Cavalcade

Cavalcade is a multi-generational look at a time of tumult in British history beginning in 1899 and continuing on until the then-present time of 1933. During that time, many important historical events took place, including the Second Boer War, the death of Queen Victoria, the sinking of the Titanic, and World War I, all of which play important roles in the drama we are to witness on the screen. 

The film was among the earliest recipients of the Best Picture (then known as Outstanding Production) award. It was also a commercial success, bringing in more than three times its production costs in theater rentals. For a long time, though, it had fallen into obscurity, and when I was initially watching my way through the Best Picture winners back in 1998, I found it difficult to find a copy. Fortunately, it has found new life in the digital era with streaming services and specialty disc manufacturers. Now, someone wanting to find it will have little trouble accessing a copy. 

This picture was taking a look at recent history and commenting on it from the point of view familiar to people who would have lived through those times. It opens and closes on New Year’s Eve, a time when we are to be our most optimistic, but in both instances the mood is more somber. The opening, the night leading into 1900, we are seeing Robert Marryot (Clive Brook) preparing to enter the military, leaving behind his wife Jane (Diana Wynyard), and serve his country in the Second Boer War. Entering the service with him is Alfred Bridges (Herbert Mundin), their butler who is married to the maid Ellen (Una O’Connor). Ellen has just recently had a child, Fanny, and fears that her husband will not come back from the war. Robert and Jane have two young sons, too: Edward and Joey. 

Both men do return from the war, relatively unscathed. Upon their return home, Alfred announces that he has purchased a pub and intends to leave the Marryot household and run his own business, taking Ellen and Fanny with him. But he falls into alcoholism and is eventually run over by a horse and carriage in the streets, leaving Ellen to run the pub in his absence. Meanwhile, Fanny is growing up and showing a great talent for dancing. 

Edward falls in love with and marries his childhood friend, Edith Harris (Margaret Lindsay), but their marriage is short-lived. For their honeymoon, they take a steamship to America, a steamship named Titanic. News of a war with Germany arises in Britain, and Joey, now old enough to fight, joins along with his father. While on leave, he meets Fanny (Ursula Jeans) again, now grown and dancing professionally. He falls in love with her and eventually proposes marriage, but she is resistant because of the vastly different classes they belong to. Her mother, Ellen, who has turned the pub into a profitable business, thinks otherwise and insists to Jane that the two get married. But on the day of the armistice, Joey is killed in battle. The film concludes with Robert and Jane, now elderly, staying up to welcome in the new year, this time 1933, thinking of all they have lost since we first saw them and blissfully unaware, as the world in reality was at that time, that a second World War was just on the horizon. 

It’s a bold endeavor to make a film like this that looks at two families over the course of many years. By its very nature, this means that shortcuts have to be made to get the point across of the passing of time. The easiest way to get this across is to use interstitial titles to indicate the years, making it perfectly clear where we are at in the timeline. Cavalcade chooses not to go that route and instead trusts us, the audience, to be able to keep track of that based on the ages of the children. We see Fanny as an infant, and later, we will see her as a young girl of perhaps 6, and that tells us better than anything that those years have passed. The film also uses famous historical moments to set the time, such as the death of Queen Victoria or the sinking of the Titanic. For audiences in 1933, these would have been fairly recent events; not quite so much to modern audiences. 

By limiting the scope of the picture to just these two families, with just a few short moments with Edith and her mother, it helps keep this film grounded and easy to follow. What is surprising is that our primary focal characters really aren’t any of the adults, despite them being top-billed. We open and close with them, and they have their moments in-between, but it is really the youth that we are to pay attention to. The youth have the biggest emotional arcs. Most of them do not make it to the end of the picture, which forms the basics of the tragedy of life. The upper-class Marryot family lost both of their children; one to a senseless tragedy and the other on the very day of the armistice, whereas the working class Ellen still has Fanny. 

But the Bridges have their share of loss, too, one of their own making. Alfred’s death comes from his own personal weaknesses, unable to say no to the bottle. He died standing in the streets after having scared his daughter, Fanny, into running away from him. That the family is better off after his death shows just how much he was bringing their situation down. There is no doubt he was a good man who loved his family, but he had a serious weakness, and it led to his death. 

The biggest failing of this film is that by casting such a large net, little time can be spent establishing anything. This necessitates a lot of shorthand to get moments across. Consequentially, we don’t really get a good sense of the relationship between Edward and Edith, making their death on the Titanic feel unearned. Joey and Fanny’s relationship is a little better, but it still plays out in a matter of minutes. The loss of both Marryot children should be a powerful and heart-wrenching moment on screen, but it is poorly established, leaving us with only the vague sense of sadness that comes from hearing any parent has lost a child. On top of that, neither happens on-screen and we’re left with just our knowledge of history and the words of another character to tell us these things have happened. 

Cavalcade has been criticized of late for being the winner of Best Picture in 1933. That is a little unfair. It is a bit uneven and it doesn’t dedicate enough time to the characters to really get to know them and become invested. But it is cinema on a grand scale and you can tell a lot of great work went into making this picture look and feel elaborate. This is a well-made film that made a lot of the right choices when adapting it for the screen. But its weaknesses are enough to keep it from being the true classic that it needed to be.

Academy Award Nominations:

Outstanding Production: Winfield Sheehan (won)

Best Director: Frank Lloyd (won)

Best Actress: Diana Wynyard

Best Art Direction: William S. Darling (won)

____________________________________________________

Release Date: April 15, 1933

Running Time: 112 Minutes

Not Rated

Starring: Diana Wynyard, Clive Brook, Una O’Connor, Irene Browne, Herbert Mundin, Frank Lawton, Merle Tottenham, and Beryl Mercer

Directed by: Frank Lloyd