Nurse raises temperatures

Growing up as I did in the age of Roger Corman, a title like Night Nurse suggests one kind of movie. But the Barbara Stanwyck vehicle Night Nurse (1931) is both more and less racy than a Corman product would have been. There is an exploitative angle, for sure--there are two or three scenes of Stanwyck and Joan Blondell standing around in their lingerie--I was going to say for no good reason, but seeing these ladies in their scanties is reason enough in itself.

But this is exactly the kind of nurse movie you would expect from a guy who was about to direct one of the toughest gangster pictures ever, The Public Enemy. It's fast, it's direct. (The dipsomaniac literally says, "I'm a dipsomaniac and proud of it," in case you hadn't worked that out yourself.) Clark Gable glowers and snarls in order to promote his plan to kill two little heirs so he and his girlfriend can get their money. (I know, it doesn't make any sense to me, either.) But the problem is "fixed" by having Stanwyck's gangster boyfriend kill Gable off, which he does offscreen and without any comment or moral resolution. Maybe that's why Gable decided to be a gangster himself later that year in A Free Soul.

There's a lot of slapping and heaving crockery around in this movie and the odd notion that a starving child can be treated by soaking it in milk. I should have thought opening the kid's trap and putting food in it would be effective. And Stanwyck is sort of a good girl in this one, in contrast to Baby Face (see Sept. 12) and The Miracle Woman, albeit a pretty tough good girl. I suppose that's Joan Blondell's influence. Hotcha!

Swapping vices

Of all the perishable items in the refrigerator of film history, the most perishable has to be the Important Drama. We all know that genre films, such as westerns and gangster films, dismissed as throwaway entertainment in their day bring enduring pleasures to the patient student or buff. Action films and comedies are variable--some hold up, some don't. But the ones that do hold up, such as Gunga Din on the action side or Duck Soup on the comedy side, become more indispensable with each passing day.

Important Drama seems to have the quickest "sell by" date. In many cases, that's because the Drama focuses around an Important Issue of Our Time, an issue which may have grown as stale as yesterday's newspaper. The Best Years Of Our Lives, a drama of re-integration of American men into post WWII society was the most highly-honored film of its time; whatever interest it has today is probably limited to historians and antiquarians. Gentlemen's Agreement was the Best Picture winner which taught that you shouldn't discriminate against Jews, because they might really be Gregory Peck. And in our own time, does anybody still get excited about dreary bores like The English Patient, Cold Mountain and Brokeback Mountain? You have to see them at the time because everybody is talking about them, but after a few years have passed, you'd just as soon watch Jackie Chan and have a good time.

A Free Soul (1931) was clearly one of those coffee-table-book-movies in its own day. There is a sort-of intriguing notion at its center, namely, adult daughter promises she will not sleep with her gangster boyfriend if her alcoholic father will stay on the wagon. This is all developed and repeated in an extremely tedious bouts of fustian. Then Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) gets so frustrated about not having sex with Norma Shearer that he strangles Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard). (And I swear, they are giving exactly the same performances as they would eight years later.) Norma Shearer is arrested for this crime, and father-lawyer's defense is that it's not her fault that Rhett strangled Ashley (as if we all hadn't wanted to do that at some time), because he, Lionel Barrymore, was a bad father. Then he has an attack and falls down and the film ends. Subsequently Barrymore was given an Academy Award for running his hand through his thinning hair and falling down unassisted. Later, he developed crippling arthritis and was confined to a wheelchair, which left both hands free to run through his hair.

I wonder what this picture would have been like with Anthony Hopkins and Meryl Streep instead?

Something to look at

Female (1933) starring Ruth Chatterton as a hard-driving, male-subordinate-chasing auto executive is in circulation on TCM and on DVD because of the kind of racy implications found in Pre-Production Code films such as this. And yes, it's fun for its table-turning aspect as she is startled by the first man who insists on his own dignity and integrity and refuses to jump in bed with her because she is the boss. (Her previous boy toys have all been shipped out of town when she was done with them. And how satisfying that must have been--and still must be--for the female audience!)

But there are reasons to watch and enjoy Female. Chatterton has one of those stuffy theatrical English accents (more forgiveable since she was English) but once you get past that, she is a fun strong heroine, with a nice chemistry with her real-life husband, George Brent. Michael Curtiz with Casablanca and Yankee Doodle Dandy far in his future maintains an even brisker pace than his usual brisk pace.

The real unexpected treat of this film is the quality of its visual design, both in Chatterton's costumes which are novel in that early-30s way without making you say "what-were-they-thinking" as is so common for the era. But the production design is seriously wonderfully crazy--Art Deco gone Expressionistic, with everything in enormous proportion yet looking somehow plausible with its swoops, curves, strong verticals and neo-Aztec decoration. Appropriately, the film ends out in the country, as if it were only when she got away from the dippy proto-fascist architecture that Chatterton's character could think clearly about having a real life. OK, the way the conclusion is stated is sexist as appropriate for its time, but it still seems logical and well prepared, given the protagonist's prior restlessness. A very satisfying sixty minutes.

Good for the gander

The Divorcee (1930) is a surprisingly honest examination of the workings and consequences of the double standard in marriage. The story is encrusted with all sorts of late-1920's frou-frou--racy parties, drinking, car accidents--like a pulp writer who had skimmed Fitzgerald and decided to make use of the "juicy stuff." Nonetheless, the story boils down to this: a couple promises to marry and live together honestly, without games, lies, deceptions. The wife, played by Norma Shearer is so modern, she hardly ever wear dresses. and even works outside the home.

Three years pass, hubby (Chester Morris) strays, she suspects, he breaks down and admits it, but tells her, "it meant nothing." He leaves town, greatly relieved. She does not feel relieved, and she returns the favor with hubby's best friend. Forgiveness doesn't come so easy now, and they are divorced. She vows that her husband is the only man to whom her bedroom door is closed! Although this is what is today called a pre-Code film, which allows for such racy goings-on, it is still a Hollywood film, and there is a fragile reunion of the characters at the end.

It's a 1930 film, so the makers were very interesting in having a lot of very smart chat. But today, the most interesting sequence, the staging of her adultery, does not use a word. To non-synchronized sound, we see a bit of hey-hey in a speakeasy, dissolve to couple sitting too close to each other in a cab; dissolve to an exterior view of a bright window with the curtains being drawn; dissolve to Shearer entering her apartment in the same gown accidentally kicking the morning paper, indicating she was out all night. Pictures still tell the story best.

Who was Ann Dvorak?

The chief asset of Three On A Match (1932), which circulates today as an example of the kind of racy storytelling that was possible before the Production Code took firm hold in 1934, is the surprising performance of Ann Dvorak.

I said it 13 years ago, and I reiterate it today--the Internet proves there is at least one person who is obsessed with anything one can think of. No sooner do I ask the question, "Who was Ann Dvorak?" than I find there is a website devoted to her work. Surprised to learn she started off as a hoofer, but maybe I shouldn't be. I think everyone at Warner Bros. started off as a hoofer, including Humphrey Bogart and Sidney Greenstreet!

What a delight to see a film like this, so rapidly-paced that the fade-outs look like lap dissolves and with a hard lesson and no punches pulled--no last-minute redemption or turnaround.