Becky Sharp (1935)

Directed by

Lowell Sherman, Rouben Mamoulian

Genre

drama film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 25m

Rated

NR

Rating

5.7 of 10 from 27 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A lower-class woman uses her wit and charm to climb the social ladder in 19th century England. She marries into an upper-class family but her actions bring ruin to herself and the people around her.

dramaticperiodmelodramaticbittersocial-climbingtenseambitious

What happens

Becky Sharp is a 1935 American Technicolor historical drama film directed by Rouben Mamoulian and starring Miriam Hopkins, who plays the eponymous protagonist. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. Other supporting cast were William Faversham, Frances Dee, Cedric Hardwicke, Billie Burke, Alison Skipworth, Nigel Bruce, and Alan Mowbray. The film is based on the 1899 play of the same name by Langdon Mitchell, which in turn was based on William Makepeace Thackeray's 1848 novel Vanity Fair. The film recounts the tale of a lower-class girl who insinuates herself into an upper-class family, only to see her life and the lives of those around her destroyed. The play was made famous in the late 1890s by actress Minnie Maddern Fiske. The screenplay was written by Francis Edward Faragoh. The film was considered a landmark in cinema as the first feature film to use the newly developed three-strip Technicolor production throughout, opening the way for a growing number of color films to be made in Britain and the United States in the years leading up to World War II. Becky Sharp was, in effect, a "demonstration" picture, which served to showcase and validate this advanced technology in color. In 2019, the film was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the United States National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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