First impressions: This is a 1932 romantic drama movie co-written and directed by Frank Capra. The screenplay was co-written with frequent collaborator, Academy Award nominated screenwriter Jo Swerling. (Footnote: Jo was the father of Peter Swerling, a radar expert with a mathematics PhD from UCLA whose thesis was on Hardy spaces. Peter’s obit was written by Solomon Golomb for SIAM.)
The audio for the copy of Forbidden we watched wasn’t perfect, with background hissing, the camera work was sloppy (some scenes were over lit, some shots were too close or poorly framed, for example). More distracting, IMHO, was the disjointed narrative. Often scenes jumped ahead in time, making the plot hard to follow. Moreover, the melodramatic nature of the plot left an impression that Lulu (Stanwick’’s character) appears almost helpless at times to solve the dramatic problems confronting her.
On the bright side: Carpa shows considerable skill in creating emotionally impactful moments and this film has a lot of these “tentpole” scenes. Furthermore, Barbara Stanwick's emotionally engaginng and her acting is excellent, in spite of the confusing nature of her character. In fact, this confusion kept me in the film, wondering what plot twist Frank Capra would bring up next.
Final words: An early Capra film that has its flaws but is well worth watching for the classic movie fan or the Frank Capra fan. (My wife liked it too:-)
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