This is the perfect early thirties romance, it's even got gangsters! It couldn't be more 1930s if it tried - everything you want from an early thirties picture is here. It dripping with atmosphere, you feel you can actually smell the leather in those massive old cars; this picture really takes you there.
This is one of those perfectly presented pictures in which the characters are so real, you're living your life with them. Helped by the flowing photography, often representing different points of view, you get a sense of intimacy and immediacy watching this. There's an almost fly-on-the-wall approach employed to make it feel like you've got stuck in the room hiding behind a curtain eavesdropping on someone else's life. Maybe I was just in a funny mood but I honestly found this as engrossing and thrilling as MISSION IMPOSSIBLE - I was on the edge of my seat, almost hyperventilating with the excitement. Nobody had to choose whether to cut the red or blue wire on the bomb with three seconds to spare - no all that was happening here was that I was hoping nothing would go wrong - in the shape of spiteful Sylvia or nasty Frank, to spoil Helen and Paul's burgeoning romance - which you desperately want to happen.
As with most of George Abbott's films, this is superbly made and I wasn't just watching it, I was there, fully immersed. I could hardly bear to suspense - it's difficult to resist the temptation to fast forward to the end! Was this meant to be this exciting?
As any fan of early thirties pictures will know, when a high-society man dies having lost all the family's money in the '29 crash, his daughter invariably has to become a prostitute and his son a gangster..... except in this. Whilst this has every 1930s trope you can think of, what makes this a little different and more memorable is it's intelligent and believable story. It is set amongst the world of the wealthy but they're presented as real, three dimensional people. It's so refreshing not to see these people lazily depicted as evil baby-eating goblins for a change.
Herbert Marshal is always a pleasure to watch and given a good script like this, you can happily listen to that silky voice for ages. Although not one of his best-known films, along with THE GOOD FAIRY I think this might be one of his best performances. And there's Claudette Colbert! She was of course the most beautiful woman ever to walk the face of the earth (along with whoever else I've just watched!) but nevertheless, her acting style is so much more modern and natural than most of her contemporaries, she immediately makes her character 'Helen' completely believable.
Her character which represents normality and the good side of human nature provides a wonderfully stark contrast with the villain of the film played somewhat bizarrely by Georges Metaxa. Taken out of context, his performance seems utterly manic, almost like he's the wicked witch in a pantomime but since everyone else accepts his eccentricity (his very unpleasant eccentricity) as normal, that dichotomy works really well in contrasting just how nice and lovely and cuddly our cute couple Helen and Paul are. And I'm not being sarcastic - this really made me smile.
