The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)

I was first drawn to The Barretts of Wimpole Street because the stage version starring Katharine Cornell and Brian Aherne (pictured at left) is on my ever-growing list of time machine plays, that if I ever get access to a TARDIS, I'll be sure to go back and watch. Written in 1930 by Rudolpf Besier, the original Broadway production ran for more than 300 performances at the Empire theater. That run was followed by a highly successful cross-country tour and then a world tour that took Aherne to far-flung places like the Australian outback about which he writes charmingly in his autobiography A Proper Job. I was intrigued by the story although, the film version stars Norma Shearer and Fredric March, (as if they were a pair to sneeze at!)

It's not often that a movie is made about one writer let alone two. Writing usually just isn't exciting enough as an activity to be the subject of a movie. And writer's lives, while they have their moments of drama, tend to be about observation more than experience. Fictional writers of the ilk of Carrie Bradshaw abound, but it's really pretty rare that a real life author is the subject of a film. The most we usually get on film is an actor portraying Sommerset Maughm appearing as a rye character in an adaptation of one his books. Occasionally a biopic about a writer, like say Becoming Jane about Jane Austen, will make it into the mainstream, but it is unusual if it is faithful to reality in any way. But Barretts is truly rare in that it focuses on the lives of two writers and it is not wildly off the mark. The story revolves around Barrett's father who was steadfastly opposed to any marriage by any of his children and the hiding in plain site courtship that she carried on with admirer and fellow-poet Robert Browning. It is based loosely on the mass of correspondence between the two famous poets from 1945 until their elopement in 1946. Much of the dialog in the film is quoted from or paraphrased from the letters. This makes for a slightly artificial and odd way of communicating, since in real life, people don't speak as they would write. The work succeeded despite this stagey quality and despite the fact that the problems of two rich neurotic thirty year old virgins couldn't have had much appeal to people facing life in America in the early 1930s.

Or could it?

I've been trying to work out what it was in the play that resonated with audiences in the grip of the Depression. At first I thought that it was just escapist fantasy, yearning for a time and place where money problems seems simply to not exist. In reality of course, money was an issue. Robert Browning was a poor poet who managed on a very small income from his father. If Elizabeth Barrett Browning had not had her own small income, free from the machinations of her father, there would be no possible elopement and no drama. The couple had a mutual friend the painter, Robert Haydon, who committed suicide as a result of a huge financial loss. But the movie simplifies even further what the play barely mentions.

Escapism alone can not explain the popularity of the play and film. The play focuses instead on the father's opposition to marriage, implying rather strongly that he was a rapist, molester and that incestous feelings were behind his strange and vehement opposition to his daughters marrying. In real life Edward Mouton Barrett was opposed to all of his 12 children marrying and disinherited the boys and girls who disobeyed him. In some of Elizabeth's letters there are hints of physical abuse, but no explicit examples are ever named. The application of modern psychology to Mr. Barrett's strange attitudes (Elizabeth describes them as "eccentricity and something more") was probably appealing to 1930s audiences as well as the lurid subject matter. Most appealing of all, was probably the theme of breaking away from one's extended family and focusing on creating a new, separate "nuclear" family. Demographically many Americans were in this boat. The Depression caused many families to stay together perhaps longer than the young people could wish as marriages were happening later, etc. My own grandparents were forced to move back in with my great-grand parents, with not always harmonious results.

As for the production of the film, it was first promised to Marion Davies. After a battle royale with Norma Shearer, the role was reassigned and the kerflufle that followed led to Davies, and the substantial bank roll behind William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan pictures, leaving MGM. As a result Hearst papers refused to review the film, which probably hurt its box office a bit. Not wanting anything to do with this hornet's nest of studio politics, Brian Aherne ran a mile from the part. The role fell to a somewhat unhappy Fredric March who complained that director, Sydney Franklin was so focused on Shearer that he allowed him to get away with the worst excesses of hamish acting. Not only does this seem like unfair criticism (it's the director's fault that you can't control your hamish instincts?) it is just plain wrong. March is actually quite wonderful and perfectly suited to the part. In real life, Robert Browning was an intense dude. This was a man who had major life crisis in his twenties because he read a poem by Percy B. Shelley. He wildly declared his love for Elizabeth Barrett Browning in his first letter to her and then spent the next 16 months trying to prove his feelings were not mere fanboy gushing. He could be overly enthusiastic (friends described him as loud-mouthed), impetuous and even unreasonably optimistic. Had he not been all these things as well as a cracking great poet he never would have gotten Elizabeth Barrett Browning to marry him.

