is in BACK STREET… His customary restraint paradoxically results in an overpowering intensity. Actually, it is Carl Th. Dreyer whom Stahl resembles far more than directors such as Sirk and Borzage. BACK STREET specifically resembles Dreyer’s GERTRUD in its evenly paced, slowly unraveling scenes which produce a cumulative effect on the viewer, until by the end of the film one is left with the feeling of having experienced a human life in its most privileged moments.10

Stahl’s restraint does not mean that Magnificent Obsession lacks technically accomplished shots, though – they are just not as immediately apparent as being ostentatious. Take the appearance of Merrick at Helen’s Paris apartment when she is at what may be her lowest point – he enters her suite, but we see him first reflected in a mirror in the hall before he reveals his presence to her. On the one hand, Stahl tips off the audience, but not Helen, that Merrick is there, but Stahl also withholds the camera’s – and audience’s – direct gaze of Merrick before he is finally revealed and the camera pans right to left. Just before Merrick’s arrival, viewers have been privy to Helen in her apartment alone, where she appears to contemplate her end. Stahl’s film does not gloss over the darkness inherent in the material – at times the director seems to embrace it, as in the brief film noir-like shot of Helen, seated still and cloaked in darkness, an expression of her blindness and perhaps her state of mind, while medical experts discuss her seemingly incurable condition.

Stahl’s film of Magnificent Obsession is 90 years old at the time of writing and seems overshadowed by the Sirk remake in the annals of cinema history. For instance, David Blakeslee favours Sirk’s remake over the original. Referring to Sirk in relation to Stahl’s original film, Blakeslee asserts:

…given his [Sirk’s] influence and accomplishments, this early rendition of a massively popular novel from the 1920s takes on value that it wouldn’t have otherwise. That’s just telling it like it is. Magnificent Obsession (1935) is basically weepy hokum, potboiler schmaltz, pre-television soap opera… a surefire cash-in on a novel with a large built-in audience that made it a natural target for producers looking for a solid return on investment.11

Blakeslee goes on to discuss “the ‘phenomenon’ of Magnificent Obsession” – that is, the novel by Lloyd C. Douglas and Stahl’s film – and states: “…The common thread that ties the book, the movie and the other works I’ve mentioned together – their shared interest in boiling down the fascinating but often confusing and ambiguous complex of Christian tradition down into a few easy to remember and practice (at least superficially) nuggets of conventional wisdom.”12 Ryan reads the novel’s philosophy more favourably:

While Douglas’s novel has generally been regarded with condescension, it is reasonably engaging pulp, fueled by its author’s committed belief in the rewards on offer from a Higher Power and occasionally leavened by a dry humor. A parable-like tale loaded with biblical allusions, it’s both a love story and a mystery, with Merrick as the protagonist, Helen Hudson as his beloved, and her late husband’s coded journal as a puzzle which, once solved, will provide the means for Merrick’s redemption.13

Although Blakeslee is critical of the 1935 Magnificent Obsession, he compliments how the film handles its central idea:

I won’t wax all theological on you here but I will express my skepticism at films and other media products like this that want to sell us on such simplistic and elementary “principles” as the solution to what ails us and the rest of the world, while we’re at it. Though I will admit, plugging this two-bit metaphysics smack dab into the heart of a bosom-heaving 1930’s weepie melodrama does at least give the pitch a touch of charm that more wooden, self-serious efforts utterly lack.14

Although there is an obvious religious element to Merrick’s heroic and redemptive arc, and Helen’s seemingly miraculous recovery from her blindness, Stahl’s film never feels overly emotional, and certainly not like “a bosom-heaving 1930’s weepie melodrama” – not overwrought but underplayed, with charming and sympathetic performances from the two lead actors. While the farfetched premise promises heightened drama, Stahl takes the material seriously for the most part, whilst sprinkling the film with comedic bits of business, bringing the highfalutin story back down to earth whenever events threaten to spin out of control and risk irking the “plausibles”.15

Magnificent Obsession (1935 USA 112 mins)

**Prod Co: **Universal Pictures Prod: John M. Stahl, Carl Laemmle, Fred S, Meyer, E. M. Asher **Dir: **John M. Stahl **Scr: **Sarah Y. Mason, Victor Heerman, George O’Neil (Based on Magnificent Obsession 1929 novel by Lloyd C. Douglas) Phot: John J. Mescall Ed: Milton Carruth Mus: Franz Waxman

Cast: Irene Dunne, Robert Taylor, Charles Butterworth, Betty Furness, Sara Haden

Endnotes

1. François Truffaut, Hitchcock by Truffaut: The Definitive Study – Updated Edition (London: Paladin, 1978/1986), p. 164. ↩
2. Truffaut, pp. 129-130. ↩
3. Truffaut, p. 131. ↩
4. George Morris, “John M. Stahl: The Man Who Understood Women,” Film Comment, Vol. 13, No. 3 (May-June 1977): p. 24. ↩
5. Morris, p. 24. ↩
6. Morris, p. 24. ↩
7. Tom Ryan, “Magnificent Obsession” in The Call of the Heart: John M. Stahl and Hollywood Melodrama, Bruce Babington and Charles Barr, eds. (Herts: John Libbey Publishing, 2018), p. 181. ↩
8. Ryan, “Magnificent Obsession,” p. 182. ↩
9. Tom Ryan, The Films of Douglas Sirk: Exquisite Ironies and Magnificent Obsessions (Jackson, Mississippi: University of Mississippi, 2019), p. 200. ↩
10. Morris, p. 25. ↩
11. David Blakeslee, “Magnificent Obsession (1935) – #457,” *Criterion Reflections *(blog),14 March 2009. ↩
12. Blakeslee, “Magnificent Obsession (1935) – #457.” ↩
13. Ryan, The Films of Douglas Sirk, p. 195. ↩
14. Blakeslee, “Magnificent Obsession (1935) – #457.” ↩
15. For more information on the novel, and the 1935 and 1954 adaptations, see: Tom Ryan, “Obsessions Imitations Subversions on Magnificent Obsession Part One,” Senses of Cinema, Issue 73 (23 December, 2014). This feature article echoes Ryan’s pieces in The Call of the Heart: John M. Stahl and Hollywood Melodrama and The Films of Douglas Sirk: Exquisite Ironies and Magnificent Obsessions. ↩