Waterloo Bridge (1931)

Universal’s 1931 film version of Robert E. Sherwood’s play Waterloo Bridge (there have been several others) directed by James Whale is a movie that has attracted a great deal of praise. Does it deserve that praise? We shall see.

The setting is London during the First World War.

Myra (Mae Clarke) is an American chorus girl. Unable to get theatre work she has turned to prostitution. She picks up a young Canadian soldier named Roy Cronin (Douglass Montgomery although at the time he was acting under the name Kent Douglass). Confusingly we’re told at certain points that he’s Canadian and at other times we’re told he’s an American. Given that he’s in the British Army it seems more likely that he’s Canadian.

Roy is nineteen and he’s as dumb as a rock. He has no idea he has been picked up by a prostitute. This is my first issue with this movie. OK, he’s nineteen, but he’s a soldier and it’s implied that he has already spent some time at the Front and it stretches credibility that he would be quite so innocent.

Roy falls head over heels in love with Myra. He wants to marry her. Myra likes Roy as well but Myra is so consumed with guilt about her profession that she doesn’t know whether to grab her chance of love or push him away.

Roy decides to take his new girl to meet his folks. This is when Myra realises that Roy is filthy rich. Roy’s mother very quickly figures out that her son’s intended bride is a streetwalker and tells Myra that of course a marriage would be quite impossible.

Myra continues to obsess over her guilt while Roy is just thinking about wedding bells.

Eventually Myra’s landlady tells Roy the truth about Myra. That’s as much as I can tell you about the plot with giving away spoilers.

My second issue with this movie is that I didn’t particularly like any of the performances or any of the characters. Mae Clarke is OK as Myra. I understand that yes, a woman at that time might well be afflicted with self-hatred over being a prostitute but Myra takes it so far and lashes out irrationally at so many people that she’s very difficult to like. Perhaps it was expected at the time that audiences would have enjoyed seeing a bad girl suffer so much but the movie seems torn between being sympathetic to her and seeing her as a woman deservedly destined to destruction.

Douglass Montgomery as Roy Cronin irritated me a bit. He’s just so wholesome and dumb.

What would a James Whale movie be without grotesque female characters? Mercifully we don’t get Una O’Connor but we do get two female grotesques - Doris Lloyd as Myra’s screechy pal Kitty and Ethel Griffies as her landlady Mrs Hobley.

Frederick Kerr plays Roy’s dad Major Wetherby. The major is hard of hearing and a bit dotty. That’s amusing at first but eventually it becomes very wearying.

Bette Davis makes no impact at all in a nothing rôle as Roy’s sister Janet.

Apart from Myra the characters are paper-thin stereotypes.

Whale’s background was in the theatre and I personally find his movies to be excessively theatrical, and he seemed to want very theatrical performances from his actors. Waterloo Bridge feels very stagey. I have never warmed to Whale as a movie director and this movie does nothing to change my mind.

This is an agonisingly slow movie. It also suffers from being a very predictable story. I won’t reveal the ending but it’s as predictable as everything else in the film and it’s handled crassly and clumsily.

Waterloo Bridge is both reasonably open and also strangely coy about Myra’s profession. There is no pre-code celebration of sex or female sexuality here. A prostitute might be a nice girl but prostitutes are doomed to misery and suffering.

This movie is included in the TCM Forbidden Hollywood Volume 1 pre-code DVD boxed set. It’s a two-disc set with three movies, the other two being Red-Headed Woman and Baby Face. The discs are labelled incorrectly. I had major problems playing both discs and I never did manage to get Red-Headed Woman to play.

I found Waterloo Bridge to be a bit of a chore to watch. I’d be inclined to recommend giving it a miss.