This blog has previously discussed some of the films of Victor Saville, who is mainly remembered for his collaborations with musical comedy star Jessie Matthews. Yet before that collaboration started, Saville had directed over a dozen other films, some of them silent films in the1920s.

In 1932 he directed The Faithful Heart, a melodrama based on a stage play, like so many of the films of the period were. The male lead was played by Herbert Marshall, a famous stage and film star who later in the same year would play husband to Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus. The female lead in The Faithful Heart is played by Marshall’s real-life spouse at the time (he ended up marrying five times) Edna Best. Best also had a significant stage career and in this film plays a dual role as both mother and daughter.

The plot of The Faithful Heart is reasonably simple. In 1899, young sailor Waverley Ango lands in Southampton port and takes a liking to a local barmaid, Grace, who he calls ‘Blackie’. After some persuasion Grace falls in love with Waverley and the pair spend about a week together before Waverley is called up to go to Africa. Despite his promises that he will return to Southampton as soon as possible, Grace knows that his heart is in Africa and she will not see him again.

Then, about a third of the way into the film, the action moves to 1919, with Waverley established in an army career and returning from the front with decorations. He is engaged to Diana, a wealthy and sophisticated woman. Then a young woman called Blackie shows up, who tells him she is Grace’s daughter and that Grace died in childbirth. Waverley understands that he is Blackie’s father, and he feels responsible for helping her. Diana, however, persuades Blackie to emigrate to Canada to join her aunt. When Waverley finds out Blackie is about to travel to Canada, Diana tells him he must choose between them. The film ends with Waverley and Blackie boarding the ship to Canada together.

Under the terms of the BBFC censorship code at the time, films were not allowed to show sexual liaisons. As a result, many films use proxies to insinuated sexual interaction has taken place. In 1929’s Piccadilly, for example, we see a woman giving a man her house key, the two of them entering the house together, and then a close-up shot of the woman reclining on a bed with her hair loose. In Blackmail (also 1929), Hitchcock has two people enter a four-poster bed with the curtains drawn, with the implication that a sexual assault takes place in the bed, unseen by the viewer.

The Faithful Heart is a lot less explicit, to the point that one is left wondering when this baby was conceived. On their first date together, Grace tells Waverley that she has no expectations of him, and she kisses him first. However, we also see that on subsequent nights they go to the theatre every night, and they lodge in a house shared by Blackie’s aunt, cousin and an older male member of the family – hardly an environment that provides a lot of privacy. Yet the audience is asked to accept that the relationship was consummated. This then leads to an insinuated portrayal of extramarital sex, which is not roundly condemned by the film. It partially justifies this by making it clear that Grace and Waverley love each other, and possibly would have married if circumstances had allowed them. Crucially, the film’s ending, with Waverley choosing to ditch Diana in favour of looking after Blackie, re-confirms his commitment to the memory of Grace who is presented as his ‘true’ life partner.

The film’s message of staying true and committed to your first love is particularly ironic in light of the private lives of both Marshall and Best. Marshall, as mentioned above, married five times during his life; Best had a total of three marriages. They had both already been divorced once by the time The Faithful Heart was made. Best’s divorce came through 2 weeks before she married Marshall; Marshall’s own divorce was finalised only 3 days before his marriage to Best. This implies that they both left their first marriages legally intact long after they had decided to live separately from their first spouses. The same pattern repeats for their next marriages, with Best actually marrying her third husband on the day the divorce with Marshall came through.

Clearly, the reality was that it was not that uncommon, particularly in showbiz circles, to have multiple significant relationships in life, and there was no moral imperative to stay with one’s first partner. In The Faithful Heart, Diana, Waverley’s fiancée, also largely acts reasonably. She is not shocked or upset that he has a child from a previous relationship. However, quite understandably, she does want to be sure that he is no longer emotionally committed to Grace. The film gets away with positioning Diana as the ‘bad’ character because throughout the film, she uses her family to try and manipulate Waverley to do things he does not want to do, like live in a luxurious flat or accept an allowance from her father. This builds the pair up as fundamentally incompatible, which is reaffirmed when Diana asks Waverley to give up Blackie – something that goes against his core values.

A final note on the soundtrack, which is unusual in the first part of the film, set in 1899. This section includes many shots of boats and ships in Southampton dock, and much of the soundtrack consists of a male choir singing sea shanties. One particular sequence, when Waverley is waking up with a hangover, is scored by a very whisper-y and somewhat unnerving rendition of ‘Drunken Sailor’. Unlike during the silent film era, when each cinema had its own musicians and the scoring of a film would differ from venue to venue and even from screening to screening, with sound films directors could make creative decisions about the soundtrack as well. Victor Saville had a somewhat unusual approach to the music for this first section of the film, which makes it memorable and showcases Saville’s talent for musical direction which would become much more prominent in his later work.

The Faithful Heart ultimately purports to be a morality tale, but the incident that gets the plot underway has to be fudged because it does not align with what was considered morally acceptable to show on film at the time. It does not necessarily walk this tightrope successfully, leaving audiences to significantly suspend their disbelief while watching this film.

The Faithful Heart is available to watch for free on BFI Player, for viewers based in the UK.