Brief Moment

Visually, I would have to give this little number a solid 10.

Carol Lombard is at her exquisite best, and one could look at Gene Raymond for a long time without blinking. The cinematography (by Ted Tetzlaff) is absolutely wonderful, and the Columbia design studios provided visuals that are eminently worth recording.

The night club where Lombard preforms is decorated with life-size bronze deer, cast after a model dug up at Pompeii. When Carol/Abby is taken to meet her stuffy potential in-laws, the famous Lombard nipples are pointing directly at her fiancée's mother (covered of course by a little something whipped up by the great costumier Travis Banton).

There is a great scene where the newly-weds are standing at the rail of a big ocean liner, an iconic 30's image with Carol wearing a marvelous hat as only she can. The apartment that Gene/Rodney brings his wife home to is swellegant. (This is an actual 30s expression, as I found it in a catalogue of Warren McArthur furniture published c. 1934!)

Mind you, it's not a "great" film, but it is very entertaining visually--the quintessence of the early 1930s. The original play was by S.N. Berman, so it certainly has good bones.

And ANYTHING with Carol Lombard is well worth watching! Not only was she staggeringly beautiful, but her acting is exquisitely nuanced to well capture a broad range of emotions, whatever her role.

Brief Moment is a moralistic melodrama, starring Carole Lombard and Gene Raymond.

Instead of the bar singer, a gold-digger, who hunts down a millionaire to live in leisure and abundance for the rest of her life, we have a young, idealistic and passionate woman who intends, through marriage and love, devoted to her husband, to transform an alcoholic and idle playboy into a modest worker, proud to earn his living by his own means.

As a script it is weak and unconvincing. American moralism, which makes Lombard a guardian angel, hidden in the vicious night of the city, to save a young millionaire from himself, from bad companies and from the vices of abundance and a frivolous life.

A role reversal that would have pleased some audiences in the 1930s, but today, honestly, doesn't convince anyone.

A bearable film, just for the pleasure that it is, always, to see Carole Lombard fill the screen with her charm and elegant beauty.

So one cliché, the greedy gold digger, is subverted and replaced by another one, the spoiled heir redeemed through real hard work. This is a one-idea morality tale, and probably not a particularly original one at that. Yet Carole Lombard and Gene Raymond are very fine, dialogues are brisk and the tempo lively. Some of the supporting actors are also worth a mention - Arthur Hohl as the torch singer's caring boss, friend and wishful would-be husband, Herbert Evans who has a very funny scene as a butler with some useful experience of dealing with his master's hangovers - he looks and sounds like a twin brother of Edward Everett Horton of Lubitsch's fame. That's quite enough to make this simple-minded, unambitious story quite worth watching.

Gene Raymond and Carole Lombard, both 25, star in one of the abundant upper crust society pictures made in the early 1930s. Raymond is Rodney Deane, and brings singer Abbey Fane (Lombard) home to meet the family. Abbey is quite cordial to Deane's family, but they are less than enthusiastic to meet her, and things go downhill from there. Lombard had been in films, silents & talkies, for 10 years already, so she is a little more polished here. No real surprises in this one; they needed a comical sidekick, like Edward Everett Horton, or Eric Blore to spice things up. In this one, Abbey does have a sidekick "Steve" (Arthur Hohl) , but he has a small, bland part. She would also make Lady by Choice with Hohl, and Mr. & Mrs. Smith with G. Raymond. A pleasant little film, all neatly wrapped up in an hour & 10 minutes. The film production code must have kicked in already at Columbia Pictures, since it is scrubbed clean of any naughty lines or double entendres. Lombard even sings a song (as of today, its not listed in the "soundtracks" section yet.. anyone know that song?) Good to see performances by Lombard and Raymond, but it is light fluff, and the actors weren't challenged.

Brief Moment stars Carole Lombard and in this film she is gets married to wealthy Gene Raymond who has a nice arrangement with his father Reginald Mason and brother Donald Cook. Dad makes the money and the two of them spend it. Lombard is a nightclub singer who falls for Raymond, but tries to reform him.

Back in the day a character like Raymond was called a wastrel. It's a 19th century word I wish would come back into common usage describing someone who just wants to have a good time and nothing else. They also are wealthy enough to see it works out that way.

During a time when a quarter of the country was out of work such people were really looked down on. Lombard thinks Raymond has abilities but he won't use them. The crux of the story.

One character does stand out that of Monroe Owsley as Raymond's best friend and fellow partygoer. He's a real piece of work.

Brief Moment is a Depression Era story that probably would not work well with a contemporary audience. It's a museum piece of a film.