Norma Shearer is equally well-suited, though it is not what we typically think of as a Shearer material. I think this film is often neglected by Shearer fans, because it was technically post-code. While some of the references to incest were toned down from the play, these changes were actually very minor and the film stands as one of her edgiest and most powerful performances. While Norma is emotionally restrained and subtle, she really sells the idea that is a woman battling for her life and independence, standing up to a tyrannical, even dangerous father. In one of her letters to Robert Browning, Elizabeth declares that her father would rather see her dead on his doorstep than married. I don't know how anyone could watch the last ten minutes of the film and not hum "I am woman here me roar" to themselves while Norma, with the help of her maid, Wilson (Una O'Connor) gains the strength to pick up and leave her oppressive environment for the man she loves. Franklin gives her a gorgeous close-up as she surveys for a final time the room where she's spent most of her adult life. It's powerful stuff and it hasn't been diluted a bit by the intervening seven decades since it was shot.

The unacknowledged star of the show is Charles Laughton who is at his scary best as the bullying, manipulative father. "They can't censor the twinkle in my eye" he famously groused when producers had to tone down some of his more overtly sexual moments. In a scene where his niece sits in his lap and fondles his whiskers, the stage directions for the play insist that he slaps her roughly on the thigh while she squeals in delight. This is really the only purge I can find in his scenes, which survive almost verbatim from the stage version of the script. Laughton is aided by the wonderful Maureen O'Sullivan who plays Elizabeth's lively sister Henrietta. O'Sullivan gets a great scene at the end where she relishes delivering Elizabeth's good-bye letter to their father and one very funny scene early on between she and a tongue-tied suitor whom she continually admonishes not to speak before he can get a word out to her. I'm pretty sure Woody Allen ripped off the whole concept for a similar scene in Bullets over Broadway. This sparkling bit of nonsense was invented by screenwriter Ernest Vajda for the film as comic relief.

I've spent most of the intervening ten days since I first watched the film reading everything I could get my hands on about the two poets who are subject of the film, including a volume of their letters, the script of the play, Barrett-Browning's volume of poetry written during their courtship, Sonnetts from the Portugese, and a feminist biography of her life, which dismisses the film as reducing her to a cheerful invalid who has to be rescued by a man. The problem with this assessment is the same one that haunts Barrets of Wimpole Street. When you add a layer of contemporary expectations to something that happened in the past you are really just twisting it to your own ends. We may never really understand the tortured relationship between Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her father. It is probably certain that it was not as dysfunctional as what appeared on stage or screen in the 1930s. I am equally certain that this film was not intended to be a weak-kneed reinforcement of Barrett-Browning as a cheerful invalid. Of all the films in which I've seen Shearer since starting this blog, I liked The Barretts of Wimpole Street the best. I think it deserves a second look from fans as it may be the height of her achievement as a barrier- breaker for the way in which women were depicted in film.

Ten Favorite Pre-Code Love Scenes

Well it's the end of a decade folks so all the movie blogs are bound to have a lot of lists. Since I have barely watched ten movies from this decade (if I didn't exaggerate, I would die) I will focus on stuff I'm actually watching. You know: old movies. So here's my Ten Favorite Pre-Code Love Scenes to keep you heated up on this cold winter's day.


10)Gary Cooper and Cary Grant in Uniform. And if that's not enough...submarines! Gary Cooper has many great pre-code love scenes: The scene at the end of One Sunday Afternoon where he in a matter of a few minutes saves his marriage and wins the audience's grudging affection. Not to mention scenes in Farewell to Arms where he makes you forget momentarily that the script has left Hemingway behind pages ago. But none of these scenes are really all that different from Gary Cooper love scenes after the code. A big exception is to be found in the oddball melodrama Devil and the Deep co-starring Tellulah Bankhead, Charles Laughton and a little known (at the time) actor named Cary Grant. Cooper picks Bankhead up, literally, he saves her from keeling over in the midst of a festival, and spends the night with her in an oasis. The scene lasts ten or eleven minutes following the couple as they move through crowded streets, back-alley bazaars and eventually the moonlit dessert. At one point she's trying to get rid of him and she shakes his hand to say goodbye, he keeps it and continues talking to her in a low monotone of hypnotic seduction while stroking the inside of her wrist with his forefinger. It's a completely cheeky thing which would get a mere mortal slapped, if he didn't look like Gary Cooper. Bankhead plays into it beautifully, protesting half-heartedly until it's too late. The rest of the film is campy good fun that ends in a submarine crash in which everyone gets wet (except Cary Grant, who sadly left the movie before this point, D'oh!)

