Faithful Emilie

Welcome back, Ms. Bergman…

After Intermezzo, Bergman made her final Swedish film, June Night before making today’s film, Adam Had Four Sons, a slow-burn 1941 piece with some surprises and more than a few fireworks, plus we see Fay Wray not screaming her head off.

The film starts in 1907, and the Stoddard family of Canada are waiting for their new governess, Emilie Gallatin (Ingrid Bergman), who’s coming in from France. Adam (Warner Baxter) and Mollie (Fay Wray) are a nice family with four rambunctious boys, Chris, Phillip, Jack, and David, who like to play basketball and have chin-up contests.

Emilie fits right in. So well, in fact, that the family leaves off with formality and call her Emilie right away.

Unfortunately, the good times don’t last. Around Thanksgiving Mollie starts laying down in the afternoons, and right after Thanksgiving dinner she collapses. She’s rushed into surgery and ends up dying, leaving Adam a widower.

As if that isn’t enough, there’s a stock market crash and Adam loses all his money. Grief-stricken, Adam has to close up the house, send Emilie back to France for the time being, and send the boys off to school, paid for by cigar-smoking Cousin Philippa (Helen Westley).

It’s not for long, though. Once Adam has his fortune and the house back he sends for Emilie and the boys. Well, Phillip, anyway, since Chris, Jack, and David are off fighting in the First World War. Phillip finds they’ve got a new neighbor, Vance (June Lockhart) who likes to pop in and look at the Stoddard house sometimes.

When David comes home on leave, he has a surprise for everyone: His new wife, Hester (Susan Hayward). Right away, though, there’s obviously trouble, as Hester goes around kissing all of the Stoddard men and getting pretty handsy. Cousin Philippa, who’s sitting on the couch glowering at the new arrival, pegs Hester for a man-eating gold-digger right off the bat and tells her so, but she dies after saying something about her cigar not tasting right.

Emilie, however, has also figured out Hester’s game, although it’s a bit more inadvertant, as she comes home to find Hester seducing Jack in the living room. She even notices Hester coming into Jack’s room at night, but Emilie pretends it was her in Jack’s room instead of Hester to protect Adam. Adam is shocked but doesn’t say much because he trusts Emilie.

When David comes home, of course, stuff hits the fan in a big way, and things will get worse before they get better.

So yeah, Adam Had Four Sons is not great, but it’s not terrible, either. The family scenes, especially in the beginning were warm and pleasant, and I wish there had been more of them, because it doesn’t take long for things to start going south and we’ve only just begun getting to know these people. It was nice seeing Ingrid Bergman getting sporty with the boys on the basketball court, even if it mostly amounts to them shooting hoops. Ingrid Bergman is wonderful as Emilie, and it looked as if the company had a good time working together.

Other than that, though, there was a lot about the latter half of the movie that struck me as a little bit weird and haphazard even though it’s based on the Charles Bonner novel, Legacy. Vance poking around the Stoddard house, for instance,  begs the question of how she got in there in the first place, but no one asks her. She’s such a nice girl, though, that the Stoppards don’t seem to mind her being curious.

Also, I don’t know why Emilie had to be French, as Bergman speaks very little French in the film and her background is never mentioned. It would have been nice if she could have just been Swedish.

Then there’s Radar Lips Hester. I really wish the gold-digger angle had crept up a little bit, because at first sight Hester seems all right, but it takes her less than five minutes to start planting full-on kisses on the Stoppard men. I kept thinking, “Good grief, girl, you’re way too forward,” and wondered how David picked her up in the first place, since kissing every guy within striking distance seems to be Hester’s thing. He should have pegged her for a camp-follower type right off the bat, but it’s apparently hard to see clearly when the gangplank marital urge crops up.

Oh, and Emilie pretending to romance Jack is definitely odd, not to mention shocking for 1941, seeing as the Production Code put the kibosh on premarital trysts. I don’t know why Adam didn’t ask more questions or send Emilie packing, but he just doesn’t want to hear the facts. When Jack tries to explain what actually happened Adam cuts him off.

Ingrid Bergman knew the movie wasn’t very good. According to TCM, she later said, “At last something my teeth could bite into, but it was not such a good apple. We had a script to work with but the dialogue was made up minute by minute as we went along, and they had no idea how to end the picture. Ruth Roberts was an enormous help, and great affection for the crazy Gregory Ratoff, so it all left a very pleasant souvenir.”

However, Bergman was still determined to give it her all, because, as she put it, “It wasn’t a very good picture. But as long as a part makes sense, and the character is a human being, I will try because I can’t do artificial people on the screen. Nothing done with such a character can make it real to audiences.”

Audiences seemed to agree, because the film made just over two million dollars at the Amercan box office. The critics seemed to give Adam middling to favorable reviews. Variety called it “moderately satisfactory entertainment.”

Motion Picture Reviews, on the other hand, got downright ebullient, saying, “The film is a fine example of an intelligent adaptation of a good story, and the direction is brilliant.”

Unfortunately, though, Adam Had Four Sons seems to have been largely forgotten, overshadowed by Bergman’s later, more towering roles. Still, it’s fun seeing her in her early American career, throwing herself into a role and enjoying herself, even in a not-very-good picture.

For more of the great Ingrid Bergman, please see Virginie at The Wonderful World of Cinema. Thanks for hosting this, Virginie! It was fun to get to visit with Miss Ingrid again. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you tomorrow for another post…

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