HILDA CRANE
US, 1955, 87 minutes, Colour.
Jean Simmons, Guy Madison, Jean- Pierre Aumont.
Directed by Philip Dunne.
Hilda Crane is glamorous soap-opera of the mid-fifties. Featuring Jean Simmons in a role in which she can emote in the grandest of fashions, the film has Guy Madison and Jean -Pierre Aumont as her suitors. Miss Simmons presents the wealthy, spoilt American woman having her own way and affected adversely by her parents. The film is quite literate in tone and was written and directed by screenwriter Philip Dunne. Dunne directed and wrote such films in the fifties is the biography of Edwin Booth with Richard Burton, Prince of Players. He also made Blue Denim. Hilda Crane was somewhat looked down on at the time because of its soap-opera style. It is quite interesting viewing decades later.
1. The emphasis of the title on the person and character of Hilda? The appeal of this kind of film?
2. How did the screenplay cater for ‘women's interests’? The female response, male response to this film? Could it be adequately described as a ‘woman's picture’? Why? The women's issues? The style of the soap opera?
3. How impressive was the technique of the film, the use of wide screen and colour, locations, the glossy magazine atmosphere?
4. How real did the plot and the characters seem? How plausible were the characters and the situations? The characters, situations and issues of soap opera? Why are audiences interested in these issues?
5. How did the film focus on Hilda herself, as a person, as a woman, the background of her failed marriages, her lack of success in her career, her sense of failure on her return home, the significance of her return to the town, to her home and her mother? Her expectations about the future?
6. How well was the character of Hilda portrayed, as an emotional person, her emotional involvement, her relationship to her mother and her dependence and independence? The memory of her father? Her encounters
with Mrs. Burns?
7. Contrast the characters of Russell and Jacques. The character of each man in himself? His place in the town, his attitude towards himself, towards love and marriage, to career? The fommation of a triangle with Hilda? How did the film contrast the two men?
8. Comment on the quality of each of them to Hilda. Her disillusionment with Jacques? The nature of the affair and his proposal? The memories of the past? Her relationship with Russell, the possibility of marriage, the growing estrangement?
9. The significance of Mrs. Burns' death and its effect on all of them? Russell's attitude towards his mother and her death, blaming himself?
10. The build-up to Hilda’s suicide attempt? How desperate was she? Why?
11. How much resourcefulness did Hilda have to rebuild her life? Her seeing through Jacques, renewing her relationship with Russell?
12. How was this film a serious attempt to give some depth to conventional characters and situations?
