Open All Night

Watched "Open All Night" (1924) with Viola Dana, Jetta Goudal, Adolphe Menjou, Raymond Griffith, Maurice 'Lefty' Flynn, Gale Henry, and others. You know, when it opens with the intertitle that reads something like "PARIS: city of love and bad marriages" (not exact, but you get the drift), that you're in for a story of something spoiling, if not going rotten. Well, Viola Dana is bored with her marriage to Adolphe Menjou because she thinks he's too soft (!), not tough enough with her, and that he respects her too much (!). He, on the other hand, is no angel. He loves his wife, yes, but... On a night when they plan to go out Dana finally says, "NO!", closes the door to her boudoir, and huffs... Menjou, with his typical nonchalance, goes out the door. Enter Gale Henry - with her new found, ah, companion - drunken Raymond Griffith (he's supposed to be funny) - who are supposed to go out with Dana and Menjou. Henry convinces Dana to go out, and they'll all go to the Parisian Velodrome where the last day of the six day bicycle race is going on. Here, Maurice 'Lefty' Flynn, a muscular man's man's man's man is winning all the heats. "He always wins". Jetta Goudal is in love with him. Meanwhile, Adolphe Menjou has already run into her somewhere else and through oily male maneuvering takes her to the Velodrome. By the night's end and the morning's passing and the race's end and a whole lot of goings on all is supposedly resolved.

Let me just say - if this were shown at a feminist's rally, the person showing the film would be strung up and hanged! It is so un-PC by today's standards that it needs to be seen to be believed. The end, for example, where Menjou has bruised the arm of Dana, and where he tries to assuage the incident by kissing the bruise, but she won't allow it because it's a badge of honor (!) - well, that's just a taste of some of the mentality of the picture. This was directed by Paul Bern, the same director who eventually married Jean Harlow, but under some still mysterious circumstances committed suicide just into the marriage.

Interesting to see another Viola Dana vehicle, though she's not as active in the film as beautiful Jetta Goudal. Menjou and 'Lefty' Flynn get most of the screen time - which wastes the time of Raymond Griffith - but that doesn't leave enough time to Dana, who only gets to react to the intertitles and Menjou. Maybe two and a half stars out of four, but beware from the beginning that the marriage code presented here is not only dated in a number of respects, but is male oriented to the point of feminist rebellion. Margaret woke up half way through this and wondered why I was watching it... I could feel her eyebrows go up even though I wasn't watching her... Thank goodness she was tired enough to fall back to sleep... I finished the film. Even my eyebrows were raised. Innocent, well, maybe the film was, but I'm not sure that's a proper word for this. Gentle, no. By today's standards incredibly dated. I wanted to like it, but I don't really think I did. It lacked the Lubitsch touch, a certain polish. Rather, it tripped over the furniture and bruised itself.

I had no idea in the 1990s when I held a three-year film option on Paul Morand's collection of stories, OPEN ALL NIGHT, that there had been a silent film made of one of them by Paramount in 1924! Isabelle Gallimard did not tell me, and probably she did not know either. I came across the existence of this film by chance recently, when its availability on DVD came to my notice. It is listed on IMDb as ONE PARISIAN NIGHT, but its original title in the USA was the same as the book from which it comes, OPEN ALL NIGHT. It was directed by Paul Bern (1889-1932), who married Jean Harlow in 1932 but committed suicide shortly thereafter (a mysterious incident, never properly explained). Although the quality of the print is good, the film itself is not enjoyable or impressive, though it has some interest and some good points. This film is based upon only one of the stories in the book, and by no means the most interesting one. It is the story of the wife who flirts with the cyclist at the velodrome. None of the characters as portrayed elicits the slightest sympathy in the viewer, and the mannered poseur of a husband as played by Adolphe Menjou, obviously believing himself to be ever so sophisticated, is as cold as ice and deeply repellent. There is nothing whatever amusing about this film, and it is deeply depressing. There is an interesting establishing shot near the beginning, purchased from some Paris supplier who filmed the real thing, of the Rotonde in Montparnasse. I had never seen the 1920s Rotonde in moving film before, with people and cars going by. The Rotonde is still there, of course, though somewhat changed. In this film, the glowing lights of upstairs show just how important that part of the establishment was for dining in the 1920s, as was the case also at the Coupole after it was opened in 1927 (after this film was made) The Paris Velodrome as shown here is a mock-up in a Hollywood studio with a much-reduced cycle track and only a few cyclists taking part in an important race, but it manages to be more or less accurate otherwise. The real Paris Velodrome was, as many will know, later to be the depositing place for thousands of Jews rounded up by the Vichy police for transport to Germany and extermination in the death camps. So the Velodrome is not a happy thought today. But in the 1920s, sporting enthusiasts like Ernest Hemingway were there as often as they could be. It was tremendously fashionable at that time to go to the indoor cycling races, and it was one of the trendy things to do in an age before televised sport. As for the society swagger, those men in silk top hats and white tie are really too, too much. Thank God one missed all that. And the simpering, spoilt society women were even more appalling back then. Some of the moving shots of the cyclists racing are exciting, and the film picks up a bit towards the end, having been tedious and boring for the first half. However, it is worth a miss.

The plot of this farce concerns Adolphe Menjou and Viola Dana's boring marriage. She wants a man who is rough with her and orders her around. He feels a woman will not respect a man who treats her badly. She becomes infatuated with a muscular bicycle contestant, while Menjou is attracted to the bicyclist's girlfriend (Jetta Goudal).

While the plot is nothing new, this film is highlighted by the supporting performance of Raymond Griffith as Igor. Igor is supposedly the "next" Rudolph Valentino, although he shows no sex appeal at all because he is drunk the entire movie. Although Griffith only has a few minutes of screen time, his scenes are genuinely funny and they make this film worth watching.