Berkeley Square

Leslie Howard received his first Oscar nomination in this lovely film adaptation of the play he starred in in London and on Broadway. He plays a current-day (1933) American man who yearns for the peace and quiet and beauty of the 18th century after he discovers some old papers and diaries in his ancestral house. He wishes so hard he is actually transported to 1784.

Right off the bat, he gets into trouble fitting into the rhythm and manners of 18th Century London ... and into the lives of his ancestors. The mother (Irene Browne) is trying to marry off two daughters (Heather Angel, Valerie Taylor) to men with money, one of whom is Howard's ancestor whose body he is now inhabiting.

Knowing that he must not change history, he walks a tightrope. He is not attracted to the woman his ancestor marries, but he is attracted to her sister. But history dictates he must not marry her. He also keeps dropping words and phrases that make no sense in 1784, and he scares people by when he blurts out bits of information about things that have not yet happened.

As he digs himself into a bigger hole every day, he realizes that the woman he really loves (Angel) seems to shares his discontent for the age in which she is trapped. She longs for the future! Yet in one horrific moment, she sees the future world in his eyes and it scares her. For his part, he finally has to admit that the 18th Century is utterly horrible and that it actually stinks! People don't bathe; the streets are full of horse manure.

Leslie Howard is superb as the man torn between the past and his own time. He and Heather Angel make for a terrifically doomed couple, and the scene when he returns (in 1933) from her grave and read the epitaph carved into her headstone is quite moving.

Co-stars include Juliette Compton as an arch and wily duchess, Alan Mowbray as Clinton, Ferdinand Gottschalk as the aged suitor, Betty Lawford as the current-day girlfriend, Beryl Mercer as the housekeeper, and Samuel S. Hinds as Adams.

In adapting his own stage play 'Berkeley Square' for the screen, playwright John L Balderston made numerous changes. One change is significant in hindsight: during Act One of the stage play, the dialogue makes several references to a war hero named Bill Clinton! (A hero on the side fighting AGAINST the United States.) In the film, this British officer is merely identified as Major Clinton, and there are no mentions of his heroics.

Leslie Howard, everyone's definitive Englishman, was actually English only by a fluke: his parents were Hungarian Jews who moved to London shortly before his birth. In the film version of 'Berkeley Square', Howard portrays two Americans -- one from the 18th century, one from the present -- but his accent and demeanour in both roles are quintessentially English. Howard had previously starred on Broadway in this story, but in the stage play he portrayed only the modern-day Peter Standish who journeys into the past; his namesake ancestor (swapping places with him in the present) remained offstage.

Here we have the fantasy about a modern American who contrives to switch places in time with his 18th-century ancestor: both men are named Peter Standish, and are physically identical. (This is unlikely: the medical, dental and nutritional standards in 1784 would have kept that century's Standish looking very different from his descendant.) Apart from failing to convince me that he's American, Howard gives an excellent performance in both roles. Soon enough, Peter Standish acquires a touch of Peter Ibbetson as he falls in love with a woman who will die in 1787, more than a century before his own birth.

The ever-reliable Samuel S. Hinds (wearing a bizarre moustache here) plays straight man to Howard in one fascinating scene, in which Standish explains the difference between linear time and non-linear time: in the latter, all the events in the universe are occurring simultaneously.

Also quite excellent is Betty Lawford in an unsympathetic role. She wears some very chic gloves but also sports a bizarre fur collar that seems to be intended for a female impersonator. A transvestite linebacker could hide his shoulders inside there!

As the doomed young lady of 18th-century England, Heather Angel has one memorable scene opposite the 18th-century Standish's body possessed by his modern descendant. Staring into Standish's eyes, she glimpses an amazing stock-footage montage of the chaos and mayhem of modern times. Her reaction is memorable.

A story like this will have intentional anachronisms, but I looked for unintentional errors. Here's one: a string ensemble in 1784 perform Gossec's 'Gavotte' two years before he wrote it. Have another: in the opening scene, set in September 1784, Lionel Belmore reports that a French aeronaut has just flown from Dover to Calais (Belmore mispronounces this name) in a balloon. Actually, that didn't happen until January 1785: the flight was in the opposite direction, and there were two men (one of them Anglo-American) in the balloon. In a later scene, some English gentlemen give the word 'bathed' the wrong pronunciation (yes, I'm quite certain). The art direction is generally excellent, except for a dodgy thunderstorm. And it's weird to encounter the term 'crux ansata' applied to what modern viewers know better as the Egyptian ankh.

