White Cliffs of Dover

Titre original : The White Cliffs of Dover

ÉVALUATION IMDb

7,0/10

1,9 k

MA NOTE

Irene Dunne and Alan Marshal in White Cliffs of Dover (1944)

London based American nurse, Lady Susan Ashwood (Irene Dunne), is at a hospital awaiting the imminent arrival of wounded soldiers. She is hoping that her enlisted son, Sir John Ashwood II (Peter Lawford), who resembles his father in appearance and temperament, is not amongst those wounded. As she waits, she remembers back to World War I when her husband, the former Sir John Ashwood (Alan Marshal), was enlisted, and the waiting she endured on any news from and about him while he was away in battle. From a humble background, Sue almost didn't meet Sir John, let alone marry him, as she and her father, Hiram Porter Dunn (Frank Morgan), the publisher of a small daily newspaper, were only in London in April 1914 on a two week vacation - her first trip - that was not going very well when by happenstance she got invited on her last day in London to the King's ball, where Sir John was awaiting the arrival of another young woman with whom he was supposed to keep company for the evening. Despite being mutually attracted to each other, the patriotic Sue didn't know whether she could leave the United States and get accustomed to John's family's aristocratic manners, as well as the English customs in general. She also thinks back to approximately ten years earlier when she was urged by her father to return to the States on the inevitability that the Germans would once again be the aggressors in a war. Through it all, Sue is a proud American, despite having lived the better part of her adult life in England.

Liretrailer2 min 36 s

1 vidéo

25 photos

Drama Romance War

Susan voyage avec son père en Angleterre pour des vacances. Invitée à un bal, Susan rencontre Sir John Ashwood et l'épouse après une romance éclair. Cependant, l'Américaine Susan ne s'adapte... Tout lireSusan voyage avec son père en Angleterre pour des vacances. Invitée à un bal, Susan rencontre Sir John Ashwood et l'épouse après une romance éclair. Cependant, l'Américaine Susan ne s'adapte jamais.Susan voyage avec son père en Angleterre pour des vacances. Invitée à un bal, Susan rencontre Sir John Ashwood et l'épouse après une romance éclair. Cependant, l'Américaine Susan ne s'adapte jamais.

Voir l’information sur la production à IMDbPro

ÉVALUATION IMDb

7,0/10

1,9 k

MA NOTE

Voir l’information sur la production à IMDbPro

Nommé pour 1 oscar
- 1 nomination au total

Anecdotes
Irene Dunne reads a telegram from her Anglophobe father to a group of English people. Her father begs her not to marry an Englishman she is in love with and tells her "You're a Yankee through and through! Think of Paul Revere! Think of the Old North steeple! Remember the Alabama!" The viewer may become confused at this point. "Remember the Alabama"? Shouldn't it be "Remember the Alamo"? However, since the context of the telegram is anti-British any mention of the Alamo would be irrelevant. What Irene Dunne's father is apparently taking about is the C.S.S. Alabama, one of several Confederate warships that were built in British shipyards over United States protest during the Civil War. These ships attacked U.S. shipping in the Atlantic Ocean. Since Irene Dunne arrives in England in April of 1914 and married just before August 4, 1914 when Great Britain declared war on Germany, the telegram was probably sent close to the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the Alabama by the U.S.S. Kearsarge on June 19, 1864 in the English Channel. The United States sued Great Britain in 1869 over the building of the Confederate warships and was awarded $15.5 million.

Gaffes
A gift with a plaque dedicated to First Lady, Dolley Madison, misspells her name "Dolly Madison."

Citations
Susan Dunn's landlady: [Of Susan]
Susan Dunn's landlady: Such a nice young thing! Not a bit like an American.

Autres versions
Elizabeth Taylor's scenes are often deleted in older TV prints.

Connexions
Featured in Twenty Years After (1944)

Bandes originales
Auld Lang Syne
(1788) (uncredited)
Traditional Scottish 17th century music
Lyrics by Robert Burns
Played during the opening credits and often in the score

Commentaires des utilisateurs43

Commentaire

Commentaire en vedette

9/10

An Unhurried Masterpiece of Tranquility

Irene Dunne is all in all herself, tender, transformative and powerful as an American girl who travels to England and falls in love with an English member of the aristocracy. Beautiful Irene marries the Englishman but their honeymoon is cut short on its first day as World War I breaks out. Director Clarence Brown's leisurely mood effect causes us to feel as disrupted as they do. Perhaps it is the soothing joy derived from the old-style black-and-white 35mm Spherical look, a classicism in George J. Folsey's cozy cinematography, that creates such a peaceful atmosphere. Believe me: This feeling is augmented by seeing it on a VHS tape, almost as though you are watching a timeworn relic. When the film quietly, serenely begins, Irene reflects upon her feelings relating to her life in England, a life she never expected to lead from event to event beginning with her purely dabbling arrival. The moving musical score fits like a velvet glove over the sustained close shot of her gorgeous face and the iceberg-thawing sound of her voice.

The backbiting between Irene and her English counterparts early in the film is funny, posing one of the movie's unanxious emotional successes which as well include strong romantic and maternal joys and longings, WWI, brief bursts of rage, mourning, WWII, and the like. A scene in the movie circa the early 1930s sends a chill down the spine, illustrating two polite adolescent German boys, part of an exchange program, staying at the English family's countryside manor. Intimating they were part of early Nazi invasion plans, the boys let it slip in a conversation's startling turn for the less comfortable that they are pondering how the estate's large green would be perfect on which for troop gliders to land.