A lot of people tend to assume GONE WITH THE WIND or THE WIZARD OF OZ were the first color movies. Firstly, color film had been experimented with since the silent era, with a handful of features being made wholly in the old two-strip Technicolor process during the 1920s. Secondly, GONE WITH THE WIND and THE WIZARD OF OZ were merely early examples of the three-strip Technicolor process, but certainly not the first-- that honor goes to 1935's BECKY SHARP and to be honest, that's about all the honor the movie merits.

BECKY SHARP is an adaptation of the novel VANITY FAIR and while I have never read the book, this appears to be an extremely truncated retelling, jumping from plot point to plot point with little in the way of interesting characters to keep the viewer invested. Becky cons men into giving her money, behaves badly, spends too much, needs more money, cons men into giving her money, behaves badly, ad nauseum. There's little sense of character development there for any of the players involved, making the movie tiresome.

I love Miriam Hopkins, but I am shocked that anyone thinks this is her best performance: compared to her work in Rouben Mamoulian's DR. JEKYLL AND MR HYDE or in the haunting THE STORY OF TEMPLE DRAKE or in anything she did for Lubitsch, this is hammy, hammy work. Not that it isn't without its charms and humor (I love the scene where she turns on the waterworks to soften up her husband's hard-nosed spinster aunt), but Hopkins gets quite shrill at points, making her exhausting to watch.

Really, the saving grace is the Technicolor. The costumes and sets are quite gorgeous, which might explain the constant stagey-ness of the cinematography. Mamoulian's films of the early 1930s tended to be far more cinematic than their counterparts, less afraid of experimenting with camera movement and sound, but here, the blocking of the actors and the placement of the camera are very theatrical and stuffy, likely to show off the color of the sets. That might have been enough to astound an audience in 1935, but color in and of itself is less likely to impress anyone, even a classic film fan, these days.

Classic film nerds like me are really the only ones who will get anything out of BECKY SHARP. It's historically important and not without good moments, but it's hardly of the storytelling stature of the far better three-strip Technicolor movies which would follow it in the years to come.

BECKY SHARP is set during the Napoleonic era. When the film begins, Becky is leaving finishing school and the headmistress is thrilled to see her go. Becky, for her part, feels the same and unlike the demure ladies of the time, she tells the headmistress where she can put her school!! But, like a cat, she lands on her feet—being taken in by a rich classmate. After wrangling this invitation to stay with this rich lady, Becky then works hard to snag a rich husband. Instead, she does manage to marry a minor member of the gentry—but he cannot afford the rich ways of his new wife. Eventually, he tires of her whore-like ways and divorces her.

Becky, now broke, is forced to work in the lower quarters of society. But, once again, she manages to find a rich guy (Nigel Bruce) to bail her out and once again she begins scheming her way to the top. And, by the end of the film, Becky hasn't learned any lesson about life other than "look out for number one"! This film is the Thackery novel "Vanity Fair" and it's been made several times. What makes this one of some importance is that this was the first full-length film made in Three-Color Technicolor—the first true color process for movies. While Two-Color movies had been made since the early 1920s, they lacked full color as the color strips were blue-green and orange-red—resulting in a film that tended to actually look more orange and green than anything else (though there were a few exceptions where the colors actually looked pretty good—such as in the color segment in THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA). Despite the major technical improvement with BECKY SHARP, it, too, looked rather muddy and orange. This is NOT due to the age of the print, as people at the time commented on its rather limited color palate. But, the process was roughly that of future full-color films and it is the first of its kind.

The story features the shallow but scheming Becky (Miriam Hopkins) working her way through society in order to further her great ambitions. To do so, she lies and plots continuously and she's quite good at it! However entertaining this is, it is also the biggest problem with the film. Because Becky is generally a selfish jerk (though not always so), it's hard to care about her and the film rests mostly on its costumes and full-color. As for Hopkins' acting, it's one of her best performances—though it is a tad two-dimensional—mostly due to the writing, not her acting. Had they made Becky either MORE evil and conniving (like Bette Davis in JEZEBEL or THE LETTER) or LESS, it would have improved the film immensely.

Overall, a rather forgettable costumer whose sole reason to watch it is the use of Three-Color film. Other than that, fans of Miriam Hopkins (both of them) might want to see it, as it's among her best performances—mostly because it doesn't call for a lot of restraint or subtlety.

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.