Tuya para siempre

Some time ago I became the owner of the Pre-Code Hollywood Collection. Me was told to watch first Merrily We Go To Hell (1932), one of the six films within this collection. And really I can say... it is a gem on its own. Maybe because it is the first film I've seen from director Dorothy Arzner and the second film I've seen with Sylvia Sidney, I got besmitten from the start seeing her in Sabotage (1936), but I was taken away with the whole as a combination of acting, directing, the story and some gowns.

Fredric March is awesome playing the drunk man, and later husband, just right and not lost in overacting. The parties go on and on. The marriage is more the real thing and not the Hollywood marriage after the Production Code came about. It is nice to see a young Cary Grant, in his first year of acting. Later that year he would have his breakthrough I think I can say fairly with Blonde Venus.

All along the storyline I wondered what the movie is trying to tell us. There are a few good aspects told about how relations can be. First the character of Mrs. Sidney, Joan Prentice, is that of a woman in love and want to do everything for her man, even let him go towards another woman. The next stage is trying to win him back by jealousy and then, the last stage, leaving her husband for good. And you can say in Hollywood in those days they also want an happy ending, but... Sorry, I won't go into spoilers. I didn't expected it, but a real good movie to watch.

Everybody here is terrific, and Paramount brought out its A-list stars for the leads, Sylvia Sidney as heiress Joan Prentice and Fredric March as aspiring playwright Jerry Corbett. They are a young couple who marry in spite of the fact that Jerry is an alcoholic who is still stuck on a past heartbreak, stage actress Claire Hempstead.

The plot treads a conventional path full of precode tropes - infidelity, drunkenness, open marriage, the inconvenient pregnancy, and the wealthy family of one spouse distrusting the not so wealthy other spouse and his motives. But yet it is interesting because of several - "Wow did they do that back then?" moments.

For example - Jerry works at a newspaper. When somebody makes an insulting remark about his upcoming wedding, Jerry punches him in the throat. And yet nobody gets fired or arrested. Prohibition is still in force, and everybody drinks everywhere. Nobody even bothers with the discretion of a flask. There is booze at private parties, booze in public places, booze everywhere. When a turkey gets accidentally dropped on the floor, the alternative is... canned chicken??? Ugh. I would think the couple didn't want to have me over for dinner in the first place. Then there is Jerry's hit play up in lights - "When Women Say No - a satirical comedy". Yikes!

Need I mention that the art design and Sylvia Sidney's fashions are gorgeous. With Skeets Gallagher as Jerry's best friend, the great Esther Howard who seems to be in some kind of relationship with Skeets' character and had a marriage end because of her former husband's drinking - she's always memorable, and Cary Grant as one of Joan's extramarital escorts with what seems to be his original nose.

Cleo Lucas wrote 'I, Jerry, take thee Joan', her only novel, at the tender age of twenty-four and it has been adapted by Edwin Justus Mayer for Paramount whilst marking the last film directed for that studio by Dorothy Arzner before going freelance.

Early on in the film the newly engaged Jerry of Fredric March asks: "Have I a right to take a swell girl and make her a wife?" Thus setting the scene for another of Ms. Arzner's stealthy critiques of the married state.

As expected, her direction is impeccable, her editing seamless and the magnificent performances she has drawn from her two leading players makes this emotional rollercoaster riveting viewing.

The all-important chemistry between March and the enchanting Sylvia Sidney as Joan without which the film would not work, is palpable from the outset. Her character develops and grows in strength as the film progresses whilst in his fourth film for this director, his portrayal of a tragic drunk makes him perfect casting for the role of Norman Maine five years later. Classy English actress Adrianne Allen is Jerry's old flame whose reappearance spells disaster.

Ambivalence runs through Ms. Arzner's oeuvre, never more so than in the ending here which is both happy and deeply tragic.

Although this story has been done a million times since, Dorothy Arzner's subtle yet brash film still has something different to say which makes this worth watching.

Being not just that rarest of 1930s Hollywood creatures: a woman film maker but also someone in an openly long term same sex relationship I wonder whether she had to try harder than her male contemporaries? She certainly delivers goods with this, imbuing energy and emotion into this very thoughtful drama. It's not just a simple story about alcoholism as it could easily have been considering this is 1932. It is a surprisingly deep examination of a strained and complex relationship which is particularly insightful for the time. Above all though it is a piece of entertainment. Unlike how this subject might be handled today, it doesn't get too bogged down in depressing misery but instead keeps the story moving forward, keeping your eyes glued to the screen with a really fast pace.

It's not just Ms Arzner's energetic yet thought provoking direction which elevates this above a lot of the output from 1932, it's Frederick March. Sylvia Sidney is fine in this (not as good as she was in CITY STREETS, Rouben Mamoulian's masterpiece made a year earlier) but she and the rest of the cast are just not on the same level as Mr March. His characterisation of someone who knows he could have everything yet also someone who knows he is going to destroy not just his own but his wife's life too and someone who knows he can't do anything to stop himself is incredibly natural, authentic and heartbreaking. He achieves this, even when he's being decidedly horrible by being so endearing and likeable. Of all the actors the 30s, he was one who had real depth and demonstrates this fully here making his character both fun and sad, ambitious yet weak and spineless, devoted yet deceitful... a real person.

Despite my gushing praise for this, or maybe because of it, I can't call this a great film. Because it's good I can't just compare it with other films of that era but have to put it in the same category of all pictures from the last hundred years. It's no MIDNIGHT COWBOY or TRAIN SPOTTING thus my fairly low rating... but as films from 1932 go, it's one of the best.

A wonderful and unsettling pre-Code film about an alcoholic playboy (Fredric March) who marries a sweet young thing (Sylvia Sidney) and proceeds to drag her down his path of dissolution. The depiction of their marriage is quite shocking, even by today's standards -- not only do they have an "open" marriage, they openly practice that freedom in front of their friends, suggesting a swinging lifestyle that wouldn't become approachable as subject matter in films for another 30+ years. March and Sidney give fantastic performances, and Dorothy Arzner, one of the rare women directors of the time, takes a matter of fact approach that leaves behind the melodrama and sentimentality that might have blunted this same story's impact in the hands of someone else.

One of the most refreshing aspects of "Merrily We Go to Hell," and one of the most shocking, is that Sidney's character does not suffer nobly while we wait for March to see the error of his ways and come back to her a chastened man. Instead, Sidney starts to behave just like him, coming within a stone's throw of alcoholism herself, and doing her own share of philandering. In that way, the film is even a little progressive in its equal treatment of the genders, even if that equality is the equality of debauchery.

Grade: A