Inconstância

Ann (Claudette Colbert) and Toby (Norman Foster) are journalists who meet, fall in love and marry. Toby meets Puff (Ginger Rogers) after one of his assignments and decides that she will be the inspiration behind a money-making story. However, when Puff is introduced to Ann, Ann has the same idea about a story with Puff as the main character. Toby throws away his yet unstarted manuscript as Ann is a far more efficient and ambitious story-teller. While she spends her time forging ahead with her career, Toby is happy to just get by. He also meets up with Puff after Ann has told him not see her again. This leads to a separation. Will Ann take him back....?...

It's an early film so the sound quality is poor and it's curious to hear Ginger Rogers speaking in a cutesy, baby-voice. Still, the cast do well and Colbert is good in the lead role. I think that they could have come up with a better title than "Young Man Of Manhattan". The film is OK.

I thoroughly enjoyed this quirky little film that plot-wise isn't much more than the story of the trials and tribulations of a newlywed couple, starring an actually married couple, Claudette Colbert and Norman Foster. What makes it special are the precode themes, the look inside the lives of somewhat normal people in big bustling New York City at the end of the Jazz age but before the Depression has really taken hold - there's not a mention of it here, and finally Ginger Rogers as a knock-off of Helen Kane, something she did only early in her career.

The story revolves around the whirlwind courtship and then marriage of movie columnist Ann Vaughn (Claudette Colbert) and sports columnist Toby McLean (Norman Foster). We don't see much chemistry building between the two - they barely have met when Toby bursts into Ann's hotel room and declares his love, and in the next scene they're married. Ann claims to be a modern sort, says she doesn't mind paying for their apartment, says she thinks that they should feel free to see other people for dinner dates although they're married, and talks the talk of a thoroughly modern woman. However, flapper Puff Randolph (Ginger Rogers) chasing her husband and Ann's discovery of her husband's seeming lack of professional ambition soon has her walking a different kind of walk. It doesn't help that both Ann's and Toby's jobs have them spending long stretches on the road and away from each other.

Charles Ruggles really did a good job here as Toby's friend and fellow sports columnist Shorty Ross. Paramount gave Ruggles more than his share of parts as the annoying perpetual drunk in the early 30's, and in this film he does more than enough drinking, but manages to get some good lines in - usually at the expense of Puff - and also adds to the humor of the film in a significant way. I'd highly recommend this film for fans of precode and films that display the Jazz Age in full flower.

I know I'm second-guessing the author, but this movie is about a couple rather than one young man. In any case, it's a romantic comedy about a couple of newspaper reporters who meet at a boxing match and decide to get married shortly thereafter. Maybe too shortly, because marital problems ensue due to alcohol and money - a bad combination. The principals are Norman Foster and Claudette Colbert who were real-life man and wife at the time. I thought there should be more chemistry between the two as a result, but it was just enough to make the movie work. They get superb help throughout from Charles Ruggles, who was very funny and displayed impeccable comic timing and saved many a scene. Also in the cast, in her first full-length feature film, is Ginger Rogers, with dark hair and an irritating Betty Boop-type voice. She was almost unrecognizable at first glance.

Foster's character is as a sportswriter, and there are some fascinating shots at Yankee Spring training camp in Florida with a look at Babe Ruth and a fleeting glimpse of Lou Gehrig. There is also some footage of the Dempsey-Tunney fight in 1927. On the whole, the film was good - I gave it a rating of six. I sometimes think that an old picture may have several worthy landmarks, mileposts and noteworthy appearances, but age alone does not make a good picture. Some relics are just old artifacts.

This routine seriocomedy flirts with some interesting ideas but doesn't really follow through on them enough to distinguish itself. Colbert and Foster play reporters who marry, then find their careers are a problem--both of them have erratic hours, occasional late nights and out-of-town trips, so each is never there when the other wants them. His character isn't particularly sympathetic by today's standards, because he whines and moans whenever her work takes her away from him, but when the shoe is on the other foot he doesn't grasp the hypocrisy of his complaints one bit. Worse, he takes to drinking too much, isn't grateful when she pays the bills because he can't, and strings along a besotted ninny (Ginger Rogers in her early dark-haired, squeak-voiced phase as a flapper caricature) for idle diversion. Colbert meanwhile is courted by a rich patron/news source, but keeps him at a professional arm's distance.

In the early-talkie manner, there's a rather stilted, interior-bound quality to the action, with dead-air sound (actually downright poor sound in the transfer I saw, but that might just have been the fault of a poor dupe) and very little background music. This movie actually could have used a nightclub song or production number or two to liven it up; it's not quite serious enough to be involving as a drama, and not quite diverting enough to be a comedy. (Rogers does sing what might as well be the anthem for characters like hers, "I've Got 'It' But It Don't Do Me No Good," but just by herself at a living-room piano.) There's brief curiosity value in the appearance by "The Four Sherman Sisters," a quartet of pretty (alleged) siblings, but they don't perform, either; they just sling around a few weak quips and get drunk with Foster and his best pal Charles Ruggles (who's had better material, too).

There isn't anything very notably "pre-Code" about this feature unless you count the alcohol consumption, whose depiction would soon get cleaned up by the Production Code. Nor does the movie exactly capture much of a Manhattan feel, as there's little exterior footage. Foster plays a sports writer, so there's fleeting interest in (very brief) clips of various sporting events that were presumably shot for newsreels rather than specifically for this feature.

The movie's major plus is Colbert, who looks great and treats the goings on with a common- sense unflappability that suggests her heroine is considerably smarter than the callow husband she nonetheless stays loyal to. (Their marital conflicts are predictably resolved by a crisis that drops out of nowhere to re-strengthen their vows.) Co-star Foster would soon leave acting for a long, successful if seldom distinguished career directing mostly B movies and television episodes.

The "Young Man of Manhattan" of the film is a young sports writer, Toby McLean (Norman Foster). He falls in love instantly with Ann Vaughn (Claudette Colbert), a newspaperwoman and they get married. Unfortunately, numerous circumstances, such as a "16 year-old who thinks she's Greta Garbo" (Ginger Rogers), and jealousy threatens to kill their perfect marriage.

Having read and liked the book (A thoroughly forgotten fluffy bestseller of the 20's) of the same title, I was interested in how it would be made into a musical. It's not really a musical though, like the IMDb says; it's a drama with a few songs thrown in here and there. It wasn't a bad movie, actually a lot better than a lot of early talkies. Surprisingly, it's very faithful to the book. Claudette Colbert and the rest of the cast are solid; Ginger Rogers is fun and it was cool to see her so young and still red-headed. She performs an utterly charming song, "I Got It But It Don't Do Me No Good".Norman Foster is fine, but often comes across as whiny and a bit wooden. Still, Young Man of Manhattan is a great one for 1930, and worth seeking out for the stars.