(93 mins.) Released 1931-05-22
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Stars: Maurice Chevalier, Claudette Colbert, Miriam Hopkins, Charles Ruggles
comedy, romance, musical
Back to musicals in the '30s.
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Hugh Hefner died this week (9/27/17). Playboy magazine began in 1953. In 1963 Gloria Steinem went undercover as a Playboy bunny (a cocktail waitress in a Playboy club) and wrote a "tell-all". (I just read it; it's a diary detailing how difficult the work is. Was a Bunny supposed to have an easier job than a non-Bunny cocktail waitress?) Hef promoted sex for pleasure. Steinem claimed it objectified women. You people are 20-30 years too late. Lubitsch covered the pleasure angle in this flick. Today I'm agreeing with Steinem that the women got the short end of the __ick.
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This movie has the Lubitch touch, conveying sexual promiscuity (LONG before the Pill) with street lamps and breakfast on the terrace in robes. But the lesson of the film, and it's explicitly taught by one woman to another, is that men, or at least the main character (Chevalier) is attracted to the fast woman, dressed in satin and fur, not lace and linen, with bobbed hair, smoking cigarettes and playing jazz.
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The only parity: the women seem to like him for HIS looks, so let's ALL be shallow, 'K?
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I'm a fan of Claudette Colbert. She looks like she might have some plastic surgery in her future. Or maybe this is why she only wanted to be photographed from one side of her face. She seems to do her own singing here, and isn't bad.
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This is charming and risque. Would qualify as a pre-Code, except maybe that the wife wins and the other woman just slinks away. I liked it better when I gave it a 7. I'm downgrading it today.
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Paramount, dir. Lubitsch; 6+
