A break from Poe for a moment due to the passing of Angela Lansbury. Moment of silence for all of our childhoods losing another icon (and yes, there will be another Murder She Wrote blog coming).
If Winter Comes is a melodramatic slog of a film. There. I said it. It was so full of characters pushing their faces together and declaring, “Oh darling” that I should have made it into a drinking game. Here goes the synopsis (in as short a way as I can). People suck and war makes it worse. There.
Very well. I should at least explain why I picked this one. Mark (Walter Pidgeon) is a funny loving and laid back writer of school textbooks. His wife Mabel (Angela Lansbury) is an uptight and traditional housewife attempting to make her place in the tiny town’s society. And Nona (Deborah Kerr) is the adventurous love of Mark’s life who married someone else. Young Janet Leigh plays Effie, a sweet teenage girl who is friends with Mark and gets them both into trouble. There’s a lot of death and town gossip accompanied by swelling music at the appropriate times. Naturally, this was based on a bestselling book. People are suckers for a weepy love story. Oops, did that sound bitter? I guess too much sensationalism make me grumpy. At least there was a good cast.
Anyway, the part I wanted to actually focus on was Mark’s job. He works for a staunchly run publishing company run by Reginald Owen with a very thick walrus-like mustache. While he keeps hinting that he should be made partner after so many years of service, his coworkers and boss are constantly looking for legitimate reasons to fire him. Mark attempts to rework the format of children’s textbooks so they will appeal more to their audience, working in better adjectives and adventure stories. He also writes commentary for the local paper. All of this is ruined by the gossip of a small town.