9) Cheap and Vulgar. Warren William and Joan Blondell in The Goldiggers of 1933. Joan Blondell calls herself "Cheap and vulgar Carol" and Warren William replies "I love you, whatever your name is." It's really pretty awesome. See it here. More on Golddigers here.

8)Put em round me. Norma Shearer and Clark Gable in a Free Soul. This whole scene is the essence of pre-code from the costumes (Norma Shearer's loose, low cut dressing gown worn without underwear would never be permitted a few years later) to the context (the scene takes place as the couple are spending the night in Ace's hideaway.) Gable and Shearer argue. He wants to marry and she doesn't. She ends the dialog and the argument with a direct command for some lovin. "Come on. Put 'em round me." A contemporary review of the film found this couple preposterous, but now they are almost cliche--the gangster bad boy and the wild, society girl. The whole scene is linked here, and starts at about the three minute mark. More on A Free Soul can be found here.

7)The pussyfooting. Barbara Stanwyck and James Rennie discuss the ups and downs of shacking up together in Illicit. "I can't stand all this pussy-footing around," he declares to which she replies, "Don't say you don't like the pussy-footing." Stanwyck is adorable and hilarious and Rennie has stuck with me, even though this is the only movie I've ever seen him in. The combination of romance, comedy and a head-strong heroine mixed in this scene would be repeated frequently in Stanwyck's best pictures. Highlights are linked here and begins around the 55 second mark. More about Illicit can be found here.

6) Jungle love. Four Frightened People. Herbert Marshall and Claudette Colbert lose their clothes and, eventually, their inhibitions as they lose their way in the jungle. After epic quantities of flirtation, he touches her shoulder. She tells him that it feels so good when he touches her and he replies "everything I've touched for weeks now has seemed to be you." Squeeeeee! Later in the film the lovers, exchange wedding vows while tied back to back to a piece of bamboo. Marshall's character has a wife back home which adds an extra level of pre-code angst to the proceedings. More about Four Frightened People here.

5) I'm gonna let you watch me shave. In Bed of Roses (1933), Joel McCrea plays a gritty ship's captain who falls for a prostitute (Constance Bennet). The whole thing is a bit of Red Dust rip off in that respect, but it's a fun movie, with well-written dialogue and enormous chemistry between the leads in their third pairing on film. In one scene McCrea's character shaves in front of Bennett and things get pretty steamy. I happened upon this movie in the last five minutes and I was completely mesmerized by McCrea and Bennett, so much so that I made a point to seek out the whole film and others with these two actors. McCrea is ridiculously handsome in this movie. I'd been used to seeing his films from the early Forties, where he was pretty, but wow. OK, just... wow. Fan of Palm Beach Story? Watch one of his pre-code comedies with Bennett and prepare to have your mind blown.

4) They are still talking about typewriters, right? Leave it to Lubitsch to make even an old typewriter sexy. In Design for Living Frederich March and Glinda admit there feelings for one another and then move on to more important matters--talking about Tommy's old typewriter. Him: "Ya didn't keep it oiled! The keys are rusty." Her, "It still rings." He moves really close to her and she whispers, "it still rings." See the whole scene here starting at around minute 54.

3)Garbo and the furniture In Queen Christina Garbo and her real-life lover John Gilbert act out the doomed love affair between a queen dressed as a man and her Spanish lover, Antononio. They spend three days together snow bound in an inn. In one memorable scene Garbo moves around the room touching the furniture and draperies with a sensual delight. She explains to Anotonio "in the future in my memory I shall live a great deal in this room." See the whole scene here.

