This film is unexpectedly relevant to what is happening today, 70 years later, as the Western world is being flooded with spoilt 'Frankenkinder' and China is being flooded with even more spoilt 'little emperors'. This is a very gritty tale written by the Romanian refugee Jean Negulesco, before he had begun to direct films. Negulesco did not write the script, and I suspect that was softened, and the ending made more sentimental than in his original story, in order to be more 'audience friendly'. Bonita Granville, a highly talented young actress of the time (best known for her four Nancy Drew mystery films, in which she excelled when she was somewhat older), plays the neglected daughter of a truly appalling spoilt rich couple. The mother is the worst sort, many of whom I have had the misfortune to know and who are more common than ever today; her interest is herself, and a child is at best an accessory and at worst a nuisance to be disposed of to servants and then to a boarding school. In her case, however, she did not even have the excuse of being a 'killer career woman', but was merely an idle and vain social snob. The father is only interested in making money, and is always out doing so. This leaves the normally charming Bonita, who has a great deal of fire to her character, to rebel and become in protest a hideously spoilt brat, and eventually even a delinquent entangled in a crime. This process is clearly shown, to a degree not at all normal in Hollywood films, where false sentimentality was the usual way to view children. Bonita Granville rises to the challenge extremely well, not hesitating to make herself as odious as necessary. There is a very wicked butler who torments the girl secretly, there is a very nice male secretary who tries to help her, and eventually an angelic school headmistress who wishes to save her. The film is really a very savage attack on the idle rich and their family victims. Negulesco, who had been a 'companion to rich older women' at Nice before coming to Hollywood, was clearly describing a woman of precisely the type he had known personally, with a rich absent husband and a victimized daughter such as he must have observed at first hand. It is a bitter tale, and honestly done except for the ending.
Review of The Beloved Brat
