I went to today's showing of this movie at the Museum of Modern Art with mixed expectations. On the plus side, it starred some of my favorite performers of the early talkie era, including Frank Morgan (before he became typecast), Lois Wilson, the underused Binnie Barnes, Margaret Hamilton and, in minor roles, Alan Hale and Walter Brennan. It was directed by Edward Sloman, a visual stylist who would helm the next year's brilliant A DOG OF FLANDERS, and whose career would abruptly end. On the other hand, it was a soap opera, and I am not fond of those.
For the first twenty minutes, my optimistic hopes were realized. True, there were no visual fireworks, and the dialogue direction was a little shaky, but a perfect portrait was offered of Frank Morgan's Joseph White, a successful man in love with his life, heading home to surprise his wife with a night out on the town to celebrate their wedding anniversary, only to be brought up short as the forgotten man at home, pushed out of every room, except when he is sent to the nether regions of the basement to deal with the cranky coal furnace. Enter Binnie Barnes.
Well, we know what's going on, but this movie received Certificate 51 of the newly rewritten and enforced Production Code. As a result, we see nothing much after this. Instead, we are treated to several monologues, none of them well delivered -- Sloman's talkies always show signs of needing a good dialogue director. This movie, which started out so well, turns into what might have been a decent radio drama.
I much fear that this movie is a severe disappointment, not because of what other reviewers call its old-fashioned nature, but because of its actual shortcomings. Its theme - - that even the most upright and honorable man or woman needs to be respected and loved -- remains with us. The story, though, could not be told under the Production Code: certainly not by Mr. Sloman.
