Honor Among Lovers.

Review #2522: Honor Among Lovers.

Cast:

Claudette Colbert (Julia Traynor), Fredric March (Jerry Stafford), Monroe Owsley (Philip Craig), Charles Ruggles (Monty Dunn), Ginger Rogers (Doris Brown), Avonne Taylor (Maybelle Worthington), Pat J. O'Brien (Conroy), Janet McLeary (Margaret Newton), and Ralph Morgan (Riggs) Directed by Dorothy Arzner (#1648 - Sarah and Son, #1810 - Working Girls, #1992 - The Wild Party, #2187 - Christopher Strong, #2362 - Anybody's Woman)

I suppose the best way to start talking about the film is to let Arzner's words (conducted in the 1970s) about the movie: "I collaborated in the writing of Honor Among Lovers, which I made for Paramount in New York. As audiences were ready for more sophistication, it was considered the smartest high comedy at the time. No, there was no pressure regarding the script, I had very little interference with my pictures. Sometimes there were differences in casting, sets, or costumes, but usually I had my way. You see I was not dependent on the movies for my living, so I was always ready to give the picture over to some other director if I couldn’t make it the way I saw it. Right or wrong, I believe this was why I sustained so long––twenty years." This was the 8th credited feature film for Arzner as a director, right between Anybody's Woman (1930) and Working Girls (1931). There were apparently a few working titles with "Sex in Business", "Strictly Business", and "Another Man's Wife". This was the second pairing of Colbert and March, who first appeared together in Manslaughter (1930) (they appeared again with The Sign of the Cross [1932] and Tonight is Ours [1933]).

Okay, sure, an office triangle movie with a couple of future Academy Award winning actors involved*. It sounds like a pretty casual affair, particularly with a runtime of 75 minutes that basically coasts on just how much you yearn to see how one woman's choices create so many ripples for all involved. It's the type of movie that has its own little quirks for modern audiences, of course, mainly because the boss in the film is, well, a boss trying to strike up a romance with his secretary that decides that the best course of action after she gets married is to fire her. But at least he seems normal when compared to the other man in the triangle in Owsley, who was a stock theater troupe man before he got onto film (in the last days of silent film) that acted all the way until his death...at 36 in 1937 (from a heart attack, of all things). One can enjoy a little bit of ham-handedness (especially when representing the underrated aspect of a love triangle story: a guy who isn't actually that good at wooing). One thing comes to another and boom, suddenly you have folks trying to throw their significant other down the river for their foolishness. At least the movie isn't completely judgmental over the decisions made by its one key feminine presence (because if it was, the movie probably would hit the rails into melodrama to chuckle at). Colbert and March prove fairly dependable and have a bit of chemistry together to where it at least isn't too hard to see where they would actually grow up and want the other. As a whole, it's a decent movie that comes and goes with the relative craftsmanship that Arzner had honed down in less than five years as a director that just rolls with useful sophistication and perspective for human nature.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

*March won his first Academy Award with his performance in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) while Colbert won her award with It Happened One Night (1934), and if you pay attention to the supporting roles, you'll see the future winner for Kitty Foyle (1940) in Ginger Rogers

Apologies, I forgot to include a song of the day for the previous review. So enjoy two: 

belated) Song of the day

and this song of the day!

The Life of Emile Zola.

Review #1347: The Life of Emile Zola.

Cast: 
Paul Muni (Émile Zola), Gloria Holden (Alexandrine Zola), Gale Sondergaard (Lucie Dreyfus), Joseph Schildkraut (Captain Alfred Dreyfus), Donald Crisp (Maitre Labori), Erin O'Brien-Moore (Nana), John Litel (Charpentier), Henry O'Neill (Colonel Picquart), Morris Carnovsky (Anatole France), Louis Calhern (Major Dort), Ralph Morgan (Commander of Paris), Robert Barrat (Major Walsin-Esterhazy), and Vladimir Sokoloff (Paul Cézanne) Directed by William Dieterle.

Review: 
"I've never tried to learn the art of acting. I have been in the business for years but I still can't tell what acting is or how it's done"

As redundant as it may sound, one needs a bit of history now and then. Who better to headline a biographical film than Paul Muni? The son of actors, he had started a career in Yiddish theatre in Chicago after emigrating there from Lemberg (a city that was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire but is now referred to as Lviv, Ukraine). He was noted for his makeup skills, appearing as an 80-year-old man to debut on stage while being just 12. He spent three years on Broadway before being signed by Fox Film in 1929, making two films (The Valiant and Seven Faces), but he went back to Broadway before being enticed to return in 1932, with Scarface and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang leading to him being signed by Warner Bros. Muni was noted for his preparation for roles, particularly for biographies, which served him for films such as The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), which won him an Academy Award for Best Actor. Muni made 13 of his 23 films in the 1930s, having script approval over what he wanted to do, a rare thing at the time. He ended his career the same way he started it: with an Academy Award nomination (he had five in total).

Naturally, one is to expect a few wrinkles of inaccuracy, which the film anticipates with a title card stating that the while the production has basis in history, the historical basis was "fictionalized for the purposes of this picture". Relating to that, a cursory search of Zola leads me to a fact I didn't discover in the film: he wrote a cycle of twenty novels named Les Rougon-Macquart, for which Nana (mentioned in the film) was part of. The obvious sticking point with history is how the film deals with the Dreyfus affair when relating to anti-Semitism of the time that was key to the case since he was Jewish (the word isn't even mentioned in dialogue, only shown on screen once), which has been argued to be due to the timidity of studios when it came to dealing with Nazi Germany. There are numerous quibbles that can be freely noted, ranging from how he is brought into the Dreyfus case (not over the tears of the wife) to the fact that his death (carbon monoxide poisoning through a badly ventilated chimney) was not in fact the day before exoneration of said general. But as Zola once said, "The truth is on the march, and nothing shall stop it." The film relies on the sentiment of truth and justice eventually prevailing in the end, with German actor-turned-director Dieterle being the one to help do it, having directed Muni to three biographical films (the aforementioned Pasteur film and Juarez) in a directing run that spanned forty years. The film has a stagy quality to it, where one senses a speech with some sort of platitudes to pop up sooner than later, which can work out well when a moment of dignity is required. In that sense, Muni makes the best of it, where one sees the dedication in bringing an icon of writing to the screen come out without seeming too much like overacting (which Muni has been criticized for, with Dieterle even accusing him of doing occasionally). One can see his conviction on display without hesitation in the monologue scene for the court, a six-minute scene of dedication to making the measure of a man. The rest of the actors (including an Academy Award-winning performance from Schildkraut) do just fine, keeping up with Muni in displaying some dignity in keeping the momentum going without too many bumps in the road, whether as people who stand with Zola for truth or stand among keeping it buried to not have to deal with an army admitting fallibility. Granted, the resulting film that comes from said statements seems a bit long at 116 minutes, but at least one can say that this worked better with being a biography than the previous biographical Best Picture winner in The Great Ziegfeld (1936), even if it is at best a fairly okay experience to spend time with. One can be inspired to inquire further about the famed author than the mild snapshots that this provides. It may not be the most prime material for its decade, but it still finds a way to create curiosity through its attempts at entertainment along the lines of other films of its ilk in most of the right places.

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.