Leo McCarey directed a few Laurel and Hardy shorts, then went on to more ambitious projects in the 1940s, hitting a home run with "Going My Way." But this production is by turns sluggish and snappy, and in the end uncertain of what it wants to be, romantic comedy or melodrama.
Gloria Swanson is a swinging chick who ends her affair with the duplicitous Monroe Owsley, presumably no relation to THE Owsley who made the best acid in the world. He's been promising to marry Swanson for some time but is just out to have as much fun as he can. Returning from a party, Swanson notes that he's been cuddling up to all the girls present and she picks a long hair from his evening clothes and examines it. "Why, Gerry," he protests, "this isn't like you." "No, I'm a brunette." The dialog sometimes has a bit of sparkle. Owsley claims he wants to go through with it. With what? "Oh, marriage and all that." "I'm afraid there'd be too much of 'all that'." Later, after Swanson meets her one true love, a novelist, her new beau asks if she makes a profit at designing dresses. She's afraid not. She always winds up wearing her own designs. "Too bad. I was hoping I could quit work." Still, the impatient novelist wants to get married right away. "It's much more fun to be married first and get to know each other afterward." Swanson: "Have you ever tried it?" Well, he hasn't tried it but it's not such a bad idea. In 1931 they were doing it in India all the time, and recent studies have shown that arranged marriages and so-called love marriages even out, in terms of satisfaction, after a few years.
There's also a rather extended shot of the novelist fiddling around with the pumps on Swanson's stockinged feet. (What ARE pumps, anyway?) He shoehorns her feet into them with a playing card and the camera seems to salivate over the process like Bunuel's. Well, we all have our quirks. But though my own collection of lady's shoes is probably the equal of McCarey's I wouldn't dream of putting my fetish on display in public view. Nobody on earth will ever know that I am channeling Imelda Marcos.
Gloria Swanson was superb in "Sunset Boulevard". She was really a very savvy lady, not at all like her screen character. And in "Sunset Boulevard" she had the perfect stagy voice for the part, as if she were imitating herself. Alas, she has the same voice here, as the newly graduated poo-poo-pe-doo ex flapper. Her singing voice is nicely controlled but she isn't really convincing when she speaks.
The plot is treated at times as a yeasty comedy but it's really a story of Swanson's conflict. She's just ended an affair with the man her niece is about to marry. Should she tell? Ho hum.
As one reviewer noted, there is a scene in which Swanson bathes and, yes, it's true that she undresses before entering the shower, although the viewer gets to see no more than her nimble knees. And, yes, it's also true that when she throws her first inconstant suitor out, she hands him his golf bag which has been stashed in her closet, suggesting that he's spent a good deal of time at her place, perhaps for reasons best left unexamined.
But let's also note another scene. When they are alone in the apartment she goes into a throbbing clinch with her new lover and McCarey cuts to the rain falling softly outside the window. I hate to say it but this is a common cinematic convention suggestive of still MORE illicit copulation. If it's not falling rain, it's a door swinging to and fro in the wind, or foaming combers curling on a beach, or a thunderstorm criss-crossed with lightning, or a fire crackling passionately in the hearth. What kind of a broad IS this, anyway?
Gloria Swanson is a swinging chick who ends her affair with the duplicitous Monroe Owsley, presumably no relation to THE Owsley who made the best acid in the world. He's been promising to marry Swanson for some time but is just out to have as much fun as he can. Returning from a party, Swanson notes that he's been cuddling up to all the girls present and she picks a long hair from his evening clothes and examines it. "Why, Gerry," he protests, "this isn't like you." "No, I'm a brunette." The dialog sometimes has a bit of sparkle. Owsley claims he wants to go through with it. With what? "Oh, marriage and all that." "I'm afraid there'd be too much of 'all that'." Later, after Swanson meets her one true love, a novelist, her new beau asks if she makes a profit at designing dresses. She's afraid not. She always winds up wearing her own designs. "Too bad. I was hoping I could quit work." Still, the impatient novelist wants to get married right away. "It's much more fun to be married first and get to know each other afterward." Swanson: "Have you ever tried it?" Well, he hasn't tried it but it's not such a bad idea. In 1931 they were doing it in India all the time, and recent studies have shown that arranged marriages and so-called love marriages even out, in terms of satisfaction, after a few years.
There's also a rather extended shot of the novelist fiddling around with the pumps on Swanson's stockinged feet. (What ARE pumps, anyway?) He shoehorns her feet into them with a playing card and the camera seems to salivate over the process like Bunuel's. Well, we all have our quirks. But though my own collection of lady's shoes is probably the equal of McCarey's I wouldn't dream of putting my fetish on display in public view. Nobody on earth will ever know that I am channeling Imelda Marcos.
Gloria Swanson was superb in "Sunset Boulevard". She was really a very savvy lady, not at all like her screen character. And in "Sunset Boulevard" she had the perfect stagy voice for the part, as if she were imitating herself. Alas, she has the same voice here, as the newly graduated poo-poo-pe-doo ex flapper. Her singing voice is nicely controlled but she isn't really convincing when she speaks.
The plot is treated at times as a yeasty comedy but it's really a story of Swanson's conflict. She's just ended an affair with the man her niece is about to marry. Should she tell? Ho hum.
As one reviewer noted, there is a scene in which Swanson bathes and, yes, it's true that she undresses before entering the shower, although the viewer gets to see no more than her nimble knees. And, yes, it's also true that when she throws her first inconstant suitor out, she hands him his golf bag which has been stashed in her closet, suggesting that he's spent a good deal of time at her place, perhaps for reasons best left unexamined.
But let's also note another scene. When they are alone in the apartment she goes into a throbbing clinch with her new lover and McCarey cuts to the rain falling softly outside the window. I hate to say it but this is a common cinematic convention suggestive of still MORE illicit copulation. If it's not falling rain, it's a door swinging to and fro in the wind, or foaming combers curling on a beach, or a thunderstorm criss-crossed with lightning, or a fire crackling passionately in the hearth. What kind of a broad IS this, anyway?