Man of the World

I just do not care for this movie. It is not because William Powell ( Michael) was bad, it is just he did nothing for me good or bad, and he played a character he could play in his sleep. Powell is at his best in two kinds of movies comedy and crime and there was no comedy and the crime was secondary. The only one I did like was Wynne Gibson ( Irene) his former partner in crime. She gives a very sophisticated and measured performance ( so much better then Kay Francis who I detest)., Carole Lombard is in the film as well and she just did nothing for me. I admit to not being a fan of hers ( especially when compared to Myrna Loy). Finally, If you want to see a great film from Powell's Paramount period I would highly recommend Shadow Of The Law, now there is a very different Powell performance. I will give it 5/10 stars all for Gibson.

This was the film when William Powell and Carole Lombard, through working together, fell in love and married in the same year. At this stage in her career, Lombard was still somewhat embryonic, having not yet developed into her proper persona, though she was an attractive and winsome ingénue. Powell, on the other hand, who was already 39, had fully matured, whereas Lombard was only 23. The story and screenplay were both by Herman Mankiewicz (1897-1953), brother of the director Joe Mankiewicz, uncle of Tom (whom I knew), and related to numerous others in the film business. It is rather sad tale of a basically good man who has become such a 'man of the world' that he cannot be true to himself and thus cannot find the happiness he craves. The story is set in Paris, at the peak of the period of its American tourist and bohemian invasion. Although not filmed on location, there are some convincing cafes and a very funny scene where a genuine Frenchwoman and her large number of children, gabbling in impeccable patois, squeeze Powell and Lombard off a park bench. So the script had such excellent touches. The quality of the film was very good, considering how recently sound had come in, and no one seems too obviously to be speaking into a microphone concealed in a vase of flowers. William Powell really is superb in this film, and it is his showpiece, and it must have helped boost his career a lot. The marriage of Powell and Lombard would only last two years, but it seems to have done them both a world of good, and they remained friends. The film had two directors, Richard Wallace, who was two years younger than Powell and is best known for the John Garfield film THE FALLEN SPARROW (1943), and an uncredited Edward Goodman, who only directed two films, both in 1931. I presume it was Wallace who finished the Goodman picture, rather than the other way around, but that is just a guess. I have no idea what was behind it all and why Goodman disappeared from the business that year, as he did not die until 1962. One of the mysteries we will probably never solve! Guy Kibbee plays a rich American tourist, father to Lombard, and does so with his usual geniality and large girth. Wynne Gibson plays the hard-bitten Irene, who has been Powell's partner in fleecing rich Americans in Paris for some time and does not want to let him go. She says: 'I know it is all over between us,' but clearly in her mind it is not. She appeared in 50 titles before retiring in 1956. She specialised in played hard-boiled women. Will Powell, who has found true love, be able to reform? Can it work in the society of that day? The film is well worth watching and finding out for yourself.

The pre-code where William Powell meets Carole Lombard. story by Herman Mankiewicz. Harry Taylor (Guy Kibbee) is in Paris, and doing things he doesn't want known back in the states. Powell is Trevor.. he pretends to help these americans get out of a jam, but is really blackmailing them. but he falls for Mary (Lombard). and his co-conspirator Irene sees it (Wynne Gibson), and the irony when she says "you've fallen in love with that kid." since Powell really did fall for Lombard. and they got hitched. Some speed bumps in Trevor and Mary's plan for a wedding. Irene throws wrenches into the works, so things aren't what they were just a short time ago. lessons learned. or are they?? It's good. and kind of exotic, since it takes place in a "foreign country." Directed by Dick Wallace. died quite young of a heart attack. was a founding member fo the Directors Guild. probably his best known works are the Girl, the Guy, and the Gob and Bombardier. and Carole Lombard was tragically killed quite young as well.

About the only thing that this pre-Code drama is significant for is that William Powell and Carole Lombard met on the set of Man Of The World and were married shortly thereafter. They did another film while both were at Paramount, Ladies Man and then were divorced with Powell leaving Paramount for Warner Brothers and a short stint there. Neither of these films is anything close to that third film they did, My Man Godfrey.

Powell along with Wynne Gibson and George Chandler has a nice little racket going in Paris. A former reporter he prints a newspaper if you can call it that of gossip distributed among visiting Americans. But for a consideration he'll make sure the item never gets printed. We have a political blogger in my area who actually does the same thing, so this racket I know well.

But problems ensue when he actually falls for visiting American tourist Carole Lombard who is a niece of Guy Kibbee whom Powell has already put the bite on.

Bill Powell was at a crossroads in his career, during the silent era he mostly played villains, that clipped mustache of his was guarantor of those kind of parts. Here he is a rat, but a rat with a conscience. How that plays out you have to watch the film for.

Powell and Lombard are good, but Wynne Gibson as a woman who knows the score in life gets all the acting kudos in Man Of The World. She should have done a film called Women Of The World.

Man Of The World is not a classic like My Man Godfrey, but Powell and Lombard do have good chemistry. Of course they had better chemistry once they were divorced.

This 1931 film with a screenplay by Herman Mankiewicz, co-writer of Citizen Kane, is credited in the books if not in the film to two directors, one of whom, Edward Goodman, must have been replaced somewhere during the production by Hollywood veteran Richard Wallace who receives sole screen credit. The sluggishness of the film is probably due to Goodman, one of the many successful Broadway theater directors lured to the west coast in the early days of sound pictures. He staged dialogue scenes in a conventional manner as he might have done a play. (Oddly enough, no film editor is listed in the credits, possibly because no one at Paramount wanted their name associated with what must have been perceived then as a talky failure.) Nevertheless, the fiIm is worth watching because it brings together two future stars, William Powell and Carole Lombard, soon to marry. She, a very popular ingenue of the early1930s, does her best as she always did with the thankless role of the rich American girl abroad. He has a few scenes in which he displays his suave charm. It would take a few more years before Hollywood learned how to use sound and how to pace sophisticated stories such as this, but even this failure has its moments. Guy Kibbee is particularly effective. Five years later, Powell and Lombard, three years divorced, would be reunited at Universal to make the comedy classic My Man Godfrey, directed by someone who really knew how to make movies move-the great Gregory LaCava. LaCava insisted on Powell who insisted on Lombard. Wise choice.