La lune à trois coins

THREE CORNERED MOON is an hard-to-find film but it is a fairly important movie given it's status as one of the first "screwball" comedies. In truth, however, it is as much a drama as a comedy but it does have many of the essential ingredients for the pending film genre with a family of wealthy eccentrics and a sensible if romantic heroine.

Mary Boland is the matriarch for a family of four young adults who still live in the family mansion. None of them work but are suddenly through into "real life" when Boland's misadventures on the stock market in 1929 come to a belated crash four years later for the family and they wind up with a total of $1.65 in the bank. Boland's three sons and daughter Claudette Colbert are forced to work for the first time in their lives.

Family friend, doctor Richard Arlen rents a room at the family estate to help them out financially while Claudette's longtime beau, unpublished novelist Hardie Albright also takes up residence though he still is not supporting himself and living off Colbert's assistance as he has been for years. While the male siblings tough it and work, "artist" Albright can't quite bring himself to working in (gasp) "an office".

Mary Boland is delicious as always in one of her very first screen roles as a dizzy-headed matron. Beautiful young Claudette Colbert, a year away from superstardom, is very much in her element as the young heiress who learns about the real world, complete with remarkably frank sexual harassment from her boss at the shoe factory. Blonde bombshell Joan Marsh is appealing as the longtime girlfriend of Claudette's brother Wallace Ford while Lyda Roberti has an eccentric role as the family's Swedish maid who understands no English. Richard Arlen is pleasant as the prince in an RX coat although he doesn't have nearly the screen time despite his billing as the pampered fiancée Albright or brothers Ford, Tom Brown, and William Bakewell.

THREE CORNERED MOON (named after the corporation that causes the family's fortune to dwindle) is a intriguing film that should be sought out by fans of thirties comedies and it's surprisingly clear-eyed view of how hard life was in the 1930's for many makes it quite unique among romantic films of the era.

It's not 'laugh you sides' off funny, instead it's got a sweet, warm cuddly sort of humour. You wouldn't describe it as 'screwball' or zany or even sophisticated...... some might not even call it a comedy (there aren't actually any laughs in this) but it's got a little bit of magic that somehow makes you smile. It does take a while to get going so stick with it, it gets much better as it goes on.

By 1933 when this was made, they'd figured out how to turn a stage play into a motion picture. This film doesn't try to deny that you're watching a play but, unlike those horrendous efforts in the early talkies years, it works beautifully here. Its scenes, its dialogue, its settings are so obviously what was being shown live on stage at this very time on Broadway but director Elliott Nugent, injects energy and life - not to mention excellent framing and lighting to make this a proper film.

It's about a silly rich family, frittering their money away on trivia who suddenly lose all their money. A silly rich family, frittering their money away on trivia would clearly not win the hearts of an audience in 1933 so what this does is then tries to endear them to us.... and it does. It's a very clever and amusing piece of writing.

It's also faultlessly acted. Although everyone except for Claudette Colbert and Richard Arlen are all nuts, you'll find them all strangely believable. Your heart tells you they're real people ....but your mind might disagree.

In many ways this could be called a 'coming of age' drama. We get to know and grow to like a group of people whom we initially find annoying. We enjoy and almost feel part of the experience of seeing them 'grow up' into responsible adults..... well apart from Richard Arlen who had to have been the dullest romantic lead of all time. It's good fun.

Got this 1933 movie from the library. Colbert is charming as are the rest of her family members. She was not yet a STAR, but her star quality is on display. It's frequently a laugh out loud movie. The story line of a daffy matriarch, Mary Boland, who gets wiped out by the stock market crash of 1929 and her 4 adult children who are still living at home, and what they do to survive the crisis makes for a delightful hour or so. The maid/cook whose English is minimal does not add anything to the comedy, but this is a minor fault. I've never previously seen Richard Arlen, who stands on the sidelines, quietly loving Colbert, and was glad to see how at the ending one obviously wrong suitor was replaced for another.

This movie is indeed astonishing: it starts out like some silly, light comedy about an upper-class Brooklyn family, living, without a care in the world, in a big house with servants and everything, exclusively on money from their stocks. BUT then the Depression reaches even their home: practically overnight, they find themselves flat broke. And, having lived for so long in their 'castle in the skies', they just haven't got any idea about what to do at first.

And then they start waking up: the only way out for the three grown boys and the girl is - to FIND A JOB! And that's what they do, and where they first meet with the difficulties of REAL life; and so, one by one, they wake up to reality - and they finally discover that they LIKE it: from being lazy parasites, they've become useful members of society...

Of course, it's by FAR not as 'educational' a picture as this may sound - anyway, it's a pre-Code movie, and it's got lots of frivolous and funny moments to provide first-class comedy entertainment. The cast is great, from Claudette Colbert as the daughter of the house who's got to choose between a daydreaming writer and a down-to-earth doctor, to Mary Boland as the 'lady of the house' who just doesn't seem to know at all what's happening, to Lyda Roberti, no less - the seductive 'Million Dollar Legs' beauty from the 1931 W.C. Fields movie - , who plays the Polish cook here who never seems to understand a word in English, but stays with the family nonetheless, even without pay; a real proof of her great acting range!

And yet, the message is there, even amidst all the hilarious fun - and it's MOST up-to-date, too: today, there are breadlines and people on the dole everywhere again, and formerly well-to-do families who now have to WORK for a living; and once you've got used to it (and have been as lucky as to FIND a job), you UNDERSTAND. You understand that it feels GOOD to be a useful member of society instead of an idler that lets others feed him... QUITE a message for a 'simple' comedy that's pretty much underestimated today in comparison with many of its other, much more forgettable contemporaries!

If it weren't for the fact that there are no dead bodies buried in the cellar, the set of the house where 90% of the film takes place looks like the Brewster home from Arsenic And Old Lace. Like the Brewsters the Rimplegars are old Brooklyn money.

Head of the clan Mary Boland could easily have been a third Brewster sister. Boland took a patent out on empty headed grand dame roles and what she didn't play Billie Burke and Spring Byington did. Some stock broker sharpie wheedled the family fortune out of her and the 1929 crash did the rest. She and her spoiled children which consist of Claudette Colbert, Wallace Ford, William Bakewell, and Tom Brown all have to make their own way in the world.

As does Hardie Albright who was courting Colbert, he figured on a life of ease, but is reevaluating his situation with Joan Marsh. The only person around with any real sense is Richard Arlen who plays a doctor who likes the family and rents a room with them. They get his rent and free medical service, can't beat that during the Depression years.

Three Cornered Moon ran for only 57 performances on Broadway in 1933 and playing Claudette's role was Ruth Gordon. Such movie cast names as Brian Donlevy, Elisha Cook, Jr., and John Eldredge were all in the Broadway cast. Though the play has a few laughs you don't really get involved with the Rimplegar family as such. Claudette Colbert had much better comedy roles in her future.