Rouben Mamoulian (birthday today 4.12) was always ahead of his time. This was the first full color feature (1935!) based on William Thackeray's "Vanity Fair", one of the greatest novels of the 19th century, full of literary splendor, transported on the screen not without success. Mamoulian's last film was "Silk Stockings" (1957) with Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, but he also started on "Porgy and Bess" (completed by Otto Preminger) and "Cleopatra" (1962, completed by Joe Mankiewicz). - With its striking gallery of great actors, like Allan Mowbray, Nigel Bruce ("Dr Watson"), Cedric Hardwicke, Billie Burke and Miriam Hopkins among others, it is great theater all the way in Mamoulian's characteristic lushness and splendor of vivacity and imagery in very innovative direction - the feature is above all a feast to the eyes and an amazing film in spite of its almost 80 years - and impressing as the first full length color film.

Miriam Hopkins gives a spirited and possibly career performance in the title role of Becky Sharp based on William Makepeace Thackerey's novel Vanity Fair. The film comes by way of Langdon Mitchell's play based on Vanity Fair with the change in title. It ran on Broadway in 1899 for 116 performance.And what a cast it had back in 1899. Mrs. Mary Madden Fiske was Becky, Maurice Barrymore was her luckless gambling fool of a husband, the part that Alan Mowbray has here and as the aristocratic rake that Hopkins is ready to give all to to square Mowbray's debts is played by Cedric Hardwicke in the film. On Broadway the role originated with Tyrone Power, Sr.Thackerey's novel was a critique of the class system in Great Britain, but really offers no solutions. It's also a story of how much more difficult it was to be a woman and poor with so many fewer options open to them.Becky Sharp is such a woman. She's been given a good education, attending school with the rich aristocratic Frances Dee. By education I mean finishing school. How she got there we're not sure, but having been exposed to how the other half lives she wants to be part of it.Her friend Frances Dee invites her to live with her family and Hopkins starts seizing her opportunities. The rest of the story is about what happens to her and the various schemes she concocts. She's not afraid to use sex to obtain what she wants, riches and respectability.Besides those I've already mentioned there's a really nice performance by Nigel Bruce as Frances Dee's Colonel Blimp like brother. In the end he proves to be Hopkins's salvation.As a film Becky Sharp has come down in history to us as the first film using the modern technicolor process. It was a novelty, but as a story it definitely has merit.And it is so much better than the version with Myrna Loy updated to the Roaring Twenties that came out under the original title of Vanity Fair a few years earlier.

Becky Sharp (Miriam Hopkins) is a lower class girl who, through her upper class friend Amelia Sedley (Francis Dee), does her best to become an upper class woman herself...and do anything to get there.Dull story with thudding dialogue (nobody ever talked like that) but I watched the whole thing. This movie has just two things going for it: Miriam Hopkins fantastic performance is one. She is playing a very unlikable character but she's so beautiful (in some shots she takes your breath away) and full of life that you can't help but root for her. The second thing is the groundbreaking use of color photography. I believe this is the first full-length feature to be filmed entirely in color. Director Rouben Mamoulian uses color creatively to express mood or show what a person is feeling or doing. I saw the restored print which has rich, beautiful colors. Even when the story was boring (which is often) with that lousy dialogue the colors and use of light and shadow kept me watching. With this film and the 1932 version of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", Mamoulian created new rules in how to direct sequences and use settings, light and shadow. Sadly, he's forgotten today.So, this is worth seeing only for Hopkins and the color. Don't watch it for the story or you'll be sadly disappointed.

"Becky Sharp" seems to have consistently attracted unfair comments. Whilst it may not be as subtle as many of its contemporary counterparts, the story provides a fun basis for a glorious use of Technicolor. As the first feature length movie to be shot in full colour, the film is a wonderful example of cinema as spectacle. Though admittedly, at times, the viewer may almost be sent cross-eyed by the vibrancy of the colour, its use is interesting in so far as one can see the attempts made at one level to exhibit the colour, whilst also trying in vain not to distract from the narrative. Also, from the beginning of the opening sequence the status of the film as a stage adaptation is clear, and in this way the idea of the now overlooked tradition of cinema as spectacle is further enhanced.The plot itself is slightly reminiscent of a Gainsborough melodrama (although it precedes them), and yet it is refreshing in many ways that Becky is not the subject of the traditional narrative retribution and resolution. The over-the-top nature of some of the narrative action does provide moments which may cause an audience member to cringe; however, if the film is not taken too seriously, it remains enjoyable."Becky Sharp" has too often been overlooked in the history of film. It may not have been widely popular at the time of its release, and it may not be seen within a high cinematic cannon, but it is definitely worth viewing, if only to appreciate the emergence of three colour film as the new advancement in film technology.