IMDb plot summary: A ne'er-do-well husband, after years of abusing his wife, disappears with their son, and winds up selling him to a wealthy family. Years later, the wife--now a world-famous opera singer--finally has enough time and money to begin a search for him.
Directed by Dorothy Azner. Starring Ruth Chatterton, Fredric March, and Fuller Mellish Jr.
Sarah and Son tells the story of an opera singer whose husband sells their baby to a rich couple in a desperate bid for money. She spends the next several years trying to find him as well as trying to make her way in the world as a singer. The lead actress was nominated for an Academy Award for this role but she really didn't do much for me. The 1930s definitely still leaned into the overacting melodrama style of performing, and she has this in spades -- more so than anyone else in the film. One article I read compared her performance here to Greta Garbo's in Anna Christie, but the performance here is miles less believable. I'm usually able to relax into the style but here there were so many moments when she would begin a devastated monologue and I would just start laughing. It's an interesting concept for a movie and it's scripted and paced pretty well, and if the rest of the cast had been following the same sort of melodramatic style I might have been able to get into it more. As it is though it's a very tough watch for me to engage with emotionally and I'm sure I'm not going to remember this for very long.
How it entered my Flickchart:
Sarah and Son < The Keep
Sarah and Son < BASEketball
Sarah and Son > Scrooged
Sarah and Son > The Machinist
Sarah and Son < 42nd Street
Sarah and Son > The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Sarah and Son > The Final Countdown
Sarah and Son < Wuthering Heights
Sarah and Son > The Rainmaker
Sarah and Son < Make Mine Music
Sarah and Son > The Peanut Butter Falcon
Final spot: #2792 out of 3550, or 21%.
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