Blonde Crazy (1931)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Blonde Crazy (1931) – R. Del Ruth

Jimmy Cagney is larger than life here, just a few movies on from his breakthrough in The Public Enemy (also 1931), as a bellboy turned big stakes grifter, travelling from hotel to hotel working his cons.  At the start of the film, he picks up his partner, Joan Blondell who all the men leer at (in this pre-code film) but who provides a ready slap to anyone who gets too frisky.  Together, they swindle Guy Kibbee (stock dirty old man of the 1930s) and then hope to use the proceeds to make more money by teaming up with old hand Louis Calhern – who promptly tricks them out of it along with his own blonde partner Noel Francis (the lure for Cagney).  The rest of the movie is spent trying to get back at Calhern with a big con of their own, while Blondell falls in love with heel Roy Milland, leaving self-centered wisecracking Cagney on his own. Although the film seems largely a comedy, we get a few nods to the gangster genre where Cagney made his biggest splash – but he still moves like the dancer he longed to be.

Monkey Business (1931)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Monkey Business (1931) – N. Macleod

The Marx Brothers allow their fluid chaos to infect a cruise ship (upon which they have stowed away).  Unlike later features, there are no definable characters to speak of (no Rufus T. Firefly etc.) but instead Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo running amok.  They are chased everywhere by the Captain and First Officer (after being discovered in barrels, singing). They run into two mobsters having a feud and conveniently become bodyguards for both sides. Zeppo romances one mobster’s daughter while Groucho has a playful relationship with the other mobster’s wife (Thelma Todd).  There are musical interludes (piano and harp, naturally).  There is a Punch and Judy show that Harpo takes over.  No real famous bits (that I was previously aware of) seem to have come from this film, their first written for the screen rather than adapted from a stage play.  But their greatest hits were just about to happen (next up: Horse Feathers).  Still, well worth a look!

Safe in Hell (1931)

☆ ☆ ☆

Safe in Hell (1931) – W.  Wellman

Pre-Code (i.e., before censorship and enforced happy endings) Hollywood feature by William Wellman and starring Dorothy Mackaill (who is in every virtually scene).  She is a call girl (the only way she can make a living, she claims, and the woeful status of women might support it) who accidentally kills her former pimp.  When her true love, a sailor, returns just at that moment, he loyally helpls her to escape to a Caribbean isle with no extradition laws to the US.  She promises to be faithful and, despite the fact that alcohol is not banned, not to party either.  As you would expect, her new land is filled with dissipated criminals who are sex-starved for a white woman (the film is as racist as it is sexist, although the two black characters, who run the hotel, are not caricatured fortunately).  Eventually gives in but still keeps her chastity awaiting the return of her sailor; instead her pimp arrives seemingly back from the dead (but of course he was never really killed, just using the opportunity to score some insurance money).  But, lo and behold, when he makes a move on Gilda this time, she kills him for good.  The plot goes on – will she get the death penalty or not? And there are a few more twists and a fully downbeat conclusion (after only 73 minutes).  At the end, I thought, well that wasn’t much -- but somehow, over night, it haunted me a bit.  Mackaill is a charismatic figure and she evokes the desperation of her plight and the psychological issues (faithfulness vs. hedonism in the face of a cruel unjust world) pretty well. Director Wellman is better known for The Public Enemy (1931) and A Star is Born (1937).

  

A Nous La Liberte (1931)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

A Nous La Liberte (1931) – R. Clair

At first, it’s a prison flick with all the inmates singing about the freedom they don’t have.  We see two of them plot their escape – but only one of them makes it.  He manages to work himself from street busker to factory owner in a quick montage.  His factory makes phonographs.  When his old cellmate appears working on the assembly line (later ripped off by Chaplin, although he settled the lawsuit without admitting it), the boss thinks he is about to be blackmailed. But instead, his friend just wants help winning the girl of his affections.  It doesn’t work and soon a gang of crooks really do appear to blackmail the boss.   In a twist that might only work in the France of the time, he abruptly donates his factory to the workers, let’s his money blow away in the wind, and hits the road as a tramp with his friend.  So, this makes it something of an anti-capitalist piece but blink and you could miss it.  Renoir’s The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936) hits the nail more squarely on the head.  But Rene Clair’s earlier film is an early talkie that still contains some of the lyricism and wowing art direction of the silents but I think I prefer his Le Million (also 1931). 

Mata Hari (1931)

☆ ☆ ☆ 

Mata Hari (1931) – G. Fitzmaurice

Pre-code Greta Garbo talkie (that was edited to remove some of its risqué content sometime later) tells the story of the famous WWI spy who was also an exotic dancer.  Of course, Garbo epitomized exotic glamour at the time, but she is a bit gayer and more free than her later melancholy and tragic image might suggest.  Still, the story is tragic in the end, because Mata Hari was ultimately revealed in Paris and died by the firing squad.  Her source of information, General Shubin of Russia, is played by pre-wheelchair Lionel Barrymore who gives the role his usual zest, overshadowing nominal leading man Ramon Novarro (a Russian soldier).  It doesn’t end well for either of them either. George Fitzmaurice’s direction is unobtrusive and the sets and costumes create the right atmosphere of romantic intrigue but generally things are a bit static.  The script is surely melodramatic enough, yet Garbo somehow isn’t able to indulge her torments to the fullest extent.