As the title character in Stella Dallas, Barbara Stanwyck flings her voice around like a lasso. At the beginning it’s sharp, with a sting, as when she’s sniping back and forth with her brother outside their dilapidated family home in a dingy factory town. At times it’s soft and coiled, as when she purrs to one of the factory’s executives, Stephen (John Boles), telling him she wishes he could teach her how to carry herself with class. Then, once she’s roped him into marriage, she falls back into that harsh, coarser snap—only this time with a bit of self-satisfaction. Now comfortable, she wears her lower-class origins like a badge, even rubbing them in his face by associating with a boorish racehorse breeder (Alan Hale). This may all make Stanwyck’s Stella sound more calculating than she is. Sure, she has her plans, but Stella Dallas—directed by King Vidor from a script by Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman, who are adapting a novel by Olive Higgins Prouty—is more sophisticated than the type of “women’s picture” that wants you to root strictly for or against their central character (or at least judge them in some way). This is, instead, a fascinating character portrait of a woman striving to improve her place in the world and making some poor choices along the way (as Stephen also does). By the end, Stella has been softened by her bad decisions and tries to make up for them by channeling all her energy into her daughter, Laurel (Anne Shirley). Yet because she can only conceive of success for Laurel in class terms—adorning her in the right dresses, getting her into the right social clubs, having her date the right boy—Stella dooms herself, even as she “succeeds.” It’s why she finds herself, at Laurel’s elegant wedding, where she was at the start of the film: on the outside looking in.
(7/6/2022)
