Merrily We Go to Hell

Everybody here is terrific, and Paramount brought out its A-list stars for the leads, Sylvia Sidney as heiress Joan Prentice and Fredric March as aspiring playwright Jerry Corbett. They are a young couple who marry in spite of the fact that Jerry is an alcoholic who is still stuck on a past heartbreak, stage actress Claire Hempstead.

The plot treads a conventional path full of precode tropes - infidelity, drunkenness, open marriage, the inconvenient pregnancy, and the wealthy family of one spouse distrusting the not so wealthy other spouse and his motives. But yet it is interesting because of several - "Wow did they do that back then?" moments.

For example - Jerry works at a newspaper. When somebody makes an insulting remark about his upcoming wedding, Jerry punches him in the throat. And yet nobody gets fired or arrested. Prohibition is still in force, and everybody drinks everywhere. Nobody even bothers with the discretion of a flask. There is booze at private parties, booze in public places, booze everywhere. When a turkey gets accidentally dropped on the floor, the alternative is... canned chicken??? Ugh. I would think the couple didn't want to have me over for dinner in the first place. Then there is Jerry's hit play up in lights - "When Women Say No - a satirical comedy". Yikes!

Need I mention that the art design and Sylvia Sidney's fashions are gorgeous. With Skeets Gallagher as Jerry's best friend, the great Esther Howard who seems to be in some kind of relationship with Skeets' character and had a marriage end because of her former husband's drinking - she's always memorable, and Cary Grant as one of Joan's extramarital escorts with what seems to be his original nose.

Clever dialogue, fantastic acting, and several great scenes made this film a delight for me, but be forewarned, its main character may have you saying 'grrr', and reduce your enjoyment. Frederic March plays a newspaper reporter / playwright who has a drinking problem, and it's while he's drunk at a party that he meets a charming young lady, played by Sylvia Sidney. The two hit it off and despite the concerns of her rich father (George Irving), get married. Things get complicated when his ex-lover (Adrianne Allen) re-surfaces and he struggles to control his problem.

It's a very strong cast all around, and Sidney in particular turns in a great performance. She ranges from a sweet, naïve, and trusting soul, loving unconditionally, to hurt and confused, to woman whose solution is to give her husband a taste of his own medicine, in a rather shocking development. The scene with her partying with her own young lover (Cary Grant no less) and his friends and quipping "Gentlemen, I give you the holy state of matrimony, modern style: single lives, twin beds and triple bromides in the morning" is sad, empowering, and a little thrilling all at the same time. As they're in a bar that's practically a den of iniquity, it's all clearly pre-code, but there is an intelligence and honesty in this scene, and throughout the movie.

March is also strong as this affable but flawed man, and in early scenes we smile at his partying, at one point yelling "Is there a baritone in the house?" until he finds a barman to fill out a quartet with his friends so that they can break out in song. The warning signs are there in his tardiness and even at his wedding, as he and his best man (Skeets Gallagher) fumble for the ring, which he's forgotten. That scene is one of several that are well directed by Dorothy Arzner, as she cuts to guests making observations and the facial reactions of March and Sidney as they say their vows.

There is a lot of partying and revelry which may put some viewers off, but I found that allowed for some fantastic moments. In one, March asks Sidney to shut the door and hold him back from going to the other woman, and in a strong way she opens it wide and says "I'm no jailer - get out!" In another, as March and Allen 'play-act' a passionate kiss to the merriment of others right in front of her, we feel the shock and humiliation amplified by her brilliant facial reaction.

The title is clearly meant to titillate, but the film has real substance beneath. It's wild, but also realistic, though I didn't care too much for the ending. We see what destructive behavior leads to, and in that I suppose there is a message, but it's delivered without heavy-handed moralizing. The plot is a tad melodramatic, but it's daring and unique in the areas it explores. Well worth checking out, if you're in the mood for pre-code.

Although this story has been done a million times since, Dorothy Arzner's subtle yet brash film still has something different to say which makes this worth watching.

