Skip to main content

The Girl Who Had Everything (1953)



The messaging of movies. It's not always something you think about, but sometimes it's easy to see when you watch older films. In this one, both the boyfriend and the father give the message: The way for women to be happy is to marry, have kids, and take care of the house. That's it. That's the secret to being content and to being truly happy. There are no alternatives.
As the title suggests, the focus is on the girl, Jean (Elizabeth Taylor). She has a boyfriend who loves her and wants to marry her, Vance (Gig Court). He's rich and she's rich. They want for nothing, and yet, even though she loves him, she's worried about settling down. She wants to see what else life has to offer. That's funny to me. She's going to have servants, and she will have the money to do whatever she wants. That's never addressed in the film. There's nothing that marriage will limit her from experiencing, except other men.
Does she want to sow her wild oats? It's a 1950s film, so this is heavily implied, but not stated, and it doesn't seem like she's against being instantly married. After all, while she tells Vance that she needs time, she immediately latches on to Victor (Fernado Lamas). Is that a plot flaw? Maybe he is "the One" in her mind, but she's still going to immediately marry him and not find out what else is out there? And even with Victor, her dreams are to settle down and live in Lexington. That's the world she knows, and she's happy and content there.
Victor, too, gets the short end of the stick. He legit wants to change for her. He's willing to retire and live in Lexington. The only reason that doesn't happen, Jean's dad, Steve (William Powell). He won't give Victor a second chance, which starts the dominoes falling against Victor. It's not really Victor's fault. Are we really not supposed to feel sorry for Victor? Whatever he did in the past, who cares? He's been good and seemingly true to Jean.
Jean has skeleton's too, but it's apparently caused by her mom dying early. Has she gone too far with boys? Does she always seek out the bad boy? Maybe that's the original attraction to Victtor, but the movie allows her to change, and not him? Why is that fair? By the way, why does she call her dad by his first name? Never explained.
By the end of the short movie -- very concisely told -- Vance is completely gone. He had said he would not be around to save her, but his absence feels odd. Would he really not be there to pick her up after Victor's exit? If Jean is now submitting to settling down and living the true woman's life, why wouldn't she crawl back to Vance? I'm also wondering about Steve. He knows a lot about Victor for years. Why was it ethical for him to work for him as his lawyer all that time?

Is this supposed to be a remake of A Free Soul (1931) -- Norma Shearer, Clark Gable? The plot is slightly different, but basically the same concept of a woman falling for the wrong man and then fortunately escaping the consequences.  

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"Digging for the Truth" Experiment #4 -- The Federalist Radio Hour

I first heard of Sean Davis last week. He created an online magazine called The Federalist in 2011, and he currently has about 500,000 followers on X.  It was about last week that he posted something amazing. He suggested if the Supreme Court doesn't rule the way they should, not only should Trump just ignore the ruling, if they keep obstructing the administration, he should just dissolve the Court altogether.  And I thought, wow. This guy is saying outrageous stuff like that, and there's an audience for it.  So, I decided I'd listen to an episode of The Federalist podcast: April 17, 2025 -- Deportation, Due Process, and Deference to the American People (40 minutes) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deportation-due-process-and-deference-to-the/id983782306?i=1000703904873 In the 40-minute conversation, the host and guest discussed why due process wasn't required for illegal immigrants.  The case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was mentioned for a brief second, but...
Post a Comment
Read more

In Utero

  In 1994, I wore my In Utero shirt to college. I’d walk down the hall, and people would look at the shirt. I still remember a professor looking at it, not apparently hip to the scene. She asked, “Bret, is there something you’re trying to tell us?” I had no idea what I was trying to say. Kurt Cobain had just shot his head off with a shotgun. Before that life-changing event, I hadn’t been the biggest fan of Nirvana, but I did recognize the immediate impact “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had on music, or at least on MTV. Nirvana had seemingly killed and buried Hair Metal, and they had done it single-handedly. What exactly was this “Alternative” sound? It was weird, because soon it felt like everything was “alternative,” and that didn’t make any sense. Once everything is the same, how can it be anything but standard, normal? Nirvana was okay, but at least at the time I was wearing the merch, I was much more into Offspring and Green Day and Tool. And that’s about as far as I went into...
Post a Comment
Read more

I Must Betray You -- Ruta Sepetys

I appreciate the pacing. The author's epilogue includes her mission statement -- historical fiction as a way to keep history alive. Romanis is an obscure place, but she hopes people reading the book will take an interest in its history.  She also makes the point that there are no clean endings. So, the evil dictator and his wife were killed, but the problems they created didn't magically go away, the country still had to find its way and move forward, and it was a process. 
Post a Comment
Read more