Karry Best movie of this year hands down!

ScoobyWell Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Ceticultsot Beautiful, moving film.

Winifred The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

mark.waltz When dancer Joan Crawford enters high society by marrying wealthy Melvyn Douglas, his sister (Fay Bainter) sends their brother (Robert Young) to try and pay her off. But Crawford stands tall, marries the brother (sans the rest of his family) and enters the social world run by the Mrs. Danvers like Bainter. Only Young's pleasant wife (Margaret Sullavan) likes her, and they become quick friends (which is a rare thing for Crawford, who admittedly despises her own sex). Bainter is passively aggressively chilly with Crawford, drops all sorts of innuendos of her disapproval, and finally, all explodes when Crawford (obviously attracted to the indifferent Young) convinces Douglas to move away, seemingly for an extended honeymoon. Before you can break into a chorus of "Burning Down the House", Bainter turns into Norman Bates' mother, and Crawford is ready to pack it in.Packed with major star power (four Academy Award Winners), "The Shining Hour" is a fast-moving camp classic where Crawford, pre-Crystal Allen ("The Women") gets to be pretty bitchy, but not nasty. It is Bainter who wins that title, giving a performance far from her kindly mother role which won her an Oscar for the same year's "Jezebel". (Working with Crawford AND Bette Davis the same year....) The following year's Best Supporting Actress winner Hattie McDaniel is amusing as "Belvedere", Crawford's faithful maid. The reason for Young's initial distaste for Crawford is never really explained other than being manipulated by his sister, although there is all sorts of interesting characterization development for Margaret Sullavan's sister-in-law who is seemingly overly noble but never sickeningly sweet.Worth repeated viewing for its cast, melodramatic performances and a few funny lines, "The Shining Hour" isn't a very sunny 79 minutes, but moderately enjoyable.

blissfilm Contrary to most of the opinions I read here, I did not find this film "soapy." I found it, refreshingly, a film for adults. For me, that's all too rare. I think it's about what relationship is, what love is and isn't, and most of all about the experience it takes and the resulting wisdom to build relationship beyond an adolescent understanding of love and attraction. And the great value of the self-knowledge that results. For me, that adult perspective was so refreshing and so rare that it beats out every other consideration. (Especially given the idiotic popular fare we're used to these days which substitutes a junior high school age cynicism for the difficult work of love.) Along with, say, "Dodsworth," for some reason Hollywood in this period was capable of some genuinely mature work for adults. The popular culture could use a little more. With Ogden Nash in the writing credits, I shouldn't be surprised at what I found valuable in this film.

blanche-2 Joan Crawford disrupts a family in "The Shining Hour," a 1938 film also starring Melvyn Douglas, Margaret Sullavan, Robert Young, and Fay Bainter.Crawford is Olivia Reilly, a New York City dancer who works in a nightclub with a partner doing an act sort of modeled on Astaire and Rogers though it's clearly down several levels. Melvyn Douglas is Henry Linden, a gentleman farmer who wants to take her away from all this to Wisconsin, and sick of her present life, she marries him. Arriving on the farm, she finds herself hated by Henry's sister, Hannah (Bainter), lusted after by Henry's brother David (Young) and loved and envied by David's wife Judy (Sullavan). Before long, David is making overt passes, Henry has figured out David is in love with his wife, and in spite of herself, Judy begins to suspect the same thing.This film is a little overdone, as it seems like the tension in the house never lets up. David always looks miserable, Judy always looks nervous, Olivia is always trying to be nice except when she's trading barbs with Hannah, and Hannah is a bitch. How any of them stood one another for more than ten minutes is a miracle. We are never allowed to see any happiness. Also, the entire end of the film is a mess -- Judy takes a ridiculous step to make everything right, but it all goes in the opposite direction. The most absurd part of the whole film, without giving anything away, is that one of the characters ends up wearing bandages - covering their nose and mouth with only the eyes showing. Now, how is anyone supposed to breathe like that? How did the actor breathe, in fact? Joan Crawford looks beautiful and is very good in her role as a city slicker who wants to love her husband and environment but is finding it difficult. Tall, elegant Melvyn Douglas, who thirty years later would emerge as one of the truly great actors in cinema, does a wonderful job as the even-tempered one of the family. For so many years, he played the family friend, the family lawyer, the other man - how, with all that magnificent talent, did he ever stand it? Robert Young is fine as David, though Margaret Sullavan is so nice and sweet and so much in love with him that he's somewhat unlikable for coming on to Olivia. As the vicious Hannah, Fay Bainter is effective, though I'd have thrown her out of the house.All in all, it's just okay.

Pat-54 Beyond soap opera. This movie is pure camp. Unintentionally hilarious at times. It's movies like this that caused theatre owners in 1938 to declare Joan Crawford "box-office poison."