Millie

Fun to see a young Joan Blondell. She and Frank Mc hugh would make TONS of great films over the next 20 years. The sound and picture quality are surprisingly good for such a seldom seen film. Sure, it ain't no Gone with the Wind, but they packed a lot of story into this early love triangle, or quadrilateral, as the case may be.

Gal (Helen Twelvetrees is "Millie") falls in love, and keeps getting shafted by the men in her life. She is determined to be strong and independent, and protect herself and her daughter, Connie, played by Anita Louise. We see the daughter at the beginning, and again near the end, but she kind of disappears for most of the story. She and her two best friends get together and "help" each other whenever there is a crisis. Help is a relative term here... her two friends take a little too much delight in giving her bad news about her husbands and the guys who "done her wrong".

Good fast moving script for the most part. Granted, there are a couple scenes that don't really need to be there (the "drunk" scene, where the two gal pals console each other, and a couple others.) Takes on some bigger issues, way ahead of its time, but watch it for yourself to see what I mean. I think they are showing all kinds of true life "things", if one reads between the lines, that weren't normally talked about in films. I'm really surprised at the lower rating of "6" as of today, but with only 211 votes, I guess it hasn't been seen much. Directed by John Dillon, who had started EARLY on in the silents. You can tell this was a relatively new talkie, since they use title cards here and there. Novel written by Donald Clarke, who also wrote "Female", another story of an early, independent woman, made into film.

Millie is one of those pre-code drama which starts with a pre-World War I setting and takes us deep into the Depression. Helen Twelvetrees is in the title role, but in fact this one could definitely be called a woman's picture. First for the fact that the best roles are for the women and that the men here are mostly dogs.

Millie starts with Helen Twelvetrees as an eager young bride who's run away with the richest, handsomest boy in town. They have a kid, but he starts stepping out on her soon enough. She sacrifices in the way Stella Dallas did and gradually she goes through a variety of men all of whom disappoint her one way or another. Twelvetrees also has some gal pals like Joan Blondell and Lilyan Tashman always with an 'I told you so' for all occasions.

But the mother instincts are aroused when one of her men, producer and rake, John Halliday starts moving on her daughter Anita Louise. Then this film starts resembling Madame X.

Twelvetrees made a career of playing tragic parts like in Millie kind of mirroring her own life. There are some great lines coming from her, Blondell and Tashman. For them alone this film is worth a view.

Prolific director John Francis Dillon's 1931 "Millie" is a curiosity piece, a pastiche of poor editing and some sprightly acting vignettes.

Millie, Helen Twelvetrees, starts off as a swept-off-her-feet kid eloping with handsome and ambitious Jack Maitland, James Hall. Her shaking virgin-wedding night-do we have to go to bed?- scene is very funny, one of the best of its kind on old film.

Ensconced in Westchester County outside NYC, Jack makes big bucks and Millie, now three years on and with a little girl, is neglected, bored and angry at her absent husband. A reunion with two girlfriends at a cabaret brings an encounter with an errant Jack and his foul-mouthed paramour who gets a sock in the jaw from Millie.

Divorced and working in New York City, Millie leads a socially active life with fast-track friends and wild parties. Reflecting the hesitancy of many directors and script writers at the time it's never really clear if Millie goes beyond gay partying to hop into the sack with rabidly panting, pursuing men, some already married.

Millie has one true male admirer, a reporter named Tommy, played by Robert Ames. A drunken twit tells Millie he's fooling around with another woman and she believes her, ending the best relationship she's had. Tommy's a sad case.

The story turns melodramatic when an older man-about-Manhattan, long obsessed with Millie, shows an unhealthy interest in her now gorgeous teenage daughter, Connie. The denouement is predictable but there's a nice trial scene to wrap things up.

"Millie" skirts on the border of dealing openly with adultery and promiscuousness. What is unusual is that the film has a clear sapphic subtext depicting Millie's two girlfriends as sexually involved - the first scene they're in shows them in bed in nightclothes. THAT was very unusual for the times. I wonder how many 1930s moviegoers picked up on that.

Most of the cast isn't well known other than to aficionados of pre-war films. Joan Blondell, whose career was in the ascendancy, is young Angie, a flighty friend of Millie and probable lover of her other girlfriend.

Better direction and editing would have improved a basically interesting story. It's a museum piece worth seeing if you care about how Hollywood portrayed extramarital flings, lechery, boozing and partying in the grand old Pre-Code Days.

5/10.

This creaky antique reworking of Madame X is of interest mainly for its pre-code ingredients, blatant lesbianism, unpunished sex outside marriage etc., than any real value as a film. A lot of the film techniques are reminiscent of silents showing the growing pains of films continued into the early thirties. Part of the problem with the film is that all the men talk about how the heroine gets under a man's skin and they can't get over her but Helen Twelvetrees exudes none of the magnetism that makes that believable. The supporting players add more to the picture than the leads with Lilyan Tashman having the most fun as a party girl with Joan Blondell and Frank McHugh both starting out but already stealing scenes with their patented personas firmly in place. Except for the three of them the acting is extremely florid, especially towards the end. An almost unrecognizable Anita Louise, still beautiful but so young, is cast as Millie's daughter.

Poor Millie! She marries for love - not money - and still ends up unlucky in love. There's something intriguingly contemporary about her consistently entering into bad relationships. Also contemporary is her decision to live with her boyfriend instead of marrying him - even though he does offer to marry her.

Helen Twelvetrees has the ability to make the heroine's story somewhat compelling despite the film's plodding structure. John Halliday is very appealing as Twelvetrees' suitor until his character turns surprisingly into a cad.

So what's the moral of this "woman's picture?" Millie is so hurt by her broken marriage that perhaps she errs in writing off her unfaithful husband so quickly. In him she may have found the only decent male character in the story.