Downstairs

John Gilbert was known primarily as a silent film idol, and his career faded with the talkies, but this film shows it certainly wasn't for lack of talent. Or guts.

Gilbert – who also wrote the story - takes on the role of an irredeemable, if charming manipulator and rouge in this pre-code film. Hired on as the chauffeur in a wealthy house, he's quickly seducing, manipulating, and blackmailing his way through both the servants downstairs, and even the wealthy owners upstairs.

While many of the supporting performers can't keep up with Gilbert, and the plot is pretty heavily melodramatic, it is striking to see the honesty (and forgiveness on a human level) with which this film handles adultery and sexuality. Indeed, this feels more sophisticated than many movies of today in that regard.

It also has a wonderfully uncompromised ending, which again, would probably be stripped from the film in today's test score driven marketplace. Not a great film, but a fun one that's well worth seeing.

The reputation for this part of his career notwithstanding, this is another good John Gilbert talkie, and it's appropriately situated between the decent 'West of Broadway' from 1931, and the great 'Queen Christina' from 1933. Here he plays a manipulative and morally bereft chauffeur who has just been hired on the day when the head butler (Paul Lukas), a loyal and proper servant, is marrying a maid (Virginia Bruce). He wastes no time in brazenly kissing her on the lips in congratulations, but soon we'll see that he can also be much slyer than that. He uses information to his advantage, plays on emotions, and treats people badly when he can get away with it, always speaking in a refined way.

Whatever we think of Gilbert's character, and he certainly is a dastardly rogue, we have to admit that he must be devilishly good in bed. We can imagine him kissing the back of Virginia Bruce's neck when he talks about a mole there where she must like it, and also what he's referring to when he suggests her husband's sideburns must tickle her (gee, where that might happen?). After he successfully seduces her into sleeping with him when her husband's away, it's clear she's seen a whole new world. "There's a kind of way of making love that drives you mad and crazy, so that you don't know what you're doing," she says passionately to her husband in Bruce's best scene, later adding "You think you can make love in the same frozen way you do everything else," and "I thank heaven I found that there is something else. Something that makes you so dizzy you don't know what's happened and you don't care!" Wow! And it's fascinating to consider that Gilbert himself wrote the script, given the torrid affairs in his own love life.

The film being pre-Code allows for this and the other references to sex, including the lady of the house (Olga Baclanova) being taken to a secret tryst in the city, and Gilbert's character using and abusing the middle-aged cook (Bodil Rosing). Part of the seduction of the latter is having her wipe flour off his backside while he lays across a table and smiles at her, which was pretty funny. Just as importantly, being pre-Code allows for us to not have a clue how the film is going to end, and without spoiling it, I'll just say that it's uncompromised and a good one.

There are two dimensions of hierarchy in the film, one being masters and servants, and the other men and women. As to the first, it's a little nauseating when Lukas says as part of a speech revering those upstairs "You know, as servants we don't produce a living. It's done for us," and "Life downstairs is very simple, but up there, the rules are different." However, the film is effective in satirizing how uncaring, vapid, and hypocritical those "upstairs" really are, and we see that they are certainly not on some higher plane of existence.

Unfortunately, it's less successful relative to the women. It's not so much that they all fall under Gilbert's control one way or another, because it's believable that a master manipulator do that, even if some of Bruce's actions are a tinge surprising. Overall the film seems to have a paternalistic attitude, such as when she sighs and says "If I were a man, I'd just want to keep on traveling and traveling," or when Baclanova says "Women sometimes do foolish things, just for lack of understanding." Hats off to Bruce being sexually awakened and henceforth looking for more satisfaction in the sack, but these other bits aren't very liberated.

Overall though, a fine pre-Code vehicle for Gilbert and Bruce, who would marry in real life just four days after the film was released. It's such a shame that his health and personal life were spiraling towards doom, and that his reputation was so unfairly tarnished along the way.

Downstairs, written by star John Gilbert, finds him cast way against type as a George Sanders like cad who is hired by as a chauffeur by Paul Lukas the butler and major domo on Reginald Owen's estate. Gilbert works his considerable charm on all of the women in the estate including Lukas's new bride Virginia Bruce, cook Bodil Rosing, and the mistress of the house herself, Olga Baclanova.

There are many reasons given why John Gilbert's career tanked when sound came in, but on the silent screen he was a hero and great lover. Like Tyrone Power in the next generation who gave a great performance in Nightmare Alley that the public stayed away in droves from, the public wouldn't accept Gilbert as a total amoral louse. I'm also guessing the Austrian setting of the story didn't encourage anyone in Depression America to plunk down their nickel to see Downstairs.

That's a pity because Gilbert gives a powerful performance as the chauffeur. During the film he and Virginia Bruce married and were husband and wife when it was released.

By that time MGM and its head Louis B. Mayer were busy developing the new stars of sound like Clark Gable and Robert Montgomery. There was no place for Gilbert any more there. It would take Greta Garbo's intervention to get him cast the following year in Queen Christina.

The rest of the cast admirably supports Gilbert. The climax is definitely one where Gilbert's hero image is shattered by Paul Lukas. Too bad the public wouldn't buy it.

This is John Gilbert's best talkie--a scathing drama about a man who'll use anyone to get ahead. Aside from being a tight drama, the film is important as the best of Gilbert's dozen or so talkies and also because it proves for anyone who has seen it, that the advent of talkies did not kill his film career because his voice was effeminate. Hollywood legend, never very accurate, has it that Gilbert's blazing film carrer was doused by his first talkie (His Romantic Night). Not true. The rude technology may have hurt his performance--as it did with many crossover stars--but his voice was not the problem. In Downstairs, Gilbert took a big chance in playing a non-romantic part, a part that shows off his acting chops. While the cook pleads with him not to throw her over, Gilbert casually picks his nose and wipes it on his pants--astounding for 1932. The film did not save John Gilbert's career, but it stands as proof of his talent. What a shame other forces were at work to ruin him. (drednm)

John Gilbert was the highest paid actor in Hollywood in 1929, the year silent films breathed their last. By 1933 he was through with movies and by 1935 he was dead. Lots of people believe bad things about him, mainly that he had a high squeaky voice or that he was a ham who couldn't adjust to talkies. In "Downstairs" he proves that both of these myths are false. The film is a splendid little drama--"little" being the only kind of movie MGM would cast him in by then--about a scheming chauffeur who blackmails or steals from practically everybody at the mansion he works at. Paul Lukas, years from stardom, plays the head butler, and Virginia Bruce (who married Gilbert in real life) plays the butler's new bride. The script and story are flawless, and Gilbert, playing very much against type, shines as the amoral chauffeur. "Downstairs" is a sophisticated drama that could not have been made a few years later after the censors cracked down on Hollywood, but more importantly, it is a testament to John Gilbert, who might have had a successful career in the talkies if he had been given a chance.