1929-30 – Ruth Chatterton
Sarah and Son
There were several things about this movie that surprised me and most of them had to do with Ruth Chatterton. She did an exceptional job in the film, playing the poor immigrant woman whose baby is abducted by her lazy, drunk husband, and sold to a wealthy family. Her performance was very real and authentic. Chatterton really impressed me with her skills as an actress.
First, she used an Austrian accent. Accents are dangerous for actors because they can so easily sound false, or be inconsistent, or both. Chatterton overcame both these hurdles with what seemed like ease. I know a little bit about Slavic accents from my own experience, and hers sounded pretty natural. In the beginning of the film, the accent was thicker and her speech patterns were more pronounced. Later in the movie, as her character has gained 12 years of experience with the English language, the accent became lighter without vanishing completely.
She also got to show off her singing talent, since the character of Sarah Storm was first a Vaudeville performer, and then later, a world renowned opera star. She only sang one song during the film, Brahms’s Wiegenlied, more commonly known as Brahms’s Lullaby. Her singing of the song was almost a plot point, and she sang it in 2 separate scenes. To be sure, she sang it competently, though to be honest, I’ve heard better. I think maybe the film’s overall poor sound quality may have hurt her performance in that respect.
The character of Sarah went through some things that were unspeakably horrible. Chatterton played the part with two things that I particularly liked: frailty, and madness. The frailty came from the fact that she was a timid immigrant who was alone in a strange place, and the madness came from the tragedy of losing her son, and being told that she could be put in jail if she insisted on pestering the wealthy family and trying to take away their baby. True, the infant was really hers, but who would the police believe? The wealthy Ashmores, or the poor, delusional foreigner? Chatterton did a fine job, but I agree with the Academy voters. Norma Shearer’s performance in the Divorcee was just a bit better.