2) What about breakfast? In The Smiling Lieutenant, Claudette Colbert and Maurice Chevalier discuss when they will next see each other. She suggests dinner, but he says no that's too long to wait he is hungry now. Then she suggests tea and he says, knowingly, what about breakfast? As she's leaving, they kiss and the screen fades to black. In the next scene she is happily cooking him breakfast. And that, ladies and gentleman is why they call it the Lubitsch touch! See the whole thing here, from the five minute mark.

1)UNF. If you don't know what UNF is try looking it up and you might just find a scene from Red Dust there as an explanation. The rather crude acronym has come to mean"paradigm of sexiness" and that about says it all really. It's hard to pick just one scene from Red Dust. One might do a list of at least five just from that film. My favorite is the first meeting of the couple in which they mostly debate the merits of different kinds of cheese. It's almost as if the writers were trying to come up with the least sexy dialog possible, but Gable and Harlow somehow set it on fire anyway. See it here.

Ever Since Eve (1937)

It's really hard to watch a movie with Marion Davies and not think of the whole "Rosebud" thing. It's also hard to watch her not imagine that the actors and actresses around her wouldn't be just a touch resentful of her star status. As William Randoph Hearst's mistress, she had an entire film production company created to give her a showcase. Of course, as Irving Thalberg's wife, Norma Shearer had a similar degree of unfair advantage. But Shearer won over critics and the public were crazy about her. She would have been a star without being Mrs. Thalberg. The same can not be said for Davies, though as a comic actress, she is actually quite good. Ever Since Eve was her final film and was a fitting movie to go out on. It is a breezy screwball comedy, co-starring Robert Montgomery and the always hilarious Patsy Kelly. I watched this movie for Montgomery and Kelly, but I was impressed with Davies' ability to hold her own in with these top notch comic actors.

Davies retired from Hollywood at age 40 to devote herself to Hearst full-time. Without Hearst's backing, she might have made a very first rate actor, though perhaps never a star. I think she was wise not to try to force her way into the glamor gal roles any more. Hollywood then as now had little room for women over forty who had the misfortune to look their age. Looks are an important part of my assessment of this movie because the entire film is predicated on the conceit that Davies character is so incredibly gorgeous and sexy that her bosses can't keep their hands off of her. She looses job after job because she refuses to submit to sexual harassment. While I'm happy to see the issue of sexual harassment brought up, I think it's a mistake to think that it only happens to pretty girls. Even more offensive is the joking way in which Patsy Kelly is disappointed that her boss is a perfect gentleman with her.

As a solution to her employment problem, she gets an ugly bob wig, a dumpy double breasted suit, some thick glasses and manages to get along fine as Robert Montgomery's secretary. Like those movies where women dress in drag and men find themselves strangely attracted to them, only to be relieved when the ruse is revealed later in the film, Montgomery's character seems drawn to her. Absurdly he doesn't recognize her voice or face when she he meets her dressed in her normal "beautiful" attire. My willingness to suspend disbelief is further stretched by the fact that Davies looks pretty dowdy in the supposedly fashionable wardrobe she wears in this part of the film. Whatever happened to the kind of outrageously glamorous work attire that say Kay Francis would wear? The fitted pencil skirts and short jackets she's wedged into do nothing for Davies. Even the gown she wears in a nightclub scene makes her look lumpy. Maybe it was more than the actors who were resentful and Orry Kelly hated her as well? Hearst moved his production company from MGM to Warner's because Davies was tired of being second fiddle to Norma Shearer. Though she might have lost parts to Shearer at MGM, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have allowed her to go before the cameras like this.

What works in this movie is the script which is frothy and full of dozens of memorable one-liners. Patsy Kelly is a hoot and so is her fiancee played by Allen Jenkins. This is definitely a case in which the secondary couple were entertaining enough to draw my interest away from the leads. Montgomery was charming and funny as usual and he and Davies are quite fun together especially when she is impersonating a plain girl. I couldn't help but wish he would have just fallen in love with her like that. Or better yet, run off with Patsy Kelly.

Riptide

Norma Shearer and Herbert Marshall in "normal" evening gear in Riptide. As always, Ms. Shearer's evening gear is by Adrian. Though Marhsall gives a great performance you can tell what MGM's publicity department thought of the male actors in Shearer's pictures by how little light his face is given.


