The Crash

Crash, The (1932)

** (out of 4)

Decent if nothing overly special melodrama from First National has Ruth Chatterton playing a woman who seduces men so that she can give their stock tips to her husband (George Brent) who then makes them money. When the stock market crashes in 1929, the two lose everything so the wife decides to try out other men who might keep her away from poverty. This drama features way too much sugar but there are a few good performances that make it worth watching. I think the film, running a brief 58-minutes, does a good job at telling a simple moral story but I think the overall message is just a tad bit too simple and in the end you can't help but think you're being fed a bunch of sugar without any real meat to back up anything you're watching or being told to believe. The pre-code elements of the husband pretty much pimping his wife out for tips is an interesting angle and there's some more darker tones that help keep this film going. The main reason to watch this film is for the performance of Chatterton who really gives it her all and delivers a full and deep character. Whenever Chatterton talks about her fears of being poor, you can't help but feel for her and understand why she is so scared of going back into the streets. Brent is also good as her husband and Paul Cavanagh offers up good support. Fans of Chatterton will certainly want to give this one a try but the final film will leave most scratching their heads as to why it was even made. At just 58-minutes, the thing is incredibly short and one will wonder why it didn't contain more.

A very high rating from me because of the baldness with which husband pimps wife and wife accepts same. Nobody does FEMALE better than Ruth Chatterton (with that of course the name of probably her most famous flick, and a must-see), and here she does it as tour-de-force - even making me doublecheck her age - she is passed off as "young" in the movie while at least 39, but she does the femme so well, I did need to review. Anway, the amoral way in which Ruth and George attack the early scenes is truly delicious. Sure, the movie finally adheres to convention, but not until after 45 minutes of such elegant pouting and flirting. And Ruth is never an object, always the center of her universe, casually creating and destroying per the whim of the moment. She has never let me down - I wonder if her later alcoholism was a way for her to hold onto just how good and memorable she is? George Brent (blank slate Irish immigrant that he was)is a good foil to her in this tailor-made role.

This is pre-Code (the Maid's behind is prominently smacked) and pre-Welles/Hitchcock. So this can be described as 'reaching' more than authentically cinematic - but that's its central value: the striving, of the characters within the story, and the striving of Dieterle to tell the story visually.

At under one hour, there's no time for sentiment - there's barely time to fit in the subplot about rescuing the fiancée with the stolen jewelry - so at all levels it has to stay emotionally tough and rigid, and fully class conscious, which must have grated audiences at a time when so many were forcibly 'equalized' by mass unemployment. What grates today, in our PC world, is the servile treatment of the underclasses, and when spoiled people are ruined, they actually go to work(!) instead of spending half of the movie whining. Today, this would be about catharsis and self-pity...there was no room for such indulgences back then.

Many themes from this have been retranslated to such modern examples as "Wall Street". This is the pre-Code, pre-Brando, pre-New Cinema version of a chick flick, where women are treated as expensive objects, but women reciprocate by trading in wealthy men like so many bellwether stocks.

THE CRASH is a wonderful short film from start to finish. It is directed by William Dieterle in a very sophisticated style. The Warner Archive Collection DVD-R is an excellent transfer.

"Ruth Chatterton has given the finest portrayal of her career" says George Brent in the trailer. I agree and consider this film as her best. She was miscast in some of her films, in ''Lilly Turner" for instance, but the character of Linda Gault fits her like a glove. Chatterton does not act in this film, she IS her character. Her perfect acting is a knock-out in every scene. I never saw her any better.

Linda Gault is a spoiled rich woman, bored with life. When she is telling a lie to her husband she gets in big trouble. Eventually it will change her life completely.

This is one of four movies that Ruth Chatterton and her husband George Brent made together at Warner Brothers, and I'd have to say that in spite of the fact that none of the main characters had remotely admirable qualities I enjoyed the film. Plus I make allowances that its roughly one hour running time is not long enough for much character development.

Here George Brent and Ruth Chatterton play wealthy couple Geoffrey and Linda Gault. Geoffrey Gault is hardly John Galt, for if he shrugged all that would be disturbed is some air. Geoffrey makes his money by allowing his lovely wife to seduce knowledgeable men of finance and extract stock tips from them. He then plays the market with these tips and accumulates more and more wealth. However, showing that there's maybe a spark of character left in him, he is still jealous. As there are signs that there are problems in the market building up to the stock market crash, Geoffrey instructs Linda to get one final tip from a man she's recently broken off her relationship with - wealthy industrialist John Fair. Fair tells Linda he doesn't give something for nothing, since he is still somewhat bitter about their break up. When Geoffrey questions Linda later in the evening and she says she got nothing out of Fair, Geoffrey says, somewhat self-satisfied, that her charms had to slip some day. Linda's pride is hurt by this, and she lies saying that Fair did tell her that the tremors in the market mean nothing and that everything will continue to go up. Not only does Geoffrey invest based on this fabrication, so does Linda's maid and all of her other servants. The results are ... well, I'll let you watch and see how this all plays out. Let me just say it all came across as rather lacking in a firm resolution.

It's always a pleasure to see Ruth Chatterton in anything, as she makes even a shallow woman like Linda Gault seem complex, and in some ways she really is. I'd recommend this one to anybody who likes the early talking Warner Brothers films or precode films, although this film is more stark commentary on the reversal of fortunes of the early 30's than it is precode.