Forbidden – review

Frank Capra's 1932 melodrama is a tough-minded, sinewy film, and a welcome inclusion in the new series of Capra revivals. It has a compelling sweep, and, for a relatively short feature, an expansive, ambitious sense of character-growth. A romantic librarian (Barbara Stanwyck) encounters a wealthy and dapper married man (Adolphe Menjou), while being courted by a muck-raking reporter (Ralph Bellamy). By the end of the film, these characters have evolved into a disappointed spinster, a state governor and a newspaper editor, and their destinies triangulate explosively. Stanwyck gives an entirely beguiling performance, initially resembling a comic sprite from one of Capra's lighter movies ("Do you know what time it is?" asks her employer when she drifts in late. "Springtime!" she replies dreamily), but becoming a passionate, demanding woman with a tragic propensity for self-sacrifice and a streak of violence. It has a tightly wound mechanism with a satisfying and effective narrative payoff.