Celle qu'on accuse

They didn't learn did they? The previous year Paramount made the utterly disjointed IF I HAD A MILLION with different directors making separate segments. This time it was different writers writing this film's nine different scenes...without seeing what the others had done! The result is like one of those improv shows where the audience shouts out what should happen next.

This crazy way of creating a script fortunately was at least weaved together by one single scriptwriter but each scene is so different in style it feels like we're watching different people with different personalities every ten minutes. Miraculously overseeing wordsmith Bayard Veiller and director Paul Sloane almost make it work....but not quite. There's one segment for example where Nancy Carroll is being taunted by her internal dialogue - we're hearing her thoughts. Quite interesting but you think you might have accidentally switched channels.

I'd love to know who wrote each part but it doesn't seem to be recorded anywhere. I think the reason for this is so that nobody would know who wrote that last chapter because nobody would want to claim responsibility for that. The first eight chapters kind of work together but that last scene is simply atrocious. Whoever wrote that should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves - they wouldn't want that publicised or they'd never work again. Unless you want to see how bad a mediocre film can get, switch this off after the mock courtroom scene, i promise you it will make more sense.

So, what's this about (as some of the writers clearly wondered)? Nancy Carroll kills a bad man and runs off with Cary Grant to escape the law. Depending on who's writing which bit, she's a strong/weak/ determined/sensitive/ neurotic young woman and he's a dashing sophisticated/naive/cynical/morally upstanding/morally corrupt lawyer. These two are actually both marvellous in almost making their impossible roles like real characters. Seriously, they really are good actors. They do actually make this pretty watchable.....apart from that last scene.

It's interesting to see this takes place on what was euphemistically called "a pleasure cruise." These were popular in the twenties and early thirties when you realise what they were. This was made at the end of 1932 before Prohibition was repealed so the scene when the stewards are knocking on everyone's door saying "The bar is open" was really significant: it meant that the ship had sailed into international waters so the three day bender was about to begin! Although this cruise ship seems very refined and genteel, that's more Paramount than reality. These hugely popular three-day pleasure cruises were more commonly known as Booze Cruses and were essentially floating speakeasies.

Presumably it was on such a cruse that the last scene was written.

When I started watching this movie I didn't expect anything extraordinary of it and it didn't disappoint me one bit. This is a story of a young woman whose previous love interest comes back into town and wants to regain his possession of her although it is too late as she is almost engaged but this man doesn't take "no" for an answer so she chooses the only possible way out of this mess. Nancy Carroll plays her heart out in this picture and shows a great variety of emotions through and through. Young Cary Grant here is absolutely fabulous too and I don't believe I have ever seen him in a similar role (and I had watched about 60 of his movies). The whole movie doesn't belong to any specific genre being more of a mixture between a detective story, drama, romance and a little comedy and it shines in every one of them. People will always ask: how far will you go down the despicable road in the name of love? I'd say - far enough, if you're pure in heart and soul about a person you're going this road for.

For an archivist researching a documentary of early thirties America, 'The Woman Accused' abounds in rich pickings; commencing with the opening film snapshots depicting the ten popular authors who contributed the preposterous plot in the form of a round robin; and including ample footage of the dawn of the Roosevelt administration, still feeling the bruises of the Wall Street Crash, but celebrating the repeal of prohibition. Little nuggets of contemporary information we learn include the fact that in 1933 the engaged tone was known as "the busy signal", and that in those days a murder trial with all the trimmings cost $100,000.

Baby-faced Nancy Carroll is the show here, modelling a variety of figure-hugging backless gowns (and a bathing suit), with a young Cary Grant serving as the arm candy while she is pursued during a pleasure cruise by creepy John Halliday, who devises an absurdly elaborate scheme to see her arrested for killing her loathsome old flame Louis Calhern - who for some unfathomable reason Halliday genuinely seemed to care about. Halliday happily enlists the aid of a hired thug played by an even more loathsome Jack La Rue despite presumably being aware that La Rue has previously killed people on Calhern's behalf. How Grant persuades La Rue to change his testimony has to be seen to believed, like something out of a pre-WWI rather than a Pre-Code movie (I'd love to know which of the authors came up with that gem)! 

As Carroll's devoted maid Martha - literally prepared to shed her own blood on her behalf - the scary Norma Mitchell (who also wrote Broadway farces) makes a striking film debut, but made only two more minor film appearances.

A scrappy she-didn't-mean-to-do-it in which the principals are forced to do their best to act out a somewhat foregone drama—admittedly with a few clever twists here and there. By and large, Carroll, Grant and Halliday manage rather well, and it's certainly not their fault that they tend to out-stay their welcome, allowing the histrionic thunder to be stolen by the support team headed by Jack LaRue (a small part, but you'll never forget him in this one), Louis Calhern (a really nasty piece of work), Norma Mitchell (a stage actress who made only three films, of which this is the first), the effervescent Lona André ("round and round") and Irving Pichel, the smooth-talking D.A. who knows which side of a legal argument will win him the most votes.

Production credits are great, with a special nod for Sloane's silky direction and Struss' marvelously fluid, super-attractive camera-work.

For die-hard Cary Grant fans, this movie is a must-see. A bit hard to track down but well worth the effort.

The Woman Accused in this story is Glenda. What is she accused of? Murder, of course. Why? When an old flame comes back to threaten her newfound happiness with fiancee Jeffrey (Cary), and even threatens to have him killed, Glenda does the only sensible thing and kills him before he gets the chance. She then takes off on a 3-day cruise with Jeffrey, convinced that it will be the only time they'll have before she is caught.

I won't tell you the ending, you'll have to see it for yourself. It's nice to see Cary Grant when he was just starting out, especially at the boyishly good-looking age of 29.

Watch it, you won't be sorry. 8/10