writers_reign One definition of genius is to create something so imperceptibly that people think it either evolved naturally or had always been there; the safety pin is a case in point. Noel Coward was a genius anyway but in 1930 he wrote a play, Cavalcade, in which the first decades of the twentieth century were refracted through the eyes of two families in London, one upper class, one lower, who go through lives punctuated by births, marriages, and deaths against a backdrop of major events. It was a brilliant concept and Coward liked it so much he did it again nine years later in This Happy Breed, but more than this, others jumped on the bandwagon not least Upstairs, Downstairs, which even borrowed Coward's coup de theatre of having a honeymoon couple deliriously happy, talking and planning in front of a ship's lifebelt and moving away to disclose the name of the ship: Titanic, and later still Downton Abbey, like the man said there's nothing new under the sun. To watch a film shot in 1933 in 2017 is to expect the worst but Coward's superb craftsmanship holds up remarkably well, he was a super patriot and he wears his patriotism proudly. It reeks with the kind of chauvinistic sentiment that writers today are either ashamed to display or no longer feel having lost an empire. Three cheers for Coward.

The_Film_Cricket I guess you could write a case study on the way that a society deals with tragedy. Take, for example, the First World War. For years after the conflict - at least until the conflict that followed it – those left behind tried to deal with it any way they could. That's where the arts are so important, in a manner of dealing with tragedy in art or music or in film, it makes for a certain auditory and visual means of wrapping our minds and our emotions around the tragedy of the insatiable need for humans to kill one another in the name of honor.In the early years of the academy awards, several films dealt with the subject and walked away with the top prize. First was Wings, a largely pro-war epic that tried to help us understand the war in the air. Two years later came the devastation of Lewis Milestone's adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front, a fearless anti-war epic about the men in the trenches displayed in bloody and unflinching detail. Those films dealt with the war from battlefield. Two years later came Cavalcade, a portrait of war and family on the home front.Of course, with Cavalcade, The First World War only makes up part of the story, but the impact is there. Based on a 1931 play by Noël Coward and directed by Frank Lloyd (who would go on to direct another Best Picture winner Mutiny on the Bounty before the decade was out), Cavalcade follows thirty years in the rise and fall of a wealthy British family from New Year's Eve of 1899 to New Year's Day of 1932. We see them through The Second Boar War, the death of Queen Victoria, the sinking of The Titanic and finally The First World War. Like Cimarron, a western that won the Oscar for Best Picture two years earlier, Cavalcade deals with the progression of world affairs as seen through the eyes of a family over several decades. The difference is that this film deals with specific red-letter moments whereas the other film simply dealt with personal issues seen through the passage of time.The focus of Cavalcade is on two families, one rich, the other employed as their servants. The wealthy are the Marryots, headed by Sir Robert and wife Lady Jane (Clive Brook and Diana Wynyard. They have two sons, Edward (John Warburton and younger brother Joe (Frank Lawton). The Bridges are headed by Alfred (Herbert Mundin) and wife Ellen (the invaluable Una O'Connor). They have a daughter Fanny (Ursula Jeans).The film opens with Robert going off to fight the Boar War and ends with son Edward coming back from The Great War. That leaves the focus of the film mostly on the women, specifically on Lady Jane who stays home and fears that her husband and then son won't come back. It is a decent performance but not great. The film is very talky and most of that talk is very flat and stiff. Cavalcade leaves you feeling as if you're watching a stage play – which is the last thing you want from a feature film.Diana Wynyard, a darling of the British stage made only a few stopovers in film throughout her long career (this was her second film) but mostly spent her life in the theater. She gives a decent performance here as Lady Jane but it is clear that the theater is still in her blood. She's was not a natural film actor and it is evident in her performance. She got her only Oscar nomination here but lost to Katherine Hepburn, came back to film occasionally but stayed on the stage until her death in 1965.Her legacy would outlive this movie. It is an interesting curio in that it shows us the lives and attitudes of people just a generation into the 20th century, but there's not real tension here. The movie is dusty and flat. There's no passion, no energy. Everyone looks as if they are reading cue-cards. For that reason, Cavalcade is all but forgotten today, a curiosity but not a necessity. Of all the Best Picture winners is has more or less passed out of common knowledge. That's as it should be because, as well intentioned as it is in dealing with war, it is not worth remembering.

TheLittleSongbird I have to admit I liked this movie. I am not sure whether it deserved Best Picture, but I do not think it is worthy of the maligning I have seen some people give it. I saw Cavalcade out of curiosity, and I found it both impressive and interesting.It may be slightly overlong, a little slow and have moments of stuffiness, but... the period detail and cinematography are terrific and the music is well composed and fits well. The story has a play-like feel and it feels adeptly constructed and very rarely lost my interest, and the script is consistently very good. The direction is adroit, likewise with the actors. The acting style here may be broad, but it is also thoughtful and interesting to watch; I think Diana Wynyard, Clive Brook and Una O'Connor are fine. Also the final march is both stirring and moving.In conclusion, Cavalcade was interesting, a curiosity yes but an interesting one at that. 7/10 Bethany Cox

Robert J. Maxwell This is one of those sweeping intergenerational stories of an upper-middle-class British families in which the children grow up over the course of thirty or so years, with the older and the younger generations each encountering triumph and tragedy. There's a bit of class conflict thrown in when the daughter of the kitchen maid becomes a successful and wealthy singer and the upper-echelon son of the ruling family fall in love with each other. There are some musical interludes, none of the songs written by the author of the play from which this film derives.That author was Noel Coward. Coward was great in some of his movie appearances, which ranged from the heroic ("In This We Serve") through the comic ("Our Man in Havana") to the somewhat bizarre and slightly menacing ("Bunny Lake Is Missing"). I quite like the guy.Yet this story seems pointless to me in many ways. A lot of these epic movies about subsequent generations and their adaptation to social change do. I know Noel Coward's work is esteemed, and I know we should all keep a stiff upper lip and hope for the best, but as one New Year celebration follows another, the message gets tiresome. Really, I was saddened by some of the turns taken by events, but didn't much give a damn what happened to any of the characters, all of whom struck me as animated messages rather than living people.What tragedy. Let me see. In the beginning there is the Boer War. The death of the Old Queen. Then two characters from the household discover they love one another -- on the Titanic. Then there is World War I. That's followed by the Jazz Age with all its threats, and what noisome threats to social stability they are -- drinking is flagrantly shown on the screen, along with homosexuality (that's a laugh, coming from Noel Coward), the threat of yet another war, art moderne, smoking cigarettes (well, we've gotten rid of that filthy nuisance), blues singers, and long fluffy feathers.At the end, the original father and the original mother, now old and a little bent, toast each other delicately. They turn and look solemnly into the camera and the mother pronounces a long toast to both the past and the future while the viewer pendiculates. Then, arm in arm, the stroll to the balcony and smile at the New Year celebration in the streets below.I suppose this sort of thing appeals to a good many people. There seems no avoiding these stories. If there IS a way of slipping past them, would someone let me know?