Sa femme

You have to judge this film in the context of how it was exhibited back in 1933. This hour-long film was not RKO's attempt at a main exhibit - that would have been something along the lines of that year's "Flying Down to Rio". All of the studios made short little films like this as filler for matinees - much like afternoon TV programming.

The film starts out with a young steel town couple Jim and Anna Stanley (Charles Bickford and Irene Dunne) just before they get married. Anne has big dreams of getting away from the mills, Jim is content to go along as things are. After they marry, Anna takes in boarders and saves up Jim's sizable paychecks so they can get "out of this place", although at the time she doesn't have a plan. Her chance comes when quiet and studious boarder Joe Zarcovia (Eric Linden) comes up with a chemical process for making dye from waste from the steel making process. For some reason, Anna seems to believe that her big hunk of steel-making husband is a genius at business and that he can make a fortune from this formula. Given we only have 58 minutes for our story, of course she is right. Thus the chemist and the Stanleys go into business together and soon are fabulously rich. The Stanleys have everything, including a little son. Unfortunately, in the case of Jim, you can take the man out of steel-town but you can't take the steel-town of the man. Soon he's on a spree that involves heavy drinking, another woman that for some reason insists on marriage rather than just the cushy kept-woman lifestyle she has in New York City, and then the business begins to suffer.

This film is so short that quite a few things don't make sense. For one thing, the message of the picture seems to be that the Stanleys are made for each other regardless of what happens, in spite of the fact that these two seem to be two very different people who want very different things out of life. Anna is supposed to be the epitome of a loyal woman, although considering what she's put through by her husband she seems more like a doormat by the end of the film. Then there is Jim's golden business acumen that seems to come out of nowhere - he has done manual labor his whole life and probably didn't even finish high school.

From a historical standpoint, I found one fact to be just plain ironic. In the beginning of the film, Anna is sitting on the porch of her little "company town" house telling Jim how she didn't want to be just another generation in generations of steel town wives. She talks about how if she and Jim got married all they would have to look forward to is a house supplied by the company and Jim employed by the mill doing the same thing until he retired. Although she seems to think this is all very dull, how much so many people living in these now largely abandoned steel towns today would give to have this kind of "dullness" brought back to their lives - a guarantee of a living wage throughout their adult lives with some degree of loyalty by their employer.

This one is worth your time if it comes your way - just don't expect "Gone With the Wind".

I saw(?) this flick once before on the tube, but the reception on the station was so bad, I had to wait for it to come on again. It was a good wait, but it came around again. Irene Dunne and Charles Bickford were probably the only ones around who could'a pulled this one off. Bickford works at the mill, marries Dunne, works hard for the money, but somehow is just not satisfied with life. He's a lucky stiff though, as Irene Dunne-- as was wont of wives in those days--stuck with him through the thick and the thin of it. What is more incredulous is the rags to riches to rags aspect of this film. Bickford finances a new type of dye developed by the young upstart living in the family boarding house, and becomes a millionaire in the process. Yeah...right !! Still more incredulous--if not audacious--is the court scene where a very nasty divorce takes place, replete with witnesses who have been 'greased' to render perjured testimony...the whole nine yards. Bickford flies too close to the Sun with wings made of wax and...you can fairly well imagine the rest. It could'a worked, if the story had been a bit more developed, and if the film had been somewhat longer. This was essentially a character study which failed to study its characters with any depth.

A group of people lives near the steel mills in a run-down neighborhood. Anna (Irene Dunne) and Jim (Charles Bickford) are in love with each other, but Anna longs for something better from life and Jim is content with the way things are. However, Anna is determined to change things, so she enlists Joe's (Eric Linden) help. Joe is an inventor with an excellent discovery; he makes Jim his manager and the two make a fortune. Unfortunately, Jim is out of town very often, and he gets lonely, so he becomes unfaithful with an exotic blonde (Gwili Andre). Soon Anna wonders if helping Jim was worth it after all.

This film is rather short, and I suspect that some of it is missing, but the story has continuity. It is a rather entertaining pre-code with a bitter courtroom battle at the end of the film. All of the actors are outstanding in their roles.

Irene Dunne was the unquestionable queen of the thirties melodrama ;even when the story is mawkish to a fault, so over the top ,she saves the situation .

A model of a housewife, who helps her husband she cherishes and a young chemist to achieve their American dream,that is to say a dyer workers affair ;very soon (too soon maybe , but the movies were short at the time,being often part of a double-feature),they find themselves thrust to the high society and to a world of luxury.

Miss Dunne,in spite of her fortune,has remained a virtuous lady and she would give it all so as not to be denied the custody of her only child ; the trial would make the movie become thoroughly ridiculous, if it weren't for the actress ' performance, who in her final plea when she's prepared to take all the blame, will win you over; have your box of kleenex besides you.

Steel mill worker's daughter Irene Dunne marries mill hand Charles Bickford. He eventually becomes a rich owner of a dye works and takes on New York mistress Gwili Andre. When Miss Andre insists on marriage and Miss Dunne refuses him a divorce, witnesses lie that she is the one having an affair.

It looks as ifthis movie had been more ambitious at one point; certainly, the marriage reception, which looks very Polish, shows the attention to detail that director J. Walter Ruben liked to take. But its short length -- impelled by Slavko Vorkapich's transitional montages -- keep it too brisk for anyone to get any real flavor out of its bite-sized portions. With Eric Linden, Christian Rub, Leila Bennet, and J. Carrol Naish.