Mae West is Tira, a dancer at a provincial circus whose act turns the head of all male customers. The circus boss (Edward Arnold) persuades her to add a new number to her repertoire: She is to appear as a lion tamer and put her head in a lion's mouth. Big success. Fame, money and rich admirers follow... Strange to say, this mediocre comedy was the big box office success of 1933. That's not to say that there are no positive sides. West has some great lines (for example 'When I'm good I'm very good. But when I'm bad I'm better'). She occasionally breaks into song, and I liked that. Ralf Harolde is good as a pickpocket who takes advantage of her act to relieve the audience of their valuables and has some other dirty tricks up his sleeve. Towards the end there is a good courtroom scene that made me decide to rate the film four stars rather than three. On the downside: On balance and despite her singing, I found West with her waddling walk and habit of never keeping still pretty off-putting. That seems to be part of what people in the 20s and early 30s liked about her (apart from her free talk) - ideals change, obviously. Ossi Oswalda, who appears in some early Lubitsch comedies and whom contemporary critics praised to high heaven did not appeal to me either. That's how it is. More importantly, the plot of 'I'm no Angel' is poor. There is no other word. For at least the first 45 minutes it is going nowhere, or rather, it meanders from one hole to the next. What's the role of Benny Pinkowitz (Gregory Ratoff), for example, whom West phones so urgently early in film? He does not have anything to do except towards the end, where he does something entirely unrelated to that phone call. The male lead Jack Clayton (Cary Grant) appears only in the last half hour or so and has got as good as nothing to do - almost as little as Ratoff. In sum, I did not much enjoy this picture and don't think I will return to it.
Review of I'm No Angel
