Claud Allister | Through the Shattered Lens

Based on a play by Somerset Maugham, 1929’s Charming Sinners takes place amongst the very rich.

Kathryn Miles (Ruth Chatterton) is married to Robert Miles (Clive Brook). Robert is wealthy and a respected businessman and, through her marriage, Kathryn is also wealthy and …. well, she’s not quite respected. The fact of the matter is that everyone is gossiping about the fact that Robert is cheating on Kathryn. Kathryn denies that Robert is being unfaithful but she knows that he is. She also knows that Robert is cheating with her best friend, Anne-Marie Whitley (Mary Nolan). Even when Anne-Marie’s husband, George (Montagu Love), comes to suspect that Anne-Marie is cheating with Robert, Kathryn tells George that it isn’t true and defends her cad of a husband.

Why is Kathryn doing this? As Kathryn explains it, she doesn’t feel that marriage necessarily means that you have to love someone. Kathryn married Robert for the money and the status and, as long as she has that, she’s willing to overlook Robert’s dalliances. Admitting that Robert is cheating would obligate her to go through a divorce and potentially lose everything that she has. If this film had been released just a few years later than it was, the Production Code would have insisted that Kathryn suffer for her less-than-reverent attitude towards the institution of marriage. Since this is a pre-code film, Kathryn is portrayed as being strong and determined. What the Production Code would have deemed a drama, the pre-code era considered to be a comedy.

Still, Kathryn does get revenge on her husband by openly flirting with a former lover, Karl Kraley (William Powell, handsome and suave as ever). Kathryn also makes some money on her own, proving to her husband that she could be a success even if she hadn’t married him. Kathryn informs Robert that she is going to be living her own life, even if they are married. And if Kathryn wants to take a lover, that’s her decision.

And good for Kathryn! Seriously, Robert is so smug and sure of himself that it’s deeply satisfying to watch as Kathryn reveals that Robert was never as clever as he thought it was. Though the film does not end with the dramatic divorce that some might expect, it does end with Kathryn taking control of her own life and making her own decisions about how she’s going to live it. That type of ending is rare enough today. One can only imagine how audiences in 1929 reacted to it.

But is the film itself any good, you may be asking. It’s an early sound picture and while the cast all proves their ability to handle dialogue, the largely stationary camera often makes the film feel like a filmed play (which is largely what it was). Like many pre-code films, the emphasis here is on how the rich have better clothes and better homes than the majority of the people watching the movie. That’s not a problem for me. I like looking at nice clothes and wonderfully decorated houses. Some others may dismiss this film as just being about the problems of the rich but my personal opinion is that everyone has problems. Wouldn’t you rather have problems as a wealthy person than a poor one? The most important thing is that the film features two of the best actors of Hollywood’s early Golden Age, Ruth Chatteron and William Powell, and they both give excellent and charming performances.

Charming Sinners is a bit of time capsule and probably not for everyone. If you’re not interested in the film’s era, it probably won’t hold your attention. But, to a fashionable history nerd like me, Charming Sinners definitely had its charms.

Did you know that Dracula had a daughter!?

Well, Bram Stoker might disagree but, according to Universal Studios, he did. Her name was Countess Marya Zaleska and, as played by Gloria Holden, she is the title character in 1936’s Dracula’s Daughter! Like her father, the Countess was also a vampire. The film never gets into just how she became a vampire. Was she born a vampire or, far more disturbingly, was she once a mortal who turned into a vampire by her own father? The film doesn’t tell us but it does establish early on that she hates being one of the undead. Unlike her father, she struggles with her urge to drink blood. When she discovers that Dracula has been staked, she and her servant, Sandor (Irving Pichel), steal the body from the morgue and burn it. The Countess thinks that this will cure her of her urges.

Sadly, it does no such thing.

So, what’s a reluctant, 20th century vampire to do? Well, she can always go to a psychiatrist and hope that science can somehow break the curse. She ends up as a patient of Dr. Jeffrey Garth (Otto Kruger). By coincidence, Dr. Garth has another famous patient — Dr. Edward Von Helsing. (That’s right, they changed the “van” to a “von” in Dracula’s Daughter. Despite the name change, Edward van Sloan returns to play the veteran vampire hunter.)

Von Helsing in on trial, accused of murdering Dracula in the previous film. Oddly enough, nobody mentions Renfield who, seeing as how we’re told Dracula’s Daughter starts exactly where Dracula left off, would have been found dead in the crypt as well. Even stranger, no one steps forward to defend Von Helsing. Dr. Seward, Mina, Johnathan Harker? Forget about them. Not a single one is to be found while Von Helsing is accused of murder.

Bastards.

Fortunately, Von Helsing has a defense! Since Dracula was already dead and had been for 500 years, Von Helsing could not have killed him. Helping him out with this defense is Dr. Garth…

Meanwhile, the Countess tries to resist the urge to attack every woman that she sees. She pours her frustrations out into painting. One night, Sandor brings the Countess a new model, a beautiful young woman named Lil (Nan Grey). The Countess orders Lil to undress and then, after staring at her, gives into her urges and attacks…

If you’re thinking that there’s a subtext here, that’s because there is. (In fact, Universal’s tagline for the film was, “Save the women of London from Dracula’s Daughter!”) Perhaps even more so than in Dracula, Dracula’s Daughter uses vampirism as a metaphor for forbidden sex. When the Countess stares at Lil and, later, when she prepares to bite the neck of Dr. Garth’s fiancée, she is embodying the hysterical fears of a puritanical society. When she unsuccessfully seeks a cure for her vampirism, we’re reminded that, in the 1930s, psychiatry classified homosexuality as being a mental illness. When the Countess struggles with her urge to drink blood, she is a stand-in for everyone who has struggled with their sexuality.

Gloria Holden plays the Countess as being as much a victim as a victimizer. Whereas Bela Lugosi turned Dracula into the epitome of evil, Gloria Holden gives a performance that is full of ambiguity. In fact, she at times seems to be so tortured by her vampiric state that, when she finally fully embraces the fact that she’s a vampire, you have to cheer a little. At least she’s finally being honest with herself! At least she’s no longer making apologies or allowing society to punish her for being who she is. Was Countess Zaleska the first reluctant vampire in film history? I’m not sure but Holden’s performance undoubtedly set the bar by which all other self-loathing vampires should be judged.

Dracula’s Daughter holds up surprisingly well. It’s definitely one to look for during this Halloween season.