Saw Spring in a Small Town, a quiet but intense melodrama about a woman who is married to a sickly man. You can see trouble brewing as soon as a visitor comes to their small household: a good friend of the husband and the childhood sweetheart of the wife. The wife and the visitor care for the sickly husband and begin the long slow process of circling around each other, unwilling to hurt each other, but both still longing for the other. It's forbidden love, 1940s style!
The film is somewhat mannered. No more than contemporary American films, but differently. There's scenes where the characters dramatically pose before launching into some dramatic act. Curiously, there's not a lot of monologues. The central woman does a lot of acting by way of little pauses, her downturned gaze bespeaking an intense inner struggle. There's a lot of pregnant pauses and unspoken feelings. The result is that the feelings can be as intense as we understand them to be. Well done.
The film is somewhat pokey however. I admit I wasn't in the mood for a family melodrama, so this film didn't really hit the spot, but I could tell even so that this is a well-made film. It seems to celebrate self-sacrifice which feels troublesome and uncomfortable. You shouldn't be too self-centered of course, but staying in what seems to be a loveless marriage, just out of a sense of duty? It feels like it's asking too much. The past was a different time.
The film is good. It's a little old, but brief for all that. It's an interesting, small, quietly big film.
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