A waste of Blondell and William
The premise to this film, its cast, and pre-Code status all made it promising, but unfortunately it fell short for me. Warren William is at it again as a suave yet unscrupulous author, his secretary is the plucky Joan Blondell, and the love interest who emerges from his past (despite now being married) is Genevieve Tobin. The film then follows the author's attempts to overcome his libido and say "goodbye again" to her, helped along by a chorus of characters who serve as his conscience (her husband, played by Hugh Herbert, her sister, her brother-in-law who is also a lawyer, and of course, his secretary).
The opening scene is amusing in that it shows the author's novels in the window of a bookstore, and we see such titles as The Boudoir Cloister (with a book cover that has a woman in lingerie reclining back on her bed, arms thrown back), A Saint in Scarlet (which has a woman with a fashionable bob and low-cut dress looking pensive), Ecstasy (flowers splaying out wildly), The Woman Who Gave (a close up of a woman's face, perhaps as she's about to give or receive), Purple Passion - a Novel of Burning Love in the Tropics (with a woman beneath a palm tree in an exotic place), and Miriam (with a woman clutching a pillow while lying on her stomach smiling joyously). Naturally, women in the bookstore are all clamoring to get copies.
There are also some wonderful little moments with William and Blondell, who were at the height of their pre-Code powers. Seeing William singing a camping song in closet, mocking the lawyer by repeating what he says as he says it, and hopping up on a window ledge and maniacally threatening to jump make the film worth seeing if you're a fan of his, and it's only 66 minutes anyway. Blondell slapping him in the face with tears welling up in her eyes, after earlier being the no-nonsense type who bargained with the hotel porter over the price of a bottle of rye, showed her wonderful range. Towards the end the film seemed like an early version of a screwball comedy, which may hold some appeal as well.
However, for me the film lacked that certain pre-Code sizzle, suffering from a weak script and some uneven storytelling from director Michael Curtiz. There's not enough passion between William and Tobin's characters, and when the weak nothing of a husband and the extraneous characters of the sister and her husband show up, it led to a lot of talking and hashing things through instead of the emotions and passion that would have made this interesting. There are a couple of clever little lines with inuendo, such as when the author says he slept well but "on and off," when we know his lover has been with him on the train, but there's not enough of this sort of thing.
It's clear to the audience that they've had sex in the past, though a portion of his recollection about a night he spent with her in college was censored, with a noticeable skip in what he says about it. That may have been by a local censor board from which the print survives (before the Production Code was enforced, different cities routinely had films hacked up according to what they believed best for their community), or been an edit required by Joseph Breen after 1934, when the film was considered for re-release. It's hard to know if other scenes were excised, though we know from the breakfast scene, that clear pre-Code signal to the audience, that they've had sex in the present too. The trouble is, it just doesn't seem like there was a lot of fire here, maybe because Tobin was miscast, maybe because of edits, or maybe because the script just wasn't daring enough.
It's not too surprising where this film is heading, and it was even a direction I'm usually a sucker for, that of the "she was right next to me all along, what a fool I've been," but even then it didn't feel natural here. Maybe I'm being a little harsh in my review score as it's not all bad, but I just thought this one was a bit of a waste of Blondell and William, who are so great elsewhere.
The opening scene is amusing in that it shows the author's novels in the window of a bookstore, and we see such titles as The Boudoir Cloister (with a book cover that has a woman in lingerie reclining back on her bed, arms thrown back), A Saint in Scarlet (which has a woman with a fashionable bob and low-cut dress looking pensive), Ecstasy (flowers splaying out wildly), The Woman Who Gave (a close up of a woman's face, perhaps as she's about to give or receive), Purple Passion - a Novel of Burning Love in the Tropics (with a woman beneath a palm tree in an exotic place), and Miriam (with a woman clutching a pillow while lying on her stomach smiling joyously). Naturally, women in the bookstore are all clamoring to get copies.
There are also some wonderful little moments with William and Blondell, who were at the height of their pre-Code powers. Seeing William singing a camping song in closet, mocking the lawyer by repeating what he says as he says it, and hopping up on a window ledge and maniacally threatening to jump make the film worth seeing if you're a fan of his, and it's only 66 minutes anyway. Blondell slapping him in the face with tears welling up in her eyes, after earlier being the no-nonsense type who bargained with the hotel porter over the price of a bottle of rye, showed her wonderful range. Towards the end the film seemed like an early version of a screwball comedy, which may hold some appeal as well.
However, for me the film lacked that certain pre-Code sizzle, suffering from a weak script and some uneven storytelling from director Michael Curtiz. There's not enough passion between William and Tobin's characters, and when the weak nothing of a husband and the extraneous characters of the sister and her husband show up, it led to a lot of talking and hashing things through instead of the emotions and passion that would have made this interesting. There are a couple of clever little lines with inuendo, such as when the author says he slept well but "on and off," when we know his lover has been with him on the train, but there's not enough of this sort of thing.
It's clear to the audience that they've had sex in the past, though a portion of his recollection about a night he spent with her in college was censored, with a noticeable skip in what he says about it. That may have been by a local censor board from which the print survives (before the Production Code was enforced, different cities routinely had films hacked up according to what they believed best for their community), or been an edit required by Joseph Breen after 1934, when the film was considered for re-release. It's hard to know if other scenes were excised, though we know from the breakfast scene, that clear pre-Code signal to the audience, that they've had sex in the present too. The trouble is, it just doesn't seem like there was a lot of fire here, maybe because Tobin was miscast, maybe because of edits, or maybe because the script just wasn't daring enough.
It's not too surprising where this film is heading, and it was even a direction I'm usually a sucker for, that of the "she was right next to me all along, what a fool I've been," but even then it didn't feel natural here. Maybe I'm being a little harsh in my review score as it's not all bad, but I just thought this one was a bit of a waste of Blondell and William, who are so great elsewhere.
- gbill-74877
- 21 mars 2022