Rent Carrie (1952)

Olivier’s Tragedy, Not Spacek’s Terror - Carrie review by griggs

Restrained and polished, William Wyler’s Carrie unfolds with a quiet intensity rather than broad melodrama. The story that grants Jennifer Jones’s Carrie a degree of sympathy she might not otherwise have been allowed. Instead of harsh moral judgement, Wyler presents her as vulnerable, ambitious, and trapped in a world where a woman’s hunger for love and stability is too easily branded as fault.

Laurence Olivier is the one who haunts the film: his Hurstwood, once proud and composed, unravels with heartbreaking precision, undone by desire and by choices that shrink his world bit by bit. Wyler never overplays the drama, instead allowing the sadness  to build in small, inexorable steps.

What could have been shrill or moralising becomes something more quietly devastating:  a portrait of love and pride colliding with circumstance, and of lives that come apart not in explosions, but in long, mournful fade.

Superior Melodrama. - Carrie review by Steve

This is adapted from a Theodore Dreiser novel set in the US at the turn of the 20th century, though without the political bite. It follows a riches to rags story arc more typical of depression era melodrama. But its great director, WIlliam Wyler, elevates the material somewhere closer to tragedy.

Jennifer Jones in the title role plays a country girl who moves to Chicago and starts a disastrous affair with a middle aged man (Laurence Olivier) who steals and commits bigamy to keep her. They escape to New York where they live in poverty. The star was a very beautiful woman, so it's easy to accept the obsession of the man who destroys himself for her. 

But she was also a limited actor and is eclipsed by Olivier, who performs wonders with a dreadful archetype; trapped in a midlife crisis and a loveless marriage, desperate for another chance. There are fascinating thematic complications, with Carrie utterly dependant on mediocre men, and harmed by pointless social conventions.  

The film benefits from Wyler's intelligent visual storytelling. He fills the frame with fascinating detail. It's a prestigious production with excellent sets and costumes. The Production Code means there is too little anger on screen, but it is still pessimistic about the myth of the American dream.