(87 min) Released 1936-06-12
Director: Frank Borzage
Stars: Marion Davies, Dick Powell, Charles Ruggles, Claude Rains, E.E.Horton, Arthur Treacher, Henry Stephenson, ..., Beulah Bondi
Genres: Drama | History | Musical | Romance
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0027726/
Watched online.
Watched out of sequence. This falls between It's Love Again and Poor Little Rich Girl. (Among MD's films, it falls immediately before Cain and Mabel.)
Since this stars Marion Davies, I expect the 7.4 rating to be inflated. The supporting cast was very promising. But this is primarily a vanity project to display MD. If I had sought a(n?) historical drama, this might have been interesting. But the 2 songs sung by DP and one partial song by the Hall Johnson Choir do not a musical make.
Trying to analyze this as a non-musical: I don't care about the people or events portrayed. The promising presence of Ruggles, Horton and Treacher (always posed in order of height) provide mild and pointless comic relief, and a source of friendship for Betsy (MD) when she's spurned. So the film's not hideous, just not to my taste.
This film has the same beginning, with different actors, as the Technicolor historical short "The Romance of Louisiana" provided as a DVD extra on The Gold Diggers of 1937. (I gave up watching it early. I suspect it did not explore Napolean's brother and his American wife.)
Warner, dir. Borzage; 5+