With a first half hour that would make any comedy of re-marriage of the late 30s proud, Riptide is one of the best Thalberg-produced Norma Shearer vehicles. The story begins with an an unseen dowager's invitation to the "World of the Future Ball." Lord Philip Wrexton (Herbert Marshall) and Mary (Norma Shearer) are strangers meeting en route to the party while struggling with the ridiculous costumes assigned to them by the dowager. These costumes are at once masterpieces of art deco styling and totally hilarious. The pair decide to ditch the party and their silly duds. (I have to say that I was a little disappointed that we don't actually get to see what the MGM art department would have down with the World of the Future Ball). After one big eyeful of one another in regular evening clothes--though to be fair when was Norma Shearer in an Adrian gown, ever anything but spectacular--they fall instantly in love. They then have one of those ridiculous conversations that could only happen in the movies where they acknowledge their intense attraction and plan their future in the vaguest and most breezy manner.

After a whirlwind "spree," represented by the usual polo-playing, speed boat riding montage the couple marry despite her wild past and his somewhat fusty personality. We flash forward five years and the couple are happily married and living in London with a three year old daughter. (I was delighted to see Norma Shearer reading the Tale of Jeremy Fisher at bedtgime. That is as close to being Norma Shearer as I ever get in a day.) Philip is going away on a men's only business trip (whatever that means) his wife is feeling sorely neglected. If this weren't a recipe enough for trouble, Philip's blacksheep aunt Hetty (Mrs. Patrick Campbell) is called in to chaperone. Hetty is a fun-loving old scamp and she insists of dragging her niece first to Monte Carlo and then into the apartment of Mary's ex, Tommie (Robert Montgomery) who is the life of every party. Tommie introduces us to a great hangover remedy, the crown of ice cubes. Inevitably there is moonlight and too much booze and Mary and Tommie get unfairly caught in a scandal. Unwilling to believe that their romance amounted to nothing more than a kiss and some idle chatter, Philip asks Mary for divorce. Apparently there was more than polo playing happening during their spree and Philip decides that because she was the kind of girl who didn't stop at a kiss back then, there's no reason (other than, you know, five years of a marriage and a child together) she should have changed. Mary is understandably annoyed by this double standard and does the sensible thing which is to start sleeping with Tommie. Then Philip changes his mind after learning from a private detective that Mary was innocent after all. Now, Mary is happy to go back to Philip except she has this new and actual cheating to explain. Things get very awkward and driven by his insecurity and her temper, the couple decide to divorce again. The last third of the movie is tiresome as heart strings are tugged, child custody is debated and marriage triumphs about 15 minutes after we quit caring about it.

If this movie was just a tad funnier and a bit shorter, it would be remembered today as a classic romantic comedy. It has all the pieces: a stellar supporting cast, a juicy love triangle and a breezy clever script. As it is, Riptide isn't much remembered at all. Dismissed by critics as a typical Shearer vehicle, it was a box office hit and quickly forgotten when the next one came along. Like most of Norma's pictures it had a lot to say about sexual politics. It is very frank and not entirely outdated. For all its fantastical settings, the portrait of a marriage of opposite personality types was quite accurate--the very qualities which attract also cause tension. Marshall is adept at playing a man in love, yet wracked with quiet insecurities, unable to communicate with his wife. Shearer portrays her loneliness and frustration admirably and then simply shines in her scenes with Tommie. Robert Montgomery who gets billed above Marshall is in many ways the star of this picture, even though he doesn't get the girl. He is always the charming gad-about playboy in these movies, but he takes "charm" to it's zenith in Riptide. He is a leviathan of charm, scooping up hearts like so many plankton and swimming muscularly away when his part in the film is complete.

Eye Candy of the Day: A Free Soul

I've posted a lot of gorgeous eye candy since I started this blog, but I have to say this may be one of the prettiest. Not only did Doctor macro come through with a still of Gable and Shearer together (many of the publicity images for the film understandably feature its stars Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer), but I wanted to talk about the smokin' hot "dress" that she wears in this scene. Also, I love the way the scene is lit so that her hair has that halo effect. Every time I watch a Norma Shearer movie I have the sudden urge to get a perm. It must be the lighting!

