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marym52
Reviews
A Slight Case of Murder (1938)
A Real Gem
One of the funniest movies I've seen in ages- featuring:
Edward G. Robinson as a genial bootlegger going legit after prohibition with a brewery making horrible beer.
Ruth Donnelly as his wife, trying to be teddibly refined.
All the great character actors who played mugs in the 1930s playing it for laughs.
A wild party
4 corpses in the guest room closet
A stuffy prospective father-in-law
And, best of all, Bobby Jordan as the beer-swilling Douglas Fairbanks Rosenbloom, the worst orphan in New York.
Try it-- you'll like it!
The Animal Kingdom (1932)
Ann Harding in another role as an intelligent woman of character
Ann Harding stands out in the first half of the thirties-- a natural platinum blond, she kept her hair long, wore it in a low bun, and used a minimum of makeup. Her natural beauty had a foil in Myrna Loy, her co-star in several films. Loy has a chic, lacquered Art Deco beauty-- quite up-to the-minute.
Harding played witty, intelligent women of strong character and soft voice.Some of her best roles were as the wife of an unfaithful husband who takes her lot with good humor and goes on to make her own successful life. This was a daring plot in its time, but the enforcement of the Production Code pulled its teeth.
"The Animal Kingdom" begins with Leslie Howard's friends and father getting together to discuss him. In his father's eyes, Tom Collier has wasted his life as the owner of a small press that publishes scholarly and art books. They bring up the fact that he has lived with a bohemian artist for three years. Adorable Myrna Loy says she knows all about her-- and announces her engagement to Tom.
Tom arrives, and decides that if his engagement is to be announced, he should immediately go and tell Daisy, his lover, who has just arrived from studying painting in Europe.
We, the audience, are prepared by this opener for a scene in which a hard-bitten Jezebel turns on Tom with violent retribution, threatening to wreck his life and his marriage. Instead, we find soft-spoken Ann Harding's radiant beauty and strength of character. She's heartbreaking as she puts her dream of life with Tom aside, and breaks with him completely when he proposes that their relationship should continue after his marriage.
Some viewers are puzzled by the title. It comes during a speech in which Daisy acknowledges that Tom can be sexually attracted to other women: "After all our big speeches, we still belong to the animal kingdom." The balance of the film concerns Tom's marriage, and Daisy's continuing struggle to resist his advances. Tom wants to have his cake and eat it, too-- an exciting sex life with Cecilia (Loy) and deep affection and understanding with Daisy.
Gradually, we see that Cecilia believes her only hold on men is sex, which she uses to manipulate her old friend (Neil Hamilton) and Tom. She convinces Tom to turn his press into a moneymaker by publishing drugstore paperbacks. She sweet talks Hamilton into buying out Tom's Bantam Press for a huge price. Her mistake is to throw surprise birthday party for Tom, inviting his old artistic friends so he can see what lightweights they are.
At the party, Daisy reads the latest manuscript up for publication and gives Tom honest criticism on what his press has become. Tom's father presents him with a huge check to show his approval of Tom's changed life-- and to convince Tom and Daisy to move in with him at his town house. It looks as if Daisy is going to have everything she wants.
Tom finally balks at the pressure to take the money, move, and sell his beloved press. Cecilia thinks she knows how to win him over-- with dinner in her cozy sitting room with the promise of a wild night in bed if he capitulates.
Unfortunately, her flower and candle-filled boudoir reminds Tom of the private dining rooms of a high class whorehouse he frequented as a student in London. He starts dropping innuendo that it takes Cecilia some time to understand, complimenting her in the shallow way a whore would expect. As Cecila becomes drunk on champagne, she takes the compliments as proof she's won Tom over to her side.
When Cecilia makes a seductive move to the bedroom, Tom places his father's check on the mantle piece-- just as he had left the twenty-pound note for the prostitutes.
As he leaves their house, Tom announces, "I'm going home to my wife!" And that, of course, would be Daisy.
After the Production Code was enforced, the nuanced view of "The Animal Kingdom" went out the window. The Loy character would be presented as such a harpy that you couldn't understand what the husband saw in her. Instead of an independent woman with her own career, Harding would be a housewife completely dependent on the husband. The plot would often center on the wife seducing the husband back to their home.
"The Animal Kingdom" vanished from view; in the 1950s and 60s, it was still considered too racy to revive on television. I'm so happy that it survived for future audiences. I wish it would receive the greater recognition it deserves.
Eyes in the Night (1942)
Edward Arnold Takes the Lead
One of the many things I love about TCM is that it shows the big studio programmers that gave their character actors and up and coming stars a chance to shine.
You can always depend on Edward Arnold giving a good performance-- including all the crooked politicians and irascible millionaires that were his bread and butter. But here he sinks his teeth into the role of a blind detective who is aided by a wonder of a seeing eye dog. Arnold is funny, clever, and charming throughout.
The mystery, as many viewers note, is solved in Act Two. The film is mainly concerned with putting detective Duncan Maclain in a jam and seeing how he gets out of it and captures a Nazi spy ring.
The cast is excellent and includes Anne Harding, Reginald Denny, Mantan Mooreland, and Friday the German Shepherd. Oops-- I almost forgot Donna Reed playing against type as a poisonous debutante! Arnold only made two of the Duncan Maclain films. Too bad-- I could happily sit through several more.
Desert Nights (1929)
Unfairly forgotten & very enjoyable
John Gilbert DIDN'T exit pictures because of a high voice. In fact, his voice was a gravelly baritone; not mellifluously romantic, but perfectly suited to the characters he played in his later sound films. It's too bad this was released as a silent.
This pre-code desert adventure film features solid performances by the leads (I always perk up when I see Ernest Torrance in the cast list), beautiful photography, and a plot full of tension from shifting power and sexual tension.
Gilbert plays a bad good guy-- roguish, gritty, full of dark humor, and willing to play his captors off each other with anything it takes for his survival. One reviewer compares him to Errol Flynn. I can see that, but also the Clark Gable of "Red Dust".
A good, suspenseful film with all the advantages of the late silent period.
The Front Page (1931)
The Uncensored Version
I saw the 1970s version first, and while I enjoyed it, I now realize how prettied-up it was. As for "His Girl Friday" I can see its merits, but you can't consider it just "The Front Page" with a change of sex for Hildy Johnson. The tone is completely different-- and just as prettied-up.
The 1931 film must be close to what wowed 1920s audiences on the stage-- and, having seen it, I can't understand critics who call it a screwball comedy. Actually, it's a black hole of cynicism with a deadly view of human nature. Especially those humans called the press.
From the early scene in which Frank McHugh gleefully harasses a Peeping Tom victim, the film is drenched in misogyny. The reporters brutalize Mae Marsh's Molly; her fall out the window isn't a bravura gesture, but an accident as she's trying to escape a mob of reporters threatening her with assault. Hildy's mother-in-laws kidnapping and injury isn't so much played for yuks as repulsion.
However, the script and direction play fair with the female characters. Molly's rebuke of the reporters is heartfelt and true. She and Williams show the best of humanity among the characters. Mary Brian as Peggy Grant is an intelligent, fair minded women who is coming to the question, "How much am I willing to abase myself to keep the man I love?" As such, Hildy's tribute to her isn't mooncalf love-- it's sincere and true.Effie Ellsler as Mrs. Grant isn't a stereotypical gorgon mother-in-law. When she confronts Adolph Menjou as Walter Burns, she's justifiably angry-- and his attempts to gaslight her are pathetic.
I found the first version of "The Front Page" to be the best of the three-- more honest, more challenging, and not sanitized.