|
George Cukor sets the effervescent tone with an early flurry, a champagne kaleidoscope to show the hard work that is "entertaining" sugar daddies. The romantic (Kay Francis) and the mercenary (Lilyan Tashman) have a nifty routine, after the nightclub they return to the penthouse but the clients can't come up because Mother is watching from the window. (Louise Beavers does the honors with bonnet in the Whistler pose.) The newest arrangement sends them to a yacht with "the Copper King" (Eugene Pallette) and his associate (Joel McCrea). "Jump into your uniform, fireman, it's a five-alarm party!" One girl fleeces the skinflint prankster, the other strikes mock-swooning poses with the strapping hunk until the two realize that they're in love and the director's role-playing themes bubble to the fore. "Pretty good pretending, baby." Plenty of snap, plenty of fresh technique—Francis and McCrea take a stroll at the zoo and an open-air reverse track slides into a lateral pan so that the camera is behind bars alongside bears and baboons peering at the couple. A phone call to the heroine's strapped ex-husband (Anderson Lawler) occasions a deep-focus composition with a female leg dangling in the background, even the blackmailing cad has his reasons, "let me be the first to congratulate you on getting rid of me." Similarly, the tycoon's wife (Lucile Gleason) arrives to chide her rival and leaves in cahoots with her. (The punchline is a montage alternating close-ups of sparkling jewels with Pallette's jowl-jiggling double takes.) "Are you going straight on me?" Hawks has the celebratory analysis in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Mizoguchi takes a tragic view in Sisters of the Gion. With Alan Dinehart, Lucile Browne, George Barbier, Robert McWade, and Judith Wood. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |