"They Were Sisters", a lush, Black and White studio film, has the cream of post-war British acting talent (Phyllis Calvert, James Mason, Anne Crawford.) You will need to get over the hurdle of tolerating that late 1940s bright, British way of talking, only nowadays to be heard in reduced form from the Queen. Also, accept and get used to the slightly wooden "Peter and Jane" style child actors - then you'll see a great weepy melodrama.
James Mason is deliciously malevolent and controlling of his drippy, sweet, doormat of a wife, the fragile Dulcie Gray. This sister's marriage troubles are timeless - what we would nowadays see as coercive control, or "gaslighting". Her sister Vera, played by that specialist of a high-maintenance woman, Anne Crawford, has a marriage more particular to the upper middle-class of the middle years of the century: a spoilt trophy wife, like a character from Noel Coward who's strayed into a melodrama, but still highly entertaining for it. The perfect, third sister Lucy has the perfect marriage, except she cannot have children, and so dotes on her sisters' neglected children. We're not great ones for family dramas like this nowadays, being rather individualistic and focussed on our ability to choose whether we marry and whether children quite fit our modern, choice-filled lives, so it is a refreshing pleasure to see this sisters' family drama, let's say from a "family" era.
Interestingly the wicked James Mason character's seventeen year old daughter is well played by Pamela Kellino, his future wife and already thirty in this picture - one of those actresses like Alicia Silverstone who seem able to play teenagers into their thirties. James Mason seems to have shown up as his smooth self in so many anonymous films that I'm inclined to avoid him; that's a bit absurd, because he's in so many good ones, in particular this one: see what he's made of here.
Give this great film a chance: if you can accept the accents and jauntiness and stop noticing them, it's a great melodrama, and the softer amongst you might finish up blubbing - maybe not quite "Wonderful Life" territory, but could be tear jerking.
