Based on the novel Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser, William Wyler's Carrie is a melodrama through and through, the sort of thing that recalls earlier efforts like Jezebel or Wuthering Heights. It's also something of a compromised work to fit in with the Hays Office's mandates on morality in film at the time, something that also hampered Detective Story. It's obvious that Wyler was trying to push as far as he could under the strictures that he was operating, but unlike someone like Alfred Hitchcock who was unquestionably on the top of the industry in multiple ways, including, most importantly, financially, Wyler was making more dramatic fare than sensationalist while his films rarely made Hitchcock money.
Carrie Meeber (Jennifer Jones) is a hayseed who decides to go to Chicago to make her fortune, following after her sister who married a stockyard worker and is making her living in a hovel in the slums of the major Midwestern city. On the train in, she meets Charles (Eddie Albert), a slick operator and traveling salesman based in Chicago who gives her his card in the hope of further contact. After she loses her job at a boot manufacturers sweatshop, she calls up Charles in the hope of finding a job, but he quickly captures her into his illicit web by getting her to live in his apartment with her without marrying her. She also meets a man who runs a high class establishment, George Hurstwood (Laurence Olivier).
The whole dramatic angle of the first half of the film is Carrie moving from one illicit situation to another because while Charles dotes on her in his own skeevy way (he may even love her in a way that's not terribly standard), Carrie falls in love with George who immediately falls in love with her back. The problem is that George is already married to Julie (Miriam Hopkins) with two grown children. However, through some machinations on Julie's part, she is the effective owner of every major piece of his property, and she won't divorce him. She'd rather seem him squirm than happy, and George is desperate for his own happiness.
It's about here where the film becomes George's, and he doesn't let go until the final twenty minutes or so. It's a good thing that Olivier is a really good actor because he makes this section, which does feel a mite overlong, work as well as it does. It's a portrait of a man on a self-destructive course because he simply wants to be happy, so he's willing to throw everything away to be with the one woman he loves. It's a downward spiral that involves theft, lying, and deception. Combine that with the thinly veiled prostituting of herself that Carrie goes through, and you have some basic elements of a Billy Wilder movie, a comparison I was actually considering early in the film.
I suppose I was slightly thrown by the change in focus as Carrie became a minor character in the movie named after her, sitting at home while George goes out and tries to make a new living in New York, his recent history following him wherever he goes so he can't keep a job. It's a showcase for Olivier in one of his more subtle performances, a marked contrast to some of his bigger moments in Wuthering Heights, and his tragic downfall, brought on by his own choices, is carried entirely by Olivier. There's little else to hold it up since it becomes an almost episodic series of events that relay that downfall.
Carrie reasserts herself towards the end when she gets confronted with the fact that George never actually got a divorce from Julie, making him a bigamist, and that they just keep getting poorer and poorer. So, she makes her own way, and that her rise to her own fame is covered in a quick montage feels like it's a cheat to her, since this is nominally her story. It ends on a tragic note, and that note ends up being George's (changed from the novel to make it less explicit in how he ends).
I found the film a small success, probably the least of Wyler's work. It keeps demonstrating how Wyler could make something out of very little through his sheer talent and ability with the technical sides of filmmaking in addition to his management of actors. Jennifer Jones might have been more of a plaything for her husband David O. Selznick than a serious actress (though, she definitely had some good performances in her like in The Song of Bernadette), but she holds her own well enough here. The show really belongs to Olivier, though, and combined with Wyler's direction, he delivers a surprisingly nuanced performance of self-destruction. He's the main joy of the film because the actual story is straight up melodrama given no real dimension to latch onto. That I feel the film succeeds despite that is a surprise to me.
Still, this is probably Wyler's least film. It's something that feels compromised by needs of the studio to push forward a big actor and clean up the action for the Hays Office. I'm reminded of The Plough and the Stars by John Ford, a work that was also diminished by studio demands but still managed to work despite them.
Carrie Meeber (Jennifer Jones) is a hayseed who decides to go to Chicago to make her fortune, following after her sister who married a stockyard worker and is making her living in a hovel in the slums of the major Midwestern city. On the train in, she meets Charles (Eddie Albert), a slick operator and traveling salesman based in Chicago who gives her his card in the hope of further contact. After she loses her job at a boot manufacturers sweatshop, she calls up Charles in the hope of finding a job, but he quickly captures her into his illicit web by getting her to live in his apartment with her without marrying her. She also meets a man who runs a high class establishment, George Hurstwood (Laurence Olivier).
The whole dramatic angle of the first half of the film is Carrie moving from one illicit situation to another because while Charles dotes on her in his own skeevy way (he may even love her in a way that's not terribly standard), Carrie falls in love with George who immediately falls in love with her back. The problem is that George is already married to Julie (Miriam Hopkins) with two grown children. However, through some machinations on Julie's part, she is the effective owner of every major piece of his property, and she won't divorce him. She'd rather seem him squirm than happy, and George is desperate for his own happiness.
It's about here where the film becomes George's, and he doesn't let go until the final twenty minutes or so. It's a good thing that Olivier is a really good actor because he makes this section, which does feel a mite overlong, work as well as it does. It's a portrait of a man on a self-destructive course because he simply wants to be happy, so he's willing to throw everything away to be with the one woman he loves. It's a downward spiral that involves theft, lying, and deception. Combine that with the thinly veiled prostituting of herself that Carrie goes through, and you have some basic elements of a Billy Wilder movie, a comparison I was actually considering early in the film.
I suppose I was slightly thrown by the change in focus as Carrie became a minor character in the movie named after her, sitting at home while George goes out and tries to make a new living in New York, his recent history following him wherever he goes so he can't keep a job. It's a showcase for Olivier in one of his more subtle performances, a marked contrast to some of his bigger moments in Wuthering Heights, and his tragic downfall, brought on by his own choices, is carried entirely by Olivier. There's little else to hold it up since it becomes an almost episodic series of events that relay that downfall.
Carrie reasserts herself towards the end when she gets confronted with the fact that George never actually got a divorce from Julie, making him a bigamist, and that they just keep getting poorer and poorer. So, she makes her own way, and that her rise to her own fame is covered in a quick montage feels like it's a cheat to her, since this is nominally her story. It ends on a tragic note, and that note ends up being George's (changed from the novel to make it less explicit in how he ends).
I found the film a small success, probably the least of Wyler's work. It keeps demonstrating how Wyler could make something out of very little through his sheer talent and ability with the technical sides of filmmaking in addition to his management of actors. Jennifer Jones might have been more of a plaything for her husband David O. Selznick than a serious actress (though, she definitely had some good performances in her like in The Song of Bernadette), but she holds her own well enough here. The show really belongs to Olivier, though, and combined with Wyler's direction, he delivers a surprisingly nuanced performance of self-destruction. He's the main joy of the film because the actual story is straight up melodrama given no real dimension to latch onto. That I feel the film succeeds despite that is a surprise to me.
Still, this is probably Wyler's least film. It's something that feels compromised by needs of the studio to push forward a big actor and clean up the action for the Hays Office. I'm reminded of The Plough and the Stars by John Ford, a work that was also diminished by studio demands but still managed to work despite them.