HUMORESQUE
DIRECTED BY: JEAN NEGULESCO - WRITTEN BY: CLIFFORD ODETS, ZACHARY GOLD, FANNIE HURST, JERRY WALD
STARRING: JOAN CRAWFORD, JOHN GARFIELD, OSCAR LEVANT
RELEASED: I946

Humoresque begins where Mildred Pierce (1945) leaves off, with Joan Crawford, as Helen, still rich; and to prove it's high-brow seriousness, she now lives in New York rather than LA. She's cultured and loves classical music, and like her rich friends she's devastatingly honest and devastatingly snotty; but she loves talented artists and likes to sponsor them. That's the way culture with a capital "C" works. The talent she spots is Paul Boray (John Garfield) a violin sensation with a New York street-wise attitude and a chum named Sid who shoots one-liners like a machine-gun (Oscar Levant).

The plot is simple: Can a rich and unhappy society woman find happiness with a scrappy little violin player with a possessive mother who lives over their family grocery store. The frisson of the two worlds colliding gave goose-pimples to the left Hollywood writers of the era, with the rich a convenient dart-board for all the troubles in the world. The darts never stop coming, except when there's love in the air or Sid is babbling (some of his material is quite funny). At one point there's a comedic little aside about a coffee pot sitting near Sid's piano. That's because Oscar Levant was in real life a caffeine freak, reportedly drinking over 50 cups of coffee a day.

The story had been made and remade a dozen times. Once was Golden Boy (1939), with Bill Holden in the John Garfield role. In that version Holden played the violin and moonlighted as a professional prize-fighter, quite a combination. They took the frame of Golden Boy and crossed it with A Star is Born to achieve Humoresque. As Paul Boray gets more famous, Helen gets more unhappy, until one night when he's playing on the radio, she starts eyeing the nearby ocean.

Joan Crawford could be anyone you wanted, flapper in the 20s, working girl, bad girl, or rich society woman. She had the facial bones that cinematographers loved to light. Here she's at her best and more subdued and introspective than usual. Humoresque has an extremely romantic, laudanum-drenched and dreamy quality in it's best moments. If there's chemistry on-screen between the stars, you can be sure there was some off-screen too.

What makes Humoresque good, besides the actor's verbal sparring, is some effective cinematography and long sections of masterful violin by Isaac Stern . Garfield looks pretty good with a violin, and Stern's playing on the sound track is inspired. There's a reason that the shot of Garfield's playing is from a certain angle (see note (b) below). The film has generous servings of music by Sarasate, Dvorak, Lalo and a brief but excellent recital of Franz Waxman's adaptation of Carmen. As the drama of their affair gets more complicated, the violin playing becomes more dramatic, with cuts to the faces of all the characters in the adoring audience. Paul's lovers in the audience are mentally climaxing as he hits those high notes, and the weird part is that Paul's mom is one of them. The two women must battle over Paul, who doesn't need either one - he's got his art.

Scenes from the film: Helen listens to Paul on the radio --- Paul and Sid Practicing (Montage)

Notes:
(a) Actor Robert Blake plays Paul Boray as a child
(b) In most of the shots where Garfield's face was visible while playing the violin, Isaac Stern is reaching around Garfield from the left side to finger the strings while yet another musician reached around from the right side to work the violin bow.