I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of A Free Soul, especially in comparison to The Divorcee which was made just a year earlier. A Free Soul is better written, her character far more daring and interesting, the acting vastly better, and the production values are miles ahead. This feels almost like a mid-thirties film. The sound if not great, is at least fully audible, and the flow and the pace of the film are much more like a talkie than a silent.

I've said before that Norma Shearer is an actress who is really only good when she is acting with other people of her level of talent. Many great actors will make bad material and weak co-stars better, but Shearer wasn't able to do that. Here, thankfully, she clicks with everyone on screen . Luckily everyone in the movie (Gable, Leslie Howard, Lionel Barrymore and James Gleason) are also excellent. Her co-stars are so good that it would be tempting to say that they carry her, but that is not the case. Lionel Barrymore won an Oscar for his performance as her alcoholic father and that award came mainly for a long monologue he delivers in a courtroom. It is very over the top, but Barrymore doesn't go too far. A big scene like that is risky in that if it fails it will be as memorably bad as it is good. Barrymore nails it and he deserves his accolades. But Norma Shearer is in the scene too, holding her own.

Clark Gable is probably the most interesting thing in the film. It was clear that he was going to be a star and he and Shearer have an incandescent chemistry. The infamous scene where he shoves Shearer back onto the sofa, plays as fairly tame today. His character is reasonably sympathetic most of the way through and in many ways this film marks a turning point in attitudes toward "antiheroes." The New York Times review in 1931 said that it was absurd that a woman like Shearer would be romantically interest in Gable's character. Now it seems absurd that Leslie Howard would have a shot at all.

What a darling ensemble!

I'm pretty confused about female friendships after watching Jane Austen Book Club and The Women (1939) in the same day. Are my female friends horrified by my personal calamities or secretly thrilled by them? Are they the wind beneath my wings or the knife in my back? The classic 1939 film maintains that most women are a pack of gossiping, shrewish harpies whose main pleasure is to shop and send the bills to their husbands who are so busy having affairs with perfume counter girls that they don't notice another $250 nightgown (in 1939 money!) more or less. The 2007 film maintains that women become instantly bonded over the smallest triviality (a favorite author) and spend the rest of their lives bucking each other up with a steady diet of reading Jane Austen, wine-drinking and Ugg-wearing. That I have female friends that remind me of characters from both movies only adds to the confusion.

Here's the thing about these staggeringly different "chick flicks:" I really loved both of them because of all of the amazing ensemble acting. I'm a total sucker for ensemble acting. The Big Chill is one of my favorite movies of all time though I have little interest in the 1960s or the lives of self-obsessed yuppies who went to college in the sixties. Give me a movie where a bunch of actors get enough room to really create characters and even if their interactions are hopelessly contrived (as in both The Women and The Jane Austen Book Club) and I'm all over it.

Here are a few of the highlights:

Rosalind Russell in the Women is a revelation even for this Ros Russell fan. She's over the top loathsome and catty and though she was a gorgeous glamorous woman she was completely willing to lookunattractive in this film. The ingenious costuming always includes extra tall ugly hats and fussy ruffles is designed to make Russell looks as awkward as possible. Compare her to star Norma Shearer who was actually a little bit frumpy in this movie until the final scenes and to Joan Crawford who benefits from the femme fatale wardrobe she's given. Speaking of wardrobe, The Women has about 15 minutes of amazing filler in the form of a technicolor fashion show. These are some of the most hilriously odd clothes I've ever seen in my life. The recent remake of the film has the main character, Mary Haines, as a fashion designer. I like how the original film skewers the world of fashion, the absurdity, the expense and the snobbishness. And then of course it turns around and gives you fifteen minutes of clothing eye candy.

Emily Blunt in Jane Austen book Club is excellent as the tightly wound "time bomb" Prudie who has serious mommy issues and a thing for one of her high school students. She also has the most amazing clothes, which stand in stark contrast to the other "hippy handcraft" wearing members of the club.

Paulette Goddard stands out in a critical but small part in The Women. I love her advice to Mary Haines, "You forgot to lick her in the one place it counts. In his arms. And if I know men that's still Custer's last stand." And then she goes on to have the film's one genuine cat fight, with Rosalind Russell. Awesome.

