Fresh and Exciting

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Jane Wyman's breakout performance (Best Actress Oscar) as a deaf- mute also stars Lew Ayres, Agnes Moorehead, and Charles Bickford (all three were Oscar nominated).Ayres plays small town Dr. Robert Richardson, who takes a professional interest in Belinda McDonald (Wyman), teaching her sign language, even though her own father Black (Bickford), and his sister Aggie (Moorehead) resist it.The doctor's relationship with his student leads to love, and she "blossoms". This attracts unwanted attention from Locky McCormick (Stephen McNally), who rapes her causing the town to suspect that Dr. Richardson is responsible (e.g. since she can't speak out to tell the truth). Further tragedy follows, causing Belinda to need a defense attorney (Alan Napier).The film, its director (Jean Negulesco), its Writing (Irma von Cube and Allen Vincent earned their only Academy recognition adapting Elmer Harris's play), Editing (David Weisbart's only nomination), Sound, Max Steiner Score, and B&W Art Direction-Set Decoration and Cinematography were all nominated for Oscars.

It is a good movie. The photography is beautiful and the performances are all quite good, though Jane is all wide-eyed and demure. Not a lot of variety there. The courtroom scene at the end is just not dramatic and that is the film's weakest part.But the thing that will always hurt this film now is that by 2012 we learned that it is not possible for a woman to become pregnant because of rape so the dramatic edge is gone. It seems like a more innocent world today. Think, back then a woman not only had to feel the humiliation and anger from rape but had the fear of being pregnant. Such an easier world we live in now that that can no longer happen.

It's hard to believe now, but when this was released in 1948 it was considered a movie strictly for adults, too shocking for kids and teens. Today of course we see it differently. Life is rough on this Newfoundland farm, run by the MacDonalds -- Charles Bickford and his sister Agnes Moorehead. Jane Wyman, as Belinda, is Bickford's deaf, simple, sweet daughter. Lew Ayres is the compassionate local doctor who teaches Belinda sign language. Steven McNally is a rugged and impulsive farmer who marries the blond Jan Sterling, who has a crush on the doc. A little complicated, eh? Too bad for her, but despite Wyman's inability to speak and hear, Wyman looks mighty attractive in her own simple way. She's got her hand on a fiddle during a polka, beginning to understand what music is, and she moves her feet from side to side in a dainty, tentative way. This attracts the testosterone-driven and drunken McNally who follows her home and rapes her in the barn. (In 1948, it would have been an "assault" or an "attack".) Wyman becomes pregnant and gives birth to a boy, Johnny, whom Wyman and her family learn to love.The small town is full of small minds. Gossip abounds, just like today's internet. Is the doctor responsible? He's been spending a lot of time at the MacDonald farm. Pretty soon, things get worse for the troubled family. Bickford is killed by McNally, although everyone believes the death was the result of a solitary accident. Wyman and Moorehead are denied credit at the store. The doctor's trade falls off and he's forced to move to a far-away city. Here's how the community mind-set works. Two elderly ladies are discussing a third who "had her arteries cut out." "Oh, no!," exclaims one of them, "It wasn't her ARTERIES -- it was" -- and she leans over and whispers into the other's ear.In the end, the town passes an ordinance or something that gives McNally and his wife custody of the child. McNally seems to regard the child more as a possession than an object of affection. He enters the MacDonald farmhouse, brushes Belinda aside, and rushes upstairs to grab the kid. She shoots him in the back and at the murder trial, Belinda has little to say (or sign) except, "I want my baby." McNally's wife breaks down and admits that McNally was the brutish heavy in the whole business. Belinda is free to leave the court with her baby and marry the now-returned Doctor Ayers.The photography is genuinely striking and Max Steiner's score is as plain and appealing as Jane Wyman's Belinda, who smiles through every crisis and is never angry at anyone. The location is boldly evoked, although what's evoked looks more like the Monterey peninsula than Cape Breton. There's not a sour performance in the lot. Agnes Moorehead is memorable in a role that requires her to project a wide range of emotions. McNally isn't really evil. He's just weak and selfish. Lew Ayres' role is a stereotype. He's the good man, the guy the audience wants to see married to Belinda.If this sounds like the kind of romantic drama you often find on LMN, that's because it is. At least the themes are the same. Production values are higher. The execution is far superior, far more mature, "adult" -- but not in the 1948 sense.I don't know why the title of the film is "Johnny Belinda." The name is never used in any dialog. Johnny is the baby, and Belinda MacDonald is the mother. If anything, it should be "Johnny MacDonald." But in Hollywood during the 1940s there were a spate of movies, mostly poor, the titles of which used the construction "Johnny" Something -- "Johnny O'Clock," "Johnny Apollo", "Johnny Eager", "Johnny Lucky," "Johnny Angel," "Johnny Chiliastic," "Johnny Bricoleur," "Jonny Satyriasis" "Johnny Solipsistic." Well, okay, I made some of them up, but the trend was real.

Wyman has the role of her career as a naive, deaf-mute young woman in a small Canadian town in the 19th century who is raped by a local hoodlum. She won an Oscar for her word-less performance, beating out Olivia De Havilland for "The Snake Pit." There are also fine performances from Ayers as a kindly doctor who takes interest in Wyman, Bickford as her tough father, and Moorehead as her aunt. The location cinematography is beautiful and it is sensitively directed by Negulesco. Other than a somewhat melodramatic courtroom scene, it is quite understated and surprisingly mature in handling a controversial subject, given the era in which it was made.