No Sad Songs for Me

Too bad the early reviewer could not appreciate this beautifully acted melodrama. This movie is a lovely swansong for Margaret Sullavan's career - she always excelled at this kind of material(as well as wry comedy)and she is pitch perfect as the dying wife & mother . All the performers do exemplary work - Wendell Corey is winning and sympathetic as Brad; Viveca Lindfors makes a very difficult role as the other woman understandable & touching; and Natalie Wood makes young Polly a very lovable daughter. Only the hardest of hearts can watch the last scene without shedding a tear - "Polly, do you remember what your mother said when she left?" "No... I only remember she smiled" ! ---highly recommended

I have seen many films of this theme a la dying of incurable illness.. Bette Davis made her dynamic imprint with Dark Victory. Lana Turner moved beyond soap opera and made Madame X impossible to not weep in her demise.. Margaret Sullavan simplifies and shines in a glowing performance in this film.. With her incredibly unique speaking voice,her subtleties that are hers alone,this is an experience to marvel and weep over time and time again. An undervalued jewel!

As a cancer survivor, I was a little uneasy about watching this. But it packs no punch at all. Maybe it did at the time: After all, until fairly recently, the word "cancer" was not uttered. It is here -- only once or twice and right at the film's beginning.

Margaret Sullavan is the sick person. She has a realistic, nice cozy looking house. She's married to Wendell Corey and their daughter is ten-year-old Natalie Wood. So maybe her passive approach makes some sense. She doesn't try to do anything different or differently, to make the most of her final months, though.

However, her not telling her husband means he is free to spend time with his new assistant Vivica Lindfors (who is excellent in her role.) I guess it's that 58 years have passed since this was made. Whatever the reason, I found it myself unmoved.

Mate's direction is sure and the musical score, from Beethoven and Wagner, is appropriate. Generally, though, I found it a disappointment.

Although it's sometimes difficult to do, judging a 1950's film with 2000's social mores and sense of letting it all hang out is probably not the best way to view this film, a sensitive and understated tale of a woman with cancer. Having lived through a time when the word was usually whispered rather than stated, and was usually not talked about in polite company, I know that Sullivan's horror at discovering not only that she cannot have a child but that she is also stricken with a killer illness is quietly realistic for the time (this is not a spoiler, such information revealed with the first ten minutes of the film). Sullivan delivers an amazing subtle performance, understated in her refusal to stage hysterical scenes of unhappiness, quietly demonstrating strength in attempting, as many people do, to not "become a burden." Underrated Wendell Corey, who is a powerful player in such melodramas as Harriet Craig and Desert Fury, is Sullivan's Mr. Average Guy, an amiable husband who loves his wife, kid, and work--and it is at work he meets a young woman who tempts him, a woman whose history reveals some hidden strengths. Enough said. Sure it's a weeper, supremely so as it gathers steam, but unlike a Crawford or Davis film, Sullivan's heroine is all about self-effacement and loving no matter what the cost, and thus appears to many contemporary viewers as a dated woman; the Oscar-nominated music score George Dunning (with plenty of help from Brahms) constantly underscores the film with a quiet persuasiveness; the supporting cast, including a delightfully thoughtful Natalie Wood deliver the goods.

No Sad Songs For Me expresses what Margaret Sullavan wishes when she learns she has terminal cancer. She thinks she's pregnant, but that's the verdict from her doctor John McIntire. Her problem is now how best to arrange her life's final months.

She'll be leaving behind husband Wendell Corey and daughter Natalie Wood. And Sullavan has an interesting problem on her hands in the person of Viveca Lindfors, a new employee for her surveyor husband. There's a growing attraction between them and normally that would call for claws to come out. But Sullavan is thinking of Wood as well and face it Lindfors is a nice person who's not doing anything to encourage Corey.

As for Wendell he's behaving like a perfect gentleman, but the signs are there.

This is a fine and literate adult drama about a woman facing terminal illness and looking to make the best of it for herself and her family. Sullavan who mostly played tragic roles on screen gives her farewell big screen performance in No Sad Songs For Me. She did do television and stage work until her suicide in 1960.

In fact all the members of that screen family ended badly. Natalie Wood drowned way too young and Wendell Corey became a misanthropic alcoholic who died too young of liver cancer. Read Kirk Douglas's memoir The Ragman's Son to find out about how Corey's career turned bad.

But in this film all the players give strong performances and the film never turns maudlin. That final shot with Lindfors and Wood with Sullavan's shadow looming over them is unforgettable.