Washington Square is a novel by Henry James about a shy and introverted young woman living with her highly respected, but stern, physician father in the then newly established neighborhood of Greenwich Village in New York City. The story was adapted into a stage play in 1947, written by married couple Ruth and Augustus Goetz that opened on Broadway before moving overseas, later to see several revivals including one as recently as the last decade. The play caught the eye of Hollywood legend actress Olivia de Havilland who envisioned a film version with herself in the lead role. She hand-picked Williams Wyler as the director and pushed Paramount Pictures into purchasing the rights to the play. They accepted and hired Ruth and Augustus to draft up a screenplay based on their play with one caveat, they wanted the character of Morris Townsend to be less of a villain. Even with that stipulation he comes across as despicable, unsympathetic and still very much the villain. The ending remains mostly the same as it did on stage with the results being just as cold and depressing.
Catherine Sloper (Olivia de Havilland) is a plain and awkward young woman living with her wealthy father, Dr. Austin Sloper (Ralph Richardson). Dr. Sloper looks down on his daughter for not living up to his charming and talented wife who died young. Catherine has none of her mother’s social graces and it is a source of constant consternation from her father who does little to hide his feelings from her. Catherine’s widowed Aunt Lavinia (Miriam Hopkins) moves in and decides she can help Catherine improve her social skills. At a ball, Lavinia keeps hovering around Catherine, offering her all sorts of advice on how to attract the men in attendance, most of the advice being off base and poorly executed by her niece.
At the ball she meets Morris (Montgomery Clift), a young man of little means who shows interest in her as well as patience over her clumsiness and lack of dancing skills. She quickly falls in love with him and, after a short period of time, agrees to marry him. But her father suspects Morris is only showing interest in order to get his hands on her inheritance which amounts to quite a lot. He forbids her to marry him and even threatens to cut her off from her inheritance should she go through with it. Should Morris truly be in love with her the money wouldn’t make a difference. She insists he wouldn’t care about the money and makes plays to elope with Morris, giving up her inheritance.
The whole of this film is dependent on the performance of the leading lady. Olivia de Havilland was not new on the scene. She was a big enough star by this point in her career to speak up and get the studio to purchase the rights to this story and was passionate enough about it to give it her all. There is so much here for her to sink her teeth into and she does a masterful job at it. Her acting is reminiscent of a similar performance given by Bette Davis in Now, Voyage. Catherine’s father is nowhere near as brow-beating as Davis’s mother was in that film but he has definitely contributed to her emotional fragility by being callous and cold with her.
He does love her, though, in his own way. He tries to not shatter her fragile emotions by outright telling her Morris is only interested in her money. He takes her away to Europe instead in hopes of her coming to her senses while she is away from him. When that fails he gets blunt with her to the point that she feels he doesn’t love her at all and decides the only way she can ever be happy is to renounce her inheritance and elope with Morris. Her naïveté leads her to tell Morris about renouncing her inheritance before they can elope thinking that he will marry her anyway. It’s a bitter lesson she must learn the hard way.
Ralph Richardson plays the stern father figure well, here. His is the thankless role having to be a bit heartless to his daughter without being so bad that we hate him as a character. He is cold towards her but only really gets tough with her after she falls in love with Morris. We are not outright told early on that Morris is a gold digger but there is ample enough evidence that when her father speaks up in opposition of the relationship we can see his side of things even if we are not completely sure he is correct in his assessment of the man yet. His unwillingness to expose Morris at first to his daughter further humanizes him. Lastly, late in the movie he falls ill and is dying. He threatens to cut her out of her inheritance if she marries Morris but cannot bring himself to actually go through with it. He may not be the nicest individual but deep down there is love for his daughter in him. It just takes a mortal illness to bring it out.
The ending of the film is completely justified in the context of things. Catherine has learned from the best how to be emotionally distant and cold, cruel even. Morris has shown his true colors and abandoned her when told they would not have money as a couple. His reasons given are shallow and pathetic, yet he acts like he was being noble by abandoning her. Now that he is back he tries to sweet talk his way back into her life, proposing again. Catherine plays along with him but sees through his lies. She arranges to take him back only to bolt the door and shut out all the lights when he returns later that evening with his bags. She leaves him pounding on the front door, never to open that door to him ever again. She has learned a lot from her experiences with him including that she would rather be a spinster than married to a man that doesn’t love her. Had he shown up the night they had planned to elope he might have eventually come to love her but that time is past and she is no longer that wide-eyed young woman desperate for love.
The finale can be seen as either liberating or a tragedy depending on your outlook. On the plus side Catherine doesn’t end up in a loveless marriage to a man that would resent her for giving up her fortune. That would have been her fate had she not told him about her inheritance before the elopement. On the negative side she has closed off her heart and may not ever open it to another man again for fear of ulterior motives. In that way Morris is more than just a greedy man but an outright villain. He has forever damaged Catherine by taking advantage of her naïveté and sheer desperation for love. She may have been shy and awkward but at least she was open to being in love. Now that is all stomped out of her. She ends the film cold and cruel, having “been taught by masters.”
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: William Wyler
Best Director: William Wyler
Best Actress: Olivia de Havilland (won)
Best Supporting Actor: Ralph Richardson
Best Art Direction - Set Decoration - Black and White: John Meehan, Harry Horner and Emile Kuri (won)
Best Cinematography - Black and White: Leo Tover
Best Costume Design - Black and White: Edith Head and Gile Steele (won)
Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture: Aaron Copland (won)
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Release Date: December 28, 1949
Running Time: 115 Minutes
Not Rated
Starring: Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift and Ralph Richardson
Directed By: William Wyler
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