The Old Maid

The Old Maid (1939)
Director: Edmund Goulding
Tagline: « Vividly, unforgettably, a woman’s love starved soul is revealed. All those strange secrets she locks in her heart … moments of rapture and of heartbreak … longings that no man can fathom. Of these has the year’s finest picture been woven! »
Actors:
Charlotte Lovell
Delia Lovell
Clem Spender
Dr. Lanskell
Tina
Genre: Drama
Rating:  vote average (4’448 votes)
Quotes: « Delia Lovell Ralston: You are wicked, Charlotte. You are wicked. » « Charlotte Lovell: No. I'm not wicked. I never could have done to you what you've done to me. You made me an old maid. » « Tina: Come in, Mommy. Oh, it's you, Aunt Charlotte. I thought it was Mommy. » « Charlotte Lovell: She thinks I can't understand her. She considers me an old maid. » « Delia Lovell Ralston: My dear. » « Charlotte Lovell: A ridiculous, narrow-minded old maid. What else can she ever think of me? » « Delia Lovell Ralston: Poor Charlotte. » « Charlotte Lovell: Oh, but you needn't pity me. Because she's really mine. If she considers me an old maid, it's because I've deliberately made myself one in her eyes. I've done it from the beginning so she wouldn't have the least suspicion. I've practised everything I've ever had to say to her, if it was important, so that I'd sound like an old maid aunt talking. Not her mother. » « Delia Lovell Ralston: Well, after all, darling, there isn't anything important to say to her now. She has every attribute of a modern successful woman – she's healthy, she's young, she's gay, she's attractive… »
Trailer: Trailer [EN]
Runtime:95 minutes
Plots: The arrival of an ex-lover on a young woman’s wedding day sets in motion a chain of events which will alter her and her cousin’s lives forever. After a two-year absence, Clem Spender returns home on the very day that his former fiancée, Delia, is marrying another man. Clem enlists in the Union army and dies on the battlefield, but not before finding comfort in the arms of Delia’s cousin, Charlotte Lovell. The years pass and Charlotte establishes an orphanage and eventually confesses to Delia that her dearest young charge, Tina, is in fact her own child by Clem. Jealousy and family secrets threaten to tear the cousins apart.

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