Ladies Must Love

Did you ever hear someone tell a joke, only the teller doesn't get the joke? That's the feeling I have with this movie.

June Knight is the subject of this movie about four gold-digging women on the make. June and Neil Hamilton fall in love, and neither is sure what it is; neither do her room mates help, since they expect her to contribute to the general welfare.

Perhaps I expected a different story -- this was a staple Pre-Code and after. Perhaps I was expecting a comedy with some good jokes and gags instead of a straight drama. More likely, though, is that DuPont came from the European cinema, where this sort of movie was about the man being doomed by a hopeless love for the Erda figure -- THE BLUE ANGEL is the example most people know.

The Erda figure would combine with the American vamp to become the femme fatale of film noir and it was way too early for anyone to have figured out how that would work. Dupont tried to make it a story of the failed redemption of Miss Knight, was saddled with a happy ending and the result is thoroughly unsatisfactory.