Blossoms In The Dust

Edna: "There are no illegitimate children - there are only illegitimate parents!"

Edna is engaged, and looking forward to getting married. Ordinarily we'd be happy for her, except that she then decides to cheat on her fiancé, with a rich guy who she's only just briefly met. Within a year she's ditched her original husband to be, married her new guy, and is making jokes at the expense of the man whose heart she's broken… about the fact that she has broken it.

Hmm, she's not your typical 1941 Technicolor heroine is she?

And indeed, this does not turn out to be your typical 1941 Technicolor movie. Edna's sister commits suicide. Then her only child dies. Then she and her husband lose their fortune. Can things get any worse? Yes, then her husband dies too. Oh dear.

Her original intended is never referred to again, but some part of Edna must surely be hating herself for treating him so shabbily.

But... doesn't the poster above brag 'Technicolor's Greatest Love Story'? So she's going to realise that that poor guy who she ditched at the start was her true true love all along, right?

No, the rest of this film, and indeed her life, is spent setting up and running various concerns for illegitimate children, and it's through these harsh endeavours that Edna at last becomes the real heroine that the piece has been missing. The 'love story' angle is her love for the children.

This definitely wasn't my kind of movie, although even I have to be impressed at the high caliber of acting from the crippled kid who she becomes attached to. (and, yes, has to give up, oh dear again)

As my mum enthusiastically declared straight after the closing titles, "They don't make films like that any more!"

Harumph. I can't argue.

(available here)