Vivre sa vie

There are three major things wrong with this movie: Joan Crawford, playing a role that should have gone to Carole Lombard; and the script, which they must have been writing as they were shooting, and the direction -- you can almost pinpoint the moments when the director must have been screaming "More energy, I want more energy up there!" Joan and Brian Aherne meet cute at an archaelogical dig in Greece, then fall in love (Joan has to lie about her wealthy background), part, Brian travels from Greece to marry her, and then they go back and forth and back and forth -- we love each other, we don't love each other, we're getting married, we're not getting married. It must have been hard on the screenwriters to keep having to come up with endless boring and unplausible reasons for keeping them apart. Obviously, I didn't enjoy this, but I must say you haven't lived until you've watched the scene here where Joan verbally attacks her wedding gown -- honest, like two pages of dialogue -- before ripping it to shreds.

Talented writer (and later director) Joe Mankiewicz wrote a decent early screwball comedy script with I LIVE MY LIFE, one that in some ways anticipated the much better MY MAN GODFREY of a year later. It meanders a bit, is repetitious and ultimately tedious, but with Clark Gable and Myrna Loy it might have worked.

Joan Crawford didn't have the light touch or resourcefulness needed to make the contrived comedy reversals of this story come to life. The result is that a movie whose script suggests a frothy romp becomes a very strained love story with failed comic overtones. Brian Aherne is tall, handsome, gallant and completely believable as an academic trying to learn how to unwind, rather like Cary Grant in BRINGING UP BABY three years later. Unlike Grant, he hadn't the gifts of comic timing or of charm -- there is something cranky and grudging about him, and maybe this kept him from becoming a star despite his good looks.

But this was a Joan Crawford vehicle, it was tailored for her, and it was she who was expected to carry it. As usual, the broad, strong face is as striking as a Modigliani sculpture but less expressive. Adrian, the great MGM designer so closely associated with her, is largely responsible for providing the illusion of presence and magnetism which Crawford didn't actually have. In this picture he gives her one of her most extreme and frankly ludicrous costumes, and in upstaging her, it exposes the essential flaw in their professional relationship.

Adrian had wit as a designer and his costumes here are all amusing comments on Crawford's character, but they expose rather than enhance her. The worst example seems meant to be a literal suit of armor since Crawford wears it in a scene in which her defensive, self-conscious character realizes she loves Aherne but must give him up in order to save her father from financial reversals. It's rendered in what looks like silver lame, with gigantic panels that fit over each shoulder, open on the sides but completely obscuring her arms from the front -- an armless Athena ready for battle. Less awful but still attention-getting are a series of black suits and dresses which are cluttered with enormous starched white collars and bibs or exploding swags of stiff material suggesting stylized nun's habits.

In contrast, two simple costumes are far less theatrical but more effective in letting us examine Crawford: A backless, halter neck sailor suit is playful and sexy when she wears it without a bra in her first scene. And much later a starkly elegant white satin dressing gown proves to be more beautiful and glamorous than the two wedding gowns she also wears, the second of which uses tiers of orange blossoms to cover up damage her spoiled heiress has done to it. The two pared-down costumes at least allow us to observe the actress and woman for ourselves to decide what we think of her. Little was required of Crawford in this period and she gave very little in return. And we have to wonder if Adrian tried to hide this or was in fact the cause of it: Why should Crawford have learned to feel and act when her collars and sleeves upstaged her in every scene anyway?

Crawford is very funny in this follow up to the trend started by It Happened One Night. Brian Aherne is miscast, but the are a good looking couple and there is some chemistry there, although not as much as there would be with Tracy or Gable. None-the-less, Crawford added a nice comedy to her dossier and it wears well even today.

Brian Aherne and Joan Crawford declare "I Live My Life" in this 1935 comedy. No one can butcher a comedy like Joan Crawford. After I saw "Susan and God," I found out that it was supposed to be a comedy. The problem with Crawford is that she was such a hard worker, and when you work hard at comedy, it doesn't come off. She was much more successful in drama. Brian Aherne, an excellent actor who was better than most of his roles, just didn't have a grasp of comedic style.

Crawford plays Kay, an heiress in Greece who meets a handsome archaeologist (Aherne). He falls for her, but she hasn't given him her real name and has told him she's a secretary. When he gets to New York, he can't find her. When he does, he finds out she's engaged to someone else.

This could have been much better with Gable and Lombard, or Gable and Myrna Loy. It is a spirited comedy with a terrific supporting cast that includes Aline MacMahon, Arthur Treacher, Eric Blore, and Jessie Ralph. Jessie Ralph, as Kay's grandmother, is a scream.

This is somewhat fun, but it could have been so much more.

TCM, the old movies channel tends to give us the best of the old school movie stars but at times I think they show too much of them in dispensation of the movies of lesser known stars who have better movies, idest this Joan Crawford movie which is only being shown because it's a Joan Crawford movie. Trash is trash no matter the star. Crawford is a rich spoiled lass. Brian Aherne has one of those archaelogical jobs with a name nobody can remember or pronounce without sounding either ulta-intelligent or extremely foolish. Their love will not work because of the class differences. Will it? Have you heard of schizrophenic movie?, that movie that cannot decide what it wants to be, a comedy or a drama and as a joan of all movies, it tries many but masters none. It's funny for 10 minutes, then suddenly comedic with people changing attitudes and tone unconvincingly, especially at the matriarch's house. Ending seems rushed and even Joan falls short in this one. Obviously an A-production with the usually sharp craftsman Woody Van Dyke behind the camera, the whole buffoonery is a poor disappointment.