Cavalcade (1933) Director: Frank Lloyd
“Give the future a chance…”
★★☆☆☆
Cavalcade is a curious choice for Best Picture (one of many odd decisions made by the Academy throughout its history). Despite featuring a panoply of mediocre acting and a fairly bland plot (the film is mostly a dreary bore), its redeeming qualities lie in several powerful montage sequences toward the end of the film in which the chaos of the British Empire –between its wars and moral ambivalence– are contrasted with the mores of a single family which has lost its children to the great tragedies of the 20th century.
Cavalcade, the winner of three Academy Awards in 1933 including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Direction, is a Victorian biopic that tells the story of the Marryot family through their various trials and tribulations –the plot is epic in scale. It begins with a toast on New Year’s Day in 1899-1900, and leads through the Boer Wars, the death of Queen Victoria, and the sinking of the Titanic –wherein two of the main characters suddenly drown offscreen on their honeymoon. Cavalcade concludes with the outbreak of World War I wherein the family’s last remaining son dies. There are several unexpected, seemingly random deaths that suddenly strike in the film. Cavalcade is, at root, a tragic exploration of the decline of the British Empire. The youthful idealism behind the Boer Wars quickly turns to jaded pessimism as World War I kills a whole generation of young men and leads to the moral relativism of the 1920s and a second ‘great’ war.
This film is a bland drag, and all of the characters are entirely distant, hollow, and forgettable. How are audiences supposed to hold onto any of these people if they simply keep dying offscreen? To me, Cavalcade felt suspiciously like an early example of Oscar bait –a desperate attempt to create a sweeping, impactful epic that was sure to garner awards– but it failed on almost every level.
Credits:
- Director: Frank Lloyd
- Screenplay by: Reginald Berkeley and Sonya Levien (continuity)
- Based on: “Cavalcade,” a 1931 play by Noël Coward
- Produced by: Frank Lloyd and Winfield R. Sheehan
- Starring:
- Diana Wynyard…..Jane Marryot
- Clive Brook…..Robert Marryot
- Una O’Connor…..Ellen Bridges
- Irene Browne…..Margaret Harris
- Herbert Mundin…..Alfred Bridges
- Frank Lawton…..Joe Marryot
- Merle Tottenham…..Annie
- Beryl Mercer…..Cook
- Diana Wynyard…..Jane Marryot
- Cinematography: Ernest Palmer
- Edited by: Margaret Clancey
- Music by: Peter Brunelli, Louis De Francesco, Arthur Lange, J. S. Zamecnik
- Distributed by: Fox Film Corporation
Other Notes:
- Cavalcade was the first Best Picture-winner for the Fox Film Corporation, and its only win until its merger with 20th Century Pictures in 1935.
- This film was entirely shot in California, despite being a British film.
- Frank Lloyd would later go on to direct another Best Picture-winner, 1935’s Mutiny on the Bounty.
- The original play by Noël Coward was later adapted into a popular 1971 British television series “Upstairs, Downstairs.”
- The regulatory Hay’s Office, the Hollywood censorship bureau at the time, was concerned with the use of “damn” and “hell” in this film, fearing that it would set a precedent in films that would grow increasingly more profane (imagine that!), but the film was ultimately not edited.
5th Academy Awards (1933)
Held on March 16, 1934 at The Ambassador Hotel, the 6th Academy Awards ceremony was hosted by Will Rogers. There was an amusing anecdote from the evening which involved Will Rogers reading the winner of Best Director –“Come up and get it, Frank”– leading Frank Capra to rush the stage when in fact Frank Lloyd had won the prize. They tried to overcome the gaff by calling all the nominees to the stage (though this also caused some confusion).
- Best Picture: Cavalcade
- 42nd Street
- A Farewell to Arms
- I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
- Lady for a Day
- Little Women
- The Private Life of Henry VIII
- She Done Him Wrong
- Smilin’ Through
- State Fair
- Best Director: Frank Lloyd, Cavalcade
- Frank Capra, Lady for a Day
- George Cukor, Little Women
- Best Actor: Charles Laughton as Henry VIII – The Private Life of Henry VIII
- Leslie Howard – Berkeley Square as Peter Standish
- Paul Muni – I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang as James Allen
- Best Actress: Katharine Hepburn – Morning Glory as Eva Lovelace
- May Robson – Lady for a Day as Apple Annie
- Diana Wynyard – Cavalcade as Jane Marryot
- Best Original Story: One Way Passage – Robert Lord
- The Prizefighter and the Lady – Frances Marion
- Rasputin and the Empress – Charles MacArthur
Did the right film win Best Picture?
In my opinion, Cavalcade is an underwhelming, forgettable panorama of life for one family through the decline of Victorian England and the demise of the British Empire. It is a bleak film filled with sorrow and hopelessness as an upper-class British family slowly deteriorates. This film reminded me a great deal of another painfully mediocre Best Picture-winner, Cimarron. I would have chosen almost any other film in 1933 to win Best Picture instead of Cavalcade.
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Sounds very curious indeed. Enjoyed your recap!