Becky Sharp
About Becky Sharp
After Waterloo, Becky Sharp uses her school friend Amelia Sedley to enter houses that would not have her. She attaches herself to Joseph Sedley, Rawdon Crawley, George Osborne, and the Marquis of Steyne. London drops her when she offends the people who had carried her. She climbs back by marrying Amelia's brother Joseph.
Cast & crew
More about Becky Sharp
Lowell Sherman began the film and died during production, and Rouben Mamoulian finished it for Pioneer Pictures. RKO Radio Pictures released it on 13 June 1935 at a cost Wikidata lists as $950,000. The script comes from Langdon Mitchell's play of Thackeray's Vanity Fair.
Themes
In film history
The Library of Congress placed it on the National Film Registry in 2019.
Reviews
Graham Greene, writing in The Spectator, called the color a triumph and a delight to the eye.
Look
Ray Rennahan shot the film in three-strip Technicolor, the first feature made entirely in that process.
Technique
Three-strip Technicolor cameras ran for the whole feature, not for a sequence inside a black-and-white film.
Music
Roy Webb wrote the music.
Preservation
UCLA restored the film in stages, with a 1984 premiere of the restored print at the Academy theatre in Beverly Hills that Mamoulian attended, and further work around 1988 and in 2002 using Italian and Dutch prints.
Notes
- Miriam Hopkins plays Becky. Frances Dee is Amelia. Cedric Hardwicke is Steyne. Nigel Bruce is Joseph Sedley. Alan Mowbray is Rawdon Crawley. Billie Burke is Lady Bareacres. Alison Skipworth is Miss Crawley.
- William Faversham is also in the cast named by Wikipedia.
- The picture played to $121,000 in its first week in Chicago and New York, according to the figures summarized from the production history.
- It was nominated for the Mussolini Cup at Venice in 1935 as well as winning the festival's color prize.
Awards
- Best Color Film, Venice Film Festival, 1935
Scenes
- Becky moves from Amelia's household into the Crawley and Steyne circles.
- After the social drop, she fastens onto Joseph Sedley.
Influenced by
- Langdon Mitchell's play Becky Sharp
- William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair
Also available
- Internet Archive (Becky_Sharp_)
- Wikimedia Commons (Becky Sharp (1935).webm)
