John M. Stahl

One of the many roles a film festival can perform is the one of bringing into the spotlight the work of directors who were once considered masters but are now forgotten or not very well-known. John M. Stahl died almost 60 years ago, so it’s only natural that most people do not know his place in film history.

Stahl was a very important name in Hollywood in the 20s and 30s. Born in New York, he directed 45 films and was one of the founding members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But apart from his industry importance, he was also a major force in the development of melodrama in cinema. The Alba Festival is paying homage to his work by showing four of his films, produced one after the other between 1932 and 1935. These titles are Back Street, Only Yesterday, Imitation of Life and Magnificent Obsession, all made for Universal Studios.

In 1932 Stahl directed Back Street, the story of a woman completely devoted to a married man, who nevertheless keeps relegating her to the ‘back streets’ of his life. It starred Irene Dunne in her first collaboration with Stahl.

The following year he directed Only Yesterday, known as the first screen version of the Stefan Zweig novel Letter from an Unknown Woman. Zweig’s work was not credited, as the film was also based on the book Only Yesterday: an Informed History of the 1920s by Frederick Lewis Allen.

It was in 1934 that Stahl made one of his most important works, Imitation of Life. It starred Claudette Colbert as Bea, a white woman trying to raise her daughter, who meets Delilah (the great Louise Beavers), a black woman who offers her services as a maid. Delilah herself has a lighter-complexioned daughter, Peola, and soon they are both seen as family by Bea and her girl. Delilah has a secret pancake recipe that makes them all rich. But as time passes, Peola starts to feel ashamed of her colour and denies her origins and her mother. The film’s main issue is the racial tensions that build up and the relationships that result from them. It is not unfair to say that if the same film were to be made and released nowadays, this would still be a taboo subject. Stahl predicted a huge part of what would happen years later concerning racial rights. Douglas Sirk, another melodrama master, remade Imitation of Life in 1959, a version which starred Lana Turner.

After directing what could easily be considered his masterpiece, Stahl went on to adapt Lloyd C. Douglas’s book Magnificent Obsession the following year, which starred once again Irene Dunne alongside Robert Taylor. It is a tale of suffering: the story of Helen, the widow of a famous doctor, and Robert Merrick, the boy she holds responsible for her husband’s death. The personal, epic and tragic tale mixing love and hate would be seen as exaggerated and kitsch nowadays, but it’s a perfect example of what melodrama meant at that time.

With his films, Stahl influenced a huge range of works we know of today, soap operas being just one example. Directors such as Martin Scorsese and Pedro Almodóvar are great admirers, citing the 1945 Leave Her to Heaven as a big influence on their own films. Seeing John M. Stahl’s films with a modern perspective makes us ask ourselves if there is place for such a cinema in the world today. On the other hand, it reassures us that cinema has always had a soul. There is no better feeling.

João Cândido Zacharias