Johnny Belinda (1948)

One of my all time favorites.

Great Film overall

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Jane Wyman's breakout performance (Best Actress Oscar) as a deaf- mute also stars Lew Ayres, Agnes Moorehead, and Charles Bickford (all three were Oscar nominated).Ayres plays small town Dr. Robert Richardson, who takes a professional interest in Belinda McDonald (Wyman), teaching her sign language, even though her own father Black (Bickford), and his sister Aggie (Moorehead) resist it.The doctor's relationship with his student leads to love, and she "blossoms". This attracts unwanted attention from Locky McCormick (Stephen McNally), who rapes her causing the town to suspect that Dr. Richardson is responsible (e.g. since she can't speak out to tell the truth). Further tragedy follows, causing Belinda to need a defense attorney (Alan Napier).The film, its director (Jean Negulesco), its Writing (Irma von Cube and Allen Vincent earned their only Academy recognition adapting Elmer Harris's play), Editing (David Weisbart's only nomination), Sound, Max Steiner Score, and B&W Art Direction-Set Decoration and Cinematography were all nominated for Oscars.

It is a good movie. The photography is beautiful and the performances are all quite good, though Jane is all wide-eyed and demure. Not a lot of variety there. The courtroom scene at the end is just not dramatic and that is the film's weakest part.But the thing that will always hurt this film now is that by 2012 we learned that it is not possible for a woman to become pregnant because of rape so the dramatic edge is gone. It seems like a more innocent world today. Think, back then a woman not only had to feel the humiliation and anger from rape but had the fear of being pregnant. Such an easier world we live in now that that can no longer happen.

To me the Academy Awards are much more a matter of industry politics than real artistic achievement. Here, however, that's definitely not the case. Wyman's deaf mute is one of the more moving portrayals that I've seen in some 60-years of movie watching. She manages to express more with her eyes alone than most actresses do with their entire emoting. Thanks to Wyman, it's a rare glimpse into a delicate soul, though I do hope she wasn't being paid by line of dialog.In fact, the entire cast is outstanding, though visually McNally and Sterling approach caricature in his dark looks and her blonde cheapness. Of course, the topics of rape and a wedlock baby were pretty explosive stuff for the Production Code of the time, but the writers handle the material deftly. At the same time, the murder of MacDonald (Bickford) is often overlooked in terms of the Code. After all, the murder goes unrecognized in the courtroom accounting and in that sense goes unpunished even in an expanded moral sense.Something should also be said about director Negulesco's compelling visual compositions. Happily, so many of the interior frames are arranged richly in detail, while the moody landscapes reflect a perceptive artistic eye. All in all, we get both an atmospheric fishing village and a series of eye-catching visuals both of which expertly complement the storyline.No need to echo more aspects of this much-discussed film, except to say that Hollywood managed here to overcome one of the industry's biggest pitfalls—a kind of soap opera that's truly touching without being sappy. Thank you, Warner Bros.!

"Johnny Belinda" is a triumphant story on several levels. The first is obvious - a beautiful but edgy story for 1948 about a deaf mute (Jane Wyman), the ignorance of many around her, and the discrimination against her when she has a child out of wedlock. The child is the result of rape, but no one knows that.The second is the incredible acting by the entire cast: Jane Wyman (who at 31 looks like a teenager), Lew Ayres, Charles Bickford, Agnes Moorhead, Steven McNally and Jan Sterling. They are each in their own way very powerful.The third is the fantastic direction by Jean Negulesco, who really seemed to have his heart and soul into this.The fourth is the vindication of Lew Ayres, whose career was over when he became a conscientious objector in World War II. He was MGM's Dr. Kildare but the series quickly became Dr. Gillespie. People understood conscientious objectors better in the Vietnam era; during World War II, it wasn't understood. Ayres did serve as a medic in World War II. When he came back, Warner Brothers cast him in this, and he won an Oscar.The story of a lonely young woman living on a farm in the desolate Cape Breton and the doctor who takes an interest in her, teaching her sign language, is a beautiful one. The screenplay by Irma Von Cube and Allen Vincent is stunning. This film swept the 1948 Oscars, and with good reason. Highly recommended.