Frank Borzage is the greatest Hollywood filmmaker you never heard of; his name should be on any informed moviegoer’s short list of the greatest American directors. The Museum of the Moving Image in Queens has mounted the summer’s most valuable retrospective series in the 24 Borzage features it’s offering through August 20.
The working-class, faithful expressions of Borzage’s movies preserve virtues that our contemporary cinema has forsaken. His love stories, pairing desperately searching lovers, represent the beliefs of a different era—when Hollywood offered average American moviegoers the sustenance of seeing working-class life ennobled. It was a model that influenced world cinema. Borzage’s characters didn’t simply strive for ambition; drama came from their struggle toward spiritual fulfillment, frequently resulting in spiritual transcendence.
Borzage’s sensibility was so popular—and central to the basic appeal of motion pictures—that he became the first director to receive two Academy Awards. (It was before John Ford had ever won and back when that accolade was meaningful.) Borzage won for Seventh Heaven and Street Angel in 1927 and Bad Girl in 1932—all superb examples of a storytelling signature that combined the ingenuity of fable with nuances of everyday life, predating Italian neorealism. Borzage’s first win, the same year as Murnau’s Sunrise, was testament to his high industry standing and the magnitude of his vision.
The 1948 Moonrise, widely hailed as Borzage’s post-WWII comeback, recalls the baroque aspect of his moral tales. But its nourished overtones and dynamic style shouldn’t obscure the film’s social sensitivity: it is the story of a poor young man’s (Dane Clark) doomed efforts to overcome his circumstances and oppressive family legacy. Drawing a young school teacher (Gail Russell) into his love-struggle, the film sets the Borzage pattern of shared agony and endurance—if not ecstacy.
All Borzage’s love couples are on their way to heaven but get there via a rough road and mean streets. The most inspiring journeys to catch are Lazybones (July 23), Street Angel (July 29), Litle Man What Now? (August 5), Three Comrades (August 6), Bad Girl (August 12) and Disputed Passage (August 13). Borzage’s cinema concerns destiny but concentrates on his characters’ spiritual lives. But this glorious series shows what most of today’s movies are missing.
