mark.waltz Review of The Silver Cord

The Silver Cord (1933)

Stagy but memorable melodrama....the ultimate mother love tale of a mother to hate.

[6/10 · 19 July 2012]

Irene Dunne and Frances Dee find they have something in common when they join together to fight their mother-in-law to be (Laura Hope Crews), a mother so in love with her sons (Joel McCrea and Eric Linden) that she passive/aggressively makes the attempt to destroy their engagements to the two young women. There have been all sorts of tales (particularly on stage during the first half of the 20th Century and on screen, mostly during the early 1930's) of women from the wrong side of the tracks who dared to fall in love above their stations, causing the wrath of some matronly dowager. Barbara Stanwyck fought Clara Blandick in "Shopworn"; Nancy Carroll fought Pauline Fredericks (already her mother-in-law") in "Wayward". But when two lovely women of good breeding go after Crews' sons, the situation somehow seems sicker and incestuous. What other reason could there be for Crews to hold onto her sons so tightly? One will win, one will loose, but the ultimate looser will be mama Crews, the ultimate "Mommie Dearest". She is magnificent in recreating her stage role, blowing everybody else off screen with the intensity of her performance as if she were Judith Anderson in "Medea" or Laurette Taylor in the original "The Glass Menagerie". The others do admirable work, but when it comes down to it, this will be remembered as the finest film work of the future "Aunt Pittypat" of "Gone With the Wind".