Vita inquieta

Back then, the studios made a lot of films, they were film factories; some films were given special treatment, those are most often the ones we see today. There was also a great deal of product that was ground out like sausage. The Girl Who Had Everything falls somewhere in the middle, as it has big stars and one of MGM's reliable (though not very artistic) stalwarts at the helm, Richard Thorpe. But it plays more like a B picture nobody cared about too much. It couldn't have taken very long to film it. It's mostly comprised of dialogue scenes and shot at MGM.

Basically it's a remake of A Free Soul, a brilliant melodrama from the studio's early days. If they had just done a fairly close remake of that one, in an updated form, they probably would have had a compelling film, what with William Powell in the Lionel Barrymore part and Elizabeth Taylor, Fernando Lamas, and Gig Young in the roles first taken by Norma Shearer, Clark Gable, and Leslie Howard.

Instead, it's a very watered down version of that picture. For example, a central plot point of A Free Soul is that daughter Norma will give up gangster Gable if alcoholic dad Barrymore will go on the wagon. There's nothing like this in the remake. Powell drinks, but he can handle it. Every interesting dramatic point is thrown away while keeping the bare bones of the original story, so there is no real dramatic tension. See the two films back to back for yourself.

A Free Soul takes place during Prohibition and Gable's character is a gangster who owns a speakeasy and gambling den, and Barrymore's character is a lawyer who frees him from a murder rap. It's topical, exciting, and fits together neatly. In the loose remake, Lamas is a racketeer and Powell is his lawyer, and that's about it. Well, see for yourself. It never gets a dramatic head of steam going. The acting is good, but that's about it.