This film gets very much right a detail that many other period stories get wrong: 'Berkeley Square' acknowledges that the past is a dirtier, not cleaner, place than the present.

The single worst thing about 'Berkeley Square' is the overscored soundtrack: practically every scene assaults the ears with loud background music, when so much of this gentle fantasy would have worked better with no music at all. I was delighted that the character actress Beryl Mercer is much less annoying than usual here, probably because (for once) she's been given no maudlin material. My rating for this gentle, stately fantasy is 7 out of 10. For a much more romantic treatment of this premise with a different set of time-travel paradoxes, I recommend a better movie: 'Somewhere in Time'.

This is a very amusing love story with a good dash of humor. Much of the humor centers around the culture clash between Standish and the 18th century family. Standish uses modern terms and slips when he reveals things that happen in the future. The culture clash is a cautionary tale for would be travelers. This film appealed to many women because Leslie Howard was a heart throb for many of them. My mother loved this film and could watch it over and over. She was so disappointed when late in her life it disappeared from the old movies shown on TV.

It is currently not commercially available, but a number of vendors have poor quality CDs or tapes for sale. All of these were probably made from a VHS tape from a TV showing. The tape was deteriorated and possibly copied several times so there is a lot of instability and wiggling of the image. The original broadcast used extreme compression of the video and sound. As a result the noise level rises to become very loud until dialog causes the gain to be cut. As a result the dialog is sometimes very indistinct. The music which was originally soft also rises to match the level of the dialog. Once this is restored by hand, the film is fairly listenable. The complaint of another reviewer about the music being too loud may stem from watching a copy with similarly compressed sound. In addition the broadcast severely cropped the film and did not stabilize the jitter.

This is a film that deserves restoration from the existing prints, but when and if this happens is unknown. Until then buying one of the existing CDs may be the only way to view this fine film.

Although this version of Berkeley Square was little more than a photographed stage play it does have Leslie Howard portraying Peter Standish as he did on Broadway for 229 performances during the 1929-1930 season. No other member of the cast repeated their roles. I have to say that the Tyrone Power version from 1951 was and is more cinematically viable.

That being said Leslie Howard was doing a part that was tailor made for him. He's a jaded American scientist who is firmly convinced that he is at some point in time destined to change places with an ancestor also named Peter Standish from the 18th century post American Revolution Great Britain.

When he gets there he mixes and mingles with high and mighty of the day like the Prince Of Wales, Dr. Samuel Johnson, and Sir Joshua Reynolds. And he knows things that others don't and uses all kinds of modern in this case 1928 idioms that first amuse then frighten.

He's in fact pledged to one woman, but falls in love with her sister played by Heather Angel, something he did not count on. It's almost like a trip to Fantasy Island where Mr. Rourke has arranged a trip to the Age of Reason. Usually those trips to some idealized place in history involved a cruel dose of reality as well and in Berkeley Square Leslie Howard gets just such a dose.

Howard and Angel are a wonderfully matched pair of lovers who will meet some day in time and space and know it. Howard earned his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor, the second coming with Pygmalion. Had Berkeley Square been better cinematically it probably would be more revived. As it is it's a great performance by Leslie Howard, one his legion of fans should treasure.

Leslie Howard plays an American who takes possession of a bequeathed estate in London's Berkeley Square quarter. While at the house, Howard magically connects to the past, and makes the stunning discovery that time happens all at once. (A topic explored by Christopher Nolan in 2014's Interstellar).

A thunder storm serves as the device that transports Howard from 1933 back to 1784, and in the same Berkeley Square house he would one day inherit. Posing as the recently-arrived American cousin his hosts were expecting, Howard frightens those in his presence by the ability to predict the future, and by his odd phrases. They think he's the devil. But Heather Angel's character, the sister of the woman Howard was slated to marry, sees the truth.

Berkeley Square has a lovely staginess to it, and the air of a drawing room comedy of manners, with sumptuous period costumes. (The film is based on a play by the same name). Howard and Angel capture the loneliness and despair of lovers trapped in different worlds. Historical figures like the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Georgina the Duchess of Devonshire make appearances.

There's a scene in which Angel stares into Howard's eyes, and sees the future: the great Industrial Revolution, with automobiles, trains, airplanes, electricity, tall buildings. She also sees war and destruction. And rather than being in awe of the modern world, she's horrified that God would condemn mankind to such a monstrous future. It's quite prescient. If someone back in 1933 could have had a peak into the future they, like Heather Angel's character, would probably look past the digital gadgets and be horrified, too.