Being not just that rarest of 1930s Hollywood creatures: a woman film maker but also someone in an openly long term same sex relationship I wonder whether she had to try harder than her male contemporaries? She certainly delivers goods with this, imbuing energy and emotion into this very thoughtful drama. It's not just a simple story about alcoholism as it could easily have been considering this is 1932. It is a surprisingly deep examination of a strained and complex relationship which is particularly insightful for the time. Above all though it is a piece of entertainment. Unlike how this subject might be handled today, it doesn't get too bogged down in depressing misery but instead keeps the story moving forward, keeping your eyes glued to the screen with a really fast pace.

It's not just Ms Arzner's energetic yet thought provoking direction which elevates this above a lot of the output from 1932, it's Frederick March. Sylvia Sidney is fine in this (not as good as she was in CITY STREETS, Rouben Mamoulian's masterpiece made a year earlier) but she and the rest of the cast are just not on the same level as Mr March. His characterisation of someone who knows he could have everything yet also someone who knows he is going to destroy not just his own but his wife's life too and someone who knows he can't do anything to stop himself is incredibly natural, authentic and heartbreaking. He achieves this, even when he's being decidedly horrible by being so endearing and likeable. Of all the actors the 30s, he was one who had real depth and demonstrates this fully here making his character both fun and sad, ambitious yet weak and spineless, devoted yet deceitful... a real person.

Despite my gushing praise for this, or maybe because of it, I can't call this a great film. Because it's good I can't just compare it with other films of that era but have to put it in the same category of all pictures from the last hundred years. It's no MIDNIGHT COWBOY or TRAIN SPOTTING thus my fairly low rating... but as films from 1932 go, it's one of the best.

A wonderful and unsettling pre-Code film about an alcoholic playboy (Fredric March) who marries a sweet young thing (Sylvia Sidney) and proceeds to drag her down his path of dissolution. The depiction of their marriage is quite shocking, even by today's standards -- not only do they have an "open" marriage, they openly practice that freedom in front of their friends, suggesting a swinging lifestyle that wouldn't become approachable as subject matter in films for another 30+ years. March and Sidney give fantastic performances, and Dorothy Arzner, one of the rare women directors of the time, takes a matter of fact approach that leaves behind the melodrama and sentimentality that might have blunted this same story's impact in the hands of someone else.

One of the most refreshing aspects of "Merrily We Go to Hell," and one of the most shocking, is that Sidney's character does not suffer nobly while we wait for March to see the error of his ways and come back to her a chastened man. Instead, Sidney starts to behave just like him, coming within a stone's throw of alcoholism herself, and doing her own share of philandering. In that way, the film is even a little progressive in its equal treatment of the genders, even if that equality is the equality of debauchery.

Grade: A

Frederick March and Sylvia Sidney star in "Merrily We Go to Hell," from 1932.

For those of us who only remember Sylvia Sidney as an older character actress -- and usually a pretty mouthy one at that -- seeing her as an ingénue is always a revelation.

Jerry Corbett (March) is a reporter and a drunk, still pining for the woman who broke his heart, Claire (Adrienne Allen). When he meets the lovely Joan Prentice (Sidney) from a wealthy family, the two fall for one another and marry.

Jerry wants to write plays, and he eventually is able to have one produced, early in the marriage. Unfortunately, one of the stars is Claire, and she's perfectly willing to take up where they left off. Jerry starts drinking again. Joan is heartbroken as well as hurt and starts drinking and partying herself. Finally, though, she returns to her father's home.

Nothing too surprising in the plot, but good performances all around. Sidney is pretty and vulnerable, taking a chance on a man her father disapproves of but whom she loves. March shows that Jerry is a weak man who in his heart doesn't believe he deserves the happiness he's had with Joan. Can these two find their way back to one another? Just guess.

Dorothy Arzner had a good sense of pacing, so the film doesn't drag or slow down. Worth seeing for the actors, not necessarily the story.