Hugh Dancy plays the lone male member of the book club. He's a sci fi nerd who is attracted to one of the members and so ends up reading all of Jane Austen as well as the Mysteries of Udolpho just to get her attention. Stunt reading. Look ma, no cliff's notes. I love his take on "Mansfield Park," that it's a reverse Empire Strikes Back, because the brother and sister get together at the end.

It would take a much longer blog post than I really feeling like doing right now to go into depth about either of these movies. They are both vacuous, enjoyable and have a way of distracting and soothing the way a good chic flic should.

Eye candy of the day: Let Us Be Gay

Norma in the "after" pictures from one of the most stunning make-overs in movie history. Do click on the high res on this one to see the amazing detail on that Adrian gown from Let Us Be Gay.

Norma Shearer may not have been the best actress in Hollywood in the early thirties, but she was certainly the bravest. It wasn't enough that she appeared occasionally in translucent gowns or that she made movies about women who dared to be as opportunistic and promiscuous as men. No, Norma did something Garbo, Harlow or Dietrich would have never dared. She appeared on screen for ten minutes without make-up, in frumpy clothes and glasses. I didn't even recognize her. I though she was the maid for the first two minutes of the movie--until she went downstairs and started giving orders to the maid that is. Kitty Brown is a woman who tries very hard to please her husband and treat him right, but he still runs around on her anyway. Confronted with the awful truth she throws him out. When next we see her she is transformed into Norma Shearer with bobbed hair, make up and sporty, sexy clothes. Mick La Salle wrote about the transformation saying that Shearer was suggesting to all women that they could be beautiful and glamorous and that her own beauty was somewhat manufactured. Nowadays when actresses ugly themselves up, they get Oscar nominations. Back then it was viewed as Norma competing against herself, her only real competition. She had to top the last movie she did, The Divorcee.

After Kitty Brown is transformed to Katharine Courtland Brown fashion designer, returning after three years in Paris, she finds herself at a week-end house party with her ex-husband. In one scene he asks to know what she's been up to and she says "like you I've been amusing myself with anything and everything. I know a man feels about those things now." Shearer plays the scene so that you don't know whether she is serious or winding him up. He clearly doesn't believe her and it takes finding two men in her bedroom to convince him that she hasn't been home knitting those clever cloche hats that she wears. Yet, by the end of the movie you are still are unclear whether Kitty is truly as worldly as she'd have her ex believe. She flirts so fast and continuously its almost as if she were inventing speed dating and she is just as deft at playing suitors so that they feel as if they are making progress without getting so much as a kiss from her.

Shearer's performance is a bit uneven and I'm inclined to think that's partly down to the varying quality of the other cast members. With an old pro like Marie Dressler she's fabulous and funny. With Rod La Rocque who plays her husband she struggles to find a rhythm. There are strange pauses and it feel like you are watching a play where people are late on their cues. And in a sense you are since since the screenplay was adapted from a stage play by Rachel Crothers.

Maximum Strength Mick

Mick LaSalle obsession, Norma Shearer, in Riptide. TCM will show Shearer's pre-code movie Let Us Be Gay, next Monday. They are also showing Double Harness a pre-code movie with another LaSalle favorite, Ann Harding, this afternoon!

After recently enjoying Mick LaSalle's books on Pre-code Hollywood ("Complicated Women" and "Dangerous Men") I found a bunch of raw interview footage of him talking about many of his favorite subjects. Mick is the film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and he taught a class on the subject at Berkeley which makes me actually want to go back to school. He also maintains a blog called Maximum Strength Mick with podcasts and book reviews.

I think LaSalles books are a great place to start with the pre-code era. His explanation of the "code" itself is the best I've read. LaSalle argues convincingly that the code did more harm than good for movies as a whole. I have a hard time reconciling this emotionally because my favorite films, screwball comedies of the late 1930s, probably wouldn't have existed without the code. It doesn't help that my favorite movie star, Cary Grant, was still learning how to act in the pre-code era. While this was pretty common actually, and bless the studio system for continuing to give these people room to grow and steady work, it is more instructive at times than actually enjoyable.

He talks a lot about Barbara Stanwyck, one of my favorite actresses. This is a great time to watch this and warm up those Tivos because TCM will be showing almost an entire day of pre-code Stanwyck films on August 19th.