La foudre d'en bas

It's the steamy jungle, where Charles Bickford returns from wherever he's been to wife Tallulah Bankhead and best friend Paul Lukas. He's going blind, so he puts on dark glasses and turns into a grouch. This convinces Lukas to end his affair with Miss Bankhead, who takes up with Ralph Forbes.

A well made precode movie should show people behaving on screen as they do in real life when blue stockings aren't watching, and this one certainly qualifies, I suppose, but not in any way that made me think this had any real dramatic purpose. Lukas decides to stop sleeping with his best friend's wife because of pity, and Miss Bankhead decides to have an affair with Ralph Forbes because he's the only White man under three hundred pounds with a full head of hair who isn't her husband.

The wrangling between Eugene Pallette and James Finlayson adds a few moments of humor to this movie, as do some early moving shots by cinematographer Charles Lang. However, given the lack of anyone to root for in this movie, I am not about to cheer when they reluctantly decide to do the right thing because the wrong thing isn't working. That's realistic, I suppose, but not terribly interesting.