Il giocatore

This may be the only full-length Hollywood film about contract bridge so I suppose you could as well call it the "War and Peace" or the "Abbott and Costello Go to Mars" of contract bridge films. The point is that it has as much connection with how bridge is played as its contemporary "Horsefeathers" has with how football is played. In case you missed it, Harpo Marx scores the winning touchdown in "Horsefeathers" while driving a horse-drawn garbage truck.

However, "Horsefeathers" did make some salient points about universities where football has priority over education and the administration pays professional "students" to play who never see the inside of a classroom. Of course that was back in the 1930s. Today's universities are ...

Never mind. Getting back to bridge, in 1931-32 the game enjoyed its fifteen minutes of fame with "The Bridge Battle of the Century" between Ely Culbertson and Sidney Lenz, with the winner getting to sell more books about his bidding system. The fifteen minutes were somewhat literal in this case as NBC radio broadcast a fifteen-minute summary of each day's action, which was also reported on the front pages of the nation's newspapers.

So just as "Horsefeathers" was more accurate about the milieu in which football was played than about how the game was played, "Grand Slam" has its fun with the idea of crowds gathered around radios and electronic news tickers for the latest results of a bridge match. It's also fairly accurate in depicting the whining, gloating and backbiting endemic among serious bridge players, of which I am one.

Aside from that, it's a lightweight romantic comedy of average quality. Nothing really "pre-code" about it. If you play bridge at all you may get a kick out of the ridiculousness of the few scenes where they're supposedly playing the game. If not, I hope this description of the film's circumstances will increase your enjoyment of it.

In a more leisurely era, lots of people played cards, bridge being one of the big games, and took the game very seriously. I had an old boss who hated cards because her relatives used to play and the next day, no one was speaking to anyone. I can remember my aunt and uncle getting into a big fight over bridge.

Bridge is still a big game, of course, and in this film, "Grand Slam," it's the biggest! Paul Lukas stars as a Russian waiter now in America who finds the game silly and develops his own system, the Stanislavsky system, which becomes all the rage.

At the urging of his ghost writer friend (Frank McHugh), he puts together a book about it, written by McHugh. This was probably inspired by the Russian bridge player Culbertson (I was once a member of the Culbertson Bridge Club) who made a big splash in that era.

Loretta Young plays his admiring girlfriend, who becomes his wife and partner in bridge on the radio (I guess they did everything on the radio), as the Stanislavsky method is supposed to keep couples from fighting. It doesn't.

Young is gorgeous and a bright presence as usual, and Paul Lukas plays it straight, which is perfect for his character. He was a fine dramatic actor but he did whatever the studio gave him, including, of all people, Philo Vance!

The movie has some fun things in it, including a performance by Glenda Farrell, and footage of the world stopping when the two great bridge players meet for their championship game - divers stop in mid-air, ocean waves stop, etc. - quite funny.

I used to stay up all night playing bridge and also whist, and this movie made me miss both of them. Unfortunately nowadays I'm too distracted to keep track of what's been played. That didn't seem to bother Paul Lukas - he just big 7 spades whenever anyone asked him for a bid.

Short, light film, with the beautiful Loretta and her amazing outfits.

From First National Pictures, some big names: Glenda Farrell was "Torchie"...Loretta Young was just in EVERYTHING in old hollywood. Paul Lukas and Loretta Young are Peter and Marcia Stanislavsky, experts at bridge. Roscoe Karns and Frank McHugh are along for laughs. We're nine minutes in, and no plot so far. One of the bridge players keeps doing flips and somersalts while the others keep playing. Peter writes a book on bridge, but when things go wrong, they go wrong in a big way. Peter challenges his main opponent to a bridge tournament, and it's the game of the century. It's all quite a silly show, and you really have to go along for the ride. Seems to be based on the up-and-coming bridge experts that were appearing in all the newspapers around the country. It's all okay. No big deal, but it does have some pretty big stars in here. Interesting for that fact alone.

Grand Slam (1933)

** (out of 4)

An intelligent Russian man (Paul Lukas) living in New York City and working as a waiter sees Bridge as a childish game but when he beats a world famous player, his wife (Loretta Young) talks him into letting a ghost writer (Frank McHugh) write a book about it. Soon the husband and wife are rolling into money and fame but as we know there's always a price to pay with this. It should be noted that GRAND SLAM was made during a time when Bridge was storming the country much like the way poker did this past decade. It should also be noted that I don't know a thing about Bridge and this film doesn't try to explain anything about it so clearly it was meant for people who know the game. Some of my favorite actors appear in this movie but sadly the film isn't all that memorable. I'm willing to say that if you know the game then you'd probably want to add on an additional half star but I'd say the rest will find much of the humor flying over their heads. I think for the most part the cast members do a nice job with Lukas leading the film as the man too smart for the sport but soon finds himself being turned upside down by the fame. Lukas certainly makes you believe he's this genius and there's no denying that his acting has a certain style all his own. McHugh is always nice to see in a movie like this because his fast talking always keeps the speed up. Glenda Farrell, Helen Vinson and Roscoe Karns round out the supporting players. Loretta Young, my favorite actress, isn't given a very good part but she does what she can with it. As usual she's very easy on the eyes and she also adds that charm like only she has. The film is done in an extremely light manor meaning that most of the situations are quite over-the-top and silly. Just check out the scenes with the fighting couples trying to play Bridge but they can't get through an entire game without smacking each other around. The ending has a big game with the principle characters going at it but the suspense that the filmmakers go for never reaches a high level but things have already fallen apart by this time anyways.

This film breeches the fine line between satire and silliness. While a bridge system that has no rules may promote marital harmony, it certainly can't promote winning bridge, so the satire didn't work for me. But there were some items I found enjoyable anyway, especially with the big bridge match between Paul Lukas and Ferdinand Gottschalk near the end of the film. It is treated like very much like a championship boxing match. Not only is the arena for the contest roped off in a square area like a boxing ring, there is a referee hovering between the contestants, and radio broadcaster Roscoe Karns delivers nonstop chatter on the happenings. At one point he even enumerates "One... Two... Three... Four..." as though a bid of four diamonds was a knockdown event. And people were glued to their radios for it all, a common event for championship boxing matches. That spoof worked very well indeed.

Unfortunately, few of the actors provide the comedy needed to sustain the intended satire. Paul Lukas doesn't have much of a flair for comedy and is miscast; lovely Loretta Young and the usual comic Frank McHugh weren't given good enough lines; Glenda Farrell has a nice comic turn as a forgetful blonde at the start of the film, but she practically disappears thereafter. What a waste of talent!