Out of the many noble sacrifices films from the 1930s and 40s bestowed on women, Forbidden certainly was one of the most rash. Lulu Smith accepts a life in the shadows, gives up her own daughter, and even kills and goes to prison in order not to ruin the political ambitions of the (married) man she loves. The film’s very first scene maybe provides the deep reasons behind her sacrifice: a cruel spring scene in a small American town where Lulu, the unmarried librarian with hair pulled back in a chignon and round glasses (we can argue she is what Mary Hatch from Bedford Falls would have become, if George Bailey hadn’t married her), is ridiculed by her colleagues and the neighbourhood kids. Then, all of a sudden, she takes all of her savings and steps aboard a luxury ship to Havana, and we know that only lovers without a future meet on a ship like that (as Tay Garnett’s One Way Passage would demonstrate that same year). She is a new woman; the glasses are magically gone, wrapped in a white fox stole her face sparkles, and the Caribbean Sea glitters like bubbles in her glass of champagne. Having shed her inhibitions, she becomes the dreamlike image of another self: perhaps more than to a man, she decides to remain faithful to that image, even when the dream fades to the anxiety of a (moderately) realistic life. Forbidden has some very beautiful visual moments, Joseph Walker’s work is bold and inspiring, but what really holds the film together is the matter of fact lightness with which Capra, Swerling and especially Stanwyck “interpret” Fannie Hurst’s novel (and let’s not forget that this girl does move up a little in the world: from small town librarian to archivist to writer for a big city paper, even if for the lonely hearts column). A great role for Ralph Bellamy, who shines in the newspaper segment of the movie: an unpleasant rogue of a journalist who is sincerely in love with Lulu, who remains unreciprocated, and destined to an unhappy ending. Capra is somewhat unkind about the film in his autobiography, over-looking its stylistic virtues and complaining about the romanticism of a story that would soon appear to be socially insignificant to him.

Paola Cristalli