The Howards of Virginia (1940)

Touches You

Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

A Masterpiece!

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I liked this movie despite the dreadful miscasting of Cary Grant. His performance beggared all description. What were they thinking? Cary looked like he had been on amphetamines, jerky and hyperactive. He sounded like an Englishman trying to speak like he thought an American should sound. Grant realized that his performance was woefully bad and vowed never to do a costume drama again. Unfortunately he must have forgotten that pledge for seventeen years later he starred in The Pride and the Passion with Frank Sinatra and Sophia Loren. While he was bad in this role too, he did not stand out as much as Frank and Sophia were equally inept. Cedric Hardewick, Richard Carlson and Martha Scott were competent in their roles in HOV which contrasted Grant's fiasco.

CARY GRANT insisted that he would never do another costume film after THE HOWARDS OF VIRGINIA and it's easy to see why after viewing the film tonight on TCM. Except for a couple of well played scenes with his sons (TOM DRAKE and PHIL TAYLOR), Grant's performance is way too broad to be acceptable as part of a serious historical epic.Director Frank Lloyd never once tones down Grant's performance and lets the hyperactive Grant overact at any given moment in a role he clearly doesn't know how to play. At least we do get more restrained work from MARTHA SCOTT as Grant's aristocratic wife and SIR CEDRIC HARDWICKE as her snobbish brother who sides with the British during the Revolutionary War period.Obviously a lot of expense went into creating the right atmosphere for this story of the turmoil surrounding America's independence among the colonies, and there are times when you wish even more had been spent to produce the film in the gorgeous Technicolor of that era. But the script is a weak one, never able to maintain the sort of interest it should have had over a running time of two hours.The banal dialog that closes the film is about as jingoistic as you can get and enough to make anyone wince. The story was probably chosen because the producers hoped to make another DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK or GONE WITH THE WIND--but they failed utterly to do so.Summing up: Sad to see Grant so badly miscast and not given proper direction.

Simpler than it first appears. This movie tries to be an epic about a frontier man transformed into a civic and military leader - but it doesn't try that hard. Cary Grant doesn't look like he knows quite how to play this guy, and I don't blame him. The material isn't wonderful, although it's a nice story. The wrong elements of the plot are emphasized, and the character of Matthew Howard is less a complicated man than a simple cypher.It's not a bad movie by any means, but it looks like it's trying desperately to copy "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Gone with the Wind" at the same time. It just doesn't have the legs for either one. I give this movie a 6 for Cary's personal magnetism, even in a stifling role like this one.

Such a thing as outright disastrous Cary Grant exists in the form of the emotionally unstirring catastrophic period piece which engages top talent for all the wrong reasons.The screenplay remains the biggest fault of the movie, due to mindless indulgence of the writer about Virginian high society and love that comes in the most rigid form of unconvincing passion. Frank Llyold's idiotic and alarmingly dated direction doesn't help ailing elements any further. Cary Grant would have been better off fronting his appearance under a different name. He looks ridiculous in a long haired wig, and with an unconvincing accent, seems an embarrassment amongst the most elegant folk in Virginia.After a succession of brilliant Cary Grant projects at Columbia, the dated ill fate and dull proceeding of this movie makes one wonder at the film's very existence.The best movie of *1927*. The pioneers of sound could have made more interesting short work of this as a cinematic experiment. Maybe it would have been more successful.Rating: 4/10